Shadow of the Gypsy by Shelly Frome Book Tour, Guest Post & Giveaway! {Ends 7/16/22}

Review By LAWonder10:

At the beginning of Shadow of the Gypsy, it tends to be slightly mystifying. At first, it is hard to determine “where this is going”. Josh – not his real name – has experienced a very dysfunctional childhood. After witnessing a terrible thing, she was sent away and lived in a boarding school before going on to college. He moved to a small town, far away, so nobody would find him. For some peculiar reason, only his mother and childhood girlfriend knew where he was.

After many years and feeling sure he was safe, he decided it was time to persuade his girlfriend to marry him… He was safe now, wasn’t he?
From here on out, suspense, mystery, action, and increased drama occur. It moves at a fast pace and is nearly impossible for the reader to determine the plot or its outcome.

The characters are diverse and very believable. They are very realistic The scenes are also portrayed well and easily visualized.

This is a story about neglect, finding oneself, dysfunctional home life, relationships, and trauma.
READER BEWARE: There is some profanity within this book’s content.

*This book was gifted me with no pressure for a positive review. This is my honest review

Those Unpredictable Believable Characters

by Shelly Frome

By and large many if not most people hide behind a comfortable façade that has helped them get by over the years e.g., the trusty mechanic, nurturing mom, life of the party, company man, trim athlete, intellectual and scholar, free spirit, caregiver, true believer—the list is endless. Put them in a story and everything becomes safe and predictable. If you inject fictional stereotypes to serve your plot the result is formulaic. No surprises, nothing that transports or doubles back on either the writer or reader’s life. No revelations about the human condition. If you’re looking for examples, look no further than Little Women; each “little woman” and Marmie part of a comforting, touching, idealistic tale far from the realities of Louisa May Alcott’s life.

On the other hand, if you’re truly delving, you could start with Middlemarch: Mary Anne Evans’ masterpiece writing as George Eliot in 1870 about English provincial life. Here, perhaps for the first time, characters do things that are completely out of character throwing off all expectations. Lovely Dorothea marries an elderly clergyman under the belief she will be a helpmate and bring to fruition a scholarly masterpiece for the benefit of the world only to have fallen into a loveless marriage to a man who has no idea what he’s doing. Young Doctor Lydgate, who has a promising future, finds himself falling for a complete ninny who, upon their marriage, charges all kinds of furnishings for an upscale flat her husband can’t possibly afford, leading him on the road to ruin. All this way before the advent of psychology.

Much later on, the iconic psychologist Carl Jung called this the shadow side, facets we’re not directly aware of, sides of ourselves we’ve repressed. Others simply suggest there are parts of ourselves that have been lying dormant. The book worm needs to get out into nature. The self-conscious beauty queen needs to drop this preoccupation and out among the poor and needy. The live of the party needs to take up meditation and rediscover his or her difficult childhood that led to this overwhelming need for approval. The gambler needs to come to terms with his or her addiction.

Another way to look at it is that all memorable stories are generated when something breaks up the routine. How do people respond under pressure when the same old way of doing things just plain doesn’t work anymore and/or relations are put to the test.

Yet still another way to go about it, is to use the Method actor’s private moment. In this instance, say, the character is alone taken to drink or walking the floor seeking some way out of a certain s dilemma.

When Anne Lamott is working on a novel she absolutely loves it when she has no idea what she’s doing and simply wings it, thrilled when things just happen and characters do and say things she never thought of. She calls it the thrill of pure spontaneity.

Perhaps one of the best examples is Edward Albee’s creation of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? He had the action all mapped out but the academic George and his wife Martha were saying

things and doing things that were totally predictable under the circumstances. One day he stopped trying to control them and left them to their own devices. The results were amazing. He discovered the love/hate games they played that revolved around a make-believe child only they were aware of.

Often there are secrets and lies and latent behavior patterns that no one saw coming. This is not just another day and there’s more to this than meets the eye.