Heartsound
A contemporary literary novel by Clare Stevens - published April 2024
Sixteen-year-old Chrissie’s first love is a girl.
But it’s the eighties, and she fears rejection from her rural community, so her relationship remains secret. When her friend vanishes, Chrissie bears her heartache alone.
Decades later, her long-lost love resurfaces, but all is not as it seems.
It takes a global pandemic and a brush with death to spark the resolution Chrissie craves.
Heartsound is a tale of unspoken truths, broken promises, almost-forgotten dreams, and hope.
Reviews of Heartsound
Clare Stevens writes engagingly about friendship, family and first love, as well as prejudice, betrayal and deceit. With a strong sense of time and place, Heartsound is a wide-ranging and big hearted novel.
Alison Moore, Man Booker shortlisted author ofThe Lighthouse.
An intense read. Memorable, evocative, and cleverly crafted. Very much character-driven, with beautifully imagined, realistic people. Sense of place is very strong, the reader can see and feel the locations. Heartsound is well worth reading.
Robosquid, Amazon reviewer.
A compelling story presented in such a realistic way that I felt a sincere emotional connection with the characters. With each new high and low, Clare Stevens brings the reader along for the ride. and does an outstanding job of helping the reader feel a part of the story. I highly recommend taking time to read this book. You won’t want to put it down!
Brian on Goodreads
A warm and thoroughly engaging read. Tracking Chrissie from intense adolescence to middle-age, Stevens celebrates the extraordinariness of supposedly ordinary lives and the enduring nature of love.
Megan Taylor, author of How We Were Lost
Find more reviews of Heartsound on Amazon and Goodreads
Blue Tide Rising
A literary (magical realism) novel by Clare Stevens
“Somewhere in me a scream is rising, but I contain it. Just.”
Diazepam-fogged Amy isn’t the best person to investigate an unexplained death, but she’s the only one Jay can get through to.
On the run from her troubled past and controlling older (ex) lover, she winds up on a Welsh eco farm where she starts to rebuild her life, grounded by the earth and healed by the salt air.
But it isn’t just her inner self she manages to uncover. There are living ghosts at Mor Tawel, and they’re as loud as the waters crashing over the shingle on the beach.
Amy’s new life has just started, and she’s already running out of time.