What do you do when your perfect live quickly unravels and you run out of options? Nina McCarrick seems to have it all; a loving husband, two boys, a beautiful home  and more time than she knows what to do with.  Her life is perfect. That is until her husband is killed in a car accident and her life completely changes. Nina learns the life she is used to is a sham. She and her children are forced to move out of their house with basically nothing. Nina hasn't worked during her marriage and is struggling to find a job to support them all.  

This is a story of a woman who has to pick herself up and reinvent herself. She stays strong for her children and works through all the lies and deceit to try to rebuild a life for all of them.

The Art of Hiding is actually the first book that I've read by Amanda Prowse although I've noticed her work before but just hadn't taken the time to read any. This is a beautifully written book with characters that are realistic, and it deals with true life experiences. Nina is such a strong character and I found myself really feeling for her and her two sons struggling to make a new life together.

Nina McCarrick our lead is a housewife in her mid thirties living in a posh estate in England. She leads a luxurious life with her husband and two sons. One day her husband is meets with a car accident and dies. She finds herself in turmoil when she finds out that her husband hadn’t told her that they are nose deep in debt. She loses everything, their business, property, wealth and even her house. All she is left with is her two children to take care of. She has no money, no skills to carry on her life and yet she is determined to make it. Once again she finds herself in the modest house she spent her time as a child. 
We follow the story from Nina’s perspective with a third person’s point of view. The story mostly revolves around Nina’s struggle to find her feet and nurture her boys after her husband dies. Her journey of transformation from a domesticated house wife to a strong independent woman is what makes this book thought provoking inspite of a common plot. What I didn’t like about this book are the parts where Nina’s relationship with other apart from her family did seem superficial. 
I read a kindle copy of the book. The book is divided in 15 chapters. The language is quite simple and easy to understand. Over all the book has a common plot but Nina and her boys journey of starting from a scratch after losing everything is quite heart-warming.

A truly beautiful story about finding strength and courage during the darkest moments. 

Amanda has such a knack for writing true to life scenarios and truly walking you through some of the toughest hardships 'normal' people face every day. The Art of Hiding is yet another perfect example of that. 

Nina is happy living her life. With a successful husband, two well-adjusted kids at the top private school in the area and a future that promises her anything and everything her heart desires. But then her husband, the keeper of the keys and the security guard of her life that she never even realised existed, is cruelly taken from her in a car accident. The pain that would befall her is not only unexpected but will test her nerve in more ways than one. 

As she struggles to piece together her life and stay strong for her two young sons, Nina quickly learns just how little she knew about the secrets her husband was keeping. As she blissfully went about her days filling the freezer with gourmet standard food and arranging flowers in the numerous vases in her house, her husband was secretly fighting a battle she would know nothing about until the day he was no longer there to keep the wolves from the door. 

This is not a story about love, loss or even death. It's a story about finding strength when you truly feel at the very edge of the cliff. If about resilience and a mothers determination to carry on for her kids despite a pain that would cripple you otherwise. As a reader, you connect with Nina and sympathise with her grief, but for me, this book was less about how much she loved her husband Finn and more about the journey to find the 'Nina without Finn'. Who was she now he was gone? How could she raise her boys without his guidance? 

As always, Amanda Prowse's books are about taking a look at the lives of normal people and asking you to truly ask the hard questions. If we were to lose our partners today, how would we cope? 

Nina is a truly well-rounded character. You are drawn into her pain from the first page. But the character that truly gripped my heart was her son Connor. Seeing grief and struggle through a teenagers eyes. Seeing how they worked together to get through the most difficult year of their lives. 

The subject is one that most will shy away from truly thinking about. Grief and death are subjects we all too often shirk away from, opting to 'talk about it later'. But to Amanda's credit, the issues brought up in this book truly made me sit back and think... how would I cope? What would I do? 

Once again Amanda has pulled a perfectly groomed and expertly trained rabbit from her plush velvet hat. Just when I think this talented lady can't possibly meet my previous expectations, she exceeds them. A truly lovely book that, once again, has left me on tenterhooks waiting for the next.

I enjoyed this book and I always enjoy amandas books not found one I haven't enjoyed

First of all, thank you so much to Lake Union Publishing for auto-approving me on NetGalley for this contemporary novel, my first by Amanda Prowse and I was instantly intrigued by the synopsis and the fact that some of it was set in Southampton, a city I know very well through living there for about ten years, going to college and university and getting my first "proper" job out of university there and making some of the best friends I've had in my life. By and large I found this to be an enjoyable novel however I'm sorry to say I wasn't blown away by the narrative. There is nothing wrong with the writing, it's merely a case of personal preference and I know this book has some fantastic ratings on Goodreads from reviewers who have loved it so please don't take my word as gold.

It's the story of Nina, who lives a charmed and privileged life in a huge, luxurious house in an area where places to lives are much sought after and the quality of life is excellent. Her two boys, Connor and Declan attend private school, are doing well academically and have vast numbers of friends. Basically, they are all deliriously happy in their lives and you can almost smell the imminent tragedy just waiting in the wings. Tragedy it certainly is, in the form of Nina's husband Finn being killed in a car accident. He was the sole bread-winner in the house and took charge of all the finances but Nina isn't too worried until she is given the devastating news that the family is actually millions of pounds in debt and almost everything they own, including their gorgeous house, has to be taken away from them in lieu of payment.

Nina and her sons are forced to leave their beautiful surroundings and exclusive school and move back to her childhood home, a council estate in one of the less affluent areas of Southampton. The rest of the story follows Nina and her boys as they struggle with their grief for their father, adjust to a completely new way of life where their next meal may not necessarily be the most opulent of offerings and learn to pull together as a family and embrace this horribly difficult period of their lives. Nina herself must come to terms with the fact that she might not ever have really known her husband and learn how to be independent and stand on her own two feet, finding a job, loving and protecting her sons and learning how to make them all a happy family once more.

Let me assure everyone who might be dumbfounded that I didn't enjoy this book that there are actually a lot of positive things about it and many reasons why other people will love it. Whilst I didn't particularly warm to the character of Nina, I appreciated the horrific situation she found herself in and the strong moves that she made in order to protect her children, which obviously was going to be her number one priority. Also, there is a moment in the story where you think the author is going to take it a perhaps more obvious, clichéd way in terms of Nina meeting someone. I fully admit, I was all ready to roll my eyes and put the book down in disgust but she really surprised me. She didn't make it an ultimate cheese-fest, she didn't make it all about Nina finding another man and instead, deliberately made it much more about Nina looking out for her children, becoming a woman that doesn't necessarily need to fall conveniently into another relationship. God, I appreciated that!

To be perfectly honest, I can't say too many negative things about this book. I disliked Finn as a character intensely - I found him controlling and manipulative but my heart still broke a little bit for Nina as she began to see his true colours after his death and realise how much she had been missing out on as she stayed at home where she had little input in many situations. Personally, the mystery behind the huge debt that Finn accrued through the business and his death (which could have been seen as mysterious) wasn't explored as much as I might have liked and I didn't feel I connected with many of the characters. Mostly, I think this story was just missing a little something for me, a certain "oomph," something I can't quite put my finger on but it just meant that as I read it, I never felt particularly excited. I'd love to know what you think if you've read it, please feel free to disagree with everything I've said, after all we all get something different out of every book we read, right?

I didn't love this nearly as much as many of this authors previous works, she seems to have changed formulas - I preferred the older style of down to earth believable women I could relate to, This is pretty formulaic and I just didn't engage with the characters enough to feel the emotions depicted. Not her best novel but readable and lots going on.

Received from the Lake Union Publishing via Netgalley.  This is the first book of Prowse's that I've read, but it seems that there she has written others, such as My Husband's Wife.

Anyway, in The Art of Hiding, Nina is watching her son Connor playing rugby for the prestigious Rugby Team at his expensive, private school. Both she and her two sons are waiting for her husband Finn to turn up to the game, but as usual it seems he is running late. Whilst his job pays for the big house and for both boys to go to their expensive school, Nina is disappointed that once again, Finn has not turned up to something he committed to do with his family.   Nina finds out that Finn hasn't turned up because he has been killed in a car crash, driving too fast in the opposite direction he should have been going in to get to the match. It is then that everything begins to unravel.

The nice upper-middle class lifestyle that Nina has settled into was all a lie (one that she told herself, and that Finn fed her). The big house, with the pool, the nice food, the private school for both the boys - is no more. Finn has mortgaged the house to the hilt, but died with the business being £8 million in debt and bankrupt. The "yummy mummies" from the school soon desert her when they find she has no money, and are not willing to even put them up in the garage, never mind loan them any money.  The bailiffs are at the door (in perhaps the only  slightly unbelievable plot point, but used for a reason).

So left with 2 children, no house, no friends, virtually no money and no work experience, Nina is left with the only option of returning to the run down estate in her home town where a relative has her old house available to rent. There she returns with Connor and Declan, who are culture shocked about the people on the estate and in their new school. It is for Nina to try and get a job, only to find that she is fit for little - but it is a chance encounter that allows her to start getting income and some self confidence back. She also reconnects with her sister Tiggy, who tells her some home truths about how she treated both herself and those around her during the social isolation and perfect life wanted by Finn (Including the fact that it is only Tiggy and none of her other "posh" friends who have stuck around when Nina needed help).

There are a mix of emotions that have to be dealt with, including grief, disappointment, shock, having to deal with the feelings of her sons who are going through similar feelings, and having to not give up, even when she wants to, because of two boys.

The secondary characters are relatively well developed - Connor as the teenager is suitably bratty at his change in circumstances and Declan (being younger) is a little more adaptable. Tiggy isn't always around, but shows Nina that she *used* to be able to do this stuff until she married Finn and she left herself give in. The tertiary characters, such as Vera from the launderette across the road, are barely sketched but that's ok.

Overall this book shows that you can be happy, no matter the circumstances if you are true to yourself, and that money isn't always everything. It was well written and not my usual fare, though I may well read another book by this author in the future.

my first book from this author and I really enjoyed it will definitely look for more from her.

The Art of Hiding is a rags to riches to rags story. The premise sets up a story of survival and the courage of a strong woman moving forward through tragic loss. At the end, the word that comes to mind sadly is cliche. A story that should have been about courage and survival turns into one about shallow characters and stereotypes. Not the book for me.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2017/11/the-art-of-hiding.html

Reviewed for NetGalley

Amanda prowse is a wonderful and extremely e talented author....another inexplicably wonderful novel and one that really dig tug on my heartstrings it was beautiful.

I received a free copy to read and review. 
Oh my lord, that was an intense and thrilling ride. Full of twists and turns. Kept me on the edge of my seat, I couldn’t put it down. 
This author has been put on my reading list.

Riches to rags story.  Nina, living in a rundown estate suddenly finds herself in a world of luxury when she falls for and marries the go-getting Finn.  When he dies this fantastic life comes crashing down.  Great cover and description but ultimately slightly disappointing.  Nina is the queen of self pity who moans and groans and this starts to grate after a while. Plus the book is overly long for what actually happens.  Pleasantly light and heartwarming it would make a good stocking filler.

This was a really good story, but for some reason i couldn't really connect with the characters, as much as I wanted to.  Had potential to be a great read, just wasn't for me.

This was a fairly good book.. Some of it was a little predictable here and there. Overall though I did enjoy it.

This was the first book by this author that I have read. This book was very predictable and the characters were kind of static and not well developed. The theme was to simply not take life for granted and to family has good intentions despite things happening,

I choose this book because I expect insights into loss and change especially as this author has a strong reputation in this area. 
Sadly I found this riches to rags - but rags and happiness - superficial and predictable. 
Because I had received by copy through NetGalley I persisted but it felt more like homework than a pleasurable curl up on the sofa experience.
Apart from the lack of insight and innovation in the story, I found the central character inconsistent. For example while she is naive to think that her domestic experience could get her a catering job, she does appear to know how to cook but at no point does her cookery experience translate it to coming up with nutricious cheap meals for her family beyond pasta in tomato sauce. She never considers going to the library to find info on doing things - despite the fact it would also be warm and safe. Generally she seems overwhelmed, yet magically lands a job where she is soon deputising for the manager. of a care home - a stressful environment (though this seems to be a calm one where the worst that happens is someone doesn't get visitors - some thing that could have been investigated more).
Sadly my general feeling is disappointment and I won't be following up with other books from this author

Interesting story of a woman losing her husband and lifestyle, then having to start over. Well written, though I feel like I've read this type of story before.

Beautifully told story how life can change in a moment. Nina and her children live a life of not having to worry about money, until it all comes crashing down. The way she handles the obstacles that come her way, shows how strong of a woman she is. This is character driven with an appealing plot. It draws you in right away. I could relate to this because being a mom, you want to provide stability for your children.

I was blessed with a ARC however the following review is honest and unbiased

Another great true to life story from this wonderful author.  All the characters are so lovable I found myself willing them on and the once again was sad I have no sister. As always a great book which I highly recommend and look forward to next book from Amanda.