Welcome to my stop on the Blog Tour for Good Morning, Bellingham by Marina Raydun on the Sage’s Blog Tours.
When Peta goes missing, a two-decade-old secret threatens to rip at the seams and come out in the open. Relationships are tested as one dysfunctional family comes together in search of their daughter, sister, and wife. What they find instead will change each one of them forever.
Located in the beautiful northwest of Washington, Peta Knudsen is the beloved weather girl on the local small-town TV station of Bellingham. She is married to Peter, also a celebrity of the same station. Peta is the mother of a baby girl, Gwenny, and has gone missing–completely, totally missing. Gone.
Just, gone.
After Peter sounds the alarm, the family, extended family, and everyone in town rally in search, discover her last known location, and go from there. The POV splits with each telling, in detail, their relationship with the missing woman. As the story progresses (besides her husband), her mother, sister, sister’s boyfriend, therapist, therapist’s son, and even the therapist’s ex-husband weigh in on their relationship and with each new connection, a darker and yet deeper story emerges.
It becomes obvious very quickly that Peta was an extremely troubled young woman, skilled in hiding her emotions on camera, she nonetheless had a childhood and mother that left her scarred (hence the therapist). The birth of her daughter forces an awakening and insight into her mother. Most are well-developed characters and it doesn’t take long before you can divide those in her life that you’d find extremely unpleasant (hint: her mother), as well as those whose own background and well-hidden secrets create an abundance of tension of their own. It is apparently the accidental discovery of one of the long-held secrets that set her off on the ill-conceived mission resulting in her disappearance.
The novel begins rather slow and generally weaves between the characters, working through some deeply held convictions that formed the lives, personalities, and emotional relationship to each. Connections gradually become revealed as the book progresses through the obvious conclusion. Each has become intellectual and psychological toys by the author who manipulates each member successfully to create an intense domestic noir narrative delving into the psyche of family members in the midst of crisis.
“…what if having to fight for something this hard means you weren’t meant to have it to begin with?”
Genre: Women’s Literature Fiction, Psychological Literary Fiction
- ISBN-10:0578559862
- ISBN-13:978-0578559865
- ASIN: B07WD1T3WB
Publish Date: September 9, 2019
Print Length: 292 pages
Marina Raydun‘s published works of fiction include a compilation of novellas One
Year in Berlin/Foreign Bride, a suspense novel entitled Joe After Maya, as well as a two-
part series, Effortless. Born in the former Soviet Union, Marina grew up in Brooklyn,
NY. She holds a J.D. from New York Law School and a B.A. in history from Pace
University. She is an avid music fan, a cat lover, and an enthusiastic learner of
American Sign Language. Whenever she is not writing, Marina enjoys spending time
with her family, catching up on Netflix, and baking. 
Thank you for visiting my stop on the book tour and thanks to Sage at Sage’s Blog Tours for the promotional materials and digital download for this profound women’s fiction novel!
©2019 V Williams 
Yes, I remember film noir, but “classic” (or roman) noir is considered a “hardboiled” genre that usually includes a self-destructive protagonist. I’m not writing the rules here, only relaying what I found in research–and it’s not pretty folks. Although I must say, we’ve definitely done a number on the original noir fiction spawned from Dashiell Hammett ( 1894-1961) “the dean of the… ‘hardboiled’ school of detective fiction.” The protagonist is not a rumpled, raincoat cloaked, cigar-chomping thoughtful-hearted protagonist, but rather a perpetrator. Forget Columbo! Think Humphrey Bogart. No, much worse. Think Kevin Spacey in LA Confidential. But there is a huge difference in the definition of “noir” and what we are calling forms of noir today.
So I jumped on Goodreads again, my go-to of all things bookish, and noted that on their (current) favorite noir list the first six of nine is divided between 
Rosepoint Publishing 