Unspoken by T.A. Belshaw| #BlogTour #Review #Unspoken #damppebblesblogtours | @tabelshaw @damppebbles

Hello, Sunshines, I have the huge pleasure of ‘yesterdays’ stopping on this fabulous blog tour for; Unspoken T.A. Belshaw. Full confession, I had made a bit of a mess with scheduling, I thought my day was today when in actual fact it was yesterday…oops!! yet, again another blooper on my part, I really must start double-checking dates. Apologies!! Anyway, I can’t wait to share my review with you all, I hope you love this book as much as I do. Firstly, thank you to Emma at damppebbles for the invite to this blog tour and apologies for the date mix-up.

A heart-warming, dramatic family saga. Unspoken is a tale of secrets, love, betrayal and revenge.

Unspoken means something that cannot be uttered aloud. Unspoken is the dark secret a woman must keep, for life.

Alice is fast approaching her one-hundredth birthday and she is dying. Her strange, graphic dreams of ghostly figures trying to pull her into a tunnel of blinding light are becoming more and more vivid and terrifying. Alice knows she only has a short time left and is desperate to unburden herself of a dark secret, one she has lived with for eighty years.

Jessica, a journalist, is her great-granddaughter and a mirror image of a young Alice. They share dreadful luck in the types of men that come into their lives.

Alice decides to share her terrible secret with Jessica and sends her to the attic to retrieve a set of handwritten notebooks detailing her young life during the late 1930s. Following the death of her invalid mother and her father’s decline into depression and alcoholism, she is forced, at 18 to take control of the farm. On her birthday, she meets Frank, a man with a drink problem and a violent temper.

When Frank’s abusive behaviour steps up a level. Alice seeks solace in the arms of her smooth, ‘gangster lawyer’ Godfrey, and when Frank discovers the couple together, he vows to get his revenge.

Unspoken. A tale that spans two eras and binds two women, born eighty years apart.

Purchase Links:

Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3lo6uHf

Amazon US: https://amzn.to/2I1xkq9

Review

As soon as I saw this book, I knew that it was one I had to read, the cover alone caught my attention before I had even read the back blurb and I am glad to say that I wasn’t disappointed. I loved the duel timeline, which is something I have always liked in books, I really enjoyed flipping back to the 1930s as Alice told her great-granddaughter Jessica and us readers her story and the events that occurred.

The story open’s in the present day with Jessica in an emotionally bullying and abusive relationship, she is trying to write a book but as we all know it is far harder than just putting pen to paper – I tip my hat to every single author out there, and every person who has actually finished that precious first draft – her only escape from the controlling behaviour and the grief is her weekly visits to see her great grandmother; Alice. Ninety-nine-year-old Alice knows her time is getting closer, she has been holding on to a secret for the last eighty years and now she is starting to see that bright white light getting closer and closer she knows that she is going to confess to Jessica she must do it now. But, the secret is a big one, one that ties both women even closer together.

I really liked the way Unspoken is written, the present is written from both Jessica’s and Alice’s perspectives, whereas the 1930’s is written in first person part as Alice is telling her story to Jessica and part in the form of her diaries which she wrote during the time. True, when we are first transported back into Alice’s memory it took a little getting used to, but once I fell into the way the story flowed and the way we go back and forth between Alice and Jessica and the past, I was gripped. True some aspects didn’t feel plausible, but to be perfectly honest that didn’t spoil the overall book for me, I really enjoyed it.

I was hooked by the first chapter, there is a real nastiness in the form of Jessica’s horrid boyfriend, he is an awful man, a controlling bully who thinks it’s ok to treat women like dirt on your shoe. Alice sees what is going on as no matter how much Jessica tries to hide the mental abuse, she can’t hide the tears. Alice sees herself in her great-granddaughter, not just Jessica being the mirror image of Alice as a young woman but also in their character and in the type of men they both choose. Alice does try and help her granddaughter by telling her all about her own abusive marriage and the aftermath of the choices she made.

I really liked the large cast of characters, my personal favourite has to be those in the past, I really enjoyed getting to know Alice as a young woman and how she became the non-nonsense matriarch she is in the present. I liked the journey that both women go on throughout the book, and they way they change as women, even if at times there were a lot of stereotypical mannerisms.

I am a big fan of a family saga, even though I have come across a few that have been a little long-winded it hasn’t put me off repeatedly picking one up, and this one is a great escape from the chaos which is going on in the world at the moment.

Unspoken is an unpredictable and heart-warming story that is all about how precious true friendship is to one when they have very little, entwined within are secrets and lies, loyalty and deceit, but the real message I got from this is survival and finding hope and happiness.

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About the Author

T A Belshaw is from Nottingham in the United Kingdom. Trevor writes for both children and adults. He is the author of Tracy’s Hot Mail, Tracy’s Celebrity Hot Mail and the noir, suspense novella, Out Of Control. His new novel, the family saga, Unspoken, was released in July, 2020

His short stories have been published in various anthologies including 100 Stories for Haiti, 50 Stories for Pakistan, Another Haircut, Shambelurkling and Other Stories, Deck The Halls, 100 Stories for Queensland and The Cafe Lit anthology 2011, 2012 and 2013. He also has two pieces in Shambelurklers Return. 2014

Trevor is also the author of 15 children’s books written under the name of Trevor Forest. The latest. Magic Molly The Curse of Cranberry Cottage was released in August 2015

His children’s poem, Clicking Gran, was long listed for the Plough prize (children’s section) in 2009 and his short poem, My Mistake, was rated Highly Commended and published in an anthology of the best entries in the Farringdon Poetry Competition.

Trevor’s articles have been published in magazines as diverse as Ireland’s Own, The Best of British and First Edition.

Trevor is currently working on the sequel to Unspoken and the third book in the Tracy series; Tracy’s Euro Hot Mail.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/tabelshaw

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/T.A.BelshawAUTHOR/

Website: http://www.trevorbelshaw.com

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4527461.T_A_Belshaw

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