Thank you all for reading an commenting, it’s very much appreciated. I understand what everyone is saying about the start, it’s all good points – It was sort of a prologue (the part in the woods) but everyone hates them, but maybe just switching the two parts round and making them chapter one and two?
To answer a few specific points, the book moves between him and Laura’s; her’s told in 1998 and 2014, so the chapter seven is really sort of three in his time line. I take on board the points re-pace and language, I wonder if properly breaking them apart in to two might give each more time and space to work better? The other thing I might do is see if I can work the ‘him’ passage into one of the other chapters, so that is almost a dream he wakes up from – to anchor it better into the narrative?
Thanks all again, I am emboldened enough to maybe post another chapter, not to be a thread hog!