NEW RELEASE
The Liberation of Alice Love - Abby McDonald (2010)
Alice Love leads a life that has been painstakingly planned out. She works as a lawyer specialising in contracts and has enough money set aside to buy her own flat. Her schedule is the epitome of a perfect routine - albeit a boring one. However, that all changes one day when her bank card is declined. She thinks nothing of it, until she goes to the bank to get a loan for her flat and finds out her savings have been cleaned out. At first Alice is distraught. She's broke, homeless and her perfect credit record is in tatters. She's also tired of the collection agencies calling and harassing her for bills that she didn't make. Alice's sister, Flora, puts her in touch with a handsome fraud investigator named Nathan who offers to help track down whoever did this. But when Alice sees who it actually is on the bank security camera, she is overwhelmed. How could they do such a horrible thing to her? And how easy did she make it for them to access her important documents? This revelation leads Alice to start an investigation of her own - chasing down each clue individually, she learns more about her impostor. While Alice's investigation leads her to do things that she would have never considered, it starts to seem like she is overly obsessed with finding the answers she needs. She's lost all sense of reality and begins spinning lie after lie. Although it's a whirlwind of deception, the ending leaves a little something to be desired. Despite that, it's a pretty accurate portrayal of what a victim of identity theft goes through and that makes it a riveting story. (AS)
Abby McDonald's second novel for adults, The Liberation of Alice Love, is about identity theft. The summary says: "Alice Love keeps her life (and boss, and family) running in perfect order, so when her bank card is declined, she thinks it's just a simple mistake. But it soon becomes clear that someone has emptied every penny from her bank account, spending her hard-earned savings on glamorous holidays, sexy lingerie and a to-die-for wardrobe and leaving Alice with thousands of pounds worth of debt. With her perfectly organised world crumbling around her, Alice enlists the help of dashing fraud investigator Nathan, and sets about clearing her name. But as she unravels the intriguing paper trail, she makes a shocking discovery: her thief is closer to home than she imagined. Following the clues from London to Rome and LA, Alice edges deeper into a seductive new world, where honesty might not be the best policy, rules are made to be broken, and the power of a gorgeous cocktail dress shouldn't be underestimated. Perhaps her alter-ego's reckless, extravagant lifestyle is the one Alice should have been leading all along." The Liberation of Alice Love is out in July.