Micro Review 66

 

The Change by Kirsten Miller (HarperCollins)

This book isn't out until August so just a very quick review.

I was sent this by the publisher to take part in a focus group about the book and the blurb really intrigued me:

The change is coming...
Nessa: The Seeker
Jo: The Protector
Harriett: The Punisher
With newfound powers the time has come to take matters into their own hands...
After Nessa is widowed and her daughters leave for college, she's left alone in her house near the ocean. In the quiet hours, she hears voices belonging to the dead - who will only speak to her.
On the cusp of fifty Harriett's marriage and career imploded, and she hasn't left her house in months. But her life is far from over - in fact, she's undergone a stunning metamorphosis.
Jo 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.
Guided by voices only Nessa can hear, the trio discover the abandoned body of a teenage girl. The police have written off the victim. But the women have not. Their own investigations lead them to more bodies and a world of wealth where the rules don't apply - and the realisation that laws are designed to protect villains, not the vulnerable.

 It sounds utterly crazy but turned out to be a book that I really couldn't put down, even though content was waaaaaaayyyyyyy out of my comfort zone a lot of time!

Despite the title it isn't really about the menopause, this is just a nice hook to remind people that women aren't all young and pretty or old and demented. My favourite character was definitely Harriet, with her erudite take downs of a male centric world but all three worked well together.

The book is a bit sweary (but to be honest that works in this context) and it is a crazy story but I hope it does well when it is published later in the year - I've definitely read nothing quite like it before!

Many thanks to Harper Collins for supplying the book and running the focus group - there was no expectation that I'd (positively) review the book as part of the group.

Micro Review 59

 The No-Show by Beth O'Leary (Quercus Publishing)

I was blown away by Beth O'Leary's first novel, The Flat Share as it managed to pack some hefty punches in what could so easily have been any other rom-com. Much of the plot to this appeared to be obvious but the way the two leads got there was innovative and emotional.

I didn't enjoy her second book (The Switch) quite so much and very unusually for me I didn't finish  last year's The Road Trip. However I'm nothing if not persistent and felt very lucky when my wish to read this book was granted by Quercus and Netgalley.

Something about the book's blurb drew me in from the start: 

Three women. Three dates. One missing man...

8.52 a.m. Siobhan's been looking forward to her breakfast date with Joseph. She was surprised when he suggested it - she normally sees him late at night in her hotel room. Breakfast with Joseph on Valentine's Day surely means something... so where is he?

2.43 p.m. Miranda's hoping that a Valentine's Day lunch with Carter will be the perfect way to celebrate her new job. It's a fresh start and a sign that her grown-up life is finally falling into place: she's been dating Carter for five months now and things are getting serious. But why hasn't he shown up?

6.30 p.m. Joseph Carter agreed to be Jane's fake boyfriend at a colleague's engagement party. They've not known each other long but their friendship is fast becoming the brightest part of her new life in Winchester. Joseph promised to save Jane tonight. But he's not here...

Meet Joseph Carter. That is, if you can find him.

With a hook like that I was instantly drawn in and I am going to say nothing more about the except to say that it was funny and sad and beautifully written. The plot gently revealed itself and was very clever, and the book managed to touch lightly on many issues giving you plenty to think about and discuss.

I am now looking forward to Beth O'Leary's next book even more!

Blog Tour - How to Be Brave

 

How To Be Brave by Daisy May Johnson (Pushkin Press)

electronic proof provided by NetGalley and Pushkin

Today is my stop on the blog tour for How to Be Brave - and I am very pleased to be a part of this tour as I've been sat on my review for this book for months!

I can't remember when I became a fan of the school story genre. I definitely read Blyton's Malory Towers books as a child and I enjoyed them, however I wasn't such a fan of her St. Clare's series. I also recall borrowing Anne Digby's Trebizon books as a teenager.

At some point before I left school I discovered The Chalet School books and even as an undergrad I wasn't ashamed of reading the genre - and there were some hardbacks in the Uni library so reading them counts as study surely?! With the growing internet I found out about fan clubs and that there were other authors who wrote in the genre and lo! a collection was started.

I've never been ashamed of reading children's books, even in public, and Twitter has been a great way to find likeminded people and new books. This was how I found Johnson and the news of her book.

How to Be Brave is very much in the traditional school story mould - due to a series of events and mishaps Calla ends up at the boarding school her mum attended but all is not well at this incredibly unorthodox convent school. Somehow it is all related to Calla, her mum and a rare duck...

The book mixes school stories, adventure stories, a few gentle issues and healthy dollop of Arthur Ransome -  but at no point did it feel derivative and I loved reading something so familiar and yet so new. It also features biscuits and other sweet treats. Lots of them - & I defy you to read this book without at least wanting to raid the biscuit tin!

The title 'How to Be Brave' relates to so much of the story and it isn't about big acts - Johnson recognises that for each of us bravery means something different and explores this in such a gentle way that it is only afterwards you realise just how cleverly and subtlety she has made the point.

There's lots of humour and Johnson makes much use of footnotes throughout the book. These act in the traditional way, as a way of crowbarring an extra plot in, and also as a Basil Exposition. By the end of the book I was a little weary of them but they were in the main great fun - I can see that the will make the book hard to read aloud however.

This was a fun book, and I'm hoping that Johnson will write more as it was a lovely  to spend a couple of afternoons with her characters.

I'm looking forward to finding out what other readers thought about this fun read.

The book is published by the wonderful Pushkin Press and can be ordered directly from them here, but do also check out your local library and see if they have copies (and ask them to order it if they don't) as authors do get an income from library loans.

Micro Review 26

 

The Swallows' Flight by Hilary McKay (Macmillan Children's Books)

Net Galley eProof

Back in 2018, when my reading stamina was at its lowest, Hilary McKay's The Skylarks' War held me captivated and was one of the first books that I managed to read from cover to cover in a weekend. It was a wonderful book and one that my mum and sister have also gone on to enjoy.

Skylarks' was a book about the lead up to the first world war and just after, whereas Swallows' is a story about the 1930s and world war two. The novel is a sequel to Skylarks' but moves on a generation and this time one narrative strand  follows two German boys and we see the increasing grip of fascism on their lives.

As with the first book I quickly lost myself in this one and found it as engrossing as any sweeping adult book set in the same time period. There are a few coincidences that as an adult I saw coming but with fiction this good I don't mind. I really hope that this becomes a classic text for schools, it is a book that deserves the same reverence given to Carrie's War and Goodnight Mr Tom (and I love that book) and it is definitely deserves to be on any curriculum/reading list far more than the implausible (and borderline offensive) The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. 

Blog Blast

 

Love in Five Acts by Daniela Krien (trans. Jamie Bulloch) Quercus Books

 (@QuercusBooks & @MacLeHosePress)

(eProof via NetGalley)

Books in translation are something I enjoy hugely and this one instantly appealed, both due to the setting (East Germany post reunification) and the translator - I've loved everything I've read in translation from Bulloch.

This book really wormed its way under my skin, in five stories (the Acts of the title) we learn about the lives of five women and how they interconnect. These women all have complicated lives and and various events in the present and past have shaped who they are.

What I most liked about this book was that the women felt real, they did feel like people you meet in daily life. They were fully rounded and you get to see all sides of them, no one is fully good or fully bad they just leap out of the page and into your life. The supporting cast weren't quite so well rounded but they definitely weren't cardboard cutouts, they had enough body to exist in their own right as well as in relation to the women.

My complaint with this book was that it ended - I wanted to spend more time with the five women and see where their lives went next.