Spotlight on my blog today is on Dancing in the Rain by Lucy Appadoo, together with a guest post by the author and a fabulous giveaway!
Can she end the turmoil and escape the firmly built trap to find the freedom she craves?
Can she end the turmoil and escape the firmly built trap to find the freedom she craves?
Book Details:
Book Title: Dancing in the Rain (The Italian Family Series)
Author: Lucy Appadoo
Category: Adult Fiction, 274 pages
Genre: Historical Coming of Age/Romance/Family Drama
Publisher: Lucy Appadoo
Release date: March 24, 2017
Tour dates: June 5 to 23, 2017
Content Rating: PG-13 + M (There is physical abuse and death involved.)
Book Description:
Fifteen-year old Valeria Allegro works diligently on the family farm in Italy, where she is torn between her duty to her family and her desire to find freedom from her strict, domineering father. She finds solace in Dario, a young student who provides a blissful escape—until a neighbour’s son, Gregorio, decides he wants her for himself.
This raises an alarm for her father, which leads to family conflict and aggression. When Dario is threatened and her family is plagued by a series of suspicious accidents, Valeria is desperate to keep her loved ones safe. Can she end the turmoil and escape the firmly built trap to find the freedom she craves?
Buy the Book:
Meet the Author:
Lucy Appadoo is a registered counsellor and wellness coach with a part-time private practice. She also works as a rehabilitation counsellor for the Australian government. In her spare time, she self-publishes or writes nonfiction and fiction texts. She previously worked as a rehabilitation consultant, caseworker, English as a second language teacher, and proofreader.
Lucy has postgraduate diplomas in psychology, education, and English as a Second Language teaching, as well as specialised qualifications in grief counselling and hypnosis. She has also completed wellness coaching courses (levels 1-3) at Wellness Coaching Australia.
Lucy enjoys reading romantic suspense, romance, thrillers, crime novels, family/historical drama, and sagas. She writes in the genres of romantic suspense, historical fiction, and romance. She has enjoyed travelling to exotic places such as Madrid, Mauritius, and Italy, and draws on these experiences in her creative writing.
Lucy’s favourite authors include Kendra Elliot, Christiane Heggan, Theresa Ragan, Tara Moss, Nicholas Sparks, Adriana Trigiani, Erica Spindler, and James Patterson (to name a few).
Lucy’s interests include meditation, playing tennis, journal writing, reading fiction and nonfiction texts about writing, coaching, and counselling, ongoing professional development, spending time with her husband and two daughters, and socialising with friends and family.
Connect with the Author: Website ~ Twitter ~ Facebook
GUEST POST BY LUCY APPADOO
In Dancing in the Rain, my female character, Valeria experiences intense anger at the hands of her strong, patriarchal father. A misunderstanding about a boy leads to conflict, but I won’t divulge too much of the story.
Valeria learns to loathe her father even more after that experience, and struggles to understand her mother’s own submissive nature when Valeria is independent and assertive. In actuality, her mother in the story feels it is her duty to listen to her husband who is the main provider. He should be respected and obeyed, but Valeria doesn’t understand her mother’s mentality. She doesn’t see that she can respect her father when he acts so cruelly.
This particular anger scene was inspired by my mother’s experience in Italy. The factual story was about an Italian woman from my mother’s village who claimed to have seen my mother talking to a boy. She informed my grandfather (my mother’s father) of what she had seen. In fact, this woman talking to the boy was not my mother. It was a case of mistaken identity. My mother was punished for something she didn’t do as another woman had been involved. Another woman had had contact with a boy, and it wasn’t my mother.
I felt for my mother when she recounted this story to me. However, back in the 1960s and in a small village with a domineering father, girls and women could not stand up for themselves. Freedoms we have now didn’t exist back then. The females did what they were told. You would be punished otherwise.
I guess the lesson you can learn here is that in spite of hardships and trauma, you can be strong at heart and bounce back. You can get some meaning out of the situation and not be broken by the experience. Both Valeria and my mother did bounce back as they are strong at heart.
Enter the Giveaway!
Ends July 1
a Rafflecopter giveaway
No comments:
Post a Comment