Tag: review

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Kamila Shamsie-Home Fire #bookreviews #positiveonly #5*

MY VERDICT? A superbly well written insight into the lives of a cast of British Muslim characters and the religious, social and cultural forces that impact them.

The Blurb:

Isma is free. After years spent raising her twin siblings in the wake of their mother’s death, she is finally studying in America, resuming a dream long deferred. But she can’t stop worrying about Aneeka, her beautiful, headstrong sister back in London – or their brother, Parvaiz, who’s disappeared in pursuit of his own dream: to prove himself to the dark legacy of the jihadist father he never knew.

Then Eamonn enters the sisters’ lives. Handsome and privileged, he inhabits a London worlds away from theirs. As the son of a powerful British Muslim politician, Eamonn has his own birthright to live up to – or defy. Is he to be a chance at love? The means of Parvaiz’s salvation? Two families’ fates are inextricably, devastatingly entwined in this searing novel that asks: what sacrifices will we make in the name of love?

A contemporary reimagining of Sophocles’ Antigone, Home Fire is an urgent, fiercely compelling story of loyalties torn apart when love and politics collide – confirming Kamila Shamsie as a master storyteller of our times.

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Virginia Evans-The Correspondent #bookreviews #positiveonly #5*

MY VERDICT? I loved this! I wasn’t sure about reading an epistolary novel but this is so cleverly plotted that I couldn’t put it down. Sybil is a compelling and memorable heroine. Reminded me of The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields.

The Blurb:

Sybil Van Antwerp is seventy-three, slowly losing her sight and always writing letters . . .

To her children. Her favourite authors. Her ex-sister-in-law. The journalist poking into her past.
Her doctor. Suitors. Kindly neighbours. The infuriating gardening club.

All receive Sybil’s witty, wise correspondence, rich with everyday concerns.

But there is one letter that she has never sent. It concerns the darkest period of her life. To post it, Sybil must find forgiveness within herself.

The hardest letter to write is the one you’d never dare to send.

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Charlotte McConaghy-Wild Dark Shore #bookreviews #positiveonly #5*

MY VERDICT? Grief, heartbreak and the consequences of climate change combine to test the resilience of the characters on this isolated island. Not an easy read, but a compelling one.

The Blurb:

A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A storm gathering force.

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny weather-lashed island that is home to the world’s largest seed bank. As Shearwater risks being lost to rising sea levels, the island’s researchers have fled, and only the Salts remain.

Until, during the worst storm in living memory, a stranger washes ashore. The family nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, but it seems she isn’t telling the whole truth about why she’s there. And when Rowan stumbles upon sabotaged radios and a recently dug grave, she realises that she’s not the only one on the island with a secret.

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Clare Leslie Hall- Broken Country #bookreviews #positiveonly #5*

MY VERDICT? The ‘before and after’ structure makes the suspense in this book hard to bear at times, especially when it’s combined with a host of painful themes. Is enjoyable the right word for something this bleak? Maybe not, but it’s certainly hard to put down. Brace yourself and then read it. Brilliant.

The Blurb:

Everyone in the village said nothing good would come of Gabriel’s return. And as Beth looks at the man she loves on trial for murder, she can’t help thinking they were right.

Beth was seventeen when she first met Gabriel. Over that heady, intense summer, he made her think and feel and see differently. She thought it was the start of her great love story. When Gabriel left to become the person his mother expected him to be, she was broken.

It was Frank who picked up the pieces and together they built a home very different from the one she’d imagined with Gabriel. Watching her husband and son, she remembered feeling so sure that, after everything, this was the life she was supposed to be leading.

But when Gabriel comes back, all Beth’s certainty about who she is and what she wants crumbles. Even after ten years, their connection is instant. She knows it’s wrong and she knows people could get hurt. But how can she resist a second chance at first love?

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Elizabeth Day- How to Fail #bookreviews #positiveonly #5*

MY VERDICT? Very funny in parts, very moving in others. This is a memoir mixed with insights from the podcast of the same name. I don’t read a lot of memoirs but this has made me think I should read more. Really enjoyed it.

The Blurb:

This is a book for anyone who has ever failed. Which means it’s a book for everyone.

If I have learned one thing from this shockingly beautiful venture called life, it is this: failure has taught me lessons I would never otherwise have understood. I have evolved more as a result of things going wrong than when everything seemed to be going right. Out of crisis has come clarity, and sometimes even catharsis.

Part memoir, part manifesto, and including chapters on dating, work, sport, babies, families, anger and friendship, it is based on the simple premise that understanding why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. It’s a book about learning from our mistakes and about not being afraid.

Uplifting, inspiring and rich in stories from Elizabeth’s own life, How to Fail reveals that failure is not what defines us; rather it is how we respond to it that shapes us as individuals.

Because learning how to fail is actually learning how to succeed better. And everyone needs a bit of that.

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Kristin Hannah- The Women #bookreviews #positiveonly #5*

MY VERDICT? While reading this, I realised I know very little about the Vietnam War. Kristin Hannah balances commemorating those who were there; conveying the suffering of the civilians and condemning the war itself. Moving and enlightening.

The Blurb:

When twenty-year-old nursing student, Frances “Frankie” McGrath, hears these unexpected words, it is a revelation. Raised on California’s idyllic Coronado Island and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing, being a good girl.

But in 1965 the world is changing, and she suddenly imagines a different path for her life. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she impulsively joins the Army Nurses Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the young men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war, as well as the unexpected trauma of coming home to a changed America. But Frankie will also discover the true value of female friendship and the heartbreak that love can cause.

‘Thank God for girlfriends. In this crazy, chaotic, divided world that was run by men, you could count on the women’

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Kate Morton – Homecoming #bookreviews #positiveonly #5*

MY VERDICT? Vividly conjures Australia in the 1960s and present day. It’s a mystery/tragedy/ family saga rolled into one with an embedded true crime narrative. I absolutely loved this.

The Blurb:

Adelaide Hills, 1959. At the end of a scorching hot day, in the grounds of a grand country house, a local man makes a terrible discovery. Police are called, and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most mystifying murder investigations in the history of Australia.

London, 2018. Jess is a journalist in search of a story. Having lived and worked in London for nearly two decades, a phone call summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother, Nora, has suffered a fall and is seriously ill in hospital.

Seeking comfort in her past, Jess discovers a true crime book at Nora’s house chronicling a long-buried police case: the Turner Family Tragedy of 1959. And within its pages she finds a shocking personal connection to this notorious event – a crime that has never truly been solved . . .

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Stephen King – The Institute #bookreviews #positiveonly #5*

MY VERDICT? I couldn’t put this Stranger Things/ Firestarter/ Tall Pines mashup down! Expect sinister government conspiracies, psychopathic wardens and kids with uncanny abilities. Classic Stephen King.

The Blurb:

Deep in the woods of Maine, there is a dark state facility where kids, abducted from across the United States, are incarcerated. In the Institute they are subjected to a series of tests and procedures meant to combine their exceptional gifts – telepathy, telekinesis – for concentrated effect. 

Luke Ellis is the latest recruit. He’s just a regular 12-year-old, except he’s not just smart, he’s super-smart. And he has another gift which the Institute wants to use…

Far away in a small town in South Carolina, former cop Tim Jamieson has taken a job working for the local sheriff. He’s basically just walking the beat. But he’s about to take on the biggest case of his career.

Back in the Institute’s downtrodden playground and corridors where posters advertise ‘just another day in paradise’, Luke, his friend Kalisha and the other kids are in no doubt that they are prisoners, not guests. And there is no hope of escape.

But great events can turn on small hinges and Luke is about to team up with a new, even younger recruit, Avery Dixon, whose ability to read minds is off the scale. While the Institute may want to harness their powers for covert ends, the combined intelligence of Luke and Avery is beyond anything that even those who run the experiments – even the infamous Mrs Sigsby – suspect.

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Patrick Ryan – Buckeye #bookreviews #positiveonly #5*

MY VERDICT? I read a few reviews saying the plot moved too slowly and it is definitely not a fast-paced book but I loved it. The novel focuses on the ordinary lives of two American couples set against a backdrop of world events. Beautifully written and compelling.

The Blurb: MAY, 1945. As news of the Allied victory in Europe reaches the small town of Bonhomie, Ohio, a woman named Margaret Salt walks into a hardware store and asks the man behind the counter, Cal Jenkins, for a radio. What happens next will change both of their lives forever.

While the country reconstructs in the post-war boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie – but nothing can remain hidden in a small town. The consequences of that long-ago encounter will intertwine the fates of two families, rippling through the next generation and compelling them to re-examine who they thought they were and what the future might hold.

Full of compassion, humour and charm, Buckeye is a dazzling portrait of the human spirit by way of one unforgettable community; the twisted roads we take to achieve forgiveness and redemption; and above all a universal longing for love and connection.

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Emilia Hart- Weyward #bookreviews #positiveonly #5*

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MY VERDICT? A few of my favourite bookish things: female narrators, multiple timelines and stories expertly woven to a very satisfying conclusion. Weyward ticks all these boxes… and witches, too! Perfect.

The Blurb:

In the present day, Kate flees a traumatic relationship to the Cumbrian cottage she inherited from her great-aunt; but the cottage hides secrets of its own.

In 1942, Violet rebels against her father’s ideas of a ‘proper young lady’ . . . until he takes matters into his own hands.

In 1619, Altha is on trial for witchcraft, implicated in the gruesome death of a local man.

Three women they tried to cage – but Weyward women belong to the wild. And they cannot be tamed…