Why a Booktrail?
2000s: Obsession is like a reflection in the mirror. It never looks away until you do…
Exquisite
What you need to know before your trail
Bo Luxton seems to have it all – a beautiful home in the Lake District and a loving family. What’s more she’s a best selling writer and enjoys the fame that comes with it.
She’s spending a week holding a writer’s retreat which is where she meets Alice Dark, an aspiring writer who is drifting through life, with a series of dead-end jobs and a freeloading boyfriend. When they meet, the chemistry is instant, and a sinister relationship develops. Or does it?
These two women create such a force that it’s impossible to know how the ripples from that first meeting will pan out -it will make ripples that take each one of them to the edge…
Locations
Reset- England - Brighton
- A: Kemp town
- B: The Ancient Mariner
- C: City Books
- D: Brunswick Pl
- England - Lake District
- E: Oxenholme Train station
- F: The Grasmere Gingerbread Shop
- G: River Rothay
Travel Guide
Brighton and the Lake District
One writer, Bo lives in the Grasmere area of the Lake District whilst Alice lives in Brighton. Two environments perfect for the art of writing – Brighton, the creative hub of the UK and the Lake District as the perfect place for a writer’s retreat.
Brighton
A city of lazy boyfriends and frustrated creatives. Alice wants to escape and although she likes Brighton with its whitewashed houses, the sea and the sense of space, her Brighton is a series of bedsits, parties which last for days and a boyfriend who sees nothing wrong with that. She visits Kemptown, wanders through the streets as she does life, before boarding the train to Grasmere and a life far away from this place.
The Lake District – Grasmere
The land of Wordsworth and where novels such as Wuthering Heights and Peter Rabbit were inspired by. This is the landscape which encourages writing and the flow of ideas, where writing retreats really can produce results – intense results as it turns out. Grasmere really is as beautiful as it sounds and is evoked with just enough style here to make you want to drop everything and go there, notebook in hand.
The station at Oxendale is the first impression we get of this place – where tense moments are played out – in contrast to the serenity and peace of Bo’s house and her life there. The green fields, the babbling brooks all there waiting to be captured by the written word. This is the world of rest and relaxation – theres tourist comes to see Wordsworth country, the Peter Rabbit museum and the tasty treats of the various cafes and gingerbread shops.
This is the country to escape from it all – to spend time at a writer’s retreat writing that next best seller, to meet like minded people. Away from the crazy people of the city and the madness of a faster way of life. Isn’t it?
From the author:
I have always been interested in ‘bad’ relationships – the psychological games people play and the link between childhood experiences and adult relationships. I’m also interested in the chasm that can exist between the mask a person wears in public and the more intimate reality.
What does she find exquisite? Scenery, mostly. I like food, but it doesn’t blow my mind in the way that hiking in the Lake District does.
Trail Gallery
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
A sinister relationship between two women is not something I’d read about since watching Single White Female. Looking at the turn of events through the eyes of one, and then the other really builds up a fascinating picture of what’s real and what’s not, and more interestingly in Exquisite, what could be true only you can’t see it yet.
Alternating chapters show events as narrated by each women in turn give a real – he said, she said feel to the novel which is very apt. Sometimes a new viewpoint all together is thrown in to clear up what actually happened. Then there’s the email correspondence – what do the email really say or hide?
This book messed with my head – reading about passion, two writers whose creative worlds merge with their reality and how all consuming emotions can eat you alive.
It felt very real – with the stories about stalkers, obsessive fans and people going to extremes for love in the news, this novel let me see what goes on in people’s minds whilst on the surface, all seems calm.
Locations were used really well here – the escape to the gentle Lake District from a chaotic city. The calm before the storm with Bo and Alice – two personalities, two locations and two lives which are soon to clash
Very tense – a psychological feast
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Exquisite
Author/Guide: Sarah Stovell Destination: Brighton, Lake District, Grasmere Departure Time: 2000s
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