16 Saturday Nov 2019
Posted in Reviews
Photo credit: Bianca Kirby.
Find out why author Shelly Berry is grateful she never acted on an office crush and how the experience inspired the plot of her new novel Outreach.
Also learn why her days as a girl guide mean she always likes to ‘Be Prepared’ and why she’s worrying about moving house.
And don’t miss out on a chance (UK entrants only) to win a paperback copy of Outreach. Continue reading
10 Sunday Nov 2019
Posted in Reviews
I’ve been spending a lot of time in Norfolk recently – the new go-to county for authors.
And I’m enjoying my little trips – including the most recent one, courtesy of Kate Frost, and her novel The Honeysuckle Dream, which also includes stop-offs in Bristol, Sheffield, Pembrokeshire and Cephalonia (where the weather was warmer than at all the other destinations).
Did I say enjoying?
Actually, by chapter two I was fizzing with fury on behalf of poor betrayed, pregnant nineteen-year-old Leila, whose mother tells her the much older, Continue reading
27 Sunday Oct 2019
Posted in Reviews
In a futuristic world, ripped apart by a devastating war, Leonie hovers on the brink of death after harnessing her extra-ordinary mental powers to save the victims of a horrible explosion.
Husband Perry, a former monk, who showed Leonie how to harness those powers, is wracked with guilt.
And, though, he knows she is receiving the best possible care from his former brothers at the monastery of the House of St Peter, he is tortured with thoughts of ‘what if?’
Meanwhile, his mentor, and Leonie’s adopted Continue reading
24 Tuesday Sep 2019
Posted in Reviews
A war veteran murdered in his bath, a crooked property developer, a family with a deadly secret that refuses to stay buried…
It’s clear DI John Tanner and sidekick DC Jenny Evans have their work cut out in Moorings, the third instalment of David Blake’s Norfolk-based murder mystery series.
There’s twists and turns aplenty, and a couple more corpses, before Tanner and Evans realise they’ve been looking in the wrong direction.
And, if you can identify the killer before they do…well, you’re a better detective than me. Continue reading
01 Thursday Aug 2019
Posted in Reviews
What happens when your widowed, 61-year-old mother wants to bring a plus-one to your wedding?
In the case of bride-to-be Charlotte ‘that man’ is definitely persona non grata.
And her struggle to come to terms with her mum’s new relationship and re-discovered sexuality provides a thought-provoking backdrop to My Daughter’s Wedding, Claire Baldry’s poignant and romantic tale of love in later life.
It’s very well-observed – told mostly from the viewpoint of Angie, Charlotte’s mother – and, though younger readers might not appreciate Continue reading
23 Tuesday Jul 2019
Posted in Reviews
How do you like your scones? The Devonshire way? Jam on top. Or do you go down the Cornwall route and spread the jam first and top with clotted cream?
I only ask because in some ways Jo Lambert’s romance driven drama A Cornish Affair reminds me of a particularly tasty Cornish scone – with the seaside setting a perfect showcase for a rich cast of characters and a plot with a surprising depth.
Am I stretching the metaphor a bit here?
Perhaps…
The clue though is in that word ‘surprising’. Continue reading
18 Thursday Jul 2019
Posted in Reviews
One of my pet hates is people who complain things were better in the old days.
Because they weren’t.
When I was a child Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were abducting, abusing and murdering children.
Spare the rod and spoil the child was still a widely held belief and, though I was incredibly lucky to have a safe and secure home life, lots of other kids didn’t.
And Rosebrook Chronicles (The Hidden Stories), a tense psychological series of Continue reading
10 Wednesday Jul 2019
Posted in Reviews
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
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.
07 Sunday Jul 2019
Posted in Reviews
Forget stereotypes and box ticking: from Kick-ass Hotties to Mom Warriors, tarts with hearts and Crying WAGS – it’s all about the writing.
Or, as Lucy V. Hay puts it in her punchy, concise e-book guide How Not to Write Female Characters, it’s about GOOD WRITING.
Hay, script editor, novelist and owner of the UK’s top screenwriting blog www.bang2write.com, knows what she’s talking about.
She’s spent the last 15 years reading the slush pile and has learned to spot the patterns, pitfalls and general mistakes writers make when writing female characters – and why. Continue reading
12 Wednesday Jun 2019
Posted in Reviews
There may be better places to read a tale of derring-do in war torn France, but the Ille de Oleron, in the heart of what was once the occupied zone, takes some beating.
As the OH and I drove through the Frenchcountryside or meandered through sleepy towns and villages, it was easy to picture ourselves in the world depicted in Howard Linskey’s World War Two thriller Ungentlemanly Warfare, where Captain Harry Walsh, has been tasked with assassinating the scientific genius behind the ME 163, a miracle jet fighter that could destroy all chance of allied victory in Europe. Continue reading
