Author: Samuel Bjork

Translated by: Charlotte Barslund

Publisher: Transworld Books/Bantam Press

Available: 2^nd November 2023 in Hardback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to Anne Cater, Random Things Tours and Transworld Books/ Bantam Press for my gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details

A Munch and Krüger detective story, following the first case that bought together the brilliant, young police cadet Mia Krüger and old-timer police chief Munch, as a new case helps solve a cold one. This is a prequel to the first three in the series and can be read as a standalone.

In Sweden two young boys are murdered, their corpses left in an almost brutally artistic arrangement, and the case remains unsolved.

Years later, two more young boys are murdered in Norway in similar circumstances.

Mia Krüger, a young trainee at the Police Academy is drafted in to help solve the case due to her uncanny ability to piece together these horrific stories. Teamed up with Munch, her skills and his experience start to show that the two cases may be connected.

My Thoughts:

It is my absolute joy today, to be sharing my thoughts with you on Samuel Bjork’s latest book The Wolf, in his Munch & Krüger series. If like me, you are fan of Scandi Noir and you’ve not yet discovered Samuel’s books, this new book could be the start of your descent into the deliciously dark depths of a new crime series! Or if you’ve already read the previous 3 books (I’m Travelling Alone, The Owl Always Hunts at Night and The Boy in the Headlights) in the series, like I have, then this instalment will shed new light on the backstories of two of my favourite fictional detectives. As The Wolf, takes readers right back to the beginning of their relationship both personal and professional! So if you’ve not read Samuel’s books, it will set you up beautifully for the previous books or if you have, it will certainly bring clarity to all the elements, you have previously wondered about!

The Wolf returns us to their first case together; Mia a trainee officer, laser focused, determined, and isolated. She is truly unique and her outlook on all situations, is wholly unlike anyone else’s! The peripheral luxuries of life are almost an irrelevance; her only preoccupation is in finding her sister, who has been missing for some time without trace! Mia spends her days, focused on her professional aspirations but her nights, take her into the dark under belly of the city, trying to trace her sibling. In contrast is family man Holger, whose career is finally on an upward trajectory, he is finally in charge and is putting an team together to deal with the most horrifying and complex cases. He does still have to deal with the endless interferences of bureaucracy and senior management, whose only concerns are image and budgets and really have no clue, what is involved in solving crime! This is a constant source of frustration for him but for the most part he handles it well, as he does most things, including his addition of Mia to his team.

Holger brings Mia into the team, despite the fact she’s not yet completed her training because, within the pictures and information of his latest crime scene. Mia can filter out the extraneous and irrelevant material and see with pinpoint clarity, details, implications, and clues, that escape everyone else. Enabling her to bring crystal clarity and eerie insight to the situation and point the team towards the killer! Which nobody has been able to do until now! I love the pairing of Munch & Krüger and I was engrossed in the development of their characters and this story answered some long held questions I had about their individual pasts, which had only been touch upon in Samuel’s previous books. As to how this story, resolves…well, you know by now, I don’t do spoilers, so you will have to buy the book and find out, won’t you!

There are many elements, I admire and relish about Samuel’s books; but what stands out for me particularly, is his exceptional talent at constructing clever, elegant, and multifaceted plot lines, that are exquisitely woven together to create unfailingly dark and complex, mesmerising mysteries. Containing concepts that will simultaneously intrigue, thrill, and terrify you all at the same time. I completely admit, Samuel’s books are not for the faint hearted, the ideas and images he creates permeate deep into your subconscious and on more than one occasion while reading his books alone in my little house at night. I’ve had to turn on all my lights to banish any monsters that might be lurking and restore my common sense, as the menacing and macabre atmosphere of this book and it’s predecessors has provoked my imagination to such an extent, that I am jumping at shadows!

Another element that I am completely drawn to especially in The Wolf, is Samuel’s atmospheric and astute observations on the broader perceptions of culture, community, environment and the social-political context of the country and the time, shared with us from the viewpoint of his characters and this understanding of the wider environment provides fascinating situational context for the potential reasoning for aspects of human behaviour and why people behave the way they do, especially when their outlook deviates from the supposed and accepted normal! I find this perspective a truly inspired addition to a fictional crime novel.

Reading The Wolf, for me, was an incredible, intense, intriguing, and irrepressible experience and one I hope to repeat soon with Samuel’s next book. This novel melds together seamlessly all the elements that make a genius crime novel for me, cunning plotlines, a brooding atmosphere, a cast of pithy, flawed, and fantastic characters and an outrageous and nefarious villain/s who is/are utterly devious but subtly so, although his/her/their crimes are not! So if you like your Scandi Noir, sinister, scintillating and stimulating…this is certainly book for you, it is certainly a firm favourite of mine and if this is your first foray into Scandi Noir, I can’t think of a better novel to start with!

Happy Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

Samuel Bjork is the pen name of Norwegian novelist, playwright, and singer/songwriter Frode Sander Øien. The Munch and Krüger series features, three books: the Richard & Judy Bookclub bestseller I’m Travelling Alone, The Owl Always Hunts At Night and The Boy in the Headlights

Please do read some of the other reviews available on this blog tour.

Author: Janice Hallett

Publisher: Viper Books

Available: 26^th October 2023 in Hardback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to Anne Cater, Random Things Tours, and Viper for my gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details:

One dead Santa. A town full of suspects. Will you discover the truth? Christmas in Lower Lockwood, and the Fairway Players are busy rehearsing their festive pantomime, Jack and the Beanstalk, to raise money for the church roof appeal.

 But despite the season, goodwill is distinctly lacking amongst the amateur dramatics enthusiasts. Sarah-Jane is fending off threats to her new position as Chair, the fibreglass beanstalk might be full of asbestos, and a someone is intent on ruining the panto even before the curtain goes up.

Of course there’s also the matter of the dead body. Who could possibly have had the victim on their naughty list? Join lawyers Femi and Charlotte as they read the round robins, examine the emails and pore over the police transcripts. Will the show go on?

My Thoughts:

It is my complete pleasure today, to share my thoughts with you on Janice Hallett’s latest book The Christmas Appeal, where once again we find ourselves embroiled in the machiavellian machinations of the Fairway players…Welcome back to Lockwood Bookophiles!

This year, I have read all of Janice’s exceptional, enticing, and excellent books and I have avidly consumed every twisty, tantalising page, of each of them but unusually for this creature of habit, not in the order of publication (boo!)

On discovering this latest novel was a sequel of sorts to The Appeal (Janice’s first book). My own internal compulsion to read books in order kicked in and I had my introduction to Lockwood and it’s now infamous amdram society and I quickly found myself utterly addicted to its sublime, cleverly constructed story, which ensured that I simply couldn’t put it down and to be honest, I am not sure anyone could! It did also, perfectly set the scene for my reading experience and enjoyment of The Christmas Appeal, which though significantly shorter, is no less masterfully brilliant than its predecessor! Personally, I would recommend reading them this way, as being engrossed in The Appeal, led to my easy comprehension of the festive shenanigans about to unfold on the pages of The Christmas Appeal, some readers may feel…’oh no it doesn’t’…but my response (in time honoured pantomime tradition is) Oh yes it does!…sorry couldn’t help myself there!

One of the many elements of this deliciously devious read, that I absolute adored and could relate to, is that all the drama/dramatics take place within the production of a Christmas Pantomime ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. Amdram is an arena I am very familiar with, rather like our esteemed author Janice, because in my former years I to belonged to an amateur dramatics company…yes…I was a junior WODS (Woodmansterne Operatic Drama Society) treading the boards annually of a local village hall. Dressed over the years as everything from a cockerel to a pithy shocking pink lycra and tutu clad fairy (named Fancy Free) …thank goodness, this all occurred before the advent of camera phones!

My own amdram experiences, with hindsight, have given me (an albeit innocent taste) of the type of complexities found with the micro hierarchies that manifest with in such groups and which Janice has constructed in her book with amusing, astute accuracy. The constant power plays for leadership and status, that are vividly and viciously contested, behind the gossima veneer of community spirit and charitable work and often result in, shall I say, unintended consequences (and that’s putting it mildly)….I will just say ‘gender neutral’ gift bags and ‘Sweeties’ at this point…if you want to know, what these seemingly innocuous clues refer to, well you’ll have to read the book to find out and I can’t help but giggle to myself as I type this sentence!

The novel itself opens with erstwhile lawyers Charlotte and Femi receiving a series of messages on ‘WhatsUp’ from their now retired former mentor R Tanner, KC but who is a bit of techno dinosaur (hence the confusion with WhatsApp). He has a new case for them to investigate! And just as in The Appeal, they are sent a deluge of paperwork, emails, police reports, round robins to sift through, in order to get to the bottom of the matter and it is via this information, we readers are re-introduced to some familiar characters along with some new voices and via their exchanges, we, along with Femi and Charlotte embark on a journey of discovery from a variety of perspectives, that provide, insight, hilarity and clarity into the plot and who could be the perpetrator?

Sara-Jane (SJ) and her beleaguered husband Kevin are now co-chairs of the Lockwood players, however ‘Bloody’ Cecilia and her family have designs on their status and position and will do pretty much anything to stage a coup and take control, with Cecilia making promises to potential supporters of better roles in future productions under their tenure! While SJ is trying to coerce and control everyone in to doing their part, while losing her grip daily in hilarious increments, she is bombarded with messages from the Vicar about his wooden panel, trying to organise enough of the ‘right people’ to join the society and they can’t be from the new estates! Re-organising cast lists…after all it is vital to have ‘an ugly idiot on standby’!

SJ tenuous grip on the situation is lost completely when during the performance, which despite being the director of, she misses because she is trying to extract her husband from his entombment in a wheelie bin, how he ends up there, I shall leave you to uncover! The monolithic and potentially toxic beanstalk is rendered asunder and instead of revealing a sweet bearing fairy to delight and entertain, deposits a mummified Santa on snowy blanket of polystyrene quavers centre stage! Who he is and how he got there, is for me to know and for you to read the book and find out…no spoilers here and the enfolding drama is yours to enjoy!

The Christmas Appeal is a compelling, clever, calamitous, Christmas crime conundrum overflowing with literary panache and liberal measures of sharp humour and allows the reader, to utilise their little grey cells to decipher between the power of implication and intension and decide for themselves, if what is said is truly intended! This is a novel that will appeal to all who read it and as the festive season approaches, if you are looking for the perfect Christmas gift for your (hopefully) book addicted friends and family.  I can’t think of a better present this year than treating them to copies of both The Appeal and The Christmas Appeal; which are without question a perfectly addictive and appealing bundle of books and if nothing else…reading these will keep them occupied for hours!

Happy Festive Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

Janice Hallett is the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Appeal (a Waterstones Thriller of the Month, the Sunday Times Crime Book of the Year and winner of the CWA Debut Dagger award) and the Sunday Times bestsellers The Twyford Code and The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels. She lives in West London.

Please do read some of the other reviews available on this blog tour.

Author: Heather Morris

Publisher: Zaffre/Bonnier Books

Available: 28^th September 2023 in Hardback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to Anne Cater, Random Things Tours and Zaffre/Bonnier Books for my lovely, gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone. 

Book Details:

Sisters under the Rising Sun tells the story of a group of women from Australia, England, the Netherlands and beyond, who were captured by the Imperial Japanese Army in 1942 and held in brutal conditions in a camp in the Indonesian jungle.

Mainly based upon the real-life experiences of Australian nurse Sister Nesta James and English musician Norah Chambers, who, after surviving a brutal 24 hours in the sea, reached the beaches of a remote island, only to be captured by the Japanese and held in one of their notorious POW camps – places of starvation and brutality, where disease runs rampant. Sisters in arms, Norah and Nesta fight side by side every day, discovering in themselves and each other extraordinary reserves of courage, resourcefulness, and determination.

Sisters under the Rising Sun is a story of women in war, exploring the powerful bonds of sisterhood of over 500 hundred women who struggled and survived together for nearly four years in the darkest of circumstances.

My Thoughts:

Today, I have the immense pleasure at sharing my thoughts on Heather Morris’s latest novel Sisters Under the Rising Sun. I am unreservedly a huge fan of Heather’s books. I feel that Heather brings the human touch to history, she is inspired and influenced by the stories and experiences of the unremembered, because as she puts it, how can you remember someone whose story is not known to you. Through her considerate, cohesive, and creative skill in merging real life experiences with artistic license, she endeavours, eloquently to shed light in history’s dark corners, where the passing of time, is slowly erasing all who survived such difficult times and taking with them, their memories and stories of courage, fortitude, humour, and survival.

I have a rather odd confession now, when I hear that Heather has a new book on its way. I always experience contrasting reactions; a sort of curious dread descends! On one hand I really want to read the book, but at the same time, I am also reluctant to actually start reading it! Not because I will find it lacking in anyway but because I know deep down inside of myself that once I start reading, I worry about processing the emotional turmoil that may arise. Heather’s powers of engagement are simply irresistible despite the complex context of the stories, she chooses to share with her readers. Having read her previous books, I know that for good reason, they often come with a weighty emotional burden for us readers to digest. Because of this, I feel I need to mentally prepare myself for the emotional draw to come, hence my reticence to start reading. Reading Norah, Nesta, and Margaret’s story. I had the heartfelt sense of being overtaken by a vortex of emotions from compassion to rage and back again, as Heather transports us to the wilds of the Sumatran jungle and into the footprints of her cast of characters, who are struggling and surviving. Women from all walks of life and of all ages from nurses and nuns to wives, mothers and daughters, who suffer deprivations, loss, starvation, illness and ill treatment, the likes of which, I can hardly imagine (especially from the comfort of my sofa) being anyone’s reality, never mind having the mental stamina to live through it!

This is a story of how a diverse group of women survived being Japanese prisoners of war in the remote, scorching, inhospitable jungles of Sumatra. Even before their internment, many of them escaped the boat they were on being bombed and sinking, leaving them adrift on the ocean or being able to swim to land (though many couldn’t) and finding no rescue! Through the eyes and experiences of the characters, as readers we are shown the failings of humanity, regarding how the Japanese during the war period dealt with civilians and military prisoners, it is unfailingly brutal! The dehumanisation, the unnecessary cruelty, the withholding of basics necessities, food, water, medical supplies. The vile insistence, that those in their charge, kowtow to their victorious whims, the full extent of which, you will discover for yourself, when you read this book.

I can’t wait for you to meet Norah, Nesta, Margaret and Inchy, Ena, Betty, and discover their back stories and then to follow their testing and often harrowing experiences during the war. Yet despite all the hardships they endure, these determined, remarkable women find a way to hope and bring humour and connection to all around them including their captors, through music. As both Nora and Margaret are both gifted musicians and between them create a voice orchestra and write (on any scrap of paper they can beg, borrow or steal) and re-imagine hymns and music for the women to sing and put on concerts with. The Captives’ Hymn and Ravel’s Bolero brought me to my knees literally! More so because I didn’t just read about them! I was so immersed in this book, that I literally couldn’t put it down, even when I had a supermarket shop and household chores on my to do list. So I treated myself to the audiobook, in order to keep reading and had the great privilege to hear these pieces of music, sung and I sat in my car in the supermarket car park, with the tears just pouring down my face, I was so moved by the intent, the words and music!

From the moment you open this book, you cannot fail to appreciate Heather’s ability to weave visual magic in her story telling, you can feel, hear, and see the pandemonium of civilians trying to flee the arena of war. The roar of plane engines, the destructive whine of bombs dropping, the innate tension of the characters, their fear, sadness, and desperate hope that all will be well. Even now days after finishing this book, the image of group of singing Australian Nurses standing together, saying farewell to each other collectively on a dock, without really knowing whether they will make it home or when, is etched in my head and as I write this thinking of them, it brings tears to my eyes, a lump in my throat and a smile of pride and admiration to my lips as I think of these women and their extraordinary strength in adversity.

At core of this novel is the importance of sisterhood, friendship, music and survival. It is truly a brilliant, beautiful, and brutal read, that is personal, powerful, poignant and plucky, I challenge anyone to not admire and love it. I read the entire book in one day and the ethos and essence of the women and their circumstances, shared with the novel does not leave you even when you’ve turned the last page. But the end of this book does not finish with the novel. As Heather has shared with us readers, what happened next in the lives of Norah, Nesta and few of the others, culminating in the wonderful statements from their families. For me this is a book, that will never leave my heart and mind and now that I know Norah and Nesta’s stories, I will never forget them and I really hope, you buy a copy and see exactly what I mean for yourselves.

Happy Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

Born in New Zealand, Heather Morris is an international number one bestselling author, who is passionate about stories of survival, resilience, and hope. In 2003, while working in a large public hospital in Melbourne, Heather was introduced to an elderly gentleman who ‘might just have a story worth telling’. The day she met Lale Sokolov changed both their lives. Lale’s story formed the basis for The Tattooist of Auschwitz and the follow-up novel, Cilka’s Journey.

In 2021 she published the phenomenal conclusion to the Tattooist trilogy, Three Sisters, after being asked to tell the story of three Holocaust survivors who knew Lale from their time in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Together, her novels have sold more than 16 million copies worldwide. In 2020 she published Stories of Hope, her account of her journey to writing the story of Lale Sokolov’s life.

Please do read some of the other reviews available on this blog tour.

Author: Anna Vaught

Publisher: Renard Press

Available: 27^th September 2023 in Paperback

Thank you to Will and Renard Press for my gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details:

A listless aristocrat, Lord Jones, finds himself in London during the Blitz, attending to insurance matters. A zebra and her foal, having escaped from the London Zoo during a bombing, cross his path, and he decides to take them back to his estate in Pembrokeshire. Little loved by his fascist-sympathiser parents, something in Lord Jones softens, and he realises he is lost, just like these zebras.

The arrival of the zebras sparks a new lease of life on the Pembrokeshire estate, and it is not only Lord Jones but the families his dynasty has displaced that benefit from the transformation. Full of heart and mischief, The Zebra and Lord Jones is a hopeful exploration of class, wealth and privilege, grief, colonialism, the landscape, the wars that men make, the families we find for ourselves, and why one lonely man stole a zebra in September 1940 – or perhaps why she stole him.

My Thoughts:

It is my great pleasure today, to share my thoughts on Anna Vaught latest novel The Zebra and Lord Jones a truly tremendous novel, that is tantalising, transforming and transformative in every way. Anna has a talent for focusing on weaving stories from documented fact. In this book, the escape of two zebras from London Zoo during the Blitz, this is their story and the man who stole them or rescued them or rather how they rescued him! What I absolutely relished about this book, was the underlying essence of hope, that despite the darkness enveloping the world and the lives of the characters, this interlude in their lives, was the candle in the dark! If you’ve never experienced one of Anna’s books, now is the time, you simply must add this book to your library!

Having previously read and loved Anna’s novel Saving Lucia on the very strong recommendation of my fellow blogger @ellspells. I fell in love with Anna’s style of writing, she is poetical, poignant and puckish and her books are imbued with an ethereal lightness of being, despite the content often dealing with some dramatic and dark events. I utterly admire, Anna’s skill at condensing and making vast swaths of historic research in to such cohesive, evocative, engaging stories and in blending the cohorts of fact and fiction together seamlessly. I would also like to draw your attention to Anna’s splendidly detailed foot notes and the fascinating additions at the end of the book and I suspect only the likes of David Attenborough, may know more about Zebras, than Anna does but I certainly wouldn’t bet on that!

The beating heart of this novel are the cast of diverting characters, whose lives and presence cannot fail to win your heart. From Lord Jones, with his hard shell which protects such a wounded soul and whose metamorphosis, from lost to found is such a magnificent progression. To the scene stealing Ernest, who you break your heart over, to the machinations of Talbot the Zookeeper, whose honest resolution is admirable.

My favourite character is our narrator, whose voice is always in the readers ear, directing our attention, presenting snippets of information, and engaging us in this journey. A voice that is enthusiastic and endearing that conveys a continuous sense of joy and awe in sharing anecdotes and influencing our reading experience with pervading sense of childlike curiosity, a trait that many of us readers may have lost, to some extent, over the course of our lives. Here, in this wonderful novel, is a timely reminder of its importance in our lives, whatever the circumstances. A truly delightful way to articulate a story! But the absolute stars of this show are of the 4 legged variety, Mother and Sweetie our Zebras (I say our because they become as much the readers as they do, the rest of the cast) and they are entrancing and humorous and I adore them!

Anna’s novel is delicious, a feast of historic delights, overflowing with sublime details, I mean how can you resist blasted owls or vengeful ghosts, I mean you simply can’t, can you?! This book is a literary masterpiece in my humble opinion it is unquestionably, fluid, fragrant, fixating, and unforgettable. You simply must have a copy and I hope you love it as much as I do!

Happy Reading Bookophiles… 

About the Author:

Anna Vaught is an English teacher, Creative Writing teacher, mentor, editor and author of several books, including Saving Lucia, Famished, Ravished and These Envoys of Beauty. Her short creative works and features have been widely published, and she has written for the national press and has had a column with The Bookseller and Mslexia.

 In 2022 Anna launched The Curae, a new literary prize for carers. Anna is also a guest university lecturer, a tutor for Jericho Writers, and volunteers with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. She is the mother of three sons, comes from a large Welsh family and lives in Wiltshire. The Zebra and Lord Jones is her third novel and seventh book.

Please do read some of the other lovely reviews on this blog tour.

Author: Hazel Prior

Publisher: Penguin

Available: 14^th September 2023 in Paperback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to Anne Cater, Random Things Tours and Penguin for my lovely, gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details:

A gorgeous feel-good novel about a young woman finding the courage to step into her new community and make friends, with the help of some very cute otters – from the bestselling author of Away with the Penguins.

Nineteen-year-old Phoebe and her widower father Al have recently moved to Devon, to a small cottage with a river at the end of the garden.

Struggling with her own closely guarded issues, Phoebe doesn’t go out much. Instead, she spends her time at home, watching detective dramas and playing detective herself – trying to deduce from Al’s deliveries as a courier what kind of lives her neighbours lead.

But when they find an abandoned baby otter on the riverbank, it’s just the push Phoebe needs to finally step into her new community. Taking the little one to the local otter sanctuary and witnessing the uncomplicated joy of its fellow creatures, she feels a burgeoning sense of happiness that she has not experienced in a very long time.

However, Phoebe soon starts to suspect that something is amiss at the sanctuary – and she will need to put all her sleuthing skills to good use if she wants to save the otters . . .

From the Number One bestselling author of Away with the Penguins comes this ‘otterly’ delightful, warm-hearted, and uplifting story about the healing power of nature.

My Thoughts:   

My dear bookophiles, today I am beyond thrilled, to be able to introduce you all to ‘The Otter Effect’ a wonderful element that imbues its ethos in every page of, Hazel Prior’s fourth novel Life and Otter Miracles. It is the sensation that engages your emotional core, from the moment you meet an Otter, a warm glow inside, that slowly spreads throughout your body and gives you a sense that all is right with the world! You cannot fail to feel it, as Otters with their warm curious expressions, big brown eyes that you can get lost in and their cheeky, playful antics, just make you joyful. And it is their zestful presence, that impacts all the fantastic characters in Hazel’s latest book and illustrates the importance of having an emotional respect and recognition in our lives for the natural world, and the vitality of having such an intimate comprehension and connection to such remarkable creatures, that rolls off the pages of this outstanding, original, and ‘otterly’ wonderous book.

Let me share a little about this story with you; despite moving from the urban bustle of Birmingham to the wonderful wilds of Devon and Highermead cottage with her father Al a retired maths teacher and widower.  Phoebe is still trapped, with a body that refuses to cooperate or function like everyone else’s. Every day for her, is an invisible battle with chronic, debilitating pain and exhaustion, even the smallest task is a huge uncomfortable effort! The sheer magnitude of her psychological and physical burden, she bears alone and silently, covering her unrelenting symptoms with a smile, believing this positive attitude to be her armour against, both the pity and suspicions of friends and family! Because if the medical fraternity can’t put a label on her condition; it must be all in her head or she must be faking it…right!

Fortunately Al doesn’t view Phoebe this way, he is endlessly supportive of his youngest daughter, despite still carrying the weight of grief at his wife’s death on his shoulders as well. Al is focused on his new job as a courier, delivering parcels far and wide. As Phoebe and Al settle into their new life in the country, they retain their familiar routines involving coffee and crime dramas, with Sherlock Holmes being Phoebe’s favourite and inspiring her own innocent forays in detecting, after all it is in the her honing of her Sherlock skills that leads to her discovery of the missing moggy Meow!

Life for Al and Phoebe continues much as it always has, until they find an abandoned otter cub, on the river side near their cottage. Seeking to provide the otter with the best care, introduces them to the brusque, slightly brisling and practical Carol, who runs a local Otter Sanctuary. But better still, Phoebe comes to know ‘the otter effect’ and it motivates her to be part of her new community and provides the best distraction from her constant pain.

As the story continues, the plots thicken and the flood water rises, we readers get to meet; the fabulous otters (Quercus, Rowan, Paddy and Coco) and their cheeky antics and find out more about the rest of Hazel’s fantastic cast of characters; like Christina in her purple Peugeot with a penchant for picking Mr Wrong, Mr Crocker a retired policeman with his girls (chickens) for company and who likes a chat, or Rev Lucy with the dodgy husband and Dan Hollis and Ellie (from Hazel’s first book) that enliven and enrich, Al and Phoebe’s life at Highermead cottage. But of course if you want to know, what happens next, then you will have to buy the book and read it for yourselves, because I have no intention of revealing any of the drama to come and I promise, there is a great deal to come!

One of the many reasons I love Hazel’s books so much is her championship and sentient sensitivity in focusing her stories around extraordinary protagonists whose age, neurological disorders or invisible chronic conditions are frequently marginalised within our society (either intentionally or unintentionally) such as in Away with the Penguins is 85 year old Veronica McCreedy who is always alone (simply because she’s old and there is nobody left, who values or understands her viewpoints) until she embarks on an Antarctic adventure and finds a new lease on life. Or Dan Hollis in Ellie and the Harp Maker, who requires quiet, order, and symmetrical sandwiches to function but has the magical ability to breathe life into wood. And now in Life and Otter Miracles, Phoebe, who some days can’t get out of bed, or write a note or take a bath but has an astute, perceptive mind and a talent for drawing and reading other people.

For me, at the core of each of Hazel’s books is unequivocal request, for us all to value diversity and encourages us to accept differences in others and subtly warns us not to judge another person merely by their looks, age, disability, or our own perceptions of such. But through her stories, Hazel instils in us readers, that we need to see the person within and celebrate each individual’s uniqueness irregardless of their circumstances. I admire Hazel’s humour and candour in imaging and illustrating this powerful, poignant, and progressive message in such an engaging manner.

Life and Otter Miracles is the otterly pawfect read for these darkening autumn evenings, where snuggling up with a good book, is sheer bliss. But don’t just take my word for it, I think it is high time you experience ‘the otter effect’ for yourselves, so put your best paw forward and treat yourself, to the most charming, charismatic, cheerful, and otterly compelling book of 2023.

Happy Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

Hazel Prior lives on Exmoor with her husband and a huge ginger cat. As well as writing, she works as a freelance harpist. Hazel is the author of Ellie and the Harp-Maker, the #1 ebook and audiobook bestseller Away with the Penguins and its follow-up, Call of the Penguins. Life and Otter Miracles is her fourth novel.

Please do read some of the other reviews available on this blog tour.

Author: Alexandra Potter

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Available: 17^th August 2023 in Hardback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to Chloe Davies and Pan Macmillan for my gorgeous, gifted copy. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details:

There is no magical land you finally arrive at where everything is figured out, fixed, and sorted. Life, like us, is a sum of moving parts, and if we’re lucky, we get to keep f**king up, figuring it out and laughing in the face of it all.

Nell’s back. Her life still isn’t going to plan. And she’s still asking the big questions and getting none of the answers. Like, for example:

1. Why is falling in love so easy, but staying in love so hard?

2. What do you do when your friendships are put to the ultimate test?

3. Can we ever really live in the moment and leave the past behind?

4. When everything goes tits up, do you fall apart or jump on a plane to LA with Cricket (an eighty-something widow and your BFF)?

5. And when all else fails, will celebrity-scented candles, smashed avocados and Instagram filters save us?

In this hilarious, un-put-downable follow-up to the bestselling Confessions of a Forty-Something F##k Up, now the basis for the major TV series, Not Dead Yet, there are laugh-out-loud lessons to be learned, truths to be told, adventures to go on and joys to discover.

But first, Nell has some more confessions . . .

My Thoughts:

If like me, you are over 40, well over in fact, OK, I am holding on to my 40s by my fingertips! And your life isn’t or hasn’t followed the expected trajectory! You know the one, meeting Mr Right or Mr Will Do Fine in your late 20s or early 30s, followed by marriage and a sproglett or two, the comfy home and a reasonably successfully career either in the home or out of it! Not achieving these hallowed or quite frankly harrowing life goals. Then you need to meet Nell because just many of us, her life hasn’t met societal or parental expectations either…. thank goodness!

In Alex’s first book in this series Confessions of a Forty Something F**k Up, I was introduced to Nell, flying back to the UK after her carefully curated life in the US has imploded. She is unemployed, unengaged, and mildly unhinged and in all fairness given what she’s experienced, who wouldn’t be! Nell tries to begin again, which I can confirm from personal experience is emotionally exhausting, especially when all about you (friends and family) have a pathological need to pity you or her!

Now I speak here with expert knowledge as Nell’s story uncannily echoes my own, granted there are a few differences, but it was the relatability of this book that I loved along with Alex’s ability to create Nell’s life catastrophises in a heartfelt, humorous manner and most of the time I was reading, I forget that Nell was entirely fictional!

Being unencumbered in your 40s or Nell’s 40s comes with a kind of intrinsic aloneness, independence and mental acuity not possessed by her married friends or her mother. But along with these positive characteristics there is also an ingrained sense of endless failure at not having achieved the life everyone else seems to have accomplished! An experience that has become endemic for many women in these modern times!

Nell ends up in a house share with Edward, who ticks all the politically correct social trends, he does yoga, cycles/runs everywhere, eats organic and has an insane obsession with keeping the thermostat low! As I write this, I can see Nell’s eyes rolling in her head and I know this, because mine are too! Honestly, Edward is the sort of chap, that I would go out of my way to provoke! Given Nell’s behaviour…I’m not alone in this!!!

Confessions of a Forty Something F**k Up was initially a book I couldn’t bring myself to read, this had nothing what so ever to do with Alex or the book but everything to do with my own circumstances at the time rendering me incapable of coping (with what I had quite wrongly, as it turns out) a book, that I assumed would be about; a down on her luck woman finally getting all her ducks in a row; meeting Mr Right, buying their dream house in the country and living happily ever after in their picture perfect life!… Given I was 41 and living in my parent’s spare room, I just couldn’t cope with that content, it was too depressingly far from my reality! Luckily I was so wrong!

Nell’s story isn’t this dreamy perfection and neither was mine, reading this novel, I discovered that despite less than ideal or prefect circumstances. Both Nell and I found success and satisfaction in the lives we’ve created for ourselves. Nell with her podcast all about her perspectives on her Forty something f**ked up life! And me winning the war of fear regarding my inability to write anything because of my dyslexia and that fact it takes me a while to write a cohesive sentence, which I believed would stymie my ability to be a book blogger, who needs to write to a deadline!

Instead I found and I know plenty of other readers did too, that Alex’s first book became a guide or handbook, to accepting and celebrating the imperfections of my Forty Something Life, where messy, merry, and managing one day at a time, were enough…in fact…are enough!

This summer Alex has brought Nell back to us, in her new book More Confessions of a Forty Something F**k Up. Nell is back and she (and we) are in a post pandemic world, she is ensconced in her tiny cosy flat, it may be small, but it is all hers! Nell is pondering on her experiences during the various lockdowns and counting down the days/hours to ‘Freedom Day’ the day when all the Covid-19 restrictions would finally be lifted.

I loved Nell’s Covid-19 retrospective, returning me to the weeks, months, and years of the pandemic, staying home, staying safe, avoiding friends and family, wearing masks (no fun at all when you are peri-menopausal and having sweat soaking hot flushes, seemingly every 30 minutes) not being able to move about freely and visit coffee shops, book shops etc. Although if I am candid here, unlike Nell (and many others IRL) I honestly didn’t mind my new normal at all! Despite living alone (bar two demanding fur beasts) I wasn’t lonely, and I wasn’t bored! Yes, I missed my partner, who I didn’t see in person for 35 weeks in 2020. Yes, I missed breakfasts and coffees out with my aged parents.

But actually having spent most of my life on my own, the restrictions didn’t bother or phase me, nor did I develop agoraphobia or an addiction to banana bread, not sure the same can be said for Nell! Although I did make a lot of Victoria sponges & Lemon and Raisin traybakes for friends and family! Instead, for me, being able to work from home changed my life for the better, as the pandemic also changed Nell’s life! Life is resuming but as Nell discovers, it is not returning to how it used to be and though it doesn’t seem like it at the time, maybe this is not a bad thing despite all the initial turbulence it causes her!

For me, revisiting Nell and all her crazy, be it DIY coffin making, a Hen Do in Yurts with a full complement of mindfulness sessions, without caffeine – the very idea of which made me swear out loud! Plus the damned Annabel is back and so is the sublime Cricket, who is one of my favourite characters ever! Reading this book transported me to my happy place!

Alex has such a talent for imbuing her novels with such a sense of tangible familiarity and fun and her words have the ability to warm your soul. In her creation of Nell, she allows all of us readers who have lived life in our own way to feel, seen, heard, and understood and brings us the knowledge, that nothing in life is perfect, yet it is in its imperfections! I have certainly taken Cricket’s mantra to heart, which is ‘You’re not too old, it’s not too late and Yes you can’. These are the best words to live by as far as I’m concerned and I think Nell agrees with me!

In More Confessions Nell’s life once more faces upheaval and issues from her past, overshadow her present, with some fairly explosive outcomes! I loved how her career path took a fantastic turn and that Cricket becomes very much a part of that and the scene with Cricket and a young stylist is still making me laugh, as I write this review…especially her reference to ‘old lady hair’ (you know, the short curly perms) which Cricket calls ‘cauliflower heads’…how can this description not fail to amuse you!

The themes of live, love, friendship and awareness of self are at the forefront of this sequel and the important message for us readers, that whatever you are feeling, you’re not alone, it is likely that someone else out there is feeling the same, is key! One of the most insightful elements of this book, I think is around Nell’s comparison of life’s breaking moments to a Kintsugi repair. Which is when a cherished vessel, that has been damaged by accident or use, the cracks or breaks are repaired with Japanese lacquer and the breaks are then painted with gold, which renders the vessel whole again, but different and ultimately more valuable. And that there are moments in Nell’s life (I’m not detailing them because I don’t want to spoil anything) that have caused fractures, but by sharing her experiences and emotions and being bravely honest with herself and those her around her. These cracks have been repaired, making her whole again, but forever changed and possibly improved too!

As you can tell from my epically long review (sorry about that). I love these books of Alex’s and I can whole heartedly confirm, that More Confessions of a Forty Something F**k Up, is just as, insightful, illuminating and incandescently funny as its predecessor and if you haven’t read either book yet, then what are you waiting for…they are on a bookshop shelf now, waiting for you…go get it/them! I insist!

Happy Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

Alexandra Potter is the bestselling author of numerous bestselling novels, including CONFESSIONS OF A FORTY-SOMETHING F**K UP which is now the basis of a major TV series. These titles have sold in twenty-five territories and achieved worldwide sales of more than one million copies, making the bestseller charts across the world.

Born and raised in Yorkshire, Alexandra lived for several years in LA before settling back in the UK. She currently lives in London with her Californian husband and their Bosnian rescue dog.

The Turnglass

Author: Gareth Rubin

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Available: 31^st August 2023 in Hardback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to Anne Cater, Random Things Tours, and Simon & Schuster for my stunning gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts. 

Book Details:

Imagine you’re holding a book in your hands. It’s not just any book though. It’s a tete-beche novel, beloved of nineteenth-century bookmakers. It’s a book that is two books; two intertwined stories printed back-to-back.

Open the book and the first novella begins. It ends at the middle of the book. Then flip the book over, head to tail, and read the second story in the opposite direction.  Both covers are front covers, and it can be read in either direction, or in both directions at once, alternating chapters, to fully immerse the reader in it.

1880s England.

On the bleak island of Ray, off the Essex coast, an idealistic young doctor, Simeon Lee, is called from London to treat his cousin, Parson Oliver Hawes, who is dying. Parson Hawes, who lives in the only house on the island – Turnglass House – believes he is being poisoned. And he points the finger at his sister-in-law, Florence. Florence was declared insane after killing Oliver’s brother in a jealous rage and is now kept in a glass-walled apartment in Oliver’s library. And the secret to how she came to be there is found in Oliver’s tête-bêche journal, where one side tells a very different story from the other.

1930s California.

Celebrated author Oliver Tooke, the son of the state governor, is found dead in his writing hut off the coast of the family residence, Turnglass House. His friend Ken Kourian doesn’t believe that Oliver would take his own life. His investigations lead him to the mysterious kidnapping of Oliver’s brother when they were children, and the subsequent secret incarceration of his mother, Florence, in an asylum. But to discover the truth, Ken must decipher clues hidden in Oliver’s final book, a tête-bêche novel – which is about a young doctor called Simeon Lee . . .

My Thoughts:

From the instant I spied this book on social media, I wanted it with an all consuming force, it was almost painful how ardently I wanted to read it and to caress its bewitching beauty in my blogger’s paws. However, as any prolific reader will attest, it is very easy these days to be seduced by a sublime book cover with sexy spredges as once more, collecting beautiful books, is as much of a hobby as reading them. But it doesn’t always follow that because a book, looks luxurious that its content will be equally as lavish! Rest assured dear bookophiles, that in the case of The Turnglass by Gareth Rubin, this is most certainly not the case. Gareth’s book is the epitome of a beguiling captivating crime novel. It is unequivocally, sumptuous, secretive, scintillating and scrumptiously sinister and quite frankly there can’t be enough hype in my opinion to encourage you to buy it…so I insist that you do! If Daphne du Maurier and Henry Millar, had a literary love child, then Gareth has written it!

One of the features of this novel, that makes it so striking aside from Gareth’s exquisitely eloquent writing. Is its literal construction, by which I refer to the novel’s assembly, which is known as tête-bêche (or head to foot but let’s be honest, it sounds more exotic in French!) So you have two novellas that can be read in any way the reader chooses, you can read each part individually, which is how I initially thought, I would read this book. However, after a chapter or two of the (blue side) my curiosity took hold, so I flipped the book and read a couple of chapters of the (red side) and then flipped back again and I continued in this way reading 2 chapters from each book. As I found it stoked both my imagination, insight and intrigue into both stories and their secrets! But it is absolutely your choice, how you approach reading this resplendent book, so long as you do read it!

Let me share a little of what the novel/s are about. Off the Essex coast, is an island on which Turnglass House is situated. In 1881 it is the home of the Hawes Family (blue side). Off the Californian coast, not to far from Los Angeles is Turnglass House. In 1939 it is home to the Tookes (red side) Perplexing isn’t it! I had to re-read the first chapter of each book/side to make sure I hadn’t confused myself! I hadn’t!

In the 1880s, Dr Simon Lee travels to the wilds of Essex to provide medical assistance to his fatally ill cousin Oliver Hawes, a local parson, who is convinced that someone is poisoning him! On his arrival, Dr Lee discovers that Oliver is not alone, his sister-in-law Florence is incarcerated in what I can only describe as a glass box, off the library. Imprisoned for the supposed murder of her husband and her own mental infirmities! And Oliver is adamant, that she is trying to kill him too! Which would be quite an accomplishment for a woman, locked away and you can’t help the sense, that Florence really shouldn’t be imprisoned at all! Then again, maybe she should!!!

In the 1930s/40s is the rather dishy actor Ken Kourian, whose has struck up a friendship with author Oliver Tooke, whose family has pedigree and renown as his father is the State Governor and of course, they have more than one skeleton in their closet! Tragedy strikes, when is Oliver is found dead in his writing hut, suicide is assumed but Ken is convinced something more nefarious is in play and that Oliver wouldn’t take his own life! Oliver’s latest novel, The Turnglass is a tête-bêche and his protagonist is Simon Lee…. Could the clues to the truth be hidden in plain sight? Can you see them? What mysteries are afoot, well you’ll have to read the book to find out!! Absolutely NO SPOILERS here!!!

Gareth’s novel is a cacophony of cleverness, awash with shadows of the past and present illuminating the undying essences of brutishness, bigotry, and avarice. With meanings hidden upon meanings, like the gossamer wings of a dragonfly, hovering in the periphery of your intellect and on the pages, you read, the very sinister truths are simmering!

I absolutely adored this novel and I confess, that I am just a little bit in love with Gareth’s delightfully dark intellect and imagination! The Turnglass is magnificent read; it is adroit, atmospheric, and astounding in every way, plot, cast, concepts. You simply can’t put it down mentally, although physically, I did frequently put it down but only, so I could flip it to change stories! Gareth’s book is one that you cancel plans for, in order to keep reading and without hesitation one of my favourite reads of 2023. You will not have read anything like it…ever! Go buy it NOW!!

Happy Reading Bookophiles!

About the Author:

Gareth Rubin writes about social affairs, travel, and the arts for British newspapers. In 2013 he directed a documentary about the therapeutic art at the Bethlem Royal Hospital in London (Bedlam). His books include The Great Cat Massacre, which details how the course of British history has been changed by people making mistakes; Liberation Square, a thriller set in Soviet-occupied London; and The Winter Agent, a thriller set in Paris in1944.

He read English Literature at the University of St Andrews and trained at East 15 Acting School.

Please do read some of the other reviews on this blog tour.

Author: Christina Dalcher

Publisher: Harper Collins (HQ)

Available: 17^th August 2023 in Hardback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to Harper Collins for my beautiful, gifted copy. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone. 

Book Details:

 The one decision you can’t take back!

Prosecutor, Justine Boucher has only asked for the death penalty once, in a brutal murder case.

In doing so, she put her own life on the line. Because, if the convicted are later found innocent, the lawyer who requested the execution will be sentenced to death.

Justine had no doubt that the man she sent to the chair was guilty.

Until now.

Presented with evidence that could prove his innocence, Justine must find out the truth before anyone else does.

Her life depends on it.

My Thoughts:

Like most bookophiles, I have a cohort of writers whose books I simply cannot resist and when I get the news, they are about to publish a new book, my feelings of anticipation and expectation, grow to fever pitch until I finally have a copy in my bookish paws. This is most certainly the case for Christina Dalcher’s books, and I have the greatest pleasure in sharing my thoughts with you today, on her latest book The Sentence. I only hope I do it justice!

As far as I’m concerned, Christina writes the most outstanding, outrageous, and intellectually ornate novels that I have ever read. She has the tremendous ability to illuminate, illustrate and elucidate on some of the most complex social topics of our time, always with a female centric perspective. There was no respite for my mind when I was engrossed in her latest novel, The Sentence, nor in fact when I read her previous books, specifically VOX (which I have never recovered from reading, yes, it is that brilliant) nor Q (which I have never forgotten either). From the moment, I turn the first pages of any of her books, my brain is in full action mode and so it was with her latest novel.

The novel is recounted from different perspectives, but most prominently those of; Jake Milford, convicted felon on death row for murdering a child and Justine Boucher, prosecutor of his case, widow, and mother! And their life experiences from the past, provide complex context for the present and no I’m not sharing the details here because, I think doing so would or could be a spoiler and with this novel, you need to comprehend the backstories for yourself! You will be able to surmise, how Jake ends up in the position he does! And then there is Justine, whose backstory, leads her to having a level of responsibility for the legislative quirk, known as the Remedies act, now in force. An act, brought into being to re-balance the perceived arbitrary decision making of prosecutors within states who retain the right to impose the death penalty.

 The Remedies Act requires that the prosecuting attorney be certain, that the defendant in their case is truly guilty of the crime they are accused of, because if the sentence of death is imposed and carried out. And subsequent evidence comes to light and exonerates the executed felon, then in recompense for this error, the prosecuting attorney will pay the ultimate price and also be executed! Which of course sounds utterly insane but when considered logically and dispassionately, its ultimate aim, is to stop, prosecutors from arbitrarily because of their own personal preference or circumstance colour their decision in requesting the death penalty without truly being absolutely certain of a defendant’s guilt. If they get it wrong, they will pay the price!

Since the law changed, Justine has only asked for the death penalty in one case, in the killing of Caleb Church by Jake Milford and now his wife Emily, has found a piece of paper in the attic of their former family home, that could prove that Justine has made the wrong decision! What is the truth and what will it cost! Well if you want to know, you’ll have to read the book and find out because my lips are sealed!

The premise of The Sentence focuses on the validity of using the death penalty as a suitable form of punishment for offenders, who commit unspeakable crimes (or those which society deem such and of course, this can vary depending on where in the US the case is committed and heard). Should killers be put to death? Should death be the price for murder? Can we (Justine) ever be truly certain of guilt!

  Is the request for the death penalty really the ultimate restitution? Can it actually be an arbitrary issue, when it is down to the respective prosecutor, to ask for such an option to be applied and what if you had a crime, case, judge and jury that were all identical the only difference in both situations were different prosecutors, one who favours using the death penalty and one who doesn’t, would the outcome be just or fair? As a student of law, Justine makes this explanation in her argument against the use of the death penalty! So what prompts her, to eventually to request it, in Jake Milford’s case??

As I read this novel, I couldn’t help but consider, if you’ve ever watched a true crime series or read true crime novels, you are fully aware of the unadulterated evil that stalks our world and by watching or reading such material. You begin to comprehend that some people kill others because they enjoy it (granted this is a massive oversimplification of the psychopathy of serial killers or your more garden variety killers).

By which I mean; Some kill, because they believe their actions are justified repercussions or retribution for a perceived wrongdoing (and the reasoning here is completely subjective and often warped!) Some kill in error, a set of circumstances occur, that result in someone else’s death; like a child who kills because they have gotten hold of a parent’s weapon or like the actor Alex Baldwin, who shot a weapon on a film set and killed someone! Some kill, because the disturbed balance of their mind demands it, be it voices in their heads or inflated paranoia. Some people kill to hide the tracks and traces of other wrongdoing. There are endless unfathomable reasons, why one person will kill another.

But does it then follow that a state or country should legislate for court appointed murder by issuing a death penalty sentence. Is taking a life for a life, ever really justified regardless of the moral outrage of the situation? Is the application of the death penalty morally, socially or spiritually, right? Or does it exacerbate the human flaw of requiring vengeance to right a wrong! And just as importantly, can the legal and judicial powers imposing this sentence be certain, they have the right man or women to impose it upon! What if they get it wrong? What are the ramifications? In reality, not a great deal, a pardon maybe, some financial restitution possibly! In this novel, well you’ll see!

This clever, cohesive, cogent novel has occupied my thoughts endlessly in recent days and weeks and in the middle of writing this review, I stopped and discussed the story with my partner (who is American born but moved back to Scotland in his late teens, and has a great deal more knowledge of the reality of the death penalty) to ascertain his thoughts and to expand my knowledge of the issue, which really only extends to its eradication from UK law in 1964 subsequent to several defendants including Ruth Ellis being potentially wrongfully executed and all of this occurred over a decade before I was born! When reading this novel and writing this review, I have completely forgotten most of the time, I was considering a fictional premise because its essence is based so firmly in a factual issue!

The way Christina has created and curated her book just made my brain fizz with the relentless dichotomy of the topic and perspectives of the characters. The story has had me arguing both sides (for and against the use of the death penalty) and I still cannot adhere one way or the other and as I am usually effortlessly decisive, the issue of the need for certainty, has and still is, at the forefront of my mind.

Via the medium of this book and her characters, Christina has led me to conclude. The death penalty is certainly final. Its use despite all considerations is a quick salve, providing a visceral, instantaneous satisfaction that ‘justice’ has been done. An act of warning to those who kill, that by making that choice, they have negated their right to the sanctity of life. For those who have had their loved ones stolen from their arms, there is no release from grief, the emotional cost of such a loss is infinite and enduring and ending the life of the perpetrator, will only provide a small measure of closure. I cannot help but think, that actually death for some killers is an easy escape from decades of solitary incarceration, which may just be a better punishment to fit their crimes.

The Sentence is a provocative, powerful, poignant, pugnacious, persistent, and pertinent novel. I applaud and admire Christina for such imaging such a taut, thrilling, and tenacious story, that I cannot stop thinking about (as you can see from my rather long review) and I have no doubt you will feel the same and I hope you add it to your bookshelves very soon, as everyone really needs to read this book and it is certainly one of my favourite books of 2023.

Happy Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

Christina Dalcher is a linguist, novelist, and flash fiction writer living in the American South. She has over 100 publishing credits in the UK, US, and Australia. Recognitions include first prize in the Bath Flash Fiction Award (February 2019), second prize in the 2016 Bartleby Snopes Dialogue-Only Contest, and nominations for The Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions. Her debut novel VOX was a Sunday Times Bestseller.

Her flash fiction appears in The Molotov Cocktail Prize Winners’ anthology, Whiskey Paper, Split Lip Magazine, (b)OINK, Five2One Magazine, and several others.

Laura Bradford of Bradford Literary Agency represents three of Christina’s novels: VOX, Q (Master Class in the US), and FEMLANDIA. For other works, please contact Cicely Aspinall at HQ Stories/HarperCollinsUK for literary sub rights.

Jasmine Lake of United Talent Agency is the contact for any film inquiries.

Christina lives with her husband and the ghosts of several dogs and cats.

To read more about her, or see samples of her work, please visit www.christinadalcher.com

Author: Laure Van Rensburg

Publisher: Penguin Michael Joseph

Available: 3^rd August 2023 in Hardback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to the SquadPod Collective & Penguin Michael Joseph for my gifted copy. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details:

Abigail is a proud member of the New America Baptist Church. Living miles away from the nearest town in South Carolina, she is safe from the depraved modern world.

She is a good daughter. A valued member of the community.

So when she is the sole survivor of a fire that burns her family’s home to the ground, it seems like a tragic accident.

Until a surprising discovery is made: before the fire, Abigail let a stranger in.

Who was the stranger? What started the fire? And was the outside world always the threat – or did danger lurk within the community’s walls?

My Thoughts:

It is my immense pleasure to be sharing my thoughts on Laure van Rensburg’s second novel The Good Daughter with you today. Laure’s latest novel is The Squadpod Collectives book club choice for August and what a phenomenal choice it is, if this book isn’t already in your hands, go get a copy immediately as this book is a potent, pernicious, page turning pleasure, Bravo Laure, bravo!

 From the moment Laure shared with us last year, that her second novel would be centred around a young woman in a cult. I was beyond desperate to read it, as one of my favourite reading tropes are novels that delve in to the dark, destructive, and devious, environments of religious cults, whose leaders twist religious/ biblical teaching to their own malevolent will and succeed in preying on people, whose physical and emotional needs are weakened by difficult life experiences. Drawing such people into their sphere of influence by making vacuous promises to transport them to a new life. But the life they find is one that on the surface, promote ideals of redemption, rejuvenation, and resolution but when you dip beneath their shiny, happy, propaganda ridden surfaces, what you find is a rotting malignant core, both in fiction and in reality and Laure’s novel doesn’t disappoint in this respect!

Cults as a topic for a novel provides this reader with an insistent, intense curiosity to find out the truth of the matter and Laure has an uncanny knack for utilizing my natural compunction and curiosity (and probably yours as well) to delve deeper into the unknown, unexplained and often unfathomable to expediate the daedalian trajectory of her plotlines and elevate the ever increasing toxicity of the atmosphere of her story and uncover the truly poisonous personalities of some of her cast!

All that our protagonist Abigail knows, is how to be a good daughter, to devotedly follow the creed instilled into her; to be submissive, obedient, earnest, and modest, these prescribed attributes are the key to her salvation. All she knows, is she is safe and secure within the confines of her family and church at New Haven, where her daddy is the pastor. An egregious man, who vehemently guides their flock on the righteous path but subtly and secretly harbours his own noxious proclivities. According to his word, the world outside New Haven is awash with sin, sinners, and corruption, which will subsume those who venture there!

Feminism is at the core of this fallen world. Women need to know their place as wives and mothers, to submit to their husbands and focus only on their families and not take the rightful jobs of men, or question decisions made for them or about them, the will of God is that they obey, as God is the head of the church, man is the head of his wife and children! Abigail sees no reason to dispute this manifesto, until despite her dutiful behaviour, she is repeatedly maltreated and sanctioned without justification and she begins to question all that she thought she knew, with truly perilous repercussion!

One of the many elements of this novel that I admire, and relish is Laure’s ability to motivate me into having such vivid emotional reactions to her stories and giving me the opportunity to consider why I am reacting in this way! There are frequent points in this novel, that as a woman, made me so incandescent with rage and frustration, mostly towards the behaviours of nefarious men; who menace, manipulate, and maim physically and psychologically the women in this book. My only recourse was that I just screamed a plethora of swear words out loud, much to the disapproving displeasure of my cats!

Now, I fully expect you might think I’m nutty lala at this point but I’m not (well mostly not) because you may assume its madness that I am reacting so viscerally to fictional characters and in a fictitious environment but here’s the thing. My reactions are a little more long ranging and born out of knowledge gleaned in my previous extensive reading of cult related books and because these repugnant behaviours Laure has imagined in The Good Daughter, have their roots planted, in well documented reality. Prime examples being the reprehensible Warren Jeffs and FLDS with his mania of control, mantra of Keeping Sweet and penchant for polygamous marriages to pre-teen girls and don’t’ get me started on the repellent hair and dresses mandate. To the less talked about primordial attitudes of the Plymouth Brethren (as recounted by Rebecca Stott – In the Days of Rain) and ultimately I believe my expressive reaction is to the never ending attempts at subjugating women and Laure’s book/s just gave me the focus to articulate this!

Now, I’ll pop down off my soap box and tell you a little more about the book. When we initially meet Abigail, it is during the aftermath of a fire, which supposedly claimed the lives of her parents! She is naturally traumatised by this turn of events but has no discernible memory of the time leading up to the fire or the event itself and Laure subtly leads us towards, possible options for this memory loss! The book itself is structured to lead us readers to the potential outcomes of the plotlines. So some of the chapters are in the present (post fire) and some are weeks/days/hours before the fire and like pieces in a jigsaw, slot in the missing holes of Abigail’s memory, similarly the partial recordings that pop up also, provide illumination on the situation until inevitably the past and present collide in a volatile conclusion but of course, what that might be, is for me to know and you to read the book and find out!

The best way I can think of describing this novel to you, is that it is a literary iceberg, you can see the surface, the sense of place, the suggestion, that New Haven is just a benign, religious community, who are private and keep themselves away from modern society. Yet, Laure skilfully and incrementally plants seeds of doubt about this picture perfect life, right from the outset; like the small suggestions about the actual nature of the relationship between Abigail and each of her parents. Or Abigail’s navigation from indoctrinated acceptance to ever increasing awareness of self and her struggle to disengage with her accepted and established norms. 

Leading to her desperately seeking answers to her ever increasing questions about her past and her present and bit by bit, as a reader you find yourself, sliding into the murky, depths beneath the iceberg, which is far larger in scope than what is on the surface. Abigail’s involvement with Summer; a visitor to the nearby local town, who is making a podcast and wants to interview Abigail about her life at New Haven. Or Abigail’s confused relationship with Tom, or the concept that everything that happens to Abigail after the fire or come to that, before the fire is really ‘for her own good’…the most damning phrase ever, trust me, you’ll find out what I’m alluding to here! But of course, I don’t do spoilers…so if you want to find out the truth and believe me you will! I shall leave it down to you to discover for yourselves what really happened at New Haven and I shall leave you wondering if Abigail will ever find ‘Freedom from the bondage of a braid’!

In case it isn’t obvious by now, I absolute love, love, love this book, it is dark, dastardly, devious, and divinely complex and breathtakingly captivating in everyway. It is a novel, that you can’t put down but want to at the same time because you almost can’t bare to read on, as you are unsure, if any satisfactory resolution will occur! This novel is unquestionably one of my favourite books of 2023 and Laure is indubitably one of my must buy authors.  If this book isn’t on your shelves already, then it needs to be, prepare to purchase and then cancel all plans!

Happy Reading Bookophiles

About the Author:

Laure Van Rensburg is a French writer living in the UK and an Ink Academy alumna. Her stories have appeared in online magazines and anthologies such as Litro Magazine, Storgy Magazine, The Real Jazz Baby (2020 Best Anthology, Saboteur Awards 2020), and FIVE:2:ONE. She has also placed in competitions including 2018 & 2019 Bath Short Story Award.

Her debut novel, Nobody But Us, follows Ellie and Steven who take their first trip away together, but what starts as an idyllic weekend soon takes a darker turn, as it quickly becomes apparent that each of them harbour secrets – and that one of those secrets is deadly.

Nobody But Us (originally titled The Downfall) was shortlisted for the 2019 First Novel Prize, 2019 Novel London Competition and 2019 Flash 500 Novel Opening. It will be published by Michael Joseph in April 2022 and has sold in fourteen territories, including Germany, Italy, Norway and the United States.

Laure’s latest novel. The Good Daughter, was longlisted in 2019 Exeter Novel Prize and more recently shortlisted in the 2020 Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. It publishes in August 2023.

You can learn more about Laure and her writing on her website at: www.laurevanrensburg.com.

Author: Lloyd Devereux Richards

Publisher: HQ Stories/Harper Collins

Available: 1^st August 2023 in Paperback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to HQ Stories/Harper Collins for my gifted copy. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details:

From Lloyd Devereux Richards comes the next pulse-pounding thriller in which FBI agent Christine Prusik races to track down a serial killer who leaves a peculiar mark on his victims.

Forensic anthropologist Christine Prusik has a knack for solving the most unusual cases – and for bending the rules in the process.

When the bodies of young women start appearing in the caves of Indiana and Illinois, Christine immediately jumps into action. But her Chicago field office is undergoing a reorganization, and the boys’ club at the top seem more interested in getting all the paperwork in order than solving the murders.

Christine isn’t going to let a little red tape stop her, and when she discovers that all the bodies contain the same mysterious pin-sized bruise on the back of their necks, she realizes she’ll have to confront her own inner demons to find the killer.

My Thoughts:

I am huge fan of crime fiction, so you can imagine my enthusiasm at discovering Lloyd Devereux Richards books. Today I am sharing my thoughts with you on Lloyd’s novel Maidens of the Cave, his second book in the Christine Prusik series. Which, I confess that I devoured in a day as it is an enticing, exciting and engaging read and now I can’t wait for book three! If you enjoy crime novels as much as I do, then you definitely should add Lloyd’s books to your collection, they more than deserve their place in your crime collections.

Let me give you a taste of the story; Christine Prusik is a dedicated, diligent, demanding and determined woman, she is self-contained and ultra focused on her work as an FBI special agent and Forensic anthropologist. She sees details and patterns in evidence that others around her miss when involved in case, her one deviation from work is her swimming, which is where she does her best thinking.

I love the character of Christine, she is very serious and professional in many ways but these character traits are really just the hard shell that she has developed, due to the constant, dismissal of her abilities starting with her father’s behaviour towards her swimming competitively as a child/teenager. Her shell strengthening further over the years, with her having to deal with constant challenging behaviour of sub-par men, whose ego and professional insecurity make her a target, especially as their abilities don’t come close to matching hers! I also admire her gumption, when she knows she’s right about an issue, she doesn’t back down, even when her job is under threat and all around her can’t see the wood for the trees. There is also a softer core to Christine, she suffers with debilitating panic attacks, brought on by a near fatal incident that occurred when she was a young student undertaking research and left significant psychological scars but also provides her with remarkable insight and instinct, when hunting down serial killers!

This novel begins a year on from Christine’s successful resolution of the Stone Maidens case (that’s book one in the series) there has been changes in the management hierarchy of the FBI Bureau office in Chicago, the new Director is obsessive about her profile admin project, demanding that Christine and her team, complete detailed descriptions of their roles. Her lead henchman is Christine’s new boss, he is obedient, obliging and laser focused on bringing Christine to heel, trying to tie her up in endless utterly pointless meetings about the Director’s pet project (although unbeknownst to Christine) there is another reason for this project, but you’ll find out what this is, when you read the novel, no spoilers here!

Christine meanwhile has turned her attention to the discovery of the body of a young woman in a cave, with seemingly no significant injuries. Christine ignores all orders that she should remain in the office and heads out on the road to investigate and then another young woman’s body is discovered in another cave and pieces of a forensic puzzle come to light, both women have the same tiny mark on their neck and what with a Pharma giant and a University battling for funding and both using the toxicology of a rare golden skinned frog, how do these elements fit together? That’s for me to know and you to find out!

Once again Christine is hot on the heels of what she believes is a serial killer, her investigations, lead her back into the company of Sheriff Joe, who she met in her last case and formed a loose romantic attachment with but their liaison got put on a back burner with her return to Chicago. However, the flames of attraction are still just smouldering and in this book, we get a taste there could be more to come for the pair and we see, Christine’s realisation that Joe, isn’t like any of the other men she’s been involved with previously, as they say his actions speak louder than words and I confess I have more than a little soft spot for him as well!

I have been fully immersed in the multi-faceted plotline that Lloyd has created and developed, and I admire the bravery that he brings to Christine’s character, when like a blood hound on a scent, she refuses to stop investigating, just because management try to force her back into what they perceive as her place/role. The inclusion of the killer’s perspective is an element that adds to this book, as it brings such taut atmosphere to the novel, their sinister presence, has a voice and as a reader, you have an inkling what might happen before Christine does but of course you can’t do anything about it, which certainly makes for compelling reading in my book!

I love this series and as I said at the beginning, I can’t wait to see what Christine tackles next, there is so much potential in what might occur for her personally and professionally. Lloyd’s books are immersive, intelligent, and imaginative and if you love crime novels, especially series then you certainly should read them. Personally, I think these books are better read in order, as there are elements in the first book, that cross over into this one but ultimately how you choose to read them is entirely yours, as long as you do read them. As in my opinion they are the perfect way to spend a Saturday at home!

Happy Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

Born in New York City, Richards worked as an attorney in Vermont and raised three children. Previously, he served as a Senior Law Clerk for an Indiana Court of Appeals judge, researching and writing drafts for dozens of published opinions, including the appeal of a serial killer sentenced to death and subsequently electrocuted.

Before practicing law, Richards travelled extensively through Europe, Africa, and Central America, journal writing and bird watching. He enjoys hiking, writing poetry and sketching pen and ink drawings. He lives with his wife Cameron O’Connor and their two dogs in Montpelier, Vermont.

Author: Julie Owen Moylan

Publisher: Penguin Michael Joseph

Available: 20^th July 2023 in Hardback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to The SquadPod Collective and Penguin Michael Joseph for my gifted copy. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details:

When Edie Budd arrives at a shabby West London boarding house in October 1958, carrying nothing except a broken suitcase and an envelope full of cash, it’s clear she’s hiding a terrible secret. And she’s not the only one; the other women of 73 Dove Street have secrets of their own.  

Tommie, who lives on the second floor, waits on the eccentric Mrs Vee by day. After dark, she harbours an addiction to seedy Soho nightlife – and a man she can’t quit.

Phyllis, 73 Dove Street’s formidable landlady, has set fire to her husband’s belongings after discovering a heart-breaking betrayal – yet her fierce bravado hides a past she doesn’t want to talk about.

At first, the three women keep to themselves.

But as Edie’s past catches up with her, Tommie becomes caught in her web of lies – forcing her to make a decision that will change everything.

My Thoughts:

Today I have the pleasure of sharing my thoughts with you on Julie Owen Moylan’s second novel 73 Dove Street that I have been enjoying along with my fellow SquadPod members in July. Julie’s novel is evocative, enticing, emotional and expressive, transporting readers into the post war chaos of the late 1950s in London. What I love about Julie’s book, is her keen attention to historic detail and her ability to immerse her readers in the gritty environment her characters inhabit. This is a female centric story, that explores the physical and psychological complexities of three women’s lives, that have a foot hold in the past but the issues they face are just as germane today.

Edie, Tommie, and Phyllis are these three women, each of whom is a survivor in her own way, each struggling to recover and move on from various traumatic elements that intersected their lives.  When happenstance brings them together, it takes time for their friendship to build and for them to develop trust in each other, which isn’t easy for any of them, given their previous experiences.

One of the many facets of this novel that drew my attention, was the link between property and people. Having lived most of my life in various cities and studied art and architecture for my undergrad degree. I have always been curious about the people who have lived in the properties or areas I have, so I enjoyed 73 Dove Street being the hub of the novel and I admire Julie’s skill at conjuring redolent images of the people and place with her fluid and stirring writing.

At the heart of this novel, is the supportive and restorative nature of friendship and learning to trust again, when Edie, Tommie, and Phyllis, have endured such trials and their trust in their own judgment has been decimated and trust in those they loved has been betrayed. I am skirting the details of what precisely has happened and continues to impact them, because Julie’s story progression does it beautifully and I don’t want to spoil the impact of this, by giving anything away here!

I will say that some of the issues that they face are driven by the societal environs of the period and as a woman, I couldn’t help but feel frustrated, angry, and deeply saddened that they had to navigate such situations. But it also occurred to me, that decades later, women today are still facing these types of situations and still battling outdated social morays, which seek, ultimately to hinder our equality and our expectation of choice across a wide range of areas. I have to applaud Julie for making her historic novel so emotionally intelligent and socially savvy, while conveying such gritty brutality. It was this confluence of elements that made this novel sing to my soul and made putting the book down impossible.

This is a powerful, poignant, and pertinent novel, that cohesively mixes historic ambience, with wonderful characterisation, I have a very soft spot for Phyllis, as her attitude reminds me of someone very dear, who is no longer with me. This novel is not focused on the black and white of situations but in the grey areas, so as I read, I found myself, trying to ascertain, what I would do if I were Edie or Tommie and the truth of the matter, is I honestly don’t know and I’m still thinking on this even now and I have to congratulate Julie on writing a story that so successful insinuated itself so deeply in my head and heart. This is a book; I think everyone needs on their bookshelves, so I hope you get hold of a copy ASAP!

Happy Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

Julie Owen Moylan is a writer whose short stories and articles have appeared in New Welsh Review, The Independent, Sunday Express, and My Weekly.

She has also written and directed several short films as part of her MA in Film. Her graduation short film called ‘BabyCakes’ scooped Best Film awards at the Swansea Film Festival, Ffresh, and the Celtic Media Awards. She also has an MA in Creative Writing and is an alumna of the Faber Academy’s Writing a Novel course.

Julie has written two novels, THAT GREEN EYED GIRL (May 2022) and 73 DOVE STREET (July 2023) Both novels are published by Penguin Michael Joseph. She is currently working on her third novel.

Author: Elizabeth Loudon

Publisher: HOOPOE / The American University Press in Cairo Press

Available: 16^th May 2023 in Paperback & eBook.

Thank you to Anne Cater, Random Things Tours & Hoopoe for my gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details:

In beautifully rendered prose, a mother, and a daughter struggle as outsiders in Baghdad and London in this intergenerational drama set against a background of political tension and intrigue “Who would be charmed by tales of life in the beautiful old house on the banks of the Tigris—looted now no doubt, its shutters torn, and the courtyard strewn with mattresses?”

One night in 2003, Anglo-Iraqi psychiatrist Mona Haddad has a surprise visitor to her London office, an old acquaintance Duncan Claybourne. But why has he come? Will his confession finally lay bare what happened to her family before they escaped Iraq?

Their stories begin in 1937, when Mona’s mother Diane, a lively Englishwoman newly married to Ibrahim, an ambitious Iraqi doctor, meets Duncan by chance. Diane is working as a nanny for the Iraqi royal family. Duncan is a young British Embassy officer in Baghdad. When the king dies in a mysterious accident, Ibrahim, and his family suspect Diane of colluding with Duncan and the British.

Summoning up the vanished world of mid-twentieth-century Baghdad, Elizabeth Loudon’s richly evocative story of one family calls into question British attitudes and policies in Iraq and offers up a penetrating reflection on cross-cultural marriage and the lives of women caught between different worlds.

My Thoughts:

Reading throughout my life, has been partly for entertainment but also for education of sorts. I have always found that books, be they fiction or factual, have always been my route to broadening my horizons, my knowledge and understanding of people, places and things, that in my daily life, I wouldn’t have anything more than a passing knowledge of. When I saw the details for Elizabeth’s debut book A Stranger in Baghdad. I was instantly drawn to it because it offered me the opportunity to discover more about a country, a time and place, that I have no personal experience of. As my only knowledge of Iraq and Baghdad would be what the BBC news has imparted over the decades, and shall we say the connotations have never been overly positive (and that’s putting it mildly).

Elizabeth’s novel, certainly put all I knew before into context, she has crafted an immersive, intelligent, intense, and insightful novel, that is filled with subtle sense of foreboding and is incredibly atmospheric from the moment you start reading. This is a novel seeped in history and heritage and is impeccably researched and the evocative details of Baghdad decades past engulfs you as you read. The story delves in the complexities of cross-cultural marriage, immigration and extrapolates on the intricate issues of colonial and political perspectives in Iraq.

The story begins in 2003, a subtly deliberate but pertinent date, as the Iraq invasion began at this time! In the office of Dr Mona Haddad, a psychologist who is just planning on leaving her office for the evening, when a spector from her family’s past, re-appears, Duncan Claybourne, this maybe his first visit but it won’t be his last and it tumbles Mona into a spiral of introspection about her family and their former life in Iraq before circumstances prompted them to flee!

At the heart of this exceptional novel is Diane Cutler, who we meet as a vibrant young nurse in the late 1930s, who catches the attention of the respected but lonely Dr Ibrahim Haddad, his innate ‘foreignness’ has left him isolated, and he is longing to return to warmth, acceptance, and familiarity of home. As they spend time together, Ibrahim appreciates Diane’s companionship and quick humour, and Diane admires Ibrahim’s calm solidness and I suspect his (in her eyes) exotic heritage. Their relationship and subsequent marriage, certainly baffles both sides of the aisle, you might say. Diane’s family react in predictable perplexity over her choosing to bind herself to ‘her foreigner’ and naturally can’t resist rancorous comments on race, religion, and their potential offspring! Equally, after their marriage and move to Iraq, Ibrahim’s family are suspicious of Diane and her innate Britishness and view her as an encroacher on their lives and in their country!

I found it both intriguing, irritating, and sad, that despite Diane living in Iraq, having 3 children, and becoming familiar with the culture and customs, the family’s antagonism towards her, never really dies down. Initially, I thought, how unfair their reaction seemed but on reflection, I suspect that their responses were born of a wider resentment to the interference in their country by foreign entities (especially the UK) and as much as I admired Diane in many ways, she does maintain an engrained attitude of colonial superiority towards them, and everyone (who forgive my bluntness) isn’t white, which obviously has a negative impact on her relationship with Ibrahim’s family and vice versa.

What also, I think fuels their attitude towards Diane and is the core plotline in Elizabeth’s book, is that in the first year of Diane’s marriage and move to Iraq, she is employed as a nanny by the Iraqi Royal family to look after their 3 year old son, Prince Faisal. During this period, she meets and befriends British Embassy Officer, Duncan Claybourne (who you might remember, I mentioned at the beginning of this review!) Ibrahim is deeply suspicious of Duncan and of the relationship between Diane and Duncan but not because he suspects his wife of infidelity, but he believes there to be a more political interest at the heart of their supposed friendship. When the King of Iraq dies in car crash, rumours suggest, this was no mere accident, but an act of political malice and it was in fact an assignation! Worse still is the implication that Duncan and Diane are in fact British spies who have colluded to bring these circumstances into play, to further British control in Iraq!

This incident and the reverberating insinuations taints Diane for the rest of her life, furthermore it has a significant impact on her marriage and the lives of her children all the way to adulthood! The complexities of this situation are eloquently dramatized and gave me as a reader, a great deal to consider and think about as I read. But as to what might be the truth…ah well, that’s for you to read the book and uncover for yourselves!

Elizabeth’s book for me is a triumph, it is informed and informing, intellectually challenging regarding our comprehension of historical, cultural, socio/political, psychological, philosophical, and personal circumstances within the boundaries of fiction but all while based on a keen knowledge of Iraq and the internal complexities of this country and its external foreign relations. It is an elegantly written and subtly mysterious novel that I have been utterly mesmerised by and I dearly hope you will be too. This is story not to missed and I strongly encourage you to added it to your bookshelves.

Happy Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

Elizabeth Loudon is a former college lecturer and charity development consultant. She has an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an MA in English from Cambridge University, and has taught at Smith, Amherst, and Williams Colleges. She’s published fiction and memoir in the Denver Quarterly, INTRO, North American Review, and Gettysburg Review, among others, and received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship. She drew on her experiences traveling in Iraq and Lebanon in the 1970s when writing A Stranger in Baghdad, her first novel. It was longlisted for the Bridport Novel Award and won the Stroud Book Festival Fiction Competition. She lives in London.

Please do read some of the other reviews available on this blog tour.

Author: Annie Lyons

Publisher: Headline Review

Available: 11^th July 2023 in Hardback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to Anne Cater, Random Things Tours, & Headline Review for my lovely, gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details:

As the bombs began to fall, the book club kept their hopes alive…

The most emotional, uplifting, and captivating story of wartime London and the extraordinary power of books to shine a light and draw people together in the darkest of days, inspired by true events.

London, 1938. Bookseller Gertie Bingham is facing difficult times, having just lost her beloved husband, Harry, and with a lingering sadness at never having been able to have a child of her own. Struggling to face running the bookshop she and Harry opened together, Gertie is preparing to sell up and move away when she is asked if she would be willing to take in a young Jewish refugee from Germany.

Gertie is unsure and when sullen teenager Hedy Fischer arrives, Gertie fears she has nothing left to give the troubled girl. But when the German bombers come and the lights go out over London, Gertie and Hedy realise that joining forces will make them stronger, and that books have the power to bring young and old together and unite a community in need in its darkest hour…

My Thoughts:

There are some books, that from the moment you read their details, you simply fall in love with. Annie Lyon’s The Air Raid Book Club was just such a book for me and today I am sharing why this is!  This is a novel that is evocative, emotional, and exuberant and it cannot fail to touch your heart and as many of my friends will attest (they used to call me black heart, due to my perceived hard heartedness) this is not a state I am overly familiar with, unless it relates to animals, then I’m a bucket of goo!

Annie’s wonderful story is one of reluctance, resilience, rejuvenation, and rejoicing, told through the voices of a stella cast of characters, who you will consider friends by the time you’ve finished reading the book. If this novel is not on your reading radar, then it needs to be! It is a book that once you turn the last page, you grieve finishing it! I know this because that is exactly how I still feel as I write this review and recall the engaging essence of this novel.

Let me tell you a little about what you can expect, when you read this book; Gertie Bingham is the proprietor of Bingham’s Books and a widow. Her beloved husband Harry died 2 years previously, now there is just her and Hemmingway (the dog, who you will love). Gertie’s sense of loss is palpable and despite her love of books and her shop, she almost can’t bear to be there anymore without her husband’s presence and is considering selling up and retiring to the coast. War is looming and when Charles (a close friend) discusses his work, transporting Jewish children to the UK and asks her if she would consider taking one of these children into her home. Gertie is torn, she and Harry had tried to have a family, but sadly had been unable to do so and had eventually turned their love and attention to each other and their bookshop. Gertie is convinced she is not equipped to be in loco parentis to a traumatised child and she likes her quiet life and isn’t sure she wants the disruption or the emotional upheaval that sharing her home will bring.

Gertie’s sense of kindness and duty along with Charles’ encouragement, prompts her to agree and Hedy Fisher comes into the life. Hedy is a German Jew and a teenager, taken away from all she knows, her family and friends. Although still young, Hedy is deeply aware that being a Jew in Germany was becoming increasingly perilous, but the reasons for why, is unclear to her but it will not be to us readers! On arrival on Gertie’s doorstep, she is distant and emotionally overwhelmed, clearly resentful of being separated from her family and having unending cups of tea foisted on her, as if that will help anything and don’t get her started on kippers! Hedy wants more than anything to be reunited with her family, and after a rocky start in her new home, she reluctantly allows Gertie help her and this focus, allows the two women to form an uneasy bond, although Hemmingway and a mutual love of books and music, also plays a part in connecting them.

Then on one ordinary day in September 1939, comes the spine chilling (even now decades later) moment when Chamberlain via a wireless broadcast, declares the country at war with Germany! Hedy and Gertie’s plans to reunite Hedy with her family, are destroyed in an instant and the implied enormity of the situation is palpable and heart-breaking for both the reader and characters alike! We follow Gertie and Hedy and their cohort of book loving friends through the years of the war, where books are their light in the dark times, stories that bring comfort, escape and connection, when it is needed most. I can’t wait for you to read this section of the novel as it is truly uplifting, despite desolating effect of the Blitz, the darkly escalating news of the situation in Europe and cost of war on those fighting and living through it. But I shall leave you to discover all the book’s subsequent plot twists for yourselves, as I’m not a fan of giving the game away, as they say!

Annie’s captivating story is one of love, loss, literature, liberation and living life. Annie is inordinately sensitive and skilled in capturing and articulating the emotional nuances of her characters experiences. You feel what Gertie, Hedy and all the others feel, whether it’s a love of books and stories, or the desperation of being separated from family or the tangibility of losing someone you love. Annie’s writing and her story, has the divine ability to make you, cry one minute and snort with laughter the next and it’s a heady mix indeed, although not particularly elegant when you do both at the same time, I speak from experience here! One of my favourite moments in the book, is Gertie visiting her delightfully obstreperous uncle in his bookshop, which is filled with a plethora of classic and antique books, and she discovers him and his assistant lining the roof of their shop with copies of Mein Kampf, to protect it from the German bombs, plus they couldn’t think of a better use for them, such wonderful irony!

Another element of this story, that I fell in love with, and I suspect any other book lovers will too, is the development of the book club and the numerous references to books, you may or may not have read and I loved the various characters discussing the book choices, their likes and their complete incomprehension of various novels, which is both charming and amusing. I loved how important books and reading becomes in the main characters’ lives and those on the periphery via the inclusion of books in Red Cross boxes sent to prisoners of war. How books inform and uplift the characters, regardless of what trying circumstances they face and how stories educate and entertain readers, throughout time, whether past or present.

If like me you are a fan of AJ Pearce’s Emmy Lake Chronicles or the television series Foyles War then Annie’s book, will be the perfect read for you, as it has a similar warmth and drama infused through its atmosphere, essence, and focus on life changing events, experienced through the lives of some truly wonderful characters. I absolutely adored this book and I want everyone to buy it and be swept away by its contents as I have been. Be warned when you do read it, you will require tissues and possibly a port and lemon or two!

Heartfelt Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

After a career in bookselling and publishing, Annie Lyons became an author. When notworking on her novels, she teaches creative writing. She lives in south-east London with her husband and two children and puppy, Nelson.

Please do read some of the other reviews available on this blog tour.

Author: Alex Hay

Publisher: Headline Review

Available: 6^th July 2023 in Hardback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to Anne Cater, Random Things Tours & Headline Review for my gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details:

When Mrs King, housekeeper to the most illustrious home in Mayfair, is suddenly dismissed after years of loyal service, she knows just who to recruit to help her take revenge.

A black-market queen out to settle her scores. An actress desperate for a magnificent part. A seamstress dreaming of a better life. And Mrs King’s predecessor, who has been keeping the dark secrets of Park Lane far too long.

Mrs King has an audacious plan in mind, one that will reunite her women in the depths of the house on the night of a magnificent ball – and play out right under the noses of her former employers…

THEY COME FROM NOTHING. BUT THEY’LL LEAVE WITH EVERYTHING.

My Thoughts:

As a book blogger, on occasion, I am exceedingly lucky to have the opportunity to read and review books, that garner a lot of media attention prior to and at publication. Alex Hay’s debut The Housekeepers is one such book and let me stop any speculation at this point…Alex’s book deserves every accolade you may have seen on social media and all the gushing that may follow in my review. This novel, I believe surpasses the hype. It is a book, you should absolutely buy, right now! It is a glorious, gleeful read, awash with history, heists and housekeepers and it has been a consummate joy to read. This is an edifying, exhilarating and exquisite story of female fraternity, familial fractures, and audacious revenge. If the films, The Kitchen/Widows/Oceans 8 had a love child with Downton Abbey then The Housekeepers, would be their prodigious first born!

The novel opens in a very intriguing fashion with one of the leading protagonists of this story; Mrs King being dismissed from her esteemed position as housekeeper in the De Vries household in the opulent and ostentatious house on Park Lane, where in reality nothing is as it seems! I confess I was very concerned with this turn of events, because a woman without references could find herself in a very perilous position, leaving her without status, finances, or options, at least not one that is countenance-able!

As I read on, Mrs King calmly dances around the pompous sanctimonious butler Mr Shepherd (who is an unctuous creep, for whom tasering is far to good) who is trying to remove her from the house. I was instantly given the impression that this turn of events, was entirely planned! But why, was my next thought and as it transpires, this incident is merely the tip of a very cleverly constructed iceberg, where decadence, deception and deceit are the true decorations of this household!

It become quickly apparent that Mrs King’s time working for Wilhelm De Vries and his daughter, has actually been part of ruse, as she has been hatching a plan to wreak retribution on her former employers for some time and now after Wilhelm’s sudden demise, it is the time to put all the players into action, in the words of Alice in Wonderland… curiouser and curiouser! Let’s just say that Wilhelm and his wealth are forged in falsehood, and as to Miss De Vries, she’s got some serious issues!

 Mrs King gathers her ‘crew’ a clandestine, cohort of clever, colourful women, each with her own skill set to bring to the table and quite frankly they make any mafia don, look like fluffy bunny. Led by the calm and calculating Mrs King, they are about to pull off the most audacious robbery, the effects of which, will have the highest echelons of society rocking on their banqueting chairs and not because they are worried that someone might steal the family silver but because their moral decrepitude, could be exposed for all to see!

However there is more to this plot than you might surmise, it is so much more than merely undertaking larceny or a case of extreme avarice, nor is this a quest for social revolution with the below stairs staff seeking recompense for their poor treatment. Instead, I believe, it can be described by my favourite quote (from Hamlet) that ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold’ meaning that Mrs King and Mrs Bone have waiting to enact retribution upon the De Vries, who as you will discover, have done great wrong and though this approach may be considered a little sadistic, it is much more gratifying to meticulously formulate a plan that can inflict the harshest payment, well it is in my book! But if you want to know precisely why Mrs King would go to such lengths or what the De Vries have done, well of course…you’ll have to read the book and find out for yourselves because I don’t do spoilers and trust me, you will want to know, all the whys and wayfores!

From petticoats containing instructions to impersonating Countesses, this novel has it all, it is a female centric litany of criminal thrills and spills, and I absolutely adored it, from the ostentatious ambiance to the magnificent cast of characters from the unequivocal, devious Mrs Bone to the unembellished and unrelenting two Janes to name but a few. This book is clever, cunning, and perfectly caustic and Alex is to be praised for his imaginative and creative writing, genius plotting skills and having a deliciously dark and twisty sense of fun. You absolute need to get hold of this book, it is one of my favourite reads of 2023…go get it, right now!

Happy Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

Alex Hay grew up in Cambridge and Cardiff and has been writing as long as he can remember. He studied History at the University of York and wrote his dissertation on female power at royal courts, combing the archives for every scrap of drama and skulduggery he could find. He has worked in magazine publishing and the charity sector and is a graduate of the Curtis Brown Write Your Novel course. The Housekeepers is his debut novel and won the Caledonia Novel Award 2022. Alex lives with his husband in South East London

A note from the author… I love books full of big houses, broken families, loyal friendships, and wild ambitions – textured with all the glorious sights, scents and sounds of the past. When I started The Housekeepers, I was itching to write a novel set in the early 1900s, to revel in the era’s extraordinary opulence, scrappy characters, remarkable flashes of modernity, and layers of corruption that exist just underneath the polished exterior. I’d also always adored the slick engineering of a juicy heist plot and was longing to try and write one of my own.

 I was washing the dishes – apt, in hindsight – when it occurred to me that the marbled drawing rooms and glittering saloons of Edwardian London had all the gumption and gloss of a Las Vegas casino and could make the perfect backdrop for a high-stakes heist. My mind’s eye turned slowly to a green baize door, and a cast of servants began sidling out of the shadows, each with their own desire for revenge… I’ve been asked why I turned to an alliance of women to lead the cast of The Housekeepers, and it’s a good question, and one I’ve considered myself too. The truthful answer is that I never really saw this tale any other way; the decision was instinctive. I love Mrs King and her gang – they feel a bone deep desire to imprint themselves on the world and the systems that marginalise them, as I think many of us do.

The Housekeepers is, of course, a work of fiction, but the glittering Park Lane mansion at the heart of this story is inspired by extraordinary houses that once stood all around the wealthiest parts of West London. Stand outside the present-day Dorchester Hotel and you can still glimpse Stanhope House, turreted and gargoyled, commissioned for soap manufacturer Robert William Hudson in 1899. It faced 25 Park Lane, a luxury townhouse built for Barney Barnato, a music-hall actor who made an eyewatering fortune in diamond-mining before dying mysteriously at sea. These were homes built for rich and powerful men, containing the most decadent and costly treasures, attended to by a seemingly endless supply of obedient servants. But just imagine what might have happened if some of those working below stairs had decided to claim a little of that power for themselves.

Please do read some of the other reviews available on this blog tour.

Author: Eliza Henry-Jones

Publisher: September Publishing

Available: 6^th July 2023 in paperback & eBook

Thank you to Anne Cater, Random Things Tours & September Publishing for my gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details:

Grief-stricken and on the verge of a breakdown, photographer Luda Managan leaves Australia for a commission, bringing her two teenage children to a remote, weather-ravaged but beautiful Scottish island.

 Luda, isolated from her two resentful teenagers, turns her attention to the records from the 17th century island witch hunts and the fragmented life stories of the executed women. Min, her daughter, restless and strong, tries to fill up the space in their family left by her father. She soon finds comfort in both the sea and an unlikely friendship. But the only thing that beautiful and gifted Darcy cares about is getting marks high enough for entry into university – one very, very far away from his mother. Until he meets the wild foundling, Theo, who slowly self-destructing in a community that is both protective and violent towards him.

But when a tragic accident unleashes ghosts and the echoes of long-ago violence and betrayal into their lives, the Managans must confront their unspoken histories in order to survive.

My Thoughts:

Today I am sharing my thoughts on Eliza Henry-Jones latest novel Salt And Skin. This is my first experience of reading one of her books and I can confidently say, it won’t be my last. Eliza has lyrical style of prose, and it certainly compliments, the more ethereal elements of this novel. This is a book, that is perceptive, poetic, and pertinent and marries, the harsh realities of life and psychological impact of loss, with an Arthur Rackham style depiction of folklore, the mystical and magical, where the lines between the tangible and intangible are delightfully smudged.

At the core of the novel is the fractured Managan family; Luda, Darcy, and Min. Tragedy has seen them leave the familiar barmy shores of Australia for the weather scarred tidal island of Seannay in Scotland for a ‘new start’. Eliza’s passion for the environment and nature, shines through her arresting descriptions of land, sky, and sea. She ties her love of the natural world to the underlying thread in her novel regarding the ongoing hazards of climate change and the impact that individuals or the wider collective of society can have, this issue is of potent significance for the writer, and she utilizes its controverses convincingly to bring drama to the plot.

Luda moves her family into The Ghost House, which as you can imagine merely by hearing its name, has a heritage, seeped in island superstition. Centuries before four women were held in this house, facing charges of witchcraft, which ultimately would cost their lives and you get the distinct impression that Luda, feels a level of kinship with them and their plight, as her own actions since her arrival on the island, have certainly caused a divide of distrust, distaste and distance between herself and the other island residents!  In contrast her children seemed to have settled in well, despite their intense reticence about being on Seannay.

For me one of the strongest elements of this novel, is Eliza’s detailed character creation and development, we have Luda, who is struggling to hold her life together, to parent and to survive the heavy burden of grief she is carrying regarding the death of her husband. Then, there’s Darcy at 16, intellectually astute, emotionally engaged and prefers to keep everyone at a distance. Min is 14 exuberant, engaged and closely bonded to islander Cassandra, who I think might just be my favourite character, she refuses to acknowledge her age and prefers to channelling spirits in the pub rather than church! And then there Theofin, who island rumours say is a Selkie, due to his rather unusual arrival on the island, I love his curiosity and the friendship he develops with both Min and Darcy.

Skin and Salt is a story awash with secrets, punctuated by an atmosphere and pace that ebbs and flows with the tide of the plot, sometimes it picks up speed and becomes dark and dramatic as the revelations come but at other points, it’s calm and almost introspective, letting the daily life of the island colour the pages. I love how Eliza has woven together a tapestry of fact, fantasy, history, and folklore in her story and overall it slightly reminds me of reading Grimm’s fairy tales, as this book is indeed a modern moral tale tempered by light and darkness. Eliza is a gifted wordsmith and this book of her’s is atmospheric, attentive, and authentic. It is certainly nothing like, any story I have read before and I hope you add it to your bookshelves, as I think you may enjoy it as much as I have.

 Happy Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

Eliza Henry-Jones is a writer and academic based on a little flower farm in Victoria, Australia. Her previous novels have been listed for multiple literary awards including the ABIA, NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and QLD Literary Awards. Her work has also been published widely, appearing in places such as the Guardian, Country Style, The Big Issue and The Age. Eliza has qualifications in psychology as well as grief, loss and trauma counselling. @elizahenryjones

Please do read some of the other reviews available on this blog tour.

Author: Kate Mosse

Publisher: Mantle/Pan MacMillan

Available: 6^th July in Hardback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to Anne Cater, Random Things Tours and Mantle for my stunning gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details:

The Barbary Coast, 1621. A mysterious vessel silently rides the swell. She is known only as the Ghost Ship. For these past months, her crew has fought to liberate those enslaved by corsairs. But the two bravest mariners on board are not who they seem. And the stakes could not be higher: if captured, they will be hanged for their alleged crimes…

But now the Ghost Ship is under attack – its hull splintered, its sails tattered and burnt, and the crew at risk of capture. But the bravest among them are not who they seem. Louise is fleeing a miscarriage of justice; her lover, Gilles Barenton, is at risk of being exposed – she is forced to masquerade as her brother. The stakes could not be higher: if arrested, they will be hanged for their crimes. Can they survive the journey and escape their fate?

A sweeping and epic queer love story, ranging from France in 1610 to Amsterdam and the Canary Islands in the 1620s, The Ghost Ship is a thrilling novel of adventure and buccaneering, love and revenge, stolen fortunes, and hidden secrets on the High Seas. Most of all, it is a tale of defiant women in a man’s world.

Kate Mosse’s new novel is an epic tale of courageous women battling to survive in a man’s world, of vengeance and breathtaking peril on the High Seas, of long-buried family secrets and a love story spanning three generations.  

My Thoughts:

I am a HUGE fan of Kate Mosse’s books, as far as I’m concerned, she is the reigning Queen of superb sweeping historic family sagas.  My introduction to her exquisite storytelling started with her exceptional debut Labyrinth, which is still a book, I regularly recommend to non-bookish friends.  In the past year, I have introduced Kate’s books to my dad, who is responsible for my love of historic fiction in the first place and now as we both approach milestone ages next year.  We decided to embark on a year long Daddy/Daughter buddy read and chose the Joubert family chronicles to start off with and we have already devoured: The Burning Chambers and City of Tears and now I have the great privilege in reviewing book three in the series The Ghost Ship and my dad has just run off with my copy of the book, trust me he’s nearly 80 and I’ve never seen him move so fast, that’s how much we love Kate’s books!

In this third instalment, I was transported back into the torrid, tempestuous turbulence of 16^th century and its endless raging vicious religious wars, which decimated people and places and I found myself reunited briefly with Minou Joubert (latterly Reydon-Joubert) heroine of the previous two books and having immersed myself in Minou story, through, if you’ll pardon the cliché, hell and high water. There was a distinct poignancy to saying farewell to her now, as her granddaughter Louise is focal point of this book and takes their family story forward.

I have always been fascinated, by how one moment in time, can change the course of history by trigging a series of impactful events. In The Ghost Ship, the assignation/murder of Henri of Navarre (Henri IV a protestant King) is the catalyst that alters the direction of our characters’ lives. For Louise, who has been in Paris, with Minou ostensibly to claim her inheritance, it sees her retreat to Carcassonne, La Rochelle and ultimately on to the port of Amsterdam (with all the upheaval you can imagine such a journey entails) but it is her voyage from there that will bring drama, danger and the greatest changes to the life she knows.

Louise, just like her grandmother before her is an engaging heroine, she is very much her own woman (despite the restrictions of her sex) I loved her gumption and desire to be independent, to seek adventure, to be the captain of her own ship (literally) and the fact, that she resolutely has no interest in love and marriage as they will just curtail her plans. Until that is, she crosses paths with Gilles Barenton, who fascinates, and I think infuriates her as well, he definitely plays his cards close to his chest (and you can’t help but wonder why?) but there is definitely a spark between them. I admired Louise’s aspirations to Captain her own vessel, despite this want being a seemingly fantastical desire. As the nautical world at this time, is one fraught with danger and brutality and very few women of this period would seek such a daunting challenge, nor could they cope with privations such a role would inflict. Yet a vicious storm and a death, provides Louise with an opportunity and she grasps with both hands! But of course if you want to know more, then you will have to read the book and find out what happens for yourself as I have no intention of spoiler what happens next!

The Ghost Ship and Kate’s sublime storytelling had me hooked from the first page, actually I think the stunning cover of this book, got me first and then when I started reading, I was completely absorbed and addicted to this story. And of the three books I’ve read so far, this is by far, my favourite. Kate has such a talent for merging fiction and history together, in such a vivid and visceral way and for putting remarkable, redoubtable woman front in centre in the stories she imagines. I felt I was on board ship with Louise for most of the time I was reading (not curled up on my sofa in Yorkshire) and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her adventures either, even though I finished reading this book a week ago.

Kate’s latest book has it all, it is a swashbuckling, scintillating, and sensational read and one that I am truly sorry to have finished. Although, having read the epilogue, it seems we may be treated to further adventures of the Joubert women, this time in South Africa…I confess I am unreservedly ecstatic about the potential for more in this series. If you’ve not read this series yet, then you simply must…it is far too brilliant for any historic fiction fans, to miss out on. I suggest you place an order online or nip out and visit your nearest independent bookshop and treat yourself, I promise you won’t regret it. I meanwhile, will have to pretend to be patient and hope Kate is typing madly away creating book 4!

Happy Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

‘I’m delighted that Mantle will be publishing my gender-swapping story of love and adventure at sea, inspired in part by the real-life stories of 18th century pirate duo Anne Bonny and Mary Read. The Ghost Ship has been a delight to work on from start to finish, and I hope readers will have as much fun reading it as I’ve had writing the novel.’

The Ghost Ship is the third novel in the Number One bestselling series The Joubert Family Chronicles, following The Burning Chambers and The City of Tears, which have together sold more than 400,000 copies. The Founder of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and recently launched Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction, Mosse is an award-winning novelist, playwright, essayist, and non-fiction writer. Her most recent feminist non-fiction book, Warrior Queens and Quiet Revolutionaries: How Women (Also) Built the World (October 2022), is now the basis for a one-woman theatre show, touring UK venues from 28 February-12 April 2023, in which Mosse will celebrate the lives of extraordinary, brilliant, trail-blazing and heroic women from throughout history whose names deserve to be better known.

Please do read some of the other reviews available on this blog tour.

Author: Lucy Campbell

Publisher: Ultimo Press

Available: 6^th July 2023 in Hardback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to Anne Cater, Random Things Tours and Ultimo Press for my gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details:

Where everybody knows everyone, how can somebody just disappear?

1987: It’s late summer and a time of change when a 17-year-old girl leaves the local shopping centre in the sleepy town of Lowbridge and is never seen again. Her unsolved disappearance is never far from the town’s memory. There’s those who grew up in the shadow of her loss whose own lives were altered forever, and those who know more than they’re saying.

2018: Katherine Ashworth, shattered by the death of her daughter, moves to her husband’s hometown. Searching for a way to pick up the pieces of her life, she joins the local historical society and becomes obsessed with the three-decades-old mystery. As Katherine digs into that summer of 1987, she stumbles upon the trail of a second girl who vanished and was never missed because no one cared enough to see what was happening in plain sight.

In a town simmering with divisions and a cast of unforgettable characters, Lowbridge is a heart-wrenching mystery about the girls who are lost, the ones who are mourned and those who are forgotten.

My Thoughts:

Today I am excited to share my thoughts with you on Lucy Campbell’s debut novel Lowbridge. In the past year, I’ve become obsessively addicted to the genre of Outback Noir. In case you don’t know, what that is; it is, in a nutshell, a blanket term for crime novels of all varieties but especially the dark and twisty types set a world away in the realms of Australia or New Zealand. I have in the past 10 months, binge read all of Chris Hammer, Jane Harper, Vanda Symonds, SR White and Patricia Wolf’s books and have made a serious dent into Garry Disher’s series and now we have Lucy’s book to add to this exciting and esteemed crime collective.

I have been trying to articulate what it is about books like Lucy’s that has drawn me to them, and I have concluded, that it is the unfamiliar atmosphere and the unique and distinct sense place and of environment these novels imbue. Lucy’s novel (like a number of the others I have mentioned) is set within a very typical small town/rural community, where the same families have lived, loved, and died for decades past, they have survived, all that nature has thrown at them and have endure a variety of privations, prosperity and poverty and this heritage has shaped the people and their perspectives, their actions, their intent.

Then when you add in the brutal beauty of the bush and the endless, remote landscapes, where you can drive for days, without seeing another car and the oppressive, potentially lethal heat and arid dryness, and the toxic uniqueness of both flora and fauna, there is already an essence of danger of the unknown, lurking to greet readers like me, for whom all of this is a completely fascinating anathema, to be explored from the safety of my sofa in verdant Yorkshire!

Lucy’s book gripped me from the opening chapter set in the mid-80s, where I watched as schoolgirl Tess, literally vanishes before my eyes, with the only trace of her left, is just her school badge fluttering to the ground. The immediate sense of foreboding is tangible in this attention grabbing opening! In fact, I had to read the first chapter, twice to make sure I hadn’t missed anything at this point! As the next chapter, winged me straight back to the present and as a reader, I was left with the impression, of ooooh so many questions and an unquenchable desire to find out what happened, which is a brilliant way start a book in my opinion!

One of the standout elements of this novel, is the dual timeline and the manner in which the story is revealed; the past is all about Tess in 80s with life and love at her fingertips, her close female friendships, a budding romance, she’s about to finish school and is surrounded by a loving slightly chaotic family and the world is her oyster but a series of innocuous events unfold and coalesces into her eventual disappearance! I loved how Lucy has us dip into Tess’s life and her typical teenage drama and the traces of subtle menacing undertones, starting to build and expand! I was fascinated by depth of Tess’s perspective and hearing her voice and thoughts and being able to comprehend, what decisions she makes and why, and how the naivety of youth, potentially costs her.

Our other protagonist is in the present, the wounded, flawed Katherine, married to Jamie and once mother to Marie…she is almost prostrate with grief, barely functioning and no amount of wine, is going to help, other than to render her unconscious, as this is her way to numb such pain. If I’m honest, when I first met Katherine, I really didn’t like her, and it wasn’t because grief of such magnitude makes everyone selfish, and she is selfish, self-pitting and wracked with guilt over her failings as a parent. I suspect it was more personal, I initially couldn’t relate to the type of woman she was because, I’m not a parent. I have never wanted to be one and the idea of being a mother has literally filled me with a sense of dread. So, I struggled to comprehend her emotions and behaviour. But as I read the book, I began to see her in a different light, her unswerving determination, her battling spirit, her single mindedness, is born out of her own experiences and her understanding of being a mother and a daughter, these traits makes her the perfect character to uncover the long hidden truth behind a young woman’s seemingly unexplainable disappearance, in a town, where everyone, seems to know everything about each other…or do they?

It is Katherine’s perspective that drives the story, having reached rock bottom, she strikes a deal with her husband, who believes some form of professional intervention is needed to ‘cure’ her of her misery and drinking. In response to this threat, Katherine has curated a list of tasks to perform, a couple every day and no drinking. This list is full of normal actions and interactions, and it will perhaps distract her for a short while at least from the insistent, relentless pull of grief.

It is during the undertaking of one of these self-imposed tasks, that Katherine, makes a new friend and discovers the Lowbridge Historical Society and their voluminous archive boxes, documenting the history of the town and its inhabitants and when Katherine, unearths old press articles relating to Tess’s disappearance 30 years ago and that learns that no trace of her has been found. Katherine’s own intimate understanding of the power of loss, drives her to insist almost obsessively on investigating this cold case and naturally leads to her digging up some long buried secrets! But of course, you’ll have to read the book to find out more and trust me, there is so much more for you to unearth!

Lucy’s novel cleverly exposes the reality of women’s lives in a seemingly somnolent outback town across decades, exploring the power and unity of their friendships, to examining prevalent social issues and variations of familial circumstances. And how various combinations of these elements will direct, dictate, destruct, and potentially destroy the women involved. How in an instant, an innocent choice or a casual conversation can have unimaginable catastrophic consequences and the trajectory of this novel, is one any reader can relate to and anticipate to some extent but cannot change, no matter how much they wish to. It is an imaginative, insightful, intriguing, and intensely intimate read and I relished the sublimely subtle way the story unfolds. The plotline will also make you grit your teeth in seething rage, at the violent, self-absorbed, entitlement of the perpetrator and establishes how the twin powers of fear and greed, can turn even the seemingly rational person feral!

Now that I’ve given you a small taste of what you have in store, when you read this book. I think you can see why, I literally couldn’t put Lowbridge down. This novel possess the power to provoke your brain into a need to know frenzy and those sensations won’t relent until the myriad of question you have, are finally satisfied. I’m pretty sure once you get hold of a copy, you will see exactly what I mean. Now all I have to do is wait patiently to find out, what Lucy will write next? As, I am in no doubt that her next book will be top of my wantie list!

Happy Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

Lucy Campbell has worked as a writer and sub-editor across magazines, newspapers, and non-fiction books. Lowbridge is her first novel. She lives in Canberra with her husband and three children.

Please do read some of the other reviews available on this blog tour.

Author: Freya Berry

Publisher: Headline Review

Available: 22^nd June 2023 in Hardback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to The Squadpod Collective and Headline Review for my gifted copy. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone. 

Book Details:

1932. Emily Blackwood, adventuress, and plant hunter, travels north for a curious new commission. A gentleman has written to request she catalogue his vast collection of taxidermied creatures before sale.

On arrival, Emily finds a ruined castle, its owner haunted by a woman who vanished five decades before. And when she discovers the ripped pages of a diary, crammed into the walls, she realises dark secrets lie here, waiting to entrap her too…

The Birdcage Library will hold you in its spell until the final page.

My Thoughts:

As part of the Squadpod Collectives June Book Club, we chose to read Freya Berry’s second novel ‘The Birdcage Library’. This time I was on the ball, as previously, I inadvertently missed out on reading Freya’s first book, The Dictators Wife but fear not bookophiles, I have a beautiful copy now awaiting my attention. I didn’t hesitate to get hold of a copy of Freya’s new book and now that I have, let me tell you, that you will want it desperately, you will not be able to do anything other than relish and revel in its mystery, macabre and menace.

From the moment, you open the first page of The Birdcage Library, you are pulled into another world, one of investigation, intrigue, intent, imagination, and illumination and you do not wish to be anywhere else, even when the plotlines reach fever pitch! If like me you love a mixture of mystery with your history or history with your mystery, then this tantalising, taut and tremendous read, is certainly the one for you! Freya is a master storyteller, whose imagination and creativity, deserves every accolade, I can provide, and I know that you will love this novel as much as I have!

Let me share with you a little of the story. Protagonist, Emily Blackwood is not a typical woman of her time; she refuses to be caged by the social strictures placed on her sex. She has no interest in the marriage mart, taking tea or purchasing diverting trifles. Emily Blackwood is an academic, an adventureress, a learned botanist, who is dedicated to exploring far flung places, where men fear to tread! She prefers to spend her time in the wild places of the world, collecting specimens, researching, cataloguing, and writing papers about species she has uncovered, she is a perverse enigma to the sniffing, stifling, patriarchy, they can’t quite dismiss her, but they do not accept her abilities, insight, knowledge, nor is there any equality of recognition for her work, in this she can only aspire to attain the seemingly unassailable.

Emily’s future expeditions are abruptly curtailed by the loss of her family fortune, and she has no option but to seek mundane but suitable employment, starting with cataloguing the Rothchild’s Lepidoptery collection. Her skills however catch the attention of Henry Vogel cloistered in his isolated Scottish Castle, once a famous collector of creatures for a renowned animal emporium in New York, during a time, when it was fashionable for the wealthy to collect exotic animals and show off their menageries. Now he wishes Ms Blackwood to assist in the cataloguing of his extensive taxidermy collection, potentially for its sale.

Unable to dismiss the financial security this job offers her; Emily agrees to the unusual restrictions of the post. She soon discovers that Henry Vogel has an ulterior motive for requiring her presence and her unusual skill set and from the ashes of her former adventures, Emily begins a very different voyage of discovery. Starting by exploring the decaying corners of Castle Parras, when she uncovers some old papers including a book, titled The Birdcage Library and the torn journal of Hester Vogel, Henry’s sister-in-law, who infamously killed herself, by jumping from Brooklyn Bridge!

Emily is intrigued by the contents Hester’s journal and finds herself compelled to uncover the truth, behind the veil of ominous secrets that consumes the Vogel family. All is not what it seems, but Emily knows this better than anyone and if you are expecting me to elucidate further on this point, then you are sadly mistaken, it is a far too clever, creative, and complex story for me to spoil with any further revelation!

I loved how this novel was constructed over two timelines, from the perspective of two fascinating women, who initially seem so different from each other, yet as we are discover, their experiences are not. Freya’s imagination is second to none, her ability to conjure and construct the rich essence and atmosphere of the historic periods, is sublime, scintillating and succulently sinister. I was completely absorbed with her approach to the women in this book and the underlying concept of imprisonment, from the exotic animals, captured, and kept for show, irregardless of their requirements for space and freedom. They were merely playthings of the rich, to be admired and eventually discarded.

The bars of a cage, whether gilded or of social construct, still curtail freedom be it, of movement, of expression, of life, whether those incarcerated are or animal or not! The idea, that women like Hester and Emily despite living decades apart are imprisoned either literally or figuratively by the expectations of self or society is both monstrous and mesmerising and certainly provide readers with a great deal to consider.

This novel is irresistible, intriguing, and irrepressibly clever, you cannot fail to be transported from Gilded Age to dusty golden cage nor can you resist, the creeping darkness that influences and taints the plotlines, trust me it will give you goose bumps!  I loved the brilliance of Emily’s intelligence especially as she is figuring out Hester’s enigmatic clues and Hester’s genius in creating them and I spent considerable time, contemplating, what fate had in store for them both. I admired, Freya’s twin abilities to illustrate and illuminate, the rich historical context of her novel and you cannot fail to be transfixed by the treasure hunting element of the story either. I literally fell into the pages of this book and quite honestly I didn’t want to leave, and I have no doubt, when you read it, you will feel the same! Bravo Freya, bravo!

Happy Reading Bookophiles

About the Author:

Freya Berry always loved stories, but it took several years as a journalist to realise she loves the kind of truth that lies in fiction, not reality. (Or, to put it another way, making stuff up is more fun.)

Her second novel, The Birdcage Library, is published June 22nd: think books within books and a literary treasure hunt packed with twists. A 1930s adventuress discovers an old book containing clues about the disappearance of a woman who vanished 50 years before. Set between a Scottish castle in the 1930s and an exotic animal emporium in Gilded Age New York, it’s a gothic tale of secrets, obsession, and murder. Oh, and taxidermy.

Her first novel The Dictator’s Wife, a high-stakes exploration of power, glamour, and complicity, was published in 2022. It was shortlisted for the Authors’ Club First Novel Award, a pick for the BBC’s flagship book show Between The Covers, and The New European’s novel of the year.

Freya lives in London and graduated with a double first in English from Cambridge. She spends more time reading smutty fantasy novels than she likes to admit.

Author: Trisha Ashley

Publisher: Bantam Press/Transworld Books

Available: 22^nd June 2023 in Hardback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to Emma Fairey, Bantam Books and Transworld Book for my lovely gifted copy. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details:

Can her heart be mended too?

After losing her fiancé and her dream job in the same week, Garland Fairford’s life is turned upside down.

Having recently met a long-lost relative – Honey Fairford – through her work as a historical costumier, Garland is intrigued when Honey reveals she is opening a Wedding Dress museum in Lancashire. With nothing to lose, Garland accepts the offer of a job there.

What she doesn’t expect is to come face-to-face with a ghost from her past – her old friend, Thom, who mysteriously disappeared years ago.

As Garland begins reading the stories behind each of the beautiful wedding dresses, and sets about repairing both them and her relationship with Thom, could this finally be the chance for her own happy-ever-after?

My Thoughts:

I have been a book blogger for a few years now and most of the time, I still can’t believe that it is my pleasure and privilege to read and review the works of some wonderful authors. When I embarked on my book blogging adventure, I was deeply concerned that I would not be up to the task, because as a dyslexic, writing has been my bet noir, my stumbling block and herculean task to date. Since I was at school, the act of putting pen to paper (yes, I am that old) …filled me with unutterable fear, I just couldn’t get down in a cohesive manner, what I wanted to say…everything I wrote seemed confused and jumbled and because of it I was never able to attain the full scope of academic success, that I might have had without it but I have gained success in a different way instead

I like a challenge, so when the pandemic took hold, I decided that after decades of fearing writing anything, I was going to start book blogging, as books have always been my greatest love (sorry fur beasts and the Big Man) and I wanted to share my love of books and reading on a wider scale than I had been doing. I remember thinking to myself, that I would know that I was truly a book blogger when I got sent a proof of a Trisha Ashely book to review and here, we are today, for I did indeed get a copy of Trisha’s latest book to read and review.

I am truly honoured to be sharing my thoughts on Trisha’s latest book The Wedding Dress Repair Shop with you today, as Trisha’s writing has engaged, encouraged, enlightened, and egged me on, through some very dark moments and you cannot fail to love and relate to any of her characters, but in this book Garland is probably my favourite character, after all she’s a petite, fierce, red head who is determined and dedicated to her chosen profession, which sounds rather like me, bar the fact I am considerably rounder than her!

Let me share a little about the story; Garland Fairford is talented costumer, working at a prestigious London firm Beng & Briggs and responsible for making detailed replicas of historic clothing/costumes for the theatre and films. She is in-line for promotion to head of her department and in her spare time and there isn’t much of that, she creates exquisite, scaled down replicas of dresses, which are sold at the V&A. Garland is engaged to Marco, a playwright and producer, it all sounds like a script for success, doesn’t it?

Until a series of both fortunate and unfortunate circumstances change the trajectory of Garland’s life. On her afternoon off, Garland is at the V&A, studying the exhibition of dresses/costumes once owned and worn by the actress Rosa-May Garland. When she is introduced by her lovely friend George (Museum curator) to the renowned crime writer Honey Fairford who lent Rosa-May’s costumes to the museum and as it transpires, is related to Garland but the how’s, whys and wherefores of this connection are yours to discover and not mine to reveal but I did enjoy their getting to know each other at Claridge’s (because their high teas are so delicious and who can resist a spot of bubbly) and it was lovely to watch their developing familial relationship grow and you can’t help but be intrigued by Honey’s Wedding Dress Museum plans, Garland certainly is!

But Garland is happy in her work, life and comfortably at home in her cosy flat, until she accidently overhears a conversation, when delivering a costume to the theatre where Marco’s play Mid-Summer Madness is about to be performed and let’s just say, that the costume she was delivering wasn’t the only thing left in tatters!!!

And so, Garland, relocates to a small market town in Lancashire, to join Honey and take over the reins at the museum and once again can focus on the restoration, repair and rejuvenation of vintage clothes or rather Wedding Dresses with stories of their own. Garland falls in love with her new surroundings but not before she experiences a shocking discovery and her past resurfaces but of course, I am not telling you the specifics, because those are for me to know and you to find out! One of the many elements, I love so much about Trisha’s books, is the way she writes such a delightfully detailed and tangible atmosphere of a place, be it Garland’s new home or Pearl’s bookshop or the pink Elephant Café, as a reader you feel as if you are part of this fictional world and walking in the character’s footsteps.

Another element, that makes Trisha’s novels such favourites of mine, are her characters, the supporting characters all have stories and quirks of their own and the heroines are completely relatable, and the villains are completely hateable! Making for an irresistible combination, you live through all Garland experiences and cheer her on, when she succeeds and finds happiness and I found myself grinning smugly when Marco got all he deserved! Trisha’s cast of characters also have a few twisty little surprises to throw your way as well!

One of the absolute stars of this novel is feline protagonist, Go Lightly, who is the yowling, howling master of all he surveys, and he has taken on Garland as his human missive, but she’s not fully aware of her impending life of servitude, until they make the move to Lancashire when Garland believes she now has ownership of this grumpy, gurning feline, but as all cat owner’s will confirm, this is never the case!

This intriguing, imaginative and ultimately uplifting story is one of fierce felines who protect you from your exs; of friendships, new and old; of family, those you are born into and those you make for yourselves and the stories behind the misadventures of wedding dresses! Plus, the historic element, that ties together Garland and Honey, their relative, Rosa-May…what did actually happen to her all that time ago? Well, if you want to know more, you’ll have to read the book and find out because I don’t do spoilers!

I am a huge fan of Trisha’s books, as they make the world into happier place with their humour, joy and realistic optimism that they bring to everyone who reads them. I completely devoured this latest novel; I just adored it and simply couldn’t put it down and I hope you love it as much as I have and in the words of another of my favourite author’s the delightful Heidi Swain, this novel is ‘Trademark Trisha’ and I couldn’t agree more.

Happy Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

Sunday Times Top Ten bestselling novelist Trisha Ashley writes romantic comedies and her latest book, The Wedding Dress Repair Shop, will be published in 2023 by Transworld.

Her novels have twice been shortlisted for the Melissa Nathan Award for Romantic Comedy, and Every Woman for Herself was nominated by magazine readers as one of the top three romantic novels of the last fifty years.

She is from St Helens in West Lancashire and believes that her typically dark Lancashire sense of humour in adversity, crossed with a good dose of Celtic creativity from her Welsh grandmother, has made her what she is today… whatever that is.

Several of her novels are set in rural West Lancashire, West Yorkshire, and Wales. They frequently explore aspects of the three F’s that are a constant in her own life: Food, Flowers, and Friendship, and include delicious recipes at the back.

Nowadays she lives in North Wales and is the founder member of Novelistas Ink, a group of novelists, several of whom are bestselling, who meet regularly in North Wales.

She is a long-term member of the Society of Authors.

Trisha has a Penguin webpage at http://www.trishaashley.com where you can sign up for her newsletters and find all the latest book news.

And on this official fan site at www.trishaworld.com you can find out more about her, check her forthcoming events, or see a complete list of her books.

You will also find her on twitter as @trishaashley.

Author: Natali Simmonds

Publisher: Headline Review

Available: 22^nd June 2023 in Hardback, ebook & audiobook

Thank you to The Squadpod Collective and Headline Review for my gifted copy . My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone. 

Book Details:

Today, nothing is going right for Em. And it’s about to get much worse.

Heartbroken by a recent split, with her 30th birthday looming, she loses her job and her home in the same morning because of two swaggering, dishonest men – the boss who sexually harassed her and the flatmate sleeping with her behind his fiancée’s back. But all Em can think about is catching a flight to attend her sister’s wedding and see her dying mother.

With a record-breaking heatwave, and a serial killer making the streets unsafe, London is completely gridlocked. Em’s life has always been full of men getting their own way, and today the scorched city teems with them standing between her and home. As Em’s troubled past returns to haunt her, she refuses to let them win. Her defiance leads to shocking consequences that soon spiral wildly out of control.

In a world where men don’t listen, and girls have no voice, one woman can change everything.

Today, no one will be staying silent.

My Thoughts:

Today I am sharing my thoughts with you on Good Girls Die Last by Natali Simmonds, firstly Happy Publication Day!

Honestly, this book blew my mind because is just so…MAGNIFICENT, MONSTROUS and MONUMENTAL! Yes, I know I’m shouting…I can’t help it…praise for this novel, should be shouted.

And while I wished at this point to elucidate why, I feel this way, the most astute adjective, I can find at this very moment and for all of this past week since I finished reading it is…WOW…oh my goodness….WOW x 1000….yes books are for everyone, or whoever chooses to read them…but if you are female and want to read a novel that could relate to your own life experiences (bar any murders), then this book is IT!

Natali’s novel is punchy, powerful, pertinent, prophetic, and poignant read. She is a writer, who has her finger on the hammering pulse of socio/political observations, experiences and captures the essences and nuances of what it can be to a woman, living and working in the world today. I have no doubt, many will label it a feminist read, which it is because it is by a woman, about a woman but it is so much more than just a label. Natali has imagined a woman who has to face circumstances, that the #MeToo movement finally brought in the public conscious and this book, will absolutely make you want to raise your fist in solidarity with all women or prompt you into acting out of character and go on a taser welding rampage, zapping every man you come across, in the groin …personally, I think both options could work for me!

When I started reading Good Girls Die Last, I thought, it looks like a perceptive crime thriller with feminist edge but in reality, it’s not, it is a Russian Doll of a book! By this, I mean as you start to read it and the shock revelations occur in increasing enormity, with every chapter, you begin to comprehend the complexity of its message and Em’s role and feel the gut wrenching familiarity of a young woman attempting to deal with beastly morons, the blight of inequality, endless sexual harassment and the being subjected to a myriad of seemingly harmless but utterly inappropriate, physical and verbal utterances that come her way (and more than likely have come your way too). It is those small things, the supposedly ‘funny’ comments, that we women brush off but when you put them all together, their never ending re-occurrences in your life or Em’s…just thinking about the smarmy….’Go on Smile love, it may never happen’ type of comment, makes you grit your teeth and start to seethe! Ladies, this book is going to make you rage, roar and grind your teeth because though it is fictional, you cannot fail to see how based in reality it is, specifically of the social environment and work atmospheres, where most of us will have experienced or are experiencing now, similar issues (and that is putting it mildly and politely) possibly for the last time in this review!

Let me give you a little taste of what to expect when you read this novel; Em could be any of us, She’s approaching 30, she is half English, half Spanish and an attractive, creative, intelligent woman, with a zest for living life to full, finding love and making a success of her career. Sounds familiar doesn’t it. But like most of us, Em’s formative years have shaped her perspective and emotions, enduring the irrational rages of drunk father and the ineffectual passive responses to this unstable and unsavoury environment from her mother. Whose entreaties to stay quiet and not make a fuss in the face of abuse, have etched themselves into Em’s conscious and hold a level of responsibility for how Em reacts to her spiralling circumstances in this story.

At the start of the book, it is a relatively normal day in London, bar the fact the city is grip in the worse heat wave ever with temperatures hitting over 40* (quite frankly, if I ever experienced that I would just die, I would lie down on the street and wait for death, as I can barely function when the weather hits 26*!) But this stifling, restrictive, oppressive heat, is the perfect foil for Em’s story to unfold in! Her day starts with her sneaking out of her male flat mate’s bed and you become instantly aware that as fabulous as Em is, she doesn’t always make wise choices…she has been sleeping (well that is my euphemism for bonking like bunnies) with him (but as you’ll find out) it’s more a case of her accepting and tolerating his attentions, because she’s got an itch that needs scratching, her relationship has failed, she’s feeling sad and sex like this, take the edge off a little.

But Matt (the flatmate) – is the epitome of a gormless, philandering, entitled cockwomble (sorry but he is, and I’ve slept with a few myself…so I can see him clearly…ugh) he’s the male equivalent of an evening bag; pretty, might coordinate with your shoes, useful for about 30 minutes and then the moment’s over and you just need to change bags and shoes! Now before you think, I am being harsh, I promise you, I’m not…but his actions and behaviours towards Em…will confirm, what I’ve said, when you read the book! Yes, I am doing my level best not to give anything away here, so no details!

Em, gets ready to leave for work and she’s packed a suitcase, because she is off back to Spain for her sister’s wedding and it is the first time she will be reunited with her mother and sister in a long time (and there is a whole other plotline here, that explains why Em is the way she is and a whole batch of secrets as well) but they will unfold before you as you read and there will be more than one light bulb moment for you to experience!

 Today is an important day for Em’s career as graphic designer, she has worked hard to be a success and hopefully today, will cement her efforts. But of course, today does not go to plan in any way imaginable – huge understatement!

Instead of securing her job, she is fired,  all because her male boss is hacked off that she rejected his slimy, intrusive, coercive sexual advances and compounds his utter vileness by telling HR that Em’s behaviour towards him made him uncomfortable, as though she’s the one trapping him in toilets and trying to feel him up! Honestly, you want to make this turd in a t-shirt, pay for his lechery and lies…. turning his testicles into earrings, would be too good for him!!! I’m on a ranting roll now, this I blame on Natali, because her characterisations are just exceptional. You cannot fail to react to the circumstances, the plot, the dialogue…all of it showed me, what a work of genius this book is, that it prods and provokes you so much and that as a reader your mind is a blur of eviscerating resentment about the unfolding story, and you can’t help but put yourself in Em’s shoes! As you can see, I may have forgotten Em was fictional, so involved in the plot had I become!

As if the Em’s situation isn’t complicated enough, the heat wave has stymied public transport and there is a serial killer, strangling women in parks across London, take note of this  fact as it will play a part in Em’s downward spiral!  Em has no way of getting the airport except to walk there and we are talking 14 miles here folks! If she is going to catch her plane and reunite with her family! At this stage of the story,  I am once more back to lying on the floor, waiting for death here as the mere idea of walking in heels, in 40 degrees…with your period…just no, no, no, no…I simply couldn’t do it…but Em does and we follow along her travails and her meeting up with Rose…who I just loved as a character and the fact, that Natali uses their coincidental meeting to show the varying degrees of friendship, solidarity and support that can develop quickly between two vastly different women is glorious and is a redemptive element of this tremendous tale.

Now if you want to find out, if Em makes it to the airport, what happens if/when she does, what ends up happening in another park on this hot London night, the impact of social media and how all that has transpired up to this point leads to utter carnage and calamity, and the liberation and destruction of a life or several lives…then get yourself to a bookshop or click online and get this book as fast as you can, as there is so much more to come. I have only skimmed the surface of this novel!

Quite frankly bookophiles, I may never recover from reading this book! EVER…it is just that phenomenal! I am quite sure; I haven’t done it justice in my review. I will say, Natali’s book, is one I will never forget, it will be top of my list of gifts to friends and family this year and for several years to come. Please, Please, just go and get a copy, pour yourself a HUGE G&T, ignore your phone and just read it and then I hope you will see exactly why I am so enthusiastic, enraged, and excited about this book. Natali you have blown me away with this novel, I applaud your imagination and sublime writing skills…whatever you create next, I will be at the front of the queue to buy it.

Happy Reading Bookophiles!

About the Author:

Natali Simmonds began her career in glossy magazines, then went on to manage marketing campaigns for big brands. She’s now a creative brand consultant, freelance writer, and fiction author, writing gritty and unflinching stories full of complex women and page-turning suspense (and sometimes a little magic).

Simmonds’ dark, feminist thriller debut, Good Girls Die Last, has been optioned for a television series by STV. As N J Simmonds, Natali penned the fantasy trilogy The Path Keeper and Son of Secrets, and in 2022 was shortlisted for the RNA Fantasy Award for the last book in the series, Children of Shadows. She’s one half of paranormal romance author duo, Caedis Knight, and has also written for manga.

When she’s not writing or consulting, she’s a columnist for Kings College London’s ‘Inspire The Mind’ magazine, and lectures for Raindance Film School. Originally from London, Natali now divides her time between Spain, the UK, and the Netherlands where she can be found drawing, reading in her hammock, or complaining about cycling in the rain.

Author: Essie Fox

Publisher: Orenda Books

Available: 22^nd June 2023 in Hardback & eBook

Thank you to Anne Cater, Random Things Tours & Orenda Books for my lovely gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details:

Twin sisters Keziah and Tilly Lovell are identical in every way, except that Tilly hasn’t grown a single inch since she was five. Coerced into promoting their father’s quack elixir as they tour the country fairgrounds, at the age of fifteen the girls are sold to a mysterious Italian known as ‘Captain’.

Theo is an orphan, raised by his grandfather, Lord Seabrook, a man who has a dark interest in anatomical freaks and other curiosities … particularly the humankind. Resenting his grandson for his mother’s death in childbirth, when Seabrook remarries and a new heir is produced, Theo is forced to leave home without a penny to his name.

Theo finds employment in Dr Summerwell’s Museum of Anatomy in London, and here he meets Captain and his theatrical ‘family’ of performers, freaks, and outcasts. But it is Theo’s fascination with Tilly and Keziah that will lead all of them into a dark web of deceits, exposing unthinkable secrets and threatening everything they know…

My Thoughts:

I am beyond delighted to be sharing my thoughts with you today on Essie Fox’s book, The Fascination. If there was ever a book to judge by its cover, Essie’s book would definitely be a front runner, it is as glorious on the inside as it looks on the outside. This is a sumptuous, scintillating, and stunning read. Rich with historic details and atmosphere, which envelops and compliments the sublime story Essie has crafted. If you don’t get hold of a copy of this book, any FOMO (fear of missing out) you may possess will indeed be realised!

In this novel, we are not transported to into a whirl of ballrooms, ladies at tea or the pristine echelons of Victorian polite society. Instead, we are dropped into the underbelly of the beast, with all its riotous, raucous, raw, rambunctious reality, where survival by any means is the common trait. Where physical difference can lead to cruelty and exploitation and a life unlike any we readers can truly comprehend, as it is so far removed from the world we now inhabit. Yet, despite the privations of birth, social status and disability our protagonists, persevere.

What I loved about this book, is how Essie brought the extraordinary lives of her characters to life so exquisitely, her love and knowledge of the Victorian age, leaps off the pages of her book and completely ensnares her readers, right from the first line of this book. You literally become an omnipotent element to the novel, you are drawn into the dark murky, mysterious corners of this Victorian drama.

So let me give you a small taste of the book; Keziah and Tilly are identical twin sisters, they are mirror images of each other except for the one difference, Tilly has not grown in height since they were 5 years old! Their nefarious father has sought to exploit their uniqueness for his own profit by forcing them to promote his fraudulent ‘miracle cure’. On the move constantly, they have never had a place to call home! Until their obnoxious father, sells them (I know just writing this sentence makes me quiver with rage, that anyone should be sold as a commodity, is beyond modern comprehension but this was not the case during this historic period!)  I had to hold my indignant horses at this point and read on…the girls are sold to the enigmatic ‘Captain’ and find themselves part of a ‘family’ of human curios, collected by the Captain for their physical differences to the accepted societal norms, to be put on show, as exotics or wonders because such performances were accepted and expected forms of entertainment. I was in a bit of intellectual quandary at this point, had the twins gone from the proverbial frying pan to the fire here or could their circumstances be somewhat improved despite being sold…all I have to say now, is wait and see!

Our other protagonist in this intriguing story, is Theo, who aspires to be a doctor. His life has been in complete contrast to that of the twins, stable and moderately comfortable. Raised by his grandfather Lord Seabrook, a man of contradictions, with his virulent dislike of all things medical but also is obsessed with physical anomalies! I confess, he was a truly vile character in my eyes! Even more so, when he re-marries and gets his new wife with child as soon as possible. And once the new heir is in place, poor Theo is surplus to requirements and is effectively abandoned but instead of focusing on this loss.

Theo turns his attention on finding a way to become a doctor, by answering an advertisement placed by Dr Eugene Summerwell (definitely a case of creepy by name and by nature!), who requires a ‘gentleman anatomist’…this very job title did indeed give me the shivers, as it sounds very macabre! But it is through Summerwell’s ‘Museum of Anatomy’ that Theo crosses paths with Tilly and Keziah, as it is also the home to the Captain and his troop of physical outcasts. However, all is not what it seems…beneath the veneer of their new homes/family, something sinister lies and they become enmeshed in others dark deceptions but of course, if you want to know more then you will have to buy the book and find out, what precisely I am referring to as I have no intention of spoiling the trajectory of the plot!

Essie Fox’s The Fascination is really the most aptly named novel, as every element provokes fascination from its readers. From her ability to vividly conjure a world of dark performances, filled with mystery and the macabre from show grounds to anatomist theatre, the atmosphere is tangible and tainted, yet you cannot look away or stop reading! Essie’s ability to write authentic and engaging characters is superb, from the intrepid, innocent, and vulnerable to the downright dastardly. Essie does not pull her punches, as she leads us on the journey of her novel, the characters endure the complexities of society at the time, where disability, domestic abuse, coercion, exploitation to name but few, were not recognised or accommodated in any way and yes, they are horrendous, unacceptable behaviours for anyone to endure but they are historically accurate and dealt with as sympathetically as possible. I admired the unflinching and yet careful way these elements have been included in this story. Essie’s knowledge and research of this period is outstanding and I applaud her talent for mixing fact and fiction together so seamlessly, I quite forgot I was reading a novel!

 For me, The Fascination is a masterful, magical, menacing, and magnificent novel and one I have completely adored reading, it is beautifully written and has eloquently educated me in elements of the Victorian period, that I was only marginally aware of. If you, like me, love mystery mixed with your history, then this book, needs to be on your bookshelves, it is as far as I’m concern literary gold…so I enthusiastically suggest, you get hold of a copy ASAP, you will not regret it!

Happy Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

Essie Fox was born and raised in rural Herefordshire, which inspires much of her writing. After studying English Literature at Sheffield University, she moved to London where she worked for the Telegraph Sunday Magazine, and then book publishers George Allen & Unwin, before becoming self-employed in the world of art and design.

Essie now spends her time writing historical gothic novels. Her debut, The Somnambulist, was shortlisted for the National Book Awards, and featured on Channel 4’s TV Book Club. The Last Days of Leda Grey, set in the early years of silent film, was selected as The Times Historical Book of the Month. Essie is also the creator of the popular blog: The Virtual Victorian. She has lectured on this era at the V&A, and the National Gallery in London.

Please do read some of the other reviews available on this blog tour.

Author: Jane Corry

Publisher: Penguin/Viking Books

Available: 22^nd June 2023 in Paperback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to Ellie Hudson and Penguin/Viking Books for my gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details:

You can run away from your life.

But you can’t run away from murder.

When her family tragedy is splashed across the newspapers, Nancy decides to disappear. Her grandmother’s beautiful Regency house in a quiet seaside village seems like the safest place to hide. But the old house has its own secrets and a chilling wartime legacy . . .

Now someone knows the truth about the night Nancy’s mother and stepfather were murdered. Someone knows where to find her. And they have nothing to lose . . .

So, what really happened that night? And how far will she go to keep it hidden?

My Thoughts:

Today is my turn on the blog tour for Jane Corry’s latest domestic noir, Coming to Find You. Now I have to confess it has been a while since I’ve read one of Jane’s books and more fool me, I have clearly been missing out! I had completely forgotten how thrilling, twisty and taut they are! The premise of this book, really jumped out at me and the confluences of murder, history, mystery, and emotional mayhem roll off the pages of this absorbing, atmospheric and addictive thriller and reading it, certainly sated my crime/thriller addiction!

The novel opens in dramatic style; when a birthday celebration leads to a violent altercation in a farmhouse and results in death and these events completely changes the trajectory of our protagonist Nancy’s life; her family decimated and her stepbrother Martin, convicted of killing her mother and stepfather! But the truth of what really happened that night…. only those involved know what actually occurred!

Left alone, facing a monstrous onslaught of intrusive public and press attention. With no escape from this pernicious and horrified fascination with her family, their lives, and their deaths. Nancy has no respite from the situation, from their hounding of her and no time or space to grieve her losses or even to begin process all that has occurred.  Leading to her decision to flee, to go somewhere familiar, somewhere safe…her grandmother Adeline’s former home Tall Chimneys, set in the rural idle of Sidmouth, Devon…far, far away from all the urban clamour and nosy Exes!

One of the elements of this novel that peaked my attention so much, was Jane’s clever focus on the convergence of complexities that arise from the circumstances of murder. The focus of everyone’s attention and sympathy, is towards the victim/s and their relatives, who have had loved ones snatched from them for seemingly no reason or at least not one they can comprehend. And yet there are the invisible victims of such a crime as murder, those who purely by circumstances of familial relationship to the perpetrator are persecuted for that connection. Who suffer furiously subjective public speculation and negative perceptions about them, despite their innocence of any crime in reality, a truly fascinating area for contemplation and an interesting point of view within this novel.

The other element of this book, that I thoroughly enjoyed, was its dual timeline; Nancy in the present day attempting to live through death and social destruction and then the story dips back to her Grandmother and Tall Chimneys with its war time (1940s) residents and who is also trying to survive a similar but different situation to her granddaughter. Experiences of life changing events, the turbulence of being an evacuee, the overwhelming impact of the loss of loved ones killed in battle or by falling bombs, this book is awash with multiple plot threads that cover everything from spies to sex and back again. Every aspect of these highly dramatic and emotional elements evolves naturally and gives the book very tangible human aspect, that every reader can relate to.

The turn of events both in the past and in the present cannot fail to prompt you as a reader to ask questions about the ethics of choice; of right and wrong decisions, the wrong decision for the right reason or the right decision for the wrong reason and how when we as people are faced with such adversity and in dreadful situations, the heart overrules the head and reacts and not always with the best result!

Coming to Find you is a sensational story of scandalous and sinister secrets, of family drama, dilemmas, and dynamics; of heartbreak and healing woven in this tale. The perfect book to tuck in your beach bag, if you are heading on holiday or if you are whiling away the hours tucked in the shade of your garden, this is book that will keep you enthralled and entertained…so top up the ice trays, hide your phone and enjoy it…I did immensely.

Happy Reading Bookophiles. 

About the Author:

Jane Corry is a former magazine journalist who spent three years working as the writer-in-residence of a high security prison for men. This often hair-raising experience helped inspire her Sunday Times-bestselling psychological dramas, My Husband’s Wife, Blood Sisters, The Dead Ex, I Looked Away, I Made A Mistake, The Lies We Tell, and We All Have Our Secrets, which have been translated into over 16 languages and sold over a million copies worldwide. Jane was a tutor in creative writing at Oxford University; an RLF Fellow at Exeter University; and is a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and My Weekly magazine. Her eighth novel is set for publication in summer 2023.

Please do read some of the other reviews on this blog tour.

Author: AJ Pearce

Publisher: Picador

Available: 25^th May 2023 available in Hardback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to The Squadpod Collective, Ed.PR & Picador for my gifted copy and for having me on the publication day blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone. 

Book Details:

THE FEEL-GOOD NOVEL OF THE SUMMER

A heart-warming, heart-wrenching wartime story from The Sunday Times bestselling author of Dear Mrs Bird, AJ Pearce.

Emmy Lake is the much-loved agony aunt at Woman’s Friend magazine, relied upon by readers across the country as they face the challenges of life on the Home Front. With the problem page thriving and a team of fantastic women behind her, Emmy finally feels she is Doing Her Bit.

But when a glamorous new owner arrives, everything changes. As the Honourable Mrs Porter tries to charm her way around the rest of the team, Emmy realizes that she plans to destroy everything readers love about the magazine.

With happiness quickly turning to heartbreak and war still raging in Europe, will Emmy and her friends find the inner strength they need to keep keeping on – and save the magazine they love?

My Thoughts:

This is the Fallen Librarian calling…. or rather reviewing and probably waving excitedly too about the treat of a book I have to share with you today. Firstly, Happy Publication Day to AJ Pearce and her third book in the Emmy Lake Chronicles…. Mrs Porter Calling, my fellow Squadettes and I, as well as many fans of this series, have been watching and waiting with exuberant anticipation for this book’s arrival. Like the best things in life, this novel was absolutely worth the wait and is just the ticket to brighten the day of any reader who loves humour, history, and high jinks…this latest instalment has it by the bucket load. Time to break out the Gin Fizzes and read!

Once more we return to Emmy, Bunty and their vivacious cohort of friends, colleagues and family all linked to the Women’s Friend magazine. As I read the opening chapter, I was once again transported to another place and time (war torn London of 1943) as well as being re-united with these wonderful characters. I had to admire, Amanda’s rather nifty little re-cap of all that has happened to them up to this point…as they gather together celebrate Emmy’s 25^th birthday, complete with cake, an absolute luxury at the time. All told, everything in their lives, despite the deprivations of War time is relatively tickety-boo.

Changes are on the horizon; some good, with Thelma and her children moving in with Emmy and Bunty and there might even be a guinea pig if a certain young man has his way! Others, not so much, following the death of their eminent publisher Lord Overton, their beloved Women’s Friend has passed into the hands of the Honourable Mrs Cressida ‘Egg’ Porter. Who on first meeting, charms the staff at the magazine, she’s ostentatious, glamourous, and appealing while disarmingly obtuse and oblivious to the fact there is a War on! The staff’s initial hope that she will be a benign presence, is quickly dispelled, with her constant list of requirements; a lavish new office and worse her ‘vision’ for the magazine and what articles should be in it to attract a socially high end audience. And which bears no concept of reality for their current readers concerns or circumstances! Emmy and Guy (Editor in chief and her brother-in-law) are faced with an ever increasing dichotomy…how to appease the Honourable Mrs Porter, is she a rotten egg or just merely scrambled and all the while trying to retain their loyal readers, who can’t figure out what is happening to their favourite magazine…the cat is certainly amongst the pigeons!

One of the particular joys of this book and its predecessors, is the prevailing concept of camaraderie, come what may, be it celebration or commiseration. The female friendships stand firm, they are wholly supportive of each other, even when they don’t always see eye to eye on an issue. And even in the toughest circumstances, be it being parted from loved ones, war time privations or troublesome colleagues. Together, they face the situation, head on and with bags of wit and exuberance, you cannot fail to admire their courage, spirit and pluck and I think it is a lesson we modern women should aspire to, as accepting others as they are and putting others first, is a status quo that has waned significantly since the war era!

Another element of this book, that I just adore are the letters that punctuate and accent the story; the loving, touching and pithy exchanges between Charles and Emmy, exploring the difficulties of starting a marriage and being separated for so long. The plethora of befuddled and bewildered questions and reaction letters, that readers submit; Can I steal my mother’s finance because I was in love with him first; Don’t feed your cute dog in a hat cake, it’s not good for him; Who is Harvey Nicks and are his frocks made of gold…these wonderful vignettes capture the essence and absurdities of both what is happening at the Women’s Friend but also the wider social complexities of the time and quite frankly, they just make me laugh until I cry!

This book is truly an evocative, emotional, effervescent cornucopia of historical fiction, a book capable of nourishing and replenishing heart and mind. Amanda writes with such exceptional historical knowledge and emotional intelligence, weaving facts and insights together seamlessly to create characters and a story that joyfully resonates with us all. I am once more bereft that I couldn’t control myself and consumed this instalment greedily in one day! If you’ve not yet read the Emmy Lake Chronicles, then you simply must…they are top notch and they are the perfect series to treat yourself to this bank holiday. I say, hang the expense, buy all 3 books and you now have the best excuse to cancel all plans for dreadful BBQs (sorry I hate chargrilled/burnt food…yuk) and recline on your sofa and indulge yourself…Chin, chin bookophiles!

Happy Reading…

About the Author:

AJ Pearce is the author of the Sunday Times Top 10 bestseller DEAR MRS BIRD, which was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick and shortlisted for Debut of the Year at the 2019 British Book Awards. It has been translated into fifteen languages and optioned for development for TV.

Born in Hampshire, her favourite subjects at school were English and History, which now (finally!) seems to be making some sense. Follow AJ on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook: @ajpearcewrites

Author: SA Harris

Publisher: Salt Publishing

Available: 15^th May 2023 in Paperback & eBook

Thank you to Helen Richardson of Helen Richardson PR for my gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details:

‘Seahurst is set on the Suffolk coast. The area is famous for its folklore. I was born in the county and spent my childhood on the beaches, running along narrow, sandy paths that thread through the dunes. The vast empty skies, mudflats and whispering reed beds have inspired writers over centuries. What better setting could there be for a contemporary haunted house ghost story?’ – S.A. HARRIS

S.A. Harris returns with a gripping contemporary ghost story set on the Suffolk coast. Evie Meyer and her son Alfie flee from her abusive partner Seth in Toronto to spend New Year with her half-brother Luke at their late father’s summer home on the Suffolk Coast, only to find Seahurst abandoned and Luke missing. As Evie searches for her brother, she is filled with a deepening dread that something is very wrong at Seahurst and that their father’s death may not have been suicide after all. Can Evie uncover Seahurst’s sinister secrets and keep Alfie safe before the souls of the dead claim yet another terrible revenge?

My Thoughts:

Today I have the great privilege of sharing my thoughts with you on Sally Harris’s new book Seahurst, which is a truly sinister, shadowy, scintillating, and scarily sublime modern gothicesque read…that will thrill and terrify you all at once. Quite early on I realised that I couldn’t read this novel late at night, all alone in my little house! Because the of insistent power of Sally’s words, their escalating tension, and her subtle power of suggestion, gripped me completely and also made me want to hide under my duvet and trust me, you really can’t read through a 15 tog barrier of protection, I know this because I tried to!

I have to applaud Sally and exclaim, what a sensational opening she has written to this book, it certainly galvanises your attention, right from the outset. Within a couple of pages, I was completely submerged in the situation, my heart was pounding, and the tangibility of fear was hideously real as it rolled off the pages…I actually had to stop reading for 5 minutes to calm myself down, as my heart was beating so fast! Now in my opinion, creating this reaction in a reader, is a fantastic way to start a book. As the reader, I was instantly invested in the story and the characters and I most desperately wanted to know what happens next but simultaneously I was petrified of what might actually happen next and trust me when you find out, it won’t be any less terrifying…I say to you now…bone rattles!

So let me give you a little taste of what you can expect when reading this book, without giving too much away…hopefully! Evie Matthews and her son Alfie are visiting Suffolk and her half-brother Luke all the way from Canada, to spend New Year together. However, you soon realise that Evie and Alfie are really trying to escape the clutches of her odious partner Seth! Evie is using this trip to seek time and space to gain perspective on her life and to figure out what the future could hold for herself and her son.

Their arrival at Seahurst, a modern architectural monstrosity (my impression not Sally’s description), perched on a cliff top, ostensibly this house was intended to be her father’s summertime retreat. Returning here, was supposed to bring Evie and Alfie, some level of solace and sanctuary while potentially offering Evie the opportunity to reconnect with friends from her past. Instead, they find Seahurst deserted, and Luke has seemingly vanished! Leaving us readers, with a whole host of unanswered perplexing questions of the Why, Where, What variety and a mounting sense of trepidation!

As Evie tries to make the best of the situation because that’s what she does, she attempts constantly to make the best of a bad situation! Evie becomes increasingly concerned about her brother, as she uncovers his unhealthy addiction to their father’s research into the history of Seahurst and his escalating belief that their father’s suicide was nothing of the sort! As Evie delves deeper, her sense of unease increases (as did mine), and she becomes concerned for her safety and sanity. Could it really be possible, that spectors from the past are responsible for the menacing miasma that hangs over Seahurst, have the whispered curses of local folklore manifested into reality! Well of course, that’s for me to know and you to find out!

What I loved so much about this book, is Sally’s masterful atmospheric environmental rendering, such as the sense of isolation and wildness of the coastline and its bitter, moaning winds in brilliant combination with her love and knowledge of Suffolk and its ancient histories and mysteries, that builds an eerie and evolving backdrop to the plot and the circumstances and complexities of the characters and it evokes the prevailing sense of insidious intent, that intensifies immeasurably with every page you read.

The house of Seahurst, its secrets and spooky spirit of the past, remind me so much of Du Maurier’s Mandalay in Rebecca and the inevitable suggestion that; nothing good this way comes! Sally is the unrivalled Mistress of Menace and despite my absolute terror experienced while reading…I still couldn’t put this book down, well not during daylight hours at least. As I was plagued with a need to know, what happened at Seahurst; why is Luke missing and what will happen to Evie? If spectres, secrets, skeletal scenery, and scary sensations sing to you as a reader then you will revel in this book’s pages, as I have done. With the bank holiday weekend approaching, this is the prefect sinistrous treat for you.

Happy Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

Sally Harris writes ghost stories and gothic fiction as S. A. Harris. Her first novel, Haverscroft was long listed for Not The Booker Prize, was one of Den Of Geek’s best books of 2019, a semi-finalist in the Book Bloggers Novel of the Year Award 2020, and a Halloween recommended read in Prima Magazine. Sally is a family law solicitor living with her husband and children in Norwich. For more information visit https://saharrisauthor.com/ Follow Sally on Twitter @salharris1

Please do read some of the other reviews on this blog tour.

Recipes and memories of a journey from Iran to Italy

Author: Saghar Setareh

Publisher: Murdoch Books

Available: 4^th May 2023 in Hardback

Thank you to Anne Cater, Random Things Tours and Murdoch Books for my stunning gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone

Book Details:

Iranian writer and food photographer Saghar Setareh’s stunning cookbook tells the story of her own culinary journey from Iran to Italy and explores the parallels that link Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food cultures.

When Saghar Setareh moved to Italy at the age of 22, she was enchanted by the rich food culture of her adopted country, and this inspired a curiosity in the cuisine of her homeland and the surrounding countries of the Levant and Eastern Mediterranean.

Pomegranates & Artichokes is the story of Saghar’s own culinary journey from Iran to Italy, in which she describes the many parallels that link Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food cultures and shows how ingredients and recipes – unconstrained by borders – are shared and transformed through the immigrant experience.

Divided into three sections representing stops on Saghar’s culinary ‘road trip’ – Iran, In Between and Italy – this book features more than 80 recipes celebrating the foods of these regions. Among the highlights are a simple Iranian breakfast platter, a celebratory Persian feast, Sicilian-style stuffed artichokes, guinea hen braised with pomegranate, sweet-sour meatballs from Aleppo, a Roman ricotta and wild cherry pie and a velvety Middle Eastern milk pudding.

Illustrated with Saghar’s own beautiful photography, and peppered with personal insights and experiences, Pomegranates & Artichokes tells the story of two food cultures, and the delicious space in between.

My Thoughts:

A decade ago (gosh, how time flies) in 2013, I was made redundant from my job, which had commanded my life for 18hrs out of 24, 5 days a week for 6 years. Suddenly, I had time on my hands, and I wondered what I was going to do with all this ‘free’ time (aside from looking for a new job) I decided, I wasn’t going to let this unfortunate change in circumstances drag me into a pit of despair…Instead, I would finally put my wall of cookery books into action and set myself the challenge of learning 100 new cake/dessert recipes in a year. This personal project of mine, also resulted in becoming an even more unashamed collector of cookbooks; I began to scour bookshops and charity shops for books containing recipes that are just a little different from food I am most familiar with, especially if it is cake related.

With this history of mine, in mind, I think you can see why I couldn’t resist reviewing this exquisite, eclectic, and extraordinary cookbook by Saghar Setareh…oh my goodness this book is stunning in every way. It is delicious mixture of beautiful photographs, taken by Saghar and vignettes of her travels, an exploration of her wide and varied interest in food and ingredients from Iran to Italy and back again. This is a book to tease your taste buds and tantalise your sense of adventure and whet your appetite to explore food and places you many not yet have experienced.

I loved the passionate and vivid visual nature of this cookbook; it provided me with the vibrant essence and atmosphere of Iran (which I have limited knowledge of) and of Italy (which I know quite well from various family holidays). I truly appreciated the construction of this book, with recipes for any level of cook from beginner to expert and from cookies to cocktails, there is something for everyone on its pages . There are myriad of tips and suggestions throughout the book from what staples I could add to my pantry/store cupboard; to the best way to prepare the recipes for an optimum result.  I was completely absorbed by the memoir style snippets providing wonderful insight into the history and provenance of the recipes…trust me, you do get rather hungry while reading, as there are so many tempting options to try, which look, and sound utterly mouth-watering!

As I said at the beginning of my review, I am probably more of a baker than a cook. So I opted to remain in my happy safe place and make the Simple Cake with date frosting on P.107…I confess, I am not a great lover of icing, so may have slightly amended my production and incorporated the dates and walnuts into the cake itself and trust me, when eaten warm from the oven, served with a little vanilla yoghurt…it was utter heaven…I’ve made it twice more since and my father is obsessed with this cake as it contains two of his favourite ingredients (the dates/walnut combination)…to the point I now have enough of both of these to make 10 cakes! Here’s my cake direct from the oven…

Another recipe, that I may have become slight obsessed with is the Beloved Aubergine Bake on P.245/6…. I adore aubergines but many people don’t…so it was lovely to finally have a recipe that is so easy to get the hang of and with the current cost of living crisis, it is also economical to make and uses lots of fresh vegetables. It is totally divine to eat, plus there are leftovers too. Below is my first attempt at this recipe and it is now a firm favourite of mine…

Next week, I am going to be trying the feta parcels and the tiny coconut cookies. Spending time with this book, my love of baking has been re-born and I haven’t been inspired to bake for quite sometime and Saghar’s delicious recipes, have certainly lit a fire in my oven once more…This incredible book, draws you to into it and I have found myself sitting for hours, leafing through the pages, lost in Saghar’s recollections, and studying wide variety of potential meals to create, it is truly gourmet treasure trove. If you only buy one cookbook this year or this lifetime, this is the one you should choose, in my opinion every household in the country should have this book in its kitchen!

Happy Cooking Bookophiles…

About the Author:

Saghar Setareh was born in Tehran and moved to Rome in 2007 to study at the Fine Art Academy. She has been running her food and photography blog, Lab Noon, since 2014, and has contributed to Food52, Conde Nast Traveller UK, and National Geographic. Alongside working as a professional photographer, Saghar runs Persian and Italian cooking classes in cities across Italy. She was among Corriere della Sera’s selection of ’50 Women of Food’ in 2020.

Please do read some of the other reviews available on this blog tour.

Author: Claire McGlasson

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Available: 6^th April 2023 in Hardback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to Anne Cater, Random Things Tours & Faber for my lovely, gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details:

Miss Margaret Finch – The perfect 1930s heroine and a young woman who will carve a space in your heart alongside Mrs Hemmingway and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.

Blackpool, 1938 Miss Margaret Finch – a rather demure young woman – has just begun work in a position that relies on her discretion and powers of observation. Then her path is crossed by the disgraced Rector of Stiffkey (aka Harold Davidson), who is the subject of a national scandal.

Margaret is determined to discover the truth behind the headlines: is Davidson a maligned hero or an exploiter of the vulnerable? But her own troubles are never far away, and Margaret’s fear that history is about to repeat itself means she needs to uncover the truth urgently.

The deeply evocative novel ripples with the tension of a country not yet able to countenance the devastation of another war. Margaret walks us along the promenade, peeks into the baths and even dares a trip on the love boat in this, her first seaside summer season, on a path more dangerous than she could ever have imagined.

My Thoughts:

From the moment I realised Claire McGlasson’s new book The Misadventures of Margaret Finch was set in Blackpool I was drawn to it and instinctively knew I had to read it, because my own family has connections to the town, via my great aunt. Who ran a prosperous hotel in Cleveleys (the posh end) of wider Blackpool in the 50s/60s and 70s and I believe from family stories, some rather famous guests stayed with her, and my father has clear and fond memories of her glamorous apartment within the hotel. And of course, we regularly visited Blackpool to see the illuminations and my grandparents took my sister and I to the amusement arcades and armed us with copious 2ps and kept us liberally supplied with rock dummies and ice lollies…So, to re-visit Blackpool several decades before my own memories begin, filled me with much splendid anticipation.

My high expectations of this novel were fully realised when I started the book, the opening pages, fill you with a deep seated sense of curiosity, I was trying to ascertain, exactly what our heroine, Miss Margaret Finch is up to? As we follow her in various places around the town of Blackpool; the lido, pubs, tea rooms, surreptitiously keeping herself to herself and attempting to blend in with her subjects and all while, listening and looking and making copious, detailed notes about the people, places, conversations, clothes, and actions all around her. These behaviours do make her seem a bit suspicious initially and I thought…she a SPY and how exciting, but at the same time, I thought, what an odd collection of daily ephemera she is collating. As I read on it was obvious that Margaret is not a spy…she in effect is a people watcher, employed by the Mass Observation Project to document the actions and activities of people (ostensibly working class people) who are on their annual Wake week at the seaside…don’t worry if you don’t know what this is…Claire, has done an excellent job of researching the social history of this era and her book, is deliciously awash with period detail, evocative atmosphere and replete with subtle explanations of the societal happenstance and nuances of the time and with all these components, there is also a slowly building tension, tucked within the story, as the country heads inevitable towards WWII.

I absolutely loved Margaret Finch, she is a magnificent mixture of characteristics; inquisitive, innocence, intellect, and insistence. She is definitely skilled in the over thinking department (and the insight into her thoughts will make you laugh) and despite the restrictions of her sex and class, she has a strong and clear idea of herself and what she wants to achieve in life and ‘romance, mating and procreating’ are not top of her list despite the toxic insistence of her dreadful stepmother…who is truly a frightful woman! Margaret has taken this odd job of hers to avoid, inflicting herself (her words not mine) on a husband, you get the distinct impression, that the job she really wants is one of an academic, within the hallowed halls of Cambridge, where she studied Mathematics but merely being female precluded her from this pathway. One of the brilliant elements of this novel, is the graceful way, that Claire sprinkles elements of Margaret’s background and experiences into the main plot line, so we can see the whole of Margaret and why she is the way she is and does what she does…I know, I am being a little cryptic here, that’s because I don’t want to spoil any element of this book for you, as what occurs, needs to be experienced by you as you read.

Claire, has crafted an intriguing, intelligent and insightful novel, blending, expanding and re-imagining factual historical people and occurrences, such as the case of the infamous Rev Davidson and his inappropriate and eccentric dealing with young women, which led to a public scandal. The facts of which, Claire enmeshes with her fictional character of Margaret, who befriends the fallen vicar and veers from her task of Mass Observation data collection and her rather quirky boss James (you are going to love him) to investigating this perplexing case which given the nature of it, well I am sure you can imagine, leads to some very interesting revelations and Margaret certainly has her eyes well and truly opened on the matter of life’s complications (and that’s an understatement) and naturally she gets herself in a pickle more than once but ultimately, her entertaining experiences, forge the way for a very different life for her, more so than she could possibly anticipate!

This novel is such a joy to read and once you start it, you will find it nearly impossible to put down, I know I couldn’t. This book is astute, amusing, atmospheric and awesome, I adored it and I hope you will too…it is a book, that needs a home on your bookshelves or pride of place on your towering ‘to be read’ pile…so I insist you get hold of a copy…ASAP!

Happy Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

Claire McGlasson is a journalist who works for ITV News and enjoys the variety of life on the road with a TV camera. She lives in Cambridge. The Rapture was her debut novel.

Please do read some of the other reviews available on this blog tour.

Author: Sharon Gosling

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Available: 27^th April 2023 in Paperback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to Anne Cater, Random Things Tours and Simon & Schuster for my gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone. 

Book Details:

A novel of second chances and blossoming communities from the author of The Lighthouse Bookshop.

Budding landscape architect Luisa MacGregor is stuck in a rut – she hates her boss, she lives with her sister, and she is still morning the loss of her fiancé many years ago. So, when she is given the opportunity to take on a parcel of land in a deprived area, she sees the chance to build a garden that can make the area bloom.

Arriving in the rundown seaside town of Collaton on the north-west coast of Cumbria, she realises that her work is going to be cut out for her. But, along with Cas, a local PE teacher, and Harper, a teen whose life has taken a wrong turn, she is determined to get the garden up and running.

So, when the community comes together and the garden starts to grow, she feels her luck might have changed. Can she grow good things on this rocky ground? And might love blossom along the way…

 My Thoughts:

If you’ve not had the chance yet, to read one of Sharon Gosling’s books then may I enthusiastically suggest that you do. Like most readers, I have a list of authors whose books, whose publication dates I wait for with feverish anticipation and in the past few years Sharon has become one of those writers for me. Because she takes a slice of lives we imagine, we would love to live and gives them a twist or two, her books are not, despite their beautiful covers, all hearts and flowers. They feature women who just like most of us, face life’s mole hills. Those life occurrences, that trip you up and put you flat on your face, but like in real life Sharon’s characters, pick themselves up and carry on, trying to make the best of often tricky situations. These aspects of life are I think familiar to us all and its these constantly evolving elements that makes Sharon’s books, wholly relatable, satisfyingly reassuring and emotionally edifying. I wholly heartedly recommend you read one or all of them! They are the literary version of the perfect frothy coffee, strong, satisfying and stimulating!

Today, I get to share my thoughts with you on Sharon’s latest book The Forgotten Garden. A story of rejuvenation of place and people. Set in Collaton, in Cumbria…a once lively and busy town but decades of socio-economic dereliction has left it a shell of its former self, with decaying buildings and a fractured community, with drugs and vandalism leaving a heavy taint.

Our main protagonist is Luisa, who is as emotionally downtrodden as the town of Collaton, having experienced the loss of her husband and is understandably still mired in the grief of such a loss and has become stuck working for a seriously toxic boss and is not fulfilling her dreams of being a landscape designer. Until she given the opportunity to build a community garden on a dilapidated factory site, which she initially refuses believing she is not capable of taking on such a huge task…and if she’s honest doesn’t have the heart for such a project, as this type of work, was her husband’s dream and without his dynamism and driving force. Luisa is not convinced she has the enthusiasm, energy, or ability to do the job but as her working situation changes dramatically and encouragement for her to take on this challenge, comes thick and fast from friends and family.

Luisa own desire to make a difference and to use her dusty skills, fuel intrigue in the project and she decides to look at the site…and fate intervenes and she ends up with a flat tire, resulting in her rescue by Cal (Mr P as he becomes known to us) and a reluctant and reticent Harper…a 17 year old, that has had to grow up far too soon and if I am honest, she’s my favourite character in this book. She’s quick witted, smart, loyal, with a bit of biting edge to her and her struggle to survive parental neglect and her assumption of the care of her baby brother (who has undiagnosed Autism) is inspiring but her complex circumstances, have led to some bad decision making on her part, born mainly out of need and desperation to provide for herself and her brother. Fortunately, Cal aka Mr P, has always been able to see the real Harper, behind her mask of snark and he does his best to support her pastorally, however he can or however much she will let him! Cal is a teacher and has been running a boxing club for local kids, trying to give them focus and a place of safety to hang out but it’s not easy and is taking a toll on his finance and life!

Luisa does embark on the garden project and this decision, helps Cal out and Luisa ends up with Harper as her reluctant assistant, let’s just say, this is Harper’s consequence for some ill conceived actions! Cal also becomes a stalwart presence for Luisa and yes there is a hint of there being potentially more between them. As well as great deal more to discover as you read…but I’m not giving any spoilers here…so you will have to dig into the book and find out for yourselves, exactly what I referring to.

At the core of this book, is the ethos of community and its importance in our lives and the belief, that if we work together, nearly anything is possible, regardless of background, race, sex or age. Also, the variety and value of friendship, that transcends ages and that in allowing others to nurture and support us, how vital this component in life, whoever we are and where ever we are at and the ways these elements occur in Sharon’s book is wonderful, authentic, heart-breaking and heart mending and ultimately uplifting.

I love Sharon’s books, because they don’t focus on the happily ever after but on the now, the complexities of human nature and the realities of life and all its tribulations and triumphs. This is a book, that will have you reaching for the tissues while laughing at the same time. It is truly a glorious read and I won’t be forgetting this story anytime soon. I hope you revel in reading this book, as much as I have.

Happy Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

Sharon started her career as an entertainment journalist, writing non-fiction books about film and television. She is also the author of multiple children’s books. Sharon and her husband live in a small village in northern Cumbria where they run a second-hand bookshop, Withnail Books in Penrith. She can be found on Twitter @sharongosling

Please do read some of the other reviews on this blog tour.

How Ancient Forests Can Save Us If We Let Them

Author: Peter Wohlleben

Translated by Jane Billinghurst

Publisher: Greystone Books

Available: 2^nd May 2023 in Hardback, eBook & Audiobook

Thank you to Anne Cater, Random Things Tours & Graystone Books for my gifted copy and for having me on the blog tour for this book. My review is based on my experience of the book and any thoughts expressed here are solely mine alone.

Book Details:

In the follow up to his Sunday Times bestseller, The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben compares tree planting to battery farming

‘In clear, vivid prose with impeccable reasoning, Peter Wohlleben makes a compelling case that almost everything we do in modern forestry management may be dead wrong. What should we do instead? Let the wisdom of the trees quell our human arrogance, heal the forest and restore our sweet, green world’

Sy Montgomery, author of How to be a Good Creature and The Soul of an Octopus

TREES CAN SURVIVE without humans, but we can’t live without trees. Even if human-caused climate change devastates our planet, trees will return—as they do, always and everywhere, even after ice ages, catastrophic fires, destructive storms, and deforestation. It would just be nice if we were around to see them flourish.

The Power of Trees is forester Peter Wohlleben’s follow-up to The Hidden Life of Trees, a Sunday Times bestseller that sold millions of copies worldwide. In his latest book, he is dismissive of token gestures in terms of tree planting. Just as he compared forest trees to ‘families’ and urban trees to ‘street urchins’ in his first book, in The Power of Trees he uses equally powerful metaphors to compare tree planting to battery farming (‘Switching to fast-growing species and breeding trees for desired traits brought results like those achieved by factory farming: individuals ready for harvest at a young age, all with a relatively uniform carcass weight.’).  However, he also joyfully describes trees determination to survive, describing seedlings breaking through the earth where you least expect them, as ‘stalwart tree children’.

This latest work is as fascinating and eye-opening as it is trenchant in its critique: on the one hand, Wohlleben describes astonishing discoveries about how trees pass knowledge down to succeeding generations and their ability to survive climate change; on the other, he is unsparing in his criticism of those who wield economic and political power—who plant trees exclusively for the sake of logging and virtue signalling—even as they ruthlessly exploit nature. The Power of Trees is a love letter to the forest and a passionate argument for protecting nature’s boundless diversity, not only for the sake of trees, but also for us.

My Thoughts:

It’s my great pleasure today, to be sharing my thoughts with you on Peter Wohlleben’s latest book, The Power of Trees. As a life longer reader, most of my spare time has involved me in a comfortable spot with my nose in a book. As I have aged, not much has changed, but what I choose to read has certainly developed over time. In the past 5 or so years, I have become fascinated by elements of our natural world and I have bought books by a variety of people, who have put their experiences and love of facets of this unique world of ours down on paper, seeking to engage, enlighten and educate readers. I have found books like Peter’s to be a treasure trove of information, opening my eyes and mind to new perspectives, political, social, and environmental issues, and celebrating life choices very different from my own and ones, which I relish and admire greatly and gratefully.

Peter’s latest book is a symphony to the Forest, and each chapter in the book, like sections of symphony, each chapter tells part of the wider story, which he believes important for us to understand and consider. His book is a poetic, political, and passionate manifesto about the important role trees and forests play in our world and lives. It extolls his personal admiration for trees, while simultaneously, explaining and extrapolating the complexities and controversies of modern forestry, exploring how detrimental and selfish, decision making is when motivated by avarice. Rather than taking time to see the bigger picture and follow profitable, practical, and protective doctrines to forest management.

I confess, as intrigued as I was by the content of this book, I was also initially intimidated by the wealth of unfamiliar knowledge and information it contained, but at the same time I found it was extremely satisfying to read because of Peter’s easy and eloquent manner of writing. I read two chapters each day, to allow myself time to absorb this odyssey and its complex and contrasting perspectives. I was surprised at how absorbed and addicted to reading it I became, despite it being my maiden voyage of discovery into the subject and I can’t wait until you get find out more about the involvement of wolves and delve into the issue of whether running out of toilet paper is more important than running out of trees! But those are elements, you need to uncover for yourselves.

I loved the idea, that trees are our protectors, and their actions are for our good and how vital it is for humanity to have or to establish a more symbiotic relationship with them. Peter’s book seeks to inspire and inform, he wishes to encourage us to protect our trees and forests for the future to come, as they have protected our environment for centuries past.

This book is a work of educational artistry, filled with the importance of advocacy, adaption, and adoption of more sentient environmental and conservational options for our foliaged friends. This is a book I believe everyone should own and read, it has truly inspired my mind and heart and I hope it does the same for you.

Happy Reading Bookophiles…

About the Author:

Peter Wohlleben is one of the world’s most notable foresters and a passionate advocate for tree conservation. Wohlleben lives in Germany, where he manages an ecologically conscious forest and runs an academy for education and advocacy. His books are bestsellers around the world. He speaks fluent English and will be In the UK 22-24 April 2023 to launch the book at the Cambridge Literary Festival and at The Linnean Society in London and available for further Interviews.

Please do read some of the other reviews available for this blog tour.