Butterfly in Frost by Sylvia Day blog tour

Teagan Ransom has finally settled in a place she can call home, spending time with new friends sheadores, focusing on a fulfilling job, whilst reconciling the past and laying the groundwork for the future.

That is until Garrett Frost moves in next door. He’s obstinate and too bold, a raging and disruptive force of nature. Teagan recognizes the ghosts that haunt him, the torment driving him. Garrett would be risky in any form, but wounded, he’s far more dangerous. Tegan fears he could pull apart everything she has worked so hard to build, but Garret’s too determined…and too tempting.

Emotional and heartrending, Butterfly in Frost marks a brilliant return by global sensation Sylvia Day, the No.1 international multimillion bestselling author of the Crossfire saga.

Extract:

Despite the lengthy walk and a leisurely lunch, I’m still out of sorts as I stroll down the driveway to my house. I’ve been trying to compose myself all morning, and I’m irritated that I can’t. After all this time, I realize I haven’t come as far as I believed. As I skirt the detached garage and head up the walkway to my front door, I can’t help but glance over at the sleek black Range Rover parked at a haphazard angle in the neighboring driveway.

The hard lump of ice inside me still hurts. I’m angry. I’d had each day planned out going forward. A new city, new friends, new routines. Half a year’s worth of therapy and reconditioning, for what? My neighbors move, and I feel as if I’ve been deceived. As if the new life I’ve built came with a guarantee that nothing would change. With conscious determination, I exhale and try to push out my anxiety with it. I pull my keys from my pocket as I approach my front door and slide one into the dead bolt. When the lock opens, I use the same key in the original midcentury doorknob that sits in the dead center of the door. Once inside, I relock them both, toss my keys on the end table, and disarm the alarm before the grace period runs out and the earsplitting siren goes off. Going through each step in the same established order settles me some. But it’s being back in my home, alone, that provides the greatest relief. I gaze longingly at the couch, so exhausted I just want to curl into the cushions and sleep forever. I know what it means to feel this tired; I know what’s coming. That doesn’t mean I can stop it. Instead, I look ahead to the wall of windows overlooking the Sound. The left side of the butterfly roof wings up and over the double-sided fireplace and dining room, with clerestory windows following the graceful rise so nothing blocks the majestic view.

Just beyond the verdant hump of Maury and Vashon Islands, the sprawling Olympic Mountains lie west and run south. Some days, fog conceals the range so thoroughly, it disappears. But on cloudless days like today, I can see the snowcapped peaks stretching down the coast.

I soak it in, letting the familiarity calm me. I stand in the center of my living room long enough to watch another massive cargo ship lumber by on the way to Tacoma. Sunlight glitters off the gently moving water, and crab-trap buoys bob to the rhythm. It’s quiet here, so very different from the frenetic pace and noise of New York. I could hardly hear myself think there, with life beating at me from all sides, a very busy medical practice, and an ever-present camera crew. Here, I can be alone with my thoughts, with no one to judge me or pity me or expect me to “get over it.”

The Retreat - Sherri Smith blog tour

The Retreat: A Novel of Suspense by Sherri Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Katie Manning was a beloved child star until her mid-teens when her manager attacked and permanently scarred her face, effectively ending her career and sending her on a path of all-too-familiar post-Hollywood self-destruction.

Now twenty-seven, Katie wants a better answer to those clickbait "Where Are They Now?" articles that float around online. An answer she hopes to find when her brother's too-good-to-be-true fiancée invites her to a wellness retreat upstate. Together with Katie's two best friends - one struggling with crippling debt and family obligations, one running away from a failed job and relationship - Katie will try to find the inner peace promised at the tranquil retreat. But finding oneself just might drudge up more memories than Katie is prepared to deal with.

Each woman has come to the retreat for different reasons. Each has her secrets to hide. And at the end of this weekend, only one will be left standing.

Another book centered around a wellness retreat which seem to be a popular choice for writers at the moment. A psychological thriller that brings together 4 women Katie, Carmen, Ellie and Ariel who attend a weekend getaway each hoping to gain something uplifting from the experience.

Naturally things don’t go particularly well and at the end of the novel only one of the group come out alive. Well paced with characters although not entirely likeable do make this work.

Not as good at Nine Perfect strangers by Liane Morriarty but worth 4 stars

I would like to thank the publisher for sending this in exchange for an honest review.



Excerpt: 



Excerpt 4. Carmen

She’d started donating her eggs in her second term at NYU when she realized that her financial-aid package, even with a scholarship, fell short of covering all of her tuition.

She had tried working as a bartender, but the late nights caused her grades to slip, and her partial scholarship was threatened. She was in danger of not being able to finish out the year. She would have had to drop out, left with nothing but crippling debt to show for it (which eventually happened anyway).

Enter Darla Gibbins from ReproGen. She’d solicited Carmen in the student commons, stepping out in front of her as if she were selling hand lotion in a mall. Darla looked like either a madam or a television evangelist. Chubby and virtually chinless, her fake thick lashes wagged from her eyelids like butterflies stuck in glittery grease. “What’s a little discomfort for a couple of weeks if it puts up to $10,000 in your pocket? Easy money.”

Ten thousand turned out to be seven thousand. But the egg donation was easy, and she could study in the waiting room. She was hooked.

Now Carmen was on her fourth donation because clearly she came from especially fecund stock, and the money was just cover- ing the little extras like clothes and replacing the busted picture window because they couldn’t go another winter with cardboard as their only protection. Her thirteen-year-old brother, the shithead, had gone on a Banksy-inspired vandalism spree and now Carmen was stuck paying off his fines to keep him out of juvie. Then to top it off, the hot water tank just went.

She told herself it was her last donation, but even she didn’t be- lieve it. She felt hooked. It wasn’t the easiest way to make money, but out of all the ways to make money, it wasn’t the worst either.

Carmen felt she was nine years old and back in the free swim- ming class offered to low-income families. The instructor had called the kids who’d passed to stand on the side and left the failures in the pool, half treading water, half drowning, looking up at them, chlorinated water burning up their noses and eyes. Carmen did everything right to escape that pool, but there she was anyway. Pov- erty was like a serial killer at the end of a horror movie; just when she thought she’d gotten away, it popped up stronger, yielding an electric bill like a machete.



She still skimmed the release of liability waiver and signed it anyway. She planned on backing out at the last minute to avoid Katie’s inevitable wheedling that would last the entire weekend. Carmen’s contract specifically stated she not partake in any drugs or alcohol, yet she couldn’t deny her interest was piqued. She’d love to drink some magical tea, morph into her spirit animal or whatever, and gallop around in some rainbow-drenched, unicorn-laden alter- nate universe for an hour or eight. Her life was hard. It’d be nice to sink into oblivion for a while. It was what she’d always liked about Katie; she brought out Carmen’s risk-taking side. She slayed her type A. Got her to loosen up, drink too much, have fun, take off her glasses, let her hair fall loose like the schoolmarm in some old- school rock video who suddenly gave in to all her seething impulses. Katie was her bad influence. Someone she could blame for doing what she really wanted to do.

Sophie Jenkins - A Random Act of Kindness

It only takes a moment, to change a life for ever…

Fern is too busy making sure other people feel good about themselves to give much thought to her own happiness. But somehow, without her noticing, life has run away from her.

Suddenly, Fern realises her vintage clothes business is struggling, and the casual relationship she’d always thought she was happy in doesn’t look so appealing.

But sometimes, karma really does come through. And when Fern goes out of her way to help 85-year-old Dinah, little does she realise their new friendship will change her life.

Dinah may have troubles in her past, but she’s lived and loved to the full. Can Dinah show Fern that even the smallest acts of kindness can make the world a better place?

Extract:

There’s a picture of Fern Banks in the Camden Journal. She’s surrounded by billowing smoke and hugging her saved frocks to her heart, and she has that look in her eyes that I recognise from the couple of times I’ve met her; the look that says she knows me better than I know myself.

Staring at Fern in the paper, I’m trying to avoid seeing the hearse through the window.

The undertakers have come to take Enid. She went quietly in the night with no fuss and no last words. But when she didn’t say good morning to me, I knew.

They’re moving about upstairs. There’s no point in me getting in the way. That’s that, then. I am eighty-five and a widower.

I’m frightened of being alone. I’m a widower and I’ve lost my wife. What I need to do is, I need to get a new one. I know a lot of widows. All of Enid’s friends are widows. I don’t mind which one it is. I’m not looking for love or looks or even conversation, I just want someone in the house, moving about, someone to put the kettle on for. I do my own laundry. I don’t need looking after.

What the bloody hell is all that bumping?

Aye, the stairs are narrow, I should have told them about that. Didn’t think to. They can see it for themselves.

‘Kim?’

Kim, is it now?

The lad comes into the sitting room. Young enough to be my grandson; bright, healthy-looking, and he’s working in the undertakers. Says cheerfully, ‘Sorry to trouble you, but we might have to take that door off the bottom of the stairs to get her out. It’s that right-angled bend.’



If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

My Sister’s Lies by S.D. Robertson with extract

My Sister’s Lies by S.D. Robertson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars


For a decade, Hannah’s life has been pretty close to perfect – she has a great job, she’s married to Mark, and her child-free existence means she’s free as a bird. The only sadness in her life is a fall-out with her sister Diane, who hasn’t spoken to her in over ten years. But now Diane is on her doorstep – and this time, she’s got her teenage daughter Mia in tow.

When Diane asks if Mia can stay with Hannah and Mark for a few days, Hannah is glad of the chance to get to know her niece. But as the days turn into weeks and Diane doesn’t return, Hannah begins to worry. Why hasn’t her sister been in touch?

Diane is carrying a devastating secret that will destroy Hannah’s carefully constructed life. But how much is she willing to reveal – and when will she pick her moment?

No fireworks with this one, it was a reasonable read but lacked suspense which made it rather slower than I would have liked.

The ending was quite predictable in fact I had guessed early on what had happened and tied in pretty quickly who had committed suicide.

No a fan of the transcripts but they did give additional background so I suppose they were relevant although there was so much explanation on feelings in almost every page that the reader would have got the point without the transcripts anyway. I confess I skim read these anyway as they were not revealing anything new.

Didn't really excite me; an adequate read but really rather ordinary so can only give this one a 3 star rating.

I would like to thank the publisher for sending this in exchange for an honest review.

The Mum who got her life back

When her 18-year-old twins leave for university, single mum Nadia’s life changes in ways she never expected: her Glasgow flat feels suddenly huge, laundry doesn’t take up half her week, and she no longer has to buy ‘the Big Milk’. After almost two decades of putting everyone else first, Nadia is finally taking care of herself. And with a budding romance with new boyfriend Jack, She’s never felt more alive.

That is, until her son Alfie drops out of university, and Nadia finds her empty nest is empty no more. With a heartbroken teenager to contend with, Nadia has to ask herself: is it ever possible for a mother to get her own life back? And can Jack and Nadia’s relationship survive having a sulky teenager around?

A gloriously funny and uplifting new book perfect for fans of Gill Sims and Jill Mansell.


Extract:


Celibacy has its advantages. It really does!

I’m not even saying that in a bitter tone, with my teeth gritted. I can happily wander about with hairy bison legs beneath my jeans, if I want to. I can orgasm perfectly well by myself, and have plenty of friends to knock around with. Corinne and Gus are two of my closest; we’ve all known each other since our art college days in Dundee, and these days we share a studio pretty close to the city centre. As my children grew up, and I managed to establish myself properly, I reached the point where I could finally afford to work outside of the flat. It feels like a luxury sometimes, as now Alfie and Molly have left I can hardly complain about the lack of space at home. But I love working here. Our studio is the top floor of a tatty old warehouse, currently decked out with decorations and a sparkling white tree, as Christmas is approaching.

‘So your present to yourself is to get online,’ remarks Gus, as he makes coffee for the three of us.

‘I’m not joining a dating site,’ I say firmly.

‘Why not just give it a go?’ He glances over from the huge canvas he’s working on.

‘I’ve told you, Gus. It’s just not my thing.’

I turn back to the preliminary sketches that are littered all over my desk. I’m illustrating a series of study guides covering English, maths and history, and possibly more subjects, if the client is happy with the results. As I start to sketch, I’m aware of Gus and Corinne exchanging a look; both of them reckon I have been single for far too long.

It’s a year and a half since I last slept with someone, and that person happened to be Ryan Tibbles, who was also at art college with us, although I hadn’t known him very well when we were students. I’d just experienced a little frisson whenever I glimpsed him mooching around, with his mop of black, shaggy hair and languid expression, a smouldering roll-up permanently clamped between his sexy lips.



After we’d graduated, everyone had scattered all over the country in pursuit of work or to further their studies. I returned to Glasgow, to do admin for a small design company, hoping it would lead to greater things. Ryan, who’d been the star of his year, whizzed off to do a post-grad at St Martins in London. I heard nothing from him for all those years until he turned up out of the blue at a party at Corinne’s.

With or without you by Shari Low

Have you ever made a life-changing decision and then wondered if you made the right one...?

When Liv and Nate walked up the aisle, Liv knew she was marrying the one, her soul mate and her best friend.
Six years later, it feels like routine and friendship is all they have left in common. What happened to the fun, the excitement, the lust, the love?

In the closing moments of 1999, Liv and Nate decide to go their separate ways, but at the last minute, Liv wavers. Should she stay or should she go?

Over the next twenty years we follow the parallel stories to discover if Liv's life, heart and future have been better with Nate... Or without him?

Extract:

Ah, so she had full facts. She was, in truth, surprisingly alert and sharp for

someone who had brain surgery three days ago. ‘Yep, I did that too,’ I said, returning

her smile.

‘That’s amazing.’

‘You wouldn’t be saying that if you’d seen me. Did they

mention that I did it in

my extra large knick

-

knacks because I couldn’t climb over in my fishtail frock?’

Her chuckle interrupted the conversation between the two elderly dears in the next

beds, who were now listening intently... as was a new arrival to the

scene.

‘Well, there’s a mental picture that may stay with me for the rest of the day.’

A man’s voice. My face

-

flush was instant, and deepened when I turned to see a

doctor, standing directly behind me. I’ve always maintained that real

-

life doctors

don’t lo

ok like the strapping hunks on medical dramas, and generally that’s true.

Richard didn’t have the chiselled jawline or the piercing blue eyes that would make

patients and staff melt at his surgical shoes, but he did have slightly unkempt black

wavy hair th

at curled over the stethoscope that was slung around his neck, somewhat

tired, potentially intoxicating green eyes, and a cheeky grin.

If this guy was in

Grey’s Anatomy

, he’d be the tall, medium

-

attractive one who

played the heart

-

throb’s sidekick, but who

always got the girl because he had a

twinkling eye, a great smile and the kind of charm that could take a patient’s mind off

most non

-

life

-

threatening ailments.

His comment was perfectly delivered, more amused than leery, bringing much

hilarity to everyon

e in earshot, and much mortification to me.

‘Richard Campbell, neurosurgeon,’ he said.

‘Liv Jamieson,’ I replied. ‘Palliative care. Late for work and about to dash off,’ I

added, before turning back to Francine. ‘I’m so glad you’re okay

–

and that I got to

meet you.’

Her infectious smile was back. ‘You too.’

Over the next few weeks, Francine made it back to full health and was discharged.

Meanwhile, the good doctor and I would bump into each other with slightly

suspicious regularity, until Chloe confessed t

hat she was trying to set me up with him

because I ‘needed a happy distraction to stop me moping about Nate’. She was right.

After Francine had been taken to hospital in the early hours of New Year’s Day, I’d

told him I definitely wanted to go through with

the split. It was the right thing to do.

We’d agreed not to call each other for the first couple of weeks and we’d both stuck

to that. So far. The seventy

-

five per cent certainty about my decision had dropped to

sixty per cent, and if it went below fifty

I was calling him.

Richard called me before that happened, at the beginning of May, when I was five

months into life as a singleton. In a stunning pivot of hypocrisy about the whole

doctor/nurse relationship disapproval, I’d accepted his suggestion of a d

ate. It had

taken a while, but I’d eventually relaxed and realised that the best thing to get over the

end of a relationship was the distraction of a cute doctor with a cheeky sense of

humour. I loved that he was a charmer and took nothing, except his work

, seriously. I

loved that it was easy and it hadn’t strayed into deep and demanding. Most of all I

loved that he was the complete opposite of Nate in every way.

Our shifts clashed, so we didn’t see each other more than twice a week, but it was

enough. It w

as uncomplicated. Fun. And not to be crude about it, but the sex...

‘Chloe, he talks the whole way through,’ I blurted, in the kitchen after the first

time he spent the night.

‘In that case, I’m so glad I was working. I’d have had to play a bit of Vengaboys

at

full blast to block the sound. Did it freak you out?’ she went on.

‘A bit.’ Okay, so here’s the thing. I could add up the total of my sexual partners on

one hand. Two of them were short

-

term things when I was a teenager. Another was an

unfortunate one

-

n

ight stand, thanks to vodka overload during Freshers Week. I spent

the next four years at uni avoiding some guy called Jeremy who’d been intimate with

my anatomy.

Then there was Nate, for eight years.

All in all, I wasn’t exactly widely experienced in such

things.

‘But did you like it?’

‘More than a bit,’ I replied, as she roared with laughter.

‘Who’d have known you had an inner slapper?’ she’d teased, before she headed

off, clutching a cream cheese bagel.

That seemed like so long ago now. Five months, thre

e days to be exact. Not that I

was counting. Okay, I was, but only to take my mind off the fact that nerves were

twisting my stomach into a knot the size of a melon.

The Winters by Lisa Gabriele blog tour

The Winters by Lisa Gabriele
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An addictively suspenseful new novel set in the glamorous world of the New York Hamptons, about secrets that refuse to remain buried and consequences that cannot be escaped.

After a whirlwind romance, a young woman returns to the opulent, secluded mansion of her new fiancé Max Winter - a wealthy senator and recent widower - and a life of luxury she’s never known. But all is not as it appears at the Asherley estate. The house is steeped in the memory of Max’s beautiful first wife Rebekah, who haunts the young woman’s imagination and feeds her uncertainties, while his very alive teenage daughter Dani makes her life a living hell.

As the soon-to-be second Mrs. Winter grows more in love with Max, and more afraid of Dani, she is drawn deeper into the family’s dark secrets - the kind of secrets that could kill her, too.

Inspired by the classic novel Rebecca, The Winters is a riveting story about what happens when a family’s ghosts resurface and threaten to upend everything.


A haunting psychological thriller very much in the style and feel of Daphne du Mauriers Rebecca from which Lisa Gabriele took her inspiration. It has all the haunted locked room and mysterious ghostly feel of Rebecca but also has its own identity as a haunting thriller.

Beautifully crafted and expressive emotive writing brings this story to life, even if you never read Rebecca you can't fail to be drawn in by this clever twisty thriller. The writing is done so well that you can easily visualise the house and each room when you enter them, the twist at the end was not entirely surprising but that really didn't matter as it was so well written and thought out that satisfaction was not compromised.

Easy to read and the pace builds right from the start making it almost impossible to put down until the end. I loved this novel and can easily give it 5 stars, I can't wait to read more from this talented author.

I would like to thank the publisher for sending this in exchange for an honest review.



Extract:

Last night Rebekah tried to murder me again. It had been a while since I’d had that dream, not since we left Asherley, a place I called home for one winter and the bitterest part of spring, the dream only ever recurring when Max was gone and I’d find myself alone with Dani.



As always, the dream begins with Asherley in the distance, shining from afar in a bright clearing. There is no greenhouse, nor boathouse, just a stand of red canoes stabbed into the pebbly beach. In fact, the Asherley of my dream looks more like it might have back in its whaling days, when from the highest turret you could still spot tall ships dotting Gardiners Bay.



Overpowered by the urge to be inside the house again, I pass easily through the thicket of forest that surrounds the property. I want so badly to wander its wood-paneled halls, to feel its plush red carpets beneath my bare feet, to move my fingers in the play of sun through the stained-glass windows, but an invisible force keeps me out. I’m relegated to the bay, where I float like a sad specter, made to watch those who still haunt Asherley act out the same strange pantomime.



I can see Max, my Max, relaxing on an Adirondack, one in a line like white teeth dotting the silvery-green lawn. He’s reading a newspaper, framed by the majestic spread of Asherley behind him, its walls of gray stones, its crowd of terra-cotta peaks, its dentils studded with carved rosettes, anchored by the heavy brow of its deep stone porch. Every lamp in every room of the house is lit. A fire roars in every fireplace. The circle of windows at the top of the high turret burns like a sentinel over the bay, as though the house were about to put on a great show for me.



I call for Max but he can’t hear me. I want to go to him, to touch his face, to smell his hair, to fit my shoulder under his arm, our sides pressed together. My throat feels strangled with that longing.



On cue, she strides out the back door, carefully balancing a tray of lemonade. She’s wearing a white lace dress with a red sash, her blond hair glinting in the sun, her face so eerily symmetrical she’d almost be odd-looking except for the singular perfection of each and every one of her features. Here is Rebekah making her way down to Max, changing her gait to accommodate the steep slope of the back lawn. Now Dani bolts from the house behind her, laughing, her chubby legs charging straight for the water and for me. She’s three, maybe four, her hair, far too long for a child, is the same white blond as her mother’s. I often wish I could have met Dani when she was this young and unformed. Things might have been very different between us.



My body instinctively thrusts forward to catch the girl, to prevent her from running too far into the bay and drowning.



Rebekah yells, “Be careful, sweetheart,” which Max repeats. She puts the tray down. From behind, she wraps her arms around Max’s shoulders and warmly kisses his neck. He places

a reassuring hand on her forearm. They both watch as Dani splashes in the shallow water, screaming and laughing, calling, “Look at me, I can swim.”



Then, as she always does in the dream, Rebekah becomes the only one who spots me bobbing in the bay, too near her daughter for her liking. She straightens up and walks towards the water, stalking me like a lion not wanting to disturb its prey. Still in her dress, she wades into the water, moving past a frolicking, oblivious Dani, until we are finally face-to-face. Her eyes narrow, forming that familiar dimple over her left brow.



I try to flee but my legs are useless.



“Who are you?” she asks. “You don’t belong here.”



Rebekah’s mouth is close enough to kiss, a woman I’d seen in hundreds of photos, whose every contour I’d memorized, whose every expression I’d studied and sometimes un-consciously mimicked in my darker days, when my obsession was most acute and I had no idea how to live at Asherley, how to be a wife to Max, or a friend to Dani.



“I do belong here. She needs me,” I say, pointing to Dani, my impudence surprising even me. I try to move but my feet are rooted in the sand below, arms floating beside me like weeds.



“She doesn’t need you,” Rebekah says, placing her hands on my shoulders in a reassuring manner. “She needs her mother.”



Then she rears back slightly. Using all of her weight, Rebekah shoves me under the waves with a sudden violence, flooding my vision with air bubbles. I fight for the surface, to scream for Max to help me, but she’s stronger than me, her hands a vise on my shoulders, her arms steely and rigid. In my dream, she’s not angry. Rebekah kills me slowly and methodically, not with hate or fear. She’s being practical. I am channeling vital resources away from her, rerouting Dani’s feelings, altering Max’s fate. My murder is conducted with dispassion and efficiency. And though I don’t want to die, I can’t imagine going on like this either, careful of my every move, looking over my shoulder, afraid to touch anything, break anything, love anything, worried his past will surface again and ruin what I’ve worked so hard for, what we’ve worked so hard for. Her task complete, my body painlessly dissolves into the waves and I disappear. I am dead and made of nothing. I am gone.



I woke up gasping for air, my hand at my throat. I kept reminding myself that everything is okay, we are okay, that we are alive and she is dead, cursing the fact that the dream had followed us here, our last stop, I hoped, for a good long while.

Starlight on the Palace Pier by Tracy Corbett

Get swept away with Tracy Corbett and spend your holidays on the Brighton pier

After an injury derails her dream of becoming a professional dancer, Becca Roberts heads home to Brighton in search of a fresh start.

And, when a part-time dance teacher role becomes available at The Starlight Playhouse, it seems like her stars are finally aligning. The crumbling old playhouse might need a bit of tender loving care (and a lick of paint!), but Becca is more than up to the challenge.

That is until Becca’s first love (and first heartbreak), Tom, waltzes into the Starlight Playhouse, and she realises life by the sea might not be as simple as she thought…

Fall in love on Palace Pier in this feel-good romantic comedy, perfect for fans of Debbie Johnson and Jill Mansell.

Extract:

Becca had learnt early on in her career that being a dancer wasn’t a glamorous existence. From dusty, dirty rehearsal rooms, to dressing rooms that needed more than a lick of paint. Not to mention the touring, getting home late at night, the money that you weren’t paid and the endless physical hard work. You had to sacrifice a social life. You had to get used to being told no a lot, taking criticism, being told you weren’t good enough. The love you had for dancing had to be bigger than all the negatives. And she’d dealt with that. She’d been stoic, dedicated and resilient…but nothing could have prepared her for the horror of teaching a class of seven-year-olds.

The trial lesson last Saturday hadn’t started well. Mrs Morris had been so relieved a potential replacement had finally been found, that she’d packed up and gone home. Talk about landing her in it. But she hadn’t let this dent her confidence, and had set about trying to win over a group of tiny tots. Her plan was to begin with the basics, assess their abilities and then build on their technique, as her teachers had done with her. Which was fine in principle. It was just in practice that it failed.

Half the kids hadn’t turned up for the class. The ones who did were unruly, wouldn’t listen to instructions and spent the entire hour running around the studio making an absolute din. Far from reining in their unruly offspring, the parents had stood around the room glaring at Becca, clearly holding her responsible for their children’s lack of discipline. One boy nicked a girl’s hairnet and refused to give it back, making her cry. Two other girls started bickering and ended up crying, and one kid ran across the studio so fast he smacked into the mirrors, resulting in more crying.

Becca had been close to tears herself.



But this was nothing compared to the parents. One outraged mother removed her child mid-class, stating in a loud voice that Becca was an ‘utter disgrace’. Three parents announced at the end of the class they wouldn’t be returning, and one woman questioned whether Becca’s ‘unconventional’ appearance was entirely ‘appropriate’ for the role of a dance teacher.