#MMBBR #BlogTourHost The Frog Theory by Fiona Mordaunt

The Frog Theory

Tragedy and comedy in perfect proportion.

Kim and Flow are the best of friends, living on a council estate, making money selling drugs. 

Just around the corner in a smarter part of Fulham is Clea, a well-heeled young woman coping with a violent home life at the hands of her twisted step-father.

The Principal runs a famous college for problem teens. Fostering guilty secrets which distance her from her own children, she resists the advances of a man she sees on the train every day. 

When Kim and Clea meet by chance, Kim is smitten but worried about her. Using the anecdote of the frog theory - that it will jump straight out of boiling water and live, but stay in and die if heated slowly from cold - he wakes her up to the dangerous situation she’s in at home.  

Serendipity and a cake-fuelled food fight that goes viral will bring Kim, Clea, Flow and The Principal together in weird and wonderful ways in this frenetic, laugh-out-loud story about love, conscience and lion-hearted nerve.

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About the author

After attending school for model-making, Mordaunt started Image Casting in 1998, specialising in customised body castings. Over the course of 13 years, she worked on such films as Atonement and The Wildest Dream, as well as for personal clients like Lionel Richie. In 2012, she relocated to Botswana with her husband and daughter where she currently resides.

http://www.fionamordaunt.com/

Your Five favourite books, or authors that you keep reading/couldn’t live without.

1. Laurens Van der Post – A Story Like the Wind

Someone at work gave this to me when we moved to Africa. I struggled to get into it initially and nearly gave up but slowly, silkily, the story began to coax me into sync with its individual beat. The richly descriptive narrative flowed; first a trickle, then enough to drown out thought of all else. I even work up at 4 a.m. on a few occasions to read a bit more, taking my time, letting the words ooze through me.

It seared a place in my soul next to Bird Song by Sebastian Falkes and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak – a real gift.

2. Lianne Moriarty – Big Little Lies

In the genre of contemporary fiction I have really enjoyed Lianne Moriarty lately. I trust her never to get too depressing. I guess I’m a sucker for a morally satisfying ending!

The story here does nothing but build and improve, the suspense simmering then boiling towards a truly thrilling conclusion. I look forward to reading her latest.

3. Bill Bryson – The Thunderbolt Kid

In thinking about the question of favourite authors, Bill Bryson kept popping up. I am so surprised; I did not realise. I don’t think I have read any of his books all the way through, apart from The Thunderbolt Kid, but they are dotted around in bookshelves all over the house and I tend to pick them up and read bits of them, when I am on my way to the kitchen, say.

4. Neil Gaiman – Neverwhere

I went through an odd patch during which I just didn’t feel like reading. Any book I picked up, I soon put down again and my friend, Jo, gave me this. I started half-heartedly but it drew me in as if a person from another dimension had grabbed me by the collar and pulled me through a wormhole. Escapism at its best, I loved the unassuming hero with his high maintenance girlfriend and the alternative universe, all set in London, so familiar to me. It was the gateway that led me to reading again.

5. My Recipe Book

My mother died just before I got pregnant with my daughter, Ella. She hated cooking but that wasn’t connected to her demise! Someone gave me an Annabel Karmel recipe book and I read in her introduction that one of her babies had died young. It touched me so that she shared that with her readers; it gave me strength and comfort that she had found a way to be productive.

I taught myself to cook in line with weaning Ella, reading many recipe books along the way. I learnt a huge amount from Gina Ford. I expect most people would not associate her with cooking. Jamie Oliver is one of my heroes, too, I’ve probably learnt the most from him.

I have a massive and much loved file that I keep all my favourite recipes in, many handwritten by

friends. That is what I refer to when I say ‘recipe book’. It is the book I would grab if my house was on fire and I could only take one with me.