Tag Archives: fiction

My Porridge & Cream read: Helen J Christmas

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Today I’m delighted to welcome thriller novelist Helen J Christmas. Her ‘Porridge & Cream’ read is Camellia by Leslie Pearse.

“I started this book in 1998 during a very wet Glastonbury Festival; I remember curling up in my sleeping bag, feeling utterly miserable as the rain splashed around the campsite. Yet from the very first page I was quickly absorbed in the story.

Set in my home county of Sussex, the saga begins with a young girl who is orphaned at 15, when her mother is discovered drowned. Camellia is an unhappy, neglected child, yet her security is ripped away when she stumbles across a secret hoard of letters among her mother’s belongings. After realising her entire childhood has been based on lies, she takes off to London to start a new life.

Beautifully written with powerful story lines, Camellia is as much a ‘coming of age’ story as a romantic drama. At the start of the book, she is an overweight teenager but blossoms into a glamorous young woman. Caught up in the sizzling 60s of London, her life turns into a roller coaster. She is abandoned by a controlling drug dealer boyfriend, but discovers a loyal friend who becomes her soul mate. It is filled with little anecdotes that remind you of growing up, for example, the excitement when the two girls get a flat together, the wild parties, the sex… It has some tragic twists too and as her life hurtles from one crisis to the next, Camellia eventually embarks on a journey of self-discovery, desperate to trace her true father.

By the time I had finished, I really cared about the main character. I have read lots of novels by Leslie Pearse but this is my all time favourite. I have read it twice and will probably do so again in my life. The places are so authentic, some of which are familiar to me. I hadn’t read the prequel of this book, Ellie, but was so pleased I didn’t, as it was a joy to discover Camellia’s secrets for myself!”

Helen J Christmas’s Bio

Helen J Christmas lives on the south coast of Sussex with her husband. With a love of writing since childhood, she started her decade spanning thriller series ‘Same Face Different Place’ in 2011. Her first book ‘Beginnings,’ set in 1970s London, combines romantic suspense with a hard-hitting conspiracy thriller. Helen confesses that her second book, ‘Visions,’ was the one she always wanted to write. Set in the 1980s, it is a psychological thriller based around the restoration of an English country house in Kent.

Writing is something she juggles around family and social life. Helen is self employed and enjoys running the web design company she and her husband set up from home. They have no children but enjoy the company of a faithful border collie and a fluffy white cat. Helen confesses to have got most of her ideas for writing, whilst walking Barney along the beach. She is coming to the end of her series with two more books in the pipeline.

Helen J Christmas’s books

Helen Christmas

Helen’s latest novel Pleasures is the third book in her British thriller romance series, ‘Same Face Different Place.’ Eleanor knows who is responsible for the crimes committed in the 70s and is now desperate to unravel the clues. Swept up in the mystery the younger generation is growing up fast, including Eleanor’s 14 year old son, Elijah. They are as keen defeat their enemies as she is. So when an illegal rave in a forest results in a shocking attack, Eleanor knows that time is running out. Will she unearth the evidence she needs to bring justice to those who deserve it? Or will the evil characters triumph yet again?

Click here to read my review of Beginnings, book one in the ‘Same Face Different Place’ series.

‘Pleasures’ by Helen J Christmas, #3 Same Face Different Place [UK: Chichester Publishing]

Helen J Christmas’s links
Blog
Facebook
Twitter
Website
Goodreads
Pinterest Book 1: Beginnings
Pinterest Book 2: Visions
Pinterest Book 3: Pleasures

Porridge & Cream

What is a ‘Porridge & Cream’ book? It’s the book you turn to when you need a familiar read, when you are tired, ill, or out-of-sorts, where you know the story and love it. Where reading it is like slipping on your oldest, scruffiest slippers after walking for miles. Where does the name ‘Porridge & Cream’ come from? Cat Deerborn is a character in Susan Hill’s ‘Simon Serrailler’ detective series. Cat is a hard-worked GP, a widow with two children and she struggles from day-to-day. One night, after a particularly difficult day, she needs something familiar to read. From her bookshelf she selects ‘Love in A Cold Climate’ by Nancy Mitford. Do you have a favourite read which you return to again and again? If so, please send me a message via the contact form here.

Discover the ‘Porridge & Cream’ books of these authors:-
Rachel Dove
Shelley Weiner
JG Harlond

Helen J Christmas

 

‘Camellia’ by Lesley Pearse [UK: Arrow]

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My Porridge & Cream read: Tracey Sinclair

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Today I’m delighted to welcome vampire novelist Tracey Sinclair.

“First, a disclaimer: my usual comfort read is generally Terry Pratchett, whose novels I regularly turn to if I’m feeling low or just want a bit of a ‘palette cleanse’ between reads – I’m a big fan of the humanity, humour and decency in his books and they invariably boost my mood. But Rhoda Baxter beat me to that! Tracey SinclairSo I’m going with another choice: Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos – a book I love so much I named one of my characters after the author. I studied it at university in the 90s (it’s one of the few books I’ve read in French and English, back when I was capable of reading more than a menu in French!). The edition I prefer is the Penguin Classic, translated by PWK Stone. I probably go back to it every couple of years, more if I’m prompted by seeing the film on TV. I usually give myself long enough to forget the intricacies of the plot (which is far more complicated and satisfying than the movie) so I can enjoy its richness again. It’s a book to read when I want to be amused and distracted but perhaps a little more stimulated than when I turn to Pratchett (as I’ve read his so many times they nourish me, but all blur into one another slightly!).

For a classical novel, it’s actually quite gossipy and fun – it is, after all, basically a catalogue of intrigue and romantic misadventures – and the epistolary format makes it a speedy read. It’s no surprise it was updated (the splendidly trashy teen flick Cruel Intentions) because the plot, based around the hypocrisy of the rich and the double standards faced by women, remains valid today. The characters behave terribly, but you can’t help admire them at least a little.

Dangerous Liaisons/Tracey’s elevator pitch: Two aristocratic ex-lovers amuse themselves and exploit the hypocrisy of ‘polite’ society with a series of romantic schemes before becoming undone when real love enters the equation.

Tracey Sinclair’s Bio
Tracey Sinclair is a freelance writer and editor, as well as a published author and performed playwright. Her books include the rom-com The Bridesmaid Blues and the Cassandra Bick/Dark Dates series, the most recent of which are Angel Falls and A Vampire in New York and Other Stories.

Tracey Sinclair’s links
Twitter
Facebook
Website

Tracey Sinclair’s books
Tracey SinclairIt isn’t easy to surprise Cassandra Bick. When you run a human-vampire dating agency, your colleague is a witch who is engaged to a shifter and your business partner is one of London’s most powerful (and sexiest) vampires, there’s no such thing as a normal day at the office. But when a mysterious Dark Dates client brings a dire warning of a new threat to the city’s supernatural community, Cass and her friends realise they are up against their deadliest foe yet – and that this time, the danger is far closer to home than they could ever have imagined.
Sexy, snarky and with more bite than a crypt full of vampires, Angel Falls is the latest in the ‘Dark Dates: Cassandra Bick’ series.

Porridge & Cream

What is a ‘Porridge & Cream’ book? It’s the book you turn to when you need a familiar read, when you are tired, ill, or out-of-sorts, where you know the story and love it. Where reading it is like slipping on your oldest, scruffiest slippers after walking for miles. Where does the name ‘Porridge & Cream’ come from? Cat Deerborn is a character in Susan Hill’s ‘Simon Serrailler’ detective series. Cat is a hard-worked GP, a widow with two children and she struggles from day-to-day. One night, after a particularly difficult day, she needs something familiar to read. From her bookshelf she selects ‘Love in A Cold Climate’ by Nancy Mitford. Do you have a favourite read which you return to again and again? If so, please send me a message via the contact form here.

Discover the ‘Porridge & Cream’ books of these authors:-
Jane Lambert
Lisa Devaney
Rosie Dean

Tracey Sinclair

 

‘Dangerous Liaisons’ by Choderlos de Laclos [UK: Penguin Classics]

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#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

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#BookReview ‘A Mother’s Secret’ by Renita D’Silva @RenitaDSilva #historical #India

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What a tangled web some families weave. A Mother’s Secret by Renita D’Silva is a fragrant tale of mothers and daughters stretching from England to India. Gaddehalli is a tiny village in Goa but I could smell the spices, hear the wind in the trees, and see the buffalos in the fields as if I was there. Renita D’SilvaThis novel about identity starts with a young girl, Durga, who must stay with her grandmother in Gaddehalli after an accident to her parents. The ruined mansion where she lives, which is avoided by the locals as haunted and full of bad luck, is the centre of this story. The modern-day strand follows Jaya, a young mother in England mourning the loss of her baby son and whose mother Sudha has recently died. Sudha was an emotionally-withdrawn mother, but when Jaya discovers some of her mother’s hidden possessions, including diaries, she pieces together the story of Sudha’s early life. Jaya is looking for the identity of her own father; she finds so much more.
From the beginning, it is a guessing game: how is the story of Durga connected to Kali, Jaya and Sudha? Halfway through, all my ideas of the twist had been proven wrong and I was wondering if the storylines would come together. At times I got the girls confused, but I read the second half of the novel quicker than the first and the twist, when it came, was a big surprise. A clever novel about families and how the important, simple things in life can sometimes be forgotten because of pride, selfishness or shame.

Read my reviews of these other novels by Renita D’Silva:-
A DAUGHTER’S COURAGE
BENEATH AN INDIAN SKY
THE GIRL IN THE PAINTING
THE ORPHAN’S GIFT
THE SECRET KEEPER
THE SPICE MAKER’S SECRET
THE WAR CHILD

If you like this, try:-
‘Yuki Chan in Bronte Country’ by Mick Chapman
‘Crow Blue’ by Adriana Lisboa
‘Love and Eskimo Snow’ by Sarah Holt

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#BookReview ‘A Sudden Light’ by Garth Stein @garthstein #contemporary

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How to define A Sudden Light by Garth Stein? It’s a coming of age tale, a ghost story, it’s about forests and trees and about man’s responsibility to nature. I loved it, one of the best books I‘ve read this year and quite different from everything else. Garth SteinStein is a new author for me. I was attracted to this book by three features: the ethereal cover, the setting in the Pacific North-Western corner of the US, and the family/saga ghost story combination.
Trevor’s parents are separated. His mother has flown home to England for the summer while Trevor visits for the first time his ancestral home on the Olympic Peninsula outside Seattle. Trevor’s objective is to repair his parents’ marriage, he is not sure how. But from the first day he and his father, Jones, arrive at Riddell House on The North Estate, everything seems strange. The house is enormous, built by Trevor’s great-great-grandfather Elijah Riddell a century earlier, testament to Elijah’s riches earned from his logging business. It is a mansion, built from timber, set amongst trees, isolated and rotting. The house is at the centre of this story; its physicality, its history, what it meant to Elijah and his son Ben, and what the sale of it could mean to the current Riddell generation: much needed cash. Trevor meets his aunt Serena [she asks him to call her Simply Serena] and his Grandfather Samuel, who suffers from Alzheimer’s. The mysteries start from day one. Is the ghost of Jones and Serena’s mother dancing upstairs? What exactly is Serena’s agenda, is she trying to seduce 14-year old Trevor? Is Grandfather Samuel speaking rubbish, or not? And what secret is Jones hiding? Money is at the centre of this tale, a family who earned fortunes as the 19th century turned into the 20th by forging timber links with the railroads. That same family now has a mansion which is falling into ruin, while Jones is newly bankrupt after the failure of his boatbuilding business.
Everyone has an agenda at Riddell House that summer, including Trevor.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Ship’ by Antonia Honeywell
‘The Good People’ by Hannah Kent
‘Barkskins’ by Annie Proulx

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#BookReview ‘Ghost Moth’ by Michèle Forbes #romance #Belfast

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Ghost Moth by Michèle Forbes opens with a woman, Katherine, who when swimming out of her depth encounters a seal. What begins as an encounter with nature becomes something more chilling, hinting at the depths of the story about to be told. “…it is his eyes – the eyes of this wild animal – that terrify Katherine the most; huge, opaque and overbold, they hold on her like the lustrous black-egged eyes of a ruined man.” Katherine’s fear when encountering the seal is a mystery until much later in the book, when we understand the memories it disturbed. Michèle ForbesThis is the story of Katherine and George, the beginnings of their love in 1949 and its endurance until death in 1969. The setting is Belfast: in 1949, post-War when Katherine sings Carmen in a local opera production and meets Tom, the tailor who sews her costume and flirts with her. Tom, who forces Katherine to examine the nature of her feelings for boyfriend George. Tom, who tempts her so she can never forget him. And Belfast, wrought by The Troubles in 1969 when even Katherine’s small children are challenged on the street for being of the ‘wrong’ religion. Katherine cannot forget Tom.
The novel examines the nature of love set against a city in 1969 where hatred is demonstrated every day on the streets with burning buses and ransacked shops. Can love ever be forgotten? Should young love be allowed to affect a marriage, years later? And is it better to tell the truth when the truth hurts, or protect your loved one by remaining silent?
In 1949, Katherine and Tom share quiet moments together as he makes her Carmen costume. Katherine forgets her new fiancé, George, in the eroticism of Tom taking a measuring-tape to her body. He describes to her how he will construct her dress. “I’ll insert the bone through the aperture of the casing, sliding it firmly upward all the way to the top of the seam. I’ll draw the bone back just a little, if I need to, so that it won’t force the material. The spring of the bone must always be right.” Compared with this sensuality, volunteer fireman George is a pale alternative.
But one night, before the night’s performance of Carmen begins, something happens which changes the lives of this love triangle.
The title of the book refers to the pale moths [below] which Katherine’s father told her: “…that some people believed that ghost moths were the souls of the dead waiting to be caught, and some people believed that they were only moths.” For me, the double symbolism of the romantic moths and chilling seal was too much. Just one of them would suffice. I think I prefer the seal.

If you like this, try:-
‘On a Night Like This’ by Barbara Freethy #1Callaways
‘The Last Day’ by Claire Dyer
‘You’ll Never See Me Again’ by Lesley Pearse

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#BookReview ‘The Seventh Miss Hatfield’ Anna Caltabiano @caltabiano_anna #mystery #suspense

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The Seventh Miss Hatfield by Anna Caltabiano opens with the auction of a painting in 1887 and then switches to 1954 as a girl sits on a doorstep. Cynthia is 11 and aware of her mother’s demands for good behaviour combined with initiative, knowing she is a disappointment. So when a parcel is wrongly delivered, she shows independence by taking it to the house opposite. There she meets a new neighbour, Rebecca Hatfield. Cynthia doesn’t go home again. Anna Caltabiano This is a tale of immortality and time travel. Where immortality means you can still die, of illness or accident, and time travel comes via a large mysterious clock owned by Miss Hatfield. Cynthia – and it is key that we are told her original name only a few times – drinks a glass of lemonade containing a drop of a mysterious substance and everything changes. “I felt as if I was slipping away into some strange dimension where I recognized nothing – not my surroundings, or my feelings, but most terrifyingly of all, not even myself.” Miss Hatfield has a task for Cynthia to do, a task which involves theft and time travel. The task, of course, does not go to plan.
The fine detail is excellent but I found the bigger picture lacking, as if the author was carried away by Cynthia/Margaret’s flirtation with Henley and lost sight of the where this fit into the flow of the narrative. I was impatient for the mystery to move on. Cynthia/Margaret is a girl things happen to, rather than her being a proactive heroine. She spends quite a lot of time waiting for the time to be right, waiting for things to settle down, before she can complete her task. I just wanted her to get on with it. She accepts her new life with minimal heartache or disbelief, demonstrates little longing for her parents and the life she left in 1954 and no cynicism about what Miss Hatfield tells her. She ages instantly from teenager to adult, but we are shown none of the insight this would bring as so ably demonstrated in the film Big. Then I did a bit of Googling and found out that Anna Caltabiano is 17, and I understood. When I read a book for review, I read with a notebook and pen by my side and quite early on I wrote down ‘feels like a young author?’ Despite the ‘literary’ front cover, this is a book written by a teenager for teenagers about young love. If I had known, I would not have chosen to read it and I became a bit more forgiving of the writing style. Another example of a cover design being misleading.
That this novel was written by a 17-year old is admirable and explains the style: lots of explanation of the action of the ‘I understood Henley did this because…’ style. Lots of re-stating the obvious, which should have been edited out. It is clear that Caltabiano was in love with Henley.
This is the first novel of a trilogy. I think I’m too old to read the others, it’s a long time since I was a teenager. But if you know one who likes stories about puppy love combined with time travel, they’ll probably love this. Caltabiano is a talented writer and I will watch out for future novels, but in a few years’ time.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Quick’ by Lauren Owen
‘An Appetite for Violets’ by Martine Bailey
‘Ferney’ by James Long

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#BookReview ‘The Miniaturist’ by Jessie Burton #historical #Amsterdam

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The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton is an intriguing treasure box of a story. Eighteen-year-old Nella starts her new life as a married woman at her husband’s home in Amsterdam. He is a wealthy merchant and it is an arranged marriage. But Nella finds herself in a world she did not expect: a husband never at home, an abrupt and unwelcoming sister-in-law, two servants who behave as if life on the Herengracht is full of secrets. Nella feels always at a disadvantage. Jessie BurtonJohannes Brandt’s wedding gift to his wife is a cabinet, a kind of empty doll’s house for a young woman, a miniature of their home intended to be used by a young woman to learn how to run a home. “The accuracy of the cabinet is eerie, as if the real house has been shrunk, its body sliced in two and its organs revealed.” It frightens her but she is unable to formulate why. There is other disturbing imagery to suggest life in the house is not as it first appears. On the dark walls there are paintings of dead animals and at Nella’s first public outing as a wife, to the Silver Guild dinner, Nella meets Agnes Meermans. Agnes wears pearls in her hair, “The pearls are the same size as milk teeth.” Odd.
Nella orders her first miniature objects from a craftsman, a miniaturist, and the story burst into life after a slowish start. First, the three objects Nella orders are chosen as symbols of defiance against her new life. Secondly, the package is delivered by the intriguing Jack Philips of Bermondsey. Who is Jack, is he the miniaturist? Or does the title of the book refer to Nella? How else does the miniaturist know what is happening in Nella’s home, and her mind?
One thing is clear, everything in this book – and in the house on the Herengracht – is not as it seems. I raced through this.

Read my review of THE CONFESSION, also by Jessie Burton.

If you like this, try:-
‘Rush Oh!’ by Shirley Barrett
‘The Penny Heart’ by Martine Bailey
‘The Knife with the Ivory Handle’ by Cynthia Bruchman

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Great opening paragraph… 51

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iris murdoch - the sea, the sea 10-6-13“The sea which lies before me as I write glows rather than sparkles in the bland May sunshine. With the tide turning, it leans quietly against the land, almost unflecked by ripples or by foam. Near to the horizon it is a luxurious purple, spotted with regular lines of emerald green. AT the horizon it is indigo. Near to the shore, where my view is framed by rising heaps of humpy yellow rock, there is a band of lighter green, icy and pure, less radiant, opaque however, not transparent. We are in the north, and the bright sunshine cannot penetrate the sea. Where the gentle water taps the rocks there is still a surface skin of colour. The cloudless sky is very pale at the indigo horizon which it lightly pencils in with silver. Its blue gains towards the zenith and vibrates there. But the sky looks cold, even the sun looks cold.”
‘The Sea, The Sea’ by Iris Murdoch

#BookReview ‘The Accident’ by Chris Pavone #thriller

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The Accident by Chris Pavone is a fast-moving thriller with so many questions. To start with, we have the Prologue about an unidentified man writing a book. This is his third draft of a manuscript called ‘The Accident.’ An excerpt from his m/s finishes: “…if what you are reading is a finished book, printed and bound and distributed into the world, I am, almost certainly, dead.” I was hooked. The Accident is Pavone’s second novel, his favourite thriller writer is John Le Carré and he certainly paces his storytelling the same way. Chris PavoneThe second person we meet is Isabel Reed, a New York literary agent. It is dawn and she has just finished reading a manuscript: ‘The Accident by Anonymous.’ She is astounded at the enormity of the story, the revelations and accusations. As well as being a page-turning thriller, this novel is also an insight of the publishing world in New York and how the connections of power function in the USA: media, publishing, Government, CIA, black-ops. Isabel was once a top literary agent, now she is desperate for the last big m/s. Is this it? She stands under the shower: “It all beats down on her, the shower stream and the manuscript and the boy and the past, and the old guilt plus the new guilt, and the new earth-shattering truths, and fear for her career and maybe, now, fear for her life.” There is a lot we don’t know about Isabel: how come she has this m/s; she thinks about a husband, where is he; she thinks about a child, Tommy, also absent. But the story moves so quickly, I put those questions aside and continued reading.
I admit that at the beginning, I lost track of who was where; so many characters are introduced with anonymous snapshots that I got a bit irritated. Which ‘he’ was this? But I stuck with it and the characters assumed names. The thing that kept me reading was the excerpts from the m/s – as Anonymous tells the story, bit-by-bit we learn more about the secret, the bombshell. So when the murders start to happen, I was expecting death. I was soon picking up my Kindle to grab two minutes reading on the run. Who is doing the killing? Who is the author? Is the m/s true, or revenge?

And here’s my review of another thriller by Chris Pavone:-
THE TRAVELERS

If you like this, try:-
‘Purity’ by Jonathan Franzen
‘A Hero in France’ by Alan Furst
‘Wolf’ by Mo Hayder

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