Tuesday, July 7, 2015

#REVIEW, #GuestPost, #Tour Stop and #GIVEAWAY for "REMEMBER MIA" by ALEXANDRA BURT!


Description:


Like Girl on the Train and Gone Girl, Remember Mia is a riveting psychological suspense, exploring what happens when a young mother’s worst nightmare becomes devastatingly real…


First I remember the darkness.
Then I remember the blood.
I don’t know where my daughter is.


Estelle Paradise wakes up in a hospital after being found near dead at the bottom of a ravine with a fragmented memory and a vague sense of loss. Then a terrifying reality sets in: her daughter is missing.


Days earlier, Estelle discovered her baby’s crib empty in their Brooklyn apartment. There was no sign of a break-in, but all traces of seven-month-old Mia had disappeared. Her diapers, her clothes, her bottles—all gone.


Frustrated and unable to explain her daughter’s disappearance, Estelle begins a desperate search. But when the lack of evidence casts doubt on her story, Estelle becomes the number one suspect in the eyes of the police and the media.

As hope of reuniting with Mia becomes all she has left, Estelle will do anything to find answers: What has she done to her baby? And what has someone else done to her?

My Take:
4 Stars!
Wow! What a story! We are pulled into this book reading it immediately and frantically, glued to the pages from the start! We are really trying to figure out what is going on, what is happening, and we want to find out. 
One day Estelle's baby, Mia, disappears. ALL of Mia's things disappear. EVERYTHING of Mia's disappears. Not one sock is left. Not one pacifier is left. Not one bottle of formula is left in the refrigerator. Not one piece of furniture! It ALL disappeared! What's going on? Estelle's husband blames HER! What about HIM? This is a crazy case! The police are called in, eventually, and Estelle is beside herself. We are frantically reading trying to find out what happened, but can't, and some of the things Estelle does, such as not calling 911 right away just don't make sense to us.
This book doesn't really slow down until about Chapter 11 when the story starts to go through things a little slower, when we can finally slow down and start to process things a little more about what really happened. Although, then again, we now have her husband, Jack, to deal with. He is a nasty one! Or at least these are his true colors he shows in most of this book!
As things slow down a bit, we find out the main character of this book, Estelle, was actually shot with a gun while she was driving. The bullet hit her in the ear, knocking her unconscious, causing her to end up driving down into a ravine alongside an exit ramp. The vehicle was in such a way that you could not see it, and it took two days for someone to be walking around in that stumble upon her and the vehicle. 
Everything that is wrong with Estelle is not ALL Postpartum Depression after all we learn! Sure, she definitely has it/had it, but there are other things at play here, too. Estelle DID HAVE A BABY! That is a proven FACT! Her husband can't try change the facts about that. Not everything that is wrong with Estelle can now be blamed on the postpartum depression.
We need to find out what is going on. but this book starts to become more about Estelle's psyche now, as we need to find out what she knows, too.
You cannot help but to feel so strongly for Estelle because her husband is so mean to her. HE wants answers, but she can't remember a THING! Her husband wants the answers now, wants to know what happened immediately, but give her a chance! She has just been pulled out of a ravine after being unconscious for two days, and her husband has nothing nice to even say to her, not even a simple, "I love you.". He can't even ask her how she's feeling. Obviously she's not feeling well, but most husbands' would at least ask their wives how they were feeling instead of just accepting the obvious here! Come on! 
Estelle had driven in to Dover, a town that is very far from their home, about three hours away, and she had no reason for doing it and no answers as to why she did it. She simply does not know.
You start to think her husband is behind this somehow, he HAS TO BE! How could he not be because of the way he was treating his own wife? Did he even FEEL for his own WIFE? I could not help but to remember a thought Jack had had about Estelle back when they were dating, his now wife, but when she was his girlfriend. He thought to himself that he 'felt' she looked at the world in a very 'emotional way'. Heck, if he were a criminal and needed someone to pin something on, this woman could become his scapegoat one day if need be! He probably thought Estelle would be the perfect woman to pin a crime on because she reacts to things emotionally. This would give Jack a nice scapegoat to blame Estelle as a good person to peg a crime on. It wouldn't take much to blame Estelle of anything, or even convince her SHE did do something so severe that she would believe it! This is Estelle's husband now, Jack. NOT a nice guy, or at least this is how I feel from the beginning! 
Jack, doesn't help Estelle with her memory, either. He continually puts her down and makes her feel guilty, that she DID do something to the baby. She believes Jack so much that she starts to dream of blood (from the car accident? She doesn't know?) and of other strange things because he makes her feel as if it is HER FAULT! Next Jack gets into her psyche by asking her HOW can she LOSE a child? He continually acts like this, and frankly, I hated him! There was not one thing I liked about this man, and I felt he was behind this entire disappearance. 
Now we are left with psychologically abused Estelle, feeling as if she DID do something to make their baby who had severe colic, keeping both her and her husband up at night, every night, and then conveniently her husband gets a job in Chicago, temporarily of course, and Estelle and the baby will continue to stay living there in Brooklyn during the time he lives in Chicago! (Wow! Did Jack set up the deal of a lifetime or what? Jerk!) Estelle IS feeling like she is going crazy, but so would you without one friend being 'allowed' into your home, (yes, this is at her husband's request!) Estelle has no family to help her, either, and prior to this accident, she is with this baby 24/7, the ONLY help was Mia's naps and sleeping at night, of which she was not good at because of the constant crying. The baby never slept. Estelle does start believing she IS crazy, and did lose the baby somehow. I don't know about you, but I sure would start to feel like I was at fault in Estelle's situation, too!
Now Jack convinces Estelle to sign papers. Papers that will institutionalize her so she can get her memory back about baby Mia.
The media gets wind of this story and calls Estelle, 'MediaMom'.
Over time, a LOT of hard emotional work, things start to work. Of course, there is so much more to this story, but I can't tell you more! It will spoil the story! It's amazing that this is a debut author who wrote this! You're going to LOVE this book if you like Psychological Thrillers!
Congratulations to this author, Alexandra Burt, on her first published work!
This book was provided to me by Penguin/Random House/Berkley for review purposes only, either positive or negative. Thank you Publishers! I truly enjoyed this book and I see a LOT of people loving this book just as much!



GUEST POST by this author,

The Write Place
by Alexandra Burt
I pinch myself and I feel pain. It’s real: contracts, agents, publishers, my first book. Remember Mia is a story of a missing baby, of motherhood, shortcomings, and isolation. But no one tells stories like life itself and my journey is one of the most unlikely stories you will ever hear.
I was born in Germany in a small town in the East Hesse Highlands. The area is heavily wooded with ranges of hills and forests straight out of Grimm’s fairytales. I was a gluttonous reader—something I shared with my late mother—and I love to share my favorite memory of her: There were no bookstores in town, I was too young to take the bus to the city and so I made do with a small library in the basement of the city hall. I depleted the entire library within a couple of years and from then on I was dependent on other people’s books. I’d watch my mother read, a ferocious reader like myself, and I‘d wait for her to finish. Hurry up, I’d say, read faster, how much longer, are you done? One day, tired of my nagging, she took a paperback and ripped it in half, handed me the first half and continued to read the second. We had solved our dilemma and from then on our shelves were filled with torn books. Many visitors gave us sideway glances imagining some unruly children or pets destroying the spines of our books. We never told.
I studied English in middle school and read some English literature in high school but read exclusively in my native language. After I moved to Texas, I worked as a freelance translator and started reading English novels. The plan was to break into literary translations but the union never panned out and I so decided to tell my own stories. I took writing classes and eventually published some short fiction.
Between classes and publishing my short stories, years passed and those were in fact difficult years. They seemed rather challenging considering I spent my days emerging myself in concepts I really didn’t understand; there were the pragmatic mechanics like plot, pace, and point-of-view but there were also the elusive concepts of voice, mood, atmosphere, and tone and not much made sense.
My unlikely story of authorhood, as implausible as it sounds, was inevitable in a way; I love the English language and what Dorothy L. Sayers called its “deceptive air of simplicity.” I recall the night I started writing Remember Mia, I recall imagining a woman in the grips of postpartum depression, confronted by a psychiatrist to solve the disappearance of her infant daughter, a tale of motherhood, of shortcomings, and isolation, and it felt like coming home; I have lived in many places but once I set foot into the write place, I knew I was home.
There’s nothing else I can imagine doing for the rest of my life.

I’m going to stay put.

#GIVEAWAY!
Anyone who is interested in entering this Giveaway, please post your name and email address below in the COMMENTS section! You have until Tuesday, July 21st, two weeks, to enter this giveaway! This giveaway is open to people in the US and Canada and is sponsored by the Publisher, Berkley, a Division of Random House

11 comments:

  1. Oh man I have this book on my TBR list and I can't wait to read it, but I'm a bit scared. Great review!

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    1. Hi cpr040304!
      Glad you have it on your TBR list! You'll LOVE it! Don't be afraid of it! Enjoy it! That's the best part of thrillers! Going in head first! Let me know how you liked it!
      Thanks for coming by! I hope you come on back and leave your email address (although I think I might be able to hunt it down if need be) for the Giveaway!
      Thanks for stopping by!
      Happy Summer!
      Laurie

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  2. Great review, piqued my interest
    DEbra GUyette
    debby236 at gmail dot com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Debby!
      Good! I'm glad my review piqued your interest!
      You'll LOVE this story!
      Good luck!
      Laurie

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  3. Replies
    1. Hi Sam!
      You'll LOVE it!! Don't forget to add it to your Goodreads Want to Read list!
      Good luck and all the best!
      Laurie

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  4. Sounds like a good read.
    whistleinthewind74@hotmail.com

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. Wow this sounds like one amazing book! I love how detailed your review is and how energetic you sound throughout it. It makes the book seem all that much more interesting. Also, thanks for not spoiling the book through your review. It takes the fun out of reading the book when you already know what's going to happen lol. And yes! You captured my thoughts exactly! I mean, it IS suspicious when the husband doesn't even ask her how she's feeling... Hmm... Thank you for the wonderful review and giveaway! My email address is xinyi1467 (at) gmail (dot) com ^-^

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  7. I've been looking forward to reading this one!
    Maranda Hymes
    edscissorhands94@gmail.com

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  8. I would love to read this book. The storyline says a definite read me. Lots of reviews for this book and it is a winner for sure.

    cenya2 at Hotmail dot com

    ReplyDelete

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