One Step Too Far by Tina Seskis Review!

Book Details Print Length: 320 pages Publisher: William Morrow (January 27, 2015) Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers Language: English ASIN: B00K53D3JC

The Description from Goodreads is as follows

An apparently happy marriage. A beautiful son. A lovely home. So what makes Emily Coleman get up one morning and walk right out of her life to start all over again? Has she had a breakdown? Was it to escape her dysfunctional family - especially her flawed twin sister Caroline who always seemed to hate her? And what is the date that looms, threatening to force her to confront her past? No one has ever guessed her secret. Will you?

The jacket description got my attention because I’m always curious about people who mysteriously leave their lives and disappear. In this case, why would Emily leave her husband and son and disappear suddenly? What had happened that was so terrible that she needed to leave her family and disappear? This book held my attention and throughout I kept trying to figure out why she would leave her child. Husband? I can understand. Husbands can be jerks and sometimes deserve to be left. But children never deserve that.

I found myself disliking Emily throughout the book. And her twin sister Caroline as well. Caroline could be described as a sociopath with mental disorders and Emily is just selfish. But towards the end of the book, I started to understand why Emily left. I wasn’t quite expecting the ending and I thought it was a great twist to a somewhat odd book.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to read coming of age stories or suspense stories. While it’s not a typical coming of age story or suspense story, it has elements of both and Tina Seskis does a good job of keeping the reader interested so you can start to understand Emily and the choices she made.


A copy of the book was provided for an honest review and there was not monetary compensation.

Tina Seskis grew up in Hampshire, the daughter of an airline engineer and a sales rep. She studied business at the University of Bath and then worked for over 20 years in marketing, advertising and online, with varying degrees of success. Before that she did a variety of other jobs including door to door encylopedia selling in the US, industrial relations for Ford in Halewood, Liverpool, and selling bacon butties with her granny in the Halfway Hut at Wentworth Golf Club.

Tina wrote the first draft of One Step Too Far in summer 2010 and then gave up writing entirely for well over a year, before writing her second novel A Serpentine Affair in autumn/winter 2011. Her third book (working title Collision) is due for completion in 2014, and is the coming together of a key character from each of the first two novels, if Tina can make the plot work.

Tina lives in North London with her husband and son.

Guest Reviewer for Celticlady's Reviews