Thank you for all of your support on my last post “The 12 Best Books I’ve Read in 2020” (you can read that post HERE)! So many of you read it that it is now the most viewed post that I’ve ever written on this blog 🙂 I absolutely love sharing my book suggestions with you and I’m SO excited to share another AWESOME book with you today! Samantha M. Bailey’s Woman on the Edge had been on my to read radar for months ever since my friend Melissa read it and told me how much she had loved it (check out Melissa’s wonderful book review blog HERE). I was SUPER excited when my copy came in at the library and I immediately raced to pick it up! Once I started reading and I told Melissa how much I was enjoying it, she so kindly introduced Samantha M. Bailey and I. I’ve truly loved communicating with Samantha over the past few months…she’s not only an AMAZING writer but a super sweet person. Thank you so much, Samantha and thank you to Melissa for introducing us 🙂 I’m so excited to share Samantha’s AWESOME book debut with all of you today and to host a GIVEAWAY for it as well!

Goodreads Synopsis of Woman on the Edge {Samantha M. Bailey}:

A total stranger on the subway platform whispers, “Take my baby.”

She places her child in your arms. She says your name.

Then she jumps…

In a split second, Morgan Kincaid’s life changes forever. She’s on her way home from work when a mother begs her to take her baby, then places the infant in her arms. Before Morgan can stop her, the distraught mother jumps in front of an oncoming train.

Morgan has never seen this woman before, and she can’t understand what would cause a person to give away her child and take her own life. She also can’t understand how this woman knew her name.

The police take Morgan in for questioning. She soon learns that the woman who jumped was Nicole Markham, prominent CEO of the athletic brand Breathe. She also learns that no witness can corroborate her version of events, which means she’s just become a murder suspect.

To prove her innocence, Morgan frantically retraces the last days of Nicole’s life. Was Nicole a new mother struggling with paranoia or was she in danger? When strange things start happening to Morgan, she suddenly realizes she might be in danger, too.

Woman on the Edge is a pulse-pounding, propulsive thriller about the lengths to which a woman will go to protect her baby—even if that means sacrificing her own life. 

My Review of Woman on the Edge {Samantha M. Bailey}:

This book was GREAT.

As you know, short chapters are my favorite and this book was PERFECT. Chapters that are only a few pages long make it SO easy to FLY through a book that was exactly what happened here. I also appreciated that this story was only told from only 2 alternating points of view. More than that and it would have been confusing. 2 was perfection.

As someone who lived in downtown Chicago for 8 years, I absolutely LOVED all of the street references. My exact neighborhood was a major reference in this story!

This book had so many twists. Just when I would think I had the ending all figured out, something would happen to make me completely change my mind. LOVE. I was completely invested in this story and these characters. I was on the edge of my seat trying to figure out how everything was going to end! Kept me guessing right up until the very end. I truly couldn’t put this book down.

I absolutely love the writing in this book and I am eagerly looking forward to future works by Samantha M. Bailey! This is her debut novel…and what a wonderful debut it is.

I had posted this on Instagram:

#truth.

I absolutely loved this book…you will, too!

A Conversation with Samantha M. Bailey:

As someone who lived in downtown Chicago for many years, I absolutely loved reading about the streets, neighborhoods, etc. I was shocked to learn that you live in Canada! Have you ever lived in Chicago? If not, how did you conduct your research to learn each neighborhood’s personality so perfectly?

Thank you! I’m so happy to know I got it right! I’ve never lived in Chicago, but I’ve visited, though it was when I was much younger. For my debut, I wanted an American city to reach a wider audience and because it felt too close to home to set it in Toronto, where I live. When I was thinking about which city I wanted, Chicago felt so right because it seems to have a similar landscape, architecture, diversity, and sensibility to Toronto, which helped me envision it. Because my budget didn’t extend to traveling, I relied on Google, Google Earth, and the little person who walks along the streets in Google Maps. I was also lucky that my copy editor, Erica Ferguson, lived in Chicago so she could tell me when my characters were driving into the lake.

 How did you choose the names for the characters in Woman on the Edge?

It was such a process! It always is for me. I look at baby name websites for the years my characters were born and wait for the right name to hit me. But as I revised, I changed the names of many of the characters, like Morgan, because with edits I would re-imagine who the characters are. In my next book, I’ve already changed characters’ names a few times, and I’ll probably change them again. 

This book explores many themes including mental health, motherhood, marriage, friendship, and love. Of these themes, which was the hardest for you to write? Which was the easiest? Why?

I don’t think any of the themes were easy for me, except maybe the love a mother has for her child. Even that, though, is deeply emotional for me. While I didn’t experience postpartum depression myself and depended on the struggles of my friends, ones I watched firsthand and those they generously shared with me, I definitely felt anxiety about being the best mother I could to my own two children. It’s such a sudden, shocking, beautiful, frightening life change when your baby is put in your arms for the first time. Writing about Nicole’s struggles was complex and cathartic, as was writing about suicide, loss, relationships, and family. I’m grateful to have an incredibly loving and supportive family and the best friends in the world, which helps, I think, to separate my own life from my characters’ so I can really dig deep.

Woman on the Edge was such an amazing debut, I’d love to hear more about your future literary plans. Are you working on another book? Can you tell us anything about it? If you aren’t currently working on another book, what type of book (if any) can you see yourself working on in the future?

This means so much to me. Releasing a debut is both joyous and scary, and doing so in 2020 has been a roller coaster. Besides my family and friends, what’s kept me grounded during the pandemic has been writing my next thriller. Writing is where I put my fears and worries, and it helps me handle them when I can unleash them on my characters. I’m so thankful to you, Jenny, and the entire book community for giving me the career I’ve longed for. I just finished my draft of my untitled-for-now next book, set in Canada, that is about middle-aged motherhood, obsession, addiction, neighbors, and…a dead body. It’s tentatively slated to release in late 2021, but until then, the mass market paperback of Woman on the Edge is up for pre-order and out on February 23, 2021.

***GIVEAWAY DETAILS***

Would you like to win an electronic copy of Woman on The Edge? I have 1 ebook to give away (open to US and Canada only for this giveaway)!  

To be entered, just leave a comment below (on this blog post)!  Your comment can be about anything!

**You must comment below to be eligible for the giveaway and you must comment here on this blog post (not on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)**

Giveaway will close tomorrow (10/17/20) at 6:00 pm CDT and the winner will be randomly chosen and announced here on my blog on Friday (10/18/20).

Make sure you check the blog on Friday to see if you’ve won (you will have 48 hours from the time I post the winners to email me which email address where you would like your ebook sent.  If I don’t hear from you within 48 hours, I will pick a new winner).

Good luck!  Can’t wait to read your comments!

Xo,

Jenny

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The 12 best books that I read in 2020 can be found HERE

The ultimate list of my top book suggestions can be found HERE