Thank you for your long, interesting review and the 4 stars. I'm the happy author. :-)
The blindness wasn't a gimmick. Marianne was blind for 2 reasons. I really wanted to write a book where neither the heroine nor the reader knew to begin with whether the hero was real or a figment of her imagination. I couldn't think of any way to do that other than to make the heroine blind, so that Keir is just a voice.
The other reason Marianne was blind was personal. I'd lived very happily on Skye for 5 years and I knew I was going to have to leave. I wanted to write about all the things I knew I would miss. But how could I write about about one of the most beautiful places in the world without descending into travelogue cliche? Many books have been written about Skye and its famous mountains. It's all been said.
So I decided if I wrote about Skye from the "point of view" of someone who couldn't see, I could get the reader to experience the Isle of Skye using their other senses.
Disability is definitely not any kind of gimmick for me. I grew up with a severely disabled father and I'm semi-disabled myself.
I've written 11 novels and they all feature older women and often mental health issues. They aren't romances (I don't like romance either!), but they are love stories. You might like Emotional Geology (set on another Scottish island) or The Memory Tree, a further exploration of my (and Keir's) obsession with trees.
Thank you so much for reviewing. Few readers take the trouble to review nowadays, so it's a real treat to get feedback .
The blindness wasn't a gimmick. Marianne was blind for 2 reasons. I really wanted to write a book where neither the heroine nor the reader knew to begin with whether the hero was real or a figment of her imagination. I couldn't think of any way to do that other than to make the heroine blind, so that Keir is just a voice.
The other reason Marianne was blind was personal. I'd lived very happily on Skye for 5 years and I knew I was going to have to leave. I wanted to write about all the things I knew I would miss. But how could I write about about one of the most beautiful places in the world without descending into travelogue cliche? Many books have been written about Skye and its famous mountains. It's all been said.
So I decided if I wrote about Skye from the "point of view" of someone who couldn't see, I could get the reader to experience the Isle of Skye using their other senses.
Disability is definitely not any kind of gimmick for me. I grew up with a severely disabled father and I'm semi-disabled myself.
I've written 11 novels and they all feature older women and often mental health issues. They aren't romances (I don't like romance either!), but they are love stories. You might like Emotional Geology (set on another Scottish island) or The Memory Tree, a further exploration of my (and Keir's) obsession with trees.
Thank you so much for reviewing. Few readers take the trouble to review nowadays, so it's a real treat to get feedback .