Ask For Andrea

Ask for Andrea

Was a book I listened to on Audible, as I am walking along the road, to collect a shop, it distracted me from the grief I felt losing my Mum. Hearing her words "we'll go together". Now don't get me wrong, I wondered what she meant, and I had no idea and no plan at all to join her by taking my life. I was on my own that much was true. 

I'd written and published a book that was begun at her bedside. As I stood in the church yard, and read all the names on plaques, mind wandered to the Church where her service had been, and where part of my book was written (not at the funeral but fixed in my mind after the funeral) I wondered how as she sat in the front row with Gus, how through the light of the church, and the reflection upon the coffin, how Dre one of my characters could see the light to say "There is nothing Holy in this Light" but lets get back to Ask for Andrea.

Without shattering the plot lines for you, "Ask for Andrea" is the poster on the wall if your in trouble "Ask for Andrea" at the bar. The three girls in the book have no idea why or what that meant, whilst they are on a date.

During the book you slip and slide from one POV to the other of Three Girls, and if your walking down a road like I was your head is turning to make sure your safe. This is the issue with an audible book, your no longer just reading, your listening and now you are hearing those girls and their fates are being weaved as Noelle W Ihli pens their fate on her computer.  

It takes great skill to do this, to pull three different girls fates and create a book around the Atagonist who is changing their lives as you listen. The only thing I didn't like was the grisly fashion and description of one of the girls fates. When it was over I was okay to continue but I had to stop and take a breath. 

Thats the only thing you need to remember your stomach will turn, its not I feel for younger readers. Yet there is a lesson there for the young teen and the young adult that needs to be heeded.                       The book continues discussing their lives and their fates, and it was here that I discovered what Mum meant when she said "we'll go together" because right there in Noelles writing it is written that life is like a web of memories. By reaching into those memories we find our loved ones, not just as a photo but they are waiting for us in that moment. When we take our final breath, the writer suggests thats where they are waiting, to take us on adventures into other webs, other memories, like a link line to memories of grandparents, great grandparents, and I suppose we meet more people or memories on the way.

I'm not saying heaven or the Elysium doesn't exist because in my own book I question there existence and its taken me a long time to realise that it was Mums time to go.                                                      

I digress because I really do not want to give anything away, but at the end its so tense and I was walking through the quiet park, listening to the ending of this book, and I was watching and looking for and hearing the branch snaps. Remember the poster "Ask for Andrea?" this is the crux or the hook of the book, this poster will be the penultamate end for this book. A life saver, like phoning for a pizza when your being beaten to a pulp by your husband or your boyfriend, when really you where calling for the police.                       I don't know whether these posters really exist in the US "Date not what you thought, Ask for Andrea" at the bar.                                         My agents name is Andrea and we read it as a joke, "what would you like to ask Andrea for?" not realising it would be a grief support network when it was just a story that Noelle wanted to tell based on true life events.