Nesting By Roisin O'Donnell - Review

My friend Stacey was raving about this book and wanted me to read it, so I requested it at the library and picked it up in the middle of May. I loved it and really recommend it. I would love to read something else by Roisin so will definitely be keeping an eye out for her!

The book is about Ciara, a young mum of two. She is married to Ryan and I think her kids are called Sophie and Ella but I'm writing this over a month later so I wouldn't swear to that. Ryan is abusive towards her. The book starts where the family goes to the seaside and he insists that the girls go swimming even though it's like April or something, and too cold. The girls are in wetsuits that are too small for them because Ciara has squirrelled away the money that Ryan gave her for new ones. The day is a disaster and when they're back at home she makes a split second decision to leave. She packs up a few things and gets in the car and leaves. 

She sleeps in the car overnight and the next day tries to find help. Ryan is obviously blowing up her phone demanding to know what has happened and begging her to come home. She gets housed in a hotel in Dublin city centre, where the fifth floor is taken up by people - women mostly - in similar situations, who are victims of Ireland's housing crisis. She tries to leave the country as her mum and sister are in Sheffield, where Ciara and her sister grew up, but Ryan has put a block on the kids' passports. Ciara has previously left Ryan for three weeks, but went back. 

In the hotel the inhabitants of the fifth floor aren't allowed to leave by the main staircase etc. Each room has a family in and everyone is trying to make the best of it. Ciara gets quite friendly with the woman next door and with one of the staff in the hotel, who is trying to learn English as a second language. 

Ciara is pregnant again which obviously adds to Ryan's rage. She talks about how he was violent when Ella was only a few months old and how she had to spend the whole night with her back against Ella's  bedroom door in case he turned more violent towards her. He has raped her at night previously, but he tells her that he's not abusive because he has never physically hit her. To the outside world, he looks like a catch. He's a civil servant and he attends mass regularly. His mother gets on at Ciara to go back to him too. 

It's not so much the leaving but it's the staying gone. Ciara has no way to support herself and Ryan has told her that she isn't allowed to teach in Ireland because she gained her degree in England - which turns out not to be true. Ryan uses the girls to manipulate her. It was done so well that the reader totally understood where Ciara was coming from and why she felt totally turned upside down.

I wanted her to succeed, of course. I wanted only the best for her and I wanted her to get money and find some friends and be able to be by herself, coparenting with Ryan I guess even though he was a dick towards her. I want this for all women in this situation and this is a brilliant book showing what can and does happen when a woman dares to leave. 

I really would recommend this and am giving it five out of five. 

 

The Surrogate Mother by Freida McFadden - Review

I've only read The Housemaid by Freida McFadden I think, and I liked it, so on a trip to The Works I picked this up along with two books by Megan Lally who I haven't even heard of, but I was intrigued by the premise of the books so I got all three for £7.50 or whatever it is. I will get to them soon....... probably. I picked this up towards the middle of June. It is compelling in the same way that The Housemaid is, but I didn't like it anywhere near as much. 

The protagonist is Abby. She is an advertising executive and works under a woman called Diana? Dinah? Something like that. The two of them get along, but Diana is a bit annoyed because Abby has been undergoing fertility treatments and stuff for years. Abby is married to Sam, who is a Maths professor at the local university. And he's very good looking. It's important that you know this because it's mentioned about 683 times. But he doesn't know he's good looking! That's important to know too. 

At the very beginning of the book Abby is having a baby shower at work. She's just thrilled it's finally her turn. She and Sam are adopting a baby from a pregnant teenager in like Texas or whatever. Abby is about to take a ton of parental leave and is looking forward to time with her baby. But then Sam arrives and tells her that the adoption has fallen through - the teenager has decided to keep the baby. Abby is obviously devastated. She's been through years of infertility and she's just fed up. 

Then her assistant, Monica, who is a very capable assistant, such a godsend, offers to be Abby's surrogate. She's young, she's probably fertile, and she is sure she can do it. Abby is thrilled and sets about convincing Sam. He takes a lot of convincing, but eventually he agrees to it and they all go to a clinic and Monica gets pregnant. She has signed a contract which I am entirely sure would not stand up in any court of law which guarantees Abby and Sam the baby when it's born.

But then weird things start to happen. Abby is sure that one of Monica's ultrasounds is at X time so she turns up then, only to find that she's late and the ultrasound has already happened, with Monica and Sam only there. Abby thinks it's the stress getting to her, but Monica has a terrible secret and it means Abby and the baby are in danger. 

I liked the premise but I thought the way it played out was just stupid. Abby made a bunch of stupid decisions and could have just opened her mouth and communicated with people, Sam especially, but she doesn't. I thought some of the twists were visible from space they were so obvious, and some of them just didn't make sense. I'm giving it three out of five. 

 

Alice Austen Lived Here by Alex Gino - Review

I picked this up in Portal bookshop in York, which is a queer bookshop that also sells badges and fun stuff like that, and has a cafe upstairs and plenty of events happening - it's a really cool place to go. I visited in June with my friend Lucinda. I bought just this book, and picked it up soon after. I love Alex Gino and would love to have read everything they write, so I was glad to buy this. 

It's about a non binary kid called Sam who lives in New York with their mother and father I think. They are close friends with a queer family who live on a lower floor in their building - a woman, her non binary partner, and their baby. Sam also walks the dog of someone in the building, I don't remember her name but I loved her. From their bedroom window, Sam can see the Statue of Liberty and it's a statue that means a lot to them. Their best friend, TJ, is also non binary. They have a busy family that Sam is sometimes jealous of. 

At school, the kids get given an assignment to enter a competition. They have to write a report about who there should be a new statue of in their home borough of Staten Island. Some kids write about Henry Hudson - been done, coloniser, never even came to the area, Sam and TJ are bored of that one - and others write about Alexander Hamilton because one of them is vaguely related to him, which she shoehorns into every conversation haha. Sam and TJ don't know who to write about but eventually learn about Alice Austen, who was a photographer. She lived with a woman for decades and took quite frank photos of herself and her friends. I hadn't ever heard of her so it was interesting to learn more about her as Sam and TJ did too. 

I liked the book a lot and I think for a middle grade audience it was perfect. It explained a lot of things about queer identity and I liked how Sam came more to terms with themself and their place in the community. For me personally it was a bit so so, but I understand I am not the target audience and I think it would hit different with them. I will say that I didn't feel a particular emotional connection with Sam unlike in Melissa or Rick, which perhaps let it down a bit for me. But in all, a good book! 

As an aside but relevant to this post - I reviewed a queer picture book called Princess Pete for Global Comment, where I write occasionally. I wrote about why LGBTQIA+ books are essential for all kids, under the umbrella or not. You can read it here. 

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld - Review

This was yet another of the books that my friend Janet had recommended when it was just 99p on Kindle, so I bought it. I picked it up at the beginning of June and took quite a while to read it, because it is quite long. I did enjoy it but I wouldn't rush out to read something else by Curtis Sittenfeld even though I know people rave about her. 

The book is set at an elite boarding school in Massachussetts. Lee Fiora is fourteen when she arrives and way out of her depth. She's from the middle of nowhere in Indiana, from a normal family. She was clever enough to get a scholarship to Ault, the school, but when she gets there she's just one clever kid in a whole raft of them. And everyone else is rich and from the 'right' family. They have the right things like flowered bedspreads but Lee doesn't - something which marks her out as a scholarship student. 

The book spans all four years of Lee's high school career at the school. She has a huge crush on Cross Sugarman, the most popular boy in her year. One day late in her freshman year she gets to spend the day with him and some friends, which intensifies her crush. She knows he'll never look at her, though. She has just one friend, who she ends up sharing a room with for the next three years. 

The most popular girl in the school is Aspeth, who eventually asks Lee for a haircut and she ends up being the hairdresser for the whole school. She is thrilled that people want to talk to her but eventually realised that this job is a bit beneath her. 

I liked the setting of the school and thought it was so cloistered and had its own language which showed the 'them' and 'us' of it all. I did think it was a bit too long and I would have liked just a bit more plot, but I understand that's not overly the point of the book. In all I'm giving it four out of five. 

Clear by Carys Davies - Review

This book was the June choice for my book club and I was intrigued to read it. It's a novella, so didn't take me very long to read at all. I really reminded me of everything I've read by Claire Keegan in that there's barely a wasted word which I think is a real talent. 

The book is about John Ferguson and his wife Mary. The book is set in Scotland in 1843. John is a Church of Scotland minister but he has been part of the nearly 500 preachers who broke away to form the Free Church of Scotland. This decision means that John has lost his housing and income, so he and Mary are a bit down on their luck. She asks her sister if she can help, and so it is that Mary's brother in law, whose name I forget right now, gets him a job. He will have to travel to a remote island between Scotland and Norway. This period in history was also when the Highland Clearances happened, when people were evicted from their homes by greedy landowners so that the land could be used for grazing. 

There is just one tennant left on this island - Ivar. He speaks a dialect that no one seems to know anymore, although John does try to get some kind of language teaching before he sets off. He is given a rifle, to be used only if Ivar gets angry. He takes with him a photo of Mary, his notebooks where he is translating the gospels into Scots Gaelic, and a few provisions. He gets very seasick on the way over but is eventually on the island. 

Ivar is the only member of his family left on the island. His mother and sister have already emmigrated to Canada and he hasn't spoken to anyone else is around twenty years. The rent collector has left him alone for years and he has a cow and a horse left and otherwise lives on his own wits. He lives in a tiny shack with a bed and a fire and all of that. His most treasured posession is a teapot that is kept up on a high shelf. I actually loved the story of the teapot when it was revealed late on in the book - I thought it was perfect. 

John slips and falls shortly after arriving and Ivar rescues him and his posessions. John is in some kind of coma and sleeps for days in Ivar's bed. Ivar observes him and looks through all his things. He falls in love with the photo of Mary and puts her up on the shelf with the teapot. John eventually comes around but finds that he can't tell Ivar why he's really there - to evict Ivar. 

Instead, the two wander the island and John tries to learn Ivar's language. His notebooks got ruined when he fell, but the pages are usable, if a little bit crinkly. So John starts to write down Ivar's language. And the two do really start to fall in love. 

Mary, meanwhile, is obviously worrying about her husband but knows that the money he will be paid for doing this job will go towards setting up John's church, so she understands why he had to go. She tells the story of how she and John met and fell in love - but the marriage isn't without its problems. 

I won't say more because I just really liked how the book unfolded and would recommend it. I am giving it five out of five. 

Gone For Good by Sarah Crossan - Review

I started reading this book ages ago and then stopped for some reason, but then it was downloaded on to my Kindle so when I was on the plane and had finished The Wedding People, I only had a few books to choose from so decided to go back to this. It did take me a bit of time to get back into it, but I read quite a lot on the plane and then I was hooked so had to read the rest of course. 

The novel is told in verse like all of Sarah Crossan's novels. My only criticism of this is that I just want more! I want more detail in the book and verse novels just don't have the space for it! I think it's so clever to write with these constraints though. It takes quite some skill as a writer!

The book is about Connie, a teenaged girl. She is abducted from her bed in the middle of the night and taken to one of those camps for 'wayward' teens. She has been having a difficult time as her mother died and her dad quickly got with someone else - Wendy - who has been making unwelcome changes to the house. Something happened and Connie got into trouble, and now she's at a camp. She's certain that her dad wouldn't have sent her there but the camp counsellors waste no time in telling her that that's not true. Connie is heartbroken and really needs to heal.

Life is of course brutal in the camp. There are sadistic staff and one of her roommates, who I think was called Florence, or similar, is the type of person who snitches on everything that happens. People start to tell Connie that the previous occupant of her bed, Becky, has gone missing and no one knows what happened to her. Connie starts to unravel the truth, but it's slow going. And she has to suspect everyone, including dishy British guy Alex. 

I liked the book a lot and am glad I got round to reading it. I'm giving it four out of five. 

The Wedding People by Alison Espach - Review

 

My friend Janet does a round up monthly of books that are 99p on Kindle and she often has recommendations, and it often costs me about a fiver when I go through and buy a few. It's like the opposite of a problem, really. Anyway she had recommended this so I bought it, and I picked it up towards the end of May when I was on holiday in Morocco. Weirdly there was a woman sitting round the pool who was reading this in paperback. I would probably have spoken to her about it but she was asleep! 

I read the end of this while travelling back from Morocco, so I got really into it because I read so much while I was on the plane. My friends were sleeping so I had plenty of uninterrupted time! 

The novel is about a woman called Phoebe Stone. She has recently got divorced from her husband. Max. They are both academics and he has been having an affair with someone in the department. They have had a difficult marriage with a bunch of failed IVF treatments. Phoebe is completely bereft and really struggling with life, and then her beloved cat (Harry? Henry) dies. She leaves his body in the cellar and sets off to a luxury hotel. She once read about the hotel in a magazine and decides she will go there to kill herself. 

When she gets there, there is a week long wedding going on. The bride, Lila, is outraged that Phoebe is there and staying in the best suite. Phoebe says she is going to kill herself and Lila is further outraged because that will ruin her wedding. Phoebe takes a bunch of her cat's painkillers and lays down to die, listening to the start of the wedding celebrations that is happening below. 

She doesn't die and heads down to the hotel hut tub. She flirts with a man there and tells him she would like to fuck him, but he tells her he's involved with someone else. In the morning, Lila comes to talk to her. Half the wedding party are hungover and Lila would like Phoebe to come and join a boat party to make up numbers. Phoebe eventually goes and then meets the groom, Gary - who is of course the man in the hot tub from the night before. 

Phoebe gets roped in to be Maid of Honour when Lila's cancels, and Lila tells everyone that she and Phoebe know each other from the gallery where she works. Phoebe ends up getting massively involved in everyone's drama. Gary has a daughter and his wife died; he is still close to her brother Jim. Juice, the daughter, doesn't like Lila and the feeling is entirely mutual. It's a whole mess!

The book is compelling and interesting. I liked Phoebe and felt really sorry for her; life has dealt her a rough hand and her ex husband is a proper dickhead. I liked the story a lot and would definitely read something else by the same author. I've seen that this has been optioned for a film too, and I would definitely watch it. I'm giving this five out of five.