Book Review: Farewell to Russia by Joe Luc Barnes

 

I think Farewell to Russia - a travelogue with political bite in which the author visits all of the constituent parts of the former USSR - might just be one of my favourite books of the year. 

It has its weaknesses. It is, after all, a huge ask to try and cover the enormity of the discrete territories - all fifteen of them - that stretch from the Baltic to the Sea of Japan and the Arctic Ocean to the southern Caspian Sea. They are so hugely different and so individually and collectively fascinating that I wanted more. 

That said, Joe Luc Barnes has done a proper job within these limits. I thoroughly enjoyed his wit and observation; I liked the dry way in which he observed the differences between the multiple cultures; I enjoyed his adventures and the characterisations of those he met. 

I already had an idea of the extent to which the Baltic states have always regarded themselves as separate, and who doesn't, these days, have an interest in Ukraine? If I'm honest I thought Barnes rather short-changed us with regard to these states, lumping the three Baltic states in a single chapter, and his journeys in Belarus and Ukraine were necessarily constrained. Perhaps that was unavoidable.

To compensate for that, his descriptions of Russia itself, and in particular of the jigsaw of warring tribes and micro-republics that make up the turbulent Caucasus, intrigued me the most. And I've always had a vague interest in the republics among the former Silk Road but had no concept of how differently they have evolved since their independence (and yet in many ways remain similar). 

Of the Caucasus I knew almost nothing (which is odd because that border between Armenia and Turkey is the closest I have ever come the old USSR, and I was there when the big beast was very much alive and the frontier bristled with armed men in watchtowers). Barnes' introduction to these tumultuous republics has already set me on the route to wider reading, his fascinating glimpses leading me to want more. 

This is an excellent book and achieved what all travel books should -- entertaining the reader while opening their mind. 

Thank you to Netgalley and Elliott & Thompson for an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review. 

 

Book Review: A History of England in 25 poems by Catherine Clark

 

The concept of Catherine Clark’s history-poetry book is an interesting one: “…the history of England told in a new way: glimpsed through twenty-five remarkable poems written down between the eighth century and today, which connect us directly with the nation’s past, and the experiences, emotions and imaginations of those who lived it.”

And it’s fine. It really is fine. 

The trouble is that it felt like it had missed a few tricks. Yes, I liked (most of) the poems but the selection was a bit odd, ranging from some of the absolute best (Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales) through the historical oddities like The Agincourt Carol, to those which seemed a little strange (such as Crumble Hall). 

There is a paradox here. The better poems from any era have survived and are well-known and the less good have fallen by the wayside for a reason, so that if you go out of your way  to include lesser-known poems they are unlikely to be the best. And while I very much liked the fact that Clarke chose lesser-heard voices (women, PoC) she was necessarily picking from a much narrower library, especially historically and some of the poems, for me, lacked literary merit.

I also felt the definition of English history was a bit stretched: Clarke includes Geoffrey Hill’s Poetry After Auschwitz and though she acknowledges the difficulties (not just the fact that Auschwitz is by no definition an English event) I nevertheless thought it a bit of a stretch to say that Hill (who was a child during the war “is nevertheless implicated, like everyone, in the violence and brutality of the Holocaust.” 

On the whole I think Clarke’s choices were insightful, especially given that it was inevitable some significant events had to be left out, but I did feel that my enjoyment of the poetry was poorer for some of them. I largely enjoyed the commentary, too, though the same limitations apply: so much had to be left unsaid. 

As a result the book was somehow less than the sum of its parts, which is a pity — but I nevertheless enjoyed it for its quirkiness and I definitely learned from it. 

Book Review: The Black Death by Thomas Asbridge

Thomas Asbridge's The Black Death, an account of the plague which spread across the known mediaeval world and probably well beyond it in a series of pulses from the mid fourteenth century onwards is, quite simply, the most informative, accessible and comprehensive history book I think I have ever read. It's by no means the first book about this apocalyptic event that I've read, though it is the first since our current century's own experience of a much lower level pandemic. 

At 560 pages it's a chunky offering, to say the least, but every one of those pages is packed with information and insight. The book is split into three sections. The first, which reads like a thriller, covers the progress of the disease from its first appearance in the shores of the Black Sea as it spread through an initially unaware and later terrified western hemisphere. The second considers how the world responded to this unprecedented disaster: how cities dealt with the loss of trade and the collapse of their economies, how they tackled the problems of feeding the living and burying the dead. The third looks at how the mystery of the plague's origins and nature was unravelled and the impacts it had upon the world not just in the immediate aftermath but for centuries to come.  

I was utterly enthralled by it, largely because Asbridge quotes extensively from contemporary accounts and the words of those who suffered -- their pain, their bewilderment, their sense of utter terror -- prove both poignant and (I felt a little guilty about this) compelling. Some stayed, some fled. Some accepted it as their punishment from God, some railed against religion. And many of them -- possibly half the population -- did not survive. 

In my experience it's rare that a historian takes in such a well-known topic and covers it with such a fresh eye. I admired this book for many things, including its comprehensive coverage of a huge topic and the quality of its writing, but most of all I commend the author for making such a complex event so easily understandable. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and learned a vast amount from it. 

Book Review: The Book Lover’s Guide to Edinburgh by Kate Stephenson

 

I thought this was a fun but rather limited guide to literary places in the wonderful (sorry, I’m biased) city of Edinburgh. The author splits it into three parts — some short walking itineraries on the city based around the works of famous authors, then a section on the city’s wider literary associations, and finally a section about museums and other sites with literary connections. 

It’s a quick read, and I did find it a little haphazard in places. The opening section has a lot of potential given the city’s literary connections, and I thought it rather sold itself short. Of the five authors considered the first three — Burns, Scott and Stephenson — can be strongly anchored to the city and there are plenty of associated sites. Diana Gabbaldon used the city as a setting but never lived there for a period and JK Rowling has often denied drawing inspiration from particular places. 

The walks associated with these latter two were very flimsy. The inclusion of the unglamorous Waverley Station, for example, on the grounds that “in all likelihood the Hogwarts Express would have passed through” felt a little fraudulent for someone expecting something interesting and different. 

The rest of the book was okay and interesting at the margins, though I felt there was a lot of information withh limited organisation and so found it a little confusing. 

I very much liked the concept of the book, but felt a little let down at the end, as there were plenty of places included which, frankly, are either inaccessible to the public or not worth the effort if visiting (in my opinion). 

Book Review: Mary of Modena by Justine Brown

 

Though I would consider myself somewhat of a history nerd there are inevitably large parts of British history about which I know very little. The short reign of James VII and II, along with its preceding period as heir to the throne and the subsequent years in exile, fall into that category. Even more shadowy is the role of his wife, Mary Beatrice of Modena, of whom I previously knew little but her name and the fact that there was controversy about the birth of her son, James, the future Old Pretender and father of Bonnie Prince Charlie. (At the time the lie was put about the he had been smuggled into her bedchamber in a warming pan, in order to undermine his legitimacy in terms of the future succession.)

This book is not, of course, a biography of James VII and II but of his consort, though he inevitably plays a major role in it. Through Mary Beatrice, Justine Brown sheds fascinating light not only on the Queen herself but on the goings-on around her and the role she was later to play in sustaining and supporting the Jacobite cause abroad — up to and including the first, ill-fated, Jacobite rebellion in 1715. 

With so much intrigue surrounding the succession, in which religion was a crucial determining factor, Mary Beatrice was inevitably at the centre of it; as with her husband, her stalwart Catholicism was perceived as problematic by many in a largely Protestant country. With the alternative candidates for the throne being James’s daughters by his first marriage, Mary’s relationship with her stepdaughters (and their own various entanglements with the friends who sought to influence them) becomes increasingly fascinating.

Without knowing more of the period its difficult to say how balanced this book is; its emphasis of Mary Beatrice’s qualities and focus on the the undoubted but possibly understandable shortcomings of ‘the other side’ made a little wary. It’s very unusual that ne side in history is all good and the other all bad and my sketchy knowledge of the period included the impression that James was perhaps rather weaker, and perhaps not as good a monarch, as the author portrays him. 

This triviality aside, I found the book fascinating in both its breadth and in its detail, and would thoroughly recommend it. 

Thank you to Netgalley and Pen & Sword Books for an advance copy in return for this honest review. 

Book Review: The Oldest Rocks on Earth by Simon Lamb

 

Okay, I admit it. I thought this book might be a bit niche, even for a rock enthusiast like myself, but I was wrong. Instead of being a dry trail through a lot of specialisms it was entertaining and engaging, as well as very informative. 

There seems to be a trend for popular science books to be as much about the people doing the fieldwork as it is about the work itself, and I really like this. The rocks in this book may be billions of years old but the discovery of them is entirely down to human beings. 

Simon Lamb focuses mainly on his fieldwork in the greenstones of Eswatini and elsewhere, and in doing so he not only enlivens a potential dull story not only through the stories of his many adventures, but also through his entertaining and accessible descriptions. 

He covers a lot of ground and some large-scale and very complex geological, geophysical and astronomical concepts — everything from the Milankovic cycles to plate tectonics via fractional crystallisation and the formation of the Earth’s core, and finishing up with the little matter of the origins of life on Earth. A lot of it is by nature technical but the juxtaposition of science and humanity makes it easier to understand than it otherwise might have been. I was particularly taken by his descriptions of the mining industry in souther Africa, and absolutely gripped by his account of his visit to the giant De Beers diamond mine at Swakopmund in Namibia.

It’s an excellent book, and one that I think can be read by those with a high level of knowledge of the subject but also enjoyed by those who do not. 

Book Review: Britain's Folklore Year by Mark Norman

 

I love folklore. As a result (and as you might expect) I've read quite a lot about it, and in quite a lot of detail. This book is best considered as an introduction. If you're looking for a something that delves into the social and psychological origins of folklore in any depth you will probably be disappointed. If, on the other hand, you're a folklore novice, or you just want a fairly simple round-up of local traditions, then this is pretty much spot on. 

It's a chronological consideration of Britain's folklore, beginning in spring (with more than a nod to both the ecclesiastical and agricultural calendars) and rounds off at the end of winter, and it looks at different traditions, where they occur, how they vary and what they have in common. 

It's wide-ranging in scope and therefore doesn't allow itself the luxury of looking at some of the more significant customs that persist in different variations across the UK (for example, the Mari Lwyd and Plough Monday are two ancient traditions that deserve a lot more exploration than the author has space for). But again: if it's an introduction you're looking for then that is what you've got. 

The range of traditions is also extremely wide, from the ancient pre-Christian rituals associated, in particular, with the transitions between the seasons, to very much more modern 'traditions' that are artificial and which, while they might one day become long-standing and historic, are currently very much what I would consider commercial events rather than folkloric celebrations. That includes such things as the World Stinging Nettle Eating Championships and the International Festival of Worm Charming. 

It's a quick, fun gallop through some of the quirkier aspects of the UK's heritage, some of it more authentic than other parts, and I thoroughly enjoyed it -- without, I have to say, finding myself hugely better-informed as a result. 

Book Review: Tracing Your Staffordshire Ancestors by Chloe O'Shea

It’s a bit niche, this one, but as I have an interest in history (and a shedload of Staffordshire ancestors, to boot) I thought I’d give it a go. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting from it, especially since my dad had done a lot of the legwork on my family tree in the days before the internet, and the framework of it is pretty much complete (enhanced a little by myself at a later stage), but I’m curious.

It’s actually a truly admirable and extremely thorough book. In the beginning I was yawning bit, but that’s because not was approaching the subject with the intention of helping those starting from scratch, and what seems glaringly obvious (when you’ve done a bit of genealogical research) isn’t (if you haven’t).

From the basics of births, marriages and deaths, however, the book moved swiftly on to reveal a whole host of other sources which had never occurred to me as possibilities. There are newspaper articles and court papers, manorial rolls, schools information, estate maps and records, company archives and so much more. For each source, Chloe O’Shea outlines what kind of material might be available, gives examples, and directs the reader to specific sources for those whose ancestors come from Staffordshire. It’s also realistic about the difficulties that a researcher may encounter and gives practical tips to avoid falling into a wide variety of traps that might lead down a blind alley — or, indeed, to someone else’s ancestor!

Despite its county-specific title, the book is of much wider value: it won’t be difficult to work out where to look for information in other English counties. It’s a pity I don’t have the time these days to go chasing the higher branches of my family tree. If I did I think I would be able to find much more than the basic information which I already have. I was unaware of the wealth of available information and how much it could add to an understanding, not just of one’s own family, but of wider social history in the local area. 

After a slow start, I definitely found this book a worthwhile read. 

 

Book Review: A Murder on the Mountain by Ellie Alexander

I don’t know it it’s just me (maybe it’s the books I’m picking up) but cosy crime seems to be trending these days towards the cosy and away from the crime. So it was with Ellie Alexander’s A Murder on the Mountain, and it’s fine, it really is, but…it’s just short on what I’m looking for in a crime novel. 

The book is set in Portland, Oregon, where wannabe investigative reporter Meg finds herself with a job at an extreme sports publication. Here, naturally, she is required to become involved in extreme sports at which (of course) she is inexperienced and so, expectedly, gets herself into a lot of scrapes. During one of these, as she is covering the filming of an extreme sports competition, she witnesses one of the competitors falling past her to his death as she clings to the side of a mountain. 

It wouldn’t be cosy crime of Meg didn’t immediately need to get to the bottom of it, despite being warned off by both the sheriff and a mysterious personage we assume to be the killer. So far, so mainstream. 

The trouble is, I found it all a bit…twee. It’s not just that Meg is improbably ditzy for a reporter, and keeps getting herself into situations which would have been avoided if she’d done as the Sheriff told her and stayed at home. It’s that the crime itself is incredibly sketchy. There are no witnesses to see how the victims came to fall and yet the Sheriff concludes that it’s homicide. We never find out why. Most of the investigation is Meg digging around to find out  the background of the contestants which, let’s face it, is something the police would be perfectly able to do for themselves — probably rather better and rather quicker. 

What we did get, instead of the crime, was a lot of froth. We had the detail on what Meg snd her friends wear, and eat, and detailed explanations of where they live. The secondary characters — friends, family, suspects — are stereotypes and without depth. Difficult mother, grandmother into crystals and alternative therapy, handsome boss vs male best friend, successful female best friend with smug boyfriend — the tropes are all there but there’s nothing to make them any more than one dimensional. That said, Meg herself, despite being on the irritating side, does at least have a complex backstory with which I was engaged, though not enough to read on beyond the end of this book to discover more.

I loved the setting, though, and was following the action with Google Maps open on my phone. The descriptions were great and really evoked the awe-inspiring setting of the Columbia Rover and its gorge, and I did like the touch of including information about all the locations at the end of the book. 

Overall, though the tone veered way too much towards the frothiness of a light romcom for my taste. Cosy or not, I’m looking for a little bit more of an edge than this in a crime novel, I’m afraid.

Book Review: The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

I’ll be up front. Prior to reading this book my experience of reading Elif Shafak (two books, There are Rivers in the Sky and The Island of Missing Trees) propelled her right up near the top of my list of favourite writers. On that basis alone I was looking forward to The Forty Rules of Love. And maybe partly because my expectations were so high, I was disappointed.

The book is a dual timeline, balancing a journey of self-discovery for Ella, a middle-class liberal Jewish housewife in the States, against the historical story of the relationship between the thirteenth century Turkish poet, Rumi, and the whirling Dervish, Shams of Tabriz. I’m always a bit sceptical of this format, though normally Shafak does it well. Too often I find that one strand outweighs the other and so it proved in this case. Ella’s storyline felt dull to me and a faint echo of the historical story, rather than offering any kind of enrichment of it. I was less interested in her boredom than with the richness of what felt to me like the main story.

This, then, is a matter of historical fact in which the renowned Rumi becomes obsessed with his spiritual teacher, alienating many people along the way and inspiring many others, until events reach a tragic conclusion. Both Rumi and Shams are still quoted today and the book takes the reader through Shams’ Forty Rules of Love, showing us events through a lot of different points of view, which I liked.

So far so good, but I did find that for much of the book I was sucked into dense paragraphs and pages of philosophical exposition. The minor characters, who by and large don’t get bogged down in this kind of detail, are much the most entertaining and engaging (even the baddies). Shams comes across as alternatively too good or too bad to be true (perhaps that’s deliberate) and Rumi, the leader, seems overwhelmed by him to the point of neglecting family and friends. 

I found the religious debate and discussions o overwhelming that they were almost suffocating; too much of it felt as if I was being lectured, rather than encouraged, about a better way to live my life. When I compare that with the sparkling storytelling and clever construction of, say There Are Rivers in the Sky, I have to admit I was disappointed, and it took me a lot longer to read than I had thought. 

Just because this book isn’t as good as I expected doesn’t, of course, make it bad and I’m sure many other will people enjoy it. But for me, it’s not Shafak’s best. 

Book Review: The Keeper of Lost Art by Lelita Baldock

The Keeper of Lost Art is based on historical events in the Second World War in the southern Italian port city of Bari. Siena Innocente, a young woman on the run from wartime Rome, arrives at the home of noted artist Aurio di Bari in search of sanctuary. He’s away fighting in the war, but his family, led by his daughter Alessia, welcome Siena into their home. As war proceeds and its horrors unfold, we learn not just of Siena’s past but also the truth about the family in which she has been welcomed. 

I really loved the setting for this story. It’s an unusual twist on the usual wartime tale and I liked that. Lelita Baldock depicts both the beauties of Italy and the privations of war, and her descriptions of how the community came together (and, just occasionally, fractured) in its desperation to survive, are utterly absorbing. The historical detail, including the historical context of the struggle against fascism, was fascinating.

The story is told from three different points of view: Alessia, Siena and, in a jump back in time, Eva, a young woman studying art in Florence in 1921. I thought the story was very busy, perhaps overly so, and I did find myself wondering whether it all hung together quite as well as it might. Some of the turns in the plot were well-worn and came as no surprise, though I did find the twist at the very end extremely satisfactory.

To make something so complicated work (and with so many apparently unconnected characters somehow coming together at the end) while maintaining some sense of credibility is quite the challenge and to do that while keeping secrets from the reader is more complicated. I wasn’t sure it worked. With two characters changing their name in the course of the book I felt the author was trying too hard to have everything hinge on coincidence. (I guessed one of the changes and suspected  the other.) 

In another, less well written book, I might have found that more frustrating, but this is elegantly written and the characters are human, both likeable and believable. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  

Thanks to Storm Publishing and Netgalley for an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review. 

Book Review: Für Elise by Mark Splitstone

This book attracted me because of its premise — a retelling of the Rip van Winkle tale, which is referred to a number of times in the text. Rather than falling asleep for twenty years, the protagonist (Hans) leaves Dresden and his teenage sweetheart (Elise) when he’s conscripted into the Wehrmacht during the Second World War. After thirteen years being held as a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union he returns to find that not only has the city changed beyond all measure, but the political situation and the whole culture he left has changed, too.

The book is in two parts and for me it took too long to get to the interesting part. Hans’s developing relationship with Elise didn’t hold my attention for that long and a lot of it felt irrelevant knowing what was to come. Once Hans returned and faced the demons of what had happened both to his city and to the people he loved, and had to come to terns with a new political situation that was hostile to him, the book became much more interesting and there was much more of a sene of purpose about it. It got better as it went on and the ending had a twist that I genuinely didn’t expect — so, hats off to the author for that! 

That said, the book isn’t without its issues. To my disappointment it lacked any real sense of place— something that’s crucial in a location-dependent book such as this. I don’t mean that it lacked detail, because it didn’t: the descriptions of the cityscape before and after Hans’s exile were, as far as I can tell, immaculate. The problem was in the telling. Party it’s because it’s an American book written in American English and had no nod to its central European setting. Even a small touch, such as the odd word in German (such as a character addressing their mother as mutti rather than mom) might have lifted it a little and made a difference. 

I hate to say it, but the main problem I have with this is that the writing was pedestrian at best and that made it pretty hard to read at times. The story, as I’ve said, is thrilling at points (certainly once it gets going) but I always felt I was very distant from it. Neither the characters nor the place (and I’ve recently been to Dresden and read a lot of eye-witness accounts of what happened there) felt real to me and even the graphic (and accurate) descriptions of the horrors of the firestorm failed to touch my emotions as they ought to. It was all telling and almost no showing and I’m sorry to say that in many places I found it dull. I thought the dialogue was clunky and I never really felt invested in the characters. I didn’t feel their fear or their pain; I was’t shocked or angry as I read. I just read, without emotion and that’s definitely not what I would look for in a story dealing with such traumatic events. 

I think that’s a pity because, as I say, this offered a great story and a really interesting premise. But I’m sorry: I just think it could have been delivered a whole lot better.

Thank to Netgalley and the author for a copy of this book in return for an honest review. 

Review: The Secret Detective Agency by Helena Dixon

Oooh! A Second World War spy thriller-cum-murder mystery! Who could resist a book set in a period so rich with intrigue, especially when the setting is the Home Front, much cosier than anything in a more military setting? In this book (of course, no spoilers!) the focus is on the unlikely partnership between severe Londoner, Jane Treen, who is involved in co-ordinating a network of spies on the continent, and Devonshire country gentleman Arthur Cilento (a codebreaker and a young man physically unable to serve). When one of Jane’s spy network turns up, dead, on Arthur’s country estate, the pair are forced to work together to catch a killer and prevent more murders.

This book appealed to me for a reason other than the setting and genre — the author. I’ve read and enjoyed several of Helena Dixon’s Miss Underhay mysteries (and will eventually get round to the rest when my TBR permits) and so I reckoned I’d have a look and see how the author handled a different period. 

Well now. As I say, I enjoyed Miss Underhay very much but…whisper it…I think I like this fledgling series even more. It’s hard to judge on just one book, but I’ll definitely read on. All of the expected qualities in terms of writing, characterisation and setting are present. For me what made it different is that the context is much more serious — an existential crisis for the nation, rather than the often-frivolous 1930s) and so the stakes are higher. 

I became very invested not just in the success of Jane and Arthur’s investigations but in the relationship between the two very different main characters and the contrast between Jane’s stark London life (the descriptions of the aftermath of the Blitz are grimly fascinating) and Arthur’s much more cosseted country situation.

I look forward to reading more. 

Thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for an advanced copy of this book in return for an honest review. 

Flight Without End by Joseph Roth

This book, for which I have kindly been sent a copy in return for an honest review (many thanks to Netgalley and Pushkin Press Classics), is a re-issue of a novel first published in 1927. It follows the story of Franz Tunda, an Austrian Jew who finds himself in Siberia after the end of the Great War and gradually works his way back to a society which believes him lost. 

Tunda’s travels (and his frequent sexual relationships) take him through revolutionary Russia, into Baku, back to Vienna, then to an unnamed university town on the Rhine and finally to Paris, where he at last encounters his long-lost fiancée. Readers used to a more modern novel might find the structure a little lacking and occasionally confusing (the narration switches between an abstract third person, Tunda’s diary, and a friend) but I didn’t find this off-putting.

I’ve always been fascinated by Europe between the wars, not just in terms of its political history, which can be complicated as well as dark, but with its society. This novel, written during the period, is overwhelmingly realistic and, though without the knowledge of the horrors was to come (like the author, the protagonist is Jewish). still contains hints at the darker forces that were stirring. As Tunda moved between spheres and adapts to them, always looking back with what feels like a curious detachment on the life he had, and the man he was, before, I was left with an overwhelming impression of the transience and brittleness of post-war European society.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I both enjoyed and feel enlightened by this bittersweet novel. 

 

Book Review: The English Wife by Anna Stuart

 

The English Wife tells the stories of two women during the Second World War. One of them, Clementine Churchill, was very much real and, as the wife of the Prime Minister Winston Churchill, unavoidably at the heart of what went on. The other, Jenny Miller, is an American broadcaster and is not real, though the authors’ note tells us that she was inspired by a real person (Janet Murrow, wife of the US broadcaster Ed Murrow). 

As far as my grasp of history tells me, it’s a faithful retelling of a critical and fascinating period in world history, and I really enjoyed seeing a well-known narrative told from a different point of view, showing us how Clementine’s sense of duty, sense of self-worth and love for her husband didn’t always overlap. 

I admit that I was particularly touched by the story and, as I read, it rang bells with me. My mother used to tell tell how, as a little girl living in South Wales during the War, she raised money for Clementine’s Aid For Russia fund, and received a letter from Mrs Churchill in response. 

I think there can often be problems in telling a true and widely-known story, and its always easier (I think) to tell them through the eyes of a fictional character, rather than a real one whose deeds are known, whose letters and diaries are public and so on, which means the truth can be a bit of a straitjacket for an author. Because of this, Jenny’s life story felt a little more real to me than Clementine’s and I would have liked to have read more about her and seen Anna Stuart’s imagination take wing. 

That said, Stuart’s talent and Clementine’s life story combined to make this less of a problem than I had feared. I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Thanks to Bookouture and Netgalley for an advance copy of this book, which I read in return for an honest review. 

Book Review: The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris by Evie Woods

Okay, so I loved Evie Woods’ last book, The Secret Bookshop, and I was looking forward to her next, The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris. The thing is, it turns out this isn’t her next book but a previous one, a good decade old. And I hate to say it, it shows. When I first read it I couldn’t understand how the author had produced a book that fell so far short of her best and now I understand: it was because to was written way back on Woods’ learning curve as an author. 

I think that’s a pity, because I was expecting more of what I knew her to be capable of. All the elements that made The Lost Bookshop so good were there — in particular the magical realism and the setting — but they didn’t work as well. In the book, Edith Lane (who is thirty, though at different points feels anywhere between fifteen and fifty) leaves Dublin to take up a new job in a bakery in Paris but ends up in the town of Compiègne instead. Here everything proceeds exactly as you would expect. After a rocky start she makes friends, meets a handsome man with whom she has a misunderstanding, wins over her grumpy old employer, uncovers the bakery’s family mystery, solves the owners financial problems, and there you have it. 

It’s a slender plot, but slender plots done well are immensely readable. in this case, the longer the book went on the more predictable it became. Corporate bad guys, feisty incomer winning over the crusty old local, local support campaign for a much-loved but struggling institution goes viral, villain’s epiphany… It had nothing new or even fresh to offer, except perhaps a nod to Marcel Proust. And I was slightly surprised about that, since Edith (the heroine) makes such a bit fuss of not knowing anything about anything, so finding her reading classical French literature didn’t really stick. 

This feels really mean, and I want to emphasis again how excellently Evie Woods can write, but this particular book just didn’t work for me. The whole was less than the sum of its parts and certainly less than the quality of its predecessor. It was a light easy read and I loved the setting, but the characters were flimsy and the magical realism, which should have held the book together, came and went rather than being the thread that held the book together. 

It’s a light read, pleasant and unchallenging, but it’s definitely not one of the authors best, I’m afraid. 

Book Review: The Winter List by SG Maclean.

The Winter List is a historical thriller set in post-Restoration England, against a background of suspicion, mistrust and revenge. Charles II is on the throne and determined to take revenge upon those who signed his father’s death warrant: one by one they are arrested, imprisoned and killed. As the search for the regicides proceeds, there are some who take the opportunity for personal revenge. 

I read this book on the recommendation of a friend and it’s one I’m unlikely yo have picked up for myself. More fool me. It’s a period of history I’m not familiar with and yet was immediately drawn in to the setting. From Samuel Pepys’ London the story moves swiftly to York where Lawrence Ingoldby lives with his wife and family, concealing his connection to one of the most wanted of Cromwell’s men. 

As the Ingoldbys remain blissfully unaware of danger, Anne Winter and her maid Grizel are on a mission to find out whether Lawrence’s friend Thomas Fairly is a traitor to the King. Among the snickets of York Anne and Grizel are not the only hunters — and Fairly not the only one hunted. 

Beautifully written, with its characters fabulously drawn, the book twists and turns like a serpent in its death throes, full of heart-in-mouth moments and, at the end, a deadly twist. 

A Lady’s Guide to Mischief and Mayhem by Dianne Freeman

 

It’s confession time. I first got my hands on a copy of this book back in the summer of 2020, ahead of its publication, and I did read it, but I never reviewed it. It wasn’t because it was bad. Looking back at the clutch of outstanding books I intended to review, I see they all date back to that point in 2020 when lockdown restrictions were lifted. From spending all day reading I was able to go out and socialise, go shopping, do things. And so I forgot the books. 

Belatedly, I’m going through them again and rereading them so I can review them with them fresh in my mind. This matters, because I’d forgotten, until I came back to this book, quite how much I enjoyed it. It’s a well-worm genre, the Victorian upper-class detective, but it’s none the worse for that. In this case out heroine Frances , the widowed Countess of Harleigh, is navigating the hasty marriage of her sister, Lily, when a series of accidents appear to get ever closer to Lily’s groom-to-be. Meanwhile Frances’ likeable and capable beau, George, is on the trail of villains and lends a helping hand. 

I’ve read a lot in this genre and I think this book benefits hugely from taking itself seriously. There’s sometimes a tendency for authors to mock the period and the class from which they have chosen their sleuths and victims, but in this case I felt all of the characters were properly fleshed out and therefore both believable and enjoyable. There were plenty of twists and turns and, while I remembered one or two from my previous reading, I remained pleasantly surprised by the way the plot turned, without resorting to silliness. All in all I felt thoroughly engaged and definitely enjoyed reading it for a second time. 

Thanks to Netgalley and Kensington Books for a copy of this novel in return for an honest review. 

Review: Storm Sister by Lucinda Riley

The Storm Sister, second in the Seven Sisters series (try saying that after a few drinks!) follows the same pattern as the first and I imagine the others, too. After the death of their billionaire father his adoptive daughters are given clues to their heritage and learn about their back stories. 

The series has been really well-received: The Storm Sister, which is the story of Allie, the second sister, has over 37,000 reviews and averages 4.6* on Amazon so it's clearly struck a rich vein of readers. I liked the first one, The Seven Sisters, very much indeed and already have book three lined up …but I find myself taking a slightly heretical view. 

I love Lucinda Riley. Her stories are terrific. They typically feature young women from a variety of backgrounds but all supremely talented in at least one way; they encompass billionaire lifestyles, glamorous settings, romance, danger, tragedy… They have it all. The writing is page turning. The characters are real. You can escape so easily into a different world and resurface from it only when you’re ready. They are perfect holiday reads.

But they’re long books, 700 pages or so, and each tells two complete but separate stories. The Seven Sisters was so chunky it hurt my ageing wrists to hold it so I borrowed the second from the library on audiobook, and this led me to a shocking revelation. Because the book is so long, and because the loan is time-limited, there was no way I was going to get through 20 hours or more and finish it. So I started skipping. I effectively cut out the story of Allie’s great-grandparents and discovered that…the book worked as well, if not better, with a single story than with two. 

The thing is, most of my interest in the first two books was in the present. It’s in the sisters’ relationships and their adventures as they try to unpick their own stories, the love and loss along the way. In The Storm Sister, which sees Allie rebuild her life after a tragedy that had me in tears even though I could sense it coming, I felt I didn’t need the full detail of the second story to make the first complete. 

It’s actually a bit of a bargain, two books in one, and I feel a little bad for having skipped so much, but the truth is I didn’t feel I missed much by not reading/listening to the whole thing. I also have a slight concern that by the time we get to sister number six, the formula might have run its course. 

I'm going to read the next in the series (The Shadow Sister) but, as I discovered it's even longer than this one, maybe I'll wait until I have very long period of dead time to occupy...