Category: Reviews-Harper Perennial

TITLE: The Truth About Delilah Blue
AUTHOR: Tish Cohen
PUD DATE: June 2010
PUBLISHER: Harper Perennial
PAGES: 409

ABOUT THE BOOK

Delilah Blue has always been a bit of an outsider, ever since she moved from Toronto to Los Angeles when she was eight. Twenty now, and desperate to become an artist like her long-lost mother but unable to pay for classes, she takes a job as an art model so she can learn from the professors as the students draw parts of her she’d much rather keep under wraps.

Her only real companion in life is her father, a dapper, single salesman. But as he’s entered his mid-fifties, he has begun to forget simple tasks and is often disoriented—telltale signs of early-onset Alzheimer’s. The disease presents itself just as Delilah’s long-estranged mother, who Delilah always believed selfishly abandoned the family, reenters the scene and reveals a secret about the past that will permanently change their lives.

MY THOUGHTS
I have to send out a huge thank you to Trish from TLC Book Tours for allowing me to be a part of this tour and to Harper Perennial for sending me the book.

I have to say that The Truth about Delilah Blue started out very slow for me and then at about chapter seven it started picking up for me to the point that I was having a hard time to put it down.

The reader knows Lila Mack as a 20 year old struggling artist in California. But what we soon realize is that she previously was Delilah Blue Lovett, a youngster living in Toronto with her mother, Elisabeth and visiting her father, Victor when it was his turn to have his daughter. On one of the planned visits when she is eight, Victor actually kidnaps Delilah because he doesn’t like the lifestyle his ex is leading. He tells her they are going to Disney World in Florida but in reality he is taking her to California. Once in California he dyes her hair, gives her a new name and a new place to live.

Lila has always been interested in the art world and always wondered about her mother who is also an artist. Lila has no money to afford going to college so in order to get her art education she decides she will pose nude for the art class at the college and listen to the professor and take away what she learns and when she goes home she will put what she learned to work.

Victor is a successful medical supplies salesman and things are going good but quickly his world is about to change. As is Delilah’s world is about to be rocked. She is not only having to deal with her father’s problems but also that of her mothers who happens to reenter Delilah’s world.

Elisabeth manages to track down Delilah. She has alot to tell Delilah not only about her new life but also a family secret that is going to rock Delilah’s world. How is she going to handle this news bomb?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tish Cohen is the author of Town House, a 2008 finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best First Book Award (Canada and Caribbean region), and in development as a feature film with Fox 2000. The film is being produced by Ridley Scott’s Scott Free and will be directed by John Carney, the award-winning, critically acclaimed director of Once. Production is set to begin in New England in 2008. Town House was released to massive media interest in Canada, has been published in Italy, and will be released in Germany in April 2009.

Cohen has also written the preteen novel The Invisible Rules of Zoe Lama, a bestseller in Canada, which was published in 2007. The sequel, The One and Only Zoe Lama, will be published in summer 2008.The Zoe Lama series is in development as a live action TV series with 9Story Entertainment.

Cohen has contributed articles to some of Canada’s largest newspapers, including The Globe and Mail and The National Post. Having grown up in Los Angeles and Orange County in California, and Montreal, Cohen now calls Toronto home. Inside Out Girl is Cohen’s second novel for adults.