Tag Archives: book review

#BookReview ‘The Black Tower’ by PD James #crime

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The Black Tower is a sinister mystery by PD James, partly location, and partly the feeling that Dalgliesh is not operating at the full capacity of his deductive powers. He has been ill and goes to Dorset to convalesce, to visit an elderly friend. His love and energy for detecting are muted, there are hints he may not continue. PD JamesOn arrival in Dorset he finds his friend, Father Baddeley has died. Dalgliesh is inevitably drawn into the daily life at Toynton Hall, the care home at which the Father was chaplain. All is not as it seems. Baddeley’s was not the first death. But Dalgliesh looks at clues and is unusually reticent, unmotivated, tired.
This is an intricate story set in a strange community with overtones of religious fervour, financial difficulties, disabilities not clearly explained, relationships tangled, past stories and resentments lurking beneath the surface.
I am re-reading PD James in order and with this, the fifth in the series, she seems to be getting into the rhythm which those familiar with the last of the Dalgliesh books will recognise. Dalgliesh is oddly denuded in this book, giving us an insight into his character we have not have seen before, we see beneath the professional face: he has been ill, is tired, less patient, and the mask of his profession sometimes slips. Fascinating, a hint of the detective into which he will evolve in the later books.

Read my reviews of the other Adam Dalgliesh mysteries:-
COVER HER FACE #1ADAMDALGLIESH
A MIND TO MURDER #2ADAMDALGLIESH
UNNATURAL CAUSES #3ADAMDALGLIESH
SHROUD FOR A NIGHTINGALE #4ADAMDALGLIESH
DEATH OF AN EXPERT WITNESS #6ADAMDALGLIESH
A TASTE FOR DEATH #7ADAMDALGLIESH
DEVICES AND DESIRES #8ADAMDALGLIESH
ORIGINAL SIN #9ADAMDALGLIESH … read the first paragraph HERE
A CERTAIN JUSTICE #10ADAMDALGLIESH
DEATH IN HOLY ORDERS #11ADAMDALGLIESH
THE MURDER ROOM #12ADAMDALGLIESH … read the first paragraph HERE
THE LIGHTHOUSE #13ADAMDALGLIESH
THE PRIVATE PATIENT #14ADAMDALGLIESH

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

And two other books by PD James:-
INNOCENT BLOOD
TIME TO BE IN EARNEST

If you like crime fiction, try these:-
‘Eeny Meeny’ by MJ Arlidge #1HELENGRACE
‘Wilderness’ by Campbell Hart #1ARBOGAST
‘Dead Simple’ by Peter James #1ROYGRACE

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

#BookReview ‘The Invasion of the Tearling’ by Erika Johansen #fantasy #Tearling

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The action starts on page one of The Invasion of the Tearling by Erika Johansen, continuing straight on from the end of the first book in the trilogy. So read The Queen of the Tearling before you open this book. Erika JohansenAt the end of The Queen of the Tearling, the neighbouring countries Tearling and Mort were on the verge of war. But author Johansen throws in a curve ball, Queen Kelsea is having visions, of a woman called Lily in what looks very like 21st century New York, with a twist. So, is this where we learn the Tearling’s Pre-Crossing history, things hinted at in book one? Yes, and no.
I was left with unanswered questions – is Kelsea related to Lily? Who is Jonathan Tearling? Was there more than one ship to cross the ocean, and cross from where to where? This has left me ready, now, to read book three. I will have to wait.
Kelsea is not just having visions of Lily, but of moments in history such as the sinking of a Crossing vessel and the drowning of its passengers. And she seems able to hurt the evil and heal the sick. Is it magic, or the power of her sapphires? And where did they come from? Is it the sapphires doing the magic, or is she channelling her own magic through the jewels?
Kelsea is no longer a teenager girl, she is the Queen and must handle power while learning to be a woman and a leader. How should she wield her power, and who can she trust?
Meanwhile, the Mort army advances.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Click the title to read my reviews of the other Tearling books by Erika Johansen:-
BENEATH THE KEEP [#PREQUEL TEARLING]
THE QUEEN OF THE TEARLING [#1 TEARLING]
THE FATE OF THE TEARLING [#3 TEARLING]

If you like this, try:-
‘The Last of Us’ by Rob Ewing
‘La Belle Sauvage’ by Philip Pullman #1TheBookofDust
‘Divergent’ by Veronica Roth #1Divergent

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview  THE INVASION OF THE TEARLING by Erika Johansen via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Ht

#BookReview ‘A Little Life’ by Hanya Yanagihara #contemporaryfiction

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This book by Hanya Yanagihara made me cry and I feel inadequate to describe it. It opens with two friends – Jude and Willem – moving into a tiny apartment in New York. They are at the beginning of their careers and A Little Life is their story and that of their two friends Malcolm and JB. A lawyer, an actor, an artist and an architect. Hanya YanagiharaThe spine of the book is Jude’s life, his horrific childhood makes him the man he is though his friends know nothing of his early years. Yanagihara stretches out the telling of Jude’s secrets for the whole of the book – and it is a long book – to the point where my imagination went into overdrive. Gradually, we learn what he is hiding. I felt sympathy for Jude, but also irritation, impatience and admiration. This is an epic book full of love, pain, honesty, concealment and brutality.
Sometimes the brutality will shock you, it did me, although the worst of it is not expressed on the page – like the most effective of dramatic murders, it happens off stage and is left to the reader’s imagination. There is art and theatre and New York life, but mostly the novel is about the four men, their highs and lows, wins and losses, laughter and squabbles, in at times small daily detail; backed up by a sterling cast of supporters [Harold the law professor; Andy, the doctor; Lucien, the lawyer; Richard, the neighbour and artist]. Not many women, though I did not feel the absence.
The story moves forward chronologically, with darts into the past as Jude remembers. It is about abuse, cruelty and pain, so harsh that you wonder how a person could survive. The answer, is love.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Goldfinch’ by Donna Tartt
‘If I Knew You Were going to be This Beautiful’ by Judy Chicurel
‘A Thousand Moons’ by Sebastian Barry

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A LITTLE LIFE by Hanya Yanagihara via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Hh

#BookReview ‘Casting Off’ by Elizabeth Jane Howard #historical #WW2

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Casting Off by Elizabeth Jane Howard starts in July 1945 as Hugh Cazalet must decide what to do as Miss Pearson, his secretary for 23 years, resigns. But the end of the European war is in sight. When this book ends, war is over and there are more engagements, marriages and divorces, births and deaths in the Cazalet family. This is the fourth book in a five-book series. Elizabeth Jane HowardThe title refers not just to ending relationships, but to letting go of war-time life. This is more complicated than anticipated. Longing for something for so long, does not make it easy to live through when it happens. Change is challenging. Post-war life is not all it is expected to be, in some ways it is harder.  Though the privations of rationing continue, often harsher than during the war itself, possibilities for new life unfold like a flower in bloom. But there are no easy answers.
The three cousins are grown-up. Polly, Louise and Clary now face life as young adults, their idealism tainted by the sadness and disappointments of war. But there are surprises in store for Clary, while the Cazalet brothers must make a business decision which affects the financial future of the whole family. Can they still afford the Sussex home, the anchor for the family throughout the war, and home to The Duchy and The Brig? And where will this extended war-time family now live, separated from one another?
Expecting happiness after the end of the war, ordinary life disappoints as the trials and disappointments continue. Louise’s friend Stella explains: “… when anyone becomes more than a certain amount unhappy they get cut off. They don’t feel any comfort or concern or affection that comes from other people – all of that simply disappears inside some bottomless pit and when people realize that, they stop trying to be affectionate or comforting. Would you like some grey coffee, or some pink-brown tea?”
Howard’s characters are so clearly drawn that they became real people for me, while I read these books. They feel like real friends. That is a huge achievement for any novelist.

Read my reviews of the other books in ‘The Cazalet Chronicles’:-
THE LIGHT YEARS #1CAZALET
MARKING TIME #CAZALET
CONFUSION  #3CAZALET
ALL CHANGE #5CAZALET 

If you like this, try:-
‘Life After Life’ by Kate Atkinson
‘The Heat of the Day’ by Elizabeth Bowen
‘While Paris Slept’ by Ruth Druart

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview CASTING OFF by Elizabeth Jane Howard http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1CH via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Last Child’ by @TerryTyler4 #family #romance

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Tudor lovers will love Last Child, sequel to the popular Kings and Queens saga by   about construction magnate Harry Lanchester [ie. Henry VIII] and his six wives. Now, Harry is dead. The King is dead, long live the king. In this case, his only son. Terry TylerThis book follows the tale of the three orphans and, like their Tudor namesakes – Isabella/Mary, Jaz/Edward and Erin/Elizabeth – they make a history of the 21st century kind. Adultery, boardroom betrayal, sibling arguments, sexual chemistry, this book is full of it. Business here takes the place of royalty, creating quite apt parallels as the themes transfer across the centuries: truth, compromise, pragmatism and bravery.
It helps to have read Kings and Queens before you start this, but not essential. The first narrator is Hannah, who was nanny in the first book to the three young Lanchester children, and is now back on the scene to pick up the pieces. Jaz, Harry’s heir, is 13, his father’s friends surround him as he prepares to take the helm of the family construction when he is 16. But Jaz, like his father, is a rebel and things do not go to plan. If you know your Tudor history, you can guess what happens next. And this is where Terry Tyler is so clever, she sticks to the broad historical brushstrokes but is inventive in the modern-day scenarios she creates for Harry’s three children.
I loved this pair of books, particularly the very last section ‘Ten Minutes Before.’ So Tudor!

Here’s my review of KINGS AND QUEENS, first of the two Lanchester books by Terry Tyler.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Little House’ by Philippa Gregory
‘Elizabeth is Missing’ by Emma Healey
‘The Betrayal’ by Laura Elliot

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview LAST CHILD by @TerryTyler4 via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Hd

#BookReview ‘Outline’ by Rachel Cusk #contemporary

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Outline by Rachel Cusk is a strange book, without a narrative spine. So, not a novel as such, more a collection of incidents which happen to an unnamed woman writer visiting Athens to teach creative writing. We learn more about the people she interacts with, than about her. People rarely ask her questions and her internal monologue is sparse. There is no cause and effect, no tension, nothing to make me curious. Rachel CuskThis book was shortlisted for two prices, the Folio Prize, and the 2015 Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. The writing is beautiful, by which I mean the expression, the ideas explored and use of language, but it left me untouched, without strong feelings of like or dislike. Central to this feeling, I think, is that we do not know the narrator’s name.
There is a quote from one of the narrator’s writing students, speaking in a class discussion, which sums it up for me: “…a story might merely be a series of events we believe ourselves to be involved in, but on which we have absolutely not influence at all.”

If you like this, try:-
‘Yuki Chan in Bronte Country’ by Mick Jackson
‘Foxlowe’ by Eleanor Wasserberg
‘All the Birds, Singing’ by Evie Wyld

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview OUTLINE by Rachel Cusk via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Fb

#BookReview ‘Confusion’ by Elizabeth Jane Howard #historical #WW2

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Confusion, the third in the five-book series by Elizabeth Jane Howard which is ‘The Cazalet Chronicles,’ covers March 1942 to July 1945, again we see the family’s experiences through the teenage eyes of Polly, Louise and Clary. Much has changed now as the war progresses, particularly affecting the role of women, the breakdown of class barriers, the empowerment of working women and educated poor. Elizabeth Jane HowardThese books are quite a social history of a period which more often is the reserve of thrillers and spy novels. Elizabeth Jane Howard has a subtle hand when it comes to observing relationship, such as Polly’s observation after her mother’s death: “It was possible to believe that she was gone; it was their not ever coming back that was so difficult.” Confusion is in part a study of the grief of Polly and her father Hugh; and that of Clary and Neville, whose father Rupert has disappeared in action in France. Clary continues to believe her father is still alive, though the rest of the family quietly accepts his death. Then word from France brings a sliver of hope. Clary grieves for the father she remembers as a child, writing a daily diary for him, and not as the soldier he died as.
The other theme in Confusion is love, or the lack of it. Louise’s story is not about death but about young love, expectations and marriage and the realization that her husband Michael is more strongly wedded to his mother Zee than to her. There are war-time affairs, some lust, some love, and with all of them comes the confusion of uncertain times, stress and the pressure of living life ‘now’.
War seems ordinary in the everyday sense, but the Cazalets are living through extra-ordinary times. The familiar characters continue from the first two books, their story arcs going through radical change now as the war progresses and everyone’s life is changed forever.

Read my reviews of the other books in ‘The Cazalet Chronicles’:-
THE LIGHT YEARS #1CAZALET
MARKING TIME #2CAZALET
CASTING OFF  #4CAZALET
ALL CHANGE #5CAZALET

If you like this, try:-
‘At Mrs Lippincote’s’ by Elizabeth Taylor
‘Freya’ by Anthony Quinn
‘The Aftermath’ by Rhidian Brook

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview CONFUSION by Elizabeth Jane Howard http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1CD via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Butterfly Barn’ by @kpowerauthor #romance #Ireland

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Reading this book was like sitting down with a crowd of girlfriends for a long-delayed get-together. In Butterfly Barn by Karen Power, Ireland leaps off the page, present in the speech of the characters, the scenery and the ‘feel’ of the book. Karen PowerThis is an easy book to read in that the pages turned quickly, but it deals with difficult topics: infant mortality, grief, betrayal, guilt. Like many Irish authors, Karen Power writes with a connection to the Catholic faith and – though I am not in the least bit religious – this did not interfere with my enjoyment of the tale. It is a women’s novel, about women, their strength, their suffering, their mutual support and above all the way they deal with what life throws at them.
On a transatlantic flight, Grace gets talking to the lady in the next seat. A friendship is forged which sees them re-united in Bayrush, Ireland, where Grace’s best friend Jessie is expecting twins. Grace is engaged to Dirk and all looks happy, until Jack – a teenage crush – returns home from Dubai.
This is the first of a series of this wide cast of characters, at times a little too wide for me. I admit to losing track of some of the more distant relations of Grace, Jessie and Kate, but I look forward to the next instalment.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

If you like this, try:-
‘The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes’ by Anna McPartlin
‘The House at the Edge of the World’ by Julia Rochester
‘Somewhere Inside of Happy’ by Anna McPartlin

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview BUTTERFLY BARN by @kpowerauthor via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1EO

#BookReview ‘Snow White Must Die’ by @NeleNeuhaus #crime

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A tight-knit community where everyone looks out for each other, bound together by past tragedy. Into this walks Tobias, released from prison after serving his sentence for murdering two teenage girls. In the village where he grew up, where the two girls died. Snow White Must Die by Nele Neuhaus starts with this potent mixture of past and present, lies and threats. The truth never went away but there will be more deaths before the full story is known. Nele NeuhausThis is the first German thriller I have read, and Nele Neuhaus is a new author for me. This was no more difficult to adjust to than reading a Swedish thriller, yes the names are different but the story pulled me along and I cared about what happened to Tobias, Amelie and Thies. Nothing is what it seems.
Detectives Pia Kirchoff and Oliver von Bodenstein bring their own personal hang-ups to the investigation, as is always the case with modern detectives. For me, it was the line-up of characters in the village which was fascinating. Lie is layered on lie: the doctor, the actress, the businessman, the politician, and twenty-somethings who were all teenagers when the murders happened.
The village closes ranks so Kirchoff and van Bodenstein must figure out a way to break down the barriers.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

If you like this, try:-
‘Eeny Meeny’ by MJ Arlidge
‘Cover Her Face’ by PD James
‘The Killing of Polly Carter’ by Robert Thorogood

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview SNOW WHITE MUST DIE by @NeleNeuhaus via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Eh

#BookReview ‘Something to Hide’ by Deborah Moggach #contemporary

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The beginning of Something to Hide by Deborah Moggach introduces three characters who seem ordinary people, living everyday lives, facing challenges which we or our family/friends/neighbours are facing every day. What is there about them that could possibly be of interest to me? But Moggach draws me into their stories until I read late into the night. Deborah Moggach

The Prologue is set in Africa, the plot revolves around Africa though not always in an obvious way. Don’t read the ‘Dear Reader’ letter from Moggach at the front of the book, save it until you’ve finished reading. That way, you will turn the page, drawn into the story of each woman – Lorrie in the USA, Jing and her husband in China, Petra in London – wondering how they can possibly be connected. Their situations are universal and Moggach demonstrates how globally connected we are these days, globally similar despite our assumptions and generalizations about things we know nothing about. But at the end of the day, it is a book about those universal things: love and lies.

This is a thoughtful book, with dramatic settings. I can certainly see it as a film.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

Read my review of these other novels by Deborah Moggach:-
THE BLACK DRESS
THE CARER
TULIP FEVER

Read the first paragraph of THESE FOOLISH THINGS [now THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL] here.

If you like this, try:-
‘All My Puny Sorrows’ by Miriam Toews
‘Angel’ by Elizabeth Taylor
‘The Lie’ by CL Taylor

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview SOMETHING TO HIDE by Deborah Moggach via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Fr