Blog Tour Review: The Distance by Zoe Folbigg

The Distance by Zoe Folbigg

Published: 1st June 2018

Publisher: Aria

Pages: 368

Available on Kindle

Order now from Amazon

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

Blog Tour Review: The Note by Zoe Folbigg

The Note by Zoe Folbigg

Published: 2nd November 2017 (Paperback)

Publisher: Aria Fiction

Pages: 304

Available in Paperback and on Kindle

Order now from Amazon

Rating: 3/5

Blurb

One very ordinary day, Maya Flowers sees a new commuter board her train to London,
and suddenly the day isn’t ordinary at all. Maya knows immediately and irrevocably,
that he is The One.
But the beautiful man on the train always has his head in a book and never seems to
notice Maya sitting just down the carriage from him every day. Eventually, though,
inspired by a very wise friend, Maya plucks up the courage to give the stranger a note
asking him out for a drink. Afterall, what’s the worst that can happen?
And so begins a story of sliding doors, missed opportunities and finding happiness
where you least expect it.

Review

The Note is the debut semi-autobiographical novel from magazine journalist Zoé Folbigg and tells the tale of Maya Flowers and what happens when she meets “The One”. Being a hopeless romantic myself the premise of this book is one which intrigued me greatly, but sadly left me a little disappointed.

Maya a daily commuter to London one day sees a new face on her train and is instantly drawn to him and convinces herself that he’s the one, he however seems to have no idea of Maya’s existence, instead spending his commute with his head buried into a book or the Metro paper. After months of agonising over what to do about her huge crush Maya is inspired by friends Nena and Velma to take a chance and see what happens, so she writes a brief note, just three sentences long and hands it to the handsome stranger one day.

The majority of the first half of this book is taken up by the will they / won’t they storyline as Maya struggles with her feelings and tries to invent ways to accidently put herself in the path of “Train Man.” I did struggle with this part of the book as it felt a long time before anything really happened and we had far too much back story of Maya and her fashion advertising job.  I also felt confused at the very beginning of the book as were introduced briefly to some characters which weren’t really necessary to the story. There are also a number of flashbacks to previous events in Maya’s life but again they didn’t seem to add anything to the story.

I didn’t feel a connection to main character Maya or even “Train Man” I think this is due to the lack of emotions portrayed in the book. It has a third person narrative so felt like reading a report of events with plenty of description but no real feelings described. We know exactly what Maya did and where she did it but we never really find out what she felt about everything that happens.

My favourite character in the book was the old lady at Maya’s Spanish class Velma. I loved her vibrant character, her love of life and her devotion to her boys and late husband. I wish she’d featured a bit more in the book as I found her storyline a lot more interesting than what was happening at Maya’s workplace.

I wanted to really love this book as the basic plotline is one which I was excited about, sadly I don’t think this is the most successful novel as I did struggle with the first half of the book. I do however think this would make a brilliant screenplay as it would be a very watchable movie, far better than Sliding Doors which it is similar to in concept.

I’d like to thank the publishers Aria for sending me a copy to review and for inviting me to be part of the blog tour.