When life throws you a curve ball, who will be there to catch it? A story of love, loss, betrayal, friendship and kinship set in 1980s Manchester with fashion and music of the day.

Joanna Nelson is trying to escape her past, but is still haunted by it. When her mum suddenly turns up, it brings back memories of being locked in a dark cupboard, of beatings, and of being dressed up like doll. All of which have consequences that she still carries with her. Thank goodness she has a sister and good friends to support her.

The trouble is, it gets complicated when her best friend is a ‘he’. Just when Joanna was through the worst, her life is turned upside with something she could never have envisioned. Who of her friends will be there for her? Or will she find herself alone?

‘Star Struck’, is a love story wrapped up around difficult life events. The book is mainly set in Manchester in the 1980’s, so it had a very nostalgic feel to it.

The main character Joanna Nelson and her sister suffered both emotional and physical abuse by the hand of their strict mother when they were younger, which has had a knock on effect in their adult lives.

Joanna lives in a flat and her life is interwoven with her neighbours and their lives, whilst her only sister Sandie lives in London. The pair of them keep in contact via the phone and visit one another, though not often. They both have different ways of dealing with their childhood trauma, one hides it away, whilst the other relives it daily.

Sandie managed to hide her feelings away and appeared to be less damaged by the experience, that was until the day she fell in love with the wrong man. Joanna on the other hand, shows you glimpses of the impact of this early life experience throughout the book. There was a lot unsaid throughout, yet my imagination managed to filled in those gaps.

Despite the subject matter this book was an easy read (apart from it needing further proofreading in places.) It was the kind of book that I could of normally read in one session, if it was not for life happening. The pace was good and the story had a natural flow to it.

Star Struck is a different, unusual take on a love story, being incorporated with the historical abuse, yet I enjoyed the book and could not wait to find out if I was right about who Joanna got together with in the end, which I was.

Karen J Mossman comes from a family of journalists with her grand father and uncle having been newspaper editors. Further back a great, great grandfather wrote for his local paper and also published a book based on those articles. Karen is the only one to have gone into the fiction market.

In 2013 she was made redundant and decided to write part time. “The first works I had published were short story collections with themes. Putting them together was exciting as I didn’t think my writing would ever reach a wider audience,” she said. “I’m very pleased to have added novels to my published material and there is still more to come.”

Karen lives in Manchester with her husband and a Yorkshire terrier. She has two children, who were both born on the same day two years apart. They were also 2lbs difference in weight and all while they lived at house number 22. She also has one grandchild.

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@KarenJMoss
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