Category: Monthly Wrap Up

Posted in Monthly Wrap Up

Monthly Wrap -Up July 2023

Posted on by thelotusreaders

As we pass the half way point of the reading year, I’m reading so many great books that I’m panicking about my end of year favourites. There wasn’t a bad read at all this month, but these are my absolute favourites of the bunch. With all the wet weather there isn’t a great deal to do outdoors so it’s been a blissful month for reading. Although, I must admit to a little bit of FOMO as people pop off to various festivals that are currently prohibitive due to cost and the fact I’m still recovering from my back procedure. Currently I can manage to be up and about for about 15 minutes at a time, but I’m hoping that will improve soon. I hope you’ve all had a brilliantly bookish July!

I loved this rather gothic dual timeline mystery from Freya Berry, with a fascinating setting of taxidermy and exotic animals. In 1932, Heinrich Vogel employs adventurer Emily Blackwood to come to his castle in Scotland and catalogue his taxidermy animal collection. She soon realises that she’s looking for a rather different treasure and through a book called The Birdcage Library, she follows the clues of another woman to bunches of paper secreted around the castle. In these papers is the diary of Heinrich’s sister-in-law Hester Vogel, who committed suicide by throwing herself from the Brooklyn Bridge. Emily becomes immersed in Hester’s life, as she is separated from the work she enjoyed to be a society wife and becomes stuck between two Vogel brothers. This is a fascinating story with amazing set pieces involving hummingbirds and the menagerie of animals in Vogel’s collection. As she reads Emily becomes increasingly suspicious about the remaining brother and exactly what is the real treasure he seeks? Sinister, intriguing and with two intelligent heroines.

This is another mysterious house with lots of conundrums to solve and isn’t this beautiful Art Deco cover incredible too? Sarah is a new employee arriving at Darkacre, the family seat of the Stilwells. Like many aristocratic families, WW1 has wreaked havoc on the men in this family. When their father died, the eldest son Hugo became the heir of Darkacre. Yet his time as heir was very short – he was killed on his return to the front leaving middle brother Maurice as heir to the Stilwell estate. Maurice was not prepared to be the master of the house and with double death duties already crippling the estate, he has learned fast. Unfortunately, he has returned from war a changed man too, plagued by nightmares, flashbacks and extreme responses to loud noises, an ailment then referred to as shell shock. With youngest brother Leonard severely disabled by his war injuries and struggling to come to terms with the loss of his limbs, the family are depleted and barely coping. However, as Leonard so cryptically tells us, perhaps it is no more than they deserve? Sarah’s arrival is the catalyst for this story and it isn’t just the relationship between family members that points to there being issues at Darkacre, soon a series of unexplained happenings start to gnaw away at the nerves of even the most stoic inhabitants. Especially the arrival of a mysterious, masked detective who claims to be trapped by rising water as a storm descends. A storm that rumbles all night, both outside and inside Darkacre. Exactly what is this family hiding? Brilliantly set in it’s time, with issues of loss and disability handled incredibly well

Wow! This is a searingly raw story, simmering with righteous anger and injustice. Set on a boiling hot summer’s day, you can almost smell the tarmac and diesel fumes. You can hear the traffic noise and feel the agitation and impatience of people trying to get to work without exchanging a word with anyone else. It’s too hot to breathe let alone exchange a friendly word. Em needs to get through her day at work, stay smart for her appraisal then find her way across London to reach the airport to catch an evening flight to Spain for her sister’s wedding. What follows is a total clusterfuck! This book is impossible to put down as the heat, her appraisal and strikes on public transport conspire to ruin her day. Not to mention the psychopath running round London and strangling women. Then she gets her period. I finished this book overnight because I just had to know what happened next. Em is determined and with the help of some new friends she is reminded that she doesn’t have to keep her landlords secrets, nor is it her fault that her much older, married boss sexually harassed her. It’s time to stop accepting the state of things and fight back. As Em becomes an unlikely heroine, this is a shocking indictment of the world we inhabit as women and a reminder not to accept it. Powerful, visceral and thought provoking.

This story is a slow burn, dual timeline mystery set in small town Australia. Katherine has moved to her husband James’s hometown of Lowbridge, a town with a very clear line between ‘the haves and have-nots’. Katherine is struggling with her mood and self-medicating with drink. James is hoping that the move will help her and has made it clear that they can’t continue as they are. He encourages her to get dressed and leave the house or go for a run like she used to. It’s clear something momentous has happened and their lives have imploded, but they are each dealing with it in different ways. When she does leave the house, Katherine accidentally stumbles across the town’s historical society and shows an interest in the exhibition they’re putting together. It’s something she can potentially help with and it’s enough to get her leaving the house. However, when she comes across a thirty year old mystery, problems start to arise. The disappearance of a young girl called Tess during the summer of 1987 has remained unsolved and Katherine thinks it may be time to highlight the case and perhaps jog people’s memories. She knows she must involve Tess’s family in the decision, but she doesn’t expect opposition from anyone else. It’s James’s opposition that surprises her most. He tells her to leave the mystery alone, that it will stir up trouble and it’s would be unhealthy for her to become wrapped up in another family’s grief. Katherine is determined though and with Tess’s family on board she starts to research what happened in 1987. Who has the most to lose from her findings? A brilliant depiction of how loss affects individuals and a whole town. Thoughtful, honest and addictive.

73 Dove Street is Julie Owen Moylan’s third novel and I thought it was a brilliant depiction of ordinary women’s lives in post-war Britain. What an incredible writer Julie Owen Moylan is, because within a few pages I was absolutely immersed in 1950’s London. This is a London I haven’t visited too often in literature, the haunted and broken post-war period rather than the glory and the drama of the the war itself. Here the war has a ghostly presence, shown by children climbing piles of rubble or an incomplete street that looks like a mouth with one of it’s teeth missing. The story is told through three women; Edie, Tommie and Phyllis. It’s Edie we follow to 73 Dove Street where she hopes to look at a room, with just a single suitcase and an envelope full of cash. Edie is almost put off by the mattress and pile of men’s clothes burning fiercely just outside the yard, but a voice summons her from an upstairs window and she recognises a place she can lie low. What is she hiding from? Tommie lives in the room below and works for an eccentric socialite who was once wealthy and popular. Outside work Tommie is lured to the seedy nightlife of Soho and the man she can’t quit. Phyllis is the landlady of 73 Dove Street, burning her husband’s belongings in the street after she discovered a terrible betrayal. She puts on a good front, an armour that she needs to cope with a past she won’t talk about. Slowly each woman’s story is unravelled and as we hear them it is so emotional, I found it deeply moving. It isn’t just the bombed houses that are missing. There are people locked in wartime, trying to carry on by avoidance, distraction or stepping around something there’s only one way through. I found this part of the book so beautifully rendered by this wonderful writer that the emotions were deeply felt.

A catastrophic climate emergency has spawned a one-child policy in the UK, ruthlessly enforced by a totalitarian regime. Compulsory abortion of ‘excess’ pregnancies and mandatory contraceptive implants are now the norm, and families must adhere to strict consumption quotas as the world descends into chaos. Kai is a 25-year-old ‘baby reaper’, working for the Ministry of Population and Family Planning. If any of her assigned families attempts to exceed their child quota, she ensures they pay the price. Until, one morning, she discovers that an illegal sibling on her Ministry hit- list is hers. And to protect her parents from severe penalties, she must secretly investigate before anyone else finds out. Kai’s hunt for her forbidden sister unearths much more than a dark family secret. As she stumbles across a series of heinous crimes perpetrated by the people she trusted most, she makes a devastating discovery that could bring down the government … and tear her family apart. I LOVE that Eve Smith doesn’t baby her readers. If there are hover cars that’s what she gives us. A two word description. No long flowery explanations of how they came to be, she just tells us what IS. She expects our own imaginations to keep up. The immediacy of her writing brings us slap bang in the middle of this alien world and it’s exhilarating. This is a great addictive thriller, involving one of women’s most emotive issues. It’s an emotional, intelligent and imaginative read from a writer who’s fast becoming my go-to for speculative and dystopian literature.

I LOVED the first two books in the Forbidden Iceland series, featuring detective Elma, recently returned to her home town of Akranes after several years working in Reykjavik. This story is a prequel and we meet her eventual partner Sæver as he looks into some very strange events surrounding a family reunion. This is not your average family though and I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to be at a party less! My sympathies were largely with hotel employee Irma who views the Snæberg family as if they are a totally different species. In a way they are, set apart by their successes and their wealth from the everyday hotel employee. So wealthy in fact that they’ve hired this entire luxury hotel for the weekend, with a full itinerary of activities and boozy dinners at night. It isn’t long before tensions and differences come to light: judgements and opinions on each other’s partners; family members who’ve lost touch and resent each other; teenagers who’d rather be elsewhere; parents who can’t connect with their children or each other. All cooped up together for a whole weekend. As the author moved our point of view from one character to another we realise this family has so many secrets. As a storm begins to roll in, cutting the hotel off from civilisation, horrifying truths bubble to the surface. Someone who has been waiting a long time for their moment makes their move in this complicated chess game. We don’t always see those who hide in plain sight and those we think we know could be monsters in disguise. I love this author’s ability to get inside the heads of her characters and pull the reader along with her. Here she builds a labyrinth of clues, red herrings and suspicious characters that I found absolutely impossible to resist. That’s why I was awake at 3am, with my attention split between the page in front of me and my ears attuned to even the slightest creak downstairs. After all you never know who might be watching….

I’ve looked forward to the new Polly Crosby novel for a while. I love her writing so I gave myself a lovely sunny weekend to completely wallow in the story. Eve has felt adrift since her mum Angela died, so her four brothers think it might be good for her to take a trip to the coast and clear out their grandmother’s studio. Grandmother Dodie was a painter and lived a fairly basic life in a small ramshackle studio just off the beach and all have fond memories of childhood holidays there. Close by is the strangely alluring Cathedral of the Marshes, a glass building so imposing it has the presence of such a holy building. Once, when she was a teenager, Eve had taken a dare to go into the cathedral with Elliot, one of the local boys. She remembers being terrified and running, but doesn’t remember much else about that night apart from seeing a painting standing on an easel – a portrait of her. How will it feel to be back in the place that still holds some of her best childhood memories? She finds a box under the sink filled with Dodie’s letters and reads of a hidden relationship and is plunged into a completely hidden part of her grandmother’s life, a powerful love affair with repercussions that lasted decades. We’re pulled back into the past to see what happened. As I was reading about the past I kept wondering who owned Goldsborough Hall now? The answer took many unwashed dishes and unhoovered floors to unravel. This was a beautiful hidden love story and an intriguing mystery as well, told with compassion and empathy.

What a brilliant month and as we creep closer to the end of the year I’m even more worried about how I’ll choose between them for the best of the year! I’ve been away this month and wanted to catch up on some books in series that I’ve only partly read. So I have to mention Matt Wesolowski’s Six Stories series. I took the remaining four books to Shropshire with me and out of all of them, it was Changeling that made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Not helped by the fact we were out in the very area between Chester and Wrexham featured in the story. This was a brilliant mystery and supernatural thriller combined and I can honestly say Ive never been disappointed by one of his books. I also enjoyed a paperback from Elizabeth Noble with the title Other People’s Husbands where the balance of a group of couples shifts when two people decide to have an affair. This was a brilliantly balanced novel that gives us the viewpoint of the two adulterers as well as other members of they’re social group. Can friendship and marriages triumph over this mistake, or has it blown everything apart? Both will appear in the next month on Throwback Thursday with a full review. Finally I must mention this lovely novel which was a Squad Pod Collective choice for July that I’m a little late starting. Minor Disturbances at Grand Life Apartments by Hema Sukumar was a very enjoyable holiday read about the residents of a an old set of apartments in Chennai, South India. This is a relaxing read, full of incredible detail with each resident facing a personal dilemma as well as the possible compulsory purchase of their homes. Review to come in the next few days. See you next time and here’s a peek at next month’s TBR!

Posted in Monthly Wrap Up

June Wrap-Up 2023

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Hello Readers, this has been a very tough personal month and it’s a surprise to me when I look at my blog to find how much I’ve read and then written about the above books. These are some of the best books I’ve read this year and for some it’s meant reading a couple of prequels beforehand which were equally good. I haven’t posted towards the end the month because I’ve had a bereavement. I lost my beloved dog Rafferty and I’m still not fully taking it in, never mind anything else. My energy is low, my sleep pattern is ruined and I feel bereft without his warm body next to mine. When Rafferty finally started to struggle with his heart it was difficult to contemplate a life without him in it. He’s been with me for sixteen years and it’s not been enough. Usually when reading he’s as close to me as he can be, so it’s odd without him. As we move forward we’re going to try and do some of those things that have been impossible while he’s been ill. We’re staying in a hotel for the weekend, returning to our old habit of visiting the cinema weekly and perhaps going abroad which we haven’t done in five years. I know that I’ll slowly learn to live with the loss and we’re all lavishing lots of love on our two cats which they’re lapping up! Here’s a quick look at my favourites this month, all of which I recommend highly.

This was a Squad Pod Collective read and since this was the third in the Emmy Lake series I decided to read all three and they were all fantastic. They’re based in WW2 and are full of historical detail, but also genuinely uplifting. We follow Emmy as she goes to work for a magazine, the Women’s Friend, in the hope of starting a career as a reporter. However, her job is to sort through and choose the letters for the problem page, presided over by the formidable Mrs Bird. Her rules are clear, nothing vulgar or remotely distasteful will ever grace her page. Yet Emmy is a modern woman who thinks differently, she would love the page to offer solutions and ideas for real problems faced by real women, tasteful or otherwise. By the start of this book, she has achieved that goal and is in charge of the problem page as well as writing a series of features on women doing war work. Things are settled when the owner is persuaded to sign the magazine over to his niece Mrs Porter in lieu of her inheritance. She has an entirely different vision for the magazine, a scrapbook of society parties and weddings, real fashion instead of the tips for looking good on a budget and no more dreary war features. How can Emmy and her colleagues keep their loyal readership, whilst trying to get rid of Mrs Porter? It’s not all magazine talk though. There are serious storylines set around Emmy and her friend Bunty’s work with the fire service and the horrors of the Blitz. There’s romance and having to keep the faith while the one you love is far away fighting in another country. There’s also a lovely camaraderie between women, as Emmy becomes closer to women from her war work articles. The issues facing women in WW2 were new to me and they’re shown in the raw, but still overall the books leave you feeling inspired by this loveable character’s resilience and spirit.

Another historical novel here from Amanda Geard, also set in WW2 but down under in Tasmania, intertwined with a storyline from the 1970’s and another towards the end of the 20th Century. The story begins as war seems inevitable and two little girls are sent to their aunt and uncle’s house Towerhurst in Tasmania, in the hope they’ll be safe from a war that’s expected to be contained within Europe. Grace Grey is Marcus and Olive’s niece, while Rose who travels with her is the daughter of their housekeeper. Rose is quite beautiful and the one people notice first, whereas Grace is rather awkward preferring to spend her time writing and reading poetry. They’ve escaped a household where the views of Oswald Moseley have become their cause and Grace’s mother was a proud black shirt. In Tasmania Grace falls for charismatic Daniel McGillycuddy, but can she seen past Rose’s beauty? What is it about these teenagers that spawns a story that lasts half a century? In the 1970’s Willow and Ben receive an anonymous inheritance, a house called Towerhurst in NW Tasmania. It sends Ben on a journey to find out about Tasmanian poet Daniel McGillycuddy, who returned to his native Ireland after fighting in WW2. Ben’s fact finding trip to London leads to a tragic accident and Willow bringing up their baby alone. In 2004 Libby flies from Tas to London to claim a satchel her father lost at the Moorgate Tube disaster. Using the clues within she tries to uncover a mystery that dates back to those two girls escaping the Blitz in 1936. This is the story of an incredible love, interrupted by war but never diminished.

My recommendations for this novel were some tissues, some chocolate and a cat to cuddle. I found it so deeply moving. Enid is struggling with aphasia, a symptom of stroke and dementia that affects comprehension and formulation of words. In fact Enid’s dementia is causing accidents and confusion, so much so that daughter Barb wonders if she should be living alone. However, this would mean separating her from her husband Roy, a devastating blow for both of them. Enid thinks this is temporary and Roy will join her in due course, meanwhile Roy is at home alone missing his wife. Tim Ewins writes Enid in such an intricate and beautiful way: sometimes she is watching life pass her by, sometimes she’s in the past falling in love with Roy or playing with her little girl and other times she’s further in the past with her first husband and all the terrible memories she has of his anger and violence. She’s experiencing all this in the same day, believing each reality to be the present. However, sometimes she has a surprising clarity and is very present, with a great sense of humour. Being so in touch with her past allows her to recognise the signs when a visitor comes in for another resident. Sometimes, Olivia is with her husband and Enid can see what this man is, he’s angry and dismissive. Enid builds a friendship with Olivia, but she wants to help her, to make her see that she doesn’t have to stay and that there is happiness, just look at her and Roy. I loved how Tim shows his main character living with an illness, despite her different realities she has formed a friendship and made someone’s life better. Tim has tacked his subject with his usual compassion and care, creating a book that had me reaching for the tissues.

I’m a big fan of Polly Crosby and this beautiful historical novel has cemented her position as a ‘must-buy’ author. In 1997, Eve is encouraged by her brother to stay in the rundown artist’s studio where her grandmother Dodie lived on the coast. Having lost Dodie and her mother, Eve has felt a little lost. This place reminds her of them both and family holidays where she and her brothers would fall asleep cuddled together like puppies after a day on the beach. Behind the studio stands the incredible Cathedral of the Marshes, a glass construction built by the Goldsborough family in the early part of the 20th Century. When clearing out her grandmother’s things, Eve discovers that Dodie had a link to the building. She painted Vite Goldsborough there, just before the war in 1938. In an echo of the past, Eve takes a commission to paint a local lady who is the key holder for the building. It’s the first time she’s been inside since accepting a dare to go in when she was a teenager. Slowly Eve begins to uncover long buried secrets that change the way she thought of her grandmother and also that night she first entered the glass cathedral and saw a portrait of herself. It’s a wonderful history of a family’s female line during the 20th Century and how much has changed for women in terms of making choices. This is a beautiful historical story of friendship, love and being your true self, no matter what others may think.

This is one of those books that takes precedence over everything, from the TV to the housework. I was utterly engrossed! Rachel is in her thirties and married to Tom, but part of her heart is still with a man she met on a Greek island in the summer after her A’Levels. Alistair was her first love and their relationship was special. It has given Rachel something to aim for in relationships because their love was the ideal. It was what love is supposed to feel like and Rachel isn’t sure she’s ever had that since. She and Tom almost ‘fell’ into living together, it was easy and they are best friends. Alistair was the kind of love everyone dreams of and her memories are reignited when she and Tom visit the island as a couple and they see one of the girls Rachel knew back then. As they talk an altogether murkier story emerges, of a nightclub staffed entirely by young women and the parties with older, wealthy men who like pretty girls around, especially young pretty girls. Rachel decides to find Alistair and reassure herself that what they had was the real thing. Yet in the background, stories of exploitation and manipulation starts to emerge. Could Rachel have everything wrong? This is a brilliantly addictive story, perfectly pitched for the #MeToo generation and even those of us who lived through very different attitudes towards women. It’s a book that’s ripe for adaptation, in a similar vein to The White Lotus series. Be aware though, once you’ve started the book, nothing will get done for the next 24 hours.

Essie Fox is an amazing author who covers subjects very close to my heart. The Fascination takes us to Victorian London and shows the seedy underbelly of what everyone thinks was a prim and buttoned-up society. We start in the rural fairgrounds and twin sisters Tilly and Keziah Lovell, whose father is a snake oil salesman, selling his elixir to people desperate for a cure. However it isn’t long before the girls are wanted as attractions, especially Tilly who is a perfect copy of her sister but in miniature. When their father sells them they end up with a troupe of curiosities working for the enigmatic Captain and Tilly is immediately in demand in London’s West End. Meanwhile, Theo first meets the girls when the fairground visits close to his home. His domineering father Lord Seabrooke has a unique collection of curiosities and exotic animals, so when Theo sees the girls he is fascinated. The lord’s remarriage is a turning point and Theo is cast out to find his own way in the world. His ambitions to be a doctor are thwarted without his father’s money, but his skills are a good fit for Dr Summerwell’s Museum of Anatomy in London. The girls and Theo’s paths will cross again, but it’s not long before his father hears of Tilly and her beautiful voice. If a man will discard his own son, just how ruthless will he be when pursuing a new item for his collection? Essie Fox has created an incredible world of fairgrounds, freak shows and theatre that was so perfect for this reader, fascinated as I am by disability history. I felt like I was watching a Baz Lurhmann film as the details of the fairground and the West End came to life. I was also frightened for the girls, desperate to know how their stories would end. This is an exciting and unusual period novel, telling the story of people who would have been considered ‘other’ and their unusual lives.

My final choice is the lovely Kate Sawyer and her new novel This Family. Set on one day, the matriarch Mary’s wedding day, this slightly fractured family come together and set aside all their differences to celebrate. Mary has three daughters and for this one day she wants Emma to speak to her sister Phoebe, she wants Phoebe to stay sober and for Rosie to stay quiet about the climate crisis. Just this once. Mary still lives in the house the girls grew up in and their father Richard lives in the annexe with his mother, who Mary has been looking after. The house is sold, so everyone is saying goodbye to a house full of memories including the huge tree in the garden where they’ll be eating dinner. Each sister has something to overcome. Emma’s childlessness has consumed her, so facing her new niece and nephew will be difficult. Phoebe hasn’t spoken to Emma for years. Rosie is the baby of the family, but her appearance in the family was difficult for the older sisters. Over the course of the day we hear from each sister’s viewpoint about their lives, sometimes the same event but from two different perspectives. The author shows us how different an event can look from two different perspectives. From all these fragments she weaves a tapestry of this family. She is always questioning how we construct reality, whether there is one true account of an event, or whether the story is fragmented, fluid and ever changing? This was a fascinating read psychologically and really made me think about how others see events we’ve shared and how families choose to overlook each other’s faults and bad behaviour, to come together and choose love, again and again.

Here’s next month’s TBR:

And finally here’s a picture of my beloved Rafferty, ‘helping’ with my reading.

Posted in Monthly Wrap Up

May Wrap-Up 2023

Posted on by thelotusreaders

May has been a lovely reading month because I have been able to read a few of my favourite authors – Essie Fox, Kate Sawyer and Lucy Atkins – but I’ve also been surprised by an author I hadn’t read before and an author that’s well known, but hasn’t been a favourite of mine until her last two novels. I’ve been able to read out in the garden for the first time this year. This is something I love because I really enjoy my garden in May/June. I can get settled on my day bed, with the cats and the dog usually squishing into my space, and enjoy being outside. Hopefully that can continue into next month when I have so much Squad Pod Collective stuff to catch up on! Here were my best reads of the month.

This amazing confection of historical and gothic literature from Essie Fox was right up my street! Using the backdrop of country fairgrounds, freak shows, the West End theatre scene and museums of curiosities, the author has created a reading experience with all the life and colour of a Baz Lurhmann film. We follow twins Keziah and Matilda Lovell, sold to the mysterious Captain at the county fair by their father, an unscrupulous snake oil salesman. Keziah and Tilly are identical except that Tilly hasn’t grown since she was five years old, she also has the voice of an Angel. There’s also Theo Miller, who catches sight of the twins at the fair then loses sight of them until they turn up in London. Theo is the grandson of Lord Seabrook, a rich man with a collection of human curiosities. Abandoned by his family, Theo turns up at a Museum of Anatomy, selling all manner of strange things from crystal balls to bats wings. When he sees Tilly perform in a West End pantomime he finds himself intrigued by the girls, but they have other admirers far richer and more dangerous than Theo. I loved this incredible story and how Essie Fox explores what it means to be other in 19th Century London. Fantastical, exciting and thrillingly different.

In a brilliant scene at a book event, author Hannah boxes herself into a corner. Used to writing literary fiction, she is disgusted to see the crowds gathering for a talk with popular crime writer Jorn Jensen. Hannah throws a book at his head and tells him she could write a crime novel in thirty days. Her friend and publisher knows a great marketing ploy when he sees one and dispatches Hannah to a remote town in Iceland. There she will stay with a woman called Ella who rents out a room in her house to writers. Unfortunately within days of arriving, Ella’s nephew is found murdered and Hannah finds herself in the middle of a real-life murder plot. If she can find out who the murderer is, maybe she has a good chance of writing a novel about it? However, investigating and having to listen to Jorn Jensen here and there, shows her that crime fiction is not the easy task she thought it was. In her debut novel Jenny Lund Madsen manages to give us a great murder plot, flashes of humour and a heroine who is both brave and flawed. This is darkly funny, dangerous and a clever satire on the bookish world.

No one was more surprised than me when I found myself placing Cecilia Aherne’s Freckles into my favourite books of the year in 2021. Now here’s another novel from her that is emotionally intelligent, moving and shows a different way of looking at the world. Alice’s mum doesn’t cope very well after their father leaves and is often to be found still lying in bed when they return from school in the afternoon. There are also times when they get home to find her up and about, on one occasion frantically cooking pancakes in every pan they have while costing out the launch of a travelling pancake van business. They never know which mum they’re going to get. So when Alice returns home to find her mum unconscious with a blue haze hanging over the bed she decides to call the emergency services. She hid in her bedroom only to hear the screams of anger when her mum is finally woken by the paramedics. No one else can see the blue colour still hanging around her mum. From then on Alice can read other people’s emotions by their colours, from the happy yellows, to the relaxed greens and the terrifying reds and blacks. How will she negotiate the world with this strange way of seeing life? I loved this tale of growing up a little bit different and how the formative difficulties in Alice’s life affect her moving forwards. This is a beautiful look at one woman’s life as she negotiates her difficult family, work, love and motherhood.

I’ve been fascinated with the Tudors for most of my life, influenced I think by the Holbein portrait of Henry VIII that sits in the library at Chatsworth House. He looks every ounce a King, just as his daughter Elizabeth I exemplifies the role of Queen in the Armada portrait. In later years I read more about the women surrounding this complicated King, from his six wives, to his mistresses, mother and grandmother. Henry, like his contemporary namesake, was the ‘spare’. Never intended to be King he remained with his sisters and mother in London, while the heir Prince Arthur got his own court at Ludlow and a beautiful wife in Katherine of Aragon. After writing a novel for each of Henry’s wives I was interested to see how Alison Weir would portray the man himself and I enjoyed the way she presented this complex and controversial man. This is the same story we all know but told by Henry, as he sees it. What I enjoyed most was the way Henry’s reign was put into context, the bloody years of the cousin’s wars showing what happens when a crown is disputed. His father Henry VII was constantly paranoid about his place on the throne, terrified that one of Edward IV’s sons might appear and claim it after their disappearance from the Tower of London. Finally, his brother’s death showed that not just heirs but spares were necessary in order to secure the crown. Weir is unparalleled as a historian and here she brings all of that knowledge to life. I felt as if I was there at court thanks to her wealth of description and it certainly left me feeling more sympathetic for Henry than I have previously.

I loved Kate Sawyer’s first novel The Stranding, so I was very excited to receive this novel about one day in the life of a family, gathered for a celebration. Mary, the mother of the family, is getting married and they are celebrating with lunch in the garden. As they all get the garden ready for the party we learn about the family from each character’s point of view, starting with Mary but extending to her ex-husband Richard and his mother Irene, plus the three daughters and their partners. Everyone has a different part of the tale to tell and they all see it differently. Blending together each character’s voice and perspective, Kate Sawyer builds a rounded view of this family. We see every side, the memories that are painful and those that bring joy, as these family members try to give Mary the day she’s asked for – the family altogether with no arguments and everyone keeping the peace. That’s hard when things are so complicated, especially between the sisters Phoebe, Rosie and Emma. I felt for each of them as they rubbed up against each other, remembering terrible things said and resentments long held. This is an honest account of a modern family, warts and all. It’s so moving and I was exasperated with a character one minute, then understood them when I heard their side of the story. Emotional and honest, with moments of joy.

I’m a big fan of Lucy Atkins so I was eager to have her new novel straight away, she’s one of those writers I just pre-order without question. I was lucky to get an early copy on NetGalley this time. This is her fifth novel and centres around two older women who live together in a windmill with several dachshunds named after brands of gin. Astrid was a successful actress, but is perhaps more well-known for her stormy marriage to the actor Magnus Fellowes. There’s also notorious ‘the incident’ at a remote hunting lodge where a young movie star was the victim of an assault. While Magnus went on to global fame, Astrid retired to her crumbling windmill. She still lives there with friend Mrs Baker, a woman who came to clean twenty years ago and never left. Now Magnus is writing his memoirs and his son, Dessie, has hired a ghost writer. Nina visits the windmill because she wants to hear Astrid’s side of the story, mainly because she’s finding herself censored by Dessie, who wants to control his father’s narrative. She finds the two women in the aftermath of the ‘incident’ often referred to but not explained at first. She passes on that Magnus might like to see a Astrid for one last time. The women in this are such fantastic characters, each in their own way hiding from something but both have learned that life has seasons and they are in control of this one. I loved the friendship they both build with Nina who is open to a friendship with two older women, perhaps realising how much wisdom and life experience they both have. There’s also a great tension that builds around the recent ‘incident’ and the one from years before, as Astrid leaves for Scotland feeling strangely unmoored but determined that this time Magnus will not be in charge. This is a thriller, but with humour, warmth and dachshunds.

Next month’s reading looks something like this:

Posted in Monthly Wrap Up

April Wrap-Up 2023

Posted on by thelotusreaders

It’s been a strange month and I haven’t read very much so I thought I’d share a very quick wrap-up for April. I’ve had a viral infection on top of my usual MS health issues so it’s not been easy to concentrate at all. Basically I had one of those months where all the wheels fell off! I’ve missed blog tours, forgotten publication day posts and have read about half of what I expected to. I also forgot my MOT was due, missed my mobile payment and got locked in a toilet! I felt like a disaster zone. I felt like a really bad blogger too. I hate letting people down, so I had to give myself a stern talking to. Although I know it’s important to keep our obligations and post about the books I’m lucky enough to be sent, there are times when I get overwhelmed and need to give myself a break. Of course I let tour organisers and publicity teams know when I can’t or haven’t met a date or tour asap, but I had to give myself a break. So that’s what I’ll be doing this week, checking through my diary and being realistic about what dates I can meet, and those I will be a little late on. I’m so grateful for all the books I’m sent and I know they’re sent for a reason, but I think it’s ok to sometimes admit to having taken on too much or that everyday life or health has cut into the reading time I usually have. I find that most tour organisers are lovely and kind about these difficulties. I have to remember that I’m not superwoman and I can’t do everything.

Someone Else’s Shoes is the latest novel from Jojo Moyes and follows two very different women as they accidentally end up with each other’s shoes after an accidental bag swap at the spa. One lives in the penthouse of the spa hotel, whereas the other is a print company salesperson who’s using a spa voucher before it runs out. As one woman, in cheap borrowed pumps, finds her life starting to implode the other finds that her borrowed Christian Laboutins are giving her confidence as well as contracts. This is a great look at how the other half live, but also a wonderful tale of female friendship and how powerful the support of other women can be.

Every Happy Family is a great novel about family, but written like a thriller. This is the first time in years that Minnie and Bert have had their three children under one roof for Christmas. Lizzie, Jess and even their eldest son Owen has come over from Australia. However, Owen’s teenage girlfriend Nora is also in the village, organising the clearance and sale of her mother’s house after her death. Owen became estranged from his parents after his break-up from Nora. Would it be wrong to invite her to share Christmas with them? Using flashbacks, the author slowly reveals what happened all those years ago and why the family are still feeling the fallout to this day.

Thirty Days in Paris was a brilliant escapist read where we follow Juliet as she rents a loft apartment in Paris to spend thirty days writing her book. She has been working for years as a ghost writer, but now she wants to write her own story. With an empty nest and newly divorced, she makes her way towards her future. But Juliet has been keeping a secret for the last two decades and she needs to resolve the past, before any more time passes. This is a romantic story, filled with beautiful French food, fashion and all the sights. I found myself quite lost in it’s pages and craving a city break as I turned the final page.

The Gin Palace is the second outing for Tracey Whitwell’s character Tanz who I fell in love with in her first novel The Accidental Medium. Tanz can talk to ghosts, but it’s a gift she didn’t want and she finds their constant chattering exhausting. When she’s offered an acting job in Newcastle, a new image starts to haunt her of an old Gin Palace with a very sinister figure guarding the door. With a little bit of detective work, Tanz starts to piece together the history of the building she’s seeing. The closer she gets though, the sinister figure takes the form of a poltergeist and he’s determined to keep his secrets hidden. He’s used to scaring people away, but he’s never met someone like Tanz before. This is a brilliant series, spooky but modern and seriously funny.

Strange Sally Diamond was an incredible read and another truly original novel from Liz Nugent. Sally can’t understand why people are so upset with her. When she asked her dying father about his final wishes he told her to put him out with the rubbish. So why are people angry that she put his body in the incinerator? Now Sally is in the glare of the village, the national press and has a strange watcher from the other side of the world. She finds out her childhood was not what she thinks, but can she overcome the horrors of that time and live as an independent adult? Maybe make friends, own a house and get a job? Do we ever escape our childhood? This is a brilliant psychological thriller, with a fascinating central character.

My May TBR
Posted in Monthly Wrap Up

My Favourite Reads February 2023

Posted on by thelotusreaders

It’s been a funny old month reading wise and at least two of my choices are books I should have read last year. MS affects my concentration so much and I think that inability to concentrate has definitely affected what I’ve chosen and what I’ve finished. There have been a few DNF’s this month, because I simply couldn’t get into the story or it didn’t hold my interest. I know these are books I’ll try again in a few months and possibly enjoy them so they’re never discarded, unless they’re the sort I’d rather throw out of the window, like Bradley Cooper in The Silver Linings Playbook. It’s no surprise to me that I’ve chosen a couple of books that are the latest in well loved series. I think we often turn to comfort reads when we feel unwell or low and being back with familiar characters was definitely soothing, even when they are crime thrillers. I also think it’s telling that all the books this month are thrillers, possibly because of the way they’re written and edited to pull you straight into the story and keep you turning the pages. There’s an addictive quality to a good thriller that seems to make it past my sluggish brain cells. Here’s to spring and hopefully some lighter nights and the garden coming alive will give us all a recharge. See you next month.

This was a proof I was sent last year and seemed to fall by the wayside, but I’m so glad I finally got the chance to pick it up! Set by the author in a community of foster homes in Scotland, this story was both compelling to read and fascinating psychologically. The author’s mother spent time in a real life version of a village just like this, something that piqued the author’s interest. It’s the perfect setting for a thriller precisely because this is a community set up to nurture children whose parents can’t take care of them and the thought that someone is stalking these vulnerable young women is terrible. In each cottage is a foster mother and father with several children, underpinned by a strict religious teaching from the church on site. They also have their own school, although our protagonist Lesley takes the bus early each morning and attends the nearby grammar school. Lesley is sharp and very good with patterns and numbers, emotionally she is most attached to her best friend Jonesey who has been in care alongside Lesley for as long as they can both remember. When a young woman is found murdered at the Homes it brings outside scrutiny, but also breeds fear and suspicion amongst the girls. As the police start their investigation, Lesley and Jonesey start one of their own and it soon becomes clear that not everything is as it seems in this community and in Lesley’s home. The intrigue and horror of the case is balanced nicely with getting to know Lesley’s story and how being placed in care affects children psychologically.

This is the latest in Elly Griffiths’s series based around archaeologist Dr. Ruth Galloway, who as well as teaching at the University of North Norfolk helps the police date and identify human remains. This story follows the pandemic and although some things have gone back to normal, there are lingering after effects from feeling anxious in close proximity to others to our favourite Druid Cathbad who is suffering long term symptoms of COVID. Ruth’s whole department is under threat from budget cuts and it’s while she’s waiting to hear the results of a review that she’s called to look at remains found in a café behind a wall. The café used to be The Green Man and it’s been closed for several years, but current renovations have unearthed a skeleton behind a wall. The remains are not ancient, so become the preserve of DI Nelson who opens an investigation. The bones belong to student Emily Pickering from Lincoln, who went missing approximately twenty years ago. She was a student of archaeology under professor Leo Ballard, so the team need to build a picture of others on the course and who she socialised with. Many threads take them back to a camping trip one evening near some ancient mine shafts. Everyone remembers some sort of ritual being performed and the sudden appearance of a horned creature from the woods, who terrified everyone. Other than the students and Leo Ballard, there was a familiar person present. Where rituals are being performed Cathbad is often close by, but when he goes missing too he becomes a missing person and a suspect. Personally, Ruth is at an intellectual and emotional crossroads. Still living on the salt marshes with daughter Kate and cat Flint, she is avoiding Nelson who is the father of Kate. His wife has left him, breaking the deadlock the three of them have been in and Nelson can often be found at the cottage overnight and on Saturdays when he drops by with pizza. She senses the big question coming ever closer, are they going to define their relationship and make it permanent? Or are Ruth’s other opportunities going to take her away from Norfolk?

This book was recommended to me by a fellow blogger and Squad Pod member Clare – The Fallen Librarian. It’s very hard to define, but combines elements of a thriller, fantasy and love story. Writer and bookseller Lily Albrecht has done more selling since her husband Abe was struck down by a mystery neurological illness that has seen him needing round the clock care. At a book fair in NYC she and friend Lucas are told about a secret client looking for a 17th Century book that’s supposed to be transformative for anyone who follows it’s advice. The Book of the Most Precious Substance is reported to be magical, if the reader anoints the book’s magical symbol with various signs of arousal a magical reaction occurs. Completing the steps can give the reader the thing they most desire. Lily and Lucas obtain the magical symbol and begin a geographical search for the book and the collector who is willing to pay millions for it. It’s a journey of five star hotels, strange eccentric millionaires and sexual discovery, but will either of them get what they want most? This is a brilliant page turner, with magical elements and real emotional depth.

I only reviewed this a couple of days ago, so I won’t give a full review here just a quick blurb. DS Grace is mourning the loss of his son Leo in a traffic accident, but the cases don’t stop coming and when a cold case links to a new incident Roy takes the case. Harry and Freya Kipling find a painting at a car boot sale that’s horrible, but Harry loves the frame. However when they discover a different painting underneath they decide to take it to the Antiques Roadshow. As soon as the show airs things start to happen, because in a chance of a lifetime it turns out that the painting could be a Fragonard, the missing Spring in his series on the four seasons. The couple are broken into but nothing is taken and when a body turns up outside a renowned forger’s house Roy believes the two things are linked. It’s surprising how far collectors will go to complete their collections, even as far as murder. This is an interesting and heart-stopping addition to the brilliant Grace series.

So that’s all for February. It’s a really busy March with lots of fantastic new releases and blog tours. Below is my TBR for the coming month. See you then. ❤️📚

Posted in Monthly Wrap Up

My Favourite Reads Jan 2023

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Welcome to 2023 at The Lotus Readers! It’s already looking like a busy one and if January is anything to go by there are going to to be some hot contenders for my round-up in twelve months time. I’m going to be spoiled for choice. There are going to be some new and developing projects this year that I’m excited about and I’m already planning into June. I’m doing a lot more work with the Squad Pod Collective this year and I’m very excited at some of the books and read alongs we have scheduled. On a more personal level I’m hoping to be a better planner this year, with the hope of clearing some of my NetGalley backlog and keeping on top of publisher’s proofs. I want to develop my Instagram account and start work on TikTok too. I have various themes planned throughout the year and new spotlights to bring to you, with poetry and classics featuring more prominently. I’ve also realised I need to tell you all a little bit about me and I must get used to seeing to showing you my face a little bit. Finally I’m hoping to update the website with new photos and a better layout so I’m easier to find. So to kick off this new year, here are my first books of the month for January.

House of Fortune by Jessie Burton

To say I’m a fan of Jessie Burton is an understatement. I am in awe of her writing abilities and love every one of her books, but there’s a soft spot in my heart for her debut novel The Miniaturist. I was transported straight back to 16th Century Amsterdam and whenever I think about the town house where Nella goes to live with her new husband Johannes and his sister Marin, I have an almost synaesthesic response because I can smell it. It’s a mixture of wood panelling and beeswax. Considering how attached I am to this extraordinary tale, there was a certain amount of trepidation in reading her follow up House of Fortune. I’d saved it for the end of the year and it came to me in two special editions, one with spredges in a green pattern and one with a yellow pineapple print. It’s been eighteen years since the events of the first book and Thea’s birthday approaches. As her father Otto is let go by his employer the household is in decline, almost down to the last treasures it can sell to stay afloat. Maybe their only hope for the future is Thea and the family are forced to launch her on Amsterdam society with the hope of finding her a husband with the fortune to keep them afloat. Otto wants Thea to have a choice and with new friend Caspar he has planned to farm Thea’s childhood home, Assendelft, by growing a crop of pineapples. However, Thea has her own plans and when small packages start appearing on the doorstep it’s clear a period of change is on the way. Could this be the miniaturist, up to her old tricks?

I was sucked straight back into Nella’s world as mistress of this extraordinary house. I loved that Burton took us to Nella’s childhood, with the walls of Assendelft full of memories, good and bad. Over the eighteen years since Johannes’s death she has become a force to be reckoned with and this reminds us of how naïve and young she was at the beginning. I felt sad that she had almost written herself off, pinning all their hopes for the future on Marin’s daughter Thea and not even considering that she could be the one pursued by potential husbands. Wealthy widows can be very attractive in the marriage market and nobody knows what Johannes’s arrangements were for his wife. I felt that Nella didn’t want marriage though, having been free for eighteen years it would certainly be hard to adjust to the more conventional woman’s role a husband might expect. I also really enjoyed being taken into the world of the theatre, where Thea is transfixed by the stories being told on stage. Her fear that someone has seen her hanging around backstage, especially since spending time with scene painter Walter, really came across strongly. I felt for her and I wanted Thea to remember what it felt like to be a teenager without her whole family’s fortunes weighing heavy on her shoulders. I was compelled to keep reading, completely caught up in the world of this strange family of outsiders, but also wondering if this time the miniaturist would be unmasked and her purpose revealed. I throughly enjoyed being back in Nella’s world and it renewed my desire to go to Amsterdam to see the original cabinet house that fired up Jessie’s imagination.

We All Want Impossible Things by

This book was a joy. That’s going to seem odd when I explain what it’s about, but it is joyful and full of life. Even though at it’s centre there’s a death. Ash and Edi have been friends forever, since childhood in fact. They’ve gone through adolescence together: survived school; other girls; discovering boys and even that awkward phase of starting adult life, when one went to college and the other stayed behind. They’ve both married and been each other’s maids of honour and become mothers. Instead of any of these things pulling them apart they’ve remained platonic partners in life. However, now Edi is unwell and decisions need to be made. After years of struggle with being, treatment, remission and recurrence, Edi now has to decide how she’ll be dying. With all the hospices locally being full, Ash makes an offer – if Edi comes to a hospice near Ash, she can devote time to being with her and Edi’s husband can get on with every day life for her son Dash. There’s a hospice near Ash that’s like a home from home, with everything that’s needed medically, but the informality and personal touch of a family. Now Ash and Edi have to negotiate that strange contradiction; learning how to live, while dying.

Ash’s home and family life is so enviable I wanted to be part of it. Her estranged husband Honey is an incredible chef and her daughter seems to have picked up the talent. The author’s descriptions of their meals really did make the mouth water and are their way of contributing and supporting Ash. All of these people are so nurturing, in Honey’s case this is despite he and Ash being separated. Before you think this sounds schmaltzy and sentimental I can assure you that these characters are not perfect. Each has their flaws and their ways of coping, some of which are destructive and possibly difficult for others to understand. Ash particularly has a novel approach to grief, but I understood it. If we look beneath the surface, it’s a way of forging connection with others on the same journey and expressing their love for Edi. It’s also a distraction, a way of leaving all the paraphernalia of death behind and affirming life. That doesn’t mean her behaviour isn’t confusing, especially to her teenage daughter who supplies whip smart commentary, eye rolls and remarkable wisdom. The men in this friendship group seem to understand that their grief is secondary, because Edi is the love of Ash’s life. I enjoyed the little addition of Edi’s other friend – the college friend – who Ash has concerns about. Does Edi like her more than Ash? Do they have a special bond? The author provides us with this loving picture but then undermines it slightly, so it isn’t perfect. We are imperfect beings and no one knows how they will react in a time like this, until we’re there. Catherine Newman shows this with realism, charm, humour and buckets of compassion.

The Curious Case of The Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett.

I was enthralled, addicted and so desperate to find out what actually did happen on the night when the police found a strange cult massacre in a deserted warehouse. Open the safe deposit box. Inside you will find research material for a true crime book. You must read the documents, then make a decision. Will you destroy them? Or will you take them to the police? Everyone knows the sad story of the Alperton Angels: the cult who brainwashed a teenage girl and convinced her that her newborn baby was the anti-Christ. Believing they had a divine mission to kill the infant, they were only stopped when the girl came to her senses and called the police. The Angels committed suicide rather than stand trial, while mother and baby disappeared into the care system. Nearly two decades later, true-crime author Amanda Bailey is writing a book on the Angels. The Alperton baby has turned eighteen and can finally be interviewed; if Amanda can find them, it will be the true-crime scoop of the year, and will save her flagging career. But rival author Oliver Menzies is just as smart, better connected, and is also on the baby’s trail. As Amanda and Oliver are forced to collaborate, they realise that what everyone thinks they know about the Angels is wrong. The truth is something much darker and stranger than they’d ever imagined. And the story of the Alperton Angels is far from over.. After all, the devil is in the detail…

It was hard to review when I didn’t want to let slip any signal or clue, so I won’t comment on the storyline. It’s drip fed to you in the different communications and I loved how we were presented with other people’s opinions and thoughts on the discoveries being made. Who to trust and who to ignore wasn’t always clear and the red herrings, including the involvement of the Royal Family, were incredible. I felt that true crime author Amanda had an agenda, that possibly had nothing to do with the story at hand and was more about a personal grudge. Janice Hallet’s research is impeccable and here she has to cover the early 1990’s and 2003, as well as the workings of the police, special forces and the social services – some of which is less than flattering and even corrupt. I found delving into the True Crime genre fascinating considering how popular it is these days, something I’m personally very conflicted about. This has all the aspects of a sensational True Crime investigation with a more nuanced perspective from other characters to balance things out. I was gripped to the end and the end didn’t disappoint.

River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer.

This incredible debut novel grabbed hold of my mind and heart, never letting go until the final paragraph. I shed tears at several points in Rachel’s journey and she’s a character I won’t forget. We meet her working on a plantation in Barbados, at that strange point after slavery when plantations were instructed to free slaves, but their sense of freedom was short-lived as masters were able to keep slaves for a further six years as apprentices. So, despite being freed the day afterwards started just the same, at the crack of dawn and walking to the cane fields for a day of back breaking work. Having nothing meant that most had no other choice. Rachel is thinking of her children, several lost before they had a chance to live but others scattered to the four winds. Her boys Micah and Thomas Augustus and her girls Cherry Jane, Mary Grace and Mercy all taken from her in different ways. Only Cherry Jane spends a few years nearby as a house slave, but in her superior position she doesn’t acknowledge Rachel who is merely a field hand. One day she decides that she must find her children, she mustknow where they are and what happened to them, even if the news is that devastating final loss. Rachel says that as a slave she plants cane but nothing of her own. However her children came about, Rachel feels that they anchor her in this world and she can’t rest until she finds them. So she runs and with our hearts pounding we follow her.

Shearer uses incredibly evocative detail to bring nature to life in this book and underscore Rachel’s sense of freedom. A river takes them deep into the forest and a community of freed slaves and indigenous tribespeople where one of her sons may be. It also sweeps them along, back to freedom after searching Grenadian plantation for daughter Mary Grace. The whole journey is littered with joys and terrible grief, but Rachel knows she must keep going. She meets others who have started to build a new life, placing the past firmly behind them and never pining for it. They live firmly in the here and now with questions left unanswered and people left behind. For Rachel that isn’t enough. Her children are like the scattered pieces of a broken vase. She doesn’t expect her family to be perfect and knows that there will be cracks and missing pieces. Rachel is putting her broken vase back together and she will pour a substance into the cracks, bringing the pieces together until her past is whole again. The binding substance used in Japanese Kintsugi pottery is usually gold, each crack making the piece more valuable and beautiful. In Rachel’s case the binding substance is love. Love for those here, those found but far away and those gone forever. An all encompassing love symbolised by the bond between a mother and her children.

Amazing Grace Adams by Fran Littlewood.

It’s possibly way too early to start picking candidates for favourite books of 2023 – I’m still deliberating over 2022 – but I think this book is certainly going to be in contention. Grace is one of those characters that you fantasise about having cocktails with and you already know you’d have the best time. Grace is stuck in traffic, it’s a boiling hot day and she’s melting. All she wants to do is get to the bakery and pick up the cake for her daughter’s birthday. This is one hell of a birthday cake, not only is it a Love Island cake; it has to say that Grace cares, that she’s sorry, that will show Lotte she loves her and hasn’t given up on their relationship. It’s shaping up to be the day from hell and as Grace sits in a tin can on boiling hot tarmac, something snaps. She decides to get out of the car and walk, leaving her vehicle stranded and pissing off everyone now blocked by a car parked in the middle of a busy road. So, despite the fact her trainers aren’t broken in, she sets off walking towards the bakery and a reunion with Lotte. There are just a few obstacles in the way, but Grace can see the cake and Lotte’s face when she opens the box. As she walks she recounts everything that has happened to bring her to where she is now.

When we first meet Grace she’s living alone, estranged from husband Ben and even from her teenage daughter Lotte. She’s peri-menopausal, wearing trainers her daughter thinks she shouldn’t be wearing at her age and she’s had enough. There’s that sense of the Michael Douglas film Falling Down except when the meltdown comes all she has is a water pistol filled with river water, an embarrassingly tiny Love Island cake and a blister on her heel. Then in flashbacks we can follow Grace all the way back to the start, to when she and Ben met at a competition for polyglots. The truth when it comes is devastating, but feels weirdly like something you’ve known all along. Those interspersed chapters from happier times are a countdown to this moment, a before and after that runs like a fault line through everything that’s happened since. As Grace closes in on Lotte’s party, sweaty, dirty and brandishing her tiny squashed cake, it doesn’t seem enough to overturn everything that’s happened, but of course it isn’t about the cake. This is about everything Grace has done to be here, including the illegal bits. In a day that’s highlighted to Grace how much she has changed what will happen to her relationship to the people she loves most?

All of these books are out now and you can potter along to your local book shop for them. Happy Reading! ❤️📚

Posted in Monthly Wrap Up

Books of the Month! November 2022

Posted on by thelotusreaders

It’s been an unusual month, because I’ve cut my blog tours right down for the end of the year so I’ve made more personal choices about what to read and when. I’m still working through an endless TBR, but I’m reading them in the order I fancy – this feels like blissful freedom to a book blogger, even through I can see a teetering pile of proofs out of the corner of my eye. Not to mention the virtual teetering pile on Netgalley that I’m slowly working through. It’s a month that seems to disappear for me, as Christmas shopping starts in earnest and I end up so focused on December that November seems to pass me by. I’m also having my living room decorated, so that it’s all dry and we can put the Christmas tree up this weekend. I’ll be rearranging my reading corner too, now that it’s a more restful colour rather than the hectic stripes of the previous owner. So, it’s now a headline rush toward Christmas with lots of advent and Christmassy content to come.

This month’s photo collage is in honour of this new book from Jodi Picoult and her writing partner Jenny Finney Boylan. It’s seen as a controversial novel and I’ve been surprised by the many trigger warnings applied to it in reviews and read alongs. Some of these have misrepresented the novel or even ruined it by disclosing parts of the plot. What you need to know about this book is that it’s a straightforward Picoult novel based around a crime and a legal case. Bearing this in mind, I think most people know by now that one of the characters in the novel is transgender. For some people this makes the book problematic, but I am reassured by the fact that Jennifer Finney Boylan is a celebrated trans writer and activist. So this isn’t a cisgender writer trying to write about transgender experience. This is a writer who is using her own experience to communicate that character’s experience with authenticity. Yes, there are characters in the book who are ignorant or even show prejudice, but that’s necessary to fully represent what it’s like to be transgender. Our storyline follows Olivia and her son Asher and the life they’ve built since fleeing domestic violence when Asher was a toddler. Olivia settled in her father’s home and gradually took over his role as a beekeeper. Asher is now a teenager and has his first girlfriend, Lily. Lily is lovely and has been given the vote of confidence by the bees, helping Olivia remove the honeycomb like a pro. Olivia’s whole existence has been devoted to keeping Asher safe, so when she gets a phone call from the local sheriff to say Lily is dead and Asher has been arrested for her murder. Could Asher have inherited some of his father’s characteristics? This is an interesting novel that is also about domestic violence, trauma, jealousy and the difficulties of being a single parent. It’s a great read and I highly recommend it.

This is an interesting addition because I re- read the book while writing about the work of Sarah Waters. I was interested in the parallels between this and her novel Affinity. I loved this when it I first read it last year and it was great to read it again. I loved the strong female characters here and the author’s clever use of liminal spaces to introduce relationships that would have been frowned upon in the 19th Century. Viola has been brought up by her clergyman father alongside a young boy he took into his care. Jonah and Viola have an incredible friendship and it’s really no surprise when they get married, although it does come immediately after their father’s death. Viola loves photography and is asked by a bereaved family if she would take a picture of their dead child. However, when Viola develops the pictures there is another child in the photographs – a child who wasn’t there. This potential spirit photography brings her to the attention of Henriette, a medium who’s been through a lot before she meets Viola and helps her to become a spirit photographer. The two women become close and Viola starts to worry about the intensity of her feelings for this new friend. Jonah, meanwhile, has secrets of his own left back in India where he was posted with his regiment. All three of these characters are so well observed and have such convincing inner lives so when they’re added to some evocative settings you’re immediately transported back in time. Loved it.

The Marmalade Diaries by Ben Aitken.

This was another unusual read for this time of year, but I was simply charmed by the relationship between Ben and the formidable old lady he’s tasked with living with. Ben is at a low ebb when a local charity matches him up to help a pensioner. Winnie is 85 years old and needs help from someone who can live with her and Ben needs a roof over his head. Winnie has an attic flat so he imagines only some of his time will be needed – for tasks such as putting the bins out, changing light bulbs and support with hospital treatment. However, once they are alone Winnie’s first words are along on the lines of ‘so what’s for tea’ and he realises he’s going to be at her beck and call a lot more. I found Winnie so funny, but sometimes she shows cunning and an ability to exploit her situation that was as hilarious to read as it must have been infuriating to live with. The stand-off with the coal man over unloading her delivery was epic – leaving Ben to receive the delivery, she feigns surprise that there was an extra charge to bring the coal onto the property and tip it into the bunker. Winnie has only paid to have dropped on the boundary, then claims that she knew nothing about the charge. Ben wonders if this is an oversight, or a sign of forgetfulness but the coal man comments that it’s an oversight that’s happened the last three times they’ve delivered. It’s beautiful to watch a friendship develop between these two unlikely house-mates and I was sorry to leave their company.

Last year A.M.Shine’s The Watchers scared the living daylights out of me and I was introduced to a new horror writer who writes stories I want to read. Yes, there are creatures and theyre terrifying, but there isn’t a lot of violence until the group start to venture about. I love that these are old fashioned stories in a sense, theres a slow creeping dread that builds, until you find yourself shutting your curtains at even the hint of sunset. Dr. Alec Sparling lives a very regimented existence in a remote Manor House in Ireland. His house is set back, covered and disguised with vegetation. There are shutters for the windows and and bolts for the doors. What is he hiding from? He has advertised for two academics to undertake field research and chooses Ben and Chloe. She is an archaeologist and he is an historical researcher with a wealth of experience in interviewing people. They must hike out to a remote Irish village and interview the residents about their life and their minimal contact with the outside world. This is a forgotten place, wary of strangers and as they stumble through a forest, tripwires attached to church style bells ring out their presence, giving the villagers plenty of warning. As Chloe and Ben finally meet the people they are shocked by their physical appearance. Poverty and hardship has marked their faces, but it’s the lack of new residents that explains the deformities they observe, years of in-breeding has clearly had it’s effect. These people are not pleased to see them and like Dr Sparling, they are nervous about dusk creeping up on them and Chloe observes the shutters at their windows, less high tech than the wealthy doctor’s, but for exactly the same purpose. Are they to stop people looking out after dark, or are they to stop someone looking in? The pair are told, if theDeeply unsettling and brilliantly written.

This beautiful book had been sat all year waiting to be read and I read this, then it’s sequel Heart of the Sun Warrior for our November Squad Pod book club. I don’t read a lot of fantasy, but weirdly when I’m doing my yearly round up, quite a lot of my favourites have a fantasy or magic realism element. The first book in the duology introduces us to Xingyin who lives on the moon with her mother Chang’e. Her peaceful life is interrupted and she is forced to live incognito as a servant in the Celestial Palace, hoping all the time to free her mother from exile. In a stroke of luck she is chosen to train as a warrior alongside the Emperor’s son. This is a great story of a girl growing into a woman and also into her destiny as a great warrior. The settings are incredible, the mythology is full of monsters, an incredible atmosphere and so much colour. To top everything there’s also a love triangle between two warriors, one who is a loyal friend and the other brings pure chemistry. In the sequel, we see another disturbance in the peaceful realm in the sky meaning Xingyin must once again draw on her skills as a warrior. She has a to face a betrayal from one of her suitors and decide whether she can ever trust him again. What I loved most about the books were the luscious layers of description the author uses to build her world in the clouds, but also that Xingyin is always the centre of the tale as a strong, warrior woman.

My final book of the month is The Dazzle of the Light, which leapt straight into my top books of the year. It was possibly overshadowed by Kate Atkinson’s new release which covered the same period of history, but although I loved Atkinson’s book, I enjoyed this one more. The author told a story of two ambitious women, both from very different parts of society. Ruby is part of the notorious Forty Thieves gang. Women of all ages commit crimes ranging from pick-pocketing to jewellery heists and Ruby has her sights set on these more glamorous jobs where she can team up with one of the Elephant Boys. It’s on one of these robberies, where Ruby is seen by Harriet Littlemore. Harriet comes from a wealthy, upper class family and is engaged to a young politician. This isn’t enough though, Harriet wants something for herself and is excited to get a small role writing women’s interest features for the local newspaper. Ruby inspires her to research and write a piece about the robbery she’s witnessed and the Forty Thieves in general. When it appears, her words are accompanied by by an artists’s impression of Ruby, whose Harriet has called ‘The Jewel of the Borough’. It’s clear that Harriet hasn’t thought about what this article might mean for Ruby and her place in the Forty Thieves, or even where Ruby has come from before the gang. I loved how the author brought this post WW1 London to life, from the upper echelons of Parliament to the seedy club of Soho. She presents beautifully the issues of this strange period of adjustment after the war and the women’s fascination with each other is electric. A brilliant read and way up the list in my books of the year.

So, these were my favourites from the past month. In December the blog is always a little quieter, but I will check in from time to time. Currently I’m reading Russ Thomas’s DS Adam Tyler series, based in nearby Sheffield. I’ll be sharing my favourite reads of the year and my own bookish Christmas List too. Hoping you all have a lovely December.

Posted in Monthly Wrap Up

Books of the Month! October 2022

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Jacqueline in Paris by Ann Mah

I truly enjoyed this beautiful piece of historical fiction, focused on one of the most iconic women of the 20th Century. I’ve read biographies on Jackie and watched many documentaries about the Kennedy family with my mum who is fascinated with the theories about the assassination of JFK. I’ve always had a picture in my head of a woman who didn’t fulfil her potential and had so much more to give than being a First Lady, supporting her husband. I’d most recently read a book focused on her life with Aristotle Onassis and his mistress Maria Callas. I always wondered why she married Onassis but felt it could have been a response to the assassination and a desire to be protected and live out of the spotlight. This book focuses on a single year in the life of Jacqueline Bouvier as she travels to Paris for the junior year of her degree course. She has a fascination with France and was interested in researching her family tree. Ann Mah shows us a girl torn between the life she wants and the life her family wants or needs her to have. Her mother has planned for Jacqui to marry someone in the political classes, preferably with family money behind them. This feels like her last year of freedom, in a Paris still recovering from the occupation of WW2 and with politics that are very different from the US. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about a new side to this fascinating woman.

Where I End by Sophie White

This was an extraordinarily powerful book, that I’m still thinking about several weeks later. On a remote island somewhere in the Irish Sea, an arts centre is being built to attract tourists, because the island is barren and without attractions. The first resident artist is Rachel, who arrives with her baby Seamus and while swimming on the beach meets local girl Aoileann. Aoileann is a strange girl, not used to strangers and fascinated with the way Rachel mothers her baby. Aoileen’s odd manner is due to her home life, where in a house with the front door and windows blocked up, she shares a caring role with her grandmother. The ‘bed thing’ needs round the clock care, with a Heath Robinson system of ropes and pulleys they haul her out of bed and into the bathroom. She does not move for herself, except the wearing away of her fingers, now bloody stumps. The line that sent a nasty shiver down my spine and changed the whole book for me, revealed the one finger where the bone protrudes from the skin. It’s this bone that the bed thing uses to scratch out messages on the floor. This is a disturbingly horrific book that shows the drudgery of caring, the effect of remote and superstitious communities, and the terrible power of secrets in a family. The author explores motherhood in such a clever way, contrasting Rachel’s love for Seamus with the neglect Aoileann has thought was the norm. This book isn’t for the faint-hearted, but it is utterly devastating in it’s effect.

The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith.

This instalment of the Cormoran Strike series is an absolute monster of a book. I had to give up reading the physical copy because it was like holding a brick! So I purchased the kindle copy so I could finish without breaking my thumbs. I’m a huge fan of Cormoran Strike, so although this wasn’t my favourite book of the series, it’s still up there as one of my favourites. This time Strike and Robin are drawn into the worlds of community arts and gaming. Two talented young artists from a community art centre create a cartoon called The Ink Black Heart, set in Highgate Cemetery and featuring unusual characters, one a wisp of a ghost and another that’s a human heart. An anonymous group of fans created an online game, where participants meet in Highgate Cemetery and complete challenges. Yet where there is success there are always people ready to tear it down and a person with the code name Anomie seems keen to do that. When the two creators are lured to the cemetery and attacked, things become serious. We’re privy to personal chats within the game and with Robin infiltrating the chat secrets will out. There are more complications in Cormoran’s love life as he dates a friend from ex-girlfriend Charlotte’s circle – can he shake off his feelings for good? Then there are those growing feelings between him and Robin, are they brave enough to follow those emotions or not?

The Pain Tourist by Paul Cleave.

I can’t stay too much about this thriller, because I’ve got a full review coming in a couple of days. This is such a fast paced thriller and it has such a tense opening! A family is woken in the night by masked men who are asking for the whereabouts of the safe. James is desperately trying to find a way to get his sleeping sister to safety. As she runs into the night, James watches the men shoot his mum and dad before he takes a bullet to the head. There is no safe. Nine years later, James wakes from a coma and his sister Hazel is soon by his side. The strange thing is James has been living all these years, in a different reality to this one and he is determined to capture it in writing. So he asks for nine notebooks, one for each year and begins to write his Coma World journal. Detective Rebecca Kent is assigned to his case and she has the help of Tate, the original detective who is now a private investigator. She is already chasing a meticulous serial killer called Copy Joe who likes to reproduce other killer’s crime scenes. What she doesn’t know is that James is recording events that happened in the real world in his journals, such as the books Hazel was reading to him or details of the weather. What else might he know? Rebecca is about to realise there’s more than one serial killer in town.

The Ghost Woods by C.J. Cooke

This is an intensely creepy novel from the beginning as we follow two young girls dealing with the consequences of becoming pregnant out of wedlock in the mid- Twentieth Century. Both choose to have their baby at Lichen Hall where the Whitlock family have been looking after young girls in trouble for several years. Mabel is the first, scared by her situation she doesn’t remember doing anything that might have led to pregnancy and concludes she must be having a ghost baby. The hall is strange, with Mr Whitlock who collects parasitic fungus and is often confused and in a state of undress. Wulfric, the Whitlock’s son, has unusual behaviour and becomes easily overwhelmed and angry. Mrs Whitlock is erratic, one moment she seems kind, but can also be snappish and dismissive. Only a few years later Pearl arrives, but the house is declining with the entire east wing seemingly overtaken by mould and fungus. Pearl has so many questions about this strange place, being a nurse she has more confidence and knowledge about having a baby. It seems strange that the Whitlock’s don’t have outside help for the girls giving birth. She wonders who the babies go to eventually and whether it’s legal. Who is the small boy she’s seen? Within a few chapter I was screaming at them to get out. They’re not restrained so it can only be the shame around their condition that holds them there. Each girl is infested by this destructive emotion and in one girl’s case, shame has made her put a lot of her experiences into a little box in her mind, under lock and key. Shame causes the denial of truths so scary, they could overwhelm us. It’s so sad that these girl’s shame creates an opening for others to exploit and exert power over them, but will they succumb? Or will they find strength from somewhere to resist and discover the truth about this mouldy house and family who live there.

Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan

This is a return to the legal case format of earlier novels by Picoult and the addition of Jennifer Finney Boylan to make a writing team has led to this interesting look at transgender rights in America. Olivia fled her marriage with her young son Asher after her abusive husband directed his violence towards their son instead of her. Now Asher is getting ready to go away to college and has his first girlfriend Lily. Lily is a lovely girl and Olivia took her out to meet her honey bees. Olivia is impressed by the way Lily works with the hives and knows that the bees are a good judge of character. Asher is so in love with Lily, so Olivia is shocked when she takes a call to say Asher has been arrested and Lily is dead. Picoult introduces a familiar character from her earlier novels as Olivia calls her brother Josh to defend her son. It really does keep you on tenterhooks as you try to work out what went wrong at Lily’s house. There are twists and turns, right to the very end. You may have seen trigger warnings about this novel, but I didn’t agree with some of them. Yes, there is a transgender character and Picoult does explore some of the negative aspects of being trans. However, this is only done to highlight how hard it can be to transition and the prejudice faced by people who are transgender. While there were prejudice characters, there were also well-meaning but ignorant characters. I never doubted that these writers were trying to portray a true representation of the experience, especially the sections written by Jennifer Finney Boylan who is one of the most famous transgender writers in the USA. This is a great book club choice, because there’s so much to talk about.

Good Taste by Caroline Scott

Caroline Scott enjoys writing about the period just after WW1 where Britain is in flux and people are going through huge changes within class, gender and the expected ‘family’ unit. England is struggling through a depression and our heroine Stella has had something of a life change. It’s 1932 and she is facing the first Christmas without her mother. With memories of her mother’s frailty last Christmas and the fear of that obvious empty chair, Stella has moved back from London to a small cottage in the West Riding of Yorkshire in order to be near her father. Money is tight, since her first book The Marvellous Mrs Raffald hasn’t done as well as she’d hoped. Celandine Cottage is rather shabby and Stella is surviving on the money she’s paid by a women’s magazine for writing a weekly article with five new recipes. When she’s summoned to London by her publisher, she’s half expecting her novel to be pulped and although she wants to write a biography of 18th Century cookery writer Hannah Glasse, she’s rather gloomy about her prospects. She’s shocked when he tasks her with a new idea – a history of English food. He wants a book that will inspire English housewives and remind English men of a nostalgic past. Although as Stella starts to think about her research, she realises that a lot of food people consider to be quintessentially English, is actually from elsewhere. Caroline has a wonderful way of balancing period detail, charming characters, and a touch of humour, while also showing us the grittier underbelly of life in a depression. There are also moments of grief for her mother, which are so beautifully rendered. Caroline makes this look incredibly easy when in reality it’s such a complex juggling act, one that she pulls off beautifully.

So, that wraps up October and since all my blog tours are read for November, i now have until the end of the year to catch up on NetGalley ARCs and publisher proofs I haven’t got to yet. Most exciting to me is that I get to choose which ones I read, so it feels like free reading all the way to January. I’m really excited for this! I might need that long to do my Books of the Year list.

Posted in Monthly Wrap Up

Books of the Month! September 2022.

Posted on by thelotusreaders

What an excellent reading month it’s been and a good mix of independent publishers as well as the majors. As part of the Squad Pod Collective, this month we’ve been reading Sandstone Press novels as part of our Sandtember feature. Next month will be Orentober – a celebration of Orenda Books, two of which feature here. I’ve been a lot busier and had so much more clarity this month, possibly something to do with us moving into the cooler months of autumn which are my favourite of the year, possibly due to it being Halloween, my birthday, Bonfire Night and the run up to Christmas. Plus Strictly is back on the telly. Here we have mainly thrillers and crime fiction, but very different from each other. I think some of this month’s books may easily reach my Books of the Year list in December. Hope you all have a great October!

This is an October review, but I read it as soon as it was delivered to my Kindle. I loved her first in the series so I was eager to see what Āróra was up to now. I won’t tell you too much, just a quick outline of what to expect from this excellent thriller. When entrepreneur Flosi arrives home for dinner one night, he discovers that his house has been ransacked, and his wife Gudrun missing. A letter on the kitchen table confirms that she has been kidnapped. If Flosi doesn’t agree to pay an enormous ransom, Gudrun will be killed. Forbidden from contacting the police, he gets in touch with Áróra, who specialises in finding hidden assets, and she, alongside her detective friend Daniel, try to get to the bottom of the case without anyone catching on.

Meanwhile, Áróra and Daniel continue the puzzling, devastating search for Áróra’s sister Ísafold, who disappeared without trace. As fog descends, in a cold and rainy Icelandic autumn, the investigation becomes increasingly dangerous, and confusing. Chilling, twisty and unbearably tense, Red as Blood is the second instalment in the riveting, addictive An Áróra Investigation series, and everything is at stake…

Out 13th October from Orenda Books

I thoroughly enjoyed this twisty thriller from an author I read automatically these days, knowing I’m going to get a quality thriller. Here we’re brought into the arty, bohemian world of the Churcher and Lally families and their adjoining houses on the edge of the heath. Frank Churcher and his friend Lal have been friends since the 1970s when they shared drugs, alcohol, women and ideas. Frank has called everyone together to celebrate the 50th Anniversary edition of his book The Golden Bones. This could be one reunion that tears the family apart…

Nell has come home at her family’s insistence to celebrate an anniversary. Fifty years ago, her father wrote The Golden Bones. Part picture book, part treasure hunt, Sir Frank Churcher created a fairy story about Elinore, a murdered woman whose skeleton was scattered all over England. Clues and puzzles in the pages of The Golden Bones led readers to seven sites where jewels were buried – gold and precious stones, each a different part of a skeleton. One by one, the tiny golden bones were dug up until only Elinore’s pelvis remained hidden.
The book was a sensation. A community of treasure hunters called the Bonehunters formed, in frenzied competition, obsessed to a dangerous degree. People sold their homes to travel to England and search for Elinore. Marriages broke down as the quest consumed people. A man died. The book made Frank a rich man. Stalked by fans who could not tell fantasy from reality, his daughter, Nell, became a recluse. But now the Churchers must be reunited. The book is being reissued along with a new treasure hunt and a documentary crew are charting everything that follows. Nell is appalled, and terrified. During the filming, Frank is set to reveal the whereabouts of the missing golden bone, but as one of his grandchildren climbs the tree for the treasure all hell is going to break loose. This was an addictive thriller, with complicated family dynamics and a brilliant final chapter.

Orenda Books must get so fed up with me banging on about the genius of Doug Johnstone and his wonderful creations; the Skelf women. Set in Edinburgh, Grandmother Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah live in the shadow of death every day. Jenny and Dorothy live literally above a morgue, as the family’s funeral business is run from the ground floor. They also run a private investigation business from their kitchen table. But now their own grief interwines with that of their clients, as they are left reeling by shocking past events. As usual there’s a shocking opening, with a fist-fight by an open grave. This leads Dorothy to investigate the possibility of a faked death, while a young woman’s obsession with Hannah threatens her relationship with Indy and puts them both in mortal danger. An elderly man claims he’s being abused by the ghost of his late wife, while ghosts of another kind come back to haunt Jenny from the grave … pushing her to breaking point.

As the Skelfs struggle with increasingly unnerving cases and chilling danger lurks close to home, it becomes clear that grief, in all its forms, can be deadly… you can look for my full review of this in my Sept 2022 archive, but it really is a cracker.

This was one of those blog tours I was asked to do and I went in blind. I knew nothing about the author or the book, but straight away I was intrigued. You are invited to cast your eye over the comfortable north London home of a family of high ideals, radical politics and compassionate feelings. Julia, Paul and their two daughters, Olivia and Sophie, look to a better society, one they can effect through ORGAN:EYES, the campaigning group they fundraise for and march with, supporting various good causes. But is it all too good to be true? When the surface has been scratched and Paul’s identity comes under the scrutiny of the press, a journey into the heart of the family begins. Who are these characters really? Are any of them the ‘real’ them at all? Every Trick in the Book is a genre-deconstructing novel that explodes the police procedural and undercover-cop story with nouveau romanish glee. Hood overturns the stone of our surveillance society to show what really lies beneath. Be prepared to never take anything at face value again.

Now I’d been waiting all year for this one. It’s been up there with Jessie Burtons House of Fortune as the ones I’ve most been looking forward to this year. I wasn’t disappointed. Kate Atkinson has written a crime novel that lays bare a decade in flux, a London that’s drowning in decadence and a generation determined to leave loss and grief behind them.

1926, and in a country still recovering from the Great War, London has become the focus for a delirious new nightlife. In the clubs of Soho, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time. At the heart of this glittering world is notorious Nellie Coker, ruthless but also ambitious to advance her six children, including the enigmatic eldest, Niven whose character has been forged in the crucible of the Somme. But success breeds enemies, and Nellie’s empire faces threats from without and within. For beneath the dazzle of Soho’s gaiety, there is a dark underbelly, a world in which it is all too easy to become lost.With her unique Dickensian flair, Kate Atkinson brings together a glittering cast of characters in a truly mesmeric novel that captures the uncertainty and mutability of life; of a world in which nothing is quite as it seems. I loved the historical background to this fascinating story and my only complaint was that I wanted to spend more time with some of her characters. See my September archive for the full review, but I was dazzled and drawn deeply into Atkinson’s world.

Tuva Moodyson is another character I’m always banging on about on Twitter. I think she’s an incredible woman and I love the representation of her disability too. Here Tuva is back at work after the shooting of her girlfriend, police officer Noora. Noora survived but now exists in a persistent vegetative state, in bed and cared for round the clock by her mother. In the circumstances, Noora’s parents understood that Tuva needed to go back to work. Dean takes us straight into the action, as Tuva finds an armoured hunting dog wounded by the side of the road. In the course of taking the dog to the vet, Tuva leans of a farm further down the road where a group of survivalists live. It’s not long before she hears that a girl’s gone missing from Rose Farm, and while the police will be investigating, Tuva wants to find her story. There are two businesses on the farm, a café and spa, so Tuva visits to get to know a couple of the residents up there. Andreas, who patrols the compound with his dogs, shows Tuva the security system and training they have in place for their members, including underground bunkers if necessary. Are these people simply ‘preppers’, getting ready for the end of the world, or is something more sinister going on? Who is the mysterious Abraham? What was missing girl Elsa Nyberg to do with the preppers and is she still alive? As usual, Tuva throws herself in and soon her own life is in danger.

This was an interesting and addictive book from Lucy Banks and I loved it. The public think Ava is a monster. Ava doesn’t think she’s to blame. She’s spent twenty five years in prison and now it’s time to start a new life. With a changed identity, her name is now Robin, she has a roof over her head and she hopes for the quiet life she’s always wanted. However, her idea of quiet is an uninhabited island off the coast of Scotland, just her and the seabirds. This reminds her of the places they lived when she was small, when her father was working for a bird protection charity. He would teach her to catch and tag the puffins. There’s no hope for a quiet life, as probation officer Margot pops in unexpectedly pushing her to apply for jobs because ‘the state can’t keep you forever’. There’s Bill next door, who likes a chat and flirt over the garden hedge, not to mention his daughter Amber who really isn’t sure of their new neighbour. Finally there’s her unwanted visitor; the strange person in black who lurks and watches; the person who sent the poison pen letter; the person who throws a brick through the window. We see everything through Robin’s mind and a slow unease starts to creep in here and there. Is she the murderer she’s been painted as or is she misunderstood? I went from feeling sorry for Robin, to being terrified of her. Absolutely brilliant!

So that’s this month. I’m having a week’s break from blog tours to read Robert Galbraith’s The Ink Black Heart, which has been staring at me from the TBR shelf for past fortnight. Here are some of next month’s reads.

Posted in Monthly Wrap Up

Books of the Month! August 2022

Posted on by thelotusreaders

It’s been a quieter month in August, at least it is where books are concerned. Personally it’s been the busiest month of the year so far. It’s full on as far as home is concerned because it’s the month where we do trips away my stepdaughters. With their Mum working and me at home, we can easily help each other. We’ve also had their cousins here demo Scotland so theres been a lot of squealing and absolutely no room in the bathroom. They’ve been to Alton Towers, Nottingham’s Kitty Cafe, Yorkshire Wildlife Park and Chatsworth House. Between this I’ve had a back operation that I’ve been waiting for three years now. I’ve had a neurotomy at four sites so have had to spend some time in bed recovering. So I’ve had chance to get ahead with some September reading, because this month I’ve got my MA to restart! We don’t do things by halves in this house. Wishing you all a great September and I hope you enjoy these favourite reads.

Halfway through my binge read of this fantastic new thriller from Helen Fields, I had to look it up and check that it really was a stand-alone novel. Sadie Levesque is a compelling central character: brave, resourceful, determined, intelligent and ever so slightly impulsive. I could easily imagine her as the backbone of a great crime series. Sadie is a private investigator based in Canada where she’s about to be the birth partner for her sister. She has time to fit in one last job, which takes her to Scotland and the atmospheric island of Mull. The Clark family recently moved to Mull from the United States to start a new life, but their new life has been derailed by the disappearance of their seventeen year old daughter Adriana. With her American accent and dark Latino looks, Adriana caused a stir among the teenagers of Mull. Her desperate parents feel the local police force are doing very little to look for their daughter, possibly because they are outsiders. When Sadie finds the girl’s body while searching local teen hang outs, the police become hostile. Adriana has been drowned. The killer has sexually assaulted her, adorned her with a seaweed crown and filled her mouth and throat full of sand. Sadie’s immediate thought is she’s been silenced. Without police cooperation, Sadie must find the killer and is drawn into local folklore, witches, a misogynistic priest and a community that looks after it’s own. Will Adriana be the last girl to die? Fields turns the island into a powerful character in it’s own right, weaving the landscape, history and folklore of Mull into her story. There are some twists to the final stages that came as a huge shock. I love to be surprised and I really was here, with my heart sat in my throat at times. Could the truth be more prosaic than the legends? That men kill and could use the excuse of ancient folklore and witchcraft to cover their tracks. I was torn between this more logical explanation and the sense of an ancient evil at play on this remote and wild island. If anyone knows, the island does.

I’ve been struggling with menopausal symptoms for the last six years so I was really up for reading a book about women who are moving towards middle age. Women become more interesting as they get older, more confident and full of wisdom and experience. I certainly found that in the characters of this book who I fell immediately in love with. They are definitely meant to be a trio.

Nessa: The Seeker
Jo: The Protector
Harriett: The Punisher

Each woman finds herself bestowed with incredible powers. When Nessa is widowed and her daughters leave for college, she’s left alone in her house near the ocean and has time and quiet hours to hear the voices belonging to the dead – who will only speak to her. They’ve always been there, but she’s been too busy with her family’s needs to hear them. Harriett is almost fifty, her marriage and career have imploded, and she hasn’t left her house in months. Her house was the envy of the neighbourhood and graced the cover of magazines, but now it’s overgrown with incredible plants. However, Harriett realises that her life is far from over – in fact, she’s undergone a stunning metamorphosis. Jo has spent thirty years at war with her body. The rage that arrived with menopause felt like the last straw – until she discovers she’s able to channel it, but needs to control it too. The trio are guided by the voices only Nessa can hear and discover the abandoned body of a teenage girl. The police have already written off the victim. But these women have not. Their own investigations lead them to more bodies and a world of wealth where the rules don’t apply and the laws are designed to protect villains, not the vulnerable. So it’s up to these three women to avenge the innocent, and punish the guilty. I really loved the clever way the author took apart the concept of serial killer stories while writing one. She talked about the popularity of crime thrillers and true crime podcasts and how they appeal to men. They’re written as if the victims are expendable and the killers get special nicknames as if they are comic book villains. The author really got this message across, but without losing any of the power in her story, or the tension that rises as we hope to see the killer caught. Finally, I have to say something about magic realism and being a huge fan of Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Alice Hoffman, I’ve been reading some of the best writers in the genre. Miller’s story is so strong and the characters so well constructed, that I never felt a sense of disbelief. I have quite a collection of magic realism starting with a teenage love for Fay Weldon and Angela Carter. This book can easily sit next to my favourites. It is that good.

I had never come across Tim Weaver’s novels before so I was very lucky to be offered this by the publisher, especially in such a special edition too. When I learned it was the tenth in his David Raker series, I approached it with some trepidation. Would I be able to keep up or would it even make sense? Now that I’ve finished the novel I can honestly say that within the first few pages, I forgot this was one in a series and just got stuck in! Such was the strength of the story and his characters that I was drawn in and captivated to the end.

David Raker is a Missing Person’s Investigator and a widower with one daughter. The missing people in this story are Cate and Aidan Gascoigne, a devoted couple who have been married for five years and together for nine. The newspapers dubbed their case ‘The Mystery of Gatton Hill’ as they disappeared on their way to have dinner from their home in Twickenham. Catherine ‘Cate’ and Aiden Gascoigne were both 37 years old and worked in creative roles; Aiden was a Creative Director for a Soho web design company and Cate was a full time photographer. As they drove to dinner in Reigate, the couple could be seen on CCTV recording laughing together, just before their car plunged down a 90 foot ravine. Their car burst into flames and even though a fire crew arrived soon after the accident the fire was impossible to stop. They then discover an impossible scenario, when trying to recover Cate and Aiden’s bodies, they find they’re no longer in the car. This turns out to be merely the the tip of the iceberg in a chilling and menacing narrative that goes on to reveal a staggering number of murders over the years, and a extraordinarily intelligent serial killer who has no intention of getting caught. Raker is a remarkably tenacious and determined investigator, even when the pressures and dangers threaten to derail the case. This is a wonderfully complex, riveting and engaging read that kept me glued to the pages from beginning to end with its sky high levels of suspense and tension. This will appeal to crime and mystery readers who love truly twisty. thrilling and superior crime fiction, and I think that this can reasonably be read as a standalone if you have not read any of the series before. Highly recommended

I loved this dark thriller from Carol Johnstone, with its bleak setting, mysterious deaths and Norse folklore. Maggie Mackay is a successful investigative journalist, but has always been held back by a negative inner voice and terrible nightmares. She’s been haunted by the idea that there’s something wrong with her and she can see or sense darkness. She thinks this feeling is linked to her childhood and a small village in the Outer Hebrides called Blairmore. Maggie stayed there with her mother when she was very young and caused a furore when, out of nowhere, she claimed that someone in the village had murdered a man. She left the community in uproar, saying she was really a man called Andrew MacNeil who had lived on the island of Kilmery. Her mother believed and encouraged her claims, but when they returned to the mainland this strange interlude wasn’t referred to again. Now 25, Maggie returns to the island, in search of answers. Mainly, she wants to find out if her claims could possibly have been true, but with her history on the island, Maggie may struggle to get people to talk to her. However, this is an island with few inhabitants, but a wealth of secrets and if Maggie gets too close to the truth she may be in serious danger.

The central mystery is fascinating and makes the book very difficult to put down. Charlie feels like the designated spokesperson for the islanders, he approaches Maggie with an apology for the way they treated her when she was a child and there’s a fatherly feel to the way he talks to her. On one hand I felt he was on Maggie’s side, but I also wondered whether he was a decoy – someone sent to give her just enough information, perhaps to deflect her from the reaching the truth. Other people greet her with outright hostility and I had a lot of admiration for Maggie’s tenacity considering how vulnerable she must feel, staying on the island as a lone woman. Maggie also has a bipolar diagnosis and I thought this was well portrayed by the author, even though it adds another layer of uncertainty – can we trust what Maggie is experiencing? I found Maggie’s narration more compelling than the male narrator, but overall loved the pace and the different perspectives that give us an insight into events back in the 1970’s. There were twists I didn’t expect and the final revelations about the mystery felt satisfying. I love how this author likes to wrong-foot her reader and although this was more gothic than horror, there were parts that were very unsettling and left me listening out for creaks in the dead of night. I came away from it with an uneasy feeling, not about the supernatural aspects, but more about what humans are capable of doing and how isolated communities like this one have the perfect environment in which to plot and keep secrets, in some cases for decades. This cements Carol Johnstone in my mind as an author to look out for and i’ll be buying a finished copy for my collection.