Heather’s Bookshelf: The Girl in the Blue Blazer
Author: Alretha Thomas
Released: 01/17/23
Genre: Suspense/Thriller
“We embrace, and in that moment, I don’t want to let her go, because I have an overwhelming feeling about what I plan to do and how many lives it’s going to impact. But I can’t turn back now, I just can’t.”
“The Girl in the Blue Blazer” follows two main interwoven timelines/POVs. The first is in 1993 and introduces Elizabeth Westlake (Liz) and her best friend Sandy as they struggle to make it after escaping terrible childhoods. The second is in 2019 and introduces Pamela Carter, an impressive woman trying to get an internship at a financial company with it’s CEO: Andrew Clifford III.
Liz and Sandy are teenage runaways who dropped out of high school to work as waitresses at an adult club in order to get by. Liz wants to be a writer and Sandy’s an aspiring singer. When a twenty-something Andrew Clifford walks into their club and saves Liz from a handsy customer, she thinks she may have found her “Prince Charming” and her path to publishing. But is Andrew really the answer to her problems?
Pamela has applied for this internship 3 times and she’s finally made it to the final round of interviews. This time she gets to meet Andrew, himself.
Early on in the tale, it is made known that Pamela is not seeking the internship solely for career advancement and Andrew is revealed to also have a connection to the young Liz. How everything is connected and what happened in their pasts to bring them to this point?
Trigger Warning: adult language, racist/sexist language, sexual situations, reference to rape, sexual assault, incest, child rape
Overall, I found this story powerful. Fair warning: this is not a happy-go-lucky tale. This story covers topics that are difficult to discuss and hear about, but it is important to do so. The author pulls from her own experiences to depict two POVs of women with different backgrounds that are connected by something terrible. I found the emotions of each woman to be heartbreaking and all too real. What pushed me through this difficult story? The tension of switching between POVs and the hope for revenge, karma, comeuppance, or whatever else you want to call it absolutely kept me turning the pages. Most of the tale is told through alternating POVs/timelines between Liz and Pamela with intermittent snippets of journal entries from each. I felt the journal entries were sometimes revealing and sometimes redundant. There were a couple of incidents of events occurring and then a journal entry depicting the same events just after they had happened. Even with the different POVs and timelines, the first 3/4 of the story had the same tone and realism throughout. Unfortunately, the last 1/4 did not share the same feel and became a little too unbelievable resulting in an abrupt ending.
I received a copy of this story in exchange of a fair and honest review.
OVERALL REVIEW:
A powerful dual-timeline story about two women connected in a terrible way. An abrupt ending doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the stories tone and importance.
Want to learn more about the author?
Check out my interview with Alretha Thomas
Interested in checking out the book for yourself?
Find it for purchase here or Kindle Unlimited
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