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Title/Author

The Mistake I Made

Paula Daly

Average Review Rating Average Rating 6/10 (1 Review)
Book Details

Publisher : Corgi

Published : 2016

Copyright : Paula Daly 2015

ISBN-10 : PB 0-552-17130-1
ISBN-13 : PB 978-0-552-17130-4

Publisher's Write-Up

We all think we know who we are. What we’re capable of. Roz is a single mother, a physiotherapist, a sister, a friend. She’s also desperate. Her business has gone under, she’s crippled by debt and she’s just had to explain to her son why someone’s taken all their furniture away. But now a stranger has made her an offer. For one night with her, he’ll pay enough to bring her back from the edge. Roz has a choice to make.

Paula Daly is the critically acclaimed author of four novels. Her work has been sold in fifteen countries, shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Crime Novel of the Year, and her books are currently being developed for television. She was born in Lancashire and lives in the Lake District with her husband, three children and whippet Skippy.

'Unusual, engaging and funny, this is an indulgent treat.'

Sunday Mirror

'Sexy and sinister.'

Sharon Bolton

'A big-hearted, empathetic novel about ordinary lives and the tremors that can rock them.'

Guardian
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Reader Reviews

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Review by Ben Macnair (311017) Rating (6/10)

Review by Ben Macnair
Book Source: Not Known
Rating 6/10

At the beginning of this novel, Roz Toovey is at a low ebb. Her business has gone to the wall, she is crippled by rising debt, and her young son is soon to learn what bailiffs do for a living, but into this, there is a stranger, Scott, with an indecent proposal.

So far, so Hollywood. Roz is a single mother, a sister, a friend, and a physiotherapist, used to dealing with living bodies, helping people to feel better. Told in the first person, we see Roz’s struggles with her business, as things begin to tighten, the economic climate causing more distress, her once comfortable home becoming something of a shrine to her past. Her son does not understand what is happening, and as things take unexpected turns, we feel the full consequences of Roz’s decision, as Scott becomes increasingly involved in her life, his one-off deal not what it appears to be.

Set in Cumbria, and the Hawkshead region, the book is very well grounded in fact and reality, although the story seems a lot more suited to a cliched metropolitan area, whilst the characters are all well drawn, as a police investigation and insurance investigation push Roz’s life into unexpected areas, but which all make thematic and logical sense.

The book is a fast read, although at more than four hundred pages it could have done with a tighter edit. At times it seems a little convoluted with characters bought in for expositional, rather than narrative purposes, but the desperate straits that Roz finds herself in, the monumental mistake she made in accepting Scott’s money for an easy way out of debt, and the impact that that decision has over the novel’s secondary characters are very well thought out, and the amount of research that by necessity has to hold up a story like this one is very impressive indeed.
Ben Macnair (31st October 2017)

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