#BlogTour-‘Life Ruins’ by Danuta Kot

About the book…

`Will suck you in from the first page’ Stephen Booth, author of Fall Down Dead

This is Broadchurch meets The Missing – hard-hitting, pacey and with modern social issues at its heart.

In a small northern town, girls are disappearing.
You won’t see it in the papers and the police aren’t taking any notice, but the clues are there if you know where to look.

Becca sees that something is wrong, but she’s been labelled `difficult’ thanks to her troubled past. So when a girl is so savagely beaten she can’t be identified, and Becca claims she knows who she is, no one will believe her.

With the police refusing to listen, Becca digs for evidence that will prove what she is saying. But her search for justice will put herself and those closest to her in danger – and once she finds the truth, will anyone even listen?

My thanks to Anne Cater of ‘Random Things Blog Tours’ and Simon and Schuster UK for the blog tour invite and my copy of ‘Life Ruins’ which is published in paperback,ebook and  audiobook formats on 25th July.

”If you populate an area with prey,the predators will not be far behind.”

In a neat allegory with Whitby’s most famous,un-dead celebrity, Dracula, Danuta Kot has created a gripping and moving thriller about the life being sucked out of northern towns . They are half filled ghost towns that come to a sort of life around summer time, but this book is set in January, a brutally cold winter which emphasises the empty shop fronts, abandoned caravan parks,the homeless population with a drop-in centre which is hanging onto its’ existence by a thread…all of it creating a perfect breeding ground for mosnters.

A haunting prologue reveals the death of an unidentified young girl, washed up in a state of decay, a momentary headline in the local newspaper all that remains of life as seemingly insubstantial as the flotsam on the waves that brought her to shore.

Kay McKinnon-known to her foster kids as ‘Special K’-lives a quiet life , struggling to cope with the loss of her husband Matt, feeling old, tired and unsure of where life will take her. Her vulnerability at this time has led her to stop fostering-the last girl she fostered, Mairead, was returned to social services when Matt became ill and she has yet to move past the guilt she feels over this teen.

Becca, an ex-foster child of Matt and Kay’s has resurfaced in nearby town of Bridlington,working at the drop-in centre after dropping out of university- many strings were pulled to get Becca this job but she is feeling more keenly than ever the weight of her tortured childhood, difficult teens and is uncertain what to do next.

Jared, an adrenaline addict recovering from a fall which he was lucky to survive, is living in one of the ghostly caravan parks whilst he decides on his next move.Haunted by an awful accident, he remains estranged from his family and friendless, existing online on the dark web.

All of them are existing in a state of flux, haunted and lost. But when Becca and Jared become involved in an horrific attack on a young girl, they not only find that their pasts are used as whipping sticks to undermine them, the authorities which they should be able to go to for help may be the very last people they should be talking to…

A chance encounter, a seemingly random act of violence and suddenly all 3 are entangled in a web of deceipt, deaths and crime that is proving increassin gly deadly…do any of them have the strength to fight to the bitter end?

All 3 main characters are flawed, vulnerable and hurting for various reasons which I do not want to delve into in depth because it could be considered spoilers.

Daunta Kot uses them to explore how society treats the abused, the used, the underclass and the situations which lead them to crime and how they come to harm by neatly exposing the underbelly of how they fall through the cracks-quite literally.

I don’t particularly like to use trigger warnings, each blogger to their own, but there were points in the book which detail caving so precisely that as someone who gets claustrophobic I didn’t realise I was holding my breath until my husband poked me to start breathing again. It was intensely anxiety inducing which is exactly the author’s intent, so this is just a headsup for those who do not like enclosed spaces.

I was hooked by the the premise that ‘Life Ruins’ is recommended for fans of ‘Broadchurch’ and ‘The Missing’,I would agree with this assertion wholeheartedly. It is gripping, gruelling, and very affecting and I loved it. It is not one that one can skim or speed through, you really need to focus on the plot-or at least I did-to see the details. Even though the over arching storyline is quite clear, I had to re-read several parts to put 2 and 2 together.

The titel,’Life Ruins’, is both statement and description. These people have been battered by life events but are still standing but also, life ruins-it can be used against you as a weapon, especially in terms of prejudice against those with mental health issues, undiagnosed PTSD, grief….all the things which are depserately underfunded, misunderstood and maligned.

It’s a great read, a gripping thriller and I am looking forward to ‘Someone Who Isn’t Me’ being published in 2020!

About the author…

Danuta Kot grew up with stories. Her Irish mother and her Polish father kept their own cultures alive with traditional tales they shared with their children.

For many years, she worked with young people in Yorkshire who were growing up in the aftermath of sudden industrial decline. She uses this background in her books to explore some of the issues that confront modern, urban society: poverty, alienation and social breakdown, using the contexts of the modern crime novel.

She now works as a senior education consultant, work that involves travel to establish education and training in other parts of the world. She is a regular academic speaker at conferences and literary festivals, and has appeared on radio and television.

Twitter @DanutaJR

@simonschusteruk

@annecater