Welcome to another Weekend Read blog, This week I’m featuring the twisty psychological thriller, Let Her Go, by popular author Alison Stockham. Alison is going to talk to us about the inspiration behind her writing. So grab a cuppa, get cosy and let’s get chatting to Alison. 

About the book:

One moment changed everything.

And now my best friend is gone.

Hannah doesn’t need much. Her quiet life suits her just fine, especially with Libby by her side. Libby always understands. Her closest friend, she feels more like family than anyone else ever has.

And then she’s gone.

Vanished without a word.

No texts. No calls. Just… silence.

Matt, Libby’s husband, says she needed space. That she’s safe. That Hannah should stop asking questions.

But something’s not right. Hannah can feel it.

The more she digs, the more she realises she might not have known Libby at all. Has someone been lying from the very start? Or should she trust her gut? Is her friend in very real danger?

 Buying link:   https://bit.ly/4olktxZ

Welcome to my blog, Alison, your book sound fab. Is your writing ever inspired by your family or real life incidents?

All of my work is inspired by real life incidents and real life people or places. Everything that happens in my books has happened somewhere to someone, and that’s what appeals about the stories to me. I want to explore why people do what they do through my writing and for that, I hone into snippets of reality and go on a journey to explore behind them.

My debut novel, The Cuckoo Sister was inspired by my looking at my daughters and wondering what a sister-sister relationship is like, as I only have a brother and the dynamic seemed very different. The Silent Friend was inspired by looking at what happens when you grow up without a support system to guide you into making good decisions, The New Girl was inspired by something that happened to a high school teacher of mine (who discovered her husband was cheating when the other woman posted their baby scan through the letter box!). The Man She Married was initially inspired by a car journey I took but the idea expanded when I added elements of relationships I had observed over the years and mixed them together to create the scenario in the novel.

My latest book, Let Her Go, explores the intensity of female friendships and what happens when they go wrong. This was inspired by how I felt after being ghosted by a long-term friend and the plethora of emotions I experienced whilst processing the fallout. It was like grief in all its stages-denial, anger, sadness, acceptance-but mixed with humiliation at the rejection and the unanswered question as to why. As with all things, I channelled that into writing, but I do have to say that the resultant book is very much inspired by real events, not based on real events!

As a thriller writer, I take inspiration from reality but then ramp up the drama, raise the stakes to the highest level and see what happens. I take my characters and put them in really hot water to see what they will do! I think that this element is why people love to read thrillers-in that they give us the opportunity to explore the darker sides of ourselves, of humanity, ones which we all recognise in ourselves and in others, but ultimately, keeping the outcomes from that captured on the page! Reading gives us all the chance to walk in other’s shoes and decide what we might do in such situations, from the safety of our sofa. It’s the best of both worlds!

As a fellow thriller writer I totally agree, Alison. Thank you for sharing your inspiration story with us.

About Alison

Alison Stockham is a Cambridge based writer of psychological thrillers and domestic suspense novels exploring why people make the choices that they do. From a background in film and television production, working in film dramas and TV documentary production for the BBC and Channel 4, she then worked as the events coordinator for Cambridge Literary Festival.

Her debut novel The Cuckoo Sister, was a top 10 bestseller and was also longlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. Now writing full time, she lives with her husband, their children and their cat, who keeps her company while she writes her next novel.

You can find her on on Instagram as @astockhamauthor, Facebook as @AlisonStockhamAuthor and Blue Sky at @AlisonStockham.bky.social

More of Alison’s Books