Tag Archives: books

#BookReview ‘Amy & Isabelle’ by Elizabeth Strout @LizStrout #contemporary

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The mother and daughter portrayed in Amy & Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout are at odds with each other. The events of one long sweltering summer in Shirley Falls are simple, familiar across the ages, but are told with a hefty emotional punch. So strong is this book it’s difficult to see that it was Strout’s first novel, published in 2000 to be followed only eight years later by her Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge. Strout is adept at peeling away the layers of character and events to show the raw emotion, shame, guilt and pain beneath. Elizabeth StroutWhen Isabelle Goodrow arrived in Shirley Falls with her baby daughter, she took a job at the local mill. Now, in a time that feels like 1970s America, Amy is sixteen and has a summer job in the same office as her mother. They sit and fume at each other, barely talking, brushing past each other without a word. Amy, who has fallen in love with her maths teacher, believes her upright, unemotional mother, has no idea of what she is feeling right now. Isabelle despairs of her daughter’s behaviour. Told in absorbing detail, switching between the two viewpoints, the trauma of the two women is revealed. Shirley Falls is an evocative setting, an industrial town with a river flowing through it. As the temperature rises, the river begins to stink adding to the stresses not just on the Goodrows but on the small community in which they exist. Strout excels at portraying the circle of characters which make the world of a novel so believable – Amy’s friend Stacy, Fat Bev and Dottie Brown at the mill, Isabelle’s boss Avery Clark.
Isabelle finds it difficult to fit in, has always felt like an outsider. As she judges others, she assumes others judge her. This is more about her own experience and inadequacies than about anyone else. As the summer days plod on and Amy’s affair unravels, we see hints of the truth of Isabelle’s past that go some of the way to explaining why she is as she is.
Difficult to put down, I enjoyed Amy & Isabelle very much. Both women are so real, their situations are real, you want to slap them both and hug them both. Strout writes in an extraordinarily perceptive manner about ordinary people in ordinary places, so real you feel you are in the room too.

Read my reviews of these other books by Elizabeth Strout:-
ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE
LUCY BY THE SEA
MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON
OH WILLIAM!
OLIVE KITTERIDGE
OLIVE, AGAIN

If you like this, try:-
‘If I Knew You Were Going to be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go’ by Judy Chicurel
‘The Museum of You’ by Carys Bray
‘When All is Said’ by Anne Griffin

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#BookReview ‘A Room Made of Leaves’ by Kate Grenville #historical

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When she is 21, a moment’s dalliance in a bush forces orphan Elizabeth to marry soldier John Macarthur. The story of their marriage in 1788, journey to the colony of Australia on board a convict ship and life in the new settlement called Sydney Town, is told in A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville. Kate GrenvilleElizabeth was a real woman but little is known of her, though her husband features in Australia’s history books as the British army officer who became a politician, legislator and pioneer of the Australian wool industry. Grenville is free to imagine what life must have been like as a white settler, and a woman, in a rough, uncultured town where the native people are viewed as animals.
Very quickly Elizabeth finds her new husband is a bully and her new home is a brutal, unforgiving, judgmental place. She spends much time alone with her sickly son and survives by disguising how clever she is, particularly from her husband. More children quickly follow and she bonds more with the convicts who work for her as servants, than she does with the wives of her husband’s friends. An outlier, she decides to improve her learning and seeks lessons on astronomy from an officer in her husband’s corps. What follows changes her understanding of her new country and her place in it.
The pacing seems at times off kilter, a trifle slow in places and rushed at the end, but the writing is as beautiful as I remember from Grenville’s earlier books. Of the book’s two halves, I wanted less of the first half and more of the second about Elizabeth’s role in developing breeds of sheep suited to the wool trade.
Essentially this is a delicately-written story of a young woman who, after making one mistake, is trapped in a loveless marriage far away from her Devon home. She learns how to manage her husband without him realising he is being managed, she tempers his outbursts and steers him out of trouble. Perhaps this fictional account of Elizabeth’s life will mean more to Australians who have grown-up with the historical story of the real John Macarthur.
A good read but not my favourite Grenville book.

Read my review of another Kate Grenville book, RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER.

If you like this, try:-
‘Dangerous Women’ by Hope Adams
‘The Pearl Sister’ by Lucinda Riley
‘Rush Oh!’ by Shirley Barrett

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

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Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz is a sandwiching together of two mysteries – one murder, one disappearance – that take place eight years apart in the same place. Second in Horowitz’s crime series featuring literary agent Susan Ryeland and Atticus Pünd, the fictional hero of her client Alan Conway’s 1950s detective books – are you keeping up? – this is at the same time a page-turning read and a mystifying Rubik’s Cube challenge. Definitely a book that will reward re-reading. Anthony HorowitzSusan’s, now deceased, author Conway loved word play and riddled his short novels with in-jokes, complicated clues and witticisms. Many of these only make sense at the very end of Horowitz’s book. Susan, now living in Crete with boyfriend Andreas, running the just-surviving Hotel Polydorus, is asked by the owners of Branlow Hall hotel in Suffolk to investigate the disappearance of their daughter Cecily. Eight years earlier, one of the hotel’s staff was convicted of murdering a guest, Frank Parris. Shortly after the trial, Conway visited the hotel after which he wrote, Atticus Pünd Takes the Case. The book was edited by Susan who knew nothing about the links to the real-life crime.
Cecily, who manages Branlow Hall with her sister, reads Conway’s novel and is certain the wrong man was convicted of the crime. And then she disappears. How did Conway use the real crime in his fictional Atticus Pünd mystery to reveal the true murderer? What did Cecily see in the book that convinced her of the convict’s innocence? How can Susan unravel the clues and fit together two completely separate stories? And what has happened to Cecily?
The story is littered with clues, everyone has something to hide and it seems everyone is lying. Alongside the detecting we have the continuing story of Susan’s life – did she do the right thing in moving from London to Crete, should she marry Andreas or leave him, can she really be happy running a hotel and not editing books? And like the first in the series, Magpie Murders, there is also a book-within-a-book; we also get to read Atticus Pünd Takes the Case.
Layer upon layer, at times there are so many twists and turns it seems tortuous. Yes, there are coincidences and convenient secrets but if you enjoy Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot you will enjoy spotting the Christie links. If you go-with-the-flow and don’t get caught up on keeping track of the details, this is a fun read.

Read my review of MAGPIE MURDERS, first in the Susan Ryeland crime series.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Mystery of Three Quarters’ by Sophie Hannah #3POIROT
‘A Gift of Poison’ by Bella Ellis #4BRONTEMYSTERIES
‘Lord John and the Private Matter’ by Diana Gabaldon

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#BookReview ‘Cecily’ by @anniegarthwaite #historical

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Cecily by Annie Garthwaite was a gradual falling-in-love process for me as I became so immersed in the story and fell in fascination with the character of Cecily Neville. What a wonderful fictionalised account of the Duchess of York it is. Mother of two kings, equal partner to her husband Richard, mother, politician, diplomat, kingmaker. Annie GarthwaiteI started knowing nothing more of her than that she was mother to both Edward IV and Richard III. Garthwaite paces herself in the telling of Cecily’s story and there were times when the [necessary] exposition of England’s 15th century politics and the seemingly endless battles and arguments of the Wars of the Roses, seemed to pause the narrative. But as the pages turn, the tension builds as you wonder how the family will survive. The politics and family connections of the time were intricately linked and can be confusing, so the exposition is a necessary part of the novel.
Cecily is a gift of a character who was somehow overlooked in the history books, as Garthwaite explains in her afterword, ‘Writing Cecily’. “Cecily lived through eighty years of tumultuous history, never far from the beating heart of power. She mothered kings, created a dynasty, brought her family through civil war…. Last woman standing.”
This does not feel like a debut novel. Cecily comes alive off the page and it’s clear that Garthwaite lived and breathed in Cecily’s shoes. She creates a modern woman, a strong woman in a man’s world which, given Cecily’s history, she must have been to survive. This is an epic story starting in 1431 as the teenage Cecily watches as Joan of Arc burns at the stake, ending with the coronation of her eldest son as King Edward IV. On the way, family alliances are sundered, friends become traitors, battles are won and lost and Cecily gives birth to thirteen children. Through it all, she believes her husband has a stronger claim to the throne than the current king, Henry VI. The tension between husband and wife ebbs and flows throughout the years as Cecily encourages and pushes Richard to claim his rightful place.
There are so many twists, betrayals, secrets and threats that I found myself just reading one more page, one more chapter, even as my eyes closed late at night. I did not want this book to end.
And what a stunning cover!

Here’s my review of THE KING’S MOTHER, also by Annie Garthwaite

If you like this, try:-
‘Orphans of the Carnival’ by Carol Birch
‘Dangerous Women’ by Hope Adams
‘Rush Oh!’ by Shirley Barrett

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#BookReview CECILY by @anniegarthwaite https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5it via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Dangerous Women’ by Hope Adams @adelegeras #Rajah

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Like Adèle Geras, who as Hope Adams wrote Dangerous Women, I saw the Rajah quilt at an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2009. What a fascinating piece of history, and what a twisty fictional story Geras has written using the quilt as inspiration. Hope AdamsDangerous Women is set in 1841 aboard the transport ship Rajah as it sails from Woolwich, England bearing 180 female convicts to Van Dieman’s Land [today’s Tasmania]. What a fascinating piece of history this is. Geras takes the true story of the ship – some of her characters are real, including matron Kezia Hayter – and tells a tale of troubled, sometimes wronged and abused women, confined together on a ship for three months. Miss Hayter is the only free woman on board and, at the behest of the British Ladies Society for the Reformation of Female Prisoners, organises a team of 18 women who can sew. Every day they stitch patchwork, creating the now famous quilt, but also stitching together the truth of their own lives, their crimes and hopes for a new beginning in a strange country. Miss Hayter is a young well-meaning woman, perhaps naïve, but with a strong belief in what is right.
The story of the voyage is told through three viewpoints – Miss Hayter and two prisoners, Hattie Matthews and Clara Shaw – and at two points on the timeline of the voyage, ‘Then’ and ‘Now’. The alternating passages of each women are quite short, telling chunks of back story. These slipped by too quickly and I would have welcomed longer sections. There were also so many peripheral characters that I got them mixed up, a female love triangle and various women with torrid pasts and mental health issues.
We learn early on that Clara should not be on board and is masquerading as someone else. She has been violent in the past, so should we believe anything she says? This matters because Dangerous Women is not just a glimpse of history, it is also a murder mystery. And this is where I ran into difficulties. When one of the women is stabbed on deck, Miss Hayter is appointed to the on-board committee, also including the captain, doctor and minister, to solve the mystery and find the attacker. The number of female convicts plus the sailors means the list of potential criminals is long and the lack of strong characterisation meant I confused Marion with Joan, Becky with Rose… and some of the admittedly low-level tension was lost.
The pace is slow for a locked room murder mystery, despite the suggestive title. But Dangerous Women creates a snapshot of an unfamiliar piece of history; the standards on the ship, and the stories behind the convictions of many of the women, are startling. This is a gentle story about a brutal, difficult subject, told through the eyes of the gentle, well-meaning Miss Hayter.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

If you like this, try:-
‘The Almanack’ by Martine Bailey [#1 Tabitha Hart]
‘The Miniaturist’ by Jessie Burton
‘Gone Are the Leaves’ by Anne Donovan

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#BookReview DANGEROUS WOMEN by Hope Adams @adelegeras https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5hN via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Waiting for Sunrise’ by William Boyd #WW1 #spy

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Determined to deal with my overflowing to-read shelf, I picked up Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd. Thoughtful with a twisty plot, we follow actor Lysander Rief from Vienna to the trenches as he tries to identify a traitor passing war secrets to the enemy. William BoydIt is Vienna 1913. Actor Lysander Rief has gone to Vienna seeking help for an intimate problem. In the waiting room he encounters two people who will determine the course of Rief’s life in the forthcoming Great War. Rief falls head over heels in lust with Hettie Bull but when Rief is thrown into prison charged with rape, he feels abandoned. He is extricated from Austria thanks to the help of a shadowy British government officer and Rief’s own ingenuity. But he owes a debt and is drawn into the shadowy world of wartime spies. Someone is sending coded messages about essential infrastructure, supply and troop movements to the enemy, and Rief is charged with hunting down the traitor.
Boyd is one of my favourite writers, his writing flows and there are multiple layers to consider long after finishing the book. All concocted with a skilful touch of humour in the right place. It all starts in the consulting room of Dr Bensimon who suggests that Rief’s delicate problem, based on an unfortunate but funny episode in his youth, can be solved not by drugs or hypnosis but by his own theory of Parallelism. Rief must revisit his memory of the incident and reconstruct the story of what happened so that today his dreams are about the changed story and his little problem stops happening. Smoke and mirrors. Rief, as an actor, is adept at pretending to be what he is not and there are countless characters he meets who do the same. He is good at spotting some people who are acting, but misses others. But unlike on stage, missing the clues can lead to hurt, separation and death. And at stake in the bigger picture of the war are the lives of allied soldiers.
This is a book about deception; lies to others, lies told to oneself. Small lies told for convenience. Big lies told to disguise treason. Along the way, people get hurt.
So much more than a conventional spy thriller from a master author. 4* for me rather than 5* because of the slow beginning. It pays to be patient.

Here are my reviews of other books by William Boyd:-
ANY HUMAN HEART
LOVE IS BLIND
NAT TATE: AN AMERICAN ARTIST 1928-1960
ORDINARY THUNDERSTORMS
SWEET CARESS
THE BLUE AFTERNOON
THE DREAMS OF BETHANY MELLMOTH
TRIO
… and try the first paragraph of ARMADILLO.

If you like this, try:-
‘Wake’ by Anna Hope
‘The Lie’ by Helen Dunmore
‘Corpus’ by Rory Clements #1TOMWILDE

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#BookReview WAITING FOR SUNRISE by William Boyd‪ https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5hB via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Lean Fall Stand’ by @jon_mcgregor #contemporary

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Jon McGregor is one of the most original novelists I have read and Lean Fall Stand doesn’t disappoint. It is a novel of three parts, beginning thrillingly at an Antarctic research station when a storm suddenly separates the three expedition members. We know tragedy happens, but not what or how. Surviving expedition guide Robert ‘Doc’ Wright suffers a stroke and is unable to tell what happened on the ice. Jon McGregorLean Fall Stand is Doc’s story as he struggles to recover his ability to do the smallest daily personal tasks, to choose the right word and pronounce it correctly, to make himself understood. The change of pace between part 1 ‘Lean’ when the accident happens in Antarctica, and part 2 ‘Fall’ is abrupt and shocking. Through the viewpoint of Doc’s wife, Anna, we realise with a jolt just how bad his communication issues are and what this means for their marriage and family, his career, his work colleagues and the enquiry into the accident. Just as the three men are alone and lost in the Antarctic storm, Doc and Anna are alone and lost when he returns home from hospital. He cannot fasten his trousers; she is his carer. Each feels unable to connect with the other.
This is a beautifully written novel about a tough subject and McGregor does not flinch from making both Doc and Anna unreachable personalities at times. This is not a sentimental novel. It is a novel about communication and the lack of it, whether limited by geography, failed radio and communications equipment, aphasia [language deficits caused by damage to the brain], or simply not speaking to our loved ones about the things that matter. Part 3 ‘Stand’ sees the language connections beginning again as Doc begrudgingly attends speech therapy class. Anna, struggling not only with Doc but with her two children who upbraid her for her mono-syllabic conversation, takes refuge in the garden where winter is turning to spring.
I finished the book never understanding clearly what happened on the ice. The mystery that McGregor hints at – legal issues, failed equipment, bad decisions, corporate responsibility – felt like a plot technique to move the story along. As Doc is unable to express himself clearly, even at the end of the book, we will never know what really happened at Station K. It’s as if the novel ends part-way through Doc’s recovery and there is more to tell.
Thought-provoking. At times uncomfortable, and difficult to read about the process of stroke recovery. Skilfully, and beautifully, written.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Read my review of McGregor’s RESERVOIR 13.

If you like this, try:-
‘Unsettled Ground’ by Claire Fuller
‘Doppler’ by Erlend Loe
‘The Man Who Disappeared’ by Clare Morrall

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview LEAN FALL STAND by @jon_mcgregor https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5eP via @Sandra Danby

#BookReview ‘The Prophet’ by @MartineBailey #historical #mystery

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When a dead body is found at the foot of an ancient oak, a tense plot begins. The Prophet is the second Martine Bailey novel to feature the characters of Tabitha and Nat De Vallory, first seen in The Almanack. The oak tree in question is not just any tree; it is the Mondren Oak, and nearby an evangelist preacher and his community have made an encampment in ancient woodland belonging to Nat’s father. Martine BaileyEighteenth-century England was a place of superstition and myth, of religious fervour and persecution. It was also a time of scientific study and enlightenment. The body of a young woman is found on May Day, 1753. The date is significant and the novel’s action winds up slowly in pace and tension towards Midsummer’s Day, coincidentally the due date for the arrival of Tabitha and Nat’s first baby. Baptist Gunn and his growing number of followers believe a new saviour will be born close to the oak tree on Midsummer’s Day. Gunn, a ‘sleeping prophet’, is gathering his congregation, and money, in preparation to sail for a new life in America.
Tabitha is a likeable protagonist, happy to be married and living in the place where she grew up, but challenged by the new monied life she leads. Her colourful background comes in handy when she determines to seek the woman’s murderer. Heavily pregnant, she makes an eye-catching amateur detective. Advised by her doctor to avoid shock, surprise, and the night-time attentions of her husband, Tabitha feels distanced from Nat. She distrusts the claims of Baptist Gunn and fears he is a fraudster. Meanwhile Nat seeks the preacher’s company, keen to run a scientific experiment studying the veracity of prophecies. Eager to support his ailing father and needing to establish his authority in the community as heir to the estate, Nat takes risks that Tabitha fears endanger their lives.
Are our lives governed by fate and can this be forseen by a privileged few? Why do some people trustingly accept claims and predictions without examination, while others demand proof and evidence? Bailey’s novel is a historical reminder to the 21st century not to believe everything you hear without an analysis of motivation, fact and context.
The Prophet is an unusual historical mystery rooted in an ancient Cheshire woodland. Bailey has created an authentic rural community which lightly bears the depth of her historical research. Watch out for the plot surprises, the secrets and lies.

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

If you like this, try this:-
‘The Wicked Cometh’ by Laura Carlin
‘The Confessions of Frannie Langton’ by Sara Collins
‘The Wonder’ by Emma Donoghue

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#BookReview ‘Heresy’ by SJ Parris @thestephmerritt #historical #crime

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Including touches such as secret messages written in orange juice, ciphers and hidden codes, Heresy is the introduction to the Giordano Bruno series of historical mysteries by SJ Parris. Set in 1583, this is the English Reformation of Queen Elizabeth I and her spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, as they steer the country from catholicism to protestantism. Meanwhile, catholics continue to worship in secret. SJ ParrisFormer Italian monk turned heretic and philosopher Bruno rides out of London on a horse borrowed from the French ambassador, to meet with a royal party bound for Oxford. Accompanied by his friend, courtier poet and secret spy, Sir Philip Sidney, Bruno has two secret missions. The first, along with Sidney, is to expose a catholic conspiracy in the university city. The second is to find a heretical text, stolen long ago but rumoured to be in England, which states that the earth revolves around the sun. This second mission is the one, I suspect, that will continue beyond this book and through the whole series.
When the murders begin, Bruno’s position as an outsider at Lincoln College is both an advantage and disadvantage. His lack of foreknowledge gives him a clear vision of factual events and the awkward questions to ask, but his ignorance of the incestuous and competitive city’s petty squabbles, hidden feuds and flirtations puts him in the path of danger. He stumbles from incident to incident, working out who to believe and who to trust. Regarded as a foreigner and therefore a suspect by everyone else, Bruno’s difficulties reflect the turmoil of the times. The murders are brutal but so are the legal punishments for crimes.
A dense plot with an infinity of tentacles of historical fact and religious conflict that, at times, I found it hard to keep up. In the style of truly satisfying detective stories, when the villain was unveiled I thought ‘of course’ and was annoyed with myself for not guessing correctly.
Much-compared to CJ Sansom’s Matthew Shardlake series – which are set in the times of Elizabeth’s father King Henry VIII and his master fixer Thomas Cromwell – I found this book slower-moving and different in focus, but nevertheless enjoyable.
I do love finding a good series.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

Read my reviews of other books in the series:-
PROPHECY #2GiordanoBruno
SACRILEGE #3GiordanoBruno

If you like this, try:-
‘Dissolution’ by CJ Sansom
‘The Ashes of London’ by Andrew Taylor
‘The Last Hours’ by Minette Walters

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
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#BookReview ‘Tainted Tree’ by @jackieluben #saga #romance

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American Addie Russell was adopted at birth after her single mother died. Always happy with her adoptive parents in Boston, USA, advertising copywriter Addie starts to ask questions when she inherits a house from a stranger in England. Tainted Tree by Jacquelynn Luben is an adoption mystery combined with romance,  threading together genealogical search and US/English differences with the joy and abandonment of teenage love. Jacquelynn Luben Addie arrives in England at the house she has inherited. Glad to cross the Atlantic and escape her job and the boss which whom she had an affair, she is determined to find out more about her birth mother Adrienne and perhaps identify her birth father. But the local lawyer handling the estate is cold and stand-offish, sending mixed signals that Addie doesn’t understand. Undeterred, she does her own research and traces her maternal grandparents but is shocked that they rejected her when she was born. Why did they hate her so?
The action moves back and forth between Addie’s new house in Surrey and the West Country, where her mother grew up. Although this story has a fair amount of romance, both in the modern story and that of Adrienne, it also has a dark streak of abuse and violence. There are some wonderful minor characters, Ada became a favourite. Luben is good at creating atmosphere and darker, threatening personalities.
I did want to see more of Adrienne’s viewpoint directly, rather than simply reading about Addie reading Adrienne’s diary entries. Her teenage love affair in the Sixties rang true and Luben populates the story with well-drawn supporting characters, particularly the three Amerys and the Graingers.
There were times in the first third when I felt bogged down with information overload and I got a couple of the historical characters muddled up, but as the middle section took off it started to become clearer. The action scenes really move things along though the pace does vary as Addie spends a fair amount of time reviewing what she knows and doesn’t know. Luben carefully handles a complex story, allowing Addie to discover contradictions and dead ends, unhelpful personalities and unexpected curve balls.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

If you like this, try:-
‘A Daughter’s Hope’ by Margaret Kaine
‘File Under Family’ by Geraldine Wall
‘The Letter’ by Kathryn Hughes

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview TAINTED TREE by @jackieluben https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4WL via @SandraDanby