#BlogTour ‘Fragile’ by Sarah Hilary

About the book…

Everything she touches breaks . . .

Nell Ballard is a runaway. A former foster child with a dark secret she is desperate to keep, all Nell wants is to find a place she can belong.

So when a job comes up at Starling Villas, home to the enigmatic Robin Wilder, she seizes the opportunity with both hands.

Only her new lodgings may not be the safe haven that she was hoping for. Her employer lives by a set of rigid rules and she soon sees that he is hiding secrets of his own.

But is Nell’s arrival at the Villas really the coincidence it seems? After all, she knows more than most how fragile people can be – and how easy they can be to break . . .

A dark contemporary psychological thriller with a modern Gothic twist from an award winning and critically acclaimed writer who has been compared to Ruth Rendell, PD James and Val McDermid. Rebecca meets The Handmaid’s Tale in Sarah Hilary’s standalone breakout novel, ‘Fragile’

”So often I woke with a rash on my throat as if every one of my lies was written there,for anyone to read. Each sour black word and deed,branded on my body.’

How amazing is this, already a huge fan of Sarah’s ‘Marnie Rose’ series, I nearly bit Anne Cater’s hand off when she emailed about an upcoming Random Things Tour for a stand alone story, Fragile.

Huge thanks to Anne for squidging me into the tour and to Macmillan for my gifted review copy of this fantastic novel, which brought the chills good and proper to this scorchingly hot weather!

Fragile is out in ebook and hardcover from June 10th in e-book and hardcover formats,and I could not recommend it any higher than shouting to the sky about how dark, twisted and engaging it is.

Starting from a sheltered vantage point, you see a three storey London building through the eyes of Nell, a castaway, a runaway from care, a woman/child who is homeless and has seen her street partner, Joe, disappear into its front door with an enigmatic woman wearing a black silk coat.

Desperate to get inside, she inveigles herself into a job interview, her street smarts coming in handy when she haggles a live in position in this building, Starling Villas, home of enigmatic writer Robin. He need someone to sort out the catastrophe of his life, contained in box after box of…what?

Nell needs to find out where Joe is, what happened to him, as much as we, the readers, want her to find him and explain the context of their relationship. She reveals snippets of information slowly-Sarah is a consummate master of scene building and setting , then letting her characters discover her carefully placed clues at the same time as we do…

What is Nell’s back story?

Who is she running from and why?

Is her interest in writer Robin Wilder just as coincidental as it first appears?

And what has happened to Joe?

In the meantime, like a grotesque spider, Nell’s last foster mother Meagan, waits and plots, drawing her web together of facts, preparing to trap Nell once and for all…

In the midst of all of this, Starling Villas takes on a life of its own, becoming as much a character as anyone else in this enigmatic, dark and twisting novel that pulls you in like creeping vines wrapping around you ankles and winding you up into a cocoon of suspicion, regret, blame and recrimination.

Who is the most breakable, the most fragile out of any of these people?

Can you be breakable and, at the same time, see the cracks in others’ shells and break them?

A dark and sinister mystery which lingers like the ghost of a half forgotten perfume, Fragile is a book which is not easily put aside,Sarah Hilary brings her trademark storytelling skills to bear on a different genre from what she normally works in -I say different, but it’s maybe more adjacent?

Whichever way it is phrased, this is ultimately a book with enough mystery to keep crime fans on their toes, enough creeping dread to please fans of dark fiction and enough suspense to satisfy a thriller fanatic. It has it all and then some.

About the author…

Sarah’s debut, ‘Someone Else’s Skin’, won Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year and was a World Book Night selection. The Observer’s Book of the Month (“superbly disturbing”) and a Richard & Judy Book Club bestseller, it was a Silver Falchion and Macavity Award finalist in the US.

‘No Other Darkness’, the second in the series was shortlisted for a Barry Award. Her DI Marnie Rome series continued with ‘Tastes Like Fear’ (longlisted for Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year 2017) and ‘Quieter Than Killing’ (Observer’s Thriller of the Month).‘Come And Find Me’ was published in 2018, with  ‘Never Be Broken’ in 2019.

Links-http://www.sarahhilary.com/

Twitter @Sarah_Hilary @RandomTTours @PanMacmillan