Newest Women's Fiction Reviews
The Time Of The Clockmaker by Anna Caltabiano
The Time Of The Clockmaker is not so much a sequel to 'The Seventh Miss Hatfield, rather it's more like The Seventh Miss Hatfield : Part Deux. Cynthia (who is now the aforementioned Seventh Miss Rebecca Hatfield and from this point we shall refer to her as such) has just seen her predecessor and mentor, the somewhat intimidating Sixth Miss Hatfield, murdered in the only way it is possible for an immortal to die – she has been slain by another immortal. Forced to flee for her life (with the clock that governs Rebecca's ability to travel through time), Rebecca is stunned to find herself back in the Court of King Henry VIII. It seems that the hands of her mysterious clock have somehow inadvertently been moved, during the course of a break-in, and Tudor England is the backdrop for Miss Hatfield's fight for survival. Full review...
The Things We Do For Love by Alice Peterson
January is an unusual name for a reasonably normal girl, a single mum to a daughter (and a dog). She has a few unusual characteristics, though. Her dog comes to work with her (at a property company where, before you ask, she's not the boss or even close to it). She was raised by her grandparents following the sudden death of her parents. And her daughter, though adorable, has a few issues which can make everyday life a bit tricky. None of this really matters, though. Because, as the title suggests, this is a straight up love story (or search for love story) and it's a pretty brilliant one. Full review...
A Better Man by Leah McLaren
Maya and Nick are both the same type of person. A special type of person. She doesn’t really see it, but they are. He is obsessed with his company, an advertising agency, and the expected long hours of not just shoots and post-production, but also client relationship management that such a field entails. She is just as obsessed, but it’s not with her former life as a hot shot lawyer – now she’s obsessed with their twins and every moment of their little lives, from enriching activities to bonding sleepy times in the family bed. The one thing they’re no longer really obsessed with, though, is each other. And therein lies the problem. Full review...
Wish You Were Here by Catherine Alliott
The Murray-Browns are off for their usual summer holiday - a month with the in-laws in the highlands - when a surprise encounter lands them a holiday in an amazing French chateau - all for free. Flora is teeming with excitement until she realises her idea of a blissful break as a family of four isn't going to be what she gets. For a start, her teenage daughters are determined they're not going without their boyfriends. And since the family are no longer going to Scotland to see her husband's father and sisters, they must be invited as well. Oh and if they're coming, so is Flora's slightly eccentric mother and if that's the case then no-one is stopping Flora's mad best friend joining the party. Soon the Murray-Brown holiday is looking less like a peaceful getaway and more like a circus. Flora remains determined to enjoy herself but between policing her daughters' bedrooms (and her mother's), a beautiful, French host who is just too friendly with her husband and a blast from the past rolling into their lives, this holiday becomes more like purgatory than paradise. Full review...
The New Woman by Charity Norman
Charity Norman has written yet another thought provoking book that will hook the reader in from the very first page. This is the story of Luke Livingstone who becomes Lucia Livingstone as the story progresses. It is also the story of a family that is ripped apart by Luke's revelation and how each one deals with having a husband, father or son who is really a woman. Full review...
Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult
How do you find someone who doesn't want to be found? For Jenna, it's to enlist the services of a fallen-from-grace psychic, and a fallen-from-grace former cop turned PI. Can this mismatched threesome uncover the truth of what really happened all those years ago? Full review...
A Better Man by Leah McLaren
Maya and Nick are both the same type of person. A special type of person. She doesn’t really see it, but they are. He is obsessed with his company, an advertising agency, and the expected long hours of not just shoots and post-production, but also client relationship management that such a field entails. She is just as obsessed, but it’s not with her former life as a hot shot lawyer – now she’s obsessed with their twins and every moment of their little lives, from enriching activities to bonding sleepy times in the family bed. The one thing they’re no longer really obsessed with, though, is each other. And therein lies the problem. Full review...
The Seventh Miss Hatfield by Anna Caltabiano
Cynthia is a simple, All American girl who whilst generally happy – she’s fed and watered with a roof over her head - and relatively care free, she is somewhat bored of her existence in Suburbia. Miss Hatfield is Cynthia’s mysterious and rarely seen neighbour. What an enigma she is and how compelling and irresistible it is for Cynthia to attempt to discover more about her. Ever hear the phrase Be careful what you wish for?. Full review...
Techbitch by Lucy Sykes and Jo Piazza
Imogen Tate (Editor in Chief, fashionista, all round legend) is back after an extended break for health reasons. Back at her desk at Glossy magazine, back in charge of the magazine and the team she’s spent years building and nurturing. Except she’s not. Things have changed a little while she’s been off. Her former assistant has sprung up the ranks and is now running the show. And it’s a show that’s now moved on, had its interval, and started its second act. Print and permanent are out, tech and temporary are in. The world has changed, the magazine’s going online and the old ways of working are just like Imogen – old. Forget trying to thrive, her new goal now is simply to survive in the arena she once loved and was happy to call home. Full review...
The Red Lily Crown by Elizabeth Loupas
Florence 1574: Chiara Nerini only approaches Francesco de' Medici to sell him her late father's alchemical equipment. She and her family are starving and a sale would mean survival. However the soon to be Emperor has other ideas and abducts Chiara to become his assistant in the quest to find the Philosopher's Stone. If he finds it she will go free. If not... Best not think about that option! Full review...
The Woman Who Fell in Love for a Week by Fiona Walker
Jenny is a teacher who sometimes spends her school holidays housesitting, and that’s just what she’s up to now, spending a couple of weeks in the country. It’s a happy coincidence that the house she’s placed at is a grand manor, owned by two well-known writers, because she herself is into literature, teaches the subject, and also works a bit as a proof reader. It’s a match made in housesitting heaven. Full review...
The Lodger by Louisa Treger
A writer writing about writers writing. What more could a reader, a book reviewer, a tentative writer and lover of words want from a book? Not forgetting the setting – England, early 1900s, clear class divisions and social expectations – and the characters – fascinating, colourful, and above all, real. This book has everything I look for in a story. Full review...
In The Unlikely Event by Judy Blume
How many planes have to crash, before people take notice? How often can an unlikely event occur before you have to stop calling it that? How horrible do things have to get before the adults are willing to talk to the children about their fears, their theories, their understanding of it all, rather than just glossing over the details? Full review...
Secrets of the Pomegranate by Barbara Lamplugh
Home in Bristol, Alice gets the news from her sister's partner, Paco. Her sister, Deborah Hardy, was on board one of the trains bombed at Madrid's Atocha station on 11 March. No one can yet confirm whether she is alive or dead. Deb had moved to Granada nearly 20 years ago, after her divorce from Mark's father, and was starting to make a name for herself as a scholar of women in Andalusia's history. Alice and her nine-year-old son Timmy fly to Spain to find that Deb is alive, but in a coma in hospital. Over the weeks she keeps vigil for Deb, Alice lives in her sister's home in Granada and reads her diaries, which proves to be a way of feeling closer to her and learning more about her than she ever knew. Meanwhile, Mark and Paco keep their distance, working through their complicated grief in their own ways. Full review...
The Turning Point by Freya North
Single-mum Frankie doesn't have time to go looking for love. In fact, its the last thing on her mind, languishing somewhere on the list below sorting out repairs on the house, writing a chapter of that new book, getting a haircut and fetching crisps for the kids. Yes, Frankie is much too busy for complications like love. But romance has a funny way of creeping up on people and when Frankie meets musician Scott on a trip to London, sparks fly and suddenly she HAS to find the time for him. Scott lives halfway across the world in Canada and has work and family obligations of his own. Can love really find a way? Full review...
The House At The End Of Hope Street by Menna Van Praag
Alba Ashby is a wallflower of a girl; studious, bookish and excruciatingly shy, so when tragedy wields its ponderous bolt, she is less able than most to adjust to life as she now knows it. In one of her midnight walks around historical Cambridge, she finds herself at the door to Number 11 Hope Street. It is house that she has never before seen; quirky and turreted with a wild garden and grandly Victorian in hue and Alba is enchanted by it. So she does something that she would never normally do, in a million years. She knocks on the door. Full review...
Based on a True Story by Elizabeth Renzetti
Augusta Price, middle-aged, washed up, substance-addicted actress has just left rehab for the innumerable time. Her only friend in the world is her equally washed-up former mentor. Augusta has recently received a sudden upsurge of interest and income when her tell all memoir became a baffling best-seller. Frances Bleeker is an American journalist who came to London with high hopes, that were quickly dashed by the reality of the British magazine market. The two meet when Frances is sent to interview Augusta about her book where Frances realises there’s far more to the story of Augusta’s life than she’s cared to put in words. Needless to say, young, optimistic Frances and self-obsessed, drunk Augusta don’t exactly hit it off at once. But when Frances loses her job and Augusta needs a ghost writer for her new book, the two offer each other a lifeline ... or enough rope to hang themselves. As Frances will learn by delving into her past, people close to Augusta don’t come away unscathed. Full review...
When We Were Friends by Tina Seskis
Six friends meet at Bristol University; six very different people from six very different backgrounds. Six lives intertwined in an assortment of ways… break-ups, marriages, careers, motherhood and bereavement; until one night six become five. Full review...
Guernsey Retreat: The Guernsey Novels Book 3 by Anne Allen
Louisa returned home one night to the house she shared with her mother, but as she opened the door a man pushed past her and dashed away. Her mother was shocked and injured by what had happened - and died in Louisa's arms, but not before telling her that the man had come for 'the jewels' - the ones which she'd worn to a ball. Betty had never married. Time and circumstances had separated her from Louisa's father before he could know that she was pregnant and no man had ever been able to match Malcolm in her heart - and it was Malcolm who had the jewels and who had to be warned that he was probably in danger. Full review...
The Confectioner's Tale by Laura Madeleine
Petra is researching the life of late historian, author, critic and greatly missed grandfather JG Stevenson when she should really be writing a dissertation for her doctorate. While looking through his belongings she comes across a photo taken in Paris at the turn of the 20th century and an intriguing note in his handwriting. Petra has never consciously realised that Grandpa Jim (as he was to her) had been to France so the revelation spurs her on against all odds, an unscrupulous competitor and academic pressure. Gradually the search reveals a romance and notorious scandal; the sort of scandal would lead a man to regret it for the rest of his life. Meanwhile in 1909, Guillaume du Frere moves to France from the provinces in order to escape poverty and changes his life completely, although not in the way he'd expected. Full review...
The Sudden Departure of the Frasers by Louise Candlish
When something is too good to be true, maybe it is. Christy and Joe Davenport have found the house of their dreams in the luxurious enclave of Lime Park Road, and are thrilled by the asking price. After all, properties rarely come up here and when they do, it’s for an eye-watering amount. Pretty soon, though, they’re left wondering. Why was this house so cheap? Why did the previous owners clearly invest so much in giving the place a fabulous finish only to move out straight after? And why won’t any of the neighbours talk about ‘’the situation’’ which clearly went down? Full review...
That Girl from Nowhere by Dorothy Koomson
Smitty Smittson (Clemency to be formal!) designs and modifies pre-loved jewellery. Smitty was adopted at birth by the straight and very correct Heather and her dearest, late Don. Although Smitty has always been curious about her birth parents she's never searched. However when her 12 year relationship with Seth crumbles, she decides to move to Brighton, the area from which three decades earlier, as a little black baby she was given away to a white family. There any idea of searching becomes redundant as the world turns and she's the one that's found. Full review...
The Tutor by Andrea Chapin
Katherine de L'Isle comes to live with her uncle Sir Edward's family at Lufanwal Hall when she's widowed after only a year of marriage. A fine home and the bosom of the family should be a place of safety but not in this case. This is 1590 in Queen Elizabeth's protestant England and Katherine's family are Roman Catholics; something they thought was a secret till their priest is found murdered on their land. Life must go on though. The children of the household are raised and educated almost on the periphery of Katherine's vision until she meets their tutor, a certain Midlands' glove maker's son called William Shakespeare. Full review...
The Pearl a That Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi
Kabul 2007: Rahima and her sisters are followed home from school one day by a boy on his bike. He taunts them innocently enough as little boys do, but with no sibling brother, the girls are unchaperoned in this land that is ruled by the laws of men. And as daughters in a household without sons, in a country that is governed by fear, the consequences will weigh heavily for them all. Full review...
The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg
2005 Alabama: Sookie Earle awakes one morning a 59 year old happily married female Methodist with American roots that go way back in history and a wonderfully steadfast dentist husband. However before she goes to bed that night all that (apart from the married and female bits) will change.
1940s Wisconsin: a Polish immigrant family lose their men to wartime conscription and so have to make a go of their family gas station alone. Fritzi and her sisters rise to the challenge and then take on another more dangerous adventure, taking to the skies for the war effort. Full review...
