Tag Archives: book review

#BookReview ‘The Ghost of Lily Painter’ by Caitlin Davies #genealogy #mystery

#BookReview ‘At First Light’ by Vanessa Lafaye #Florida #historical

Having loved Summertime, the debut novel of Florida-born Vanessa Lafaye, I was looking forward to reading At First Light. I was not disappointed. As with her first book, Florida in the period after the Great War is the setting. But the story starts with a bang in 1993 when an elderly Ku Klux Klan official is shot dead at a rally in Key West. The murderer is a 96-year old Cuban woman. At First Light is the story of Alicia Cortez. This is an intense story in many ways. Love, politics, racial hatred, prostitution and Prohibition. In 1919 Alicia arrives on a boat from Cuba, running from shame though for a while we don’t know the exact details. On the same day, John Morales disembarks from the troop ship which brought him from Europe where he fought with distinction in the Great War. Watching from the dock is fourteen-year-old Dwayne Campbell, who falls a little in love with Alicia, is in awe of John, and who becomes entangled in what is about to unfold. When John, a white man, a local man, is seen with a ‘brown’ stranger, Alicia, the newly established Klan of the Keys takes notice.
Although we know from page one that Alicia shoots someone, we do not know the identity of the victim. As she will not talk to the police, her motivation is unknown. So as the story of her arrival in Key West in 1919 unfolds, the guessing game begins as the Ku Klux Klan plans its attacks. This story segment takes place over a short few months and the speed at which events unfold is mesmerising. There are many thematic contrasts: the beauty of the location, the poverty and depravation; the global politics of war, the local politics run by corrupt men; the lack of women’s rights, the moral and emotional strength of women.
Inspired by a true story – the murder by the Ku Klux Klan of a white man in 1921 because he refused to end his relationship with a mixed-race woman – this is a novel about freedom. The freedoms fought for in war which are too often, and too rapidly, forgotten in daily life when hate is allowed to overcome tolerance and people become too quick to judge. And once a wrong is committed, who has the right to determine the nature of justice and how it should be implemented? Once the police cannot be trusted, the disintegration of society begins.
I read this book very quickly and didn’t want it to end. Second novels are often a disappointment, this one is not.

And here’s my review of SUMMERTIME, also by Vanessa Lafaye.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Ways of the World’ by Robert Goddard
‘Curtain Call’ by Anthony Quinn
‘Time Will Darken It’ by William Maxwell

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview AT FIRST LIGHT by ‪Vanessa Lafaye‪ via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2zh

#BookReview ‘Follow the Leader’ by Mel Sherratt @writermels #crime

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This police procedural is not about identifying the killer as the reader knows who it is from page one, but a chase against time. Will the police stop him before he completes his series of murders? Follow the Leader is the second in the DS Allie Shenton series by Mel Sherratt and, as well as being a story in its own right, it continues the thread of Allie’s story and of her sister Karen. So much so that the ending made me want to pick up book three and keep reading. The story is told in the present time from the viewpoint of the murderer, and Allie, plus flashbacks to schoolchildren in 1983. There is bullying, nastiness and violence at home. Patrick keeps his head down, hoping not to be noticed. Unfortunately for him, he has ‘victim’ written all over him. The schooldays segments are horribly realistic. The setting of Stoke-on-Trent is a critical part of this book and it is clear Sherratt is describing real places. The first body is found on the canal towpath. A man was walking his dog, in the same place, at the same time, as he always does. The next victim is a woman. Both have coloured magnetic letters left on the body.
The murders come thick and fast, the police are twisting and turning but the murderer has planned meticulously and remains one step ahead. There are many characters, most of which were at school in 1983, though the identities are muddled with the use of nicknames. As we see the former schoolfriends now, going about their daily life, we wonder who will be next.
Patrick is a difficult character to like or sympathize with despite his abusive childhood. Towards the end Sherratt does consider whether someone can change, can leave behind their violent past. Unfortunately the unthinking cruelty of teenagers to each other has consequences, but there is never an excuse for murder.

Read my reviews of more books in the Allie Shenton series:-
TAUNTING THE DEAD #1ALLIE SHENTON
ONLY THE BRAVE #3ALLIE SHENTON

If you like this, try:-
‘Good Me Bad Me’ by Ali Land
‘The Anarchist Detective’ by Jason Webster #3MAXCAMARA
‘Snow White Must Die’ by Nele Neuhaus

And if you’d like to share a link:
#BookReview FOLLOW THE LEADER by Mel Sherratt @writermels via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2v9

#BookReview ‘The Stars are Fire’ by Anita Shreve #contemporary

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I haven’t read anything by Anita Shreve for a very long time and I wonder why, because I thoroughly enjoyed The Stars are Fire. It is a fine example on how to write about someone experiencing difficult times, who is trapped and feels powerless, without being depressing. It is 1947 and the summer heat is blazing. Then the heat turns to drought and the drought turns to wildfire. On the coast of Maine, Grace Holland, five months pregnant, without a car and at home with her two toddlers, must run as the fire threatens to engulf her village. Her husband Gene is with other men, making a fire break. Grace, with her best friend Rosie and her children, run from the fire, taking refuge overnight at the beach. The next morning, their houses are ash, their village is burned. They are homeless, penniless and, though Rosie’s husband returns, Gene doesn’t.
Grace must cope and in doing so she finds a new world opening up. A world which she had no idea existed. She becomes decisive and brave, she finds a home, a job and learns to drive. All of this validates her worth. With her mother, they fashion themselves a new life. But it is a life with a temporary feeling about it because Grace dare not think Gene is dead. Theirs was a difficult relationship, suffocating, Gene is an emotional bully. She revels in her new freedoms until one day everything she has built, the gains she have made, are lost. Her gamble backfires.
This is a woman’s story of its time, when men were the providers and expected their wives to fulfil their wifely duties. Grace and Gene married young because she was pregnant and this sets the tone for their marriage. His mother wanted better for Gene and has never welcomed Grace. Grace’s dissatisfaction with her claustrophobic life grows. Gene is a good provider but they have little emotional connection, and so Grace envies Rosie’s close and sensual relationship with her husband Tim.
Shreve’s writing style is simple and descriptive. Gene sometimes calls Grace ‘Dove’. “She has never been Gracie. Only Grace. And then Dove, with Gene. Grace doesn’t feel like a dove, and she’s sure she doesn’t look anything like a dove, but she knows there’s a sweetness in the nickname. She wonders if it means something that she doesn’t have a fond or funny name for her husband.” The story is told, however, from Grace’s viewpoint. Gene’s thoughts are left unsaid.

If you like this, try:-
‘We Are Water’ by Wally Lamb
‘The Photographer’s Wife’ by Suzanne Joinson
‘Did You Ever Have a Family’ by Bill Clegg

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE STARS ARE FIRE by Anita Shreve via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2sq

#BookReview ‘My Husband the Stranger’ by Rebecca Done #contemporary

#BookReview ‘Reservoir 13’ by Jon McGregor #contemporary

3 Replies

Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor is a thoughtful, intelligent telling of what happens to a village when a person goes missing. Told after the event, it brings a new angle of understanding to the post-event trauma of those on the outer circles of tragedy. A girl goes missing in a village surrounded by moors, caves and reservoirs. ‘The girl’s name was Rebecca, or Becky, or Bex.’ At no point do we hear the viewpoint of the girl, her parents, or the investigating police. Slowly the story unfolds as we are told the life of the village through the years after it happened by an omniscient narrator, disconnected from the action.
I loved the way McGregor recounts the daily comings and goings of the village, the farmers, the vicar, the schoolchildren. The rhythm of life and nature is mesmeric, the message is ‘life goes on’. Love affairs start and end, babies are born as are lots of sheep, cows are milked, allotments tended. The village sits within the natural world of peaks, woods and rivers and, sometimes only in a single sentence, we are told of the hatching of butterflies, the unfurling of new leaves, the water running beneath the bridge. The writing style is sparse and all the more beautiful for that. The action switches from one person’s life to the next, sometimes in a simple factual sentence such as ‘this happened’. But as the action moves from one local to another, the story is slowly, painstakingly pieced together of a village which struggles to leave behind the mystery of what happened to Rebecca/Becky/Bex.
At the beginning I was unsure how the story would unfold: murder, missing person, runaway teenager, abduction? It is this not knowing which casts a shadow over everyone in the village.

Read my review of LEAN FALL STAND, also by Jon McGregor.

If you like this, try:-
‘Smash All the Windows’ by Jane Davis
‘Himself’ by Jess Kidd
‘The Museum of You’ by Carys Bray

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview RESERVOIR 13 by Jon McGregor via @Sandra Danby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2qa

#BookReview ‘Innocent Blood’ by PD James #thriller #adoption

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If you are a PD James fan, I should say up front that Innocent Blood is very different from the Adam Dalgliesh detective series. It is a psychological thriller, a slow-building mystery which starts with little steps then, as the odd details start to make sense, the tension builds. It is the story of a young woman who knows she is adopted, who exercises her right to know the names of her birth parents, and finds something she never in a million years expected. Philippa Palfrey is 18, about to go up to Cambridge, until she decides to find out the truth of her adoption. Her birth father is dead, her mother though is still alive. Philippa’s adoptive father warns caution, tells her to do her research and think carefully before contacting her mother but Philippa, driven by the need to know who she is and where she came from, goes ahead anyway. With the arrogance and naivety of youth, she embarks on a complicated path full of moral dilemma, tragedy and loss.
It is a novel of family blood and relationships, violence, redemption, revenge and acceptance. Is there a threat, real or imagined, and where/who does that threat come from? As the story progresses, that threat advances and retreats, reforming in another shape. Is Philippa right, or should she have listened to Maurice’s warnings?

Here are my reviews of the two Cordelia Gray mysteries:-
AN UNSUITABLE JOB FOR A WOMAN #CGRAY1
THE SKULL BENEATH THE SKIN #CGRAY2

And one other book by PD James:-
TIME TO BE IN EARNEST

If you like this, try:-
‘Shadow Baby’ by Margaret Forster
‘The Marriage Certificate’ by Stephen Molyneux
‘The Blood Detective’ by Dan Waddell

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview INNOCENT BLOOD by PD James http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Yi via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Outsiders’ by Michelle Paver #YA #fantasy

5 Replies

I came to this Michelle Paver series late, years after reading the award-winning ‘Chronicles of Ancient Darkness’ series which starts with the wonderful Wolf Brother. Doubtful that any character could be as admirable as Torak, it was a joy to read about The Outsiders, first in the ‘Gods and Warriors’ series. Hylas, like Torak, is an outsider. The Outsiders starts at a run from the first page and doesn’t slow up. Hylas has been attacked, his dog is dead, his sister missing and a fellow goatherd killed. And the killers are after him. Adrift at sea, disorientated, Hylas fears he must die. And then there follows a glorious section about dolphins. I won’t give away any more of the plot. The narrative is a shape familiar from Wolf Brother – wild boy in trouble, on the run, not sure who is friend or foe, sets off on a quest where he makes new alliances – but that doesn’t mean this is not an entertaining read with new characters, a new setting, and different myths and gods.
Michelle Paver’s books for children and young adults are set in mystical places but are based on solid research about the way our ancestors lived and survived in wild lands, the animals they hunted, the gods they worshipped and the monsters they feared. The Outsiders is set in the Mediterranean in the Bronze Age.
All the outdoors things inaccessible to today’s children – unsupervised by adults, expected to be self-sufficient at the age of twelve, adventuring to unfamiliar places, making a den, lighting a fire, navigating, foraging, analysing geography, weather and threats. Her child characters have respect for their world, they are brave, adventurous and learn quickly from their mistakes. If they don’t, they will die: these are not gentle stories but they are a preparation for the real world where children must learn for themselves how to survive.

And read my reviews of these other novels by Michelle Paver:-
RAINFOREST
THIN AIR
VIPER’S DAUGHTER #7WOLFBROTHER
WAKENHYRST

If you like this, try:-
‘Gregor the Overlander’ by Suzanne Collins #1UNDERLANDCHRONICLES
‘The Bear and the Nightingale’ by Katherine Arden #1WINTERNIGHT
‘Divergent’ by Veronica Roth #1DIVERGENT

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE OUTSIDERS by Michelle Paver http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2c5 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Long Drop’ by Denise Mina #crime

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Glasgow, 1950s. Three men meet in bar. One leaves. The remaining two men talk and drink until the early hours. They are unlikely drinking companions. A businessman, and a criminal. What are they talking about? Which one is telling the truth, or are they both lying? The Long Drop by Denise Mina is her fictional version of the night of Monday December 2, 1957 and the subsequent murder trial. It is a chilling story. Peter Manuel was a real murderer in Glasgow and the Burnside Affair happened, which makes this such an unsettling read. A woman, her sister and daughter have been killed, the girl was also raped: this is William Watt’s family, his wife, his daughter, his sister-in-law.
Manuel, a known criminal, writes to Laurence Dowdall, Watt’s solicitor, to say he knows the location of the murder weapon, a gun, and so Dowdall arranges the meeting at Whitehall’s Restaurant/Lounge. Suspected by police of murdering his own family, William Watts meets criminal Manuel desperate for answers. But for a naïve, boasting businessman, he is keeping strange company. All is not as it seems.
Mina populates her story with living/breathing Glasgow in the 1950s. If you have been to Glasgow, Mina’s words bring it alive. It you don’t know Glasgow, your imagination conjures up a crystal clear picture. “This city is commerce unfettered. It centres around the docks and the river, and it is all function. It dresses like the Irishwomen: had to toe in black, hair covered, eyes down.” Dowdall drives a maroon Vauxhall Velox.
This is the first book by Denise Mina which I have read. I really like her writing style. Concise, why use six words in a sentence when one or two conveys the meaning?

Read the #FirstPara of THE LONG DROP here.

If you like this, try:-
‘An Uncertain Place’ by Fred Vargas #8COMMISSAIREADAMSBERG
‘Little Boy Blue’ by MJ Arlidge #5HELENGRACE
‘The Nationalist’ by Campbell Hart #2ARBOGAST

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE LONG DROP by Denise Mina http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2pR via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Another You’ by @JaneCable #contemporary #romance

6 Replies

Novels rooted in a particular area where the place and scenery come alive off the page are favourites of mine. Studland Bay in Dorset, England is a beautiful part of the country, a dramatic coastline which is an ideal for a dramatic story. In Another You, Jane Cable uses the place to great effect. Key action scenes take place at the looming chalk cliffs, the Old Harry rocks, the sand dunes and heath. The time in which the story is set is cleverly chosen too, the sixtieth anniversary of preparations for the D-Day landings, preparations which took place along the south coast of England. It is a time full of memories, grief, regret and gratitude.
In this place and time, Cable sets her story. Marie is chef at The Smugglers, the pub she owns with her husband Stephen, from whom she is separated. Jude their son, a student, lives at the pub and helps out. Despite its popularity, the pub’s finances are not good and there is not enough cash to pay suppliers. Marie doesn’t understand what is happening and is stressed by this and having to deal with her difficult husband. This human story plays out alongside rehearsals for a commemorative re-enactment of Exercise Smash, the exercises conducted to rehearse for the Normandy landings. There are strangers in town, in the pub, soldiers, tanks, tourists. One day walking among the dunes, Marie meets an American soldier Corbin. Entranced by his old-fashioned manners, Marie looks for Corbin again but his presence is unpredictable, he appears and disappears. Marie also meets George, an elderly local gentleman who actually fought at D-Day, and his businessman son Mark; and then there is Paxton, another American serviceman based at a nearby tank museum, who entrances Marie and with whom she starts an affair.
Will Marie self-destruct before she confronts her husband? Will she ask Paxton why he can’t sleep at night, or Jude why he is so unhappy. Her frequent migraines and love of a glass of brandy make her an unreliable narrator, at times she is unable to see the way forward from her situation or question some of her wilder assumptions. Throughout this time, the voice of reason belongs to George. At times I found the story disorientating. In the middle of a migraine, Marie’s sense of the real is blurred, is she remembering real things, having visions, hallucinating, seeing ghosts, blacking out? Mark is a breath of fresh air in the midst of this emotional turmoil. When Marie first meets him, he is tying up his sailing dinghy. Somehow the sea, the waves and wind symbolise a freedom from the troubles on land.
A strong recurring theme throughout Jane Cable’s fiction is the way past and present inter-connect, decisions made years earlier are re-visited, things which happened to an older generation has significance today. This check-and-balance keeps the pages turning quickly.

Read my reviews of Jane’s other books:-
THE CHEESEMAKER’S HOUSE
ENDLESS SKIES

Also by Jane Cable, writing as Eva Glyn:-
THE COLLABORATOR’S DAUGHTER
THE CROATIAN ISLAND LIBRARY
THE MISSING PIECES OF US

If you this, try:-
‘In Another Life’ by Julie Christine Johnson
‘Sweet Caress’ by William Boyd
‘Freya’ by Anthony Quinn

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview ANOTHER YOU by @JaneCable via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2ke

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SANDRA DANBY'S BOOK REVIEWS

Sharing thoughts on the books I read, new authors, favourite authors, classics re-visisted

Tag Archives: book review

#BookReview ‘The Ghost of Lily Painter’ by Caitlin Davies #genealogy #mystery

#BookReview ‘At First Light’ by Vanessa Lafaye #Florida #historical

#BookReview ‘Follow the Leader’ by Mel Sherratt @writermels #crime

#BookReview ‘The Stars are Fire’ by Anita Shreve #contemporary

#BookReview ‘My Husband the Stranger’ by Rebecca Done #contemporary

#BookReview ‘Reservoir 13’ by Jon McGregor #contemporary

#BookReview ‘Innocent Blood’ by PD James #thriller #adoption

#BookReview ‘The Outsiders’ by Michelle Paver #YA #fantasy

#BookReview ‘The Long Drop’ by Denise Mina #crime

#BookReview ‘Another You’ by @JaneCable #contemporary #romance

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