3.5 stars

What do you do when you find out the life you thought you had was a lie?

Great premise for a book, right? Nina McCarrick lives a life of privilege. She has a beautiful home, two sons in a private school and a successful husbands. Or so she thinks....until the unimaginable happens.

Nina's husband dies in a car accident - no spoilers here. Not only is she dealing with her grief and the grief of her son's but she quickly learns that she is about to lose everything. Her husband was in charge of their finances and he kept A LOT from her. She never knew just how bad things were with his business. Not until she receives a call from her son's school that tuition is late and is due NOW. The dominoes quickly fall as she learns just how much in debt the family is. Her home and all of her possessions are taken from her and she is left to return to the one place she never hoped to see again.

Her husband never wanted her to have a career but Nina has to work and she sets about making a life for her and her children. Her sister Twiggy lends a hand and thus begins the families journey of starting over, second chances, resiliency, and hope. There are bumps along the way but Nina and her sons all grow stronger and find the courage to move on. The saying "Money can't buy happiness" comes into mind while reading this book.

This book also should serve as a reminder to always know your finances!!!! Always believe in yourself and your abilities. This book has several themes: loss, secrets, second chances, family and hope. I like how the family rallied and how Nina let Twiggy back into her life and allowed her to help her when she and her son's needed it the most.

I will admit that I initially had a hard time getting into this book and it took me some time to finish reading. That is not to say that this is a bad book, it just failed to grab me right away but I did end up enjoying it. I found it convenient that when the family was about to lose everything that the husband had a car accident. Was this on purpose...or just a way to move the plot? Nevertheless, this is a light read even though there is a death and deceit in this book.

I received a copy of this book from Lake Union Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Solid writing and the quick movement of the plot help this book, "The Art of Hiding", get a 4 star rating. The main character named Nina sometimes seemed a little too much in denial many times at the beginning of her story but she does eventually come to terms of how her life has drastically changed since the death of her husband Finn. Somehow Amanda Prowse, the author, keeps the books main theme of survival after betrayal unique and you begin to cheer for Nina. I was happy for her when I finally began to see her and her oldest son's growth in strength and personality by the book's end.

The Art of Hiding by Amanda Prowse is the story of how one family dealt with the devastating double whammy of losing a loved one and financial security in one fail swoop; therefore, a reverse rages to riches tale. The story is intended to remind us that family is the most important thing in our lives and we can live, rich fulfilling lives, without the “stuff” that so many individuals focus their attention and hard earned money on acquiring.
Nina McCarrick has the perfect life. Two wonderful boys, a loving husband, big house, fancy car and all the trappings that go with the wealth that her husband’s successful business allows. Yet, behind the beautiful manured lawn lies secrets that will destroy all of this and reduce it to ash as sure as any conflagration.
The house of cards all comes tumbling down when Finn, Nina’s husband, is killed in a car accident. Nina is now a single mother of two boys, alone and bereft, with a mountain of debt, and she has no idea how to move forward. When none of her “friends” will help, she makes a desperate call to Tiggy, her estranged sister. Tiggy suggests she move back to her home town of Southampton.
Out of options, with no job and very little money, Nina does just that and moves into a small run down flat where her Aunt once lived. It is especially hard on her two boys who have never know anything but a life of privilege. Fortunately, with the help of Tiggy and some new friends Nina slowly starts to reassemble her life and in the process she rediscovers herself.
While I did not feel a strong connection with Nina, mainly because my life experiences have been so different and I have always been independent, I still could empathize with her because the author did such a wonderful job with her character. In addition, the plot was believable; therefore, it was easy to see how someone could end up in Nina’s situation.
There is a lot of good things, plot, characters, etc., to like about this book, but for me, it was the message. The best things in life really are free and we just lose sight of that in all the bustle of everyday life. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good story and one with that delivers a heartfelt message.
I received a free copy from the publisher, via Net Galley, in exchange for my honest review.

This isn’t the type of book I normally read but I’m always open to new genres. Amanda Prowse writes about a privileged woman, Nina, who loses everything when, after her husband’s death, it come to light that her family is bankrupt. The story follows Nina’s attempt to rebuild her life and that of her two sons, Connor and Declan. She is forced to re-evaluate her attitude to money, class and possessions. Nina also has to rebuild her relationship with her sister, Tiggy, from whom she has become semi-estranged.

The book is well written and I particularly warmed to the character of Declan Nina’s younger son. The book has a feel good factor: you get the sense early on that things will turn out all right in the end. All the characters become better people as a result of their experiences. It’s little too cosy and clichéd for me. I prefer novels with a grittier edge. That is not to say that it isn’t a good read.

I received a complimentary copy of the book from NetGalley and publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thank you.

This book was so well written! Every character in this story felt so true to life in each of their situations. Although this was not a "page turner", the steady pace was right for this type of story.

Was pleasantly surprised by this book and would highly recommend!

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book!

I really enjoyed this book. It was well written and help my attention throughout. Nina's life was perfect until the death of her husband. I loved how the story unfolded. It had a few life lessons which made me think. I would highly recommend this as it is a great read and very believable.

Nina McCarrick lives the perfect life, until her husband, Finn, is killed in a car accident and everything Nina thought she could rely on unravels.

Alone, bereft and faced with a mountain of debt, Nina quickly loses her life of luxury and she begins to question whether she ever really knew the man she married. Forced to move out of her family home, Nina returns to the rundown Southampton council estate—and the sister—she thought she had left far behind.

But Nina can’t let herself be overwhelmed—her boys need her. To save them, and herself, she will have to do what her husband discouraged for so long: pursue a career of her own. Torn between the life she thought she knew and the reality she now faces, Nina finally must learn what it means to take control of her life.

Bestselling author Amanda Prowse once again plumbs the depths of human experience in this stirring and empowering tale of one woman’s loss and love.

I loved this book. Amanda Prowse is a brilliant author. She brings every one of her characters to life. I loved Nina, her sons and her sister. They became real people to me rather than just characters in a book.

Nina’s husband dies leaving very large debts, she has to lose her home and her son’s fee-paying school and move back to where she was brought up. This story is about how she copes, and carries on. And the love and concern she has for her young sons.

Did I say I loved this book? Well I did! Would highly recommend this book. 5*

Nina has the perfect life, then he life gets shattered in one day when her husband is killed in a car accident. She is left utterly alone with a ton of debt to deal with. She has comes to relieze that her perfect marriage has been a bit of a lie and now she has to return to the sister she left behind.
I am a HUGE fan of Amanda Prowse so I was super excited to receive another book from her! I was not disappointed! The writing was amazing and OMG the characters are always so realistic and three demonstrational. I truly LOVED Nina! She is super strong and an amazing mother. She is all about making life perfect for her boys! Now a small disclaimer….grab a box of tissues. The Art of Hiding will get you!
I look forward to reading more from Amanda as she is fastly becoming one of my favorite authors!

This is a beautifully written book with characters that are realistic, and it deals with true life experiences. Nina is such a strong character and I found myself really feeling for her and her two sons struggling to make a new life together. It's fast paced, easy to read book. It's filled with a range of mixed emotions, from anger, heartbreak, love, faith and loss. Have the tissues handy

The Art of hiding is another great book from Amanda Prowse. Nina McCarrick comes from a poorer part of Southampton meets a wealthy businessman Fin McCarrick and marries him.
Years later, now with two boys Nina finds out that Finn has died in a car accident. Weeks go by and after Nina gets over the loss of her husband, then finds out that her husband’s company has gone bankrupt and that he has left her in 8 million pounds in debt. She knew nothing about what is going on. She is devastated. Even more so, when the local community find out what has happened, they disown her. She has the leave her home and the boys have to leave their private school. The only one that comes to her rescue is her sister Tiggy. Who helps her find a flat in her old neighbourhood and the boys are placed in the local school. In the beginning, the boys are not happy and they blame her for everything. But they slowly come around, when she eventually finds a job in a care home.
This is a very emotional heartfelt story. It showed about family values. It also showed how women can get complacent in a relationship and then be controlled by their husbands and be oblivious to their surroundings. As a singleton myself, I just don’t understand that, does this really still go on in real life.
I enjoyed the is book very much and I will be looking at other books that Amanda Prowse has written. Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an auto approved copy of this book.

What an amazing book!
This book made me smile, but it also made me cry (embarrassingly on a tram to work in Manchester!) more importantly it made me grateful for what I have in life and made me question what I need and don't need.
Nina is perhaps one of the strongest characters I've come across in a book and after the loss of her husband and all their wealth has to raise two children with next to nothing. Returning to the family fold was tough for her her but she fought for herself and her family - I don't think I could be that strong in her circumstances.
This book was completely believable and the writing so emotive. I loved every second of it, thank you so much for letting me read it.
However, I feel I need to know what Nina did next, perhaps a sequel?

Another wonderful page turning emotional read from Amanda Prowse. The pace of this book was great and the writing seemed so effortless in the way that the story flowed.
I had to stay up late to finish, it's addictive, compelling and brilliantly told. I didn't want the story to end which is always the sign of a great book for me!
I have read a few books by this talented author and this my favourite to date.

Thank you!

I laughed and cried along with the characters in this book and rejoiced when life improved for them all. Serious issues sensitively handled.

I like the overall plot of the story, but I had a hard time connecting with the characters. For me, there was an emotional spark missing so I wasn't captivated by it the way I thought I would be.

First of all, I'd like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Objectively speaking, this is not a bad book. The prose is clear, the main characters are well developed, and its main themes - financial struggles, bereavement, and women's independence - are both incredibly important and all-too universally relevant.

Sadly, I just couldn't click with it at all. The entire first half of the book is devoted to one misfortune after another befalling our protagonist Nina, who is utterly unprepared to deal with her husband's death and the financial troubles that entails, after leading a sheltered life with him for their entire marriage. I'm not sure which aspect of this was the deal-breaker for me; on the one hand, I really struggled to relate to Nina, whose best quality and defining feature is arguably her selfless love for her children (and husband). This is definitely not something we have in common, and it meant that I found it really difficult to connect to her, because for the first half of the book it felt like her personality was almost entirely defined by that single trait. While that was arguably a deliberate choice by the author in order to drive some of the themes home, it left me grasping fruitlessly for an emotional connection to the protagonist and the novel overall. And secondly, I've never been particularly fond of stories which wallow in misery, so that also diminished my enjoyment of the first half (though the hopeful ending did remedy that a bit).

I also found the book frustratingly heteronormative a lot of the time - though I have to say, I was delighted that the novel never fell into the trap of having another, "better" man come along and sweep Nina off her feet, and making that a significant part of the healing process for her. This is not a romance, it's a story with family at its heart, and a woman who rises to the occasion and fixes what her husband broke, and that was probably one of my favourite things about it.

I did feel like the novel needed to pick a side with Finn (the late husband), though - it really wavered between condemning him and absolving him of his actions, especially with regard to the patronising way he treated Nina. That in particular made it awfully frustrating to read endless paragraphs where Nina reminisces about the "good times" with him, because they just rang utterly false. In total fairness, it gives the novel a very realistic feel - after all, emotions and memories are such subjective things - but personally I have so little patience with controlling, manipulative men that it just left me feeling exasperated.

Finally, I also thought that the prose was a little inelegant at times - particularly the dialogue, which had a tendency towards the wooden - and the plotline was a little simple for my taste (again, this one is entirely subjective - I'm very much a fan of PoV jumps, time jumps, and subplots galore - because the plot was exactly as complex as it needed to be for the story to work), but overall, this was a decent story about a mother overcoming adversity, so if that sounds like something you'd be interested in, I wouldn't be surprised if you enjoyed it much more than I did!

The politest description that I can think of for this book is complete tosh. I requested an arc of this novel by Amanda Prowse from Netgalley because this is a very prolific author, (sixteen teen books since 2011 and six novellas), and a very popular one too. Never having read her before I thought that I was possibly missing out. If this book is a true indication of her output, I wasn’t. I determined to abandon the book several times but having asked for it this wouldn’t be fair.

It is the story of Nina, who having been born into and lived in poverty as a child, in he late teens, before she has had a chance to train for a career of her own, catches the eye of a young wealthy good looking ambitious builder who is successfully developing his own property business. They marry, have two sons five years apart, move to a massive, prestigious property, the sort with electric gates and a swimming pool, in the countryside just outside Bath. The boys attend a very expensive private school, they jet off on exotic holidays umpteen times a year and have everything associated with an ultra rich life style. But it’s all built on sand. Unknown to Nina, vast amounts of money are borrowed to finance each project, gambling on huge sales at the end of the development. This normally works, but not the last time when debts of eight million are accrued. No half measures here ! . Nina’s husband mysteriously dies in a car crash. Was it suicide ? A question hangs over it for the family. Surely a full police investigation would have been carried out in the circumstances. Just one of a massive continuous string of events that just don’t ring true. The bailiffs take property and belongings and the family are homeless and virtually penniless. But a relative has a cramped depressing flat in the area where Nina grew up. No more posh school but the local comp. No car, just the bus. Welcome to the real world for a huge percentage of the population. Nina finally gets a job in an old peoples home that sounds too up market to be true. I never saw anything like that when looking for my relative.. The story just goes on being more and more out of touch with reality.

I can only guess, but I’m wondering if this tale sprang from the author imagining how it would be if she suddenly lost everything she had and needed to fend for herself with her two boys when they were younger.. Basically a sound idea if you don’t hold up private education, which her boys received and this world’s goods as an ideal to be striven for and anything else as very inferior and to be despised. In my personal utopia all children would attend state schools and education would no longer be treated as a commodity that was for sale. So I guess we are coming from different view points. The lack of research in this work is glaringly obvious. Imagination is a huge asset for a writer, but you do actually have to go and find out how things really are. I’ve just read a brilliant book, much of the action being based somewhere that has to be the Falkland Islands. I’m not suggesting that Miss Prowse goes that far, but a few trips to local charity shops and perhaps doing a some voluntary stints in the name of research would be a good idea. Then she wouldn’t have the main character picking up a Venetian blind for a few pence. The shop couldn’t cover it’s overheads, let alone make a profit. And how about getting involved in some functions at her local comp. Then we wouldn’t have had that daft rugby dinner. I feel that this failure to go and find out how things really are for people outside her social orbit is insulting her readers intelligence.. But that’s just my view. Her sales figures show that many people disagree with me and appreciate what is being written. I’ve given two stars because I did ask for this book but one would probably have been more accurate.. Certainly the last book I’ll read by this author.

Once again Amanda Prowse has written a book about a woman who relies on a man to provide her well being. This time instead of his running off with another woman as in My Husband's Wife the husband in question dies in an accident leaving £8million debt.

Nina and Finn have had an idyllic marriage so it seems but when her home and possessions are repossessed Nina and her two young sons have to move back to the town she grew up in. Nina learns valuable lessons but it is all so predictable that I almost gave up reading the book.

Amanda Prowse's fans will no doubt enjoy The Art of Hiding (I didn't get the connection of the title with the story itself other than the tenuous link that Finn hid his financial troubles from Nina) but sadly it wasn't for me. Thanks to Netgalley and Lake Union for the opportunity to read and review the book.

Oh my goodness, this book got to me! Right from the start I was with Nina, and thinking her husband was a bit of a dead loss. I was devastated for her when Finn died and although I knew from the blurb that she ended up back on the rundown estate she started from, it seemed so extreme that I thought there must be something she could do first. I was screaming at her to get her stuff packed up and away as the solicitor advised and had a racing heart as she went about the next day still not realising the urgency. From the very depths though came a strength of spirit encouraged by her fabulous sister, Tiggy. I was glad Nina felt guilty about how she'd treated Tiggy, and while the circumstances weren't ones I'd wish on anyone, they made Nina and her boys much stronger and more likeable characters. As Tiggy pointed out, Nina had unwittingly been controlled, and it introduced the concept of a different level of "abuse". She loved her husband but as time went on she admitted that she'd put her feelings and wishes for life to one side to please him and live her comfortable life. My son asked me what was wrong while I was reading, as I was blinded by tears - sometimes sad, sometimes happy, It's a good book that affects me on this level!

This was a book that I was pre-approved for on net galley and not what I would have chosen for myself at all. However, I decided to give it a go, I've been pleasantly surprised in the past by a book I would usually overlook. This was not the case here.

The persistent references to Nina's husband taking care of her :

"you've had to worry about money your whole life, but not anymore. I will take care of you."

really started to grate. For one thing, Nina is only 34 and has been with Finn since she was 18, so, whilst she might have come from a background of poverty, I wouldn't say that she has had to worry about money for a long time.

There were inconsistencies about Nina's age that I found confusing. She must be 34, (because her sister is described as being 38, 4 years older than Nina). However, there are mentions of her being married for 20 years, but then about getting together with Finn when she was 18.
Further inconsistencies involved Finn. The most amazing father, yet he was never available to watch his son play rugby. He is described as a husband who worked all the time and was never at home, and yet simultaneously he was a wonderful man always booking holidays for them to get away.

The descriptions were consistently terrible :

"rough leather of her denim bomber jacket"

is it denim or is it leather?

I found the whole book tedious and instead of feeling sympathy for Nina I just wanted to give her a good shake and tell her to stop whining!

Not one for me, sorry!

The art of hiding is a thought provoking book. Nina has led the perfect life since marrying Finn, with a beautiful house, two boys at public school, top of the range cars etc she wants for nothing.
When Finn is killed in a car accident (?) she discovers their life is a sham, his business had failed leading to massive debts of £8million. Without any warning they are evicted from their home, the boys forced to leave school immediately due to unpaid fees and everything repossessed by bailiffs.
Will she sink or swim? Take this journey with Nina and perhaps learn a few lessons along the way, I realised if I suddenly lost my husband I'd have a pretty hard time sorting everything out, leaving him to the job of all our finances as I do.
My thanks to net galley and publisher for opportunity to review this book honestly.

The Art of Hiding is another beautifully written story by Amanda Prowse. This is a powerful story that will definitely tug at your heartstrings. Amanda Prowse is a gifted storyteller, and this story will prove that once again!

Nina McCarrick has it all...a wonderful husband (Finn), two amazing children (Connor and Declan), and a life free of financial struggles. The life she has become accustomed to drastically changes when her husband dies in a car accident and leaves her with over eight million dollars in debt. Finn never once told her that his business was in trouble, which has Nina wondering if she ever really knew Finn at all. Nina grew up in a family that constantly struggled to make ends meet, but after marrying Finn, she never imagined that someday she would be having to do the same with her two sons. Nina's perfect life is taken away in a matter of days...she loses the family home, the car, and almost all of their belongings. Left with no other options, she turns to estranged sister (Tiggy) for help.

The story that unfolds is a definite wake-up call for Nina and her two boys. She has to help her boys deal with the loss of their father, while at the same time, take them away from the only life they know. This is a story that is both heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time...a story that will take you on an emotional rollercoaster.

The author does an amazing job with the realistic portrayal of the characters. Nina is a character that has an inner strength and determination that even she didn't realize she had. Connor and Declan will tug at your heart, and you truly will feel for them having to deal with the hand they've been dealt at such vulnerable ages. Tiggy was a great character as well...awkward at first, but the love she has for her Nina and her nephew's is obvious.

Overall, this is truly a fantastic story packed with emotion and the hard lessons we all have to face in life. At the end of the day, you will see that material things are never as important as family! Despite the horrible things this family had to face, in the end, it made them all stronger.

I would like to thank Lake Union Publishing and NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to read and review this book. My views are my own and are in no way influenced by anyone else.