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'Tis the (damn) Season by Fiona Gibson #Review

  Festive reads continue with Fiona Gibson's 'Tis the (damn) Season, published by Boldwood Books.   This year, their families can deck the bloody halls themselves... Old friends Shelley, Lena and Pearl have reached their limit with the festive preparation that has always fallen to them, and five days before Christmas, they’ve booked a mini break… without their families. Up until Christmas Eve, they’ll be sipping prosecco in the Highlands while their kids wrap bacon around 100 chipolatas and their partners brave the supermarkets. It’s exactly what they need… until they’re snowed in. Facing the prospect of Christmas 500 miles from home, each woman is forced to confront her real reasons for needing to escape: the fiance with the obnoxious family; the son’s new girlfriend who is taking over their home; the family who take their mother for granted all year round… Will the friends make it home before Christmas day? And if they do, can they really go back to their old lives?

Little White Secrets #Extract #Publication Day





Today to celebrate the Publication Day of Little White Secrets by Carol Mason, I have a great extract for you to sample. Before we get to it, here's a little about the book: 


A daughter pushing the limits. A marriage ready to crack. A secret that can break them.

For Emily Rossi, life may not be perfect, but it’s pretty close. She has a great career, a house in the country, a solid marriage to Eric and two wonderful children—tennis superstar Daniel and quiet, sensitive Zara. But when her fourteen-year-old daughter brings home a toxic new best friend, Emily’s seemingly perfect family starts to spiral out of control.

Suddenly Zara is staying out late, taking drugs and keeping bad company. And just when Emily needs Eric to be an involved father, he seems too wrapped up with his job in London to care. What’s more, he’s started drinking again.

When a dark secret from the past emerges, Emily’s life is turned upside down. Struggling to protect the people she loves, can she save her damaged family? Doing so may mean keeping a secret of her own…



                                                        Extract

In the beginning of the book Eric and Emily have been invited to their friend’s wedding anniversary party. After the event, Charlotte, sends Emily a video taken by a fellow guest. Emily is horribly embarrassed by it. Up until this point she’d thought Eric’s little white secret – his drinking - had been kept within their four walls. Little does she know there’s actually a much bigger secret he’s keeping.

‘I love my food,’ he was saying to a rather stiff couple of bookish types, who looked cornered. ‘Basically, if there’s an avocado in it, I’ll eat it.’ He swayed a little, clutching his whisky glass high up by his chest. ‘I bloody love avocados! I bet you don’t love them as much as me. I love them so much I could marry them.’
The stiffs couldn’t bring themselves to look amused, even out of charity, as though Eric’s inanity might be catching. On he prattled about avocados.
Ugh! I groaned, and switched off.
‘No!’ Charlotte said when I rang her and she was done laughing. ‘That’s not the best part! Didn’t you see the rest?’
The ‘rest’, when I looked again, was Eric even more hammered, looming over a startled, fair-haired young woman. ‘I’m a weak man. A bad person. No, you don’t understand . . . I mean a bad person. I’ve done things . . .’ Hiccup. ‘Things I’m not proud of . . .’ He was hanging on to his whisky glass for dear life, talking off to the side of her head like he was losing focus, clearly oblivious to the iPhone camera that was trained on him. ‘Where’s my wife, anyway?’ He turned and scanned the room for me, as though he was trying to peer through molasses. ‘I need to find my wife . . .’ His bleary gaze finally returned to the blonde’s ear.  He suddenly looked somber, haunted. ‘Let me tell you I love my wife. Have you met her? She’s the best… the best person. I don’t deserve her. I will never deserve her . . .
The videographer got bored and panned to someone else.
‘He was drunk,’ I said to Charlotte, flatly, feeling uncomfortably exposed. ‘He’s under a lot of pressure. That’s how he relieves his stress sometimes.’
If she was thinking, Do you have any idea what he was talking about?, she had the good grace not to ask. As I was, I couldn’t have enlightened her. 
 Copyright Carol Mason 2020

About the Author

 Carol Mason was born and grew up in the north-east of England. As a teenager she was crowned Britain’s National Smile Princess and subsequently became a model, diplomat-in-training, hotel receptionist and advertising copywriter. She currently lives in British Columbia, Canada, with her Canadian husband. To learn more about Carol and her novels, visit www.carolmasonbooks.com
You can follow Carol here: Twitter 
Book link: Amazon UK 

Thanks to Carol Mason and Rachel of  Rachel's Random Resources for the extract and a place on the event.
 

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