Clare Stevens’ novel Blue Tide Rising starts with the young female protagonist Amy walking down Belmoral Street in a slum section of Manchester, England. Amy was forced into the slums after the miscarriage of her baby. Most of her days were spent in a stupor from alcohol or the drug diazepam for her anxiety. She only left her attic flat occasionally to get a free welfare meal.

In the middle of one night she awakes under the influence of the diazepam and there is a beautiful man in her room named Jay. The way he talks to her leads her to believe that he is a social worker. Over the next few months she sometimes wakes up in a drug stupor in the middle of the night to find him in her room. He gets her talking about her life and how it all went sour, and then coaches her how to find her real self again.

The novel then goes into Amy Blue’s backstory and how her life fell apart. When her life moves forward, the plot turns more pleasant, eerie, and mysterious all at the same time. I don’t want to give too much away. After I finished the novel, the Covid-19 virus was at its worst in my area of America and I got waylaid from writing this book review. I reread the key scenes in the novel and thoroughly enjoyed reading them again before writing this review.

The plot was excellently crafted, and the novel was expertly edited. It expressed tension, uncertainty; and feelings of inadequacy, triumph, and mystery. I thoroughly enjoyed it—twice. I do highly recommend it for romantic, paranormal, and mystery novel enthusiasts.