Brooklyn by Colm Toibin - Review

 

This was my book club book for October and I have to say that I wasn't thrilled about it when I saw it. It looked really cutesy and romance like, which isn't my jam at all. 

Aliza in Nazi-Land by Elyse Hoffman - Review and Blog Tour

Hello and welcome to my blog for my stop on the tour for Aliza in Nazi-Land by Elyse Hoffman! It is a pleasure to welcome you here. Please do click around and read some of my other reviews. I previously read something else by Elyse which I reviewed here. I haven't read the first book in this series so didn't fully get the context of Aliza's experiences and life, but there is enough information in this book for it to make sense. So if you haven't either, don't worry about picking this one up. 

The book is set in the USA in the mid 50s. Aliza is sixteen and she is a Holocaust survivor. She was in a concentration camp, where she lost her parents, and she was saved by her adoptive dad, Amos, who is part of a crew called the Black Foxes. She now lives with him and her adoptive sisters - one older and two younger. Aliza is haunted by what happened to her and by the fact that she can't even really remember her family. She hates school and her teacher and is often in trouble. Her elder sister is bullied by a boy called Yonah so Aliza often stands up for her. 

One day Aliza sees something strange in her history textbook. She has been offered a contract to become a God in a zone of Hell, a zone which houses the absolute worst Nazis that existed, including Hitler, Goering, Himmler, and Heydrich. In this zone, she will be allowed to torture them as she sees fit. She can harm them, humilate them, do whatever she wants to them. They have to obey all her Commands. 

Aliza keeps going into her Zone to inflict more pain on those who inflicted so much pain on her and millions of other people. She starts to avoid her real life which is a problem and which has an impact on her family, and she also begins to learn that power is seductive. It's fun - but also, is it? Aliza has a conscience and she begins to wonder exactly what she is doing. 

It's an interesting philosophical discussion. If you could torture Hitler, would you? And especially if you were a survivor of the Holocaust, would you want to get revenge on men who wreaked so much havoc? What does it say about you? What does it say about them? I liked the way Elyse poised this question. It's easy to understand Aliza's anger and her wish to get even. 

I liked Aliza's family and her adoptive uncle, Sam, too. I would have liked a bit more drawing of their setting in the US, and I did also think the rules about Hell were a little bit confusing and would have liked a bit more explanation. But in general I really liked the book and would like to hear others' opinions on it too! 

Rare Singles by Benjamin Myers - Review

I know I've read The Offing by Benjamim Myers and enjoyed it, but I can't remember how or why I picked this one up. I think it must have just caught my eye in the library. I go to craft club every Monday morning in my local library but they are refurbishing it at the moment so they're in the local town hall at the moment. They still have a room we can use which is brilliant. They only have a few books in the much smaller room - but of course, they can order anything in that you might want - so maybe that's helped me to see the wood for the trees or something, because I have picked up a few books that have popped out at me. 

I read this at the beginning of October so the details are a bit hazy - we're in mid November as I'm writing this - so please do bear with me. I did really like the book, though. It's set in Scarborough and I love books that are set in the north of England as it's where I live myself. I know Scarborough quite well after going a thousand times throughout my life, so it was lovely to be able to picture the streets and the harbour and bays perfectly. 

The book is about Northern Soul music. In Scarborough there's Dinah, who lives with her husband and son, who are both useless human beings. Her husband drinks too much and her son, while an adult, sits in his bedroom smoking weed and so on. She works a thankless job (I want to say in like a supermarket or something, can't remember exactly) and she loves Northern Soul. She can lose herself in the music a couple of times a week, and she does. She reaches out to a musician called Bucky Bronco, who had a couple of hits way back in the sixties, and then vanished off the face of the earth. Dinah has managed to find him, and she invites him to Scarborough to sing. 

Bucky Bronco is now an old man, living by himself in Chicago after the death of his beloved wife, Maybelle. He had some kind of injury and now has an opioid addiction. He is basically just getting through life, talking to his late wife and wishing it was his turn to go. He doesn't really think of his musical life. He has a lot of regrets and through the book we learn why his musical career was cut so short. This part was actually fascinating, because yes things happened in his personal life, but there was also a lot of music industry stuff that was so interesting. He hasn't sung since the late sixties but he decides to go to Scarborough anyway. 

Then he manages to leave his pain pills on the aeroplane, so he is in England going cold turkey for the first time in like a decade or something. He stays in the Grand Hotel, which is a real hotel in Scarborough which anyone would recognise. Ben has described it perfectly - I know people who have stayed recently and apparently it's very shabby and run down now and not a patch of its glamorous past. I loved that Bucky - who was himself a bit faded and a call back to a different time - stayed there. 

In all I'm giving this four out of five, it was a really good book about music and nostalgia and stuff. 

The Glass Room by Ann Cleeves - Review

 

I picked this up off my shelves recently. I had forgotten I had this Vera Stanhope but, so was happy to see it when I unpacked my books. I bought my mum the first eight books in the series and she has made her way through them and enjoyed them, and I've been in an out of them. So I picked this up, anyway, at the beginning of October. I'm still way behind in blogging so I'm writing this in the middle of November. I've forgotten some of the ins and outs of it, sorry. I am hoping to get caught up eventually but, man, life keeps happening. 

Anyway, Vera has made friends with her closest neighbours to her isolated farm. They invite her over and feed her and stuff. Joanna is one half of the couple and she goes to this writing retreat on this island off the Northumberland coast (how many islands ARE there off the Northumberland coast??) and one of the writers is found murdered. Joanna is found holding a knife over the body, so it really looks like she is guilty of murder.

Vera knows that really she should hand the case over to someone else, but she just doesn't believe that Joanna is capable of murder. All of the people at the retreat are suspects, but when it seems like one of the writers has written a scene exactly like the murder scene, it gets more and more complicated.

As always, I liked the mystery, but I only gave the book three out of five and now I can't remember exactly why. I guess it just didn't do it for me that much. 

Kittiwake Stormhaven and the Pirate's Portolano by Victoria Williamson - Blog Tour and Review

 

Hello and welcome to my blog for my stop on the tour for Kittiwake Stormhaven and the Pirate's Portolano by Victoria Williamson! It is a pleasure to welcome you here! Please do click around and read some of my other reviews. I've read a lot of books by Victoria and always love her, so there's a few reviews of her books around. 

I love Victoria's books and think she's a great Middle Grade author who we need more of in the UK, so I was pleased to see a new book by her arrive and signed up immediately. I was lucky enough to receive a physical copy which came in a very cute box with some pirate themed goodies in it too, so thank you very much for those, I really enjoyed them! Such a cute little gift from Tiny Tree Books, thank you. I was provided with a copy of this book for review purposes but all thoughts and opinions are my own. 

The hero of the book is Kittiwake Stormhaven, who is around twelve years old. She lives in a world where there isn't much, if any, land left. There are a few seaports around the world, but most of the population lives on ships and the world is divided into quadrants. Kittiwake lives on the Amazon Princess, living a luxury, pampered life. Her mother Mollyhawk is the captain of this ship. Her sister Petrel went missing and their father Kestrel went off to look for her and is presumed dead. 

Kittiwake has a friend, Scallion, known as Scally, who was caught on a pirate ship so is branded on his forehead with a P. He is a stowaway on the Amazon Princess and is careful to not be found. Kittiwake also has a pet monkey, Caboodle. The three get into mischief and such, which is funny. But then there come rumours that Petrel is the captain of a pirate ship, the Seawitch. Mollyhawk is rightfully shocked and upset about this.

Meanwhile, the material that the ships are fuelled by is running scarce. It comes from a meteor and one is expected to land soon, so all ships are trying to get a piece of it. I liked this environmental aspect of the book. I also liked the setting, it felt old fashioned but with more modern inventions. I think this is a fun swashbuckling adventure book. I recommend it for middle graders! 

Read Between the Li(n)es by Malcolm Duffy - Review

I can't remember where or when I picked this book up but I obviously did at some point, and I picked it up towards the end of September. I'm reviewing this like six weeks later as I've just been so busy and have been on holiday, so some of the details of the book are a bit lost to me now. However, I didn't like it much - I don't think it was as good as Me Mam, Me Dad, Me by Malcolm which I read years ago and liked. 

Anyway, there are two protagonists of this book. Firstly there is Ryan. His parents are divorced and he is living in the south of England with his dad, although he is from the north east. His mam isn't around much. Ryan and his dad are living with his dad's new girlfriend, whose name escapes me right now, and her son, Tommy.

Tommy has been in a young offenders institute for a year and now he's back home. He's got to start school again in Ryan's year, although he's older. Ryan's mam thinks he is a bad lad and doesn't want Ryan living with him, but what can she do? Ryan wants to get on with Tommy but the two clash to begin with. Tommy is well liked at school but he's also prickly and can be difficult. He finds school difficult, because he is dyslexic, and he has never got help for that. 

Ryan is dyslexic too, but he's been well supported in it so he is doing well in school. He has things that help and strategies, so he is a bit nerdy. He wants Tommy to like him as he doesn't have many friends in his new area.

The two get closer and Ryan shares how he learnt to read and all of that stuff. Secrets start to slide out, which as an adult I found a little bit predictable, but a teenager may not find it that way. So maybe I can't really judge on that score. 

I am giving this three out of five. It has positive things - it's UK based, it's a normal family situation, and I liked what Tommy went through as a teen that landed him in trouble. But the negatives just outweighed that a bit for me. 

The Killer Question by Janice Hallett - Review

You know I love a Janice Hallett book so when I knew there was another one I picked it up straight away. It's very similar to her other books - written in a non linear fashion, without prose. This time it's about a pub, a bit off the beaten track, which is being run by Sue and Mal Eastwood. They have a WhatsApp group with several other publicans in the same chain. Each pub runs a quiz - except one, I think - and each of them is really proud of their quiz for bringing in business etc. Mal prides himself on writing his quizzes himself, unlike lots of the other landlords in the group who rely on quiz books. 

There are several teams who always come to Mal's quiz, who are known by their team names and who have friendly rivalries between them. A new team turns up one night and puts the cat among the pigeons by coming first. They make their way round a few of the pubs and keep coming first. Mal becomes certain that they are cheating, and sets out to find out how. 

A body is found near Mal and Sue's pub which brings lots of intrigue and police into their pub. The body belongs to someone who knew a bunch of the quizzers who keep winning, so it all gets really confusing. I was expecting a twist at the end but when it happened I was incredibly shocked as I hadn't seen it coming at all. I liked the book as a whole and thought it read more quickly than some of her others. I can't wait until her next book as I will of course read it.

I'm giving this four out of five.