For a couple of years, I’d considered adding book club questions to the back matter in my books, and I decided against it. I made that decision because I’d noticed a general reaction in the reading public to back matter in general. The advent of e-reading made this phenomenon more pronounced, but it was always there. You’re reading along and know you’re getting close to the end of the book, but you still have twenty or so pages, right? Wrong! You flip the page (virtual or paper) and discover that you’re at The End. Oh, how frustrating and disappointing, and if that book is one of those that readers endearingly dub a “cliffy” (a series book with a cliffhanger–that technique seems to be employed most often with trilogies, a la Fifty Shades of Grey), all the more so, because they had been expecting some resolution to the story. So that back matter, the area where we writers try to connect with our readers after they’ve finished our book? It seems that the more crap we stuff back there, the bigger the chance we are to being reviled by those same readers we’d hoped to win over.
So I chose not to put book club questions in the back of my book! I still thought it was a great idea, though, and I’m always trying to find ways to add value to my website–things my readers can access from me at anytime–so this was a great way to do that.
Today, we’re going to be looking at another one of my older standalone books. Although I published Fabric of Night in the summer of 2011, I’d actually written it several years before that. It’s one of my books that’s not read much, but that doesn’t mean it’s not read at all…and so I’m going to write questions for it too! First, though, the blurb…
Her past will haunt her until she can remember it.
Teri Conover emerges from a river late at night with amnesia. She doesn’t know how she got there, and she can’t even remember her name or her past. She’s taken in by an elderly couple and feels drawn to a good-looking stranger named Bryan, but when she returns to her old life, she finds she is already engaged to another man. Teri must choose between the two men and race against time to discover what caused her amnesia. Most important, though, she must grapple with a past that she’d just as soon forget.
The questions:
A lot of books use the amnesia storyline to create a mystery. Is that technique effective in this book? In what ways did it work? Is there a different way the story could have been told–without the protagonist suffering from amnesia?
Teri discovers that she wasn’t a very nice person before the amnesia. How does that affect her relationships?
How big an effect does Bryan have on Teri’s transformation? Do you think she would have continued becoming a better person if he were completely out of the picture?
Is the book’s ending too “easy”?
Do you like Teri when she’s “Violet”? What about after she’s returned to her element? When you see her past? When she finds redemption?
Is Teri’s change believable?
If you could change the ending, how would the book end?
Are there any quotes that made an impression on you while reading?
If you could ask Jade one question about this book, what would it be?
Happy reading!
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