♥ A Trick Of The Mind - Penny Hancock || Review ♥

Have you committed a crime ...or are you the victim of one?

Driving down to the cottage in Southwold she's newly inherited from her Aunty May, Ellie senses she is on the edge of something new. The life she's always dreamed of living as a successful artist seems as though it is about to begin. So excited is she that she barely notices when the car bumps against something on the road.

That evening Ellie hears a news flash on the radio. A man was seriously injured in a hit and run on the very road she was driving down that evening. Then Ellie remembers the thump she heard. Could she have been responsible for putting a man in hospital? Unable to hold the doubts at bay, she decides to visit the victim to lay her mind to rest, little knowing that the consequences of this decision will change her life forever.

This is the first book my mum rated 5* on goodreads, which says something, its also the first book she has read in two days, so this had to be a good one, so i knew it was something i had to read straight away. 

We meet Ellie as she heads out of town to stay in her aunty mays cottage, driving along she hits something in the road - and then carries on, not thinking all too much of it, but immediately wanting to turn back due to some OCD tendencies - she fights it and arrives at the cottage, waiting for her friends to arrive she sets about making the cottage homely.

As the evening wears on, Ellie hears on the news about a hit and run accident on the stretch of road she drove down, starting to panic she flees to check, to conivnce her self she didnt do it, but theres that doubt, after spending the weekend with her friends, shes not conivinced it wasnt her, so Ellie heads off to meet the injured man.

What follows as the pair embark on a weird relationship,  as they learn to get to know each other, as Ellie wants to correct her wrongs. It's an odd read, its gripping and consuming. The characters suck
you in, you want to know whats going on their heads.

A trick of the mind leads you down one road, but lets you see the others, it could be one thing, it could be another - its hard to describe without putting too many spoilers, i just want the world to read it, i adored girl on the train but this is a step up from that.

5/5

Penny grew up in South East London and then did an English degree in Newcastle Upon Tyne. For several years she taught English as a foreign language in Italy, Greece and Morocco. She then took a PGCE, got a job as a Primary school teacher in an inner city London school, and moved into her partner Andy’s short-life house in East London, which is now part of the hardcore under the M11 that links their new home in Cambridge with her birth place in Greenwich!

While bringing up their three children, she continued to teach in primary schools, taught English to asylum seekers, and ran adult education classes in writing. She also wrote articles for various papers (The Independent, The Guardian, The Times Ed, The Sunday Express magazine, and Child Education, amongst others) specialising in family and education. Penny has also written readers for English language learners for Cambridge University Press, and a Primary English course for children published by Longmans. It was an Arvon writing course and an MA in creative writing at Anglia Ruskin University that encouraged her to complete her first novel.