PUBLISHED BY TRANSWORLD DIGITAL ON 17th MARCH 2022
Beth has never stuck at anything.
She’s quit more jobs and relationships than she can remember and she still sleeps in her childhood bedroom. It’s not that she hasn’t tried to grow up, it’s just that so far, the only commitment she’s held down is Friday drinks at the village pub.
Then, in the space of a morning, her world changes.
An unspeakable tragedy turns Beth’s life upside down, and she finds herself guardian to her teenage niece and toddler nephew, catapulted into an unfamiliar world of bedtime stories, parents’ evenings and cuddly elephants. Having never been responsible for anyone – or anything – it’s not long before she feels seriously out of her depth.
What if she’s simply not up to the job?
With a little help from her best friend Jory (purely platonic, of course …) and her lovely, lonely next-door neighbour, Albert, Beth is determined that this time she’s not giving up. It’s time to step up.
This is a story about digging deep for the strength you never knew you had and finding magic in things that were there all along.
Sarah Turner lives in Devon with her husband and three sons.
After graduating with first-class honours in Philosophy from The University of Exeter, she dabbled in careers in finance then higher education before a ‘warts and all’ parenting blog she’d started to let off steam gathered unexpected momentum and writing became her full-time job.
She has since written three Sunday Times bestsellers: The Unmumsy Mum, The Unmumsy Mum Diary and The Unmumsy Mum A-Z. The Unmumsy Mum was voted number 4 in Amazon’s Top 10 books of 2016 (as voted for by Amazon customers) and was also shortlisted for Book of the Year (non-fiction, lifestyle) at the 2017 British Book Awards.
Stepping Up is Sarah’s first novel, the spark of an idea coming from a conversation about will-writing and more specifically guardianship, should the unthinkable happen.
Sarah likes bookshops, walks on Dartmoor (when the kids aren’t whingeing) and pretends to like running, though she’s started Couch to 5k three times and keeps ending up back on the couch. She doesn’t like coffee, films with sharks in or writing about herself in the third person.
I thought this was a delightful story even though a bit sad at times, Beth is such a likeable character that appears to always be put down by her mother. She certainly rises to the job of looking after her sister’s children after the accident. I would have liked the ending to finalise things a bit more but I guess on a good day you can have a positive ending or the opposite on a bad day. Love finds a way in the end as they say. Loved the writing and emotion portrayed by the characters, looking forward to the next book from Sarah Turner.
You can follow Sarah’s reading, writing and parenting adventures on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (@theunmumsymum).
