BLOG TOUR: Pretending to Dance by Diane Chamberlain

I'm the last stop on the blog tour for Diane Chamberlain's latest book, Pretending to Dance! I thoroughly recommend this book, the story is fantastic! 

Molly Arnette and her husband live in San Diego, where they hope to adopt a baby. But the process terrifies her. Because Molly is very good at keeping secrets...
As the questions and background checks come one after another, Molly worries that the truth she's kept hidden about her North Carolina childhood will rise to the surface and destroy not only her chance at adoption, but her marriage as well.
She ran away from her family twenty years ago after a shocking event left her devastated and distrustful of those she loved: her mother, the woman who raised her and who, despite Molly claiming is dead, is very much alive, her birth-mother whose mysterious presence raised so many issues, and the father she adored, whose death sent her running from the small community of Morrison Ridge.
Now, as she tries to find a way to make peace with her past and embrace a future filled with promise, she discovers that even she doesn't know the truth of what happened in her family of pretenders.

Publisher: Macmillan

Pages: 384

I've not read a Diane Chamberlain book for ages but I loved the sound of this one when the publisher got in touch. Pretending to Dance is an excellent book; the story is intriguing and the characters are very realistic and well managed.
Molly and her husband Aiden are living in San Diego and they are in the process of applying to adopt a baby. That in itself is stressful but Molly has the added worry of the secrets from her past being revealed. As far as Aiden is concerned, Molly's parents are dead, how will he react when he discovers that Molly was actually adopted herself and in fact only her father is dead? Molly

left all of that behind her in North Carolina; she ran after her father's death and has never been back,. Now faced with the prospect of taking on an open adoption herself, Molly has got to confront the secrets she has kept if she has any chance of having the future she wants.
Pretending to Dance flits between the present day situation with Molly and Aiden and then back to the summer that Molly's father died. She was only fourteen and the events of that holiday would change her forever.
Molly was incredibly close to her father. A child 'pretend therapist', he was confined to a wheelchair due to having MS. Whilst Molly could take on board her father's limitations, she still believed he would always be there so his death is devastating to her and when she discovers the circumstances surrounding it she runs away.
Diane Chamberlain handled Molly
's fourteen year old character so well. I think she really showed the mix of emotions you experience on a daily basis at that age. Molly fiercely wants to be more independent, especially when it comes to boys and she fights against her parents to get more freedom. That comes at a price though and Molly realises that perhaps she is not as grown up as she thought and I can remember several instances where that happened to me as a teenager.
Pretending to Dance looks in particular at love within a family unit; the lengths we will go to in order to protect each other. Molly, even as an adult, has not come to terms with the decisions family members made on her behalf. When the prospect of becoming a mother herself becomes imminent, Molly is able to look at things a little differently; what would she do if in a similar situation with her own child?
I think that Diane Chamberlain dealt with a lot of complex and emotional issues in this book and she did it very well. I loved the back and forth nature of the story and it was interesting to see just how much Molly's past had effected her present day life.
Pretending to Dance is an engrossing, well-written book about family and love. Chamberlain's writing is emotive and well-thought out; this is a book that particularly resonated with me and reminded me what a fantastic author she is.

Many thanks to Macmillan for inviting me to be part of this blog tour, Pretending to Dance is available now! 

The Lost Daughter by Diane Chamberlain

Sorry that it has been a wee bit quiet on Dot Scribbles recently but I've not been too well, so there has been lots of sleeping during the day rather than blogging! I'm back now though and I have just finished The Lost Daughter by Diane Chamberlain which was fantastic. I had noticed it on quite a few other blogs and managed to swap a copy with someone, it's definitely worth a read.

Would you live a lie to keep your child?
In 1977, pregnant Genevieve Russell disappeared. Twenty years later, her remains are discovered and Timothy Gleason is charged with murder. But there is no sign of the unborn child.
CeeCee Wilkes knows how Genevieve died - because she was there. She also knows what happened to .missing infant, because two decades ago CeeCee made the devastating choice to raise the baby as her own.
Now Timothy Gleason is facing the death penalty, and CeeCee has another choice to make. Tell the truth and destroy her family. Or let an innocent man die to protect a lifetime of lies.

I have read many reviews that have compared this book to those of Jodi Picoult's, I have to say that I think this is better. I always feel that the characters are a little bit distant in Picoult's books but Diane Chamberlain's characters are completely believable and vivid. The action in the book starts immediately as we observe Corinne Bailey's reaction to her mother, CeeCee Wilke's confession about her involvement in the kidnapping of Genevieve Russell. The reader is then taken back to when the devastating events occurred and we begin to build up a picture of the type of person CeeCee Wilkes was at that time and what led her to make the momentous decisions that she did. The scenes described between the young CeeCee and Genevieve are devastating and you can feel the panic and guilt experienced by CeeCee which then permeates throughout the rest of the story.
There is a lot of action in this book but the main purpose is to explore how we deal with the consequences of our actions. Diane Chamberlain explores this by showing how CeeCee Wilkes tried to live her life and bring up the child that she had kidnapped in a loving and stable environment. You gain a real sense though that since that fateful day, CeeCee Wilkes has never been at peace, she has constantly been looking over her shoulder and this is an awful way to live a life. The character of CeeCee Wilkes obviously changes during the book and there were many occasions that I really did not like her but when you see her having to make the decision at the end of the book you see what a completely remarkable person she is.
The very first page of the book obviously gives away the ending and this is quite a long book. So what keeps you reading? For me there were so many things that I wanted to know. What happened to Timothy Gleason? How did CeeCee Wilkes survive? Why did she confess to her actions? How will her 'daughter' react to the knowledge that her whole life has been a lie?
The Lost Daughter in many ways is a simple thriller yet I felt that it was a little bit more than that. As a reader, you are really forced to ask yourself so many questions as you wander how you would react in those situations. Diane Chamberlain takes a really exciting story and uses it to look at some of the most basic aspects of human nature.