The Distance by Zoe Folbigg
Published: 1st June 2018
Publisher: Aria
Pages: 368
Available on Kindle
Rating: 3/5
Blurb
From the author of the bestselling novel, The Note, comes this beautiful, romantic tale of finding love in
the most unexpected places.
Under the midnight sun of Arctic Norway, Cecilie
Wiig goes online and stumbles across Hector Herrera in a band fan forum. They
start chatting and soon realise they might be more than kindred spirits. But
there are two big problems: Hector lives 8,909km away in Mexico. And he's about
to get married.
Can Cecilie, who's anchored to two jobs she
loves in the library and a cafe full of colourful characters in the town in
which she grew up, overcome the hurdles of having fallen for someone she's
never met? Will Hector escape his turbulent past and the temptations of his
hectic hedonistic life and make a leap of faith to change the path he's on?
Zoe Folbigg's latest novel is a story of two people, living two very
different lives, and whether they can cross a gulf, ocean, sea and fjord to
give their love a chance.
Review
The Distance is Zoe Folbigg’s latest novel and like its successful
predecessor The Note is explores the concept of love overcoming any obstacle.
In this book it’s the story of love between Hector and Cecilie. Hector lives in
Mexico and Cecilie lives in northern Norway, the two “meet” in a music chat
room one evening in 2013. Over the next five years the two communicate via the
internet and slowly fall in love, there’s just one major problem the distance
between them. Will these two ever gain the courage to meet up and give their
relationship a chance or are they destined to be pen-pals for ever?
Cecilie and Hector are two characters which I didn’t gel
with for a long time. Hector seems a bit of a player and spends much of his
time drinking and partying until the early hours without a care in the world.
Cecilie came across as very young and naïve despite being in her late twenties,
she acted more like a sulky teenager most of the time. I did warm to them
towards the end of the book but only after they make big changes in their
lives.
My favourite part of the story was Kate’s, who lives in
England with her husband George and their three children. I immediately like
Kate although I couldn’t work out her connection to either Hector or Cecilie. This
is explained further on in the book but doesn’t fully make sense until the very
end of the book.
I found The Distance quite a hard book to read, you have to
be paying full attention as the narrative switches between and Hector, Cecilie
and Kate and jumps through a time period between 2013 and 2019, so sometimes I
was confused by what exactly was going on, making it a hard book to enjoy.
The Distance is a book about love finding a way, no matter what,
about not giving up on your dreams and doing what makes you happy. It had some
funny moment, some sad moments and some heartfelt moments which made for a well-rounded
read. I liked this book, but I didn’t love it as much as Ms. Folbigg’s first
novel.
Thank you to aria and Netgalley for inviting me to be part
of the blog tour and sending me a copy to review.
About the Author
Zoë Folbigg is a magazine journalist
and digital editor, starting at Cosmopolitan in 2001 and since freelancing for
titles including Glamour, Fabulous, Daily Mail, Healthy, LOOK, Top Santé,
Mother & Baby, ELLE, Sunday Times Style, and Style.com. In 2008 she had a
weekly column in Fabulous magazine documenting her year-long round-the-world
trip with ‘Train Man’ – a man she had met on her daily commute. She has since
married Train Man and lives in Hertfordshire with him and their two young sons.
She is the bestselling author of The Note.
Buy now links:
Amazon: mybook.to/TheDistance
Kobo: https://bit.ly/2H1MHxn
iBooks: https://apple.co/2EMMLv3
Google play: http://bit.ly/2l7RakV
Follow Zoe
Website: http://www.zoefolbigg.com/
Twitter: @zolington
Facebook:
@zoefolbiggauthor
Follow Aria
Website: www.ariafiction.com
Twitter: @aria_fiction
Facebook: @ariafiction
Instagram: @ariafiction
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