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. 

The Vipers by Katy Hays - Review

I read The Cloisters by Katy Hays and didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either, so I don't know that I would have given her another chance but then someone chose this for an online book club that I'm in so I bought it on eBay for a few quid and picked it up. And I ended up liking it a lot more! So that's good.

The book is set on the island of Capri so it has the summer gothic feel that I love, where everything is so bright and sunny but there's an undercurrent of threat and something sinister. I loved the setting and could picture it perfectly. 

The main characters are Helen and Lorna. Helen is the daughter of the Lingate family. Her dad and uncle, Richard and Marcus, have a lot of money and are very rich and influential. Thirty years ago, on Capri at the villa they always stay at, Helen's mother Sarah, a famous playwright, fell over a cliff and was killed. The family maintains that it was an accident, but Helen, who was a small child at the time, has always had her doubts. Her father and uncle - and Marcus' wife, Naomi, who drinks too much and takes a lot of prescription drugs - keep her on a really tight leash. She went to college but had a driver and so on; she's  never been free. 

She's determined to make things happen, so she's looped in Lorna, who is Marcus' assistant, to help. Pretty soon in the book the reader knows that Lorna has disappeared, but not exactly why. But as soon as the family arrive on Capri they run into an old friend, who was on the island the day Sarah died, and there's something for Helen too - a present. It turns out to be the necklace that Sarah was wearing when she died. 

A ton of things happen and it did get slightly confusing in places, and there are quite a lot of people involved, but I liked the story and the setting. I thought it had a good ending, too. I'm giving it four out of five. 

The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths - Review

 

So you know I'm a huge fan of Elly Griffiths and have read everything she's written for adults, and a couple of her books for children, but when I first heard of this book I wasn't thrilled about it. It involves time travel and I was like ....sure. So I didn't buy it. But then when I was at Stockport Noir in January Elly was there and the way she talked about this book was enough to pique my interest. So I bought a copy of it for Elly to sign. Then when I mentioned it to my mum and to my friend Sarah, who both also really like Elly, they both said that it's really good and I should give it a go. Sarah said that you just accept the time travel premise and how it's done, and that the book carries you along with it. 

So I picked it up in March and I have to say my mum and Sarah were right - I really liked it and the story is good enough to forget my misgivings about time travel. I will definitely read the second and more in the series! 

The protagonist is Ali, she's in her forties and has a son called Finn who is about twenty five. She had him pretty young and was married to his father (Declan? Duncan? One of those) but they have divorced and don't particularly get on. Ali's job is for the police, ostensibly in 'cold cases', but in actuality, a scientist in the department has cracked time travel. Ali has been back in time just once, when she and a colleague went to the 1960s to witness a crime to bring back to the present day for relatives to get closure. There's just six people in the department and it's obviously on a need to know basis. 

Finn works for a Tory MP called Isaac Templeton. Ali is disappointed if he believes in Tory politics, which I thought was very funny, but she appreciates that he has a good job and is learning his way in politics, etc. Then Isaac gets in touch with Ali's department and she has to go see him. 

He explains that his great grandfather, Cain Templeton, was a bit of a wrong 'un, that he might have belonged to this group called The Collectors - and rumour has it that to join the group, you had to kill a woman. There are details in his diary of a murder in a house he kept, and Isaac wants to be sure that Cain didn't kill this woman so Ali has to go back in time to see. Cain certainly did collect some weird things, like people's brains and so on, so it seems like he really might have murdered this woman. I liked the similarities here to Jack the Ripper and to other groups like The Collectors. 

Ali is helped in her transformation into a Victorian lady by several people, including the scientist in the department, whose name I've forgotten but I liked her a lot too. The time travel goes well and Ali arrives in the 1860s and goes to Cain Templeton's house. It isn't where he lives - he's posh so he has a manor house in Sussex or something - but he keeps the house for artists he's patronising and other waifs and strays. Ali sees the murdered girl and isn't sure who has murdered her, so does some enquiries. She is supposed to return home at the same time the next day, when the 'portal' will be open again, but when she gets there, it doesn't work. 

She's stuck. She rents a room in Cain's house and starts trying to unravel what has happened there. She poses as a widowed lady and tries to get herself back home. Victorian London is not a fun place to be...

Meanwhile Finn is in legal trouble back in the present day but with his mum 'away' for work he's having trouble too. 

I liked Ali a lot and can't wait to read more about her. I liked Finn too. The set up was just good, and it was a good story for the first in a series. I'm giving it four out of five.