Don’t Leave by Pru Heathcote
JANE is a young woman grieving for her child, who is taken to a remote holiday cottage on the Northumberland coast.
From the moment she arrives at the cottage with her much older and over-protective husband, Peter, Jane keeps catching glimpses of a little girl and hearing a child crying.
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Peter is convinced these are hallucinations, as Jane has been diagnosed with schizophrenia – a diagnosis she doesn’t agree with.
She sets out to discover who or what the child could be.
A ghost?
A real child?
Or something else?
My Review
I loved this book. I read it in about three sittings and would have read it in one go if I had been on holiday. And I would NEVER have guessed the reality of what was happening in a million years.
Following the tragic death of Jane and Peter’s young daughter Angela, Peter decides that it would do Jane good to give up work for a while and spend some time in a cottage by the sea in a remote location off the coast of Northumberland. They will be away from everyone and everything and Jane will be able to come to terms with her loss.
But no sooner have they arrived that strange things begin to happen. Peter believes that her sightings, visitations, whatever you wish to call them, are hallucinations, caused by her diagnosis of schizophrenia. Except Jane disagrees with the diagnosis and even stops taking her medication as it makes her groggy. And Jane believes the little girl in the red Minnie Mouse top is real.
She sees her everywhere – through the window, in the garden, on the beach. She asks her peculiar next-door neighbour Mrs Mortimer (who Jane and Peter call Morticia) if anyone has a child staying with them nearby, as she is worried that she may be in danger out alone so close to the cliffs.
It’s a mystery, but then so is Mrs Mortimer. Her cottage is the other half of theirs (it was originally one house) and she does the cleaning and tidying for each new holiday tenant on behalf of the landlord. Her backstory is as interesting as Jane’s hauntings.
This book is so good. Intriguing, a little scary at times (though not too much), ghostly and creepy.
Many thanks to @zooloo2008 for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
From the Author
‘I’ve always loved telling stories and putting them down on paper as soon as I could write. I began my working life in Hertfordshire as a local newspaper reporter – obits, weddings, Uncle George’s Kiddies’ Corner – then went on to teenage magazines (Fab and Rave) and women’s magazines.
‘I moved to Northumberland forty years ago and worked as an adult education tutor, teaching any subject I didn’t need a qualification for, including creative writing.
‘Over the years I’ve written dozens of stories for magazines, a commissioned biography, and several plays, one of which was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe. It was one of my plays that formed the basis for my novel Don’t Leave, winning entry in the 2020 Lindisfarne Prize, written during the first Lockdown.’
‘I’m married, with three grown-up children and two grandchildren. I live in Warkworth, a village on the Northumberland coast, an area that provides most of the inspiration for my stories.’
Follow her at:
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/pru.heathcote
Buy Link – https://geni.us/e7fKV
