YvonneAria Fiction are simply the best, with the lovely Melanie keeping thing super organised for all the Blog Tours and making sure we all know what we are doing, well in advance. NetGalley also deserve a mention for making my pre-approved titles so easy to download, without them things just wouldn’t run so smoothly.
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‘HER GREATEST MISTAKE‘
Do we ever know what goes on behind closed doors?
Eve and Gregg were the perfect couple, with the perfect marriage… which has become the perfect lie.
Gone is the charming, attentive Gregg – instead Eve wakes up each morning beside a manipulative and sinister man who controls his wife’s every move.
So Eve flees her immaculate marital home to keep herself, and young son Jack safe. Yet no matter how careful she has been, she knows Gregg will be relentless in his pursuit of his missing family.
And that one day, when she’s least expecting it, he will find them…
What was Eve’s greatest mistake?
Marrying Gregg? Leaving him? Or leaving him alive…?
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Hi! I’m SARAH SIMPSON
I have a first-class honours degree in Psychology and have worked in a neuro-psychology department at a Brain Rehabilitation Hospital.
When I first graduated, I formed a mental health consultancy and worked as a psychologist within the family court system of Warwickshire and Oxfordshire.
Three years ago I moved to beautiful Cornwall, with my husband and three children, and now run my own practice in Truro.
Her Greatest Mistake is my debut novel, and I am currently working on the second.
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Keep up with my news on facebook
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I do enjoy a good author Guest Post, so am thrilled to be able to share this one with you, as my spot on the Blog Tour.
“DO WE EVER KNOW WHAT GOES ON BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
AND WHAT WAS HER GREATEST MISTAKE?”
BY SARAH SIMPSON
My background, working within mental health, gifted me an invaluable understanding of life and people. So, Her Greatest Mistake is a cocktail of professional and personal experiences stirred vigorously by my imagination.
I am relatively late to the writing scene, despite a love of books and writing from when I was very young, it wasn’t really until 2016 when I sat down to put pen to paper. Her Greatest Mistake was probably twelve months in creation, then a month later I ripped it apart, re-writing several times. In June 2017, I signed with my lovely agent Broo Doherty and was then over the moon to be offered a three book publishing contract with Aria, Head of Zeus, in November of the same year.
To be honest, it still seems a little surreal. I am very honoured and flattered to be here today. Her Greatest Mistake had been sitting in the back of my mind for a number of years.
The novel is split into two interlaced time periods. I wrote the first time period set in the 1990’s in its entirety first, before weaving through the more current story. This was important to me as I really wanted to ensure that I gave proper credence to the plight of Eve. To demonstrate how her past lurked in the back of tattered memory templates in all she did. The story is told through the eyes of Eve, who has found herself trapped, almost quarantined in such a dark life, married to Gregg. Some years ago, I worked as a family consultant for families caught in the divorce process, so it was incredibly important to me to grasp some the horrors people can endure.
Eve comments within the story that we often think we know what we would do in certain situations, but in reality – we don’t. Context is everything. We never truly understand how we will behave, feel or respond. I really hope that Her Greatest Mistake will help people recognise, it is so easy to judge, so much more difficult to understand.
Hopefully, my readers will not have experienced the troubles of Eve but they will be able to engage with her, relate to her and root for her on her turbulent, emotional journey. Sadly, many of us will know of someone who has trodden similar, delicate paths.
Her Greatest Mistake questions our perspective. Do we really ever see the truth? And perhaps, it is not always about what we think we know, what we think we see, but more about what we don’t know and what we don’t see. We read about incidents of emotional and physical abuse that sadly go on behind closed doors for years. It is all too easy to judge, to wonder, why they didn’t leave? Why didn’t they stand up to the other person? I hope that Eve can demonstrate, this isn’t always as easy as people may believe. Sometimes, people can become ensnared, isolated, with battered self-esteems and seemingly void of an obvious escape route.
I understand one of the questions Her Greatest Mistake may throw up is – why didn’t Eve go to the police? Could she have benefited from some form of witness support protection? Gregg, is a white collar psychopath, he doesn’t fit the stereo-typical role of an abuser, a criminal. He is shrewd, sharp, calculating and a member of the white collar professional club. He chips away at his prey, breaking down any resolve before metaphorically imprisoning them. Eve also perceives Gregg as above the law, capable of manipulating, influencing the authorities. Her trust of the authorities has already been broken, she is almost afraid to ask for help. She also understands that Gregg will somehow, some day find a way to hunt her down no matter what, her only true way to escape is to somehow play his game. Over time she watches, learns and plans but unfortunately, all with many best made plans …
All of us are different, none of us know how we would respond in a given situation, we only think we know. With hindsight, maybe Eve would have done things differently. But hindsight is often futile.
Her Greatest Mistake reflects on the relationship between truth and lies and how really, there is very little absolute truth, only ever perspective. A perspective coloured by life and personal experiences in a moment of time. I wanted to question the role of perception in our lives. Not just the role of, but the power of something so incredibly subjective. During my time working within mental health, I witnessed first-hand how perceptions can devastate, pull apart lives. Both those held personally of the world, of others and those directed inwards from others. Eve was held prisoner in a world of abuse, a marriage drip fed by abuse by a truth only known by her. Her perceptual outlook on the behaviours and judgments of others secured her fate.
Her Greatest Mistake includes some dark scenes but it is also a story about hope, love and sheer determination. Not all stories end happily, as in life, some stories end with a need to learn a level of acceptance, requiring a strength to move forward despite the shackles of a past. To do this Eve used her strongest emotion, the love for her son, to guide her through the bleakest of times.
I now live in beautiful Cornwall, with my husband and three children. Which is also the current home of Eve and her son, Jack. The world of Eve was created walking the coastlines, lost in thought moments gazing out to sea with a mind that always wonders why, how, what if?
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I liked the way this sounded when you first featured it, but this interesting guest post by the author makes it seem all the more intriguing! Knowing she has the real life “cred” to back up her story makes a great difference!
There is a total understanding of, and passion for, her subject, in Sarah’s storyline for ‘Her Greatest Mistake’, which comes through in this strong and emotionally charged Guest Post.
Compassionate and caring, firm but fair, would be my first thoughts about Helen the professional. As for Helen the author, I can’t wait to find out if this book is as good as it sounds!
Thanks for visiting and I hope that this one might win its place in your ‘Want To Read’ pile 🙂
Great guest post. Her Greatest Mistake sounds like an interesting read and I like the dual time settings. I like 1990’s anything, it’s my favorite decade. It’s true, so much is about what we don’t see.
The 1990s is a bit after my time, I’m afraid!
I was a teenager in the 1970s, when my boy band crushes would have extended beyond the homegrown talent which you probably won’t have heard of, across the pond to the likes of David Cassidy, Donny Osmond and my all time heart-throb Elvis Presley. Glam Rock was just about in its heyday when we got married in ’79!
The punk rock of the 1980s pretty much passed us by and since then I haven’t really bothered too much about the trends of the times.
The story does sound quite intense and I enjoyed reading how Sarah constructed the premise. There are so many great lines in the Guest Post and alongside the one you chose to highlight, I would quite like to feature …
“It is so easy to judge, so much more difficult to understand.”
Thanks for taking the time to comment 🙂