Touching the Wire by Rebecca Bryn

I can't believe my last post was nearly a month ago. I've been reading but this time to help another author. This has been the best thing about publishing as an independent author; there is a wonderful community of supportive writers out there. Helping each other with promotions, book cover design and reviews. Three wonderful writers have taken the time to Beta read my next book; conversations with Tom. I've taken their advise to heart and are making the necessary changes. In turn, I did a Beta read myself.
I've also been busy with book promotion; it's a never ending job. One promotion that is coming up is a Kindle countdown deal from the 13th to the 16th of February. Blood Ties will be reduced to 99c for .com customers.

Blood Ties on Amazon.com

Of course book 1 remains free.
Touching the wire is the second book of Rebecca Bryn I've read. She's a very talented indie writer and I would recommend giving her books a try.

Touching the wire by Rebecca Bryn on Amazon

Touching the wire is a story told in two parts. Part one is narrated by Walt, a grandfather of seven year old twins Charlotte and Lucy. He is plagued by the memories of his time as a doctor at Auschwitz. Through a number of flashbacks we find out about his struggle to keep patients alive and his blossoming love for a young Jewish woman; Miriam. Part two is told from the perspective of Charlotte, his granddaughter who we catch up with several years later. This book raises many interesting questions like; what are we willing to sacrifice to save the ones we love and is standing by without acting the same as giving consent? I liked the structure of the book and thought the telling of the story through flashbacks, diary entries and present day events worked well. The often harrowing details of camp life and medical experiments were handled sensitively although at times graphic. Horrendous things happened at Auschwitz and the author is justified in going into the gruesome details. We need to keep writing about the holocaust, so that younger generations will not forget.

I liked the first part of the book very much and I got swept up in the budding romance against all odds of Walt/Chuck and Miriam. I did have some problems with the second part. We now have Charlotte narrating. She is a married woman with a complicated love life. I found the change of pace, setting and main character a little unsettling, but reading on I found myself being captivated by Charlotte’s quest to unearth her grandfather’s secrets.

  I gave this four stars.

The Silence of the Stones by Rebecca Bryn

I would have liked to have posted this review a few days earlier, but with work etc. I didn't get the book finished until this morning. The book was free over the weekend so it would have been nice to blog about that too. Anyhoo, go and buy it, it's worth the money. I give it 5 stars.

The Silence of the Stones by Rebecca Bryn on Amazon.com

This book has all the ingredients for a good read; a plucky heroine that is far from perfect. A mystery that has you guessing to the very end and a nail biting ending. Alana is a struggling artist that inherits a cottage on the Welsh Moors. Despite her families warning she decides to keep the cottage and risks everything by not selling it but creating a monumental art work. The easy way would have been to sell the cottage and carry on as before, but Alana is inspired by the place and makes a bold move. Knowing many struggling artist I found her character ballsy and entirely believable. Alana soon uncovers the unhappy past of this village and finds that things are still not right. Mysterious Runes appear on doors followed by a death. They seem like natural deaths, but is someone out for revenge? The story is complex but Rebecca has written it in an easy to read style. I couldn’t put this book down as there were just so many mysteries to uncover.

Set against the very atmospheric backdrop of the Welsh moors and its ancient monuments, this is a book well worth reading. I hope to discover more of this talented writer.