Star by Star by Sheena Wilkinson - Review and Blog Tour

Hello and welcome to my blog for my stop on the tour for Star By Star by Sheena Wilkinson! It is a pleasure to welcome you here. Please do click around and have a look at my other reviews. 

I was really intrigued by the premise of this book and signed up for it without realising that I have already read something by Sheena Wilkinson. I finished the book and when I was adding it to Goodreads I realised I read Name Upon Name by Sheena, which is actually related to this book! That book's main character is Helen, and she has a cousin Sandy, and in this book the main character Stella meets Helen in the first chapter, and she ends up living with Sandy! So that was delightful to learn and I'm glad I did learn it. 

So yes, Stella is fifteen and the year is 1918. The Spanish flu is endemic across Europe and the Great War is roaring. Stella has grown up in Manchester with her Mam after her mam had to leave Ireland when she was pregnant with Stella. Her mam has been a suffragette, fighting for women's rights to vote, and eventually, women who are over thirty and are householders are entitled to vote. It's a great victory! But Stella's Mam catches flu and Stella has to nurse her as she dies. 

Stella is left alone in the world and has to travel back to Ireland to live with her mother's sister Nancy. Nancy runs a kind of boarding house and Stella is to go and help her. She meets Helen on the train from Belfast; Helen is trying to visit Sandy but it doesn't go well. He is a wounded soldier, wounded in the trenches of the war, and has some kind of PTSD that means he rarely leaves his room. Also in the house are two elderly women and a young nurse, Kit, who nurses at the local convalescent home for soldiers.

Things are changing in Ireland - after the Easter Rising of 1916 the spirit of independence from British rule is in the air. Reading this as someone in 2026 who knows what happened in Ireland it was interesting to get into the head of someone living in Ireland at the time. Stella is an independent forthright young woman who wants to sort everything out. She has no malice in her and people's best interests at heart, but the way she goes about things sometimes rubs people up the wrong way! 

I loved the book, I am so glad I joined in this tour. I loved Stella and I liked the setting and her aunt and all the other inhabitants of the house. I liked Sandy and thought he was very compassionately portrayed. He is only 22 and has been an officer and has been permanently wounded by the war. I'm giving this four out of five and thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Sugar & Other Stories by A S Byatt - Review

I have never read anything by A S Byatt but have always wanted to, so when I saw this in a charity shop in York for just a couple of quid I picked it up. 

I really enjoyed the selection of stories, but it's a few weeks since I read it so I don't remember specifics of many. I think generally the theme was people, and relationship, and quite a lot about middle class people. The book was published in 1987 so all of the stories were dated before that, but some felt quite a bit older - more like Agatha Christie type of time period. But some really felt set in the 1980s, too. 

This definitely has inspired me to read something else by A S Byatt, so I'll keep an eye out for something else by her! I'm giving this four out of five. 

Shorelines by Ruth Ennis - Blog Tour and Review

Hello and welcome to my blog for my stop on the tour for Shorelines by Ruth Ennis! It is a pleasure to welcome you here today. Please do have a click around and read some of my other reviews. 

I love novels told in verse and I love mermaids, so when I saw this book come up on the blog tour I signed up immediately! This book really did not disappoint. I loved the artwork on the front and inside; I would recommend it on artwork alone. But the writing is beautiful too. I raced through this and loved it. It is somewhat a retelling of The Little Mermaid, but in a modern setting. I loved the glimpses of the original story peeking through. 

Muireann is a mermaid. She has lots of sisters, including her twin sister Mairead. One day, they are searching for pearls as gifts for their mother. The twins are obsessed with the world above the surface and want to go one day. Mairead goes missing and the whole family has to look for her. When they find her, she is dead - killed by a mass fishing net. Muireann's mother sinks into a deep depression and Muireann feels totally alone.

She is a fat, strong, powerful mermaid. She knows her place within the ocean, but she really wants to see the surface. She and Mairead had spotted a ship in trouble and saw a man there - obviously the handsome prince. 

But when Muireann does go ashore, the real world isn't like she imagined it to be. She has to become someone else in order to be safe. And she wants more than anything to return to the sea.

I loved the book and would definitely read something else by Ruth Ennis in the future! I will keep a look out for them for sure. I'm giving this a high four out of five. 

What Does It Feel Like? by Sophie Kinsella - Review

My friend Stacey read this book and recommended it, but she had a library copy so she couldn't lend it to me, so I requested it from my library because it sounded really interesting. It is a tiny little novella, but it's really good and really packs a punch and I would definitely recommend it. 

It's a semi-autobiographical novel about Sophie's own life. She was a massively popular author whose Shopaholic books got made into a film (maybe more, I don't know, I didn't read much of her stuff) and she died of a brain tumour in 2024 I think. This book is about an author called Eve who buys a dress to wear on the red carpet for the premiere of her film. She's successful, she's happily married, and she has five gorgeous children.

Then she wakes up in hospital with no memory of how she got there. It turns out she has a malignant brain tumour that has grown huge. She has to learn how to walk, talk, and write again. She has to work out how to tell her beautiful children that their mum will die. She has to be reminded about what has happened by her husband, who is faithfully by her side. 

This is a tiny book, a novella really, and it's told in little vignettes which tell Eve's story. There's a few pages which have text messages from Eve's family and friends, which I liked the inclusion of. It's a powerful little book and I'm giving it five out of five. 

The Secret Room by Jane Casey - Review

I can't remember where or when I heard of this book but I obviously had, as I requested it at the library and it arrived so I read it. I didn't love it, though, I don't think it really stood up to what I thought it was going to be. Oh well, I live and learn! 

This is the twelfth book in a series about a detective called Maeve Kerrigan and her boss, Josh Derwent. I didn't realise that but as with most series you mostly can start here and catch up on some of the back story. In this case, it is obvious that Maeve and Josh have had a bit of a dalliance, and later there's more on their relationship. I did mostly like this aspect but Josh is a bit of a dickhead so it was hard to care as much about him as Maeve clearly does. They were nearly together but then Josh's girlfriend Melissa's son got unwell, and Josh felt guilty and stayed. From further reading I see that this book is set six months after Maeve and Josh didn't get together, which makes sense. 

The main murder in the book is of a wealthy woman called Ilaria Cavendish. She has a long standing meeting on a Wednesday afternoon with her lover, who I think is called Sam? They meet in a hotel every week for sex. She arrives one week, makes her way up to the room which is the room she always has, and waits for Sam. A hotel employee arrives with a bottle of champagne; on the CCTV later the police can see that he was in and out of the room in only a few minutes. When Sam arrives he says he finds her submerged in a scalding hot bath - he tries to pull her out but she is already dead. He is the prime suspect, of course, but he didn't really have enough time to kill her. 

It's a classic locked room mystery and Maeve and Josh are confused. Ilaria was married to a man who had a lot of money and who seemed to trade in wives for a younger model every few years, so he is a suspect too. Sam, meanwhile, has a pregnant girlfriend who he's trying to keep all this from. 

Maeve's parents are Irish immigrants to London and she seems like she avoids them a lot, but they were close with Josh's stepson and still miss him; they end up looking after him at times. Then Melissa is found attacked at home, badly beaten at the bottom of the stairs, and Josh is of course prime suspect. Maeve is sure that he couldn't have done it so she ends trying to investigate it herself, which brings her up against some fellow cops, of course, but she obviously has to meddle which did actually annoy me. Some unsavoury things about Josh come out which I feel was meant to put the reader off him, but he had already come across as a dick anyway so. 

I did like the outcome of both mysteries but something in the way this was written just didn't work for me. It meandered a lot in the middle and I didn't care about Maeve's dating life - she's trying to see this other fella - enough to put up with it. In all I'm giving this three and a half out of five. 

Spring by Michael Morpurgo - Review

After I read Winter by Val McDermid I knew I wanted to read the rest of the series. This one is the only one to have come out so far - Summer is expected this summer and I can't wait! I requested this one at the library and read it at the beginning of April when it really did feel like Spring had sprung but the weather was still a bit wild, as it ought to be. 

Michael's description of his Springs has a lot to do with his farm, which is in Devon, and from where he and his wife set up Farms for City Children, a charity where children come from the cities to work on farms to explore the living, etc. This still happens at Michael's home, apparently, and I liked the descriptions of the children with the pigs, mucking out the horses, and so on. I could imagine the farm well, including the birds that he and his wife Claire spend a lot of time looking at. Michael appreciates that he is no longer in the spring of his life, but he appreciates each new spring with the new life that comes and what that brings on a farm. 

He also talks a bit about how sometimes nature is cruel and things don't live, which I liked. In all this is a cute little book - not quite as punchy and immediate as Winter, but I liked it all the same. I'm giving it five out of five. 

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - Review

This was the April choice for my book club, chosen by Helena. I was a little uncertain about it when I read the blurb, and for the first few chapters of the book. But then I just decided to lean into it, into the weirdness, and then I ended up really liking it. It is odd and it did split the group a bit, but I think more people liked it than not. 

Piranesi is the main character and he lives in the House. It has big halls and vestibules, is made of marble, and has three levels. Below, there are tides that wash through the halls, and above as clouds. Piranesi has spent years journalling and mapping the halls where he finds himself. He lives a simple life; he passes through the halls, he visits the skeletons of the thirteen other people he knows to have lived, he fishes and keeps note of the tides, and on Tuesdays and Fridays he meets with The Other.

The Other is the only other person that Piranesi knows to be alive currently. Piranesi doesn't know where he goes when they're not meeting, but assumes he is in the vast House somewhere. The halls are filled with marble statues depicting any number of things; Piranesi knows them all intimately. He also has reverance for the skeletons even though he doesn't know who the bodies were. As far as he knows, only fifteen people - includimg himself and The Other - have ever lived. 

One day The Other mentions something about an unknown sixteenth person. He warns that if Piranesi was to talk to them, he would go quite mad, so he must not talk to them. Piranesi trusts The Other so believes him. He sees evidence of the sixteenth person a little time later, in the form of arrows through the confusing labyrinth of halls and vestibules. Then Sixteen leaves a note for Piranesi but he, mindful of The Other, erases the words. But little by little things start to unravel. Piranesi discovers gaps in his journals, and the names of some other people. He can't trust himself and he has no idea who, what, or where he is. 

I thought at first Piranesi might be in heaven, because of the many rooms. Then I realised it has shades of Plato's Allegory of the Cave which I know about but can't explain in good enough detail to explain why I thought of it, but I really did. I liked how the story unravelled and I thought it was a satisfactory ending. I just leaned into the weirdness and got involved in Piranesi's life and thoughts. I'm giving it four out of five.