You'll notice there is a recent review of this title earlier in the blog with a challenge to take the free copy and do a review.......well Mary Ellis took up the challenge and here is her take on this book......
Outside the Lines by Amy Hatvany
Mental illness – don’t be put off –is a difficult subject.
It’s difficult for the sufferer, relatives and friends, medical practitioners,
social workers and all of us who witness unusual behaviour. Would you choose to write a novel whose
characters deal with mental illness?
Amy Hatvany has produced a very human story with characters
who ring true – flawed, brave, hard-working, misguided and attractive. Perhaps she has sugar-coated the pill by
making it a love story with a beautiful heroine, giving her a pet dog, a
successful career and charity, but the depiction of the mental illness of her
father is heartbreaking, given his artistic creativity, drunkenness and
inability to live within the lines according to society.
Like so many recent novels, there are a lot of time and
narrator changes, but each chapter is headed with a date and character, so it
isn’t confusing.
This is a book worth reading, about a difficult subject
rendered sympathetically and with understanding. The heroine’s quest maintains the suspense so
that you want to keep reading and the ending is realistically satisfactory. I think Amy Hatvany has pulled off a difficult challenge.
AMY HATVANY
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