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Book Lovers' Booklist

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Book Lovers' Booklist

Category Archives: Reviews

Review: How ‘normal’ is normal? That’s the question for Sally Rooney’s Normal People

10 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by Susan Pape in Reviews

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I was reluctant to add to the praise of this author – or like her book. I mean Sally Rooney has already had most of the plaudits that can be thrown at a young debut writer: shortlisted for a string of book awards, and winner of others including the Costa Novel of the Year, and long listed for the Man Booker Prize as well as the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Sally Rooney

Sally Rooney

She’s published by Faber & Faber who can afford to throw money at her marketing and promotion. She’s young and she comes from County Mayo so she ticks boxes (age and un-London).

And in the book she’s writing something that would seem to me to be a coming of age story featuring two unlikely teenagers.

She uses the present tense. And she doesn’t use quotation marks.

Really? How can I, riven as I am with (ahem) preconceived ideas and resentment, like this author and this book?

Childishly, I thought: Oh, come on.

Continue reading →

Review: Take a trip down James L. Weaver’s Blackbird Road and enjoy a thrilling character-driven ride

11 Monday Feb 2019

Posted by Sue Featherstone in Reviews

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Blackbird Road, James L Weaver, Lakewater Press

What happens when you read a book that’s so good, you can’t find the words to adequately describe how much you enjoyed it?

You procrastinate – and six months down the line, you still haven’t posted a review.

Which is daft!

Because all I really need to say about Blackbird Road, the third novel in James L. Weaver’s Jake Caldwell series, is that it’s a cracking thriller with great characters.

And I LOVED it. Continue reading →

Read an extract: Christmas Miracles at the Little Log Cabin by Helen J Rolfe

14 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by Sue Featherstone in Reviews

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@rararesources, Christmas Miracles at the Little Log Cabin, Helen J Rolfe

Do you believe in Christmas Miracles?

We’ve a delicious extract for you to read from Helen J Rolfe’s heart-warming festive romance, Christmas Miracles at the Little Log Cabin.

Here’s what the blurb has to say about the book:

Holly is looking for a change and even though not everyone agrees with her career choices, she’s determined there’s more to this life than the long hours she works as an editor in New York City.

What she doesn’t expect is to meet Mitch, a recluse who’s hiding more than she realises.

Mitch does all he can to avoid human contact, spending his days in the little log cabin out in the woods behind Inglenook Falls where he owns a Christmas tree farm, so when Holly falls into his life, he’s not sure how to react.

All he knows is that something needs to change if he ever wants to get his life back on track. Continue reading →

Review: Alison Moore’s quietly creepy story builds tension from the beginning

13 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by Susan Pape in Reviews

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From the start of Alison Moore’s quietly creepy book, the expectations are that not all will end well. Continue reading →

Review: Anita Waller’s Murder Undeniable proves an undeniable hit

11 Tuesday Dec 2018

Posted by Sue Featherstone in Reviews

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Anita Waller, emma@bloodhoundbooks.com, Murder Undeniable

What happens when the good man you married isn’t all he seems to be?

In fact, he’s much, much worse than Katerina Rowe, a church deacon in the historic plague village of Eyam, could ever imagine.

And the tension is palpable as Kat slowly realises her life is built on a lie and Leon, the husband she adores, is a crook and a scoundrel.

But is he also a murderer?

Murder Undeniable is a promising start to a new crime fiction series from prolific Sheffield-based writer Anita Waller. Continue reading →

Review: Hope and Christmas Spirit galore in Susan Buchanan’s seasonal story

10 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by Sue Featherstone in Reviews

≈ 2 Comments

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@rararesources, Susan Buchanan, The Christmas Spirit

Everyone needs the right mix of Hope and Christmas Spirit and the mysterious Natalie Hope has both in abundance.

She’s a woman on a mission: every December she has just 24 days to make sure four unhappy people have a Christmas to remember.

This year she’s landed in the small town of Winstanton, twenty miles north of Glasgow, and, in next to no time, she’s working her magic: re-uniting families, bringing lovers together and generally stirring things up.

It’s all a bit clichéd but who cares? Continue reading →

Review: Staying On – feel good story about a three-quarter-life crisis by Kev King author CM Taylor

06 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by Sue Featherstone in Reviews

≈ 3 Comments

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@CMTaylorStory, Random Things Tours, Staying On

Hopefully CM Taylor won’t take this the wrong way, but I thought the author of Staying On must be a woman.

Partly, this was because the family-orientated thrust of the story seemed a feminine rather than a masculine theme and partly too, because in the opening pages, the authorial voice seemed to be female rather than male – don’t ask me to analyse why, that’s just the way I read it.

But the clincher was that the exploration of the inner lives of the main protagonists was…well, it’s what women writers do. Continue reading →

Review: Isa Ritchie’s Fishing with Māui is a multi-layered, multi-voiced delight

07 Wednesday Nov 2018

Posted by Sue Featherstone in Reviews

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@IsaPearlRitchie, @rararesources, Fishing for Māui, Isa Ritchie

Fishing for Maui - Front - (RGB) (002)Every so often you get to the end of a book and think: ‘I’d better read that again.’

Fishing with Māui, by Wellington-based author Isa Ritchie, is one such book.

I turned the last page a couple of days ago and I’m still not sure I’ve picked up on all the nuances or that I’ve properly understood what Ritchie was trying to say about the importance of family and tradition; the place of religion (or not!); and the difficulties of being comfortable in your own skin. Continue reading →

Review: Inside the Whispers – another page-turner from best seller AJ Waines

21 Sunday Oct 2018

Posted by Sue Featherstone in Reviews

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@AJWaines, Bloodhound Books, emma@bloodhoundbooks.com

A.J. Waines - Inside the Whispers_cover_1Losing one patient to suicide is happenstance.

When a second dies it could be coincidence…

But alarm bells start ringing VERY loudly for Dr Sam Willerby, a specialist in post traumatic stress, when suicide claims the life of a third patient.

It’s not just her professional reputation that’s at stake – all three turned to Sam for counselling after surviving a fire on the London Underground – her lover Con is also displaying similar symptoms, and Sam is terrified he too will give in to the voices in his head that tell him he doesn’t deserve to live. Continue reading →

Review: Corruption! marks a twisty end to Elizabeth Dulcie’s  Suzanne Jones series

05 Friday Oct 2018

Posted by Sue Featherstone in Reviews

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@ElizabethDulcie, @rararesources, Corruption!, Elizabeth Dulcie

CORRUPTION_FRONT_CMYK (002)The phrase ‘O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive…’ might have been coined especially for Elizabeth Dulcie’s new thriller Corruption!

It wasn’t, of course, the quote is a line from Sir Walter Scott’s 1808 poem, Marmion, but it does provide a perfect summary of the plot of this third, and final instalment, of Dulcie’s Suzanne Jones series.

Corruption! is a more-ish deliciously twisty tangle of deception and false trails and crooks masquerading as caring family men. Continue reading →

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