Book Review - Swallowtail

Chicago wife, mother and finance executive Claire Cummings, arrives at work one morning to discover her friend Julia has embezzled millions and vanished. Blindsided and devastated by the betrayal, she’s sent home pending further investigation. Claire’s bizarre death the following day sends everyone reeling, guessing and looking for her in all the wrong places. In no time she’s addicted to an enchanting menagerie of tricks and techniques for getting the living’s attention, but most people are harder to reach than she’d ever dreamed and even harder to set free.

She was still a mother, a wife, a daughter and a friend… she’d move heaven and earth to keep it that way. Sheri Meshal’s Swallowtail is a haunting story about life, love, loss and just how far we’ll go to control it all. This debut from a thought-provoking new voice in fiction begs the question… what would you do if all the rules changed, and you were suddenly bestowed powers beyond your greatest imagination?

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MY REVIEW: When you start reading Swallowtail, you think that it is a mystery novel about coworkers that are intertwined in a theft within their company, yet they are innocent. Then, you are spun in a total 360. From that point on, I was hooked. The way that Sheri tells the story of Claire and her attempts to help her family and friends (from the other side) is amazing, chilling, exciting – it really brought me into the story. I felt like I was right next to Claire, I understood why she did some of the things she did, as a mom and as a wife and friend.

The imagery and thought put into this novel are wonderful. It was a fast read for me. Although I didn’t want it to end, I was compelled to read “just one more page”.

About the Author

Sheri Meshal spent most of her childhood on an old farm in Iowa. She is an author by day and chauffeur by night… for a tad bit
longer. Swallowtail took over six years to write and was inspired
by bizarre events which occurred shortly after her father’s passing
in 1998. Best friends, they’d engaged in countless conversations
reagrding the possibility of life after death and enjoyed sharing
books on the subject years before he was diagnosed with lung
cancer. After a myriad of unexplainable events, Sheri realized had
she died first, she would’ve done everything in her power to get
her father’s attention and show him all the things she could do.

Her father had informed her that she was a writer long before she could begin to accept the possibility. In her heart, she knew he should’ve been the writer, and if she did possess any talent for it, it was due to his DNA. She began writing for both of them and often wondered if he helped her, as crucial research repeatedly found its way to her by the strangest means. When she met medium Jonathan Louis, he desperately tried to avoid a cliche topic. Exasperated, he finally gave in saying, “I don’t want to say this. Whenever I do, the room goes crazy. Sometimes it just is what it is and nothing more, but what does it mean when I say the word butterfly to you?” Overcome with emotion, she confessed she’d written a novel titled Swallowtail about a dead woman communicating with her friends and family. He answered softly with a smile, “He helps you.”

Buy the book from …..

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com