I’m writing this from a puddle of my own sweat and with a fan roaring in the background. Every animal has spread their body as far as possible across the wooden floor trying to keep cool. It’s been a stay at home month for sure as my neurological symptoms worsen when it’s hot, within a couple of days I had the texture of a wet noodle. So it’s been a month with lots of reading. I’m organised though, fans in both rooms I use a lot, ice cold water, lollies and ice chips, a neck fan and a handheld motorised fan that’s a god send. Nothing tells you that you’re middle aged more than a neck fan for Christmas. Especially when you’re pleased with it. I’ve been reading for the Squad POD Collective this month, then mainly NetGalley reads in between. There’s a huge range in these favourites as we go to Ireland, Liverpool, Norway, Italy and the US, from the aftermath of WW1 to the present day. There are family sagas, an incredible forbidden love story, a great start to a new crime series, the most talked about book on social media and finally a slice of whimsical joy from Matson Taylor. See you next month 📚
Look at that fantastic gothic cover! This is the dark and dangerous side to my favourite city as disgraced detective Mark Fletcher wakes up disoriented in the Castle Street Hotel. He’s horrified to find he’s in bed with a corpse, a man with a bullet hole in his head. How can he explain this when he has no memory of what happened last night? His finger prints and DNA will be everywhere, so will his disillusioned colleagues believe him if he calls it in? He can take his chances with his old team or he can run. This is the man who caught the Butcher of Bootle, only to watch his life rapidly fall apart nine months ago. Luca Veste takes us on a breathless chase through Liverpool while the crime team are playing catch up. We follow his old colleagues Kirkham and Abs as they investigate a body discovered in a garden in Kirby, making Brookside jokes along the way. Could these two deaths be linked? We’re also introduced to the Bonucci family, patriarch Salvatore and his second in command Gino and Frankie. Everyone knows the Bonucci family, they have legitimate business interests but underlying that is a criminal enterprise that’s seeped into every area of the city. They also blame Mark for the death of Salvatore’s youngest daughter Sofia, a huge lapse of judgement that went terribly wrong. Now Mark is trying to investigate who killed his bedfellow, Kirkham and Abs are 24 hours behind him, but could the Bonucci’s be closer? This is a nail-biting and action packed crime thriller that had me rooting for Mark from the moment he woke up. I loved the Scouse humour and the settings the author used as Mark jumps out of windows and even into the Mersey. The ending is such a shock and very clever indeed. I’m already waiting for the next book.
I’ve not written my full review on this but I can’t stop thinking about it and I’m dying to talk to other people for their opinion. We are introduced to Natalie, a trad wife influencer in the US with a hugely successful social media business and merchandising from their ranch Yesteryear. Natalie espouses the traditional life where the man is the head of the household and the woman looks after the home and their ever growing family. Her husband Caleb works the farm, while she runs the business with the help of two nannies and a producer. The monetisation paradox is clear to see, she’s making a living by preaching values that she doesn’t live by. Natalie wants her followers to embrace her trad view on family life, but has turned her ideology into a successful business run by a woman. Followers can watch her baking bread or collecting eggs from the chickens, but they don’t see her childcare or the producer who live on the isolated ranch with the family. Thanks to some clever remodelling of the house they also have all mod cons, but hidden from view with clever screening. Natalie tells women they should submit to their husbands, while agreeing privately that her own is an idiot. Without her this family would be lost. At university Natalie kept herself to herself, noting her roommate’s promiscuity and feminist viewpoint knowing she would become one of the ‘angry women’. Women who think they can have it all – the career, the marriage, the home, the children – end up doing it all and no wonder they’re angry. She still criticises the angry woman; seemingly never realising that’s exactly who she is and that her life is unsustainable. One morning she wakes up when it’s still dark, she can hear children having breakfast in the kitchen. Why hasn’t anyone put a light on? As she makes her way into the kitchen she realises that it’s very basic and her children are eating by candlelight. Except they’re not her children. The oldest girl is looking after them, but she doesn’t know her. Then she sees Caleb, but there’s nothing behind his eyes. They seem to living a real pioneer life, with everything done by hand, no hidden gadgets or shortcuts, no staff, no filming. Is this a nightmare? Has she been imprisoned here? Has she time travelled? You will ask all these questions alongside Natalie as the author takes you back and forth from the internet friendly lifestyle she created and the real thing. The author has managed to make an unlikeable character incredibly compelling, asks questions of this strange world where everyone has a real life and an Instagram ready life, and challenges ideals that current US politicians are advocating for women. The minute you finish this book you will want to find someone else who’s finished it so you can talk.
It was lovely to spend some time this month in one of Faith Hogan’s warm and welcoming worlds, this time on an isolated Irish island called Pin Hill. In this small community, sisters Blythe and Rae grew up with their grandparents at the family hotel in Hope Square after the death of their parents. Blythe’s ambition in life was to train in hospitality at university and follow her grandad into the family’s hotel business. Rae on the other hand was more of ‘go with the flow’ girl, spending her time with friends rather than learning the family trade. Yet, when we meet the grown up sisters, life hasn’t turned out as planned. Blythe lives in her own guest house at Still Water House with handyman husband Kip and daughter Siggy. Rae’s husband Marcus has died and she’s living alone in the Hope Street Hotel, where she’s run the family business with her husband for many years. What happened to place these sisters at odds with their expectations, especially Blythe who lived and breathed the hotel. As always Faith has created some great characters here in the rather strident and opinionated Blythe and her quieter, less confident sister. Blythe’s actually a bit much in parts and I found her very hard to like. We’re taken back and forth to the women’s teenage years where the explanations lie and uncover the secrets and events that set them on the wrong paths. While in the present day, Rae is struggling to maintain the hotel alone and has discovered financial problems her husband covered up. Unfortunately they aren’t the only secrets about her marriage. She has the help and support of niece Siggy and refugee Danial who’s just moved to the island with his grandmother. Blythe is suspicious of both of them and becomes obsessed with Rae’s potential plans for the hotel, setting herself on a path to disaster. This was a lovely, warm novel with great moments of humour in between the sister’s broken relationship. This is the perfect summer holiday read.
First of all I have to mention that gorgeous Art Nouveau cover on this novel, matching perfectly with the time period which is post WW1. This is one of my favourite periods for historical novels because I’m fascinated with the pace of societal change that ranged across class, gender and sexuality. It’s also a period where mental health issues and disability became much more prominent. Many men came home from the war with amputations and facial disfigurements, changing their lives forever. Of course many men didn’t return and every family was touched by loss either on the battlefield or in the waves of Spanish Flu that broke out after Armistice Day. Into this period of seismic change, Rue Baldry has written a beautiful story of forbidden love that touches the heart. Our two narrators are Albert and Edgar, who are both at a boarding school but for different reasons, despite being close in age. Albert was demobbed and needed a job, so is working at the school as a gardener. He has been through so much, yet is only 19 years old. Edgar is 18, a schoolboy from the middle classes who has just missed active service and longs to train as a doctor despite his dad’s wishes. When they meet there’s an instant affinity between them and we’re drawn into their fledgling love. This is a book that’s so evocative of the era whether it’s the old-fashioned British private school or in hell of the trenches. I thought the exploration of a class divide between the two men was very well done too and represented the societal changes in post-WW1 England. It’s impossible not to be drawn in by this love story, especially poignant considering these men were paved the way for the more permissive society we have today. There is no better representation of love is love,
In Ireland, Maggie has grown up hearing her mother tell her the bedtime story of The Glass Key. It’s a Nordic fairytale passed down by Maggie’s grandmother Anna Swan, who mysteriously left her home one stormy night years ago, never to return. Now Maggie’s grandfather has died and going through his things, Maggie is shocked to discover a faded wartime letter, asking him to take in a baby. In that moment she realises that Anna Swan was a woman of many secrets.
Only by travelling to Norway and discovering the story of four brave young women whose lives were forever changed by the occupation of their tiny islands, can Maggie uncover the shocking truth about her family – and finally unlock the mystery of the glass key…
I’ve still to write my review for this one, but I enjoyed it immensely particularly the WW2 timeline in the Norwegian islands that I knew nothing about. People displaced and lost during WW2 is close to my heart as my late husband was Polish and both of his parents were displaced during the war. I loved how the author showed how far the war reached and how it was only on one tiny uninhabited island that the young women could let go of it for just one afternoon. Amanda’s novels are real favourites of mine and this had everything – family secrets, hidden letters, forbidden relationships, espionage and some incredibly brave women. This should be on every historical fiction fan’s summer list.
Last, but definitely not least we come to Matson Taylor, not only a great writer but an all round good egg. His knowledge of art. architecture, and ancient Rome gives us a fabulous summer setting for this standalone novel about found family in the eternal city. A wobble on a new Vespa has Clemmie and Monty literally bumping into each other on a bridge flanked with angels as the novel opens. Monty’s injuries aren’t too severe but mean he can’t work on the renovation job he has in Rome. Now without a roof over his head and needing to recover from concussion (at least he hopes that’s why he can hear Octavian the cat talking to him) Clemmie and her friend Floss offer their palazzo. In their very unique home he finds the rest, relaxation and the care he has needed for a long time. You’ll fall in love with Monty who really is one of life’s innocents or what me and my mum call ‘new people’ who are on their first incarnation in the world. What he does have are secrets and a private grief that he’s never shared. Matson brings him together with the caring aspiring writer Clemmie and her friend, the flamboyant retired actress Floss. Add to these eccentrics a pair of food smuggling nuns, a man who lives in a converted ice cream van and a little twinkle of magic too. I never want Matson to stop writing because where else would I find scenes of nuns going to a gay disco? Set in the 1970s where the height of fashion is Floss’s new avocado en-suite, dazzling Rome is brought beautifully to life and as always there are deep emotions at its core. This is a wonderful comfort read for the summer, especially for those of us who are staycationing.
Here’s next months tbr, if I don’t get distracted of course!
The Lotus Readers 