Month: Nov 2024

Posted in Monthly Wrap Up

Best Books September – November 2024

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I suddenly realised today that I hadn’t done a monthly wrap-up since August! Since I last spoke to you all, a few things have gone wrong with my health. As you know I have multiple sclerosis, but for many years now I’ve had problems with my spine. I had a spinal injury when I was 11 years old. I’d read books like Pollyanna and What Katy Did where the heroine has an accident either falling from a tree or a swing and becomes paralysed. As soon as I landed the somersault I knew something was wrong and I stayed still, but a classmate ran over to the crash mat, grabbed my right arm and tried to pull me up. I had an excruciating pain near my shoulder blade around the level of my bra strap. It turned out I’d broken two vertebrae and crushed a disc. Years later when caring for my late husband, I tried to move him across the bed to stop him falling and had a searing pain in my lumbar area. I couldn’t move and he had to call my parents and admit ‘I broke my wife’. I had an injection in my spine and stayed in bed for two days. Thanks to these injuries I have chronic pain in my lumbar and thoracic spine where the nerves are impinged by the discs. Lately I’ve really struggled with the pain and I’ve been having a radio frequency denervation alongside strong painkillers to control it. At the end of August I had my latest procedure and it was so painful I struggled to tolerate it. I can’t be sedated for the procedure, because I have to be able to feel things so the consultant can ensure they’re burning the right nerve – not the motor nerves. Sadly this time the procedure hasn’t worked and I’ve had increased pain that’s moved from the right side of my spine into the left leg. I was struggling so much that I had an MS relapse too. So I’m taking a hiatus from blog tours and any other promotions, so that I can read slowly and pick what I want from the TBR pile. I’ve found the thought of being in this level of pain indefinitely very difficult to cope with. I’ve had a really low mood and had found it hard to read books that I either wasn’t enjoying or in the mood for because I’d made a commitment to read it by a deadline. So at least till the end of the year I’m picking what I fancy and reviewing when I can, with no pressure. Here are my favourite reads of the last couple of months.

Married couple Martha and Finn are travelling in South America on what feels like a final attempt to save their marriage. Martha has been wrestling with severe anxiety about the climate emergency and wanted to come to Bolivia, specifically to visit the other-worldly salt flats. A place where the sky is so perfectly reflected in the wet surface that it feels like you’re walking in the clouds. She has found an eco-spa based on salt, promising group therapy work, salt drink rituals and lounging in the warm salt pools. Finn is sceptical, especially about the cost, but agrees to throw himself into the experience. Only 48 hours later, as the group wake from their salt drink ritual and a night of hallucinations, someone is found dead. The guests are at the mercy of their hosts and the inhospitable environment. How will they find their way out of the salt flats and which one of them is a murderer? This is a tense and psychologically brilliant thriller, with a strange and otherworldly backdrop that heightens the sense of isolation and fear.

Set in the not too distant future, Lights Out focuses on a summer where electricity rationing has become a reality. The government shut down of power will begin at 8pm every night and every residential household is affected, only hospitals and hospices are exempt from the switch off. As the days count down Grace feels her anxiety start to build. She has had a phobia of the dark since she was a child when she remembers being locked into a pitch black space, an incident she believes happened at school. Most nights she’ll be on duty in her job at the local hospice but she’s home for the first switch off and begs her partner to be home before 8pm. He seems not to take her fear too seriously, even though he’s spent years since they moved in together sleeping in an eye mask to block out then constant light Grace needs. Then strange things start to happen. One morning Grace notices her goldfish Brad and Jennifer have a companion in their bowl. The next night some candlesticks appear in the kitchen. Who has heard of a break in where they add to your belongings instead of stealing them? No one takes her concerns seriously, but she’s unnerved by the accompanying note from ‘The Night’. This is a seriously tense thriller with an interesting premise that plays into current fears about energy usage and poses two mysteries: who is The Night and what does he want? What happened to make Grace so scared of the dark?

I thoroughly enjoyed this new thriller from Paula Hawkins and it’s isolated setting on the Scottish island of Eris, only reachable from the mainland at low tide across a causeway. This was the home of Vanessa, a celebrated painter and potter, but since her death has been owned by her friend and companion Grace. While the island was left to Grace, Vanessa’s works were unexpectedly left to her first agent who has an art foundation at a stately home where they are in the process of going on display. The story is set in motion when a visitor to the gallery makes them aware that one of Vanessa’s installations seems to contain a human bone. As the piece is pulled for forensic examination, everyone is thinking about Vanessa’s estranged husband who went missing after visiting her on Eris. He was thought to be lost from the causeway, but what if he never left the island? Becker is the curator of the gallery and an expert in Vanessa’s work. Grace will have to be informed and it could be just the opportunity to visit Eris, so that Grace is seen in person and Becker can approach her about artworks and diaries that the foundation believes she is withholding. Grace may seem to be a quiet and unassuming woman, even mousy, but once on Eris it’s twelve hours until the tide turns. The human bone came from someone who visited Vanessa’s studio, but did they ever leave? This is an atmospheric and obsessive thriller detailing the messy lives of those in the bohemian world of art.

This wonderful new novel from Tracey Chevalier captures the spirit of the Venetian islands and a heroine you will take to your heart. Orsola Rosso is the daughter of a glassmaker living on the island of Murano. She has to grow up quickly when her father is killed in the glass workshop when a flying shard from a chandelier hits him in the neck and cuts into his artery. Under her elder brother, the workshop starts to suffer a decline as he tries to pursue more artistic pieces than the consistently good tableware that was the Rosso’s main source of income. Desperately wanting to help she visits their merchant, Klingenhorn, for ideas and he sends her to the only female glassmaker in Venice to learn how to make glass beads with a lamp. Very soon she is able to create beautiful beads that Klingenhorn can sell. Orsola is a heroine that gets under your skin. She’s ambitious, fiercely loyal to her family but able to see how the workshop must diversify if they’re to survive. Chevalier shows us the magical islands of Venice and Murano through her eyes as she weathers grief, the plague, business woes and falling in love. Set, with magical licence, from the time of Casanova all the way up to the COVID pandemic this is an incredible story of a strong and bold woman who knows how to survive.

Another incredible woman heads up Jodi Picoult’s new novel, this time an Elizabethan playwright named Emilia Bassano. In a dual timeline narrative we see modern playwright Melina finding that it’s still difficult for your plays to reach the stage if you are a woman. Egged on by her best friend she starts to research and write about an ancestor, Emilia Bassano who was a published poet and also wrote for the stage. As the official mistress of the man placed in charge of the London theatres, Emilia has access to Elizabethan playwnights and poets like Spenser, Webster and Kit Marlow her best friend. Melina becomes drawn in by the conspiracy of whether Shakespeare was solely responsible for his incredible number of plays? Her research leads her to believe that the ‘real’ writer might have been a woman and the evidence points to Emilia as a possible candidate. She was a Jewish woman living as a Christian, part of a family of court musicians from Italy with an incredible talent for words. She has visited all the places that Shakespeare uses in his plays, understands how to fit in at court and on the street and knows what it is to be a strong woman – could Beatrice and Viola have come from her pen? This is a gorgeous piece of historic fiction with a heroine you’ll enjoy and a mystery that draws you in.

This incredibly emotional novel has to be Julia Owen Moylan’s best one yet. In Berlin 1926 sisters Leni and Annette have lost everything after the death of their parents and are living in a makeshift shelter in an abandoned garden. Leni finds work in a glamorously decadent nightclub as a cigarette girl. Babylon Circus is a glittering cabaret with provocative dancing girls, providing a staggering contrast between Leni’s nights and days. However, it does provide the means to find the sisters lodgings and regular food. When Leni meets Paul, the club’s pianist, a tentative love affair emerges that may challenge the fragile beginnings of a stable life for Annette. Their love plays out over forty years and changes the course of both sister’s lives forever. The author brilliantly captures the two distinct time frames of a country that’s struggling in the aftermath of two world wars and a city that’s physically and ideologically divided. For the sisters she shows how extreme circumstances, trauma and one split second decision can shape a life. The contrasts between the colour and sparkle of the cabaret at night and the shabbiness of the daylight hours are stark, echoing the poverty and grim utility of a city post war and under Communism. The sisters are so real heart-breakingly human, full of flaws and hovering between resignation and hope. This is definitely in contention for my book of the year.

That wraps up the last two months of powerful reading. I don’t have a tbr as I’m reading what I fancy on the day but here are some that are calling to me from my various to read piles, some on NetGalley plus the ones I’m physically tripping over at home.

Posted in Publisher Proof

The Lifeline by Libby Page

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Libby Page novels always touch on interesting and difficult subjects, but through a very cosy lens – a balance that’s very hard to achieve. Her focus is women’s lives and here our main characters are Kate and Phoebe, both of whom are going through big life changes. Kate has recently given birth to daughter Rosie and moved from London to a small village, nearer to her family. Kate and her husband wanted Rosie to grow up with a garden and to spend time with her wider family. While her husband sets up his photography business, Kate has found the first few months of motherhood hard and hasn’t bonded with her daughter in the way she hoped. She’s also missing her job in journalism, her best friends and the buzz of her London life. Phoebe has lived in the village for a while, in a flat above some shops with her boyfriend Max. She is a mental health nurse with flame red hair and visits her patients on a motorbike. It’s all change when Max decides he’s leaving and takes all the furniture. Phoebe doesn’t give herself time to process the break-up and keeps pushing herself to visit patients. She doesn’t realise that right now, she also needs help. Could the village’s wild swimming group be what both women need to restore them back to themselves? 

I was immediately attracted to the character of Phoebe, having worked in similar roles most of my life. I thought this was a slightly sugar coated version of mental health work, that touched some of the realities without changing the feel of the book. It did show that no two days are the same and the difficult juggling act of seeing regular patients when another has a crisis and needs to seen immediately. Phoebe is very conscientious and usually ends up working longer hours and eating into her own downtime to ensure everyone is seen. I could see Phoebe was heading for burn out, always putting her own needs last and missing the people and activities that restore her soul. Ive never had a baby, but I have seen what a seismic change it is from my friend’s experiences. Their world’s shrink because they’re so overwhelmed by this small person who is so dependent on them. I didn’t always understand why friends hadn’t called or couldn’t come to events, but having stepdaughters has made me realise how all consuming parenthood is. I’ve definitely seen less of friends and sacrificed my own needs for theirs, and babies need so much more. What I noticed about both women was how difficult it was for them to admit they’re struggling. Phoebe is conditioned by her job to always put someone else first. Kate has been influenced by the Instagram yummy mummies and the perfection of her sister’s life. She feels inadequate next to them, not realising that social media is edited to show the best photos and most interesting experiences. It’s a case of comparison is the thief of joy. Could both these women change their lives by finding a moment for themselves by the river? 

The story is set in an idyllic little village with cozy details like a coffee and cake van down by the river, an Italian deli under Phoebe’s flat and picturesque stone cottages. It’s clearly affluent but as Phoebe’s clients show, sorrow and illness can come into any home. It’s these cute and cozy details that make the book feel like a warm hug. I loved the camaraderie of the wild swimming group and the way they all pulled together when their swimming spot is threatened due to contaminated water. There’s a touch of romance too, in the rather gorgeous shape of Italian Luca from the deli. I enjoyed the humour too, especially the bridal boutique incident – the most disturbing boutique incident since Bridesmaids. Above everything it’s the female friendship that absolutely sings in this novel, confirming something I know to be true; it’s the women in our lives that hold us up when we fall, celebrate when we’re happy and stick with us through the seismic changes women experience in life. 

Meet the Author

Libby Page is the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Lido and four other warm-hearted novels. She lives in Somerset, England with her family. Before becoming an author she worked in journalism and marketing. When not writing she can be found reading, and swimming outdoors.

Posted in Netgalley

The Trouble With Mrs Montgomery Hurst by Katie Lumsden

Posted on by thelotusreaders

A single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife – so why choose her?

Katie Lumsden’s first novel – The Secrets of Hartwood Hall – was a fantastically addictive Gothic mystery where nothing was as it seemed. This second novel has the feel of Jane Austen; light, witty and full of gossip. In this comedy of manners, where class and family reputation is everything, scandal is just around the corner. Amelia Ashpoint is comfortable with her life as it is. She and her brother Diggory live at home with their wealthy father and younger sister Ada in their newly built mansion in the county of Wickenshire. Summer 1841 and at the start of marriage season Amelia is 23 and her father has decided he wants to secure a husband for her. He has his hopes for Mr Montgomery Hurst, the most eligible bachelor in their social set and the owner of stately home Radcliffe Park. At previous dinners and dances, he has sought Amelia for his dance partner and they chat comfortably together at dinner. Their easy manner has been noted in society. However, at the next society ball there is intrigue and shock. Mr Hurst has been secretly engaged elsewhere, to an unknown widow with three children. Their friends are appalled but Amelia feels nothing but relief. She has no interest in marriage at all. It seems society has big expectations for Amelia, but her heart lies in a very different direction.

There’s so much to like in this Regency tale and Amelia is the centre of the centre of that. She’s an intelligent young woman who really knows her own mind and accepts who she is. She also knows where her heart lies but realises it can never be made public. It’s interesting to watch her slowly realise that she’s no longer a girl but is considered a grown-up and there are expectations on young women to marry. She imagined spending her days at the family home with her father, never having to marry but hasn’t realised what her father already knows. He isn’t going to be here forever. He’s becoming anxious about making sure she is settled, because the truth is all of them will have to marry. The house and estate will go to her brother and whoever he chooses to marry will become the mistress of Ashpoint Hall. Ada is still a girl but there won’t necessarily be room for Amelia. If only everyone could have as simple and happy a marriage as the new Mrs Hurst. When Amelia visits Radcliffe she is heartened by their easy manner with each other and the very natural relationship he seems to have built with his new stepchildren. Everyone around Amelia, including her best friend Clara and even her brother Diggory, appears to understand this unwritten rule – it’s time to find a mate.

The author portrays Wickenshire society beautifully, detailing how much traditional country society has changed. The differences can be seen in the village’s gentleman’s club The Lantern, where one floor is for those deemed gentlemen and downstairs is for tenants and tradespeople. People like the foreman of the Ashpoint Brewery Mr Lonsdale and military men like Major Alderton. The Ashpoints are not aristocracy themselves, in fact Ashpoint Hall is relatively new despite it’s grandeur. They may be new money, but the fact they have so much of it qualifies them as acceptable in polite society. The Earl and Countess of Wickford are the pinnacle of county society, so when they have a ball, they invite everybody, including the Major and Mr Lonsdale, but they can only get away with this behaviour because they’re aristocracy. If anyone else invited such men to a soirée it could reflect badly on the host. However, the author shows very strongly that just because someone is viewed as a gentleman it doesn’t mean they behave as one. Amelia’s brother Diggory is horrified to find that his best friend Alistair, Viscount of Salbridge and heir to the current Earl, has a guilty secret. His behaviour shows he has no regard for those reliant on him for their wages, the roof over their head, or even for a woman’s honour. This discovery leads to such a parting of the ways that Diggory starts to frequent downstairs at The Lantern. The usual downstairs clientele would be considered beneath him normally, but he’s growing up quickly and making his own life choices. Ever since he decided to propose to Lady Rose he’s started a steep learning curve, working every day in the brewery and preparing to take over from his father. He’s also keen on showing Lady Rose’s parents that his intentions are serious, realising that men are not born with integrity and honour. Money is also no guarantee of a man’s good character. Falling in love has set Diggory on the path to be a better man, also abstaining from drinking and the dangerous levels of gambling that have been the norm for him and the Viscount.

Amelia also has to grow up a lot throughout the novel. The subject of a woman’s honour and her marriageability are the strongest theme in the novel. It’s clear that societies like Wickenshire are in flux. Amelia has been insulated by her father’s money, so up until now the reality of a woman’s choices in life haven’t touched her. It is only her money that makes Mr Hurst a possible mate, otherwise he would be completely out of reach. Meanwhile, some titled families are beginning to find themselves financially unstable, meaning they are having to cast their nets wider to find suitable marriage partners. Where once only a title would do, families might need to consider new money and potential grooms may have to support the whole family or maintain a huge mansion. This could be good news for Diggory and Lady Rose, who is horrified to find her parents in dire straits and in a hurry to find her a husband. If Diggory doesn’t secure his bride, anyone reasonably respectable might do! For Amelia it’s her best friend Clara’s potential suitors that shock her the most as she’s always assumed they were of the same mind. However, Clara’s family don’t have the financial stability of the Ashpoints so she doesn’t have the luxury of turning down good offers, even if it isn’t her inclination to marry. Amelia grows up and gains a lot of perspective listening to her friend’s dilemma, realising how lucky she is to have a family who can support her for life and a fledgling writing career to fall back on should her father’s plans come to nothing. When rumours start to spread about Mrs Montgomery Hurst, Amelia realises how even a whiff of scandal can ruin a woman and how polite society shuns those who stray from the accepted conventions. Could there be a way for Amelia to use her position to still the gossiping tongues and sway polite society to accept the family? This is also a timely reminder that her own perpetual single status could be the cause of gossip.

I loved this wonderful homage to Austen. It has everything: characters of all classes; light comedy; smart social events; a dissection of Regency love and the marriage market. The author then brings in themes that we might consider more modern, such as infidelity, domestic abuse and LGBTQ+ relationships too. Just as Sarah Waters did with the Victorian novel, Katie uses the format of a Regency novel to show us that these types of relationships did exist when Austen was writing. It’s a form of writing back; she’s placing people and themes that were not included in literature of the time back into their historical context and exploring how they might fit in that time period. It gives us a richer and more varied sense of how society might have been, touching on subjects that didn’t really start to appear in literature until Queen Victoria was on the throne. It was only a few decades later that the Brontë’s wrote about more complex relationships: Jane Eyre’s love for a married man, Anne Brontë’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall escaping from an abusive and violent marriage or Emily Brontë’s slightly incestuous and abusive relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff. These are very different novels though with a darker tone.

Katie has instead taken all the lightness and wit of Austen, making her novel such a pleasure to read, but brining darker and more complex themes under the surface. The opening scene of chaos as the Ashpoint family get ready for a ball while Ada sobs at the unfairness of having to stay at home, is reminiscent of the Bennett sisters in a similar situation. For Austen, the comedy of Mrs Bennett’s nerves, the preposterous Mr Collins and Mr Elton, as well as the romance of the storylines disguised more complex themes of a woman’s place in society and their inability to inherit, not to mention the awful fate of an unhappy marriage. Upon the death of their father, girls were often left at the mercy of distant male relatives and had no say over their own fate. Our heroine Amelia simply wants to achieve the best outcome for herself, knowing she doesn’t want to marry. All she wants is to live in her childhood home, write her books and to enjoy the company of her brother’s family when he inherits. Most of all she wants to have the personal freedom that characters like Lady Rose and her friend Clara sadly can’t have. You’ll keep turning the pages, hoping she can achieve it.

Meet the Author

Katie Lumsden read Jane Eyre at the age of thirteen and never looked back. She spent her teenage years devouring nineteenth century literature, reading every Dickens, Brontë, Gaskell, Austen and Hardy novel she could find. She has a degree in English literature and history from the University of Durham and an MA in creative writing from Bath Spa University. Her short stories have been shortlisted for the London Short Story Prize and the Bridport Prize, and have been published in various literary magazines. Katie’s Youtube channel, Books and Things, has more than 25,000 subscribers. She lives in London and works as an editor.

Posted in Netgalley

The Salt Flats by Rachelle Atalla

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Fin and his wife Martha are travelling in South America. Their eventual destination are the salt flats in Bolivia, an other worldly natural phenomenon where the horizon becomes endless and you’re standing in the sky. Martha and Fin are not just sight-seeing, although the urge to take photographs and capture the illusion is strong. Having been together for 11 years, lately they’ve struggled as Martha has been in the grip of an obsessive anxiety over the climate crisis. They are booked into a retreat on the salt flats, found by Martha and extortionately expensive, it promises a transcendent experience using salt to purify mind and body. So the couple find themselves crammed into a pick-up truck alongside Rick and Barb, a middle aged and out of shape American couple, and partners Hannah and Zoe. They are now in the hands of their driver who doesn’t speak a word of English and an elusive shaman called Oscar. They will spend the next few days meditating, relaxing in warm salt pools and participating in a series of salt ceremonies where hallucinogenic visions bring them face o face with their subconscious reality. Yet the final ceremony descends into chaos, Martha and Fin need to grapple with Martha’s anxiety and the moral implications of their trip. As for their marriage, could this nightmare bring them together or are some wounds too deep to heal?

I’ve been fascinated with the salt flats after seeing them on an episode of World’s Most Dangerous Roads. It was incredible to see the sky reflected in the shallow saltwater surface, giving the impression of standing in the sky. It’s an image recently repeated on Race Across the World and even on a small screen it’s an incredible landscape. The author recreates that otherworldly and alien environment so well, creating an atmosphere of dislocation from the normal world even before any hallucinogens. It struck me as an odd place for a spa or well-being centre, something I always imagine as comfortable and with lush surroundings. This landscape is hard and barren. It left me dubious about the benefits of such a place and how professional it would be. As they’re collected by a taciturn driver I half expected him to rob them and leave them in the middle of nowhere. When they break down en route it doesn’t help, giving an impression of something run on a shoestring in a very inhospitable place. The building is much less luxurious than the group imagined, considering the high price they’ve paid to be there. It’s an igloo type structure built from blocks of salt. Even the beds in the dormitory have salt bases and the group are less than impressed to be sleeping in the same room. Each of the group have personal reasons to be there and the first salt ritual brings up themes of infidelity, assault and intrusive negative thoughts about the future. By confronting these issues, Oscar tells them they can process the trauma and move on. Trust has to build very quickly between the group who are letting each other into their personal spaces, both physical and mental. They’re baring their souls to each other. It’s clear that none of them will come out of this experience unchanged. Whether that’s a negative or positive change is hard to say. When Fin wakes up with a blooded face he is completely confused about how he got there. He knows he interacted with Zoe and that Barb had an accident, but the rest is fluffy and unclear. Where is the blood from and what horrors has he blacked out from his memory. 

I didn’t bond with all of the characters but I was definitely intrigued by them. I could understand why all of them needed change in their lives. It was easy to understand Martha’s concerns about the direction the world is taking. Although her preoccupations are with climate change, Brexit, Covid and wars breaking out across the world have left me with anxieties about the future, especially for the younger members of our family. It only takes a few swipes of the iPad to see how climate is changing the lives of those in low lying countries. However, that proximity to information can radicalise people as the most extreme viewpoints shout loudest online and I felt this had happened to Martha. Finn couldn’t keep living with constant anxiety about the future and needed Martha to meet him in the present every so often. The author’s depiction of their relationship felt very real, showing how people in long term relationship can change over time. Sometimes out takes a conscious choice to re-commit to that person or a bit of compromise that reminds why you committed to each other in the first place. Agreeing to the salt spa was Finn’s act of commitment, to show that he can give Martha a little of what she needs in the hope it will be enough. However, he ruins that a little with his scepticism and his shock at how spartan the spa is for the money spent. As horrors start to unfold will he blame Martha or will everything they’ve experienced bring them closer together? That’s if they both get out alive. The monumental stupidity of allowing themselves to be taken into the middle of nowhere at the mercy of people who don’t speak their language and have taken a huge chunk of their savings, starts to sink in. As things start to unravel you won’t be able to put this fascinating debut down.

Out Now from Hodder and Stoughton

Meet the Author

Rachelle Atalla is a Scottish-Egyptian novelist, short story writer and screenwriter based in Glasgow. Her debut novel The Pharmacist was published by Hodder & Stoughton in May 2022.

Posted in Netgalley

Lights Out by Louise Swanson

Posted on by thelotusreaders

The Government have declared a state of emergency in this tense and thought provoking thriller from Louise Swanson. They’re introducing a temporary policy of electricity rationing, so at 8pm every night the lights and all other electrical power will turn off. For Grace this is her worst nightmare, because she’s terrified of the dark and no reassurance or safety measure from her husband is going to change that. She knows that at some point she will be forced to face the dark alone. An experience of being enclosed in the dark as a child has left it’s mark. All she can do is take as many night shifts at the hospital as possible, where they’re exempt from the switch off. In the house she will have to carry a torch and try to be alone as little as possible. When the switch off comes it’s effects are worse than she could possibly have imagined. Someone is coming into her home. Late at night when she’s shivering under the covers, too scared to move. Someone is leaving behind strange gifts – a third goldfish is swimming beside Brad and Jennifer in the bowl, a horrible painting of a dragon has replaced her own photo on the stairs, a pair of candlesticks in the kitchen. With them he leaves a strange and unsettling note: 

‘I have you in my sights. Love, the Night.’

Where can Grace feel safe if not in her own home? She’s an interesting character, clearly badly affected by childhood trauma and the memories of her previous, abusive relationship. The author opens with a first person account of being locked in a small pitch black space, it’s so vivid I could feel her fear. Grace tells us she was locked in a cupboard by the other children at school, where they continue taunting her until she wets herself. Since then she has always kept the lights on after dark and her partner sleeps in an eye mask to avoid the constant light. She also works at night where she can and sleeps in the day at home. She works as a carer in the hospice, spending a lot of time sitting beside those who are close to death, once her other tasks are completed. She didn’t go to university because she had a baby boy while very young and he has recently left home to live with his partner. Grace moved in with her own boyfriend and he has promised to be home in time for first big switch off. However, when she’s counting down the minutes, torch in hand, her partner is nowhere to be seen. 

The author shows brilliantly how even a strong and capable woman can be triggered by something that others barely notice. She touches on how the lights out policy affects the wider population – hypothermia in the elderly, rotting food defrosting and causing waste, a rise in crime. For others the lack of power has some positives, people can’t hide or be distracted by screens and communication within families will improve. Grace has been a single mum and she works well with people who are dying, so we know she isn’t scared of the big stuff. So why has one experience from childhood left such a huge impression? Her mother had always hoped she’d grow out of it and now the twelve hours of darkness must surely mean she must face the fear? It’s like state sponsored exposure therapy. Then ‘the night’ starts visiting and suddenly the dark covers up worse fears, new ones that are very real indeed. Even worse, her night visitor isn’t breaking in, so surely they must have a key. She is unsure how to deal with it and ringing the police is pointless when they’re dealing with a darkness induced crime wave. 

In between Grace’s sections of the story we meet a man who is in therapy. He left me feeling very on edge and I found myself wondering how I’d react if he were my client. He seems very unaware how counselling works, despite it being a fairly common concept these days. He also responds strangely to the therapist’s standard introduction. He fidgets, stands and paces round the room and I was uneasy on the therapist’s behalf. He seemed agitated. He’s convinced that his girlfriend is seeing another man. Is he paranoid? We have no idea how he fits into the story, but I was intrigued by him. Grace’s world becomes even more confusing when someone from her past turns up at the hospice as a patient. She knows she should disclose their connection, but if she does she knows she won’t be able to work with them. She decides to keep it to herself so she can sit with them. What clues, if any, might they have about her childhood and could what they know help her fear of the dark? As the pages turned I became more and more suspicious of her partner. Never home when he says he will be, distracted and very unsympathetic. I didn’t like him from the start and wondered if he was exercising coercive control over her. The moments when she’s under the covers with her heart racing as she hears her intruder moving around downstairs are truly terrifying. Yet he doesn’t seem malicious. He seemed to enjoy her fear and I even wondered if the night was closer to home than she thought. The truth was even stranger than expected and I found myself rooting for Grace, wanting her to get some resolution about her night visitor but also more long term relief from her phobia. That could only come from openness and facing the truth of her childhood and that time in the pitch dark cupboard. This is an enjoyable thriller with interesting insights on how childhood trauma affects us and how early relationships can inform the attachments we form in later life. 

Out Now from Hodder and Stoughton

Meet the Author

Louise Swanson’s debut, End of Story, was written during the final lockdown of 2020 – also following a family tragedy, it offered refuge in the fiction she created. The themes of the book – grief, isolation, love of the arts, the power of storytelling – came from a very real place. The second Swanson book will arrive in hardback and eBook spring 2024. Watch this space. 

Swanson, a mother of two who lives in East Yorkshire with her husband, regularly blogs, talks at events, and is a huge advocate of openly discussing mental health and suicide.

She also writes as Louise Beech. Beech’s nine books have won the Best magazine Book of the Year 2019, shortlisted for the Romantic Novel of the Year, longlisted for the Polari Prize, and been a Clare Mackintosh Book Club Pick. Her memoir, Daffodils, was released in audiobook in 2022, and the paperback version, Eighteen Seconds, in April 2023..

Posted in Netgalley

The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Set on an isolated Scottish island called Eris, where the mainland is only accessible at high tide, an infamous artist has retreated from the world. Twenty years ago Vanessa’s notoriously unfaithful husband visited the island then went missing. After Vanessa’s death, the island became the home of local GP Grace, often referred to as Vanessa’s companion or friend. However, all her artworks were left to an art foundation set up by her first agent. The curator of the foundation is Becker, hired for his expertise in Vanessa’s work. He is under pressure from the new owner to extract the last of Vanessa’s work from Eris. They have tried polite enquiries, legal letters and ultimatums but they are sure this has all been in vain and that Grace is deliberately holding back. Now a situation has arisen with one of Vanessa’s found object installations already on display in the gallery. A visiting doctor is convinced that the bone suspended in a glass box is human. They withdraw the box from view and contemplate having to break it open to have the bone properly tested. The unspoken thought on everyone’s mind is whether this might solve the mystery of Vanessa’s missing husband? It’s an opportunity for Becker to tell Grace face to face, but also to address the missing works that must be on Eris. He feels this is the best way forward; a last ditch attempt before legal action. However, visiting Eris is not without it’s risks. Are all of it’s secrets and lies about to be uncovered. 

I’ve been waiting to love a Paula Hawkins novel ever since the brilliant The Girl on the Train, which was THE novel to be reading when it first came out. It was a successful film too, even though I felt it lost something when transferred to America rather than it’s London setting. Her following novels haven’t really stayed with me in the same way, even though they were page turners. This story really did grab me. I love reading about the lives of authors and artists, because they’re always interesting characters with depth and complexity. They also usually have atmospheric settings with the sort of rambling houses I dreamed of living in when I was little. This had all three and I truly couldn’t put it down, choosing it over TV in the evening and going to be early with it too. The story was intriguing too, with the mystery of the human bone to be solved but also the missing works of art, not to mention Vanessa’s husband. Vanessa has always insisted he left the island and his wallet was found washed up near the causeway suggesting his leaving was ill-timed and the tide came in as he was crossing. Becker is torn. He knows that they must test the bone, but he feels sick at the thought of destroying one of Vanessa’s works in the process. His boss agrees that he must travel to Eris to discuss it with Grace in person and take the opportunity to bring back any works he finds that should be in the gallery. 

I loved the complicated relationships in this story. Even Becker is in a strange relationship triangle. He arrived at the foundation specifically look after Vanessa’s legacy, but there was more change when Vanessa’s agent died and the house, grounds and art foundation passed from father to son. Also left behind were his frail and elderly wife and his son’s fiancée Helen. Becker was immediately attracted to Helen and to his surprise his feelings were reciprocated. This ultimately resulted in Helen leaving her fiancé for Becker and moving to his cottage on the estate. They are now married and Helen is pregnant with their first child. Becker had expected to lose his job over the affair, but his new boss was surprisingly gracious. Becker is from a modest background and he sometimes can’t believe that Helen chose him, besides her ongoing friendship with her ex-fiancé leaves him uneasy. This is a man who has everything and now he must leave Helen in his hands, so he’s feeling very conflicted about his trip to Eris. 

Grace is absolutely fascinating and her relationship with Vanessa is complex. She is aggrieved that Vanessa ‘left her with nothing’ neatly ignoring the fact that she now owns the house and island. The foundation’s position is that Grace has withheld certain paintings, sketches and Vanessa’s diaries. She comes across as a borderline personality. Her early experiences have left her feeling unwanted and inadequate leaving her unable to form healthy relationships. In order to be accepted she has learned to blend her personality to fit whoever she’s with, but sadly has no idea who she really is. When she wants to form an attachment she makes herself indispensable to the other person. In Vanessa’s case she becomes quietly present, in the background preparing meals, cleaning the house and making sure Vanessa has all the conditions she needs in order to create. In her way she feels she has contributed to the works Vanessa produces. There is no word for what Grace is – friend or companion is the usual – but really she’s like a servant, always anticipating their mistress’s needs. Most of the time she feels indispensable to Vanessa, but occasionally she is displaced from her position, by the latest lover or her ex-husband popping in and monopolising Vanessa, until she abandons work and spends time with him, often not leaving the bed for the duration of his visit. Grace hates him, often retreating to her cottage across the causeway until she sees his little red sports car departing the village. Then there are heated arguments and recriminations over his visit until the pair settle once more into their usual routine. Grace fears abandonment. She remembers the relief she felt when she found her tribe at university only to return home from lectures one day and find that her two friends have moved out of their shared house without even a note. As the village GP Grace is clearly intelligent and skilled but I worried about her access to vulnerable patients. I couldn’t decide whether she was a tragic figure, or a sinister one. 

Vanessa could be volatile. Her tempestuous friendship with her agent was well known and friends were surprised that she left him such a huge bequest on her death. Her marriage was also a rollercoaster of ups and downs, both of them drawn to each other but utterly incapable of living together. Could one of their legendary fights have gone wrong? As Becker arrives on Eris a battle of wills develops between him and Grace and secrets will out. The author keeps you guessing; is Grace the victim or persecutor? Is she holding on to the diaries because they incriminate Vanessa? Or is she trying to preserve the memories of her life with her friend, in the only place where Grace has felt like she’s home? The author pitched the tension perfectly and I devoured the final third of the book. We move between Becker’s narrative and Grace’s, alongside excerpts from Vanessa’s diary where each excerpt or reminiscence reveals about her clue or changes the story dramatically. Above it all is the artist – a figure we might imagine we know through their work, but art can be a mask, just a way of painting over the cracks. The diaries offer a less curated Vanessa, as well as the raw and unvarnished truth. Eris stands above all as a mystical landscape, like one of those places in a horror film that you can never leave no matter how hard you try. This was a brilliant thriller where you’re never sure about the truth until the very end.

Out Now from Doubleday

Meet the Author

PAULA HAWKINS worked as a journalist for fifteen years before writing her first novel. Born and brought up in Zimbabwe, Paula moved to London in 1989. Her first thriller, The Girl on the Train, has sold more than 23 million copies worldwide. Published in over fifty languages, it has been a Number 1 bestseller around the world and was a box office hit film starring Emily Blunt.

Paula’s thrillers, Into the Water and A Slow Fire Burning, were also instant Number 1 bestsellers.

Posted in Personal Purchase

By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult

Posted on by thelotusreaders

In Manhattan, Melina Green finds out that women’s voices are worth less than a man’s. Theatre critic Jasper Tolle eviscerates a play she has entered into a competition and it knocks her confidence so badly she finds it difficult to get her theatre career off the ground. Years later, her best friend Andre encourages her to write about her ancestor, 16th Century poet Emilia Bassano. Emilia has been described as the ‘dark lady’ of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Melina is inspired, furiously researching Emilia’s life and the possibility that she might have written for the stage, despite it being banned in Elizabethan England. She then wonders if she used a pseudonym or submitted her work under another playwright. Melina starts to read about the Shakespeare conspiracy – what if the bard didn’t write all those incredible plays after all? There are many theories out there about who could have written them, but what if the playwright was Emilia? Melina is inspired, ferociously writing her play. Andre is also inspired, after they celebrate her finishing the play and Melina sleeps, he decides to enter the play into a festival taking place ‘off off Broadway’. Cleverly deleting the last few letters of her name he enters it with the more ambiguous Mel Green. Could this be her big break and her chance to prove that women writers are still sidelined, even in the 21st Century? 

I’m a huge fan of Jodi Picoult and I met her when she was in the UK promoting her book Sing You Home. Her books usually follow a pattern of presenting controversial issues -abortion, racism, the Holocaust – then testing them through the legal process. The first book that really caught the UK imagination was My Sister’s Keeper where a young girl takes her parents to court for medical autonomy, after she has donated blood and bone marrow to her sister with leukaemia. She’s had no say in these medical procedures and feels like she’s spare parts for her sister. This new novel is a complete departure from this tradition and it reads like a labour of love. I collected my copy from The Rabbit Hole Bookshop in Brigg and had read several chapters while we drove to Liverpool. Picoult has a brilliant way of drawing you straight into the character’s world and this book is no exception, despite it spanning several centuries. Picoult’s best novels are the ones where she can touch on her Jewish heritage such as one of my favourites, The Storyteller. This has definitely played a part here and the passion with which she tells Emilia’s story makes everything come alive. 

Emilia is the sort of character I fall in love with. She’s determined, intelligent and dreams of being much more than women are allowed to be. Life deals her a terrible hand at times, but she tries to make the best of it. Sometimes she’s desperately struggling to survive and other times she’s living in the lap of luxury. Historically we only know fragments of Emilia’s life but she is mentioned in an article written by Elizabeth Winkler entitled ‘Was Shakespeare a Woman?’ We know that Emilia was from a Jewish family who kept up a pretence of Christianity outside their home. They were court musicians under Elizabeth I which dragged Emilia into the fringes of court life. Most information on her comes from the diary of Simon Forman who was an astrologer/doctor and he describes her as a woman who is sexually progressive and has one illegitimate child. He describes her as the paramour of Lord Hunsdon until she became pregnant and was then married off to a minstrel. Hunsdon was Lord Chamberlain with responsibility for entertainment and the theatre. Foreman describes her as beautiful and intelligent, but gives her the sad news that she will become pregnant again, but will miscarry. Picoult uses these small facts and others she’s found to flesh out this fascinating woman and pose the theory that she could, at least in part, have written the plays attributed to Shakespeare. The page is the only place where Emilia has any power or agency. She was brought up by a countess away from her family, the head of the family then sells her to Hunsdon as a courtesan and then to the minstrel Alphonso who squanders all of the money Hunsdon settled on her. Could this lack of agency have possibly create female characters with the sass of Beatrice, the adventurer in Viola, the manipulative and power hungry Lady MacBeth or the shrewish Katherine? 

There is so much to love here, from Emilia’s personal story with it’s twists and turns, to the fascinating possibility that Shakespeare is merely a front  rather than our greatest ever playwright. I enjoyed the idea of this woman who occupies a liminal space in so many ways: Italian by descent batt living in England; living humbly but entertaining the dazzling heights of Elizabeth’s court; Jewish but masquerading as Christians; living a rich lifestyle with Hunsdon but in the precarious position of a courtesan; a woman hiding her immense talent behind a man. Every single part of her life is a masquerade, in fact there are only two men she is herself with. She lets go with her secret lover Southampton and her great friend Kit Marlow – a friendship that beautifully echoes Melina and Andre’s relationship centuries later. Picoult’s skill in setting a scene takes us directly into Elizabethan London and we see the city at it’s extremes due to Emilia’s huge changes in fortune. The house she grows up in is a far cry from the humble home of her family and Hunsdon’s home is grander still. Then what follows are terrible years of hardship and violence, where she’s little more than a servant. They have very little to eat and we really see the squalor and poverty of the capital in those moments. I enjoyed the idea of literary salons as a space where women can freely share their talent and it’s only her position as Hunsdon’s mistress that gives her access to contemporaries like Spenser, Jonson and Marlow. I felt like even if the reader doesn’t agree with Picoult’s theory on Shakespeare her evidence is compelling and you realise she loves Britain and it’s literary tradition. 

The modern day narrative does pose some interesting questions about authorship, especially the opportunities for women. As someone who reads female authors the majority of the time it seems like the opportunities are there at first glance. Yet I took on board all the points made here, how in a commercial space it’s hard as a woman to secure financial backing for their creative ideas. Especially where those who hold the purse strings are men. Although I was interested in Melina’s story I didn’t feel as connected to her as a character in the same way I did with Emilia. When the historical story is so dramatic and heartfelt it can overshadow the present day narrative. Overall though I loved this book and it’s up there with my favourites of the year so far. I felt completely transported to Elizabethan London. As for the premise, it’s an interesting one and the afterword brilliantly backs up her theory with points from her background research. It certainly gave me something to think about where Shakespeare is concerned. I could see why people question his authorship, but I can also see the all the reasons why such claims are rubbished and denied. What I’m taking away though is what an incredible woman Emilia was, with or without the possibility she was a playwright. I’ll definitely enjoy exploring around the subject further and I know this is a book I’ll be re-reading in the future.

Published 10th October by Penguin

Meet the Author

Jodi Picoult is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty-nine novels, including Mad Honey, Wish You Were Here, The Book of Two Ways, A Spark of Light, Small Great Things, Leaving Time, and My Sister’s Keeper, and, with daughter Samantha van Leer, two young adult novels, Between the Lines and Off the Page. Picoult lives in New Hampshire.

Follow Jodi Picoult on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter: @jodipicoult

Posted in Random Things Tours

Dark as Night: Forbidden Iceland 4 by Lilja Sigurdardóttir

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I always look forward to a new book in the incredible Àrora series and this one really delivers! It takes two long-standing mysteries in the novels and sheds new light on everything we thought we knew. The disappearance of Àrora’s sister was the only reason she came to Iceland from the UK. She works as a financial investigator, usually in the area of tax. She’s built a life here, including a relationship with detective Daniel. Now she’s contacted by a woman who says her young daughter has memories of being Arora’s sister Isafold and they’d like to meet with her. Àrora is a straightforward and rational woman, but I remembered those lonely months where she trawled old lava flows with a drone, based on nothing but a feeling. She knows that Isafold is dead but finding her has been a compulsion for so long. How can she ignore what this little girl has to say? Lady Gugulu has been living in Daniel’s garage conversion for a long time. Once a science student and potential academic, he leads a quiet life and makes his money performing as a drag artiste. He and Daniel have become close so he’s shocked to find that his tenant has suddenly vacated the garage without a forwarding address. When three men turn up, Daniel has a sense that they’re investigators or secret service. Whoever they are, they’re leaving no stone unturned. A black eye and split lip later, he enlists Àrora to look into his friend’s finances in the hope of finding his whereabouts.

In turn Daniel convinces his superiors to take another look at the missing person case opened on Isafold and her violent boyfriend, nicknamed the ‘Ice Bear’. He also wants to look into the parents and background of the little girl who knows things only those closest to Àrora and her sister would know. How does she know these details and could she possibly be genuine? I loved how the author played with doubt and belief when it came to this little girl. Àrora is very shocked that she knows Bjorn’s nickname and that their father called Àrora his troll girl and Isafold his elf girl. Their father was a weight trainer and Àrora definitely took after him. She still trains and is currently trying to increase her lifting weight. She’s been having steroid injections but knows they’re having an affect on her libido and emotions. She’s been irritable and takes her moods out on Daniel at times. Now she’s transfixed by the little girl and genuinely feels like she’s back with her sister when they meet. Every time they talk I felt she left Àrora on a cliffhanger. Just when Àrora is trying to stay rational, she reveals something that only Isafold could know, even confirming that Àrora is right and her sister is lying in black lava. Daniel is sceptical and suspects the parents of coaching their daughter. He brings in a child psychologist and I was absolutely glued to their session, dying to see what would come next with so many unexpected twists! 

I’d always been intrigued by Daniel’s lodger but I’d never imagined this background and I was so worried for him. Having been treated to a second visit from the men in black, Daniel knows he’s dealing with either foreign agents or interpol. The best thing is to put Àrora on the trail and as she sets off to the Canary Islands to talk to Lady Gugulu’s mother. She’s suspects he’s used several identities over the years, but what exactly is he running from? As the men in black turn over the whole garage, Daniel gets the feeling they’re not just looking for his friend, they’re looking for something. It’s great to see Daniel and Àrora going the extra mile for each other in their investigations. There’s an incredible trust built up between them, because these people are so precious to them and the outcome of the investigations could be life-changing. They’re also confronting a reality that stretches their credulity: Daniel has to suspend his disbelief around all things mystical. He sets out expecting to find a rational explanation for the little girl’s apparently supernatural knowledge, treating the family as suspects rather than witnesses. I was glued to this part of the story, truly expecting evidence that they were scamming Àrora in some way. Similarly the revelation that Lady Gugulu has been on the run from the authorities is utterly unexpected. Daniel’s always known that his friend was intelligent but as Àrora starts to uncover an academic background at Oxbridge and a very unexpected career path Daniel has to accept the possibility that his friend is not what he seemed. As he says, it’s as if he has James Bond on his trail. It was lovely to spend some time with a character who always been in the background up till now. I enjoyed learning about his academic and romantic past, moving beyond his sexuality and drag persona. He proves himself incredible resourceful and resilient on this journey and my admiration for him grew enormously. 

This was an enthralling addition to the Forbidden Iceland series. I loved that the author isn’t easy on her heroine, allowing the reader to see her flaws and her vulnerabilities and how they drive her actions. She’s a proper three dimensional character and hard to like in parts, particularly in the way she treats Daniel. Although, their teamwork is incredible and their ability to lean on and trust each other speaks volumes. We all know thrillers that are addictive at the time, but instantly forgettable. Here the writing was tense and addictive, but the deep and intelligent characters stay with you. The unifying story across all these novels has been Àrora’s loss of her sister so to see her search potentially moving forward was quite emotional. While someone is missing there’s always an element of hope and this is the first breakthrough in a long search. This could tip Àrora and her mother from hope, into the depths of grief. It also opens up the question of Àrora’s prolonged stay in Iceland which might come to an end if Isafold is found. The little girl who holds all this potential knowledge is a fascinating character, beautifully written with a feeling of the uncanny and otherworldly about her. Could she genuinely hold the key to Isafold’s disappearance? A strange separate narrative that’s unattributed took me all the way back to the first book and a potential clue about what might have happened to Àrora’s sister. I didn’t want to put this book down at any point. It is simply the best so far in a series that gets better and better. 

Published by Orenda Books 10th October 2024

Meet the Author

Icelandic crime-writer Lilja Sigurdardottir was born in the town of Akranes in 1972 and raised in Mexico, Sweden, Spain and Iceland. An award-winning playwright and screenwriter, Lilja has written eleven crime novels, many of which have been translated into multiple languages and hitting bestseller lists worldwide. Lilja has won The Icelandic Performing Arts Award for ‘Best Play of the Year’, The Icelandic Crime Fiction Awards twice, been longlisted for the CWA International Dagger, been shortlisted for the prestigious Glass Key Award twice and had a Guardian Book of the Year. The film rights for the Reykjavik Noir trilogy (Snare, Trap and Cage) have been bought by Palomar Pictures in California. She lives in Reykjavík, Iceland, with her partner but also spends considerable time in Scotland.

Posted in Random Things Tours

The Torments by Michael J. Malone

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I was bowled over by the first novel in the Annie Jackson series – The Murmurs. I already knew that Michael was an incredible writer, able to bring great compassion and intelligence to his characters while delivering a page turning thriller. The added elements of the paranormal and Scottish folklore really grabbed my attention and fulfilled my craving for all things weird and gothic. Here we find Annie living in her little cottage with a view of the loch, the only place that gives her peace from ‘the murmurs’ that can strike at any time beyond the walls of her home. The murmurs are sibilant whispers letting her know that someone close by is near to death. A vision of a skull appears over the person’s face, followed by a horrible premonition of how they meet their fate. One day, while working a shift in the local coffee shop, Annie can hear the whispers and feel the rising nausea. This vision is for a young local man called Lachlan. Annie sees a terrible car accident and Lachlan’s vehicle wrapped around a tree. Torn between warning him and drawing attention to herself, or walking out and ignoring the vision, Annie chooses a middle ground. She tells him his tyres are bald and he really should change them. Even this course of action backfires as only hours later she is berated by a man who comes to tell her Lachlan is dead and she could have prevented it, but didn’t. The rumours about her powers go into overdrive as people realise Annie is the woman who found the bodies of several murdered women. 

Annie can’t win. She’s either dismissed as sinister or even mad or she stays quiet and is blamed for whatever ensues. Desperately wanting to hide from the world, she hopes her little cottage will continue to protect her from the murmurs, but hadn’t banked on how angry locals would be. They break her windows and target her house with red paint. Thankfully, her twin brother Lewis arrives to stay and help just as their adoptive aunt visits, hoping that Annie’s gift might help someone in need. She wants them to look into a missing person case; a young man called Damian has disappeared and she suspects something sinister has happened to him. Damian has had a very complicated past, including ending up in prison on one occasion, but in recent months he had calmed down due to the birth of his son Bodhi. While Annie is keen to explain that she isn’t a medium and can’t find people on command, Lewis thinks they might be able to help. Why not research and interview people like a private investigator? Then during their investigation if anything comes up for Annie they can act on her ideas. What awaits them is a surprising and complex puzzle, that seems to include the dark arts and a woman with the ability to ‘glamour’ others. This time Annie could be in serious danger. 

Michael moves us through different timelines and perspectives, from Annie and Lewis’s investigations to new characters called Ben and Sylvia who are pupils at a private school several years earlier. I found their tutor very disturbing, almost grooming both of them into his fascination with the occult. He’s chosen exactly the right students to draw into his web, students who are distanced or estranged from family and potentially vulnerable. His name is Phineas Dance – an awesome name for the villain of the piece! He gives them a reading list including Alastair Crowley and other proponents of the dark arts and they take to his teaching very well, particularly Sylvia who we watch become more obsessive as she matures. Their training involves ritualistic sacrifice, as well as the attainment of wealth and success – using their new powers to ensnare other followers of celebrity and influence. This leaves them both free rein to operate where they live, having local dignitaries in their pocket. Every few years they have a chance of ensnaring the Baobhan Sith, a mythical female deity who can unleash havoc. All they need is a sacrifice and who better than Annie? The author excels at creating a nail-biting game between Sylvia and Annie’s powers, with Sylvia drawing Annie towards her beautiful home and Annie’s murmurs being suppressed then surging again. Annie is confused by this strange sensation, that feels as if her brain is dialling in and out of a radio station! I was mentally begging her to resist Sylvia’s strange abilities and stay with her brother who is in a battle of his own. He’s using detective work to find out about their missing man Damien and unearthing a possible link to a terrible fatal accident that happened when he was only a teenager. Could this incident be behind Damien’s reckless and addictive behaviours? I loved his interactions with the detective working the missing person’s case, Clare is deeply suspicious of the brother and sister team at first. However, when she has an inkling that corruption might be at play she works in tandem with Lewis and they make a formidable team. I even detected a a bit of chemistry between them. This is a fast moving case, especially when Annie is targeted, meaning you won’t be able to put the book down until you know if she can be found before the ritual sacrifice begins. 

When you finish this book you’ll feel like you’ve been on a fairground ride! The author has a brilliant way of engaging the reader’s emotions, drawing us into the character’s inner lives in a depth that can be rare in thrillers. It’s his ability to make us root for this brother and sister pairing that drives this novel. I feel so much for Annie, who hasn’t asked for this strange ability she has but has to live with the consequences and it’s a lonely life. She’s misunderstood and shunned by people who really don’t understand how powerless and frightened she feels. It was great to see her with the back up of her brother, who accepts her abilities without question and doesn’t judge. Their bond felt very real and setting aside the paranormal elements of their quest, they did remind of the close bond I have with my own brother. When you add these characters to a great case, full of drama and danger, it makes for a very satisfying reading experience. I absolutely raced to the conclusion, never expecting the outcome and enjoying the twists along the way. It left me hoping for more from Annie and Lewis, with a hope that Annie gets a little bit of respite from the murmurs first.  

Published by Orenda Books 12th September 2024

For more reviews check out these bloggers on Septembers blog tour.

Meet the Author

Michael Malone is a prize-winning poet and author who was born and brought up in the heart of Burns’ country. He has published over 200 poems in literary magazines throughout the UK, including New Writing Scotland, Poetry Scotland and Markings. Blood Tears, his bestselling debut novel won the Pitlochry Prize from the Scottish Association of Writers. His psychological thriller, A Suitable Lie, was a number-one bestseller, and the critically acclaimed House of Spines, After He Died, In the Absence of Miracles and A Song of Isolation soon followed suit. A former Regional Sales Manager at Faber & Faber, he has also worked as an IFA and a bookseller. Michael lives in Ayr.

Posted in Netgalley

The Glass Maker by Tracey Chevalier

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Orsola is the spirited teenage daughter of the Rosso family, all glassmakers from the tiny Venetian island of Murano. She’s very young when she sees her father bleed out in the workshop after he’s struck in the neck by a shard of glass while making pieces for a chandelier. Out of his two sons, the youngest is quiet, solid and dependable and would have made the perfect maestro, while his eldest Marco is loud, egotistical and very proud of his skill with glass. Now the entire family’s fortunes lie on his shoulders as the eldest always inherits the title of maestro from their father. He needs to support everyone from his widowed mother Laura and her youngest daughter Stella. His promotion leaves room for another servente to become the apprenticed glassmaker, second only to the maestro. In an unusual move Marco employs Antonio, originally a fisherman he has always wanted to work with glass. For Orsola it is love at first sight. Meanwhile, she is looking for ways to supplement the family’s income and visits their patron and merchant, a Dutchman called Klingenhorn. He suggests that she approach the only female glassmaker in the city to teach her how to make glass beads over a heated lamp. Once her beads are of the right quality, Klingenhorn agrees to place an order and she sets to work with determination. Orsola is our window on the Rosso family and she imparts both their history and the history of the island with it’s amazing glassmaking heritage. It is a history filled with love, passion, duty, tragedy and ingenuity, plus a little touch of the magic that Venice has in abundance. 

It’s hard not to fall in love with Orsola because she’s so brave and independent, attacking life with a fearlessness that aligns her with the most important woman working in glass, Maria Barrovier. The family business is run by the men of the family, leaving the women powerless. Her mother has a great business brain and younger brother Giacomo would have definitely been a safer pair of hands, churning out the same simple glassware for daily use. Yet thanks to a circumstance of birth they are all at the mercy of the mercurial Marco. He is so dissatisfied with their usual output of plates and goblets that have been the Rosso’s bread and butter, he wants to make more ornate and decorative glass, but misses the fact that it still has to be functional.  Orsola keeps her own business dealings with Klingenhorn a secret from her family, telling them her bead making is merely a hobby. Her budding romance with Antonio is intoxicating, but she knows immediately that he wouldn’t be her brother’s choice for a husband. They spend moonlit nights marooned on Antonio’s boat dreaming of a life where they can be together, away from the rivalry his presence has caused in the workshop. The Rosso’s business is a rollercoaster and they have to face hardship, change focus and rebuild several times. The author takes us from the 17th Century plague that hit Venice hard, all the way through to the COVID pandemic. While centuries pass in the real world, somehow everything happens within Orsola’s lifetime. When I visited Venice for the first time, particularly in the evening, I had a strange feeling I might turn a corner and be in another century. Orsola rarely leaves Murano and Venice, only once venturing to the mainland, rowed by Klingenhorn’s slave. I felt that if Orsola actually set foot on the mainland she would suddenly age by decades. 

The time difference felt strange at first, but it soon felt completely normal. We get to experience the city’s heyday as a bustling port, filled with merchants and people of all races and places. We see that dwindle as time goes on and slowly native Venetians leave and tourists move in. The author explores issues that are important to the island today: the worsening of the acqua Alta; the building of flood defences in the lagoon; cruise ships dwarfing the city and disgorging hundreds of tourists into San Marco at once; the shops selling cheap Chinese versions of local crafts such as mask makers, leather workers and glass makers, undercutting local artists; the changing flora and fauna, illustrated by the dolphins reported in the lagoon during COVID when only residents were left in the city. The author explores that conundrum of the negative impact of tourism on the city, while also acknowledging the city’s absolute dependence on it’s visitors. The endless lament that Venice is sinking, only serving to heighten people’s desire to see it. There are those who feel Venice has become a theme park of of it’s original self. I utterly adore Venice and I’m going next year for what will probably be the last time as it is difficult for a disabled person to get around. The author mentions a Las Vegas hotel where a microcosm of Venice has been created, with some visitors thinking they no longer need to travel to see the city. Yet it’s picture perfect bridges and clean canals are miles away from the real Venice. Of all my memories of Venice, the most important are those that are far from perfect. It’s the churn of the mud in the Grand Canal and silty smell of the mud, the washing hanging above your head, meeting locals and their dogs walking after dinner and the sound of squeaking rubber against the dock as the vaporetto leaves it’s stop. We always laugh about the old man we met crossing a bridge into Castello who farted loudly, before laughing uproariously! I feel that spooky sensation I had walking round the back of La Fenice after dark and the smell of candles and incense as we heard mass in an unexpectedly beautiful church. It was watching everyday things that gave me an idea of living in Venice: the grocery deliveries; being rushed to hospital or having the rubbish collected by boats. It’s all these things that make Venice real and not a film set. 

Of course I was longing for Orsola to reunite with her one love Antonio and I won’t ruin your enjoyment by telling all, except to say that just like the real Venice, real life is rarely a romantic novel. However, what I enjoyed most was Orsola herself because she is a pioneer and an incredible business woman. In fact she succeeds precisely because she is a woman. While Marco inherits the business, his ego and inability to change could have derailed the whole family. The women in this novel ‘manage’ the men, working around them and often slowly drip feeding ideas and solutions to the men until they adopt the idea as their own. Whereas Marco never asks for advice and rarely takes it, Orsola recognises the shortcomings of the business or when a crisis is looming. She knows who to ask, consulting with Klingenhorn and his replacement Johnas, Maria Barovier and the women of Cannaregio about threading and stacking seed beads. Even as the novel comes up to date she’s still diversifying, opening a second shop in a busy tourist Calle of Venice itself and employing someone to crate the glass balloons and trinkets that are easily packaged and stowed in a suitcase. She survives by being pragmatic, recognising when to challenge and when to do her duty, even if her temper does get the better of her at times. The depth of research that’s gone into her story and the author recommends many sources in her brilliant afterword. She creates a Venice I recognise, full of beauty and history but also a real and imperfect place, reliant on the very thing that destroys it. She captures the soul of the island and of Murano too and the people who feel themselves as Muranese first and foremost. I loved the magic of these places and how it attracts the eccentric and eclectic characters who have made it their home over the years. From Casanova, to Peggy Guggenheim and the previous owner of her home, the Marchessa and her pet Cheetahs. It is a moving, vibrant and intelligent novel that I know I will want to read again and again.  

The Borough Press 12th September 2024

Meet the Author

Tracy is the author of 11 novels, including the international bestseller GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING, which has sold over 5 million copies and been made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth. American by birth, British by geography, she lives in London and Dorset. Her latest novel, THE GLASSMAKER, is set in Venice and follows a family of glass masters over the course of 5 centuries.