Good Morning everyone! Happy Bank Holiday Monday to all of you in the UK. I hope you all have a fab day in the sun and don’t get sunburn! Wear your suncream. Let’s hope the sun is shining where you are as well. I finished reading Raising Hell by Bryony Pearce over the weekend and it was so much fun to read, I didn’t want it to end.

Today I’m here with a very special author post where Bryony tells you five things you need to know about Raising Hell!

Thank you UCLan Publishing and the author for a copy of the book and a spot on the blog tour! Look out for my review on June 3rd for even more reason why you should read this book.

Raising Hell is out on the 3rd June and you can pre-order here: Amazon UK | Waterstones | Book Depository | Blackwells |

Goodreads Synopsis

Meet Ivy Elizabeth Mann:
“I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not half faery, or demon, or angel or anything like that. Mum’s a Body Shop consultant living in a bungalow in Birmingham and Dad enters crossword competitions.”

Once upon a time, Ivy and her friends did a very stupid thing and now there’s a rift letting dark matter into the world. Dark matter manifests as black magic which actually works. Now every teenager with access to the Internet is raising hell. Literally.

Ivy’s doing her best to stem the tide, but her new job working school security barely pays the bills and there’s only so much one girl with a machete (and a cat possessed by her own dead grandmother) can do against the forces of evil.

Now she’s facing a teenaged goth with an attitude, a dark cabal with a terrifying agenda and a potential zombie apocalypse.

Ivy losing her job might be the best thing to happen to the world!

FIVE THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT RAISING HELL

1. Raising Hell was written in the middle of a global pandemic. I didn’t want to write a book about a pandemic, nor did I want to include covid in my writing, but inevitably it crept in. When I was thinking about the zombie plague, which spreads fast and kills quickly, I imagined myself in rush-hour London with people turning to zombies around me, and I thought about how it must feel to have someone nearby coughing while I was trapped on a tube line. Although I don’t describe the zombie’s journey through London, only their arrival at Emporium, you can see, through the kinds of people who have been turned and how, how awful the journey through the city must have been.

2. The main character, Ivy Elizabeth Mann feels like a daughter to me. Consequently, she has the name I would have given my own (second) daughter if my husband hadn’t donated a Y chromosome, meaning that I had this lovely girl’s name picked out and no way of using it! One advantage to being a writer is that it means I can gift the names I love to characters (otherwise I would have some oddly named pets) and I’m very glad that I saved Ivy Elizabeth for a character I really love.

3. The occult symbols that form the chapter headings are actually real symbols. I searched online for symbols of protection and blessing. If they work, readers might find themselves carrying some nice supernatural armour around with them!

4. My favourite character is Gran, the talking cat. She enables me to inject a lot of humour into the story. There is also a lovely serious moment between Ivy and Gran when she realises what Ivy’s lonely life and Gran’s own irresponsibility have turned her into.

5. Writing Raising Hell made me happy and kept me sane while the world was falling apart. I hope it makes you happy too!

About the Author

Bryony Pearce is a multi-award-winning novelist working in both the YA and Adult markets. In the YA genre, she has produced a mixture of dark thrillers, paranormal adventures and horror and currently has nine published novels: Angel’s Fury, The Weight of Souls, Phoenix Rising, Phoenix Burning, Wavefunction, Windrunner’s Daughter, Savage Island, Cruel Castle (2021) and Raising Hell (2021).

She also writes adult thrillers, and her first domestic noir, The Girl on the Platform is out with Avon (Harper Collins) in Spring, the next to follow in 2022.

Website | Goodreads | Amazon | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

Make sure to check out everyone’s stop on the blog tour and come back over here on the 3rd to read my review and why I loved this book so much!

Raising Hell is out on the 3rd June and you can pre-order here: Amazon UK | Waterstones | Book Depository | Blackwells |