Seven All Alone by Kirsty McKay - Review

I can't remember where I picked this up but I think it wasn't that long ago. It was one of those American type floppy paperbacks, weirdly, so I think that made me think it was set in the US until I started reading it. But it is set in Scotland which I was really glad to read. I like UK YA that is set in places other than London, or sometimes Brighton. It's one of my bug bears, actually, but that's a rant for another day. 

The main character in the book is Maggie. She's around sixteen years old. She, alongside six other kids in her class, was kidnapped ten years ago by their bus driver. He kept the seven kids in a cave and the other six managed to escape but Maggie didn't. He had her tied up and then he planned to kill the both of them. Instead, she had to watch his suicide over a cliff. She obviously had a lot of trauma and has been homeschooled for the past ten years.

But then she goes along on an Outward Bound type of trip alongside five of the kids who were kidnapped with her - Ben, Stephanie, Lawrence and Seb, Ant - and another girl whose name I've forgotten. Lawrence and Seb are twins. Ant is non binary and has ADHD and I thought this was written brilliantly even though it's only a side bit of plot. Maggie and Ben had been going out but have split up, and he is now going out with Stephanie. Maggie is determined to just ignore them and just get on with the trip. Her dad is a teacher and he is leading them, so even though she's back in the same area as where she was kidnapped before, she's trying to just have a good time. 

But immediately strange things happen. Maggie's dad and Ant are carried off in one of the rafts alongside quite a few of the supplies. Maggie wants to follow them downstream but it becomes clear she can't. The rest of the group decide to head to the cabin where the group was to be staying. Maggie has no choice but to follow. But then Stephanie gets injured when a rock falls on her and the others have to stay in the cabin and nurse her. There's a storm rolling in too. 

I liked the mystery but didn't love the outcome. I would have given it five starts but I thought the ending was just a bit meh. I didn't buy the motive. I did like the setting though, and all the teens involved. It is told in really believable ways and I could just imagine where everyone was and the wilderness. In all I'm giving this four out of five and would pick something else up by Kirsty in the future! 

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. 

Red Runs the Witch's Thread by Victoria Williamson - Review and Blog Tour

Hello and welcome to my blog for my stop on the blog tour for Red Runs the Witch's Thread. I hope you like my review and I invite you to click around a little bit and read some of my other reviews. I've read a lot of Victoria Williamson's books now and enjoyed all of them so when I saw there was another of her books on tour I grabbed at the chance! I was lucky enough to receive a paper copy of this book and it came with some other goodies too, including a raven necklace, a mini sewing kit, and some sweeties! Amazing, it really brightened up my day so thank you!

First of all I'm not really sure where to put this book in terms of genre. It's kind of got a Young Adult feel to it even though the main characters are adults. I think that's partly because there are flashbacks to when the main character, Christian, was a small child. The book is set around 1720 and I really liked the historical setting. Victoria is good at historical fiction and makes it feel accessible to a modern reader. 

She is now thirty something and she is a widow. She has had to move back into her childhood home, with her mother and her two sisters. She is trying to perfect the art of bleaching thread, so that her thread would be the finest in the land and she can sell a lot and regain her family's fortune. She is a lady, after all, but the family has been on hard times since the death of Christian's father three years previously. Christian is sending herself a bit mad with the soap and the lye and the sun bleaching of the thread, but she is determined to do it. But everyone in the house is a bit wary of Christian because of what happened when she was a child. Christian is aware of this but also thinks she's being stalked by the ravens which come to the window and haunt the house and gardens. She begins to have flashbacks of what happened before and it's clear madness is taking its hold on her. 

The parallel narrative tells us what happened when Christian was little. She fell ill and accused several people in the area of being witches. Eight people were condemned to death and Christian and her father went to watch them being hanged. Since then she has never had a monthly bleed, making her barren, which shortened the list of men who would marry her... And now it is now and she is carrying a lot of guilt around. Christian's youngest sister is desperate to get married but Christian's reputation may stop that. A potential suitor comes to visit, and everything goes really wrong. 

In all I liked the story; I liked the setting and Christian and her sisters (the other one is really mean and spiteful, which is actually quite funny within the story), but I wish we had seen a little more of her mother. Christian's descent into madness is all too real and I really liked it. I did guess the twist around two thirds of the way through, but I thought it was set up really well and done well. 

Thank you for having me along! 

Vicky Romeo + Joolz by Ely Percy - Review

I backed this book on Kickstarter but then realised it had never arrived, thankfully they sent me another copy and I picked it up just after it had arrived in mid February. This was because I was really looking forward to reading it, and also because I wanted to lend it to my friend Chloe as I thought she would like it too. 

The book is set in the gay scene in Glasgow in 2001 and it is a little dated. The author themself acknowledges this in the foreword of the book, explaining that attitudes have changed a lot since then and that if they were writing the book today, it would be very different. There are a few instances of biphobia and transphobia in the book which are warned about, which I'm glad for, as they are jarring. I get the author's point at the beginning, and I'm glad the foreword is there. But I would like to also warn for this in my review.

So Vicky is twenty-one years old and she works in a cafe during the day, which she hates. She lives with several other LGBTQ+ people, including her best friend Minty and a girl called Kat. She is a proper player. She sleeps her way around the scene, rarely seeing the same woman twice. She promises and often delivers on her promise to give them the time of their lives, but she moves through the quickly, hence her nickname Romeo. Vicky is suspicious of femme lesbians and bisexual people. She had her heart broken by her ex girlfriend in her teens and has never got over it. She's a member of a lesbian support group and also, within the book, joins a threate troup which starts putting on The Importance of Being Earnest. 

Vicky meets a girl called Julie and goes home with her. In the morning Julie's mother finds them, having not known that her daughter is any kind of queer. Vicky and Julie fall out, but life keeps throwing them back together. 

Vicky's mum is also gay and in a relationship with a woman called Sam, who is also a parental figure for Vicky. Vicky tells some of her back story through Sam and her mum. 

The book is laugh out loud funny in parts, and had a lot of pathos in others. I liked it, but with caveats. Vicky is infuriating and self-centred and selfish at times. I also got confused with some of her friends and thought they could have been more streamlined. But in all i'm glad I got to read this book and am giving it four out of five. I'm also passing it on to someone who I think will enjoy it too!

Where the World Ends by Geraldine McCaughrean - Review

I got this book as part of a Secret Santa I did. It had been on my wishlist for ages, but I can't remember why I added it. But I was intrigued by the story, and I always like to read the books I got for Christmas early into the new year - or at least try to - so I picked this up in early February. It's a middle grade book, suitable for kids aged 10 and upwards, in my opinion. 

So I do know about the St Kilda archipelago in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. I know that while the islands are abandoned now, there used to be families on the biggest island, Hirta. And every year the island would send men and boys to the Stac, where they would catch gannets, called gugas in Gaelic, and other birds, some of which could be used as fuel. The workers would spend about four weeks there, stocking up for the islanders, and then the boat would return to pick them up. I know this because for my book club we read a book called The Black House, which is a crime novel which uses a fictional version of the Stac, in much more recent times, as its setting. When I read that I was looking up the island. It was abandoned in 1930, but prior to that the gannet hunting had really happened.

So this book is set in 1727. In early August, Quilliam and eight other boys, plus three men, are taken on a boat to Warrior Stac. Quilliam is one of the older boys and he's done this before. He is there with his friend, Murdo. He is also obsessed with a girl called Murdina back on Hirta, and speaks to her frequently in his head when he is on the Stac. Some of the other boys are really quite young, like Davie. There's also Kenneth, who is a terrible bully. Quilliam becomes King Gannet, because he catches the first one. The men and boys start catching all the birds they can, putting them into structures called cleits for safe keeping. They're expecting to be picked up a few weeks later, by the end of August, only no boat turns up. 

To begin with, they think this must surely be some kind of mistake. They keep holding on hope. But then bad omens appear. And Euan has a vision that everyone else has been Raptured, but that God has forgotten them on the Stac. And while the three men basically start off fine, Col Cane, who is the sexton back on Hirta, starts to become more religious and escapes to one of the Bothys. Quilliam becomes Keeper of Stories and bestows other Keeper jobs on the other boys. They're cold as autumn comes in and then winter. They're hungry and have no fuel. And surely, surely they haven't been forgotten?

I kept thinking they must be rescued by the end of the book. But the ending blew me away because it included something that really happened that I didn't know - I'm glad I didn't know it because it would have ruined the ending! I really liked this book, it's brilliant middle grade. I'm giving it four out of five.