Interview with Bethany Jane Askew

Author of Out of Step

Bethany Askew is the author of eight novels: The Time Before, The World Within, Out of Step, Counting the Days, Poppy’s Seed, I Know You, Don’t I?, Three Extraordinary Years and The Two Saras (Runner Up in the Bookends Prize, Lakeland Book Of the Year 2021)
Bethany likes to write about women’s lives, their role in society, their position as wife and mother and the impact of marriage, children and divorce on family dynamics.
Two further women’s fiction novels are due to be published in 2022 and 2023 and she is currently working on a new one.

Bethany lives in Somerset where she was born and brought up. She is married and has four grown-up children and seven grandchildren. In her spare time she enjoys reading, listening to music, walking, the theatre, voluntary work and dancing.

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Synopsis

Seen from the perspectives of three very different women, Charlotte, Alice and Anna, this novel follows the first few years following the break up of a marriage.
When Charlotte leaves her husband Steven to live with her lover Jeremy she naturally assumes that her six year old son Tom will live with them and that Jeremy's teenage daughter Octavia will live with his ex-wife Alice.
But it doesn’t work out like that.
Publicly and privately humiliated by her betrayal, Steven isn't content to sit back and accept the situation.
Alice proves equally difficult, leaving her troublesome daughter Octavia for Jeremy and Charlotte to look after.
As the children come and go between step-families, rivalries, jealousies and resentments escalate, and it remains to be seen which, if any, of these three relationships will survive.