Tag Archives: book review

#BookReview ‘The Roundabout Man’ by Clare Morrall #contemporary

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The Roundabout Man is a clever and involved story by Clare Morrall about a man, his real mother, father and triplet sisters, and the seemingly identical fictional family created by his author mother in her popular series ‘The Triplets and Quinn.’ It is a gentle story which reels you in. Clare Morrall At the age of 60 Quinn is living in a caravan parked in the middle of a wooded roundabout. He enjoys the quiet and the solitude. He forages for items to reuse, and scavenges for leftover food at the nearby Primrose Valley service station. We learn he fled the family home, The Cedars, the setting for The Triplets and Quinn series, after spending his adult years there caring for his eccentric widowed mother and showing fans of her stories around the house. The real story of this family has been subsumed by his mother’s fiction, easy answers to inquisitive fans who spout fiction as if it is reality, and his unwillingness to face up to unpalatable truths.
As real life and his mother’s fiction merge in Quinn’s head, it is a while before Quinn (and we) start to piece together the real story. Meanwhile real life intrudes at the roundabout and Quinn is forced to socialise with the service station employees. When, individually, his sisters visit him, he ends up with no answers and more questions. Why did his parents foster so many disadvantaged children, and then seem not to care about them? Was the story about the fictional Quinn’s kidnap as a baby based on a true event? And are the casseroles, left anonymously on his caravan doorstep, left there by foster child Annie of whom Quinn has fond memories?
Yet again, another delightful novel from Clare Morrall. She is so good at delving into human nature, family connections and the unintended misunderstandings and mis-firings which can affect a person’s life. Is it too late for Quinn? With his parents, Mumski and the Professor dead, is the truth out of reach?

Click the title to read my reviews of these other novels by Clare Morrall:-
AFTER THE BOMBING
NATURAL FLIGHTS OF THE HUMAN MIND
THE LANGUAGE OF OTHERS
THE LAST OF THE GREENWOODS
THE MAN WHO DISAPPEARED

Read the first paragraph of ASTONISHING SPLASHES OF COLOUR here.

If you like this,try:-
‘Perfect’ by Rachel Joyce
‘The Signature of All Things’ by Elizabeth Gilbert
‘The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes’ by Anna McPartlin

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE ROUNDABOUT MAN by Clare Morrall http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1ZL via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘At the Edge of the Orchard’ by Tracy Chevalier @Tracy_Chevalier #historical

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Tracy Chevalier is a ‘must buy’ author for me and At the Edge of the Orchard does not disappoint. It is a story about roots – of family and trees – about the pioneers who populated built America’s mid-west and west coast, battling swamp and mountains. Most importantly it is about apples. Tracy ChevalierThe scent of the fruit imbues every page. But this is not a romantic story. The Goodenough family live an at-times brutal life as they try to establish an apple orchard in Ohio’s Black Swamp in 1838. Love them or hate them, the apples affect the direction of their lives.
The story started slowly for me as we hear the family’s daily life told by mother Sadie and father James. The two are so antagonistic that you wonder how they ever married. They battle the elements, each other and Sadie’s need for applejack, to put food in the mouths of their surviving children. In winter they wade through mud, in summer they battle swamp fever. Sadie is an almost completely unsympathetic character, hiding in a bottle while her husband hides with his apples. The children, if they survive, are adults before their time.
The story really took off for me when we hear what happens to Robert, the youngest son, who one day simply walks away from the farm. Fifteen years later he is an itinerant worker on boats and even in the Gold Rush, before a chance meeting in California with a plant collector [the real William Lobb] changes his life. He writes home to the family in the Black Swamp, but hears nothing. Is his family dead? Why did he really leave? Can Robert leave behind the apple legacy and become his own man? Will he ever shake off memories of his difficult upbringing and forge close relationships himself? Having seen the Californian sequoias which Robert discovers, I loved the second half of this book.

Read my reviews of Tracy Chevalier’s other novels:-
A SINGLE THREAD
NEW BOY
THE GLASSMAKER
THE LAST RUNAWAY

If you like this, try:-
‘The Knife with the Ivory Handle’ by Cynthia Bruchman
‘If I Knew you were going to be this Beautiful, I never would have let you go’ by Judy Chicurel
‘Time will Darken It’ by William Maxwell

And if you’d like to share a link:
#BookReview AT THE EDGE OF THE ORCHARD by Tracy Chevalier @Tracy_Chevalier via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2dY

#BookReview ‘Serious Sweet’ by AL Kennedy @Writerer #contemporary

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Serious Sweet by AL Kennedy is about one day in the lives of two troubled Londoners, Jon and Meg. I didn’t click quickly with this angry experimental novel and wondered if I missed its subtlety or whether it needed a serious edit. But I stuck with it. AL Kennedy The set-up is intriguing. First we are shown a family on a Tube train, the baby daughter is scarred, the family Arabic in appearance. Next we meet Jon, a civil servant. Pages are dedicated to his rescuing of a baby blackbird tangled in twine. At first, I was touched by the delicacy of his situation and the anxiety of the hovering mother blackbird. Then I became bored with Jon’s internal monologue. Thirdly, we go with Meg to an undefined gynaecological appointment. More internal monologue.
The timeline is confusing. Everything supposedly takes place in the course of one day but there is so much remembering of past events by Jon and Meg, separated by short scenes of seeming unrelated people, at times I lost the will to read on. Why did I? Because it is AL Kennedy and I loved her edition of short stories, All the Rage, so I was prepared to stick with it. But the stop-start stream of consciousness thoughts were often boring and inexplicable. I missed and forgot multiple references. Either the author or publisher or both were not sure how to describe this book – politics (both Jon and Meg rant), self-help, alcoholism recovery, romance or a spy/thriller. I was almost expecting a terrorist bomb. The mystery actually hangs on whether Jon and Meg will meet. They do, finally [at 46% on my Kindle] meet by letter.
It is a long book, 528 pages, which could be so much shorter and tighter. There were moments of clever, beautiful description and thoughts which made me smile, some made me chuckle, but there were others which made my eyes skip to the next paragraph. I finally got it at around 75% and read the last quarter quickly.

And read my reviews of these other AL Kennedy books:-
ALL THE RAGE
DAY

If you like this, try:-
‘Autumn’ by Ali Smith #1SEASONALQUARTET
‘In the Midst of Winter’ by Isabel Allende
‘The Noise of Time’ by Julian Barnes

And if you’d like to share a link, try:
#BookReview SERIOUS SWEET by AL Kennedy @Writerer via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2bD

#BookReview ‘Good Me Bad Me’ by Ali Land @byAliLand #thriller

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Good Me Bad Me by Ali Land is a difficult book to review without giving anything away. It is compulsive, difficult reading, and though I raced through it I can’t honestly say I enjoyed it. Ali LandTeenager Annie is living with a foster family whilst waiting to give evidence at her mother’s trial. Her mother is accused of being a serial killer of children, Annie turned her in to the police. As she waits for the trial, Annie [now called Milly] is coached by her foster father on how to handle being in court and giving evidence under cross-examination. For Milly, there is no escaping her horrible childhood. As Mike tells her, the only way out is through. But Milly isn’t telling Mike everything.
Milly’s identity is secret, her name false, her reason for being fostered is fabricated. In this world of officially-approved lies, Milly must face her memories of what happened: what is real, and not-real. What did her mother really do? What did Milly do? At times of stress – and there are many as she fits into a foster family with an unwelcoming teenage daughter – Milly hears the voice of her mother in her head, encouraging her to be controlling, to be nasty. This is the ‘good me, bad me’ of the title. Of course every person is a mixture of light and dark, what matters is the decisions we make. Will Milly be able to let go of her past and make a new life?
Covering the few tense weeks in the run-up to the trial, Good Me Bad Me is a turbulent emotional read. One minute I thought ‘please don’t do that, Milly’, the next I was indignant on Milly’s behalf at some of her foul treatment at the hands of school friends. The picture of teenagers, girls selfish and taunting, boys over-sexualised, is not an easy-read. You will make up your own mind whether to like Milly and whether to believe her.

If you like this, try:-
‘Wolf’ by Mo Hayder
‘The Girls’ by Lisa Jewell
‘Taunting the Dead’ by Mel Sherratt

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview GOOD ME BAD ME by Ali Land @byAliLand http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2ip via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Penny Heart’ by Martine Bailey @MartineBailey #historical

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This is the sort of novel which creates a world into which you can sink. It is a story of revenge, cookery and two women in 18th century England, connected by one man. The story of The Penny Heart by Martine Bailey is told by the two women, who cannot be more different. It is about the nature of truth, the passage of time and the difficulty of deciphering the lies hidden within truth. Martine BaileyIn 1787 when Mary Jebb is caught playing a confidence trick on a young man, she is sentenced to the colonies. Before she leaves, she sends two pennies, each engraved with a promise, to the two men she blames for her fate. These are the penny hearts. In contrast, virtuous and timid Grace Moore marries handsome Michael Coxon in a property deal arranged by her father and husband. She soon learns that her husband is not what he seems. At the isolated and rundown Delafosse Hall she is lonely but finds a friend in her new cook, Peg.
By halfway through I really didn’t want to put the book down and the last third runs along with an ingenious ending that was impossible to foresee. Whose story to trust? Mary, resourceful and struggling to survive in a world which gives her nothing. Or Grace, who escapes a drunken father and finds herself marooned with an exploitative husband? Will Grace realize Peg is not what she seems? Will Peg’s plans work out? And which facts are true, and which lies? This is not a pretty historical story set in which involves a few recipes. It is a dark story of murder, double-crossing and lies.

And here are my reviews of other novels by Martine Bailey:-
AN APPETITE FOR VIOLETS
THE ALMANACK #1TABITHAHART
THE PROPHET #2TABITHAHART

If you like this, try:-
‘The Miniaturist’ by Jesse Burton
‘Gone are the Leaves’ by Anne Donovan
‘The Other Eden’ by Sarah Bryant

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE PENNY HEART by Martine Bailey @MartineBailey via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2ii

#BookReview ‘Fair Exchange’ by Michèle Roberts #historical

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This story by English/French author Michèle Roberts starts with a woman dying, she has a secret to confess. We must wait until almost the end of the book to find out the truth. In a village near Paris, Louise is dying, it is the early 1800s, after the French Revolution and during the subsequent English/French war. Fair Exchange is the story of that secret, of Louise’s part in it and how she impacts on the lives of two other women, one English one French. Michèle RobertsIn an Author’s Note, Roberts explains the inspiration for the story: William Wordsworth’s love affair, at the beginning of the French Revolution, with Annette Vallon. This is not a true account, it is historical fiction about the romances of two couples – English poet William Saygood and Annette Villon [note the mis-spelling], and Jemima Boote [sketchily based on Mary Wollstonecraft] and Frenchman Paul Gilbert. Roberts’ telling of the story combines the detail of poverty at that time – the grinding daily life of Louise and her mother Amalie in the village of Saintange-sur-Seine near Paris – with sumptuous description. Louise is picking plums: ‘The plums were so ripe that they fell into her hands. They smelled fragrant in the warm sunlight, as though she were biting them off the tree and tasting their sweet juice. Flies rose up in clouds as she pushed into the web of branches and she beat them away from her face in clouds. They had got there first, settling, in blue glints of jewelled wings, on minute cracks in the fruit that oozed gold.’
This is a period of history about which I am ignorant. First Annette, and then Jemima, arrive in Saintange-sur-Seine, single women, and pregnant. Louise is drawn into their lives, caring for them, supporting them, observing them. Fascinating stuff.

Read my review of THE WALWORTH BEAUTY also by Michèle Roberts, and try the first paragraph of FAIR EXCHANGE.

If you like this, try:-
‘An Appetite for Violets’ by Martine Bailey
‘The Knife with the Ivory Handle’ by Cynthia Bruchman
‘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 FAIR EXCHANGE by Michèle Roberts http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Of via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Pale as the Dead’ by Fiona Mountain @FionaMountain #geneaology #mystery

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Pale as the Dead by Fiona Mountain is an unusual mix of genealogy mystery and history, centred on the glamorous Pre-Raphaelite artists and Lizzie Siddal, the girl in the famous ‘Ophelia’ painting. Fiona Mountain
Ancestry detective Natasha Blake –  Pale as the Dead is first in the Natasha Blake series – meets a mysterious, beautiful young woman, Bethany, who is re-enacting the Lizzie Siddal scene for a photographer. Bethany confides in Natasha her fear that her family is cursed following the deaths of her sister and mother. After asking Natasha to research her family tree, Bethany goes missing. Has she run from a failing love affair, committed suicide, or has she been murdered?
The trail is cold. Natasha must turn detective in two senses: she searches the birth, marriage and death records, census returns and wills, to find Natasha’s ancestors; at the same time, she is being followed by someone driving a red Celica. Adam, the photographer, is also Bethany’s boyfriend but Natasha feels there is more to his story than he is telling.
The narrative wandered rather from the central story, complicated unnecessarily by Natasha’s own history and love life which added little. Perhaps this could have been avoided by telling part of the story from Lizzie Siddal’s point of view. There were so many peripheral characters, both in the present time and the historical story, that at times I lost my way. I was also unconvinced by the threat to Natasha – the red car, the break-in. These jarred, almost as if added as an afterthought to appeal to lovers of crime fiction which I think was unnecessary. The kernel of the story about Bethany and Lizzie is fascinating in its own right.

And here’s my review of the next in the series:-
BLOODLINE #2NATASHABLAKE

If you like this, try:-
‘Deadly Descent’ by Charlotte Hinger
‘In the Blood’ by Steve Robinson
‘The Marriage Certificate’ by Stephen Molyneux

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview PALE AS THE DEAD by Fiona Mountain @FionaMountain http://wp.me/p5gEM4-23v via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Taunting the Dead’ by Mel Sherratt @writermels #crime

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The first in the Detective Sergeant Allie Shenton series, Taunting the Dead by Mel Sherratt hits the ground with a bang. Literally, the murder victim has her head bashed in. Nine out of ten murders are committed by someone who knows the victim, unfortunately for DS Shenton, the husband of the victim is a local businessman/crook. Unfortunately, too, that Allie and Terry Ryder seem to have some sexual chemistry going on. And the third unfortunate thing is that Terry has an alibi. Mel SherrattSteph Ryder is killed on a girls night out, then the story retreats to show her life in the days before she is killed. An abrasive alcoholic, she has few friends and has arguments with her husband and daughter Kirstie. She is also having an affair with one of her husband’s employees. Not a clever thing to do. The Ryders flash the cash around and accumulate enemies. At one point it seems as if practically everyone has a motive for killing her.
This is a full-on read without pause so if you want a book to keep you reading through a boring journey, then this is the one for you. The action is brutal and unremitting and the pages turn quickly. The setting, Stoke-on-Trent, is somewhere I don’t know but Sherratt makes it a real, dark, creepy sort of place. This is crime in the raw, so if you’re not keen on sex and swearing it might be best to give this a miss.
Allie Shenton is a typical fictional detective, likeable with flaws, who at times seems young and naïve for her job. She makes decisions which propel the story along nicely, though I hope real detectives would not make similar choices.

Read my reviews of more books in the Allie Shenton series:-
FOLLOW THE LEADER #2ALLIE SHENTON
ONLY THE BRAVE #3ALLIE SHENTON

If you like this, try:-
‘Business as Usual’ by EL Lindley #1GEORGIECONNELLY
‘Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley’ by MC Beaton #4AGATHARAISIN
‘Fortune Favours the Dead’ by Stephen Spotswood #1PENTECOST&PARKER

And if you’d like to share a link:
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#BookReview ‘Murder at Catmmando Mountain’ by Anna Celeste Burke #cosycrime

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I nearly gave up on this in the first few pages, and what an error that would have been. Anna Celeste Burke is an American writer specializing in cosy mysteries, so why did I almost stop reading Murder at Catmmando Mountain? Chapter one introduces narrator Georgie Shaw who works in PR at tourist attraction Marvellous Marley World, based on the cartoon characters of tycoon Max Marley. The action starts in chapter two and that’s when the fun starts. Anna Celeste BurkeEarly one morning, a body is found. Not just any body, a dead body. The body of Mallory Marley, obnoxious daughter of Max Marley. Lying next to the body, and dipped in Mallory’s blood, is Georgie’s scarf. Georgie, who recently moved to the PR department from Food and Beverage rather than take retirement, is forced to consider her life in a new light. Is one of her colleagues trying to frame her? Homicide detective Jack Wheeler, who reminds Georgie of James Garner in The Rockford Files [watch out for the American detective references], makes being a suspect easier for Georgie to deal with, though she does have an alibi as the transponder in her car was clocked by a state police camera at the time of the crime. But other clues linking Georgie to the crime continue to appear.
All the time I was reading this book, it reminded me of the comedies of Carl Hiasson, the Florida journalist turned novelist who wrote the hilarious Lucky You, Skinny Dip, Native Tongue and Basket Case. I liked Georgie from the beginning, and her Siamese cat Miles. This is comfort reading, easy, it was fun eliminating the suspects one-by-one and choosing the wrong one.
This is a read-in-one-sitting novella, 178 pages, and I would have liked it to be longer. The last chapter is a summary of how the case is solved, and it would have been more dynamic to read the action.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Cornish Wedding Murder’ by Fiona Leitch #1NOSEYPARKER
‘Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death’ by MC Beaton #1AGATHARAISIN
‘The Killing of Polly Carter’ by Robert Thorogood #2DEATHINPARADISE 

And if you’d like to share a link:
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#BookReview ‘Under A Pole Star’ by Stef Penney #historical #adventure

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In 1883, twelve-year-old Flora Mackie is taken by her father, captain of the Vega, a whaling ship, to the Arctic. She returns to the Arctic as a young woman, a meteorologist, heading her own expedition. ‘Under a Pole Star’ by Stef Penney is Flora’s story and that of the troubled 1891 Armitage-de Beyn expedition to Greenland. Stef PenneyThe story starts in 1948 as an American group leaves New Jersey, the purpose unclear. Onboard the plane are scientists, air force men, a television crew, a journalist, and Flora Mackie. The Snow Queen. What unfolds is the story of the two rival expeditions: the British, told by Flora, and the American, told by Jakob de Beyn, geologist with the Armitage party. It is quite a while before there is even a hint of what the controversy may be. Until then, we follow the lives of Flora in Dundee and London, and Jakob in New York, as they grow from children to adults. Finally the separate Greenland expeditions set off, unaware of each other. When Flora and Jake meet in Greenland in 1892 there is a spark between them. At this point I was unsure what the book was about – Arctic exploration, romance, a thriller?
Penney’s writing about the Arctic makes me want to go there. The ice, the light, the endless horizon. But this is not just a story of women crossing boundaries at the end of the 19th century, it is a mystery with claim and counter-claim from rival explorers. Ultimately, this is a story of what men, and women, will do to be the first to their goal.
A fascinating story which moves slowly at times with some things left unexplained. It makes me want to read more of Penney’s books, but I was left with the feeling that the story could be tighter with a stronger spine of mystery.

Read my review of THE BEASTS OF PARIS also by Stef Penney.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Surfacing’ by Cormac James
‘The Leviathan’ by Rosie Andrews
‘Devotion’ by Hannah Kent

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview UNDER A POLE STAR by Stef Penney via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2bx