A Twist of Fate

by Joanna Rees

[Leah]

Joanna Rees is a Chick Lit author that’s been about for years. Firstly as Josie Lloyd, then as a collaboration writer with her husband Emlyn Rees, then she became Jo Rees and now, in what could be her last(?) incarnation, she is Joanna Rees. I’ve never read any of her novels written solely by her, but I have read a couple of her collaboration books with her husband Emlyn Rees. I loved them, actually, and I was quite disappointed their partnership as writers (writership?), though they are still married, came to an end, as I loved their books and the dual narratives were always very interesting. Her new novel, with her new publisher Pan Macmillan, is probably like her Jo Rees novels, though I suspect it’s less sexy. (The novel says it’s glamorous and sexy and epic, but I found that strange, to be fair. It is a bit glamorous, but it’s not a sexy novel, though it is an epic.)

A Twist of Fate tells the story of two girls, whose lives and fates were decided by the flip of a coin. First, there’s Thea Maddox, daughter of the Maddoxes, and who has everything a girl could ask for. A beautiful house, horses, privilige, wealth, and love. But after her mother dies, and as Thea grows up, she finds herself seeing the evil side of life. A side she couldn’t even fathom. Then there’s Romy. After growing up and escaping from her Eastern European orphanage, she finds herself catapulted into stardom as a famous model, but the things that occurred and happened when she was younger follow her around wherever she goes and she’s desperate to bury it, desperate for nobody to find out what happened. As the two girls lives collide and cross, will they ever find out how their lives really started or are they destined to never find out?

When I started A Twist of Fate, I had no idea what to expect. I know Jo’s writing from her collaboration novels, but I knew this was a bit of a different genre from her collaboration novels. I found the novel absorbing. The two tales, of Romy and Thea was excellent. I loved how it went from Romy to Thea to Romy to Thea and back again. I liked seeing Thea’s wealth contrasting with Romy’s fight to survive. I thought both girl’s stories were fascinating for different reasons. What Romy had to do just to survive was horrific, but necessary and whilst Thea had the wealth and the privilige, well, after her mother’s death she also acquired a new step-mother and step-brother, a step-brother who is quite awful, I must say, and it just goes to show, your life isn’t going to necessarily be better or easier if you’re wealthy. I adored the novel. It honesly blew me away in ways I wasn’t expecting. I had no idea I’d enjoy the novel as much as I did, but Jo is an excellent writer.

I would very much recommend A Twist of Fate. I’ve had a good run of good books recently and this one is up there with the best of them. I’m quite disappointed in myself for not having read it sooner. I will definitely be pre-ordering Joanna’s next novel as soon as it’s available because after A Twist of Fate, I am absolutely sure about what an excellent writer she is. I always find books written in the third-person to be harder to warm to, but Joanna has that knack of just getting it and it was almost as if the book was written in first-person, that’s how easily I managed to get into it and how much I felt we knew about Romy and Thea. I thought it was such a dramatic novel with so many twists and turns and I was dying for Romy and Thea to know about each other, and perhaps even meet each other, and each page sorta brought us a step closer to that. I really, really enjoyed it.