A Song for Issy Bradley by Carys Bray - Review

This book is my book club book for December, so I bought it on eBay for a few quid in November, and started reading it pretty soon after because I wanted to get it read before book club. Rae chose the book and I think in general the book club will like it.

It is about the Bradley family, a devout Mormon family living somewhere around Southport on the north west coast. Dad Ian is a Bishop in the local church, mum Claire stays at home with their four children, Zippy, Alma, Jacob, and Issy.

One Saturday in October, it is Jacob's seventh birthday and he's having a party. Ian is called away on Bishop duties, so Claire has to rush to the shops herself to buy supplies. She leaves Issy in bed, and when she gets back Issy is still there. She gives her some medicine, and leaves her to sleep, distracted by the party. Later, she realises Issy is really ill and rushes her to hospital, where it turns out she's suffering from meningitis and won't live. She dies the next day.

The book is told from the points of view of each of the remaining family members as they're trying to deal with Issy's death. Claire retreats to bed, unable to get up and face the world and feeling that she isn't devout enough to have stopped this from happening. Ian is determined to keep a stiff upper lip, to use his faith that they will all be reconciled in the next life with Issy to stop him from thinking too much about his children or Claire or his own grief.

Zippo, sixteen, is in love with President Carmichael's son, Adam. She wants to be a good Mormon girl and attends all the meetings about preparing for marriage and being a faithful wife, but it's difficult when she is also running the house in Claire's absence and also trying to fit in with her friends. I liked Zippo (from Zipporah, she was Moses' wife apparently) and wish we had seen more of her point of view.

Thirteen year old Alma (a boy, named after a Mormon prophet) isn't very religious. He finds his dad's rules difficult to live by and he just wants to play football. He was an excellent teenage character and I loved him.

Jacob is seven and knows that miracles happen. All he needs to do is find the right thing to do that will resurrect Issy from the dead.

All five members of the family are coping terribly and everything is falling apart. The Mormon element means that while they do have some support, they're also judged quite heavily, often under the guise of concern. Claire wasn't a member when she met Ian, and their story is told too.

I really liked the book, I liked each character - even Ian, although he is quite unsympathetic at times. I learnt a lot more about the Mormon church than I did know, and I wasn't starting from nothing. I found it quite an interesting look into something most people don't know a lot about. In that way it reminded me of The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris. It also reminded me of The Lovely Bones, which I read years and years ago while at university.

Carys Bray grew up in a Mormon family herself but has now left the church. This was her first novel but I would definitely read something else by her now.

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley - Review

I bought this book just a couple of weeks ago while Christmas shopping in Waterstones. It just appealed to me and I liked the blurb. I then started reading it immediately, I was just in the mood for something thrilling and hoped this would fit the bill.

My short review is that all of the people in this book are reprehensible humans and I didn't care which of them lived or died, to be quite honest. Maybe that's part of the appeal. I'm not sure.

Anyway, it's about nine old friends from university who always spend New Year's Eve together and who are this year going to the Scottish Highlands to stay in a lodge and get away from it all. We first meet them when they arrive at the local train station and get in a car with the gamekeeper Doug to make their way to the Lodge.

The nine are made up of four couples and then Katie, who is single. Most of them met at university - the inner circle of Miranda, Samira, and Katie. Miranda is Queen Bee, married to the gorgeous Julien and enjoying a life of leisure - but Julien has a deep secret and Miranda's life isn't as perfect as she would like to think. Samira is married to Giles and they've just had a baby, Priya, and honestly, everyone is kind of a dick towards a couple with a young baby, but whatever. Katie is a lawyer, and single, but has something on her mind. There's Nick and Bo, who for me were painted as very much the token gays with no depth to their storyline or characters at all, and there's Mark, Julien's friend, and his girlfriend Emma. She's the newbie to the group, she's only known Mark for three years. She is eager to ingratiate herself into the group and is a real people pleaser, Miranda in particular. Miranda says mean and nasty things to everyone, but especially Emma.

Then there's two members of staff, Heather and Doug. They both live on the estate and both have their reasons for wanting such remote jobs. The book has parts from their points of view, and from Miranda's, Katie's, and Emma's.

There's two strands to the narrative. In the first one, it's the 2nd of January and Heather and Doug are out searching for one of the guests. They find a body, but the reader isn't told who it is. In the second strand, we're back in time to the 30th of December and New Year's Eve, watching the friends come back together and watching as they rip themselves and each other apart.

Several of the characters just aren't well enough drawn for me to care about - like Nick, Bo, Samira, Giles, and even Julien. I liked Miranda's inner dialogues and I liked Katie as a character. I liked Heather, too, I would think to think she lives a long and happy life after the book finishes. I really disliked most of the characters and hoped they all died, but the book was compelling and I wanted to see what happened. I thought the remote Scottish setting was really well written and really creepy. The Lodge has several small cabins for guests and otherwise is totally dark, and I could definitely picture everything described. The book is generally okay written although I thought there were some continuity issues.

I'm going to give it four out of five because I found it compelling and wanted to finish it, but I didn't think it was written all that well.

Yes No Maybe So by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed - Review

Where did I get it? Netgalley, so many thanks to Simon & Schuster Children's Books for granting me access to this book. 

What's it about? Jamie, awkward nerdy boy aged seventeen, and Maya, start canvassing on behalf of a Democratic local candidate for the state senate near their houses in Georgia. 

Jamie is Jewish and lives with his mum, his little sister Sophie, and his grandma. His grandma has some local notoriety on Instagram. Jamie's cousin Gabe is heading up the campaign for local Democrat Jordan Rossum, and has roped Grandma and Jamie into helping too. Jamie is awkward - he once puked on someone's shoes - and utterly convinced that he can't do knocking on people's doors to talk to them about politics. His little sister's bat mitzvah is coming up and Jamie's mum is kind of going crazy over it. It's the summer and school is out, and Jamie is kind of sick of being wingman for his friend Drew. 

One day at Target he sees Maya, a girl he used to know when they were little kids because their mothers were friends. She's with her friend Sara, and she's really cute, but Jamie manages to make a fool of himself and then wants to hide forever. 

Maya is with her best - and somewhat only - friend Sara. Sara has just graduated high school and is high on the idea of going to college. She might even be going early, meaning her summer with Maya will be cut short, but she's seems to be barely even noticing Maya anyway thanks to her jobs and her new college roommate. It's Ramadan so Maya is fasting, but she's also trying to deal with the fact that her parents are having a trial separation. Her dad is moving out of the family home and Maya doesn't know what to do about it. She wants to talk to Sara, but Sara is barely ever around. 

Jamie and Maya get pushed together when Maya joins the local campaign and the two go canvassing together. They run into a racist, and then later, Jamie's car is targeted with a white supremacist sticker. They're both really upset and suddenly, for Jamie at least, the political is personal. He starts to understand how people like him can make a difference, even if they can't vote.

He is still freaking out over having to do a toast at Sophie's bat mitzvah though.

The two become close and everyone thinks they're dating. They're adamant they're not - Maya mostly because she's not sure she wants to date in high school, or without thinking about the boy very seriously - but they do have feelings for each other. Will it be a happy ever after?

This is a really really gorgeous romance novel. Not a lot of plot actually happens, but there's tons of gorgeous moments like watching The Office together on the phone. It is just really lovely, fun, cute. I loved both main characters a LOT but I also loved their families too. Really gorgeous book. 

What age range is it for? I'm going to say that if your thirteen year old likes romance YA and wouldn't mind the political stuff, then they'll be fine with it. 

Are any main characters LGBTQ+? They're not main characters but Jamie has gay friends who are pretty cute too. There's also a coming out which I'm not going to ruin but it was PERFECTLY written and I loved it and I have hearteyes. 

Are any main characters people of colour? Yes! Jamie is white, but Jewish, so is obviously subject to anti-Semitism, and Maya is Muslim and has brown skin so obviously encounters a lot of racism. I don't think it is said where Maya's family is from originally, which I don't think matters as you just know she is Muslim and that her mum wears hijab, but it means I can't say where her origins are!

Are any main characters disabled either mentally or physically? No I don't think so. 

Is there any sex stuff? No, hence my age rating 

Are drugs mentioned or used? No 

Is there any talk of death? Very little, there's mentions of Jamie's grandpa dying but that's it. 

Are there swear words? Not many, but a few. They're used to great effect actually. 

What criticisms do I have? I saw some continuity errors. These may have been ironed out in the final edit, but I did notice them. 

Would I recommend the book? Yes absolutely. 

Why did I choose to read it at this point in life? I was really looking forward to reading something else by Becky so I rushed to it. I've never read anything by Aisha Saeed, but I definitely would now. Sometimes in books with dual authors it's obvious who wrote what, but honestly, in this, I couldn't tell. That really worked for me. Both points of view are equally lovely. 

What do I think of the cover? I've seen a couple around. This one, the blue, and a yellow one. I think they're both nice. This is cute though, with the doors. 

What other books is it like? It reminded me of The Upside of Unrequited, a bit. 

How many stars? Four out of five. 

Yes No Maybe So will be published on the 4th of February 2020. I was given a free electronic copy of the novel but was not compensated in any other way for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

Meeting Robin Stevens in Sheffield

I follow Robin Stevens on Twitter because, as you know, I'm a huge fan of her books. I saw her tweets saying she would be at Rhyme and Reason books in Sheffield one Sunday in November, so I immediately went to reserve tickets for myself and my partner. I knew I would love ti meet her! Plus it was a Sunday morning so we would both be free.

I haven't been to the bookshop before. It's on Eccleshall Road and that's not somewhere we go a lot. We were close by over the summer, though, when we went to Endcliffe Park with friends. But I hadn't seen the bookshop and now I wish I'd known about it before because I would have gone! It's a children's bookshop and although it's quite small, it has a huge number of books in it. I would like to go back and have a proper browse at some point.

There's a back room and quite a few of us crammed in - lots of children and their parents. The staff introduced Robin and to begin with she read a little scene from Top Marks for Murder, the bit where Beanie sees a murder happen out of the girls' dorm window. Then Robin signed books for everyone. She was so gentle with her young readers, it was actually a pleasure to witness. She asked each one if they had any questions for her, and when they asked she gave careful, considered answers and I'm sure none of the kids were disappointed. She signed LOADS of books; ones bought there, ones read and loved and brought along, and even ones for friends who couldn't make it. There weren't many people there so it wasn't taking very long, and I just thought it was very lovely of her. She had bookmarks, badges that said Detective Society Member and she took photos with everyone with their phones and hers. I have met a lot of really lovely authors but Robin really stands out as being extremely nice, which is so important when your books skew towards a younger age range. I was impressed!

I waited til the end because we weren't in any rush and because I feel like kids deserve to go first in situations like this. I had taken all my Wells & Wong books with me and it turned out the only one I don't have was Mistletoe and Murder (which is perhaps my favourite, although I really can't choose), so I bought it from the bookshop. Robin very patiently signed alllll my books (including the two novellas/small mysteries that I have). I said it was a pleasure to meet her and that I recognised a lot of factors from Deepdean in my own school, and we had a nice chat about the series in general, about the fact that the next full length novel is going to be the last in this series, and about what she might write next. She's definitely working on something! I heard her give a hint to when exactly her next work might be set, and I'm definitely intrigued!

I said that I really like the political atmosphere of the books, for example the way in which Hazel suffers racial abuse. We talked about George and how his stature as someone from South Asia influences his political thinking. I'm not surprised that the next book will be the last as Daisy and Hazel are ageing out of the demographic, but I will be sad to lose them. I have loved reading this series and I'm sure the last book - which will be set in Egypt, and for which I have a bit of an idea about the title! - will be excellent too.

It was a lovely meeting and Robin is so nice and obviously appreciates all her fans, young and old alike. Definitely go to meet her if you can!

I also have to mention how lovely the two shop staff members were. They seemed really enthusiastic about their jobs and about the books in the shop, and were really nice. If you're in the area, the shop is definitely worth a visit.

At the beginning just as Robin finished her reading

Look how beautiful the books had been set up! There were lots of copies to buy, although I think I got the last copy of Mistletoe and Murder

Robin answering questions from fans

Me and Robin! No we didn't coordinate on outfits but we definitely matched! I think the pattern on her dress was macarons

And here's my bookmark and badge - I'm now a Detective Society member and proud of it!

Library Loves Meme

This is a meme I took from Steph's blog here! Sorry if the formatting gets all messed up on this post, that often happens when I copy and paste stuff to this blog. I don't know why and I'm usually good at sorting this stuff out, but not, for some reason, on this blog!

1. When did you first go to the library/get a library card?

I don't remember having my own library card as a kid. I think there was a policy that kids had to be on their parent's library card. I was on my dad's. I suppose then that the first library card that was my own was for my high school library, which I got given when I started aged 11. I probably still have it somewhere! It was blue. 

2. How often do you use your library?

I use one of my local libraries all the time. I go to a craft club every Monday that is held in the IT suite of a library a few miles away from where I live. It means the room is used, showing a need for the library to remain open. I often browse books while I'm there, and even though it's quite a small library there's still tons of great books in it. I sometimes use the reserve function online to get a book to that library to pick up, so that I don't have to drive other places to get it.

My book club is also supported by the library, and we try to have half of our books a year be ones that come from the library, to again use it and show there is a need for it.

I don't use the library in my village very often, but it is truly tiny and parking near it is difficult. I think the council will close it down in the next few years, which will be a shame as it is often used by others in the village. 

3. Have you ever had a late or lost library book?

No I don't think so! I'm a bit paranoid about library return times, and I think I was the only person I knew at university who never had a fine. 

4. What’s your favourite thing about your library?

I guess I'm fond of the one I go to craft club in because it has a good teen section, because it supports our craft club, because the staff are friendly, and because it has good parking. It's also in a nice village where I sometimes do a bit of shopping too. It's a small town/large village!

5. Are you a browser or do you plan what you’re taking out?

Oh I'm a broswer. I pick up anything that catches my eye. Some of the best books I've read have happened into my hands that way! Sometimes, as I say, I request books from the catalogue, which is really useful, so I guess I do plan then. My town council demolished the old central library a few years ago to build another, and put all the books in storage in council buildings. Using the request service meant that you could get anything that was in storage, which was good. I haven't actually been to the new library, although I've heard it's really nice and has a good cafe onsite! 

6. Name a book you took a chance on from the library.

I think the most recent one was Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller, which I read last year and LOVED, after I picked it up on a whim. 

7. What is best book you read from the library?

I have really strong memories of reading Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal when I was at sixth form college. I read one on the bus on the way home one dark and stormy night. I know I made my dad read both, too!

8. Have you ever taken the same book out multiple times?

I probably did as a teen, and it was probably something completely embarrassing like a Sweet Valley High book. 

9. Have you read a good book set in a library?

Hmm that's a good question. I can't think of any off the top of my head. What are your favourites? 

10. Have you used your library’s ebook and audiobook options?

I haven't - I don't actually know how to! I don't really like audiobooks, although when I had a longer commute I used to listen to them on the way to work. I don't know how to access ebooks and to be honest I already have so many that I probably don't need to. 

11. Which is the best library you’ve been to?

Oh it's got to be Trinity College Library in Dublin which is home to many amazing books but most famously the Book of Kells, which is a really old illustrated book of the gospels. It is absolutely amazing to see and learn about. The library itself is huge and has huge tall ladders up to the books. If you're ever in Dublin, it's an absolute must-do tourist thing. I've been twice and I would go back tomorrow!

12. What would make you use your local library more?

Parking! I do use my library enough - and recommend you do too!

Trinity College Library - Dublin. Photo taken by me in September 2016

Did Not Finish - If It Makes You Happy by Claire Kann

It is so rare that I don't finish a book, or that I get halfway through a book and then give up on it. I sometimes read just a few percent of a book on my Kindle or a few pages, but rarely get too far. I don't like giving up on books and I wanted to love this book, so I persevered, I really did. But, I just couldn't get on with it.

My friend Angie recommended this book on Twitter and said it had an amazing black fat protagonist, which intrigued me. I ordered it and picked it up a couple of weekends ago. The protagonist is Winnie, who is seventeen and who spends the summers with her grandma in a small town called Misty Haven. Granny owns a diner called Goldeen's and Winnie works there. She's accompanied by her brother Winston and their cousin, Sam (who I think also lives with Winnie's family full time). Sam is spending her summer babysitting. Winnie tries to get Granny to enter a competition, but she's having none of it. Winnie's ungirlfriend Kara lives in Misty Haven. The two of them are friends who are dating, but are both free to date other people.

So every summer there's a like homecoming thing where the town nominates a Queen, and then someone volunteers to be her consort, and then there's a whole celebration thing around that. I don't think I read far enough to fully understand the ins and outs of this thing. Winnie gets nominated as Queen. Kara volunteers to be consort, but then so does this boy called Dallas, who is totally dashing and who Winnie has a crush on.

This is like all that happens in the first half of the book. The action just wasn't moving fast enough for me, and I felt like there was a lot of telling me what was what rather than showing me. There was a lot of what I felt was unneeded detail. I liked Winnie and Winston and Sam, and even Dallas, but Kara left me a bit cold.

Oh, there's also Granny commenting on Winnie's weight and trying to get her to go on a diet and exercise with Sam. Usually I love this stuff, but it just wasn't gelling for me. It took me five nights to read half the book, which is ridiculously slow for me. So for now, I'm giving up on the book, but if it sounds like your thing, do read it!

A Deadly Thaw by Sarah Ward - Review

After I ready the first book in this series, I bought the next two off eBay for just a few quid each. I had enjoyed the first book and liked the three main detectives involved - Francis Sadler, Damian Palmer, and Connie Childs. So I thought I would keep going with the series. I have been enjoying reading more crime fiction by women; I genuinely think it's a genre where the differences between how women write and how men write are really stark! I was, for example, shocked when I found out S K Tremayne is a man, because I think his writing skews very feminine.

Anyway, this book sees the same detectives in the fictional town of Bampton in Derbyshire. At the beginning, a body is found in an abandoned morgue some way out of town, and Sadler is called to the scene. He recognises the body straight away as that of a man called Andrew Fisher, who Sadler knew as a teenage. The problem is that Andrew Fisher was killed in 2004 by his wife, Lena, who has just served twelve years in prison for murder. Sadler and his team go to interview her immediately.

Lena lives with her sister Kat in their childhood home, Providence Villa. The place is falling apart, but Kat sort of loves it, and Lena has had little choice but to be there. She's not overly surprised by the police's visit, but she then goes missing. Lots of the book is told from Kat's point of view as she tries to work out what her sister did and where she is now. She starts receiving messages from Lena and is utterly confused about what's happening.

Meanwhile the police are doing their thing trying to work out who the actual body in 2004 was and where Andrew Fisher has been hiding all these years.

I liked the story, I thought it was compelling and interesting. However, I didn't like the ending very much. While I understood the motives involved, I didn't think they were written in a way that made them believable. And I thought the book went on for too long after the denoument, for no reason. Plus Palmer just really annoys me.

I'm giving this book three out of five stars, I didn't enjoy it as much as the first one. I will probably read the third one, though.