Tag: Travel

Posted in Sunday Spotlight

Sunday Spotlight: Uplifting and Comforting Reads. Veronica Henry.

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I was totally new to Veronica Henry when I was invited onto a blog tour a couple of years ago. I was desperately in need of an uplifting read after a lot of dystopian and crime fiction. I read The Impulse Purchase and found a series of warm, charming and uplifting reads that are so light but full of strong and capable women trying to change their lives. The settings are gorgeous, romantic and so well described it’s like having a little holiday.

I spent an escapist couple of days reading about this interesting family of women all at a crossroads in life. Julia, great-grandmother and owner of the beautiful Wisteria House in the village of Rushbrook, has died and left behind four generations of women. There’s grandmother Cherry who was a model in the 1960’s; mother Maggie, the redoubtable owner of a food PR company; daughter Rose who is a new mum and volunteers at the local homeless charity; and Gertie, three years old and the apple of everyone’s eye. Aside from great-grandmother Julia’s death and Gertie’s birth, this is a family facing a lot of change. Maggie is still mourning the death of the love of her life, husband Frank. Maggie also faces change at work, as her apprentice has absconded taking some of the business with her. Rose has struggled with grief, but her job is giving her more confidence. Cherry organises a party to celebrate her husband’s retirement, Mike is an artist and photographer, retiring from teaching and looking forward to spending more time travelling with Cherry. They just need to finish the sale of Wisteria House, but Cherry sees something at the party that changes her mind and sets in place a new plan for all the women of the family. The Swan is Rushbrook’s public house and has been a family haunt for as long as they can remember. If Cherry does the unthinkable and use her inheritance to buy The Swan, could the women come together and turn it into something really special. This is uplifting and inspiring, as well as incredibly cozy.

Years ago, Juliet left a little piece of her heart in Paris – and now, separated from her husband and with her children flying the nest, it’s time to get it back! So she puts on her best red lipstick, books a cosy attic apartment near Notre-Dame and takes the next train out of London. Arriving at the Gare du Nord, the memories come flooding back: bustling street cafés, cheap wine in candlelit bars and a handsome boy with glittering eyes. But Juliet has also been keeping a secret for over two decades – and she begins to realise it’s impossible to move forwards without first looking back.

Something tells her that the next thirty days might just change everything…

Juliet is now a middle-aged, ghost-writer who’s at a huge crossroads in life. She and her husband have taken the very brave decision to separate as their last child leaves home for university. Most of their friends think they’re crazy, because the couple still get along, they’re probably the best of friends in fact. However, they feel they’ve drifted into two different paths. As her husband has embraced all things cycling – including the Lycra and the diet – Juliet isn’t enamoured and would rather curl up with a good book or go to the theatre. As the time to sell their large family home has come around, they can’t see the point of trying to meld their differing lifestyles into another joint home. So each will take half of the house sale and do their own thing and Juliet would like to take a trip into her past. Years ago, when she was still a teenager, Juliet went to work as an au pair in Paris, but returned in shame and sadness only a few month later. She has rented an apartment for a month to reacquaint herself with the city and spend some time writing her own story. However, revisiting the past is never easy and Juliet finds there are experiences she still needs to process and come to terms with. 

I found reading this book a little lie watching Sex and the City or perhaps more aptly, Emily in Paris which I binge-watched over the Christmas period. Everything about Juliet’s time in Paris is simply gorgeous from the description of the patisseries near her apartment, to the clothes worn by her friend ….. and the work Juliet starts on her book project. It’s romantic and simply gorgeous.

There are a couple of her novels that I’ve gathered up from charity shops and are on the the throwback pile. In A Night on the Orient Express one group of passengers are settling in to their seats and taking their first sips of champagne, the journey from London to Venice is more than the trip of a lifetime. From a mysterious errand; a promise made to a dying friend; an unexpected proposal; a secret reaching back a lifetime…there are so many reasons to be there… As the train sweeps on, revelations, confessions and assignations unfold against the most romantic and infamous setting in the world.

One night to fall in love.
One summer to change everything…

Over the last few months, Connie’s whole world has fallen apart. Her husband’s run off with an older woman, the magazine she works for has gone bust and she’s having to sell the family home. So when her beloved godmother, Lismay, begs her to help run the beautiful Château Villette, it couldn’t come at a better time…

No one knows the château quite like Connie. She spent a blissful summer there in her twenties, learning to cook delicious French food for the guests, ironing the lavender-scented sheets – and trying to resist the very handsome neighbour, Remy.

As soon as she arrives, it’s clear that the château is close to crumbling and Connie knows she’s going to have her work cut out. Could it be the fresh start she didn’t even know she needed – and will she find a way to save the château, before it’s too late?

Coming June 2025 from Orion

Meet the Author


I’m Veronica – otherwise known as Ronnie – and I’m delighted you’ve found your way here!

I love to take my readers somewhere they might like to be, whether a gorgeous house in the countryside or a seaside clifftop; a trip to Paris or on board the Orient Express. There, my characters go through the trials and tribulations of everyday life, embroiled in situations and dilemmas we can all relate to. And of course at the heart of my writing is love. All kinds of love, not just romantic: the love of friends and family, or a place, or a passion (food, wine and books, in my case . . .)

I also live by the sea and head to the beach every day with my dog Zelda. I love discovering new restaurants, and do a bit of sea swimming to offset the calories. I love a bit of upcycling too – never happier than when painting a set of bookshelves with a tin of Farrow and Ball.

My biggest writing influences are HE Bates, Nancy Mitford, Jilly Cooper and any book that has a big rambling house and an eccentric family.

You can find out more about me and my books by following me on Instagram and Facebook @veronicahenryauthor or on twitter @veronica_henry

Posted in Netgalley

The Paris Express by Emma Donaghue

Posted on by thelotusreaders

When I first started reading The Paris Express, I had a strange feeling of deja vu. It wasn’t that I thought I’d read the book before. In fact I was a bit disoriented at first, wading through a lot of characters I didn’t know and who didn’t all fit together was a lot to take in. It was more that I had a sense of when I was. The books that immediately came to mind were Dubliners by James Joyce and Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. Both books have passages on public transport, but it was the drifting quality of the writing and the ‘democratisation’ of people being pushed together in a small space. They are forced to exist together for the time of that journey and even though this Paris train has First, Second and even Third Class, there is such a mix of generations, classes and genders that there’s potential for desire, tension, friction and misunderstandings. However different they may seem, the fate of one of them, is the fate of all. 

What Woolf achieved beautifully in Mrs Dalloway, is that experience of being in the same place and looking at the same thing, but seeing it completely differently. The much loved Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, works on the basis that two people can witness exactly the same event but view it differently. They experience the event through a filter of their own past, their general well-being and mood that day, even whether they’re in a rush or feeling hungry. Woolf shows us that a car backfiring in the street is just a car backfiring to some, they hear it, recognise it and file it away to be forgotten. Whereas, Mrs Dalloway who is slightly anxious and focused on getting things done for her dinner that evening, actually flinches against the noise and immediately her brain starts questioning what it might have been? She will remember it and possibly even comment later that she jumped out of her skin. Septimus Smith hears a bang and is immediately back in the trenches, surrounded by death and destruction. It might even send him over the edge. I felt like Emma Donoghue really achieved that feel here. We can hear the conversation in each carriage and even go into the minds of some of the train’s passengers, but each one is reacting differently to everything that’s going on. Gradually I was compelled to keep reading because the tension was rising with every new passenger and because the reader is omniscient. Donoghue gives her reader the full story and we know the potential fate of every one of them.

Set in 1895 on a train journey to Montparnasse, Donoghue places us within the fin de siecle, with every little detail. It isn’t just her description of the train, it’s the character’s clothing and their attitudes. One passenger muses on the very idea of the fin de siecle, debating whether the closing of a century does cause a decadence of behaviour and fear of the coming century. There’s certainly evidence of a shift in attitudes to the Victorian ideals that have held firm throughout the 19th Century. In one journey we can see women being more outspoken, having a definite sense of purpose, and a need to determine their own destiny. Women are travelling alone or for work, in the case of Alice she is travelling with her boss as the secretary for his photographic business, but she is enterprising. She takes the opportunity to talk to him about moving pictures, looking for permission to make a short film. She has researched the subject and thinks it could be a new market for the firm. Marcelle is researching in the field of science and huge fan of Marie Curie who is so work focused that she went to get married in an everyday blue dress and spent their gifted money on two bicycles so they could ride to the lab every day. Marcelle knows it isn’t just her gender that may hold her back, it’s her race: ‘a pair of twits in her anatomy class once asked her to settle a bet as to whether she was a quadroon or an octoroon.’

Blonska has a variety of skills, but she’s also incredibly perceptive and quickly reads the other passengers in her carriage. I was absolutely fascinated with Mado. She stands out more than she realises, with her androgynous clothing and short hair, not to mention the lunch bucket she’s clutching as if her life depends on it. She’s a feminist, an anarchist and like Blonska seems to have an interest in reading other people. Her own internal struggle is so vivid that I could feel the tension in her body as I read. She seems contemptuous of many of her fellow passengers, particularly the men, knowing that the Victorian feminine ideal is simply a role women are forced to play. To step outside of the norm is brave and a deliberate outward show of her inner strength and determination to change women’s place in the world. 

‘That’s the price of wearing a tailored jacket with short, oiled-down hair. Even back in Paris, where quite a few young women go about à l’androgyne, sneers and jeers have come Mado’s way ever since she scraped together the cash to buy this outfit at a flea market last year. Her hair she cuts herself with the razor that was one of the few possessions her father had when he died. She’ll take sneers and jeers over lustful leers any day. Bad enough to have been born female, but she refuses to dress the part.’

Throughout the novel there were complex relationships and interesting vignettes, sometimes no more than a line that made me rethink the people I’d been journeying with. There’s a grandad who hops off the train at the last stop to have a furtive and erotic moment with a stranger. As we spend time with the train crew, I learned a lot about their working conditions – having to relieve themselves by hanging over the side of the engine. They struggle amongst the chaos to read tickets and make sure people are in the right carriage, some actually choosing to downgrade their journey for some peace and anonymity. I was faced with my own assumptions near the journey’s end as I learned something about two of them that turned their relation to each other upside down. Of course they’re not the only ones who are pretending to be something they’re not. The author takes us far beyond the beautiful period costumes and shows the reality of train travel – ladies having to relieve themselves in a handy receptacle while the men look away, the inconvenience of a heavy period on a long journey, the strange contents of some traveller’s picnic bags as duck legs and creamed leeks made an appearance! The birth scene brings home the indignities of bringing life into the world, especially in a small train carriage. It is Blonska and Mado who have to help the poor woman, who is desperately trying to convince her baby that now is not the time. Mado has experience with midwifery too: 

“Nothing ever came of all that labour—no more little Pelletiers, nothing but stains on the floorboards. Ever weeping,Madame Pelletier blamed the devil. But Papa taught Mado that her mother’s losses and his own paralysis— such broken health among the hungry and worn out—could be no accident. Employers, politicians, and capitalists were to blame for the sufferings of the working classes.“

This was one of those novels that becomes much more than you expect at the beginning, although I should have known that since Donoghue has never let me down yet. I loved how she ended the novel and the journey because it was such a surprise, along with the afterword. I don’t read the blurb or reviews of a novel I’m about to read and come to it completely fresh, so I didn’t expect it and appreciated it all the more. Donoghue’s ability to see the unexpected, the downtrodden, the extraordinary and the silenced voices, of both a story and it’s place in time, is at it’s peak here. These anonymous and ordinary train carriages are made fascinating and unique by the character’s inside and their intentions. Through them she drives the story along faster and faster, until you simply have to go with it and read through to the end. 

Meet the Author

Born in Dublin in 1969, Emma Donoghue is a writer of contemporary and historical fiction whose novels include the international bestseller “Room” (her screen adaptation was nominated for four Oscars), “Frog Music”, “Slammerkin,” “The Sealed Letter,” “Landing,” “Life Mask,” “Hood,” and “Stirfry.” Her story collections are “Astray”, “The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits,” “Kissing the Witch,” and “Touchy Subjects.” She also writes literary history, and plays for stage and radio. She lives in London, Ontario, with her partner and their two children.

The Paris Express is out this week from Picador

Posted in Netgalley

The Salt Flats by Rachelle Atalla

Posted on by thelotusreaders

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

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

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

Out Now from Hodder and Stoughton

Meet the Author

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

Posted in Netgalley

The Sky Beneath Us by Fiona Valpy 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Fiona Valpy is a newish author to me, someone that I’ve come across while blogging and I always request her books on NetGalley. I know I’m going to get a read that’s focused on women, their history and characters going through an experience that changes their outlook on life. I love the psychology behind these stories and this new novel was no exception, taking our main character through her family history to explore her identity and her direction now she’s in middle life. In two timelines we meet Violet Mackenzie- Grant and her great niece Daisy almost a century later. In 1927, Violet is leaving the family estate to focus on a new and exciting career path for women. Having watched her sister settle into the role of wife, Violet wants her life to be different and enrols at The Edinburgh School of Gardening for Women. Manual labour isn’t really what her family had in mind for her daughter, but Violet is so excited especially when she gets the chance to use her drawing skills to sketch plant specimens for the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens. She is thrilled to see the amazing plants being brought back from expeditions all over the world. Little does she know that this work will inspire a journey of her own; the trek of a lifetime to Kathmandu and beyond. In 2020, her great niece Violet Loverack has always dreamed of retracing Violet’s steps ever since she discovered her journals at the family home in Scotland. Her plant hunting exploits inspired Daisy’s own career as a landscape gardener, but from her tiny flat in London, Kathmandu has always seemed a long way away. Now divorced and with her last daughter leaving home for university, she’s made the decision to go on the trip of a lifetime. As she arrives in Nepal, ready for her trek into the Himalaya, fate has a different plan in store for her in the shape of the COVID pandemic. It prevents her mother joining her on the trip and soon after her arrival, the country is shut down leaving her stuck mid-way to the village Violet mentions with her two Sherpas. She must now undertake her journey alone with her guides, hoping for shelter at the same village. As she starts to piece together all the parts of Violet’s story she uncovers long held family secrets, can they inspire Daisy to find her own path forward and build a new life for herself? 

I was so inspired by this story, especially the adaptability and courage of these women. It gave me the travel bug too and I booked a little trip to Venice half way through! Violet is an incredible character, brave and perhaps a touch naïve at first. She doesn’t want to be restricted by what her family and society expect for her, but isn’t quite prepared by how strong their beliefs and rigid class structure is. Even going away to study us a massive step away from that path of marriage and children her parents were hoping for and manual labour for a woman of Violet’s class is possibly unheard of. There’s an openness and freedom to how she thinks that’s partly being young, part never challenging the status quo before and partly her own restless spirit. Things changed rapidly after WW1 for both women and the rigid class structure of the Edwardians. There’s a definite generational gap between those who remember those early years of the early Twentieth Century and those born after the war. Men were more scarce and that applied particularly to women of Violet’s social standing. There were more spinsters at that time, but the war also had an effect on class. It’s a change watchers of Downton Abbey saw between the dowager Duchess played by Maggie Smith and her granddaughter Sybil, who elopes with the young chauffeur. The family also struggled to keep the estate financially viable and many aristocratic families at this time had to give up their stately homes or married American heiresses who were only to keen to gain a British title in return for fixing the stately home’s roof or paying the multiple death duties. Young people of the 1920’s were the flappers and bright young things of the ‘Roaring Twenties’. Violet’s parents seem relatively relaxed about her studying, but probably assume Violet will give it all up when the right man comes along. In finding him, I’m not sure Violet understood how restricted her choices actually were. 

When Violet meets Callum Gillespie at the botanic gardens it’s a meeting of minds as well as hearts. Both love gardens and are inspired by the intrepid plant hunters who travel all over the world to bring back the specimens that Violet is sketching. They are experimenting by cultivating seeds and cuttings to see which plants grow well in the Scottish climate. Violet’s home is situated where the Gulf Stream brings milder temperatures and along with it”s mountainous countryside it could be the perfect site to cultivate plants coming from Nepal. Violet has fallen in love with the stunning Himalayan poppy, it’s sky blue petals and orange centre jumps out from the page and she’d love to grow it back home. Callum is going on the next expedition to Nepal, but first Violet takes him to meet her parents. It’s fair to say she’s stunned by their reaction. They insist that there’s no future in their relationship. He’s so far beneath them in class, that they couldn’t possible give their blessing to the relationship. Violet must break off their relationship. Determined to be with Callum, they both leave and spend the night in a nearby bothy together, cementing their union before a trip to Callum’s parents where they expect a better reception . Sadly things are equally awkward. Callum’s mother is uncomfortable when Violet tries to help out with tea. They are more used to working for people of Violet’s class, and to Callum’s embarrassment they act more like servants than family. They tell Callum he should look for a wife from his own class because this will never work and he could ruin Violet’s chances of a more suitable marriage. As Callum leaves for Nepal the pair are downcast and worry for their future. They continue to write to each other over the weeks and Violet becomes ever more sure that he is her soulmate. Surprise news makes Violet realise she wants to be with him, wherever he is and with the help of her sister she sets off to Nepal where life changing events await her. 

Years later Daisy is setting out on the same journey. She’s recently been very uncertain about the direction of her life now she’s no longer a wife or a full-time Mum. I loved following her journey, taking Violet’s steps into the Himalaya and at such an extraordinary time too. While the landscape itself is unchanged, more and more tourists have made their own attempts to conquer Everest. Previously, the Nepalese people thought it disrespectful to the mountain goddess to climb her, but since then both the Tibetan and Nepalese governments have allowed tourism in the area. Of course this has opened up the small communities to the rest of the world and allowed communication links to and from the area. It was fascinating to read about the effects of tourism on the people and the delicate eco-system around them. Sherpas are now employed to to tackled the most dangerous aspects of climbing Everest. They know the mountain, the weather and the best paths to take. Some are employed to create paths of ladders across the glaciers and many lives are lost, depriving families of their fathers and the income. It was clever to set Daisy’s journey in the pandemic because she gets to see the valley where Violet lived without tourists. The place feels untouched and even more remote as tourists have rushed home and the villages are locked down. So Daisy gets to experience the trek very much like Violet did, it’s quiet, there’s nobody on the same path and when she reaches the village she’s so surprised to a warm welcome. She’ll have to quarantine of course, but she has a family here with so many cousins she’s lost count. She also has access to the rest of Violet’s journals and will be able to read what remains of her life story. Just as these people did for Violet when she arrived a century ago, they now take Daisy in and look after her, 

I loved the equality of the village and I’m sure this is what Violet enjoyed too. There’s no class structure and seemingly no judgement either. She was taken in and as soon as a house becomes available it is cleaned and given to her for as long as she needs it. They don’t find industrious and hard working women an anomaly. This is somewhere Violet can settle and now Daisy can meet Violet’s descendants. Their societal structure is based on community and sharing. No one is without, but equally no one has ownership either. I loved how Daisy is inspired by the villagers and their generosity. It sparks a fire in her for community garden, partly to put something back into this wonderful place, a replacement for what years of visitors have taken. She also thinks it could work back home in Scotland, sharing some of the land that’s been her privileged birthright with the community. She inspires her daughters to improve the estate with an organic gardening project and more ethical values. The settings in the novel are incredible, equally beautiful but it’s hard not to be in awe of the incredible landscapes Daisy uncovers on each day’s trek. The valley between the mountains has its own climate and a unique combination of plants. I was blown away by the author’s description of the flower meadow which I pictured as a living rainbow of roses, rhododendrons and climbers. Of course there are also those vivid blue poppies and yes, I have already sourced some seeds. The idea of being above the clouds was incredible, almost as if it’s a magical, heavenly place. 

Of course there are some darker moments. COVID hits the family hard, just as typhoid hit Violet’s plans a hundred years earlier. The trek is challenging as Daisy struggles with the altitude and the stamina required to reach the village, in fact she’s stunned by how sure footed and physically fit the older members of the community are. This was heartbreaking in parts but also incredibly uplifting. It left me thinking I could start to tick off those bucket list items and fulfil those dreams I had for my life but set aside when I first became ill. Daisy’s Sherpa has a great way of combatting her fears and anxieties about completing the trek. He tells her to keep taking small steps, one in front of the other and I think this is great advice for any overwhelming task and life in general. You only fail if you give up. 

 Out 10th September from Lake Union Publishing.

Meet the Author

Fiona is an acclaimed number 1 bestselling author, whose books have been translated into more than thirty different languages worldwide.

She draws inspiration from the stories of strong women, especially during the years of World War II. Her meticulous historical research enriches her writing with an evocative sense of time and place.

She spent seven years living in France, having moved there from the UK in 2007, before returning to live in Scotland. Her love for both of these countries, their people and their histories, has found its way into the books she’s written. Fiona says, “To be the first to hear about my NEW releases, please visit my website at http://www.fionavalpy.com and subscribe to the mailing list. I promise not to share your e-mail and I’ll only contact you when there’s news about my books.”

 

Posted in Squad Pod Collective

Escape to the Tuscan Vineyard by Carrie Walker

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Just when Abi thinks she’s getting her big break as a movie make-up artist, everything starts to go wrong. When she’s told her booking on Moonmen was a mistake, she wonders if it had anything to do with her encounter in a sauna with a good looking guy who wasn’t honest about who he was. Nevertheless she has been paid for a month and when she tells her best friend Holly, she says there’s no excuse not to fly out to Tuscany and pay her a long overdue visit. When she makes it to San Gimignano she’s charmed by the ancient town and the lovely B and B that she’s booked into. The owners, Mia and Paulo are just starting out and Abi has the chance to be a guinea pig, sampling their food, activities and the wine from the attached vineyard. Then she meets Tony, a handsome American Italian man at Holly and her boyfriend Xavier’s restaurant and she decides to have a little holiday fling. Since the heartbreak she encountered in her last long term relationship, Abi has a rule when it comes to affairs of the heart; single encounters only because then she can’t get attached and can’t be hurt. However, something told me that Tony might not be discouraged as easily as she thinks.

Well this novel is a lovely slice of Italian sunshine! It can be read in a day and is the perfect escapist read. I’m not a usual romance reader so this wasn’t something I’d normally pick up. I wasn’t even sure I was going to like it at first because Abi was the type of person who rubs me up the wrong way. In fact there were moments I wanted to give her a slap. When we first meet her she’s running everywhere, helping her Mum out with hair and make-up when an ill advised spray tan and hair tint have left her looking like an Oompa Loompa. Luckily Abi has all the fixes to get her glowing again then she’s off picking up balloons and cake, getting changed and decorating a party room ready for her friend’s surprise birthday ‘do’. She’s so precise and controlled about everything. The discipline she has to get up every morning and pull on her running gear, even when she isn’t working, made me shudder.

‘A quick shower and I was in full make-up by 7.35am and ready for the day ahead. Which suddenly felt like a lot of time to fill. I made the pot of chamomile tea and opened my notepad to start a fresh, new list and get myself organised. I loved a list. It helped me feel in control.’

Abi is all routine and organisation, with no fun or relaxation. Luckily I’m a huge fan of transformation and I had a feeling that this one was going to be worth waiting for. I really enjoyed the humour in the story and I knew if anything could change someone Italy could. Abi loosened up by slow degrees – with a cake for breakfast here and a lie-in there. This is mainly because Italy forces her to be spontaneous. Despite a well planned itinerary Abi can’t sightsee because the buses don’t always run on time and sometimes don’t turn even up. People often close their shops to pop for lunch or an afternoon nap when the heat becomes too much. There’s nothing to do some days except be in the pool and the shade. She soon realises that La Dolce Vita is the only way and she’ll have to get on board with it. I started to enjoy this more relaxed Abi and as we hear more of her story and her feelings of loss and heartbreak the more we understand her.

The setting is simply magical. The vineyard view with the red roofs of the town in the distance sounded idyllic and the food made my mouth water. I’m also a massive fan of Glow-Up even though I rarely use make-up myself, so I loved all the detail about Abi’s career and how skilled she is creating everything from a face painted with bunches of grapes to a full Venetian mask with feathers and gold detailing. When she’s using her skills to help the vineyard and the people she loves, Abi really does shine. I did get drawn in by the romance because it’s impossible to dislike Tony. He’s a straight forward decent man who doesn’t play games and respects Abi’s boundaries. I wanted him to be able to break them down, but I didn’t know if he’d be able to. Ironically, in her desperate need to avoid being hurt, she’s hurting herself. I felt like I’d had a holiday myself when I finished the book. I’d thoroughly enjoyed the villa, especially the wine festival with its incredible food and a fairy lit pergola – the perfect venue for dancing the night away. The family of puppies were pretty irresistible too. Venice was the absolute crowning glory of the story, with Abi making-up the movie stars she’s longed to work with and dealing out some sweet revenge at the same time. Plus it’s my favourite place in the world so that helps. It’s wonderfully uplifting to see someone leave behind painful and negative patterns, it’s one of the reasons I love counselling. Even more than I wanted Abi to find romance, I wanted her to truly live life again instead of trying to control it. I could see a whole new world opening up for her and that made for a very satisfying read. I remember a bit of Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert where she’s done the praying and the eating and falls in love on the island of Bali. She goes to her herbal doctor who listens as she panics that she’s not kept to her meditation routine and she’s going to lose the balance she’d worked so hard for. Her doctor smiles at this and points out that if we look at our lives overall there has to be some imbalance, otherwise it won’t be balanced. This is something Abi has had to realise for herself.

‘I didn’t want to slip back into my old, controlling ways. I needed to start taking chances again. My lists had to be less about cleaning and more about trying new things and going to new places. I’d wasted so much time…’

And what about Tony? I’ll leave you to find that out for yourself.

Meet the Author

Carrie Walker is a Brummie born romcom lover with a lifelong passion for travel. She has lived in a ski resort, by a beach, in the country and the city, and travelled solo through Asia, South America and Europe.

Her own love life was more com than rom until she met her husband a few years ago and settled down with him and her dog Ziggy in a pub-filled village in Essex.

Longlisted for Helen Lederer’s Comedy Women in Print prize in 2021, writing has long been Carrie’s side hustle, penning columns and features for newspapers and magazines, while working in many other jobs. She has been the CEO of a global disability movement, a board director of a brand agency, the editor of a newspaper, a radio presenter, a football mascot, dressed up as a carrot for the BBC and now she is writing books. Escape to the Swiss Chalet was her debut novel.

Posted in Netgalley

The Little Venice Bookshop by Rebecca Raisin

Posted on by thelotusreaders

A bundle of mysterious letters, a trip to Venice, and a journey that will leave a lasting impression.

When Luna loses her beloved mother, it feels as if she’s lost her identity She’s rootless and can’t ground herself. Once she has these doubts, she’s begins to question everything around her. They have enjoyed a rather nomadic way of living up till now, probably because home has been where her mother was, but as she tries to cope with grief, the lack of roots is a struggle.The discovery of a collection of letters in her mother’s possessions seems to signal the way forward and she embarks on a most unexpected adventure. Taking clues from the letters, Luna travels to Venice, in the hope of unraveling her mother’s mysterious past. Maybe if she finds the answers, she might find her own place in the world.

I love Venice. I’ve been lucky enough to spend two weeks there, once in the spring and then a couple of years later in the winter when it actually snowed. I actually travelled with my mum the first time and it was wonderful to see this place we’d always dreamt about come to life in front of our eyes. Venice is obviously a place of wonder, but it’s also got a spooky edge that’s been explored in literature many times. This is more of a ‘cozy’ Venice and I think the cute cover really sets the tone for that. It focuses on the quaint and romantic side of the city, so it’s an easy read, but enjoyable nevertheless. The bookshop is a lovely setting for the story and the rather grumpy owner is clearly crying out for something new, perhaps an antidote to loneliness? As Luna begins to work at the shop mentioned in her mother’s letters she tries to work out how her bohemian mother and the owner, Giancarlo, were connected. She also persuades him to let her develop the shop, improving its visibility through use of social media – to make it a destination place for bookish travellers.

There’s nothing better for an avid reader than a book about books. Luna is definitely a lover of stories and she appreciates what books mean to their readers and collectors. I love that this celebrated second hand books too, something I love too, especially ones that have dedications or messages inside them. Often they tell a story that’s all their own, separate from the printed pages. It’s an interesting thought that these books have been through so many different hands, each with their stories to tell. It was a joy to spend time with a character who’s so passionate about books and Luna’s bookish initiatives are great fun. The family of cats named after authors are particularly whimsical. The idea that her bereavement has made her think about her own life is such a relatable one and the realisation she wants her own family is understandable. The urge to set down roots comes from wanting to make connections, permanent ones that are entirely opposite to the traveller’s existence she’s grown up with. I enjoyed the romance between Luna and Oscar and wondered if perhaps she’d found her forever home?

Although I normally enjoy books that go a little deeper, I did come away from this with a smile on my face. This was a relaxing and soothing read for me. It had a magical feel and I guess it does read like a book lover’s fairytale. I have often daydreamed of a life far different to my own and Italy, books and handsome men are an irresistible combination for this reader. Yes there’s the sadness of loss, but the emphasis is on healing and the result is hopeful and uplifting.

Published on 30th March by HQ

Meet the Author

Rebecca Raisin writes heartwarming romance from her home in sunny Perth, Australia. Her heroines tend to be on the quirky side and her books are usually set in exotic locations so her readers can armchair travel any day of the week. The only downfall about writing about gorgeous heroes who have brains as well as brawn, is falling in love with them – just as well they’re fictional. Rebecca aims to write characters you can see yourself being friends with. People with big hearts who care about relationships and believe in true, once in a lifetime love. Her bestselling novel Rosie’s Travelling Tea Shop has been optioned for film with MRC studios and Frolic Media.

Come say hello to Rebecca on her Facebook page : https://facebook.com/RebeccaRaisinAuthor

Posted in Squad Pod

Three Nights in Italy by Olivia Beirne

Posted on by thelotusreaders

As this novel opens Zoe has just lost her grandmother, a larger than life, charismatic artist who lived in Italy. Zoe and her mum Ange are left grieving in Cornwall, but they grieve differently and Zoe is worried about her mum, who appears to be in a trance but answers ‘fine’ when anyone asks how she is. Fine is a word banned in my counselling room, so I could understand Zoe’s concern. It’s a form of masking how we truly feel. Uncle Reg is dealing with all the legal and financial stuff, holding an auction of his mother’s belongings only a week after her funeral in Italy. Zoe and Ange plan to stay in Cornwall, but Zoe is uneasy about Uncle Reg and so was I. Her grandma promised her the beautiful emerald engagement ring that she claimed had magical properties. So, when Aunt Fanny turns up after being missing for fourteen years, she encourages them to travel out to Italy. She should know if it’s necessary, after all she was once married to Uncle Reg. With a reluctant agreement from Ange, they agree to travel to Italy for three nights only. They must go to grandma’s house and search for the ring before Uncle Reg even knows they’ve left the country.

Our young heroine Zoe shares the narrative in short, snappy sections with her friend Harriet, Mum Ange, and of course, Aunt Fanny. There are times when her voice gets a little lost amongst these other sparky and formidable women, especially Fanny who has chosen this diminutive of her true name Fenella just to see the blushes it causes. Zoe has stayed in her home town since school and works as a high end wedding coordinator. It’s as if she hasn’t really started in life, adept at creating and delivering the dreams of others she has forgotten her own. I loved her sparky little assistant Kitty who was giving off perky Reece Witherspoon vibes. Zoe hasn’t travelled, had a long term relationship or been to university. Her most important relationship is with close friend Harriet who also seems stuck, but we’re given more access to her inner world and she knows she’s treading water. It’s always been just Harriet and her mum, so it was a shock when Mum met someone and now has a newborn baby. They feel like a family and Harriet has felt like she doesn’t belong. Zoe has also had an all female upbringing made up of Mum and Aunt Fanny, along with holidays in Italy with her grandmother. Mum Ange remembers meeting Fanny just after she married her brother Reg and despite being so different they clicked instantly. Fanny is distinctly upmarket and while Reg always seemed embarrassed that his sister and niece were dressed by Next, Fanny never made her feel like that. With Reg working away the two women became Zoe’s parents and Zoe remembers the shock they felt when Fanny left suddenly and never contacted them till now. Zoe doesn’t have the pizzazz or individuality of her aunt or grandmother and it seems she has really suffered from the absence of these women in her life.

I enjoyed the women’s camaraderie and the way they supported each other. Despite seeming a bit disconnected from Mum at the moment, Zoe is devoted to her and wouldn’t think of leaving while she’s in this trancelike state. Aunt Fanny is the backbone of this group and such a formidable woman in her stilettos and her trademark ice-blonde bob that’s never out of place. She is loud, flirtatious and determined to live life to the full. She seems unbreakable and undaunted, buying everyone’s ticket to Italy, convincing Ange to come, overcoming obstacles and hiking in four inch heels! She grabs every opportunity to have fun and takes adversity in her stride, she even encourages the others to let their emotions out. Yet there are so many questions: where has she been for fourteen years? How does she keep her bob so immaculate? Does she really have a fortune from inventing a nail file? Why does she have other people’s credit cards? And why did she leave in the first place?

There is some romance too, with a love interest for Zoe in red-headed Sam who she meets by knocking a drink over him at the airport and pops up in the most unexpected places. They have a first date in Grandma’s town and I loved the women helping her get ready, just like they would when she was younger and going out. Even our older ladies (my age actually) have their flirtations, but this book is mainly about personal transformation though and finding your authentic self – something that’s not always easy for women who are bombarded with messages about who and how they should be. This is personified by Zoe’s grandmother whose presence is huge, despite her absence. I felt the book would have really benefited from more flashback moments between her, Ange and Zoe. She’s present in the laidback town where she lives, in her hillside home, and most of all in her paintings. The painting that’s a self-portrait of grandma in dungarees with her paint brushes in her pocket, seems to leap off the page with her life force. The depth and number of vivid colours show how vivacious she is and captures her love of life. It’s just so perfectly her, living her best life. I couldn’t bear to think of this stunning painting being sold at the auction. Even more than the engagement ring, it would have been the thing I had to keep. All I kept hoping was that Zoe could take some of grandma’s magic and apply it to her own life, to find out who she truly was and live her own fabulous, authentic life.

Thank you so much to Headline Review, Olivia Beirne and the Squad Pod Collective for the chance to read this book.

Meet the Author

Olivia Beirne is the bestselling author of The List That Changed My Life, The Accidental Love Letter and House Swap. She has worked as a waitress, a (terrible) pottery painter and a casting assistant, but being a writer is definitely her favourite job yet. Three Nights in Italy is her fourth novel.

Posted in Netgalley

Thirty Days in Paris by Veronica Henry.

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Because Paris is always a good idea…

Years ago, Juliet left a little piece of her heart in Paris – and now, separated from her husband and with her children flying the nest, it’s time to get it back! So she puts on her best red lipstick, books a cosy attic apartment near Notre-Dame and takes the next train out of London.

Arriving at the Gare du Nord, the memories come flooding back: bustling street cafés, cheap wine in candlelit bars and a handsome boy with glittering eyes. But Juliet has also been keeping a secret for over two decades – and she begins to realise it’s impossible to move forwards without first looking back.

Something tells her that the next thirty days might just change everything…

I hadn’t read any of Veronica Henry’s novels until I did a blog tour for her novel The Impulse Purchase. I found it delightfully escapist and optimistic while exploring female relationships, especially familial ones, in an interesting way. In her new novel we’re more focused on one woman; Juliet is a middle-aged, ghost-writer who’s at a huge crossroads in life. She and her husband have taken the very brave decision to separate as their last child leaves home for university. Most of their friends think they’re crazy, because the couple still get along, they’re probably the best of friends in fact. However, they feel they’ve drifted into two different paths. As her husband has embraced all things cycling – including the Lycra and the diet – Juliet isn’t enamoured and would rather curl up with a good book or go to the theatre. They’ve each become comfortable in their own routines and as the time to sell their large family home has come around, they can’t see the point of trying to meld their differing lifestyles into another joint home. So each will take half of the house sale and do their own thing and Juliet would like to take a trip into her past. Years ago, when she was still a teenager, Juliet went to work as an au pair in Paris, but returned in shame and sadness only a few month later. She has rented an apartment for a month to reacquaint herself with the city and spend some time writing her own story. However, revisiting the past is never easy and Juliet finds there are experiences she still needs to process and come to terms with.

I found reading this book a little lie watching Sex and the City or perhaps more aptly, Emily in Paris which I binge-watched over the Christmas period. Everything about Juliet’s time in Paris is simply gorgeous from the description of the patisseries near her apartment, to the clothes worn by her friend ….. and the work Juliet starts on her book project. Thanks to the two series mentioned, along with a teenage diet of Judith Krantz novels, I find Paris ridiculously romantic and imagine it full of quirky shops, artists, vintage bookshops and incredibly elegant women. Every walk she takes I was imagining the decorative shop windows, acres of pastel coloured macarons and fairy lit trees, not to mention the incredible bridges, cathedrals and art galleries. I’m also a sucker for transformation shows like the old Gok Wan and those wedding shows where people choose their dress and I also had that vibe too. This might seem like I’m making the book sound trivial or all about appearances, but it’s far from that. This isn’t just about visual transformation. The author takes what can be a difficult period in a woman’s life: empty nest syndrome; menopause; relationship breakdown and that sense of having lost who you are. Veronica Henry takes us into that process of grieving and growth and I kept reading in the hope Juliet would come to that place of finding herself – the person she is now and the way she wants the rest of her life to be. Before she can do that she needs to face what happened all those years ago when she was such a young girl and just starting out in life.

I really felt for the younger Juliet and these sections leapt off the page. I loved how brave she was in leaving her cozy home and family to do something completely different. That sense of being a fish out of water really comes across as she tries to settle into the apartment of the French family she’ll be living with. Her French is minimal and I could feel the nerves as she tries to fit in, especially when the children’s mother is quite volatile and erratic in mood. However, the father seems kind and tries to make Juliet feel at home by taking her out for Sunday lunch with the children. Juliet comes across as a kind young girl, good with the children and concerned about their mother whose moods fluctuate between treating Juliet like a little sister and angry, tearful outbursts. I warmed to Juliet because she doesn’t become angry or resentful, but is worried that her employer is struggling as a working mum of three children and perhaps needs extra support. I had concerns about the way the children’s father acted around Juliet early on and couldn’t decide whether he was trying to make her feel like family, or whether the late nights, sharing a bottle of wine, might lead to more. Juliet’s affections are completely engaged by Luke as soon as they meet. Her friend calls it a ‘coup de foudre’ or love at first sight and it does seem to be an immediate connection, as if their souls know each other before they even speak the same language. In the present day sections, Juliet hints at a disastrous ending to her time in Paris and a separation from Luke that leaves unfinished business. I wondered whether she would feel the urge to reconnect and explain what happened all those years before.

If you’re looking for an enjoyable, escapist read this winter/spring then this is definitely the book for you. Juliet is interesting and her earlier years in Paris really help us understand her character’s choices later on. I wondered how much her stable, but safe, marriage was a response to these early romantic mistakes and terrible heartbreak. I would say that her return to Paris, especially her rekindled friendship with Nathalie, brings out her spontaneous and playful side. Nathalie takes risks, from visiting less salubrious parts of the city, to accepting random invitations and wearing some quirky outfits. Their friendship picks up where they left off and I would definitely be the demographic buying Nathalie’s memoir and cookbook. I loved the way Juliet tackled what happened in the past and it showed the difference in attitudes between then and now; where once Juliet took on a lot of the blame, she can now see other people’s part in what happened and how they took advantage of her naivety. While I wasn’t necessarily rooting for a romantic ending to the story I was rooting for Juliet to build a totally new life for herself where she’s with the people who inspire her. I enjoyed the ending and felt it worked well for the character, especially when a call from home dangles her old safe life in front of her. I wanted her to continue growing and trying new things, because just reading about it felt like taking a holiday.

Meet The Author

I was so interested in reading Veronica’s author section on Amazon because it’s so personal. So I’ve reproduced part of it below.

‘People often ask me what kind of books I write and it’s a very difficult question to answer in one sentence. Primarily, I love to take my readers somewhere they might like to be, whether a gorgeous house in the countryside or on a seaside clifftop. There, my characters go through the trials and tribulation of everyday life, embroiled in situations and dilemmas we can all relate to. Love is at the heart of it, but all kinds of love, not just romantic: the love of friends and family, or a place, or a passion for what you enjoy (food, wine and books, in my case . . .)

I have a background in writing television drama (Heartbeat, Holby City) so that has been an influence – creating lots of characters whose lives impact on each other. Working on The Archers I was taught ‘Make ’em laugh; make ’em cry; but above all, make ’em wait’!

I hope my books are beautifully written, uplifting and a little bit escapist. I’d love to know what you think, so do leave a review. Or you can contact me via Twitter @veronica_henry, or on Facebook or Instagram @veronicahenryauthor

A little bit about me: I live by the sea and head to the beach every day with my dog Zelda. I love cooking and discovering new restaurants on city breaks, with a bit of yoga to offset the calories – and I’ve just bought an e-bike. My biggest writing influences are HE Bates, Nancy Mitford, Jilly Cooper and any book that has a big rambling house and an eccentric family.’ From http://www.amazon.co.uk

Posted in Random Things Tours

Jacqueline in Paris by Ann Mah

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis is one of those iconic women that we can’t help but be curious about. From watching the film JFK and numerous documentaries about the death of President Kennedy with my mother, I started to be curious about the woman in the blood-stained pink suit. I think people are drawn to women who remain silent. As far as I’m aware she has never spoken directly about the horrific, life changing events of that day. She has almost seemed stoic. The perfect widow, in her lace mantilla at the funeral, still seeming numb and shell-shocked. When she surprised everyone by marrying Aristotle Onassis, the millionaire shipping magnate, I think it was driven by a need to hide. She needed a place to be without cameras following her every move and on his yacht she was definitely away from prying eyes. Perhaps his protection allowed her to grieve and come to terms with her trauma. I wanted to read this book, because I was fascinated to meet this version of Jackie – the Jacqueline before she was Jackie in. I always had the impression that she could have been a woman in her own right, more than the political wife she became.

Ann Mah has set her book in one particular year. In 1949 Jacqueline Bouvier travelled abroad for her junior year at college. It was to be her last year of freedom. She was aware that despite being poised and ready for society, her family were on the edge financially and she felt pressure from her mother to make a good match on her return. She met Jack Kennedy in 1952. Jacqueline lives in an apartment with a widowed French countess and her daughters. She finds a world of champagne, avant-garde theatre and jazz clubs and socialises with people she would never have met in her home town or the social circles at Vassar. There’s even romance with a man who loves literature like she does, but who would be totally unsuitable back home. Yet Paris isn’t all fun and glamour, because this is the aftermath of WW2 and its clear that the city’s people have suffered. The countess and her daughters have suffered too, as part of the resistance. The whole city is haunted by events during the Occupation and it will take many years for them to recover from the lies, betrayals and suspicion that lurk round every corner.

I love that Mah has written this novel in the first person, so we have Jacqui’s unguarded thoughts and emotions from the start. Even though it is a fictionalised self we’re getting to know, it still feels like a rare window into the innermost thoughts of a very private woman. It may sound strange to regard her as private when she was later married to the most powerful leader in America and arguably the world. Jacqui is private though. From this part of her life when she has the most freedom she’s ever known she’s testing people out for herself, but there’s still a natural reserve. She gets to decide who to spend time with and who to trust. On her return to the US and her subsequent relationship with John Kennedy, she is private by design. It’s part of the mystique of being a powerful politician’s wife who should show loyalty, discretion and control of her emotions. Once she’s in those circles, who can she trust to be a true friend? Where many might have seen her as the archetypal political spouse, this was the ambition of her mother rather than Jacqui’s own desire. Here we see her when she was naive and idealistic. Her love of art and for the city of Paris is evident. She’s also keen to make friends and experience real French life, but that reserve can make it hard for others to feel they know the real her.

She finds that one of the biggest differences between the US and Europe is a political one. During the war, Parisian people did what they had to in order to survive and there are still grudges against those forced to collaborate. She learns which subjects to avoid. Madame de Renty is a lively and colourfully dressed woman during the day, but she was imprisoned at Ravensbrück concentration camp during the war and Jacqui hears her crying in the night. Some truths can never be spoken. Aside from the post-war adjustments and the effects of trauma that will last for generations, Jacqui is most shocked by the Parisian’s politics. There is a lean towards communism here, something that’s unthinkable in the US where it’s considered in the same breath as Nazism. Her mind is broadened by friends who explain it’s underlying principles – an equal, fair society. This has huge resonance for us, because we understand she will be First Lady during the Cuban missile crisis, and the 1950’s saw a wave of suspicion about communism that fuelled the McCarthy era.

Despite these darker undercurrents there’s also the joy of seeing Paris through her eyes, for the very first time. The beautiful language, the smells of incredible food and early morning croissants. There’s also Jacqui’s love of learning and through this I could see glimmers or the different life she could have had, if her family had valued her as more than a marriage commodity. This is a well-researched account that held some of the answers I’d pondered about her life: that pull between the security of marriage and the more precarious life of her own; the love of Europe that would see her return there after Kennedy’s death; the education from a really great college versus the education of how to be a wife provided by her mother. I thought the author found a great balance between fleshing out a story and what we know of Jacqui’s year abroad through historical research. I understood this Jacqui and felt I’d met her before in my own reading. Now I have to give this straight to my mum so we can talk about it.

Meet the Author

Ann Mah is an American food and travel writer. She is the author of the USA
Today and Wall Street Journal bestseller The Lost Vintage, as well as three other books. She contributes regularly to the New York Times Travel section, and her articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Condé Nast Traveler, The Best American Travel Writing, The New York Times Footsteps, Washingtonian magazine, Vogue.com, BonAppetit.com, Food52.com, TheKitchn. com, and other publications

Posted in Random Things Tours

Ahead of the Shadows by A.B. Kyazze

Posted on by thelotusreaders

When a photographer witnesses war crimes, will she have to abandon her calling to save herself?

As Lena and Kojo work in conflicts across East and Central Africa, there is immense psychological pressure, and it’s not certain if their relationship will survive.

Eighteen years later, Bene walks the gritty back streets of Paris for one night in a music festival. He is on his way to meet his father in Kenya, a man he’s never met.

Ahead of the Shadows is about the intense relationships that come from work in war zones, the transmission of trauma from one generation to the next, and how one unconventional boy might be able to break the cycle.

It’s such a pleasure to close the blog tour for this small but powerful book about the dangers and struggles of working in conflict zones. I had a period in my teens where I wanted to be a journalist and was in awe of Kate Adie and Feargal Keane. My life didn’t go that way, but I remember reading Feargal Keane’s memoir and a long piece by Italian correspondent Janine di Giovanni that really impressed upon me the life long effects of being and working surrounded by danger. There are the effects of what they’ve seen such as PTSD and a terrible restlessness left over from living such an adrenaline fuelled existence. Many can’t overcome that restlessness and choose to live a peripatetic existence, endlessly wandering from one crisis to the next, using drink to avoid the worst of their memories. It destroys people and their relationships. So, when I saw the blurb for this novel I was interested to read it.

I think the author really captured how adrenalin fuelled these jobs can be as we follow Lena into the Democratic Republic of Congo. With her group she settles into their temporary accommodation for the night, only to be woken by the sound of a dozen phone alarms going off raised voices and activity. With very quick thinking she pushes a piece of furniture across her door and sits against it, eventually falling asleep on the floor. It shows the reader how alert Lena is to the possibility of violence at a moment’s notice. With no clear sides in the country’s conflict, as well as soldiers for hire, child soldiers and rape regularly used as a weapon, Lena doesn’t know from which side danger might come. There’s no clear wrong or right and danger could come from local bandits, not just men engaged in conflict. The next day, with most of her party having left in the night, Lena rings her lover Kojo for advice on what to do. He advises her to walk to the border and cross to Kigali in Rwanda where he can send someone to meet her. As she walks alone towards to border my heart was in my throat. The author creates so much tension and our own knowledge of corruption and violence in these regions adds to our fears for Lena. It seems to take forever for her to cross the no man’s land between the two countries and she seems so defenceless. Hours later in Kojo arms, she is awake as he sleeps, aware that she feels so much safer with him present, but she still has adrenaline coursing through her body.

When writing about such dramatic events and heightened emotions in one timeline of the book can leave the present day sections feeling flat by comparison. However, as we go to Paris with Bene who is on his way to meet his father for the first time in Kenya, the author doesn’t try to compete. She lets Bene’s world seem almost dreamlike in comparison, at least on the surface. As he wanders in Paris he meets a beautiful young woman called Fatima who takes him on a tour of her city. These sections are like a dream sequence within the harsh realities of Africa from almost two decades before. There’s a sense of going with the flow as Bene goes out with Fatima into the evening. This stop has been a hiatus in his journey out to Kenya to meet his father for the first time. He should be carefree, but here and there we get traces of anxiety. When she takes him to a party at her ex-boyfriend’s place he doesn’t look forward to being with strangers, especially if they’re fakes. Most are out on the apartment balcony, watching a singer in the square below. It’s not his type of party. He goes to find Fatima as he wants to leave and steps onto the heaving balcony and wonders at how easy it would be to throw oneself over the railings and what it would take to turn that urge into a reality? I wondered where these dark thoughts and anxieties came from in such a young man. As if he’s only just running one step ahead of the shadows.

Lena’s time in Sudan is a tough read, but an important one. There was a period of time when family and friends were fed up of hearing me ask why news programs and governments had forgotten what was happening in Sudan. I remember George Clooney funding a satellite to view areas where rumours abounded about the mysterious ‘Janjaweed’. The UN seemed reluctant to use the word genocide but it was happening. The author captures the fear these masked murderers on horseback generated in the villages. They were thought to be mercenaries, appearing with no warning, except for the sound of pounding hooves. They left no time for people to flee and showed no mercy. Men were killed, young boys rounded up and recruited or killed, young girls and women gang raped. Then the survivors rounded up and placed in camps. Lena travels there as an NGO worker, trusted to bring back her clear observations for Kojo’s project.

Kojo has trusted Lena to see exactly what’s happening, she has experience of travelling through conflict regions and knows how to find the truth. Even he is taken aback by her phone call, when she tells him that no other place they’ve travelled to holds the amount of fear expressed by survivors. She tells him there’s something more going on here, that even the workers are scared and the people to scared to speak. They’re petrified. Kojo has never known Lena use hyperbole, so when she suggests people are being rounded up, Kojo suggests they talk in person. The longer Lena spends in Darfur the more she thinks about her friend Stefan, another photographer, the one who killed himself. Kojo notices when they’re reunited, a mental distance, and a physical one too – as if she’s constantly on alert and ready to flee. It takes a catalyst to set, what has only been a feeling up till now, into reality. Something to force her into taking flight. The author brings all these strands together beautifully, a full eighteen years since Lena and Kojo were in Sudan. Will Kojo come to understand her urge to flee and find safety all those years ago? Will he forgive her for keeping secrets? This is a beautiful book about the horrors humanity is capable of and what it means to bear witness to these atrocities. It is about being broken down with no joy in life and a sense of despair that can kill and how those responses to trauma can pass to the next generation. However, it’s also about those things that happen to bring us back to ourselves. The things that help us to see the future again with a sense of joy and hope.

Meet The Author

A.B. Kyazze is a British-American writer and photographer. She spent two decades writing and taking photographs around the world in conflicts and natural disasters – in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Darfur, Sudan, where Ahead of the Shadows takes place, and other parts of Africa, Asia and the Balkans. Her photographs and non-fiction work have been published in travel magazines, The Huffington Post, The Washington Times, The International Review of the Red Cross, and by Oxfam, Save the Children, and the British Red Cross.Into the Mouth of the Lion, A.B. Kyazze’s debut novel, was published in May 2021. She has also published the Humanity in the Landscape photography book series, and a number of short stories, articles and book reviews. Today, she lives in southeast London with her young family. There she writes, mentors other writers, runs a freelance editing business, and facilitates creative writing workshops in schools and libraries. She serves as a Trustee for the Oxford Centre for Fantasy, a creative writing charity. For more information go to http://www.abkyazze.com