Dec 1, 20193 min read

King Of Hearts - Mark Stibbe

Blog tour stop for this gripping and emotional Christmas read

#BlogTour #KingOfHearts @RussLitten @Wildpressed @LoveBooksGroup @malcomdown

"As the stakes get higher, so do the risks"

Synopsis

King of Hearts tells the gripping story of Jake Graystone, a struggling teacher, husband, and father, who looks for easy money playing poker.

When his wife Sally exposes his secret addiction on Christmas Eve, he walks out and heads north for Casino City, leaving his family for a dark world of gambling, prostitution and murder.

How will the cards fall for Jake in this brutal, urban wasteland? And, as the stakes get higher and higher, will this modern Desperado ever come to his senses?

King of Hearts is a winter, festive story to sit alongside It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol. Raw yet redemptive, it is a Christmas tale you'll not be able to put down.

At the end of each chapter, you will want to twist, not fold.

My Review

As a book blogger the blurbs I read tend to be the same that you see on the back of the book, in this case I was treated to an extended synopsis still only a page long and it sucked me in to this story so quickly that I was desperate to see what happened next, and could not wait for this book to arrive!

As a no spoilers blog it is very hard to review this book without giving anything away!

This book was the Christmas read, engaging, full of emotion and surprisingly a gripping page tuner.

I found the characters relate-able, Jake while he makes mistakes, you can still understand how anyone could to drawn in to the path he takes and how easily just a few wrong decisions can destroy everything.

It was eye opening to go through Jake's Journey with him, the world of gambling to me is either seen as a dark and seedy underworld or a bright and enticing event or place like the big casinos or places like Las Vegas.

I also felt the heartbreak that Jake family was suffering, from how his Wife Sally copes to the emotional letters Jake writes to his son, this book was a roller coaster of emotions, it made me angry, made me smile and left me with tears in my eyes.

If your looking for a Christmas read that is just a bit different but still full of emotion and redemption, this is perfect.

Author Bio

Mark Stibbe, “An acclaimed Christian author,” New York Times.

Mark started writing when he was very young, publishing his first book - an anthology of poetry entitled The Drawing out of Days - when he was just 17.

Since then, he has been a prolific author and professional writer, with over 50 books published, and countless articles in broadsheet newspapers, journals and magazines. One of his most successful recent books has been Home at Last, offering a faith-based journey of recovery for those who were deeply affected by the trauma of being sent away to boarding school. He has also ghost written over thirty books, of many different genres.

In 2013, Mark migrated from writing nonfiction to fiction and this resulted in the co-authored historical spy thriller The Fate of Kings and now his debut, single-authored novel, King of Hearts, a raw but redemptive Christmas tale in the tradition of A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life. In early 2020, as the official storyteller for the award-winning Arokah Puzzle Game, he and Steve Brazier, the inventor of the puzzle, will publish the first in a series of Sci Fi Fantasy novels based around Arokah and starring Khali, an autistic, mixed-race hero. These are aimed at the 9-13 age group.

Mark runs BookLab with his wife Cherith, a company dedicated to equipping aspiring writers to become great authors. He is a frequent and much in-demand speaker at workshops for writers and conferences in which the subjects of his books are featured. He has often been interviewed on BBC (Radio and TV), Channel 4 and other media, and writes articles for The Times.

Having been brought up by an adoptive father who dined fortnightly with CS Lewis, his whole life has been devoted to books and to writing.

He lives in Kent with his wife Cherith and their Black Labrador, Bella.