Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

We have been promised some snow this afternoon, but the rest of the forecast is bleak.

There will be a huge drop in the temperature, much colder than normal, they say. I’m not looking forward to that as I am cold enough already!

I have made sure the bird feeders are full and wish I could do more. As it is, I want to bring all my bonsai indoors!

I have a book review to post today, and then I will sign off, as this might be the day I finish writing my book…

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Tina’s Diary: 1997 ~ #Review ~ #Coming of Age Fiction @StevieTurner6

A ghost holds the key to a stolen fortune…

Tina is fourteen years old. She is argumentative, surly, disobedient, and hails from a dysfunctional family. She has had various unsuccessful stays in foster care, as her behaviour always remains challenging. When she is moved to Sunrise Court, a children’s home, she is soon in trouble for breaking the rules, and is horrified to discover she has to barricade herself into her bedroom every night to evade the wandering hands of a certain member of staff.

Devoid of hope for the future, she starts a diary at the beginning of January 1997 as she approaches her fifteenth birthday. Will the New Year will bring an improvement in her situation?

‘Tina’s Diary: 1997’ reached the finals of the 2023 Page Turner Writing Award.

Review by D.G Kaye, author of Conflicted Hearts

Tina is a fifteen year old girl living in an orphanage home. She is an angry and rebellious girl, but very resourceful. She drops out of school but is quite clever and streetwise, and carries a lot of resentment toward her parents for her predicament. Tina’s mother was a drug addict and alcoholic who over-dosed when Tina was ten and her philandering father had long gone, and remarried. Tina has an estranged and resentful relationship with her cheating, alcoholic father who typically visits her once a year at Christmas, and occasionally on her birthday, to leave her money and whatever stolen goods he may have acquired that she may be able to use.

Tina doesn’t like rules and uses her bedroom window to escape out at nights for dates with all the wrong kinds of shady characters. She’s also quite clever and learns how to make some spending money on the side, because it’s a ‘short stint for a decent payoff’.

This story begins as a diary of Tina’s life in the home, and then all the little plot twists that come along in her life, keep us turning the pages.The author did a marvelous job of writing Tina’s story in this epistolary style of writing, and writing from the mind of a lonely, angry, and confused young teenager facing situations and decisions at an age with adult-sized problems. Tina’s shenanigans with a twist of paranormal make for an interesting read.

Stevie Turner

Stevie Turner is a British author of romantic suspense, paranormal stories, and women’s fiction family dramas which are sometimes humorous. She is a cancer survivor, and still lives in the same picturesque Suffolk village that she and husband Sam moved to in 1991 with their two boys. Those two boys have now grown, and she and Sam have 5 lovely grandchildren.

One of her short stories, ‘Lifting the Black Dog’, was published in ‘1000 Words or Less Flash Fiction Collection’ (2016). Her screenplay ‘For the Sake of a Child’ won a silver award in the Spring 2017 Depth of Field International Film Festival, and her novel ‘A House Without Windows’ gained interest in 2017 from De Coder Media, an independent film production company based in New York. ‘Finding David’ reached the quarter-finals of the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Competition. ‘Scam!’ won first prize in the 2021 Electric Eclectic writing competition, and ‘His Ladyship,’ reached the finals and Longlist of the 2021 Page Turner Writing Award. ‘Falling’ reached the finals of the 2022 Page Turner Writing Award, and Stevie’s latest manuscript ‘Tina’s Diary: 1997’ reached the finals of the 2023 Page Turner Writing Award. You can find Stevie’s books and reviews on her website http://www.stevieturner.uk

Our Review…

Tina seems like the worst kind of teenager. No respect for rules or her own safety. But when you look at her life, you won’t blame her.

To be without hope at such an early age is sad, and personally, I think she did the best she could in the circumstances, although her mother did her best to help.

My own childhood wasn’t quite as bad as Tina’s, but I realised as I read her story, just how close it came at times.

I was rooting for Tina to turn her life around long before the end of the story, as she really deserved some happiness.

Did her life get any better, was there any happiness out there for her?

You must read her story to find out…