Death stalks the pages in "Never Coming Home" (Italy)

Set in
USA, England, Italy

Never Coming Home by Evonne Wareham is an engrossing novel from the folks at Choc Lit publishers, this book bowls along at a cracking pace, from the USA, to England and over to Italy. A storyline that twists and turns, slowing a little in its pace as it comes to the final chapters. Is Jamie, the little girl alive or is she not?

And here at TF we absolutely love the cover - and a lot of covers cross our path, both great and not so great. Here, the heat and sun of Italy are evoked: the shadows, the shutters, the shapes all come together to highlight the dark, featureless figure of the little girl in the foreground. The cover gives a brooding sense of foreboding, a dark mystery about to unfold in the pages of this book. 

Available to buy from your local bookshop or through TripFiction by clicking on the cover.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW WITH EVONNE WAREHAM

TF In “Never coming Home” you evoke Italy particularly well. What drew to that country as a location?

EW Thank you – I’m glad you enjoyed the portrayal of Italy. The locations of my books are important to me, as I want to take the reader to somewhere glamorous and exciting – and then have sinister things happen. I love Italy, and Florence is one of my favourite cities. When I needed to send my heroine, Kaz, to search for her ex-husband in Europe, it was a natural choice. I like to write about beautiful locations, full of sunshine, as I HATE the cold, and it is lovely to re-visit places I have stayed, even if the return visit is only in my memory and imagination! Because the locations in my books are special to me, I’ve created an armchair tour for Never Coming Home, with pictures and more information. It’s on my blog http://www.evonneonwednesday.blogspot.com 

TF It’s a fabulous plot that goes back and forth. How did the storyline evolve?

EW I’m not really sure how it worked. I knew what all the threads were and where they were going, but I’m still not certain how they knitted themselves together. I did have panic moments where I had to check that characters were not in two places at once, but it was usually OK. I had a pretty strong idea of the plot before I began writing, but things never quite go as you plan them. I do a lot with time lines and I had multiple ones to cover parts of the story that were taking place simultaneously, but in different parts of the world. 

TF We are particularly drawn to the cover which is infused with the warm “pink” that you see in Italy so often, the shadows make it feel like a really hot climate and the shadowy figure of the little girl leads one to wonder whether she is really there or not. How much input did you have in the design?

EW My publisher, Choc Lit, is very good about involving their authors in the cover choice. There were half a dozen possibilities, and I would have been happy with any of them, but the one that was finally chosen completely sums up the book for me. I’m grateful to Berni, the designer, for the trouble she took. And I’ve been lucky enough to have her design the cover for my second book – Out of Sight Out of Mind - which has a very different look, but is equally gorgeous.

TF How did you first come to writing?

EW I’ve been writing since I was in school and Never Coming Home is the result of a very long apprenticeship! It took me a while to find the genre that I really enjoyed writing. I love creating a balance between the love story and the thriller element and I’ve discovered a darker side to my work that I didn’t know existed. 

TF How did you decide on the names of your characters?

EW Authors will tell you that the names of characters are very important, and it’s true. I try out a lot of ideas in my head, before anything gets written down. I knew very early that Devlin would only use one name. Because of the life he has led, he has had many changes of identity and he’s simply got bored with thinking up new names. Devlin seemed to fit him. Kaz/Katarina started out as Caz, but the spell checker on my machine kept trying to change it and in the end I decided to give in – and when I did, it felt right. When you get the right name it seems to click. It may not even be a name you particularly like, but once it fits, that’s it. 

THANK YOU to Evonne for answering our questions.