Today is my stop on the blog tour for Pink Ice Creams by Jo Woolaston – Big thanks to Jo and Rachel of Rachels Random Resources for the copy of the book and the invite to be part of this tour!
Blurb
Intent on fixing her broken marriage and the alcohol-fuelled catastrophe that is her life, Kay Harris arrives at her grim and grey holiday let, ready to lay to rest the tragedy that has governed her entire adulthood – the disappearance of her little brother, Adam.
But the road to recovery is pitted with the pot-holes of her own poor choices, and it isn’t long before Kay is forced to accept that maybe she doesn’t deserve the retribution she seeks. Will the intervention of strangers help her find the answers she needs to move on from her past, or will she always be stuck on the hard shoulder with no clear view ahead and a glove box full of empties?
Pink Ice Creams is a tale of loss, self-destruction, and clinging on to the scraps of the long-lost when everyone else has given up hope.
Review
Having been lost in a bit of a fantasy rabbit hole with my reading recently, Pink Ice Creams brought me crashing back to reality, pulling me into the tragic tale of Kay Harris as her life seems to be spiralling out of control. Haunted by memories of her childhood and her little brothers’ disappearance, longing to finally come to peace with it all whilst trying to scrape together the remnants of her broken marriage, Kay begins her stay at the same caravan site that holds all her memories and nightmares from her past.
Switching between timelines, the book is almost like three stories in one, giving us not only the view of Kay in the present, but allowing us an insight into the fateful holiday where her brother disappeared, and also into the more recent past, giving us snapshots of a less than idyllic marriage. A marriage she is keen to fix nevertheless.
Despite being happy with nothing but alcohol for company, Kay has a varied cast of strangers thrust into her path. From Brian, her over-enthusiastic neighbour from the next caravan over, and his slightly less enthusiastic wife Miriam, to a pair of brothers, Sean and Pete.
As the story unfolds, Kay manages to get herself into an array of alcohol-fuelled incidents, increasing in severity with each instance. As much as I was rooting for her to be able to sort her head and her life out, the poor woman just couldn’t make a right choice no matter how hard she tried. Every decision she made, every direction she chose, just seemed to throw her deeper into trouble, and then a turn of events starts the wheels turning. Slowly Kay pulls together the scattered puzzle pieces about her little brothers disappearance all those years ago, and it starts to look like she may actually be able to move on.
Purchase Links
Amazon UK:
Paperback
Kindle Edition
Author Page
Amazon US:
Paperback
Kindle Edition
Author Page
About The Author
Jo Woolaston lives in Leicestershire, England with her extreme noise-making husband and two lovely sons. She tries to avoid housework and getting a ‘proper job’ by just writing stuff instead – silly verse, screenplays, shopping lists…
This sometimes works in her favour (she did well in her MA in TV Scriptwriting, gaining a Best Student award in Media and Journalism – and has had a few plays produced – that kind of thing) but mostly it just results in chronic insomnia and desperate tears of frustration. Pink Ice Creams is her first novel, she hopes you liked it.
Social Media
Website – www.jowoolaston.com
Facebook – @NeverMindTheBloggers
Twitter – @JoWoolaston
GoodReads – @Jo_Woolaston
Don’t forget to check out all the other lovely bloggers taking part in this tour!
K T Robson 