*Blog Tour: On Hampstead Heath by Marika Cobbold

Today I'm on the blog tour for On Hampstead Heath by Marika Cobbold. 

Thorn Marsh was raised in a house of whispers, of meaningful glances and half-finished sentences. Now she's a journalist with a passion for truth, more devoted to her work at the London Journal than she ever was to her ex-husband.

When the newspaper is bought by media giant The Goring Group, who value sales figures over fact-checking, Thorn openly questions their methods, and promptly finds herself moved from the news desk to the midweek supplement, reporting heart-warming stories for their new segment, The Bright Side, a job to which she is spectacularly unsuited.

On a final warning and with no heart-warming news in sight, a desperate Thorn fabricates a good-news story of her own. The story, centred on an angelic apparition on Hampstead Heath, goes viral. Caught between her principles and her ambitions, Thorn goes in search of the truth behind her creation, only to find the answers locked away in the unconscious mind of a stranger.

About the Author:

Marika Cobbold was born with newspaper ink flowing through her veins. She used to visit her father and grandfather at their offices at the Gothenburgh-Post, the Swedish broadsheet her grandfather had rescued from oblivion decades earlier. At home, when Marika wasn't reading, she listened as the grown ups around her discussed the issues of the day, and to the stories told by her mother and great aunt, who was a writer.

She left Sweden for England when she was nineteen, with vague plans of studying law, but eventually what her grandfather called 'the family curse' caught up with her, and some years later she wrote her first novel, Guppies For Tea. She has been writing ever since.

My thoughts?

Journalist, Thorn Marsh is the long standing news editor at The London Journal. Changes come when the paper is bought over and Thorn's moved over to the light hearted midweek supplement - London Living to edit "the bright side" page. This involves her writing true to life, heartwarming tales about the everyday Londoner. 

She's absolutely devastated to lose the job which has defined her and calls on her ex-husband for support. They have a few drinks and he tells her about something he saw on Hampstead Heath which he captured on film. A little drunk and with some embellishments on Thorn's part, the story takes wings and goes viral overnight...

What follows in the aftermath is her understanding of a lot of things including her mother's distance, how much her neighbour and her little dog mean to her as well as, discovering who the stranger is. It's a heartwarming story laced with lots of humour, friendships, family secrets, sadness and new beginnings. An absolute gem. I loved it.