Too Close to Home

Author/Guide: Susan Lewis

Why a Booktrail?

2000s: Wales is meant as a fresh start for Jenna and Jack but all is not what it seems…

ISBN: 978-0099586487
Genre: Fiction

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What you need to know before your trail

Jenna and Jack Moore move to Wales with their fifteen year of daughter Paige for a fresh start running their won publishing business. At first things seem as if they are going to have a good life, a new life but Paige having started a new school is starting to become more and more withdrawn. She used to be close to her mum but not any more.

Jenna is also worried about her husband and starts to wonder just what kind of secrets he is keeping. There’s also the other kids to worry about. Paige is older, she’ll be fine won’t she?

Paige is getting further and further drawn into a world she doesn’t want to be in and no one can hear her distress

Until it might be just too late.

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Travel Guide

Wales – Rhossili Bay to be precise. The perfect Welsh getaway described in such a way that you will immediately want to head there yourself –

They had gathered some impressive footage of surfers riding the waves over at Rhossili Bay; the flighty dance of marram grass as the wind gusted over the dunes…
What a place! The perfect place for a new start, one where the family has ‘missions’ of finding about about local folklore – Viking raider the Arthurian legend, smugglers, dragons. They’re making a project for Paige’s IT course where they capture all about the region that they consider worthwhile..

And where they live on the Gower Peninsula is like something from a book. Talking of their neighbours-

“The way they sometimes carried on with each other made Jenna wonder if she’s stumbled into the village of Llareggub, the infamous setting for Under Milk Wood.”

However, this story is one firmly centered in the harrowing world of bullying – cyber bullying to be precise as well as physical bullying at Paige’s School. Having moved for a fresh start, starting a new school is going to be a tough experience at the best of times but Paige is drawn into a world from which she can’t escape.

While her family and parents in particular are having their own set of problems, Paige suffers the most from the upheaval of the family’s move to Wales and the trauma that this entails.

With a family there are so many layers at play at once – secrets, lies, young children to consider, infidelity to deal with and a so a teenager who appears strong and level headed may just go under the radar.

And it’s what goes under the radar that causes the greatest dangers