Tag Archives: book review

#BookReview ‘The Lamplighters’ by Emma Stonex #suspense

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The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex is a difficult story both to describe and to compartmentalise in genre. I, mistaken by the Author’s Note at the beginning which refers to a true incident in 1900, thought I would be reading a historical story. The action is set in 1972 and 1992. The genre is variously described as horror, ghost, thriller, suspense and mystery. I saw no evidence of ghosts and it doesn’t feel to me like a thriller. It is a story of human emotions and the consequences of actions, set against the atmospheric backdrop of the sea. Emma StonexCornwall, 1972. The Maiden Rock, a lighthouse on a rock tower out at sea, is the scene of a mysterious disappearance. When the relief boat arrives, all three men who should have been on the rock have gone. Are they dead, kidnapped, drowned, or disappeared to start a new life? The story of principal keeper Arthur Black, assistant keeper Bill Walker, and supernumerary assistant keeper Vince Bourne is told in two timelines – the men’s stories in 1972 and that of their wives 20 years later when they answer the questions of a journalist researching a book about the disappearances. But why now? And what secrets does he think these women have hidden all these years?
Stonex writes beautifully about the sea, the rugged beauty, the loneliness it conjures in the minds of men alone, within sight of their loved ones on shore but a million miles from their touch. The men’s lives are driven by the sun and the moon, the regimen of keeping their light going. Arthur loves early morning the best; ‘The time I think of you the most is when the sun comes up. The moment before, the minute or two, when night yawns for morning and the sea starts to separate from the sky. Day after day the sun comes back. I don’t know why. I’ve had my light safe here, shining through the dark and I’ll keep it shining: the sun needn’t bother today. But still he comes and still come my thoughts of you.’
The three men are loners, they have to be to survive the rigours of their job and living conditions. Being a lighthouse keeper attracts a certain personality. Each man has his own way of coping with the empty time; Bill carves seashells, they all smoke constantly. They talk politics, the space race, the Cold War. Each man has his loves, regrets, secrets, guilts and griefs. Are these on-shore things irrelevant to life at the Maiden, or do real life events invade their isolated world-within-a-world? Each man dwells in his own mind and as the weather worsens, the mind begins to play tricks.
This is more a story about the three men on the Maiden and less a closed-room thriller, less a what-happened-here mystery. And I was drawn more to the characters of the three men – their life on the Maiden, the effect of their isolation surrounded by the might of the sea and weather – than on the three women ashore and the answer to the mystery.

If you like this, try:-
‘Wolf Winter’ by Cecilia Eckback
‘Little Deaths’ by Emma Flint
‘Himself’ by Jess Kidd

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#BookReview ‘Magpie Murders’ by Anthony Horowitz @AnthonyHorowitz #crime

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In the tradition of the theatrical play-within-a-play, Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz is a detective-mystery-within-a-detective-mystery. First in the Susan Ryeland series, more of her later, Horowitz has written a page-turner laced intricately with clues, delivered by a fictional detective in the Poirot tradition. Anthony HorowitzSusan Ryeland is head of fiction at Cloverleaf Books whose star writer is Alan Conway, author of the hugely successful Atticus Pünd crime series. Reading the manuscript of his latest submission, Magpie Murders, Susan is surprised to find the last chapters are missing. The murderer remains unnamed. Worse, Alan Conway has committed suicide. If Ryeland and her boss Charles Clover don’t find the missing chapters they can’t publish the book. And with no future books to come from Conway, the company may go bust.
The first half of the book is dedicated to Conway’s story of his fictional private detective, Pünd, who investigates one accidental death and one murder which take place in the same West Country village within days of each other. The victims knew each other. There must be a connection. In classic Agatha Christie style, the possibilities, lies and secrets are discovered by Pünd but he keeps his conclusions to himself.
The second half of the book tells how Ryeland first sets out to find the missing part of the manuscript. But increasingly puzzled by inconsistencies and lies in those surrounding Conway, she begins to suspect his death was not suicide. And that the answer lies in the manuscript of Magpie Murders. Did Conway fear for his life, and did he leave clues behind for his killer to be brought to justice.
This is such a clever beginning to what is a new detective series from Horowitz, who has written extensively for television including Midsomer Murders and Poirot. All the tropes of the classic detective novel are here – family arguments, a crook going straight, injustice, jealousy and rivalry, mixed up with the tensions of a local community where everyone knows everyone else’s secrets… or do they? Why is the vicar so hesitant when answering Pünd’s questions? Why did a son tell his mother he wished she were dead? Who stole a dangerous drug from the GP’s surgery and what did they do with it?
I’ve read some good books recently but none that kept me reading into the dark of the night until my eyes drooped. Oh, and I guessed wrong the wrong murderer.
Good fun.

Read my review of MOONFLOWER MURDERS, second in the Susan Ryeland crime series.

If you like this, try:-
‘A Death in the Dales’ by Frances Brody #7KATESHACKLETON
‘The Art of the Imperfect’ by Kate Evans #1SCARBOROUGHMYSTERIES
‘The Guest List’ by Lucy Foley

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#BookReview MAGPIE MURDERS by Anthony Horowitz @AnthonyHorowitz https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5bC via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Unsettled Ground’ by Claire Fuller #contemporary

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The title is well chosen. From the first page, Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller is unsettling. An eclectic mixture of setting and detail make the timeframe difficult to pin down, it seems other-worldly. An ordinary world, but not quite. This is a world of Google and internet banking, of smartphones and digital life. Claire FullerFuller writes about twins Julius and Jeanie who, aged 51, still live with their mother in a remote rural cottage. They scratch a living, cash-in-hand earned from odd jobs, vegetables and eggs sold at the garden gate and the local deli, money kept in a tin rather than a bank account. Everything changes when their mother, Dot, dies suddenly and they realise how she protected them and kept them safe. But with Dot gone, their familiar world collapses. Their routines don’t work, the difficulties their mother smoothed are now rocky, and they are evicted from their home.
This is a novel about relationships – sibling, parental and with the local community – both supportive and dismissive. As the twins attempt to cope with the paperwork following their mother’s death, their isolation from modern society becomes evident to them. Many people step aside from their helplessness, finding them strange and ignorant, people make assumptions and take the easy option of turning away. Jeanie is mortified to find out that other people know more about her life and family history than she does, how neighbours silently colluded in a scenario either from a sense of helplessness, a misguided assumption they are helping, or malicious sniggering. Unsettled Ground is an uncomfortable but at the same time uplifting read.
As Julius and Jeanie confront each revelation about the life they have been living, they begin to question each other’s loyalty. Jeanie finds emotional strength she didn’t know she had, despite a heart complaint she’s had since childhood. She sneaks back home and finds solace in the abandoned garden, harvesting vegetables. This is an uncomfortable depiction of modern poverty in a society where money exchange is cashless and application for help depends on literacy. Both find a way to cope but inevitably they need each other despite their grumbles and disagreements. At times of stress, they pick up their guitars and sing folk songs as their parents taught them.
When the truth slowly emerges about their father’s accidental death and Dot’s subsequent struggle as a single mother, they realise that deep down they had always had suspicions. This is a powerful story about the strength of human nature and the bonds of family, about fighting back against bullies and finding light in the future.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Midnight Library’ by Matt Haig
‘In the Midst of Winter’ by Isabel Allende
‘The Lie of the Land’ by Amanda Craig

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#BookReview ‘The Fine Art of Invisible Detection’ by Robert Goddard #thriller

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I always look forward to a new Robert Goddard book but wasn’t sure what to expect from his latest, The Fine Art of Invisible Detection. Partly, I think, because the blurb seemed more a detective novel than a thriller. Actually, this is both. Goddard has creative a heart-warming, realistic new hero, Umiko Wada, known simply as Wada. I raced through this book, full of Goddard’s clever twisty plotting, emotional dilemmas, should-I-shouldn’t-I moments. Robert GoddardWada is a 47-year-old secretary at a detective agency in Tokyo, making tea, writing reports for her technology-incompetent boss Kodaka. Widowed after her husband was killed in the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, Wada is quiet, efficient and invisible. But burning deep is a sense of righteousness. So when her boss asks for her help with a new case, she agrees to go to London to pose as the client who wants to find out if her father really committed suicide almost three decades earlier, or if he was murdered. From this point on, Wada’s life becomes unpredictable and her talent for being invisible becomes a lifesaver. Her boss dies in a car accident. The man she is due to meet in London has gone missing. Always logical, she follows the one clue she has.
Nick Miller is also due to meet the same man in London. Nick, a 41-year-old Londoner, is hoping to learn more about the father he has never met. Nick and Wada’s paths keep missing each other as they separately follow the trail of mystifying clues about the past. The action moves from Tokyo to London, Rekyjavik and the wilds of Iceland to Cornwall. There is a high-technology fraud, plus hints of terrorism and Japanese gang warfare, but this is not a violent read.
Wada is at the heart of this novel. Her logic and calm reasoning drive the narrative forward in that just-one-more-chapter way that makes this book a quick and fulfilling read. She is ordinary but extraordinary. I hope she returns in another novel.

Read my reviews of Goddard’s other books:-
PANIC ROOM
THE WAYS OF THE WORLD #1WIDEWORLD
THE CORNERS OF THE GLOBE #2WIDEWORLD
THE ENDS OF THE EARTH #3WIDEWORLD
THIS IS THE NIGHT THEY COME FOR YOU #1SUPERINTENDENTTALEB

If you like this, try:-
‘Exposure’ by Helen Dunmore
‘Gabriel’s Moon’ by William Boyd #1GABRIELDAX
‘Wolf Winter’ by Cecilia Ekback

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#BookReview ‘The Evening and the Morning’ by Ken Follett @KMFollett #historical

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I absolutely loved The Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett. It is thirty years since Follett published his monster hit The Pillars of the Earth and this novel is his prequel to what became the Kingsbridge series. Set in Southern England in the year 997 at the end of the Dark Ages – so called because the lack of historical documents and archaeological remains from the time means our knowledge of the era is thin – it was a period of unrest and war. Viking raids, skirmishes with the Welsh, the law allows violence against slaves while power-hungry local rulers disobey the rules of King Ethelred. Ken FollettThe story is told by three principal characters – a French noblewoman, a young English boatbuilder and an English monk. Each is smart, ambitious and honest but they are confronted by violence, cruelty, law-breaking, jealousy and betrayal.
In the west country village of Combe, eighteen-year old boatbuilder Edgar waits on the beach for his true love. She is married and the pair are going to run away together. But as Edgar waits, he sees the arrival of a Viking ship and his life changes. The town is destroyed. Three powerful brothers arrive to examine the damage – Wilwulf, ealdorman of local region Shiring; Bishop Wynstan of Shiring; and Wilgelm, thane of Combe – each will lose income because of the raid. It is decided a visit to Normandy is necessary to ask for support from Count Hubert, a Norman lord in Cherbourg who has influence with the Vikings.
In Normandy, Hubert receives two English visitors, a monk and a priest. The monk, Brother Aldred, has a chest of books he has bought in a French abbey. His plan is to create a library, a scriptorium, at Shiring Abbey. Hubert’s daughter Ragna is under pressure from her parents to marry a local lord she dislikes. She wishes Guillaume was educated like Aldred who, being a monk, is celibate. But when English lord Wilwulf arrives, she quickly falls in love.
Ragna travels to England where she will marry Wilfulf. En route she arrives at Dreng’s Ferry and meets Edgar. His family now lives on a farm at this, a poor, lawless place where the local dean and clergy live life to their own rules.  This is the beginning of a long friendship that will last many years. Though life as the wife of an English ealdorman is not what she expected, Ragna is supported by the presence in Shiring of Aldred who also becomes a friend.
This is an endlessly fascinating story, with so many twists and turns, achievements and horrific setbacks for the three friends that it’s easy to get lost in the ups and downs of their lives. The structure of the story may be predictable at times but the characters are strongly written, the historical setting is believable and the themes of friendship and perseverance are uplifting.
As soon as I finished reading it – and it’s a long book, 832 pages – I wanted to start at the beginning again. The last time I felt like that was when I finished The Pillars of the Earth.

Click the titles to read my reviews of other Follett novels:-
THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH #1KINGSBRIDGE
WORLD WITHOUT END #2KINGSBRIDGE
A COLUMN OF FIRE #3KINGSBRIDGE
THE ARMOUR OF LIGHT #4KINGSBRIDGE
NEVER

If you like this, try:-
‘The Almanack’ by Martine Bailey
‘Days Without End’ by Sebastian Barry
‘The Signature of All Things’ by Elizabeth Gilbert

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#BookReview ‘Yield’ by @ClaireDyer1 #poetry #gender

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Yield is the third poetry collection by poet and novelist Claire Dyer. An essentially personal examination of a mother and son as the son becomes a daughter. Incredibly honest, Dyer conjures up scenes of private moments from birth to clinic visits, sorting clothes, tea at the Ritz, the parental pain of feeling unable to help, the parental pride in a child’s courage and honesty. Claire DyerThe word honest is key to this experience, shared with us by poet and mother. When I finished reading this slim collection I was left with a sense of the overwhelming love of a family and individuals where gender at the same time matters totally, and not at all. What matters are child and parent.
My favourite three poems? For exuberance, ‘Doing Cartwheels at the Ritz’. For heart-rending practicality, ‘Wardrobe’. For the goblin, ‘Body Clock III’.
And the line that stayed with me for days afterwards… ‘If I’d been braver, wiser, kinder…’ which features in the series of ‘Clinic’ poems. Isn’t that the best of poetry, when it echoes in our thoughts, when it brings previously undiscovered perspectives on life, when it puts us into someone else’s shoes for just a moment.
A powerful, moving, sometimes startling collection which opens a privileged window for us into the world of a private transformation. Joyous, difficult, full of love.

Read my reviews of Claire Dyer’s novels, THE PERFECT AFFAIR and THE LAST DAY.

If you like this, try:-
‘Sentenced to Life’ by Clive James
‘Ghost Pot’ by John Wedgwood Clarke
‘Hold Your Own’ by Kate Tempest

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#BookReview YIELD by @ClaireDyer1 https://wp.me/p5gEM4-58l via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Killings at Kingfisher Hill’ by Sophie Hannah @sophiehannahCB1 #crime #mystery #Poirot #AgathaChristie

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Red herrings, twists and turns, lots of lies, confusing motivations and a long list of characters make The Killings at Kingfisher Hill by crime writer Sophie Hannah the type of book you need to read when fully alert. Fourth in Hannah’s series of continuation Hercule Poirot mysteries, I finished it with mixed feelings. Sophie Hannah Direct comparisons of Hannah and Christie seem unfair as these are continuation novels. Christie was a highly accomplished author who balanced likeable characters with dense but ultimately solveable crimes, while at the same time making the novels appealingly comfortable to read. If The Killings at Kingfisher Hill were a standalone novel featuring an unknown detective, it would be free of these comparisons. I enjoyed The Mystery of Three Quarters, third of Hannah’s Poirot novels, and will continue to read this series. It has also given me renewed impetus to re-read the Christie originals.
The complications start at the beginning. Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool are about to board a char-a-banc for Surrey and the exclusive Kingfisher Hill development, when they encounter not one but two women passengers behave strangely. One fears she is about to be murdered on the bus if she sits in a specific seat. The second woman confesses she has killed someone. Christie’s novels always have options – for victim, and murderer – but the options here did seem rather full-on with numerous characters introduced or mentioned in quick succession with none fully-formed in my mind. At one point I felt as Inspector Catchpool does, ‘My mind blurred, then went blank.’ So many possibilities in quick succession made me long for Christie’s more leisurely pace. True to character, Poirot is totally in charge of his investigation. He tells Catchpool, ‘Once one has a point of focus, all of the other details start to arrange themselves around it.’
Throughout I felt two steps away from the action because the murder has happened before the book begins. We are told the story of Poirot’s investigation by Catchpool and hear much of the necessary information as told to Poirot by third parties. Hearsay. I longed to be in the moment as it actually happened, or at the very least immediately afterwards – I think here of Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express, Evil Under the Sun and Death on the Nile.
The Killings at Kingfisher Hill wasn’t quite what I expected.

And here are my reviews of other Poirot books by Sophie Hannah:-
THE MONOGRAM MURDERS #1POIROT
THE MYSTERY OF THREE QUARTERS #3POIROT

If you like this, try:-
‘No Other Darkness’ by Sarah Hilary #2MARNIEROME
‘Cover Her Face’ by PD James #1ADAMDALGLIESH
‘The Secrets of Gaslight Lane’ by MRC Kasasian #4GOWERDETECTIVE

And if you’d like to share a link:
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#BookReview ‘Slow Horses’ by Mick Herron #spy #thriller

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Always on the lookout for a new thriller series to sink into, I am a late discoverer of the Jackson Lamb books by Mick Herron. Soon to be filmed as ‘Slough House’ and starring Gary Oldman as Lamb, it seemed a good time to start with book one, Slow Horses. Mick HerronLamb is the quixotic leader of Slough House, the place where British spies go when they have messed up. They work in a scruffy non-descript building doing boring, repetitive, desk-based jobs and dream of going on ‘ops.’ The reason for each person’s banishment is not spoken by some pact of olvidado but they are all intensely curious about each other. Very much on the outside, they are derided at the Park, the Regent’s Park MI5 headquarters run by ‘dogs’ and ‘achievers.’ The book is littered with spy language, at first confusing, but soon accepted without a second thought.
As always, the first book in a series can be slow to progress, given the need to establish characters, setting and world. And there are a lot of characters, some of whom were cardboard cut-outs with names. The action really gets moving with Hassan, a student who has been kidnapped by three white racists. His beheading is scheduled to take place live and be broadcast on the internet. Members of Slough House are pulled into an op which threatens to go badly wrong, not helped by the intense secrecy and rivalry of everyone involved. Not to mention lots of chips on shoulders. This is not a team and Lamb is not a leader, instead he sits in his top-floor office and is rarely seen.
Slow Horses features a bunch of dysfunctional characters who are unattractive and secretive and the link of the spies to Hassan’s plight is slow to appear. When it does, the story takes off as the team are yanked from their torpidity, told to use their initiative and become the spies they were trained to be. I can’t say I ended the book feeling I had access to Lamb’s character but then he is a spy and so inaccessible, opaque, contradictory. He is also irreverent, funny, disgusting, authority-hating, rude and strangely likeable. Interesting characters I want to see more of include Slough House agent River Cartwright, his grandfather the ‘OB’ who is retired and lives in Tonbridge, and slimy politician PJ who has a wonderful basement kitchen.
Next in the seven-book ‘Slough House’ series is Dead Lions which I will read soon in the expectation that Jackson Lamb’s past will be revealed.

Click the title to read my reviews of the other books in the Slough House series:-
DEAD LIONS #2SLOUGHHOUSE
REAL TIGERS #3SLOUGHHOUSE
SPOOK STREET #4SLOUGHHOUSE
LONDON RULES #5SLOUGHHOUSE
JOE COUNTRY #6SLOUGHHOUSE
SLOUGH HOUSE #7SLOUGHHOUSE
BAD ACTORS #8SLOUGHHOUSE
CLOWN TOWN #9SLOUGHHOUSE

If you like this, try:-
‘Panic Room’ by Robert Goddard
‘The Travelers’ by Chris Pavone
‘The Farm’ by Tom Rob Smith

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#BookReview ‘A Prince and a Spy’ by Rory Clements #thriller #WW2

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Rory Clements is fast becoming an author I turn to when I need a page-turning read to relax into. A Prince and a Spy is fifth in his Tom Wilde Second World War series and it doesn’t disappoint. Woven into true history of the conflict – the fatal crash in Scotland of the Duke of Kent’s plane, the holocaust – Clements adds real and fictional characters, intrigue and competing spies, to make this an enjoyable read. Rory ClementsWhen history professor Wilde returns by train home to Cambridge he bumps into a former student. Cazerove seems distracted, distressed, munching on a bag of sweets. Before the train reaches its destination, Cazerove dies of poisoning. So begins a typical Clements thriller – strong characters, true history and a string of unrelated incidents. When the Duke of Kent’s plane crashes on a remote hill in Scotland, the public is told his plane came down in heavy fog when taking off for Iceland on operational duties. In the world of A Prince and a Spy, the flying boat was returning from a secret diplomatic mission in Sweden where the Duke met his German cousin, a former member of the Nazi party. Wilde, working for the newly-established American secret intelligence service, OSS, is sent to Scotland to sniff around at the crash site and ask questions on behalf of his president. FDR wants to know why the plane crashed, was Prince George at the controls, was it shot down, and how did one person survive?
A keynote of this series is the multi-layering of rival spy agencies in the UK – the British, the Americans – the infiltration of Nazi agents, Soviet agitators and, in this book, a secret society. Clements is excellent at showing history through the eyes of fictional characters, a challenging task, and I particularly liked the Scottish segment with fisherman Jimmy Orde. A continuing thread from book to book is Wilde’s relationship with his partner Lydia, and Philip Eaton, the British spy who first involved Wilde in espionage. Clements twists reality in this book so Wilde doesn’t know who to trust, who to believe, and who is spying on him. So much so that at times, I lost track too.
An excellent weekend read.

Click the title to read my reviews of the other books in the Tom Wilde series:-
CORPUS #1TOMWILDE
NUCLEUS #2TOMWILDE
NEMESIS #3TOMWILDE
HITLER’S SECRET #4TOMWILDE
THE MAN IN THE BUNKER #6TOMWILDE
THE ENGLISH FUHRER #7TOMWILDE
A COLD WIND FROM MOSCOW #8TOMWILDE

And from the Sebastian Wolff series:-
MUNICH WOLF #1SEBASTIANWOLFF
EVIL IN HIGH PLACES #2SEBASTIANWOLFF
INVITATION FROM A DICTATOR #3SEBASTIANWOLFF

If you like this, try:-
‘Life After Life’ by Kate Atkinson
‘The Aftermath’ by Rhidian Brook
‘Midnight in Europe’ by Alan Furst

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A PRINCE AND A SPY by Rory Clements https://wp.me/p5gEM4-574 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘All Our Squandered Beauty’ by Amanda Huggins @troutiemcfish #grief

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At 122 pages, All Our Squandered Beauty by Yorkshire writer Amanda Huggins packs a powerful punch. It is a sensitively managed novella of a teenager navigating young love, relationships and sex while pulled underwater by grief for the father who died when she was young. His disappearance at sea has never been explained, his body never found; but gossip is becoming history. Kara Bradshaw, believing he would never leave her, hangs on to memories of time they spent together, sure of his love. Amanda HugginsIt is 1978 at Elmwick Bay in Yorkshire. Kara’s youth was punctuated by life beside the sea, gathering sea glass from the sand, identifying the birds flying overhead, watching stars in the night sky, tales of local legends and folklore. All occupations she enjoyed with her father. Now as a seventeen-year-old, Kara hangs out with bikers at Charelli’s café and the amusement arcade but fancies her art teacher, Leo. A thread running throughout the book is that all is not always as it seems, something Kara must understand if she is to accept the past and move on into adulthood. But first she must acknowledge her grief and let her father go.
A promising artist, Kara cannot wait to leave school for university in London. But her best friend Louise seems happy to settle for a life at home with her boyfriend, and Kara’s mother has moved inland where the sea is out of sight. Kara knows her boyfriend Marty would like to marry her and have babies, but she wants more. More love, more life, just more. Huggins writes with delicacy about a fragile teenager who knows what she wants but not why, seeking a path of learning without a father to guide her. Seven years have passed since villagers gossiped that Ged Bradshaw hadn’t really died at sea but ran away with Lola Armitage. Kara sees Lola everywhere, follows her only to discover it is someone she has never seen before.
Kara, unable to understand she still grieves for her father in hundreds of small ways, is seeking definitive answers to unanswerable questions. She looks for escape and finds it in art teacher Leo who offers her place at a summer art school in Greece, funded by the Philip Patou Art Foundation. Kara jumps at the chance. What she finds in Greece is not what she expected. Huggins is a successful travel writer and her description of the island of Lyros is beautiful, seen through the eyes of artist Kara who compares it with her seaside hometown.
This coming-of-age story passes quickly, I read it in two sittings and was left curious. I longed to see more – of Kara’s childhood and of the woman she will become. All Our Squandered Beauty is the story of one summer in her life, interwoven with reminiscences of her father. Huggins’ writing is, as always, delightful, her technical skill invisible on the page leaving the reader to dwell on the emotions. The short fiction form doesn’t allow the exploration in depth of all Huggins’ themes, and hopefully she is turning her attention to a novel.

Read my reviews of other work by Amanda Huggins:-
Novellas
CROSSING THE LINES
THE BLUE OF YOU
Short stories
AN UNFAMILIAR LANDSCAPE
BRIGHTLY COLOURED HORSES
EACH OF US A PETAL
SCRATCHED ENAMEL HEART
SEPARATED FROM THE SEA
Poetry
THE COLLECTIVE NOUNS FOR BIRDS

If you like this, try:-
‘A Week in Paris’ by Rachel Hore
‘The Last Day’ by Claire Dyer
‘The Cheesemaker’s House’ by Jane Cable

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#BookReview ALL OUR SQUANDERED BEAUTY by Amanda Huggins @troutiemcfish https://wp.me/p5gEM4-56j via @SandraDanby