Sometimes it seems as if literature were a field in which to land, taking advantage of a popular pull for actors, musicians and even politicians. The question is whether it is a wildfire with which the publisher on duty achieves punctual and succulent sales or if there really is the wood of a writer.
The case of Lorraine Franco, an actress and now a consolidated writer, is the opposite of that punctual encounter with letters. In the first place because Lorena started from the base, in that ocean of desktop publishing in which she managed to excel. Second, as a natural derivative, due to the high valuation of readers since its unsuspected irruption in the literature without the noise of the marketing of the large publishers.
Then came the natural success and the backing of the big labels, the bid to get his works. But for it the author had already published several stories in an ebook for Kindle, with that long-awaited sum of stars of maximum valuation that arise spontaneously when the readers are satisfied with the presented plot.
The greatest virtue of Lorena Franco is the intensity of her literature within its thematic versatility. Because although lately we enjoy his domestic thrillers in the style of the also thriving Shari lapena, once dumped its inspiration in the fantastic or the romantic, always with an imprint of vivid plots full of that magnetism of the bestsellers of any genre.
So from this author we can expect any kind of story but always with that feeling of dependency as soon as you start reading.
Top 3 recommended novels by Lorena Franco
the place where we were happy
On the night of June 22, while the entire elitist Instituto Magno celebrates the end-of-year party, Blanca Roca, the literature teacher, is gunned down in the forehead. The next morning, some bathers find her body on the beach.
Blanca's death remains unknown when, three months later, the new course begins and Paula Arias arrives as a substitute in a town still shaken by the tragedy. She will soon meet Nuno, a mathematics teacher and owner of the controversial Faro nightclub, who will soon find out who Paula really is and what are the reasons that have led her to Llafranc.
How long can we keep secrets hidden without weighing us down? Paula and Nuno will have to remove the foundations of strongly established structures to discover the truth about Blanca.
Silvia Blanch's Last Summer
There is always a story, a plot that marks that before and after. At least in an emblematic case of a writer with quality and tenacity like Lorraine Franco. And many are those who consider that "Silvia Blanch's last summer" It is that inflection that blatantly marks upward, pointing to resounding success.
And Lorena makes her literary career compatible, to make matters worse and no less worthwhile, with her performance as an actress and model. Focusing on the novel, and specifically approaching a town around the forest to discover a suspense novel, a thriller with that almost telluric composition, brings us closer to narrative spaces masterfully addressed by Dolores Redondo in Baztán.
But the truth is that a paradigmatic space of fear such as a forest is always a perfect place to awaken that atavistic and ancestral terror, that panic that can awaken like an icy spasm amid the whispering silence of the forest. Either by a simple sensation or by the call of some beast that approaches from the shadows.
This is where Silvia Blanch disappeared, between the jaws of a forest that, because it is a Mediterranean wooded space in the depths of the province of Barcelona, does not become friendlier and less gloomy than Baztán.
As readers we discover the town of Montseny in two stages. First when the tragedy took hold of the routine of the place and second when some year later the journalist Alex proceeds to investigate the matter of a disappearance as shocking as that of the young woman. Everything to recreate a newspaper article. Only that sometimes the will to know more can bring us closer to areas of reality that are too dark ...
Perhaps in this move between two times, that of the events and that of Alex's arrival, we can know or intuit more than Alex herself about the dark motives for the disappearance that points to even the most heinous crime.
But that is the least because the author is in charge of channeling all the emotional intensity to how Alex faces his investigation, and what he will have to live and suffer in an increasingly threatening place.
In that strange anxiety that assails noble souls, when they feel as close to the truth as they are to death, Alex will not be able to give up discovering everything, because he has become too involved. Because in the interviews and walks around the places he meets someone very special, perhaps the one he may have the most blame for Silvia's disappearance.
But there are moments when what we want most is to discover that reality can end up shaking everything, even our worst suspicions, even the most obvious lies. Only to end up reconciling us with life, with love and with death.
The time traveler
A gazillion years ago I wrote a curious story about second chances that mixed science fiction with that point of romance about lost loves and the transience of our time, it's called A Second Chance, and you can find it here for € 1.
In this case we also embark on a journey between the existential and the fantastic, ending up enjoying a very powerful narrative about that fundamental engine of the Universe: love.
Lia and Will's family portrait opens up to the routine of any other family. They are those children who share everything in the presence of parents busy with their daily routine towards caring for the family who ends up putting aside the most basic needs, precisely, of children.
Time passes, the mother dies, and at that vital turning point that is always such a fundamental loss, the brother, Will, disappears. Lia is touched by everything that happened, until she discovers a strange link with her brother through a mysterious painting in an exhibition.
Magic takes off with absolute fascination towards a possible reunion between literature and reality, between History and the intra-histories of the characters who inhabit time ...
Other recommended novels by Lorena Franco…
She knows it
Maria's disappearance sets the pace for this novel "She knows it". And he marks it intensely because María, the disappeared, is Andrea's neighbor.
And the last moment Andrea saw her, shortly before she disappeared, she was getting into her brother-in-law, Victor's car. Andrea, a writer who hides her own ghosts in her crime novels, moves in a space of real anxiety. Betraying her brother-in-law arouses real terror in her.
Since he settled in her house, his presence already seemed disturbing to her, the events that she could see from the window ended up frightening her until she was blocked.
The space of the house, where Andrea coexists with her husband, in an exhausted relationship, with the addition of Victor and the discovery of the disappearance of the neighbor in her car, that space of what should be a home is transformed into hell To andrea. Will he be able to reveal what he could see from the window? What consequences will all that she knows have on her?
Andrea's experiences from that point on move in a space of continuous tension that traps the reader with a sinister literary ability.
Once again the domestic thriller, in the style of recent novels such as The girl from before or Will not be afraid again, or even the work The last word of Juan Elías (from the television series I know who you are) is represented as one of the greatest successes of the black genre.
Turning home into the antithesis of what the word "home" represents hooks you as a reader and moves you restlessly between its pages.
The midnight club
The unavoidable hook of this story stems from that feeling of need for abandonment in the face of the most prosaic reality, an old notion that from fiction gives us the wings to undertake that escape.
Natalia is in charge of materializing that exit from her toxic environment, from that life mired in self-imposed roles, in abysmal limitations and routines.
Considering her grandmother's advice, Natalia goes to that Paris of her predecessor's imagination, a city of lights and shadows, of mysteries and adventures.
The old Le club de minuit bookstore becomes the goal, the door from which to embark on the journey, a guideline from his wise grandmother that will transform his life. Because when Natalia gets there and meets her owner Corinne Whitman, she will understand that nothing will ever be the same.
When the doors of the store are closed to the increasingly small public, other doors open at the back, a threshold perhaps created among so many books written many years ago and reread in book clubs with the power of invocation.
The new Fantasy described by Ende and inhabited on this occasion by the adult Natalia in search of the recomposition of her world.
True, "Everyone is looking for Nora Roy" is great, it hooks you from the beginning, I loved it.
You are missing “Everyone is looking for Nora Roy”, which is very good (more than 4* on Goodreads), cheers.
True, "Everyone is looking for Nora Roy" is great, it hooks you from the beginning, I loved it.