Short Book and Scribes #BookReview – The Tango Chain by Linda MacDonald

The Tango Chain by Linda MacDonald is published by Troubador Publishing and is available in eBook and paperback. My thanks to Linda for sending me a copy for review.

You can read my reviews of the other books in this loosely linked series by clicking on the title below. Linda also wrote a guest post about psychological abuse which was a theme in The Man in the Needlecord Jacket and one about How Meeting Lydia Came to Be.

Meeting Lydia

A Meeting of a Different Kind and The Alone Alternative

The Man in the Needlecord Jacket

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Two women, two dangerous obsessions, one tangled web of love, longing, and lies.

When newly retired teacher Taryn stumbles into the seductive world of the Argentine tango, the unexpected reappearance of her charismatic ex, Marc, threatens to unravel the stable life she’s built with steady, dependable Neil. As she spirals between exhilaration and self-destructive temptation, Taryn risks repeating the very mistakes she once swore she’d left behind.

Down the road, Rachel – clever, impulsive, and half Taryn’s age – is trapped in an affair with a married man she calls “Sam”. She knows he’s wrong for her. She knows the relationship is doomed, but Rachel can’t tear herself away. When Taryn, determined to save her from heartbreak, draws her into the tango scene, a truth erupts that leaves both of them reeling.

With their lives suddenly entwined, Taryn and Rachel must confront the illusions that have kept them captive: illusions about love, about themselves and about the people they’ve placed on pedestals.

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The Tango Chain is book five of a loosely connected series which can be read as standalone stories but are interlinked by the characters. I’ve now read all five and have enjoyed them very much.

This book is centred around two women, Rachel and Taryn. Rachel is having an affair with a much older married man. It’s the sort of toxic relationship you might expect as Rachel is besotted and ‘Sam’, as she calls him for privacy reasons, is quite clearly taking whatever he can get. Taryn is an emotionally unstable woman, almost 60, and torn between settling down with steady Neil or going back to her promiscuous and ill-advised ways. The two women live near each other and find they have more in common than they first realised, not least a burgeoning love of dancing the Argentine Tango, an intense and sexual dance.

This is a strongly character-driven book, focusing on human flaws and foibles. The narrative is told in alternating chapters by Rachel in the first person and then from Taryn’s third-person point of view which worked well and meant each voice was distinctive. For much of the book I didn’t find either woman particularly likeable, but the reasons for their behaviour became clearer and I think on the whole, the story offers a very honest view of humanity and all its imperfections.

It was good to meet some of the characters from the previous books again, particularly Marianne. I wonder if I’ll meet them again in a future book…I hope so as I’d love to know what happens next. The Tango Chain is an engaging and relatable story of obsession, temptation and ultimately, redemption.

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Linda MacDonald is the author of five novels: Meeting Lydia and the stand-alone sequels, A Meeting of a Different Kind, The Alone Alternative, The Man in the Needlecord Jacket and The Tango Chain. They are all contemporary adult fiction, multi-themed, but with a focus on relationship issues. In November 2016, Meeting Lydia was adapted as an audiobook, narrated by the talented voice actress Harriet Carmichael and published by Essential Music, London. After studying psychology at Goldsmiths’, London, Linda trained as a secondary science and biology teacher. She taught these subjects for several years before moving to a sixth-form college to teach psychology and health and social care. Linda was born and brought up in the England’s beautiful Lake District, in Cockermouth, and after thirty-six years in leafy Beckenham in south east London, she moved to Weymouth in 2021 where she now lives with her husband and dog.