The Forgotten Promise by Paula Greenlees

Today is my stop on Zooloos Book Tours for The Forgotten Promise.

Malaya, 1920: Two girls make a promise in the shadows of the jungle. A promise that life won't let them easily keep.

Malaya, 1941: Ella is running her late father's tin mine in the Kledang hills, while Noor works as her cook.
When the war that felt so far away suddenly arrives on their doorstep, Ella is torn apart from her family. Her daughter Grace is left in Noor's care as Japanese soldiers seize the mine.

Ella is forced to make an impossible choice that takes her to England, thousands of miles from home. She is desperate to be reunited with her loved ones. But will the life she returns to be anything like the life she left behind?

Review:

WWII historical fiction is one of my favorite genres. This story is told in Malaysia and England, which is an area of the war I knew little about. WWII impacted everywhere, not just in Europe. First I must say I love this cover. It has beautiful colors and made me want to pick up the book. This is the story of a family separated by war and how they survived. I enjoyed the details in the story and learning about an area I didn’t know. The book is set during the war and the war is an important part of the story but it is almost a backdrop to what the characters faced. I highly recommend this book if you are looking for a different area of WWII historical fiction.

About the author:

Paula has lived in various places, including Singapore, where she was based for three years. It was while living in Singapore that the first seeds of her debut novel, Journey to Paradise, developed. The crumbling buildings and the modern high-rises popping up almost overnight seemed to be a metaphor for the social diversity and change in Singapore at that time. However, as a young mother living there, she wondered what it must have been like as a post-war colonial wife living miles away from the familiarity of home. Despite the gloss and glamour of colonial living, women were frequently stuck in unhappy marriages, often unable to follow careers or have the independence to divorce if things went wrong – which they inevitably did.

Her writing, although set against exotic backgrounds, is set on the cusp of change – the shift from colonial dominance to independence. She likes to dig into a variety of issues and her main protagonist is, in many ways, a metaphor for the political and social events surrounding her at that time. It isn’t always an easy journey, but in the end, success comes her way.

As for Paula – she has always wanted to be a writer. As a little girl she used to spend hours writing stories and turning them into books, even using flour and water as paste to stick the pages together.  She spent hours writing poetry and plays as a teenager and has always written short stories in her spare time. It is this need to write and a love of reading that led her to take a degree in English and European Thought and Literature, and later a Masters Degree in Creative Writing.

Apart from her writing, Paula hosts a regular author interview on her website. You can find out more about new and existing historical fiction authors, such as Liz Trenow, Frances Quinn and Louise Fein, by hitting the ‘author interview tab.’

As a writer, she feels it is important to have a wide range of interests – not only does it adds flavour and layering to prose, but allows it allows time for ideas to mull and to percolate. People watching in cafés is one, long walks is another. And food! Good food is essential to her and she loves to cook using the best ingredients she can find.  As well as a love of travel, she is a keen amateur photographer and her next trip takes her to Cambodia where she is hoping to discover an exciting hook for a new book - you can find out more about her progress there by following her on Instagram.

Paula has a grown up daughter and lives in Warwickshire with her husband and an extremely friendly Labrador.

Keep in touch with her on social media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WritingMatter

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulagreenlees/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PGreenlees

Website:  https://www.paulagreenlees.com/