Category Archives: book reviews

#BookReview ‘The Night Ship’ by @JessKiddHerself #historical #Batavia

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The Night Ship by Jess Kidd is a strange compelling story about two orphaned children separated, but connected, by 361 years. Each thinks they see ghosts, learns legends and fights monsters. Both want to be scared, to seek out the unknown. Jess KiddIn 1628, nine-year old Mayken is aboard the magnificent Batavia, one of a fleet of ships heading from Holland to Batavia in Dutch East India (now Indonesia). She travels with her nursemaid Imke. Mayken’s mother has died of ‘the bloody flux’ and she travels to live with her father, a senior executive in the Dutch East India Company. Mayken has never met him but knows he grows red and white roses at his marble mansion, has chestnut stallions and dapple mares.
In 1989 after the death of his mother, nine-year old Gil goes to live with his grandfather who is a fisherman on the remote Beacon Island off the coast of Australia. It’s a stark place. Gil, who has only the vaguest childhood memories of both his grandfather Joss and of Beacon Island, has never known his father.
Both children explore their new surroundings, making adventures in their limited worlds. The warning ‘don’t go there’ or ‘don’t do that’ becomes an invitation to do exactly that. Both are explorers, brave in the face of the unknown, outsiders living in worlds limited in space bounded by the sea. When brutality strikes, how can they escape. Both are haunted by legend and scary stories, both make unlikely allies and enemies. Mayken discards her rich dress and wears breeches to venture below decks and, as ship’s boy Obbe, assumes a new identity. There she makes friends and enemies amongst the soldiers and sailors; these connections are vital later in the story. Gil knows he cannot leave the island without his grandfather’s permission. He finds a friend in his tortoise Enkidu and dresses up in clothes from Granny Ada’s wardrobe. When he finds a boat, inspired by stories about a shipwreck many years ago and the finds by an archaeological team digging on the island, he dreams of escape.
I loved the fond relationship between Mayken and Imke, particularly the recurring question about how Imke lost her fingertips as Mayken’s suggestions get more bizarre and gruesome. This is a welcome distraction from the bizarre and gruesome things that begin to happen aboard. Is someone making mischief, is it simply sailor’s superstitions or is there a monster aboard? Gil struggles to connect with his silent, brusque grandfather, and becomes the target of the island’s bullies. Each storyline is told only from the child’s viewpoint. Are Mayken and Gil to be trusted as reliable witnesses or has the real world become lost in their imaginations.
The Night Ship is based on the real seventeenth-century story of the voyage, shipwreck and mutiny aboard the treasure-laden ship Batavia. The fictional accounts of Mayken’s life aboard ship and then on the island they call Batavia’s Graveyard and Gil’s life on Beacon Island, the same place, explore community within and the social breakdown of small groups of people.
Slowly, slowly, this story grew on me. First, it seemed simply strange. But then the echoes in the lives of the two children begin to build and I wanted to know their endings. Beautifully-written and born from a wild imagination. This is the third book by Jess Kidd that I’ve read, each so different and impossible to predict. Sometimes a difficult read, this is also a hopeful, magical story with ultimately a positive message about the resilience of human love and kindness in the face of violence, evil and exploitation.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Read my reviews of two other novels by Jess Kidd:-
HIMSELF
THE HOARDER

If you like this, try:-
‘Dangerous Women’ by Hope Adams
‘The Ship’ by Antonia Honeywell
‘Devotion’ by Hannah Kent

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE NIGHT SHIP by @JessKiddHerself https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-5Tw via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-Dinah Jefferies

#BookReview ‘The Dance Tree’ by Kiran Millwood Hargrave #historical

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The Dance Tree by Kiran Millwood Hargrave is compelling and emotional. I read it in two long sittings, unwilling to put it down. Kiran Millwood HargraveBased on a true historical event in Strasbourg in 1518 when, one hot summer, one woman started to dance and didn’t stop. Others followed. Set at a time of extreme heat, hunger, intense religious belief and superstition, The Dance Tree takes the historical event and tells the story of a group of women and their secrets.
Lisbet, heavily pregnant with her thirteenth child, having lost the previous twelve, lives on the family farm with husband Henne and mother-in-law Sophey. They scratch a living from their bees, selling honey and beeswax. They await the arrival of the baby, and of Henne’s sister Agnethe returning from seven years of punishment at a nunnery. Many things are unspoken. Lisbet, feeling secrets are kept from her, finds support with her best friend Ida. But always she feels as if the Wilers blame her for bringing bad luck to the farm, bad luck because Lisbet was born on the day of a comet, a comet which bought bad luck and starvation to the land.
So many things are unspoken. What happened before Lisbet married Henne and joined the Wiler family. What shame did Nethe commit to deserve her banishment and, now she is returned, why is there such hatred between her and Ida. Lisbet, feeling estranged from her husband and mother-in-law, struggles to make sense of what is happening. What is the family hiding from her, and why. The family has so many secrets, including the secrets Lisbet is hiding about her mother’s death.
The power balance at the Wiler house changes as the three women are left alone. Henne travels to Heidelberg to give evidence in court that their bees are free creatures in nature and are not wilfully stealing nectar from the wildflowers at the monastery. Meanwhile in town women begin dancing. First one, trance-like, hearing music that those watching cannot hear. More join in, at first a spectacle for the town’s inhabitants. But then, as more people join in, fear begins to circulate. Are they ill, are they mad. And how will the church control the hysteria.
Into the Wiler home come two lodgers, two musicians paid by the church to play music to drive the devil from the dancing women. And so the power balance shifts again in the Wiler household, especially as one of the men is a Turk, an infidel. The power of religious belief and superstition is overwhelming. Heat, poverty, hunger all increase the pressure to conform. Judgement against those who do not fit in or whose behaviour is judged sinful or simply different is uncompromising. Those wielding the power, the Twenty One, are strong men filled with pomposity and arrogance. They are quick to judge and will not hear evidence or allow people to make witness. Women’s voices are not heard.
Lisbet’s place of sanctuary is a linden tree, hidden deep in the forest in an impenetrable tangle of bushes. There she can be herself, remember her mother and grieve for her lost babies. Her mother had a tree like this near Lisbet’s childhood home, it was called a dance tree. When Lisbet visits her tree she finds peace in its solitude. At every visit she leaves a small offering, a pebble, a feather, a flower. She feels safe there but in truth there is safety nowhere. When the Twenty One sees the dancing women, decisions about what to do – to punish the women or care for them – are made individually according to the woman’s standing and position in society, obedient or sinner.
Like Hargrave’s previous novel The Mercies, this is a powerful mesmerising novel tight with tension, betrayal and threat leavened by snatches of love and togetherness. Excellent.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

Click the title to read my review of THE MERCIES, also by Kiran Millwood Hargrave.

If you like this, try:-
‘Orphans of the Carnival’ by Carol Birch
‘The Wicked Cometh’ by Laura Carlin
‘Gone are the Leaves’ by Anne Donovan

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE DANCE TREE by Kiran Millwood Hargrave https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-5Tk via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-
Jess Kidd

#BookReview ‘Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North’ by Rachel Joyce

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If you haven’t read the two previous books in this trilogy, please don’t start Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North by Rachel Joyce until you have. This novella can standalone but you will miss many references. It’s as delightfully funny and painfully sad as The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, and neatly completes the Fry story. It supplies the missing piece in the jigsaw, that hole in the middle. Rachel Joyce It is ten years since Maureen Fry’s husband Harold returned home from his walking adventure in search of old friend, Queenie. Maureen has a minor presence in the first two novels, so this is her painfully supressed story about unbearable grief. Not always a sympathetic character, Maureen has always felt different. Until she met Harold, she felt as if she were ‘being measured against something she didn’t understand and would never get right.’ Always lacking in self-confidence, Maureen struggled first after the death of their son David and later to accept Harold’s quest to see Queenie one last time. This book tells of Maureen’s quest, to find herself.
Deeply emotional and simply written, this is about the longevity of grief and how it can permeate every minute of your day. The depth of Joyce’s understanding of human nature, the poetically simple language and the parallel rather than sequential storytelling reminds me of Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy Barton novels.
There are some ‘chuckle out loud’ moments such as the scene with the assistant in a diner. Like Harold, Maureen meets people on her winter journey who surprise her in positive and darker ways. But principally it is about Maureen learning the confidence to accept – and love – herself as she is, to accept each person as an individual and to understand that David was his own person too. She cannot mould the real person David was into one that fits her memory of him.
A quick read, it can be read in one sitting, but for all its brevity it packs a punch. I was still thinking about it days after I read the last page, always a good sign.

Read my reviews of these other novels by Rachel Joyce:-
MISS BENSON’S BEETLE
PERFECT
THE LOVE SONG OF MISS QUEENIE HENNESSY

And read here the first paragraph of THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY

If you like this, try:-
‘The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes’ by Anna McPartlin
‘The Hoarder’ by Jess Kid
‘The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman’ by Julietta Henderson

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview MAUREEN FRY AND THE ANGEL OF THE NORTH by Rachel Joyce https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-5Td via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-
Kiran Millwood Hargrave

#BookReview ‘The Partisan’ by Patrick Worrall #thriller #ColdWar #spy

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The key protagonist in The Partisan by Patrick Worrall is a female Lithuanian resistance fighter who becomes a Cold War assassin. How nice to read a thriller set in the Baltic States, a fresh take on war and how to survive it. At the heart of the story is Greta, the partisan. I admired her, and feared her. Patrick WorrallAn ambitious timeline ranges from the Spanish Civil War to the Sixties Cold War as Greta turns from wartime fighting, one of the Three Sisters, to post-war vengeance tracking down the war criminals on her list and eliminating them. Greta’s story intersects in 1963 with Yulia and Michael, Soviet and English teenage chess champions respectively, and a Soviet plot to win the Cold War. The 1963 chess sub-plot got in the way. Greta is the fascinating character, I wanted to read about her. Her story is thrilling enough.
I couldn’t help but wonder if a more limited reach would help the story’s rhythm. The story jumps around a bit. In the first half I would prefer spending longer with each character to understand them, before the pace picks up as tension rises and point of view gets snappier. I wanted to read about Greta’s story in one long narrative thread instead of a timeline jumping between 1940s and 1963. I particularly enjoyed Greta’s interviews with journalist Indrė in 2004 and was unable to get beyond the jumping around when I wanted to settle in with one character. The character list is long with many similar names to remember – who is on which side, who is double-crossing who – and this took me out of the story.
I’m always partial to a good thriller and like to find debut authors, so I’ll be watching out for the next book from Patrick Worrall. It’s different, try it.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Diamond Eye’ by Kate Quinn
‘A Hero in France’ by Alan Furst
‘V2’ by Robert Harris

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE PARTISAN by Patrick Worrall https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-5T8 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Last Hours in Paris’ by Ruth Druart #WW2

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The Last Hours in Paris by Ruth Druart is a different kind of Second World War romance. At times it is a tough read, the hatred is visceral and uncompromising. It feels real. Ruth DruartThis is the story of three people in the last days of occupied Paris and the years following when repercussions continued and the war, though never spoken of, remained tangled in the roots of daily life. Those who fought the Germans, those who stayed behind and lived under German dictatorship. In peacetime everyone must live alongside each other again. The different memories, experiences, losses, are difficult to assimilate.
In Paris 1944 Élise Chevalier a bank clerk by day, secretly helps to smuggle Jewish children from the city. ‘Paris was no longer Paris. It was an occupied city, and even the buildings seemed to be holding their breath, waiting.’ No longer her familiar city, Paris is sinister, threatening, frightening. One day in her favourite bookshop Élise is threatened by two French policemen and is defended by another customer, a German soldier. And so begins the story of Élise and Sébastian Kleinhaus and the terrifying, impossible time in which they live.
In 1963 in rural Brittany, eighteen-year old Joséphine Chevalier uncovers a story about her mother that she could never have imagined. She fears it is impossible to truly know someone. ‘From now on, she’ll always be wondering what part of themselves people are hiding.’
A slow burn to start, Druart takes her time, allowing us to feel connected to the characters as she gradually raises the emotional temperature. The peripheral characters are well drawn, particularly Élise’s younger sister Isabelle, bookshop owner Monsieur le Bolzec and Breton farmer Soizic. Each brings their own experience, judgement and dignity to what is an impossible, unbearable situation for everyone. The definition of family and home, love, protection and separation. ‘Maybe home wasn’t a place at all, but the people you wanted to be with.’
Whatever you may think of what happened in Paris at this time, Druart tells this sensitive story of young people, inexperienced, naive and hopeful, living in a time of such violence and betrayal, of secrets, survival, moralising and vengeance. After surviving the hardships, violence and deprivations of war, how can they adapt to find a new life of possibilities. How can they forgive the secrets and betrayals and move on.
A strongly emotional interpretation of life in occupied Paris that is hardly an obvious setting for a story about love. But this is a love more than romance. It is a love of family, responsibility, truth, sacrifice, forgiveness, of letting go of past hurts and wrongs and looking to the future.
Highly recommended.

Click the title to read my review of WHILE PARIS SLEPT, another World War Two story by Ruth Druart.

If you like this, try:-
‘Midnight in Europe’ by Alan Furst
‘The Book of Lies’ by Mark Horlock
‘After the Bombing’ by Clare Morrall

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE LAST HOURS IN PARIS by Ruth Druart https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-5T2 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Ladder of Years’ by Anne Tyler #contemporary #family

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Ladder of Years is another fine character-led drama by Anne Tyler, one of my favourite authors. It is the story of Delia Grinstead who, in a moment of dissatisfaction with her life and relationships, goes for a walk on the beach and keeps on walking. Finding a niche in a small town, with hardly any money and possessions, Delia starts again. And when her family catch up with her and ask her why she left, she cannot find a way to explain. It is twenty-eight years since Ladder of Years was first published. It was chosen by Time magazine as one of the ten best books of 1995. Tyler had already been a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1986 with The Accidental Tourist and won it in 1989 for Breathing Lessons. All her novels stand the test of time and can be read as if the action takes place today, so accurately is her finger on the portrayal of human emotion.
Adrift from her husband and three almost-adult children in Baltimore and not understanding why, Delia finally tips over the edge while on holiday. She finds herself in Bay Borough, the sort of small town where everyone knows everyone else’s business. She finds a job and a room to rent, buys a couple of secondhand work dresses and a nifty gadget to heat water in a cup so she can make an early morning cup of tea. Delia knows she should let her family know she is safe but is disinclined to do so, feeling she has been taken for granted. Inevitably, one of her sisters arrives on the doorstep. What follows is the story of a woman free for the first time, having married as a teenager and worked all that time as her doctor husband’s receptionist. Free from the expectations of others, she makes a circle of friends on her own terms.
This is a novel about middle-aged stasis and escape, about admitting the truth of one’s own life, choices and possibilities, and that there are no easy answers. Tyler’s characters are always so well-drawn and believable and her observations so wise and true, sometimes uncomfortably so. Here’s an example; ‘Didn’t it often happen, she thought, that aged parents die exactly at the moment when other people (your husband, your adolescent children) have stopped being thrilled to see you coming? But a parent is always thrilled, always dwells so lovingly on your face as you are speaking. One of life’s many ironies.’ Of course, Delia encounters other parent/child combinations in Bay Borough which challenge this theory.
Tyler’s novels deceive; seemingly about small domesticities and passage-of-life-events, they are really about the big, difficult questions we all face as we pass through different phases of life.
Excellent.

Read my reviews of these other books by Anne Tyler:-
A SPOOL OF BLUE THREAD
CLOCK DANCE
FRENCH BRAID
REDHEAD BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD
VINEGAR GIRL

And read the first paragraphs of:-
DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT 
BACK WHEN WE WERE GROWN UPS

If you like this, try:-
‘Olive Kitteridge’ by Elizabeth Strout
‘Mothering Sunday’ by Graham Swift
‘The Stars are Fire’ by Anita Shreve

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Bookreview LADDER OF YEARS by Anne Tyler https://wp.me/p5gEM4-49S via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Dark Earth’ by @RebeccaStott64 #fantasy #folklore

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Dark Earth by Rebecca Stott is rooted in the history of post-Roman Londinium, the Dark Ages of which few facts are known. It traces the fate of two sisters, both confound the expectations of the time. Isla is a smith, Blue a mystic. When their father dies they must adapt to survive. Rebecca StottSet around AD 500, these sisters have been living a self-sufficient free life with their father, a Great Smith, on a small island in the Thames. When he dies, they cannot stay. Isla finishes her father’s commission, a special ‘firetongue’ sword for the local lord and overseer Osric. Women are forbidden to work as smiths so the girls must deliver the sword without admitting their father is dead, their aim is to gain the protection of kinship. But a violent act forces the sisters abandon their plan and they flee Osric’s camp.
They hide in the Ghost City, the abandoned riverbank settlement that belonged to the Sun Kings and is now home to a secret women’s community. As the girls are hunted by Osric and his son Vort, they are torn. Should they stay or run. Stay sheltered amongst this supportive group but unable to venture beyond the walls of the Ghost City, or protect the community by leaving it and leading their attackers away. The sisters have different tasks during the day which means they see each other less and become exposed to new influences. Isla establishes a forge while Blue forages for herbs and learns about healing. Romance adds complications to their big decision, stay or go. Will the sisters remain united or, as they become adults, will they make individual decisions taking them in different directions.
In places I was overwhelmed by description with so many historical and folklore details that the setting seemed to blur and the narrative pace slowed. More a fantasy novel rooted in history than a historical novel with fantasy elements, Stott has creatively imagined the unknown time in which Isla and Blue live. The country during this period was occupied by a variety of settlers, knitted together by essential trade but separated by beliefs and violence. Little fact remains. Perhaps there would be more clarity if each group were given their historical name, ie Romans rather than Sun Kings. Trying to guess who was who distracted me from Isla and Blue’s story.
This is a story about sisters in an ancient time who grow from being inseparable to having their own motivations, desires and conflicts. Told from a modern female perspective with few rounded male characters, it is an atmospheric read, slow in the middle but which raced towards the end. An end that neatly connects the Ghost City to today.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

If you like this, try:-
‘The Invasion of the Tearling’ by Erika Johansen
‘Children of Blood and Bone’ by Tomi Adeymi
‘The Silence of the Girls’ by Pat Barker

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview DARK EARTH by @RebeccaStott64 https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5SB via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting’ by @SophieHIrwin #romance

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Just what I needed after finishing a more weighty and time-consuming read, A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting by Sophie Irwin propelled me along on a wave of flirting and social waltzing. And I gulped it down like a mug of hot chocolate on an icy day.Sophie Irwin

Kitty Talbot is in need of a husband, quickly. After the deaths of first her mother then her father, Kitty, as the eldest of five girls, is left with the financial and caring responsibilities of her younger sisters and a huge debt. With 12 weeks to pay the money owed or vacate their childhood home Netley Cottage, Kitty decides a husband with the right amount of wealth must be sought. The twenty-year old problem solver, always pragmatic, heads to London with bookish sister Cecily in tow, to stay with an old friend of their mother. Aunt Dorothy is not their aunt and, Kitty fears, her history may not withstand close examination. But Kitty’s plan is to gain admittance to the London season – specifically the circle of ‘the ton’, the wealthiest and most aristocratic of London’s social scene – and find a man richer than is available to her in Dorsetshire. He must wipe out the Talbot debt and ensure the financial security of the five sisters. Aunt Dorothy is the only person Kitty knows, despite never having met the lady, who might help them.
A combination of scheming Becky Sharp and witty Elizabeth Bennet, Kitty occupies the fine line between being a fortune-seeker, a flirt and a liar. She is sharp-witted, charming, eager to learn and brave. The latter quality comes in useful as she must enter ballrooms full of people she knows she recently offended due in part to her lack of knowledge of social conventions and in part to the delicate sensitivities and prejudices of the offended. The social mores of ‘the ton’ are unpredictable, difficult to predict and often silly. So she holds her head high and seeks help from the most unlikely places. Lord Radcliffe, the elder brother of one of Kitty’s first flirtations, becomes an unwilling mentor. In a deal to ensure Kitty will not engage with his younger, naïve brother Archie, Radcliffe agrees to give Kitty guidance on London’s social minefield. Neither is wholly satisfied with their deal. Kitty, because Radcliffe is often unable to give her the most helpful information [how deep or shallow a curtsey should be to people of differing ranks, for example] and Radcliffe because he fears he will never be rid of her.
Funny and entertaining, complete with unpredictable siblings who get into trouble, embarrassing beaux, flirtations and elopements, gambling and pistols, I enjoyed this immensely. The plot moves on swiftly and, though the language and detail sometimes slips from period accuracy, I decided to ignore that and go with the fun.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Convenient Marriage’ by Georgette Heyer
‘The 20s Girl, The Ghost, and All That Jazz’ by June Kearns
‘The Girl at the Window’ by Rowan Coleman

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#BookReview A LADY’S GUIDE TO FORTUNE-HUNTING by @SophieHIrwin https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5Sq via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Paper Cup’ by @writerkcampbell #contemporary

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Homeless Kelly witnesses a horrific accident in Glasgow which sets her on a course towards her hometown in Galloway. Paper Cup by Karen Campbell is Kelly’s story as she faces her long-buried demons and receives gestures of kindness from complete strangers. Karen CampbellA new author for me, I found the first few pages slow to get into but I persevered and was glad I did. There are many ‘finding yourself’ road trip novels – The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce being the first that comes to mind – and most are uplifting, verging on the sentimental. This one is different. Campbell’s gritty portrayal of Kelly’s struggles, and finally the truth of why she is a vagrant, challenges the reader to be open-minded and compassionate.
A long way from home, cadging pennies to buy the alcohol which keeps her going from day to day, Kelly blocks out troubling memories until a lost ring gives her purpose and a forlorn puppy becomes a companion. Re-learning to love and care for Collie [short for Cauliflower] redirects Kelly’s self-focus and gives her strength to put one step in front of the other. Kelly originally starts walking in order to return an engagement ring to a drunken bride who, on her hen night, didn’t realise that in the pile of coins she left at a dosser’s feet was her diamond ring.
This is a generous, sympathetic portrayal of a character who is lost in so many ways and Campbell encourages us to be kind and less judgemental. In order to move on emotionally, Kelly must open the box full of bad memories and be kind to herself. During an encounter with a minibus of tourists, Kelly is given a leaflet. ‘Pilgrims’ Progress. Travel through Scotland in the footsteps of saints and sinners.’ She decides to follow the map. Four places in four days. ‘Her own wee walkabout’ alone amongst the heather. ‘And the best of it is, no one knows she is here.’ Meanwhile Kelly is pursued from Glasgow by friends, and a journalist keen to tell her story.
There is Glaswegian slang but after a few pages I just learned to go with the flow of language. Kelly walks through a beautiful part of the world and Campbell’s description brings this to life, always tempered with edginess which brings us back to Kelly’s past and present, the sad reasons for her homelessness and alcoholism.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman’ by Julietta Henderson
‘Etta and Otto and Russell and James’ by Emma Hooper
‘Mobile Library’ by David Whitehouse

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview PAPER CUP by @writerkcampbell https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5Sj via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Ivy Tree’ by Mary Stewart #mystery #suspense

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A strange encounter on Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland kicks off this mystery of assumed identity and deceit. The premise of The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart reminded me immediately of Josephine Tey’s masterpiece about a fraudulent heir, Brat Farrar and Stewart’s characters refer to the Tey book. Mary StewartDays after a young man mistakes Mary Grey for a local woman who disappeared eight years earlier, Mary sees a strange woman watching her in the Newcastle café where she is waitressing. What follows is a complex plot to secure the fortune and property of an elderly gentleman, his health failing, before he should die. Mary, at the behest of sibling partnership Connor Winslow and Lisa Dermott, will impersonate Annabel Winslow, the woman she so resembles, in order to win the Winslow’s farm Whitescar for Con. Unscrupulous, immoral? Or redressing a wrong perpetuated in a will which needs updating before Matthew Winslow’s imminent death? Throughout the first half of the story, which works up to the false Annabel’s arrival at Whitescar and the hurdles of lies and pretence she must negotiate, I suspected Mary Grey of being the real Annabel. But at the halfway mark in the story, everything changes as new information bursts on the scene. And all set in the glorious summer setting of rural Northumberland, where abundant roses tumble through the hedgerows and a cat named Tommy has kittens.
More a mystery with an odd touch of romance, than a romantic mystery, Stewart has populated the story with edgy unlikeable characters. Apart from Annabel’s grandfather and her young cousin Julie, who was only eleven when Annabel was assumed dead after mysteriously disappearing. Julie’s naïvely-recounted memories of what passed eight years earlier help the reader, and ‘Annabel,’ to grasp the complexities of the Winslow family politics. But as for everyone else, I didn’t trust any of them.
The ivy tree of the novel’s title is not of course made of ivy, it’s a large old oak tree now swamped by ivy. ‘Eventually the ivy would kill it. Already, through the tracery of the ivy-stems, some of the oak boughs showed dead, and one great lower limb, long since broken off, had left a gap where rotten wood yawned, in holes deep enough for owls to nest in.’ As the story unfolds, the significance of this tree becomes clearer. Stewart, as always, writes with such a brooding sense of atmosphere, almost acting as an extra character. And she handles the balance of trickery, of information withheld, suspected, hinted and revealed, like a master craftsman.
A story with so many twists it seems the knot will never be untied. But it is, in a final thrilling scene involving the old ivy tree. Another Mary Stewart classic. She makes you feel as if you’re there, watching as the story unfolds around you.

Click the title to read my reviews of other Mary Stewart novels:-
THIS ROUGH MAGIC
THORNYHOLD
TOUCH NOT THE CAT
THE GABRIEL HOUNDS

Click the title to read my review of BRAT FARRAR by Josephine Tey.

If you like this, try these:-
‘My Husband the Stranger’ by Rebecca Done
‘Wolf Winter’ by Cecilia Ekback
‘Little Deaths’ by Emma Flint

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE IVY TREE by Mary Stewart https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5Sc via @SandraDanby