Difference between revisions of "Newest General Fiction Reviews"

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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
 
[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->
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[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]__NOTOC__
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Gary D Schmidt
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|isbn=B0DGDJRHYD
|title=Orbiting Jupiter
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|title=Nowhere Man
 +
|author=Deborah Stone
 +
|rating=4
 +
|genre=General Fiction
 +
|summary=In a quiet suburban house, Patrick is making his final plans. A meticulous man, he makes sure of every preparation, down to the last detail. Some last reflections, and then he says goodbye to his wife, the world, and his life. It's horribly sad. At work in her shop, his wife Diana is fending off yet another phone call about her ageing and ailing mother, who needs extricating from yet another accident. It will be a while before Diana realises what Patrick has done.
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1739526910
 +
|title=Where I've Not Been Lost
 +
|author=Glen Sibley
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Twelve year-old Jack is informed that his parents will be fostering another boy – fourteen year-old Joseph. But Joseph isn't like most fourteen year-olds. He's troubled: the rumour is that he spent time in juvenile incarceration for trying to kill his teacher. And there's something else about Joseph, too: he has a daughter.
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|summary=''One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's life, he arrives in an unfamiliar Devon town to recover. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday home, he dreams of reconnecting with everything he has lost. But as those tentative plans falter, he becomes swept up in a local world of unlikely friendships, mobile discos and surprising romantic possibilities.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783443944</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Tasha Kavanagh
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|author=Jenny Lecoat
|title=Things We Have In Common
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|title=Beyond Summerland
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Yasmin is fifteen and seriously overweight - her capacity for consuming food will amaze and sickenShe's bullied at school and even her own mother finds her just a little bit weird: let's not go into what her stepfather thinks about herHer father died a while ago, but Yasmin has never really come to terms with his death and still has the feeling that everything would be OK if only Terry was still around. There's a girl in Yasmin's class called Alice and Yasmin is so in awe of her that she stalks her.  One day, in the school playground, she spots a man watching Alice as carefully as she does and becomes obsessed by the idea that the man is going to abduct Alice.
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|summary=Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupationDuring the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to a banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him.  As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the war is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of himBut will the truth come as a relief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war?  Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio?  And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782115943</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1846976537
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}}
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{{Frontpage
 +
|author=Onyi Nwabineli
 +
|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself
 +
|rating=4.5
 +
|genre=General Fiction
 +
|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain.  Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her.  Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so.  Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empire.  Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?
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|isbn=0861546873
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Kate Atkinson
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|isbn=1529153298
|title=A God in Ruins
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|title=The List of Suspicious Things
 +
|author=Jennie Godfrey
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
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|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Teddy Todd never really expected to survive the warAs a bomber pilot it wasn't something which you could rely on and he certainly knew the statisticsBut - against all the odds, he came through it, albeit with some time spent as a prisoner of warOn balance he had a good war, but time will see him married to Nancy, father to Viola and grandfather to Sunny and Bertie - and left with the feeling that it's more difficult to have a good peace than a good war.
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|summary=It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister.  (A woman?  I mean, honestly...)  She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though.  Women have been disappearing.  Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frighteningMiv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoidedFor Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that.  She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552776645</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Jessica Treadway
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|isbn=1035906708
|title=If She Did It
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|title=Diva
 +
|author=Daisy Goodwin
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Hanna and Joe had two daughters.  Iris, the elder, had done well at school and gone on to be a medical student, but Dawn had always struggled.  Hanna worried that it was something to do with the birth when Dawn might have been starved of oxygen for a brief momentShe was never bright, bullied at school and suffered from amblyopia or lazy eye.  Dawn called it 'lacy eye'.  In her late teens she had a boyfriend - tall, good-looking Rud and was obviously besotted with him and brought him home for Thanksgiving, but the pair left the next morning under a cloud with Joe accusing Rud of having stolen from the house whilst everyone else was out.  That night Hanna and Joe were attacked in their beds;  Joe died from his injuries and Hanna was left severely scarred and with no memory of the events of that night.
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|summary=We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteenHer original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the StatesWhen she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751555266</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Christopher Ransom
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|author=Alexander McCall Smith
|title=Beneath The Lake
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|title=The Perfect Passion Company
|rating=3.5
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|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The Mercer family are on the holiday of a lifetime at the somewhat remote Blundstone Lake in NebraskaIt is all the things a camping holiday should be; tranquillity and beautiful scenery in spades and lots of good old-fashioned family funWhen another family arrive, the Mercers try not to feel disappointed that their solitude has been encroached upon and do their best to keep out of the other family's way, but when the newcomers' family disharmony becomes violent and murderous, The Mercers have no option but to become rather more acquainted with them than they had bargained for.  And so their lives are forever altered.
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|summary=The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service.  Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a whileKatie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to EdinburghAnd so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm.  Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751555223</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1846976596
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Jonathan Coe
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|author=Dean Koontz
|title=Number 11
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|title=The Bad Weather Friend
|rating=4
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|rating=4.5
 +
|genre=Paranormal
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|summary=Benny is having a terrifically bad day.  He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed.  Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house!  The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck.  He is a nice person.  A really nice person.  So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person.  Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.
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|isbn=1662500491
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}}
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{{Frontpage
 +
|author=Katherine Howe
 +
|title=A True Account
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There's a great deal of significance in the title of ''Number 11''It's the common abbreviation for the home of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as well as a bus route around the outskirts of Birmingham which provides a useful haven for those who can't afford to put the heating on at home.  It's also Jonathan Coe's eleventh novelOn a level more personal to the characters in the book it's also the number of floors below ground which are being added to a house in Chelsea owned by an obscenely-rich family.  Even more obscene is the fact that the owner of the house doesn't know what she wants that floor for - everything that could possibly be added (swimming pool with palm trees, wine cellar, bank vault, staff quarters...) is on the other floors or in the house itself.  But Mrs Gunn wants it because she can have it.
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|summary=Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a young age.  When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watchEnthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of two vicious pirates.  She hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boyShe soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670923796</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0861547438
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Nils Schou
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|isbn=1471180158
|title= Salinger's Letters
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|title=Maybe Tomorrow
|rating= 3
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|author=Penny Parkes
|genre= General Fiction
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|rating=4.5
|summary=Dentist-turned-author Dan Moller is struggling, both financially and mentally, when an opportunity presents itself in the form of a pair of Americans. They offer to sweep away Moller's financial worries in exchange for his correspondence with J. D. Salinger, the elusive author of The Catcher in the Rye. What follows is, for Dan Moller, a journey to America to meet Salinger, and, for the reader, a journey through these letters into Moller's relationship with his depression, the lives of the eccentrics in his writers' collective, and into Western intelligentsia ranging from Kiergegaard's writings to a psychedelic apparition of pop icons featuring Andy Warhol and Woody Allen.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910124656</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Chuck Palahniuk
 
|title=Beautiful You
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Penny Harrigan.  And let's hope your introduction to her is more gentle than that we have on the first page of this book, where she is being raped in front of a full court house, who – male to the bone – sit back and say nothing, if not whip out their camera phoneOnce people take her out on a gurney and recognise her, we can start from the beginning, where she is a lowly underling at a law firm, having failed too many exams to progress satisfactorilyThe company is where the world's richest man is in legal negotiations having left the world's best and most beautiful actress, and lo and behold he just happens to pick Penny to replace her with, even if she doesn't think of herself as the most beautiful girl aroundBut what exactly is it she is wanted for, and can her apolitical style of feminism and aspirations be met?
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|summary=Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brick.  Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'He's asthmatic and the more you read, the more you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrumSometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to schoolMissed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the wrong.  It was going to come to a head.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009958767X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Melissa Hill
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|isbn=B0CKD1L5JL
|title=The Hotel on Mulberry Bay
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|title=Radio Free Olympia
 +
|author=Jeffrey Dunn
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Penny and Elle Harte are sisters, but they couldn't be more different. The two had an idyllic childhood, brought up in the family hotel in the scenic Irish coastal town of Mulberry Bay. Ambitious Elle always had the urge to spread her wings and fly, whereas her dreamy younger sister was content to stay at home and help her parents out in the hotel. As time passed, the sisters no longer had the close bond they once shared, especially with Elle living in London, enjoying her successful and demanding role as an architect. A family tragedy brings the sisters together once more; however, and family loyalties are tested as never before.
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|summary= Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the forests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, and armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the forest, broadcasting the strange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471127710</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=John Searancke
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|author=Sarah Marsh
|title=Prunes for Breakfast
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|title=A Sign of Her Own
|rating=4
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|rating=3.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Edward Searancke was called up to serve his country in 1940, not long after the outbreak of the Second World War and we hear his story from initial call-up, through the years of preparation for the invasion of France, to his eventual release as a Prisoner of War and return home to attempt to pick up the pieces of everyday lifeIt's a delightful mixture of the mundane (the difficulties of getting dry clothing, problems with his feet) and the dramatic (being surrounded and captured in an orchard in Northern France and his life as a prisoner of war) and much of the story is told through the genuine letters from Searancke to his wife which were handed to his son after his father's death.  John Searancke tells us the story of his father's war.
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|summary=After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing.  Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes.  Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing.  From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible SpeechAt the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784625051</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1035401614
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Alexander McCall Smith
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|isbn=B0BC3YTCMR
|title=Chance Developments: Unexpected Love Stories
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|title=Good Girls Die
|rating=5
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|author=Ayura Ayira
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Sometimes, if I'm in a cafe by myself, I like to watch the people around me and imagine stories about their livesJust a single sentence, overheard, can lead to wonderous tales of mystery and intrigue whilst I sip my cappuccino! So I was delighted to sit down to read the latest offering from AMS, not only because he wrote it, but because he wrote it after looking at 5 different black and white photographs, and then imagining the stories behind themWho are all these people, and what are their stories? Each story is unique, and yet they all have one abiding link...love.
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|summary=''This story is not for everyone.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846973295</amazonuk>
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Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happenedShe was a very bright student, a bit too nerdy if truth be told, and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to hug her in case it's contagious. It's not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white.  She had a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her.  Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him.  She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extensionShe went to his house and he raped her. In shock, she even allowed him to give her a lift home.
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Helle Helle and Martin Aitken (translator)
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|isbn=1472263936
|title=This Should be Written in the Present Tense
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|title=The Figurine
 +
|author=Victoria Hislop
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
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|genre=General Fiction
|summary= This is the first novel of Helle Helle's, an award winning Danish author, to be translated into EnglishIt is easy to see from this novel why she is gaining accolades in her Danish homelandThe rhythmic, natural flow of the narrative is mesmerising and appears to lull you through the bookIt has some lovely, spare sentences of description: ''There were run-down cottages with open doors and news on the radio.  Gulls flocked around an early harvester in the late sun''. But mostly, it is written in a modernist, almost stream of consciousness style, which I found refreshing.
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|summary=It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece.  She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritageHer trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits.  She grew to love her grandmother and the family's maid, Dina, but was wary - and frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis PapagiannisHe was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate themHis prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587475</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Homer Hickam
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|author=Dean Koontz
|title=Carrying Albert Home: The Somewhat True Story of a Man, His Wife and Her Alligator
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|title=After Death
|rating=5
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|rating=3
|genre= General Fiction
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|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Elsie and Homer Hickam were West Virginians and knew how to make their tales as ''tall as the hills that surrounded them on all sides''. There is a Hickam family legend that has been told and retold so many times over the years that the lines between myth and reality have become well and truly blurred. ''Carrying Albert Home'' is the story of a man and his wife, a sweet pet alligator and a very lucky rooster who decide to take a road trip to Florida in 1935; the year of the Great Depression. What follows next is all completely true, well, except for the parts that are made up...
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|summary= Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accident. Finding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, he has a sense that something very, very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can ''feel'' everything.  ''Everything''. Michael isn't ''Michael'' anymore.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000815421X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1662500467
}}
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}}  
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Lina Wolff and Frank Perry (translator)
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|isbn=B0BVDC2VWH
|title= Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs
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|title=The Grave Listeners
|rating= 5
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|author=William Frank
|genre= General Fiction
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|rating=4
|summary= Upstairs, a flat where mother and daughter struggle from pay cheque to pay cheque; downstairs, the love nest of a dying writer and her last of many conquests. Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs is a multilayered testimonial to the writer, the eccentric Alba Cambó, gathered by Araceli, the teenager upstairs. Through Araceli's bird's-eye view, anecdotes unfold as told by lovers, business acquaintances (often both – for with Alba Cambó you can never know), and the short stories of Cambó herself.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276649</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=John Van der Kiste
 
|title=Always There
 
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When Dave left Plymouth to go to college in Uxbridge he met Lisa. They sort of palled around together for a little while with no thought of anything more, well, not on Dave's part at least. The he met Jo and for a long time they were really good friends and it would be a couple of years before they were anything more.  Lisa didn't see it that way though: she reckoned that if Jo hadn't come along she and Dave would have stuck together and made a go of it.  Dave and Jo's couple of years at college were marked, if not marred, by Lisa's regular outbursts.
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|summary=The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and even gallows, if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and that is the reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is tolerated.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1517761239</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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|author=Pamela Hart
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{{Frontpage
|title=The Soldier's Wife
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|isbn=B0BYF82CXT
 +
|title=Semi-Detached
 +
|author=Deborah Stone
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''...none of it was real, until the last moment when his hand, the tips of his fingers, left the tips of hers and he was gone.''
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|summary=''Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a depressing rut of boredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much in love – move in next door. Despite their different outlooks on life, the couples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. But all is not what it seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy.''
 
 
''Turned into just another soldier.''
 
 
 
Ruby and Jimmy are newly-weds full of big dreams and plans for the future, but all of that will have to wait. It is 1915 and the world is in the grip Great War, sweeping Jimmy away to fight battles in far-off Gallipoli. Ruby feels like she's in limbo; no longer an innocent child but not quite a fully-fledged married lady. Not wanting to return home, she decides to stay in Sydney, to keep herself occupied as she waits out the war, longing for the return of her beloved husband. She rents a room from a local landlady and finds a job as a bookkeeper at a Timber Merchant. Although she initially takes the job to keep herself occupied and earn a little money, she soon falls into a comfortable routine and starts to enjoy her new-found independence and responsibility.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349410186</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Alice Thompson
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|author=Shalini Boland
|title=The Book Collector
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|title=The Silent Bride
|rating=4
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|rating=3
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet VioletSwept off her feet by a disarming encounter with a landed gentleman and bookshop owner at a coffee shop, she immediately falls in love with him, and is quickly married, and almost as quickly with childWhen the boy is born, however, fairly understandable doubts creep in.  Is her husband hiding anything behind his assuredness – especially when she wakes in the middle of the night alone?  What ghost is left by the fact he lost his first wife and baby in childbirth? What should she understand from her own opinions about her new life, her new life's life, and the idea of a nanny looking after it?  Just what is going on in her new country pile?
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|summary= Alice and Seth are a match made in heavenHe is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-materialShe is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and set. When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is waiting for her to become his wife.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784630438</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1662507089
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Sophie Duffy
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|isbn=1787636003
|title=Bright Stars
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|title=The Girls of Summer
|rating=3.5
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|author=Katie Bishop
 +
|rating=5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= I fell into this novel from the first short chapter, set in 1983, at Lancaster University – perhaps because I grew up in the 1980'sThe central character and first person narrator, Cameron Spark, comes across as vulnerable, shy and unassuming, and at first, likeableAs the novel progressed, however, I did find him less plausible and a bit wet and annoying.  He falls in mad love with Bex right at the beginning of the book, who is a much more interesting character, being a feisty, feminist, fox-hunting activist and saboteurCameron is clearly besotted and therefore biased in his affection for Bex, and you can sense that this is going to get him into deep trouble from the start.
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|summary=It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the islandRachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, she was flattered rather than waryIt was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by himAlistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785079840</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Jack Wilson
+
|author=Amanda Craig
|title=In Fidelity
+
|title=Three Graces
|rating=3
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Dick and Christine Blodgett were only 22 when they got married in 1955. As the novel opens in 1974, it's clear their relationship is now precarious. A brief allegorical prologue, echoing Heraclitus, warns that a crisis will change the course of the marriage irrevocably: 'one day there was a storm…and the stream never returned to the [channel] it had known before.' The title of Chapter 1, 'A Premonition of Danger', reinforces that sense of foreboding. Driving on dark, icy roads, Dick and Christine fret about her health: a dental procedure revealed a serious problem with her gums for which she will soon need a biopsy.
+
|summary= Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, crafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784623830</amazonuk>
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|isbn= 140871468X
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Jolien Janzing
+
|isbn=152915118X
|title=Charlotte Bronte's Secret Love
+
|title=Pineapple Street
|rating=3.5
+
|author=Jenny Jackson
|genre=Historical Fiction
+
|rating=4.5
|summary=This is the second novel by Jolien Janzing, a Dutch author who lives in Belgium. Originally published in Dutch as ''The Master'' in 2013, it is already being made into a film. The flawlessly translated story zeroes in on two momentous years in Charlotte Brontë's life, 1842–3, when she was a pupil and then a teacher at the Pensionnat Heger in Brussels. I read this in tandem with Claire Harman's new biography of Charlotte Brontë; it was particularly fascinating to see that the two books open with the same climactic episode: lovesick Charlotte making a confession at a Catholic church, even though she was an Anglican parson's daughter.
+
|genre=General Fiction
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>9462380597</amazonuk>
+
|summary=''Pineapple Street'' is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana.  Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe.  The problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property.  Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, which they own. They won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in.  Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the reality.  Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'.   She's living in ''their'' family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'.
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Jojo Moyes
+
|author=Emily Critchley
|title=After You
+
|title=One Puzzling Afternoon
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 +
|genre=Crime
 +
|summary=84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory.  However, Edie is tormented by the memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago.  After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her.  And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and more in her day to day life.  Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever?
 +
|isbn=1804181250
 +
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|author=Madelaine Lucas
 +
|title=Thirst for Salt
 +
|rating=5
 +
|genre=Literary Fiction
 +
|summary= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
 +
 +
Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.
 +
|isbn=0861546490
 +
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=0008506337
 +
|title=The Garnett Girls
 +
|author=Georgina Moore
 +
|rating=5
 +
|genre=General Fiction
 +
|summary=The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides.  Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love.  Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'.  Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career.  In the event,  they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight.  Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist.  The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha.  Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of Wight.  Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: ''she would never be able to leave him in charge''.
 +
 +
Then Richard left them.
 +
}}
 +
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=1914585402
 +
|title=Dashboard Elvis is Dead
 +
|author=David F Ross
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=After writing the massively popular ''Me Before You'', all of Jojo Moyes' readers were clamouring for more. Having been on the edge of our armchairs during the story, we all wanted to know what happened to Lou next.  Would she be okay?  Would she live her life with passion?  Where would she go next?  So the arrival of this story is a special treat, as it continues the tale of Lou, although perhaps not in the way we had imagined…
+
|summary=I reviewed David F Ross's book [[There's Only One Danny Garvey by David F Ross|There's Only One Danny Garvey]] a couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. It was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, and rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718179617</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author= Mike Bullen
+
|author=Lucy Ashe
|title= Trust
+
|title=Clara and Olivia
|rating= 4
+
|rating=4.5
|genre= General Fiction
+
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Greg and Amanda are happy. Unmarried, but together thirteen years and with two young daughters, they are very much in love. Dan and Sarah aren't so fortunate. Their marriage is going through the motions, and they're staying together for the sake of their troubled teenage son. Following a business conference away from home, one bad decision sends a happy couple into turmoil, and turns an unhappy couple into love's young dream. As secrets and betrayals threaten to send both relationships out of control, there's only one thing that can keep everything from falling apart: Trust
+
|summary=The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, on the inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that ''je ne sais quoi'', that don't come from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, a ''joie de vivre''. The difference between a hard-worker, and a star.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751559253</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0861544080
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Menna Van Praag
+
|author=Heather Fawcett
|title=The Dress Shop Of Dreams
+
|title=Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
|rating=5
+
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Cambridge is a city of winding streets and cobbled alleyways and in such a street you will find A Stich In Time, a tiny dress shop filled to bursting with dresses that will take your breath away.  Etta Sparks spends her days crafting gowns from jewel-coloured velvets and beaded silks that are unlike any dresses you have seen before; once you try one of Etta's creations on - and with a few stitches from her expert and rather magical needle - these incredible, amazing garments have the power to reach within your soul and extract your deepest desire and hidden-away dreams.
+
|summary=Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the very first encyclopaedia of faeries.  Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with people.  So when she finds herself far, far North in the small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the right track.  Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emily's frustration. But why is he here?  What does he want?  And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749018720</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0356519120
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Ruth Rendell
+
|isbn=1398515388
|title=Dark Corners
+
|title=The Boy and the Dog
 +
|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Carl Martin was in the fortunate position of having just had his first novel published and inheriting his late father's house in Maida ValeHis father had accumulated a collection of homeopathic remedies which really should have been thrown out, but Carl had other things on his mind and never got round to itThere was his girlfriend Nicola, work to start on his second novel and he wanted to let the top floor of his houseAuthors are not that well off, you see and he needed some ready money coming inIn addition to being a bit remiss about the contents of the medicine cabinet he should have been a bit more careful about who he took on as a tenant.
+
|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdownThe result was complete and utter devastationThe deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespreadThe fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience storeHe wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091959241</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
 
|author=Julia Franck and Anthea Bell (translator)
+
{{Frontpage
|title=West
+
|author=Christopher Bowden
|rating=3.5
+
|title=Mr Magenta
|genre=Literary Fiction
+
|rating=4
|summary=Put yourself in the shoes of a young mother to two children, who declares her intention to leave the Communist East Germany for West Berlin, and thus loses her scientist job.  What would you expect on the other side – shops full of attainable products, pleasant neighbourhoods, nice neighbours, an active and busy new life, where things might feel alien but at least you speak the same language?  Well, for Nelly Senff, this is hardly the case.  Once past the depressing Eastern exit procedures she is confronted with more desultory interrogations from those 'welcoming' her to the West, beyond which she and her children (their father, whom she never married, is long assumed dead by the authorities, if nobody else) are practically left in a shared accommodation in a transit camp.  The shops are full of what is still unobtainable, the children hate their new school – and people still look down on them as being foreign, even if they have only moved across a city.
+
|genre=General Fiction
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554321</amazonuk>
+
|summary= Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of indulgence to a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to him an obligation to find it all out.  
 +
|isbn= B0B6Z9VJDW
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Beverley Hansford
+
|author=Jennifer Mason
|title=The Golden Anklet
+
|title=Partitions of Unity
|rating=3.5
+
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Jane Carroll is becoming more and more successful as a young journalist on a woman's magazine.  Yet, although her future looks secure, Jane would like to discover more about her past.  As an orphan she was raised in a children's home with no information regarding the identity of her parents apart from what was on her birth certificate. Therefore armed with this certificate and the help of her new boyfriend Bob, not to mention genealogist dabbling neighbour Gerald, the search begins. However nothing is as straightforward, or indeed as safe, as she thought it would be.
+
|summary= Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in [[Preposterous: An Elizabeth Cromwell Mystery by Jennifer Mason|Preposterous]], when she investigated and unravelled a series of disappearances. In ''Partitions of Unity'', she sets her mind to solving a murder...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784624675</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=B09LQR9FRF
 
}}
 
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|author=Will Carver
 +
|title=The Daves Next Door
 +
|rating=4
 +
|genre=General Fiction
 +
|summary= Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a London tube line. As their fates overlap, the story is told in backwards order, leading up to the fateful moment.
 +
|isbn= 1914585186
 +
}}
 +
 +
Move on to [[Newest Graphic Novels Reviews]]

Latest revision as of 10:43, 30 September 2024

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Review of

Nowhere Man by Deborah Stone

4star.jpg General Fiction

In a quiet suburban house, Patrick is making his final plans. A meticulous man, he makes sure of every preparation, down to the last detail. Some last reflections, and then he says goodbye to his wife, the world, and his life. It's horribly sad. At work in her shop, his wife Diana is fending off yet another phone call about her ageing and ailing mother, who needs extricating from yet another accident. It will be a while before Diana realises what Patrick has done. Full Review

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Review of

Where I've Not Been Lost by Glen Sibley

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's life, he arrives in an unfamiliar Devon town to recover. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday home, he dreams of reconnecting with everything he has lost. But as those tentative plans falter, he becomes swept up in a local world of unlikely friendships, mobile discos and surprising romantic possibilities. Full Review

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Review of

Beyond Summerland by Jenny Lecoat

4star.jpg General Fiction

Jean lives on Jersey with her mother where they are celebrating the end of the occupation. During the war, Jean's father was arrested for listening to a banned radio and soldiers took him away one night, leaving Jean and her mother waiting for years for news of him. As the British finally free the Channel islands from the Nazis, and the war is finally over, their hopes rise that they will finally learn what became of him. But will the truth come as a relief, or will it raise further questions around what else happened during the war? Who was the informer who told the Nazis about the radio? And what other secrets have been kept throughout the occupation? Full Review

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Review of

Allow Me to Introduce Myself by Onyi Nwabineli

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her. Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time? Full Review

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Review of

The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey

5star.jpg General Fiction

It's 1979 and Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. (A woman? I mean, honestly...) She's not what's worrying Miv's family, though. Women have been disappearing. Well, they've been murdered, but to have 'disappeared' doesn't sound quite so frightening. Miv's upset because she's overheard that her father wants to move the family 'Down South'. When you're from Yorkshire, Down South is a frightening, foreign place, best avoided. For Miv, the move would mean leaving her best friend, Sharon, and she'll do anything to prevent that. She's not worried about the dangers or that her Mum's stopped talking - to anyone. Full Review

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Review of

Diva by Daisy Goodwin

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

We tend to think of Maria Callas as Greek, but she was born to Greek parents in Manhattan, New York, in December 1923 and only moved to Athens when she was thirteen. Her original surname was Kalogeropoulos but her father changed it to 'Callas' to make it more manageable in the States. When she was back in Athens - supposedly so that she could get appropriate training for her voice - she was raised under the Nazi occupation by a mother who mercilessly exploited her and made no secret of her preference for her elder sister, Jackie. Full Review

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Review of

The Perfect Passion Company by Alexander McCall Smith

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

The Perfect Passion Company is a dating agency in Edinburgh, run by Ness and operating as an alternative to all the online apps in providing a more personal, tailored service. Ness has asked her younger cousin Katie if she could come and look after the business, as Ness is planning to take a trip to Canada to get away for a while. Katie is coming out of a break up with a bad boyfriend, and so jumps at the chance to come home to Edinburgh. And so begins this new story from Alexander McCall Smith, bringing us to an Edinburgh we already love, thanks to 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novels, but with some new characters who quickly begin to charm. Katie has no experience in running a business, or in match-making, but Ness has full confidence in her abilities, and there's always her very helpful (and rather handsome) neighbour, William, to lend a hand… Full Review

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Review of

The Bad Weather Friend by Dean Koontz

4.5star.jpg Paranormal

Benny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to his house is a new friend, a bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are. Full Review

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Review of

A True Account by Katherine Howe

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a young age. When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the hands of two vicious pirates. She hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, and then to escape them completely she runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the ocean waves. Full Review

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Review of

Maybe Tomorrow by Penny Parkes

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Jamie Matson works in an upper-class grocery store, for a man who's a control freak with all the subtlety of a half brick. Jamie's son, Bo, 'has his problems'. He's asthmatic and the more you read, the more you'll suspect that he's on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes Jamie needs to take time off at short notice - she's a frequent flier in the local A&E and sometimes Bo's not fit enough to go to school. Missed shifts or the need to be away on time to pick Bo up from school are occasions when Jamie can be controlled and put in the wrong. It was going to come to a head. Full Review

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Review of

Radio Free Olympia by Jeffrey Dunn

4star.jpg General Fiction

Petr is an orphan. Rescued by the strange, reclusive Bear, he is brought up far from bustling cities and busy human society, in the forests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula. After Bear dies and a brief sojourn in human company, and armed with only a pirate radio transmitter, Petr goes on a journey through the forest, broadcasting the strange, wild and rarely heard voices he encounters. Full Review

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Review of

A Sign of Her Own by Sarah Marsh

3.5star.jpg General Fiction

After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. At the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, and Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage. Full Review

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Review of

Good Girls Die by Ayura Ayira

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

This story is not for everyone.

Lavender Daniels was three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday when The Incident happened. She was a very bright student, a bit too nerdy if truth be told, and suffered from vitiligo - people were afraid to hug her in case it's contagious. It's not easy being a black girl whose skin is 84% white. She had a crush on seventeen-year-old Reggie Anderson but never thought he would notice her. Then he did: Lavender was very good at math and Reggie asked if she would tutor him. She readily agreed: tutoring was something she gladly did at church: this was just an extension. She went to his house and he raped her. In shock, she even allowed him to give her a lift home. Full Review

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Review of

The Figurine by Victoria Hislop

5star.jpg General Fiction

It was in 1968 that Helena McCloud made her first trip to Greece. She was alone: her mother, Greek by birth, had left the family home and refused to return, but Mary and Hamish (Helena's parents) felt that it would be a pity if Helena grew up without knowing her grandparents or understanding her Greek heritage. Her trip to the family apartment in up-market Kolonaki would be the first of several annual visits. She grew to love her grandmother and the family's maid, Dina, but was wary - and frightened - of her grandfather, retired general Stamatis Papagiannis. He was proud of his close connections to the Junta and expected his family to uphold his values but saw no reason to accommodate them. His prejudices included Helena's red hair and green eyes - inherited from her father's Scottish ancestors. Full Review

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Review of

After Death by Dean Koontz

3star.jpg General Fiction

Michael Mace, Head of Security, at a top secret biological research facility, is among 55 people who die when a virus is released in a bio-hazard accident. Finding himself in a makeshift mortuary, covered in plastic, he has a sense that something very, very bad has happened to him – and only him – as he sits up and looks around at the shrouded bodies of his dead friends and former colleagues. As he recovers his senses, he realises that there is something different about him; he can feel everything. Everything. Michael isn't Michael anymore. Full Review

B0BVDC2VWH.jpg

Review of

The Grave Listeners by William Frank

4star.jpg General Fiction

The village is isolated and poor. It's surrounded by a Witching Forest. And the villagers subsist largely by farming Uphegia plants - its bread-like fruit provides nutrition and its blossom provides herbal medicines. The black wood of the forest provides heat and warmth, roofs on homes, and even gallows, if needed. The fear of being buried alive is an existential superstition in the village and that is the reason Volushka, a drunken, self-indulgent, lazy lout of a man is tolerated. Full Review

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Review of

Semi-Detached by Deborah Stone

4star.jpg General Fiction

Bill and Amanda are living in a semi-detached house, stuck in a depressing rut of boredom and disappointment, when Terry and Fiona – glamorous, successful and very much in love – move in next door. Despite their different outlooks on life, the couples befriend each other and life appears to improve for both pairs. But all is not what it seems, and their increasingly interconnected relationships are fated for tragedy. Full Review

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Review of

The Silent Bride by Shalini Boland

3star.jpg General Fiction

Alice and Seth are a match made in heaven. He is everything she has been searching for; handsome, accomplished, clever, funny; total and utter husband-material. She is all he could possibly want in a wife; beautiful, successful, confident… and so the inevitable proposal is eagerly accepted by Alice and the wedding is planned and set. When the much-anticipated day arrives, Alice is walked down the aisle by her father, beaming with pride and excitement as she surveys the congregation – their friends assembled to celebrate this joyful day and when Seth turns to face his approaching bride, Alice's world implodes because she has absolutely no idea who the man at the altar is, who is waiting for her to become his wife. Full Review

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Review of

The Girls of Summer by Katie Bishop

5star.jpg General Fiction

It was the summer when Rachel Evans turned eighteen that she and Caroline went backpacking around Greece and arrived on the island. Rachel wasn't exactly innocent but she was, perhaps, naive, so when thirty-four-year-old Alistair Wright started to take an interest in her, she was flattered rather than wary. It was quite a while before he made any sort of physical approach to her and by that time she was obsessed by him. Alistair worked for Henry Taylor, looking after his interests on the island and in particular in the bar where all the girls either worked or partied. Full Review

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Review of

Three Graces by Amanda Craig

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Few styles of contemporary fiction interest me like the state-of-the-nation novel. There's something so utterly compelling about any writer who can catch hold of the atmosphere of the day and capture it, crafting an image of the country as it stands in one particular moment. To say that Amanda Craig is skilled at doing this would be embarrassingly inadequate: she's practically synonymous with the genre of contemporary social fiction at this point. She has such a gift for weaving the ongoing issues of the day into the lives of her characters in a way that feels natural and lived-in, never making them ciphers for social commentary but instead fully realised people, grappling with issues far larger than themselves. Full Review

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Review of

Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Pineapple Street is the story of three women: Sasha, Darley and Georgiana. Darley and George are sisters and Sasha is married to their brother Cord. They're Stocktons, only Sasha isn't a Stockton by birth so she isn't readily accepted into the tribe. The problem's exacerbated when the clan matriarch, Tilda, asks Cord and Sasha if they'd like to move into the Pineapple Street property. Tilda and Chip have renovated and downsized to another property, a street or so away, which they own. They won't need any of the furniture from Pineapple Street, so Sasha and Cord can move straight in. Nominally, they had a choice but that wasn't the reality. Darley and Georgiana start to call Sasha 'the gold digger'. She's living in their family home. They use it so often that they abbreviate it to 'the GD'. Full Review

1804181250.jpg

Review of

One Puzzling Afternoon by Emily Critchley

4star.jpg Crime

84 year old Edie has lived in the same small town for almost her whole life, but now she is facing a move as her son wants to move to another house and bring Edie to live with his family, as Edie is starting to lose her memory. However, Edie is tormented by the memory of her childhood friend, Lucy, who went missing over 60 years ago, and the worry that there was a secret she was keeping for Lucy that somehow might be the thing that reveals the truth of what happened all that time ago. After 'seeing' Lucy in the high street, just as she was the last time she saw her, she starts to find pockets of memories coming back to her. And yet as she remembers the past, she is forgetting more and more in her day to day life. Will she uncover the truth about Lucy's disappearance before her move, and before her memories are gone forever? Full Review

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Review of

Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity

Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town Thirst for Salt details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably. Full Review

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Review of

The Garnett Girls by Georgina Moore

5star.jpg General Fiction

The love affair between Margo Garnett and poet Richard O'Leary was all-consuming, apparently on both sides. Margo was just sixteen when they fell in love. Richard was twenty-one and described by Margo's mother as 'an older man'. Her parents worried that Richard's influence would take her away from what they felt she could achieve - going to Oxford and having a glittering career. In the event, they eloped and Richard took her away from the Isle of Wight. Margo did go to Oxford and went on to become a well-respected journalist. The couple had three children: Rachel, Imogen and Sasha. Life was lived in London and holidays were spent at Sandcove, the family home on the Isle of Wight. Even then the doubts about Richard's drinking were never far from Margo's mind: she would never be able to leave him in charge.

Then Richard left them. Full Review

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Review of

Dashboard Elvis is Dead by David F Ross

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

I reviewed David F Ross's book There's Only One Danny Garvey a couple of years back and remember being absolutely floored by how powerful and affecting it was. It was a gripping, emotionally wounding read, and rereading my review of it my main takeaway was that I might not have lavished enough praise on it. Full Review

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Review of

Clara and Olivia by Lucy Ashe

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

The year is 1933. The place? Sadler's Wells. Ballerinas Clara and Olivia are sisters, twins no less. Identical on the outside but not, we learn, on the inside. And not on stage, either. Because there's a lot that builds a dancer. Some things that can be taught or learnt – discipline, attention to detail – and some things, that je ne sais quoi, that don't come from the classroom. A stage presence, a charm, a joie de vivre. The difference between a hard-worker, and a star. Full Review

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Review of

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

4star.jpg General Fiction

Emily Wilde is an expert academic scholar on faerie lore, and she has travelled extensively, and researched meticulously, to write her life's work, the very first encyclopaedia of faeries. Whilst she is brilliant at research and speaking to faeries, she is not so good with people. So when she finds herself far, far North in the small village of Hrafvsnik, having somehow offended the village matriarch, she is not sure what she has done, nor how to redeem herself and put her final investigations for her book back on the right track. Enter Wendell Bambleby, her dashingly handsome and insufferable rival who arrives unexpectedly, all charm and delight, much to Emily's frustration. But why is he here? What does he want? And what exactly is going on with the faerie folk around Hravsnik? Full Review

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Review of

The Boy and the Dog by Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in. Full Review

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Review of

Mr Magenta by Christopher Bowden

4star.jpg General Fiction

Christopher Bowden's latest novel is a patient untangling of a seemingly ordinary woman's life, carried out by her nephew after she has died. The aunt who always provided a safe harbour and a little bit of indulgence to a young nephew had had a much more interesting life than that nephew Stephen had ever realised and it seems to him an obligation to find it all out. Full Review

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Review of

Partitions of Unity by Jennifer Mason

4star.jpg General Fiction

Here at Bookbag Towers, we first met Elizabeth Cromwell, dominatrix and unintentional detective in Preposterous, when she investigated and unravelled a series of disappearances. In Partitions of Unity, she sets her mind to solving a murder... Full Review

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Review of

The Daves Next Door by Will Carver

4star.jpg General Fiction

Five strangers come together in one moment as a suicide bomber prepares to detonate his vest on a London tube line. As their fates overlap, the story is told in backwards order, leading up to the fateful moment. Full Review

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