Sugar and Snails by Anne Goodwin

At fifteen, Diana Dodsworth took the opportunity to radically alter the trajectory of her life and escape the constraints of her small-town existence. Thirty years on, she can’t help scratching at her teenage decision like a scabbed wound. 

To safeguard her secret, she’s kept other people at a distance ... until Simon Jenkins sweeps in on a cloud of promise and possibility. But his work is taking him to Cairo, and he expects Di to fly out for a visit. She daren’t return to the city that changed her life; nor can she tell Simon the reason why. 
Sugar and Snails takes the reader on a poignant journey from Diana’s misfit childhood, through tortured adolescence to a triumphant mid-life coming-of-age that challenges preconceptions about bridging the gap between who we are and who we feel we ought to be.Visit her website and blog at http://annegoodwin.weebly.com



As promised, this is the first review from the list of books in my previous blog posting. 

This book is actually quite difficult to review without giving the plot away so forgive me if I sound a little vague at times. Suffice to say that the plot is original and surprising and Ms Goodwin confronts the issues which face her protagonist with sensitivity and insight. 

She is also an excellent storyteller and the plot unfolds deftly in her hands. She has  diligently done her research in putting together this fine novel. 

Diana is a strong and complex character and it was not obvious to me as a reader what her secret is.  Her story is gripping and I loved the way I came to a gradual realisation concerning her refusal to return to Cairo.  In many novels I can second guess what is coming but with this novel the author unravels for us the issues and concerns that Diana confronts in a way that kept me reading in order to discover what was going on.

Ultiimately, this is a story of self discovery which challenges the reader to consider issues of equality and the way in which individuals are conventionalised by the society in which they live. It also deals with the enormity of dealing with decisions that we make when we are young and the impact that has on the rest of our lives.

Well done to Anne Goodwin for producing such a readable and challenging book. 

I would love to hear your thoughts on this book when you have read it.

ISBN:  978-1908600479

Publisher:  Inspired Quill

Price (today on Amazon.co.uk) Paperback: £8.99   Kindle: £3.49

About the Author:

Anne Goodwin loves fiction for the freedom to contradict herself and has been scribbling stories ever since she could hold a pencil. During her career as an NHS clinical psychologist her focus was on helping other people tell their neglected stories to themselves. Now that her short fiction publication count has overtaken her age, her ambition is to write and publish enough novels to match her shoe size. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was published in July 2015 by Inspired Quill.