16 Aug 2015

Eliza Bennett has the life she's always dreamed of.
She's who she wants to be, and she's with the man she loves.

But Eliza is living a lie. Her real name is Klaudia Meyer.
And Klaudia is on the run. She's escaping her old life, and a terrible secret buried at the heart of her family.

This is the story of Eliza and Klaudia - one girl, two lives and a lie they cannot hide from.

Psychological and suspenseful: the gripping story of one girl living a double life.

From rising star Saskia Sarginson, author of The Twins and Without You.

Published: March 2015
Publisher: Piatkus
Author Goodreads: Click here
Goodreads : Click here
Series or Stand-Alone: Stand-Alone
Source: Review copy from Publisher

What a surprising read! I had previously read The Twins by the author and enjoyed that one so I was very intrigued to find out what this book had to offer. If you like books that are full of suspense then definitely check this out.

What I loved about this book...
This book really surprised me. Going into this by just reading the blurb and not reading any reviews etc I had thought that this was a story about Eliza/Klaudia and finding out what she had done so make her run away and change her name. This story is so much more than that. The family secrets portion of this book were really surprising. I did have an inkling as the story went on but it was still surprising nonetheless. It really surprised me how deep the story actually went. It is certainly not just your run of the mill 'girl runs away from home and sets up a new life to escape the old one' type of story. Without going into too much detail, there are references and character experiences with a historic event that is really surprising and intriguing.

This story is split into different perspectives - you have the main character in the present day (Eliza), you have the main character in the past (Klaudia) and then you have the view point of someone called Ernst in the past. Although you have three different characters' perspectives of their stories, I had no difficulty in following each of the stories and trying to work out the relevance of each to the story.

For me, the best aspect of this book is the suspense. For about three quarters of this book I was in the dark, wondering what is going to happen next. The author did a great job with feeding little bits of information as the story goes on making me want to keep reading. I have to admit that I read this book in one sitting; I just couldn't stop reading. I needed to find out the rest of the story!

What I was not fond of with this book...
Honestly speaking, there were parts in this story where I felt a little annoyed with the main character, Eliza/Klaudia. She had made a new life for herself, is really happy etc etc and when something happens (although it was a big something) she just drops everything and leaves it behind. For me, that is something I could not do and something that I do find annoying but that is just a personal opinion rather than anything wrong with the actual story.

(From Goodreads)

Saskia grew up in Suffolk and now lives in London. She is the mother of four children, including identical twin girls. She has a B.A hons in English Literature from Cambridge and an M.A in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway. She's worked as a Health & Beauty Editor,freelance journalist, ghost-writer and script reader. As well as writing and reading, she loves tango dancing and dog walking,