Everyone Is Lying to You by Jo Piazza - Review

When I read Yesteryear I saw recommendations for this, which is similar but apparently better. So I got it and read it on Kindle. I was reading it when I went to Brighton in August which is where I took this photo - the pink item is my bag and the blue item at the bottom is my dress, and I swear the creamy colour to the right hand side is actually the white sheets in the lighting in the room, not my flesh! I didn't notice what this photo looked like until I've uploaded it just now... 

Anyway! On to the plot. I haven't written here in ages and it's weeks since I read this book so I am trying to remind myself about what happened in it. I really need to get caught up on my book blogging because I don't want to miss out any of the books I've read! Please bear with me. 

The first character is Lizzie. She's a magazine writer whose job is in jeopardy because of the death of magazines and so on. She's married and she has two young children. She spends quite a lot of time scrolling through the instagram of her old friend Bex, who is now a tradwife influencer. It's a love/hate kind of thing and Lizzie can't tear herself away. Then she gets a message from Bex, now known as Rebecca, suggesting that she break some news about Rebecca's life in her magazine. It will be a huge story and Rebecca wants her to be the one to break the news. She suggests that she and Lizzie meet up at a blogging conference and she will give Lizzie the exclusive interview. 

The conference is very clearly meant to be Blog Her, which is probably defunct now and which really made me laugh. It's full of influencers and corporate giveaways. It's held at a luxury hotel and Lizzie enjoys her first couple of days there. She barely sees Rebecca, but enjoys herself anyway. Rebecca comes to her room one night and they drink together, Rebecca letting her tradwife side slip. 

Then the next morning, in the middle of the keynote speech or whatever, news comes that Rebecca's husband Gray has been found murdered on their ranch. She is taken for questioning and so is Lizzie. 

Rebecca's life turns out to not be as rosy as it looks online. She is married to Gray, and has moulded him into the man she would like him to be - a bit like Natalie in Yesteryear. They have five children. Rebecca is working hard at her job of making everything look perfect - but clearly not everything is. 

I did find the book really compelling and I liked Lizzie's point of view and thought it was so true how she couldn't look away from Rebecca's life. But it just fell a bit flat for me. I'm giving it three and a half out of five because I do think it's worth reading, and I do think it's better than Yesteryear, but it just wasn't quite there yet. 

The Bookman's Wake by John Dunning - Review

This book was my choice for book club. I wasn't sure what to suggest this year so ended up picking this. I first read it about twenty years ago, maybe longer. It was definitely when my dad was still alive and he died in 2008. He read it first when we were on holiday in France I think, and he liked it so much that he made my mum and I read it too. I absolutely loved it at the time but have never reread it. I thought it was an interesting choice for book club as we don't tend to read a lot of crime, and I thought it would be interesting to read it now I'm 42, not in my late teens or early twenties as I was before. 

The book is one of a series about an ex police detective called Cliff Janeway. He now works as a book dealer and he's minding his own business doing that one day when an ex colleague arrives in his shop. This colleague is now like a bounty hunter, returning those who have skipped bail and cashing in on it. He has a new person he's chasing. She's called Eleanor Rigby and she's a young woman who's skipped bail. Janeway is intrigued because of the connection to books - there have been ashes of books left behind after robberies that Eleanor has been arrested for, and Janeway wants to know why. 

He sets off in pursuit of her and ends up in Washington or Oregon, one of those places. I think. It's a while since I read this so the details are a bit fuzzy. Anyway she's been all over the country and there are dead bodies, too, so if it was Eleanor then she is also wanted for murder. I can't fully remember. But Janeway captures Eleanor and then they spend a nice twenty four hours together scavenging rare books and teaching each other some lessons. He then decides to take her back to her family farm and meets her parents and her uncle. There's definitely a frisson of something sexual between them even though, as Janeway points out to himself, he's old enough to be her dad. 

So the books that have been left in ashes at crime scenes. Eleanor's dad used to work for the Graysons. They were a pair of brothers who had a printing press. Darryl Grayson was proud of his work and was very exacting about it. He printed a copy of The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe and there was a mistake in it, way back in 1949, and he was haunted by it for twenty years. The brothers died in a fire in 1969, a fire that took their entire workshop and everything else up in smoke. But Janeway finds that there were rumours that there was a new copy of The Raven, without the mistake. The rumour goes that Darryl sent it out to his subscribers, first of all, but that he was going to do a proper print run but then he died, and couldn't. Janeway suspects that the ashes of the books left at the crime scenes were copies of this new version of The Raven.

These parts of the book are all fine, and interesting, but it gets bogged down in detail at about two thirds of the way through. There are people after Eleanor and it all gets a bit stupid and there's too many characters and it's hard to wade through. But I did enjoy the main story. I think most people at book club agreed with me. 

In all I'm giving this sort of three and a half out of five - not quite a four but it was nice to reread something that I read so long ago and that I shared with my dad. I'm not sure I would read any others in the series, though! 

Are You Awake? by Sarah Crossan - Review

I realised there was a Sarah Crossan book that I hadn't read so I requested it at the library. It's six weeks since I read it now so I'm struggling to remember the names of the people in the book. Let me go google... 

Ah, yes. This book is for adults, definitely, so be careful if your children know Sarah Crossan from her YA books and want to pick this up. I've read another of Sarah's adult books and think I've read everything she's written actually! The other adult book was told in verse like her YA books are. This one is told in sort of vignettes, so it's not a full novel but the way of writing worked really well for the subject matter. It gives a really compelling look into the mind of Dolores, the main character.

She is a secondary school teacher and she's married to David. He's some kind of corporate something, I don't remember. One morning Dolores discovers a sex doll hidden in a bag in the garage. She's a lifelike full size doll called Zoey. In fact, the book was previously published under the name Hey Zoey, because that's what Dolores keeps saying to activate her. Finding her throws up a lot in Dolores' and David's marriage. She asks him to leave but then she unpacks Zoey herself and ends up opening up to the doll in ways she's never been able to with David.

The two of them met at university and I feel like Dolores engineered a lot of their relationship to ensure that they ended up together. Like David just isn't that forthcoming as a person. Dolores is traumatised and seems numb throughout the book, which I liked. She had a difficult relationship with her mother and protected her little sister from a lot of things. When she was young, her mum moved in her partner and his son. The son was just a bit older than Dolores and eventually sexually abused her. It isn't told in explicity terms but it is definitely there, and Dolores struggles with it. 

I didn't feel like we got to know David at all, which I found strange, but honestly I have very little criticism of the book. I'm giving it four out of five. 

The Family Friend by Claire Douglas - Review

This was the third book I bought in Waterstones in Peterborough and I read it near the end of July. I've read other books by Claire Douglas and I was intrigued by the premise of this book so I got it. My cousin's wife saw it when I'd bought it and expressed interest, so I passed it on to her when I was done. I hope she liked it more than I did. I didn't hate it, but I only gave it three out of five stars so there was obviously something that didn't gel with me. It's a while since I read it but I will try to cast my mind back...

The book is about Imogen, a woman in her thirties who has been working as a journalist but she's suspended at the moment due to something that happened with one of her investigations. She is I think married to Josh, who is a tiresome human being that I disliked from the off. Some of his actions were really abusive so I would give a trigger warning for that. Imogen gets the unexpected news that she has been left a massive house in Bath in the will of a woman called Dorothea. 

Dorothea is an artist and has had a successful career, but the house went up in flames and a lot of her artwork was destroyed. But Imogen finds a box addressed to her and realises Dorothea is trying to tell her something about her own past as well as what happened to Dorothea. Imogen hasn't seen Dorothea since she was sixteen, half her lifetime ago, when her mother left her dad and took Imogen with her. They stayed with Dorothea and she helped them, but Imogen's mother went back to Imogen's dad, and he is now serving time for her murder. Imogen has had a difficult life because of this, but is very close to her sister.

She starts trying to unravel what happened to Dorothea. There's a weird neighbour who is a bit too friendly, and there's a hunky next door neighbour who Imogen remembers from the summer she was sixteen. Dorothea's studio yields nothing but then there's a hidden bunker in the garden which does. There are three friends of Dorothea's who know a lot about what happened with Imogen's parents, but they are under threat too. 

I liked the sense of threat in the book a lot, but Imogen drove me mad by making stupid mistakes and decisions. Josh is a proper dickhead to her. I thought it was a bit slow in parts, too. I think maybe my time with Claire Douglas is up as I don't find her that interesting. 

Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan - Review

I've read other books by Claire Keegan so when I spied this in Waterstones in Peterborough I picked it up. I had a voucher to spend so got this and something else on buy one get one half price. I then read it really soon after purchasing, which is good going for me. 

I love the sparseness of the prose in this book, which I've said about Claire Keegan before. I love these little novella books, of around 150 pages, as I think they're really accessible for readers. This one is short stories and I like how Claire said so much in so few words. They were even sparser than her usual stuff! All the stories are set in Ireland which I loved. There are only seven stories and I liked them all. 

I really liked the title story, about a priest performing a marriage involving a woman that he was in love with, and how he moves through the day. There's a story about an abused daughter which was hard to read but done so beautifully. I liked the story about Martha, a storyteller, who causes chaos in her family by exposing the truth about them to the neighbours. But they were all good! 

I think I've read everything that Claire Keegan has published now which is a shame, but I more recently read a book that was a lot like this one, which I'll review soon! In all I'm giving this four out of five and I thoroughly recommend it. 

Heartstopper Vol 6 by Alice Oseman - Review

It's the end of Heartstopper! Waahhhh! I had forgotten it was coming out in July and then I was in Waterstones in Peterborough on holiday and I saw it. I still had vouchers so I bought three books and this was one of them. I have read a bunch of the others as library books but decided now that the series is over that I wanted to own them all. I ended up buying the first five books as a set on Vinted and I may have to do a reread soon!

I also wanted to read this book before I watched the Heartstopper film that was the finale to the TV show. It was on Netflix about the 17th of July or something. I had a procedure on the 21st of July and laid on the sofa for the whole entire day, so I planned to watch the film so knew I needed to read this first. So I did. And now it's ended. Wahhh! I thought the book ended in such a lovely way, I liked it a lot. 

We're back with Nick and Charlie as they work through being separated for the first time as Nick is heading off to uni. Nick struggles with not being 'perfect', something which goes back to his dad leaving the family. It was nice to see them supporting Nick through something rather than him being the strong silent type while Charlie's mental health suffered. Charlie's confidence grows and grows in this book which was amazing to see. I loved seeing Nick at uni - it was so reminiscent of my own time at uni. 

We also saw the endings for all the people we've got really fond of over the years - Tara and Darcy and of course Elle and Tao. Elle is my favourite character - well except Mr Farouk because I am an old jaded queer as well. And I loved HIS ending too, but no spoilers! But Elle and Tao had a really realistic ending and it showed how grown up they could be. 

I liked the film as well, it stuck really close to the book which was good. I am sad to see it end, though. As I've said a million times, when I was younger we just didn't have this type of queer representation on the television so I'm happy it exists now and look forward to seeing more. I will read more of Alice's stuff soon and probably do some rereads too. In all I'm giving this four out of five. It's adorable. 

The Secret of Skeleton Island and The Mystery of The Moaning Cave - Review

 

When I was little I read a bunch of these books, and last year I reread The Mystery of the Talking Skull and really liked it. I got a few of the books on Kindle and when I was away at the beginning of July (nearly two months ago, which is how far behind I am with my reviews...) I ended up reading two of them. The first night, I couldn't sleep. I wonder if I was given caffeinated coffee actually because I couldn't sleep for the life in me. I finally fell asleep at like 6am when I had read an entire book and watched the sun come up. Which was actually really pretty to see. But even so!

So these books have Alfred Hitchcock's name attached to them and he always makes an appearance when the Three Investigators have finished a mystery and they tell him about it, but he didn't write them or anything. I did think that most of them were written by Robert Arthur, but The Mystery of The Moaning Cave was written by someone called William Arden. I have read both before, I'm pretty sure, way back over thirty years ago when I used my little local library every week. 

The Three Investigators are Jupiter, Bob, and Pete. The books are set in California in the 1960s and although a little outdated they do stand up to modern reading. I would actually LOVE a modern rewrite of this series with new technology and stuff like that. Jupiter lives with his aunt and uncle although I don't remember why and it wasn't explained in either of these books. Bob and Pete live with their respective parents. 

In The Secret of Skeleton Island Pete's dad is working in Hollywood and filming a movie on the east coast or something, and the three boys are invited to go and watch and do some diving. I vividly remember this book because Bob and Pete get stuck while diving and that makes me feel sick, it's one of my worst phobias. I have never reread The Beach because of the bit when the Swedes get stuck in the diving tunnel through the island - it was just TOO realistic and I remember feeling the same about Bob and Pete! The boys are picked up when they arrive but are dropped off on the wrong island and have to rescue themselves. The waters around the island are full of fish, but surely the rumours about them being full of buried treasure aren't real?! 

I still loved this book as much as I did when I was a kid. I'm giving it four out of five. 

I don't know if I've read The Mystery of The Moaning Cave before. It didn't ring as many bells for me. The three boys are on holiday in Southern California on a huge ranch. There are rumours that an outlaw called El Diablo went missing on a cave on the ranch and now there are moaning noises coming from that cave. But surely the long dead outlaw cannot actually be there? There are a bunch of people in this book, all of whom have a different opinion about the moaning noises. The boys obviously go to investigate. 

I enjoyed this book as well, another four out of five. I will have to read some more of this series soon!

Dead Teenager Movie by Cethan Leahy - Review and Blog Tour

Hello and welcome to my blog for my stop on the blog tour for Dead Teenager Movie by Cethan Leahy. It is a pleasure you welcome you here. Please do have a click around and read some of my other reviews!

I was immediately intrigued by the premise of this book so wasted no time in signing up for the tour. I read the book in mid August and really enjoyed it. It's a fun YA novel, drawing on a lot of horror movie tropes. I would definitely read something else by Cethan Leahy and look forward to what he writes next!

The book is set near Cork in Ireland. I love Irish based Young Adult lit so I was really glad to read this, there really needs to be more of it. There are five teenagers. Four of them already know each other - Carl, his sister Scarlett, their friends Erika and John. Carl and Scarlett are wealthy, Carl has his own car, stuff like that. He has just started seeing April so they pick her up on their way to an isolated house for the weekend. Carl says it's his dad's second home or something. 

But strange things start happening and the group realise they are being stalked. A series of murders have happened in Cork including a janitor being murdered and someone heading to a party with no one there, so the teens start to wonder if this is the same person. They lose any way of leaving the house and are desperately trying to stay alive. 

Meanwhile, two teens are watching a livestream of what is happening to April and co and they are so intrigued - it's like a horror movie but it's really happening. They decide to try to get to the house where April and the others are, but soon things don't look too good for them either. 

There's a bunch of horror film tropes that happen while April, Carl, Scarlett, Erika and John are trying to stay alive. Things like - don't believe the bad guy is really dead. Don't trust anyone. Nowhere is safe. 

It's a really fun book and I enjoyed it. I am giving it four out of five and am hoping everyone else enjoyed it just as much! 

The Woman In Suite 11 by Ruth Ware - Review

I read The Woman in Cabin 10 in late 2018, absolutely years ago now! Then at Stockport Noir in January she was talking about this, a sequel to that book, so I ordered it. I didn't love it, and having read my review for the first book, I can see why! I think maybe Ruth Ware just isn't for me, and that's okay. She was absolutely lovely when I met her, which is the important thing!

So, Laura is living her best life in New York, married to her dishy husband Judah and bringing up their two children. She's still a journalist but not a travel writer. It is a decade on from what happened in the first book. But then she gets an invitation to the opening of a luxury hotel in Switzerland and wants to go to try and revive her career. The hotel is owned by the Leidmann Group, whose head is Marcus Leidmann. It is widely believed that he will give up the position to his son, Pieter. 

Lo arrives in Switzerland and is reunited with three people from the cruise ship ten years earlier, which seems weird but they're all still working so maybe it's not that weird? Then Lo gets an invitation to Suite 11. She goes, and finds Carrie, who was the woman in Cabin 10 all those years ago and who has been on the run ever since due to her involvement in that case.

She tells Lo that she is Marcus' mistress and that she is trapped. He is abusive towards her and knows that she isn't who she says she is and is blackmailing her to stay. She wants Lo's help - Laura has two passports and Carrie wants to borrow one to get them both to England. Lo is really unsure but eventually agrees to help, feeling guilty about what happened ten years ago. 

It's a risky plan but they do both make it through and end up deep in the Sussex countryside in a fancy hotel. They have plans to leave - Laura is going to see her mum - but these plans are derailed when Marcus and Pieter turn up at the hotel. Lo and Carrie think that they are tracking Lo to see if Carrie turns up, so they try to hide her. But it all goes a bit wrong when Marcus is found drowned in his bath. 

I thought the story was compelling but the book lost its way a bit and it was just too long. It needed some editing I think. I can only give it three out of five. 

The Silence In Between by Josie Ferguson - Review

This was the July choice for my book club and I read it on Kindle. I did mostly enjoy it but had a few caveats that took my star rating down a bit. 

The book has a dual narrative. In the first one, Lisette is around thirty years old and has two children. Ellie is fifteen and Axel is only a few weeks old. Axel is unwell and Lisette takes him to the hospital in West Berlin. She is urged to go home and sleep and come back in the morning with clothes for him and her. But in the morning, the people of East Berlin find that the Wall has gone up overnight and they are no longer permitted to travel there freely. Axel is stuck in the hospital and no one can do anything. But Ellie is determined to smuggle herself in to West Berlin to rescue her baby brother. 

In the second narrative, it is Berlin during World War Two. Lisette lives with her mother who I think was called Rita. Her father is off fighting and Rita waits for him to come home forever more, years after the war has ended. Lisette is in love with a neighbour, Julius, who has been drafted to fight and must leave. The women are friends with a neighbour, Frau Weber, who is a Nazi, althought from Lisette's point of view she and her mother definitely aren't. THEY definitely don't think Jewish people are subhuman or whatever like those NASTY Nazis do! I really didn't like this part of the book because I felt like it exonerated Lisette and her family too much. The book moves on to what happened after the Soviets moved in and how terrible they were to the Germans. The book is pretty harrowing in terms of sexual assault and rape. Others in my book club felt like Lisette was right in what she did, but I'm not sure I agree. 

It was interesting to read about what happened in Berlin during the war, especially from the point of view of women, who are often left behind in war. However, it was often hard to tell the difference between Lisette's and Ellie's points of view, so when the timeline shifted it was hard to tell who it was. Especially when Lisette was a young woman; then the book read more like Young Adult fiction and it just didn't quite ring true for me. I also didn't like how, I felt, no one took responsibility for Nazi actions. 

In all I am giving it three and a half out of five. My caveats mean it got rounded down from four stars. 

Hey Man by Andrew Meehan - Review

I went into the main library in Barnsley town centre when I was there with Lee, and picked up a couple of books. It's a new building, woven into the new piazza that the council made a few years ago, so it's really easy to get to and accessible. I love the displays they have in there and often like to have a look if I'm in the area. I picked up this book and a middle grade children's book that I haven't read yet so I've renewed it a couple of times. 

This is a really understated novella and I really liked it. It reminded me of Claire Keegan and similar authors - there's as much in what's not said as there is in what is said. 

Ian is seventeen and living in Ireland when he goes to live with his dad's cousin in London. Tommy is thirty and a jobbing actor, and dashing and charismatic. It is 1989 and Ian is sheltered and shy. But he and Tommy stay up all night and gad about London and really Ian falls in love. 

They meet again in Dublin fifteen years later, briefly, when Ian is a Benedictine monk known as Brother Eugene, and Tommy is still a jobbing actor, still treating women badly, still dashing and charismatic.

They meet finally when Tommy is sixty and celebrating his birthday, but he's also dying. 

It's a lovely book, very undersold and written in such a longing fashion that it made me ache. I'm giving it four out of five and would definitely read something else by Andrew Meehan in the future. 

 

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke - Review

I had heard so much hype about this book and a couple of people told me it was exactly my thing so I thought I had better read it sooner rather than later. I need to discuss it in person with people who have also read it, because it boggled me a bit. 

One thing you might not know about me is that I have a special interest in Christian fundamentalists. I did Theology and Religious Studies at university which I think is a big part of it. I have kept an eye on families like the Duggars, the Collins, Ballerina Farm and so on ever since. I belong to forums where we discuss these families and how gross they are for what they believe in. 

There has been a rise in Christian fascism over the past decade and a half, and it has meant that we ended up with Trump in the White House. Twice. The fact they love him is absolutely boggling because he is everything they are supposedly against - but he isn't a mixed race woman so they voted for him over Kamala Harris because they really hate women and they really hate people who aren't white, so she's a double whammy. They are behind the rise of Zionism in the US and increasingly in the UK too. It's scary. It's easy to look at their cute kids, perfect kitchens, and modest dress, and think that they aren't that dangerous. But they have LOT of power, money, and influence, and they are scary. I loathe them, of course. They are antithesis to everything I believe in. 

Enter Caro Claire Burke and her novel, which is about a tradwife called Natalie. She is from a somewhat fundamentalist home and was brought up by her mother with her sister. Her dad left the family but everyone pretended he was dead and the family moved, so that the mother could keep respectability. Natalie wears somewhat modest clothing when she's at college and judges her roommate dreadfully because she has sex and is just a normal eighteen year old but like whatever, Natalie is incredibly judgemental. 

Natalie meets Caleb, whose dad is a senator or something. The family is incredibly wealthy and Caleb is the fifith of five sons and is, honestly, just incredibly thick. I feel like his dad has spent a lot of time bailing him out of trouble. But Natalie knows she can mould Caleb into the alpha male she wants him to be. She sells him on the idea of a ranch, where he will be the boss, and she will stay at home with the children and drink raw milk (they are all obsessed with raw milk). She sells him on this and ends up leaving college before the end of her second year so they can get married and she can have her first baby. 

Fifteen years later she is living the dream. Allegedly. She has a handful of children, another one on the way, and she has Help. She has two nannies, a bunch of ranch hands to do the actual work since Caleb can't, and a social media manager. She shares recipes on her blog and films A LOT with her children. We've seen how this can go with the likes of Ruby Franke. She is small minded and judgemental; she meets up with a girl she went to school with in the supermarket and is certain that this woman is incredibly jealous of her. 

One of my problems with Natalie is that I think Caro Claire Burke gave her much more credit than many of these women are due. She is clever - she gets into Harvard for goodness sake - and very self aware. A lot of these women in these cults just aren't that clever. They have fully bought in to the ideologies of the cult - they genuinely believe that women are inferior to men, that they need to have as many children as possible, that their men are heads of the households, that women shouldn't preach in church, that they need to cover their elbows, knees, heads, lest they lead men astray etc. I don't think that Natalie really DID believe those things; she was just using them to get what she wanted out of life. 

Anyway, one day she wakes up, and it's 1855. She is stuck in the mid 19th century with children she doesn't recognise and a man that is surely not Caleb although he looks kind of similar. You'd think she'd love this - she gets to go back to all the things that she wants! But of course, she doesn't. It's incredibly inconvenient to live a life where there is no indoor plumbing, where all food has to be made from scratch, and where medicine is limited and there's a very real chance that one of your children might die. 

She tries to escape and can't. The book switches between times periods - Natalie is stuck in 1855 but then she recounts what has happened for the last twenty years back in modern times. It's obvious that the two strands will come together but I wasn't sure how exactly. And I don't think the pay off was worth it. It sort of felt like Caro Claire Burke had had this great idea to write a book about a woman like Ruby Franke or Ballerina Farm or whatever, but hadn't quite worked out what she wanted to say. I didn't hate the ending buuuut it was a bit odd. 

I also think that Caro Claire Burke does herself have some really anti feminist views and these peeped through fairly often. Obviously Natalie is anti feminist and obviously she's also an unreliable narrator but there were bits that weren't her point of view that were just really anti women. So I didn't like that. In all I'm giving this three out of five. It was interesting and I'm glad to have read it, and I would like more discussions about it, but I didn't love it. 

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! 

My (Secret) YouTube Life by Charlotte Seager - Review

I had a sampler of this book's first chapter that I had clearly picked up forever and a day ago probably at a convention or something. It had got mixed up with my zines but when I sorted them all out - I catalogued them into a spreadsheet and now have over a thousand zines on shelves in my middle hallway - I found it again and read it. I was really intrigued by the first chapter so requested the book at the library. I haven't read anything by Charlotte Seager before but I would again!

The book is told from two points of view. Firstly is Lily. She is a YouTuber. She started off as a make up vlogger and now she's an influencer. She is inundated with free products etc. She lives with her rockstar boyfriend, Brian. She's living the perfect life, right? But Brian can be a total pain and Lily just sometimes wants to step off the rollercoaster. I think Lily is about twenty one so she's slightly out of the YA age group but I think her story will resonate with teenagers anyway. We all know vloggers/influencers like her, so it's easy to understand what it's like behind the scenes. Those people's lives are never as shiny and amazing as they look on social media!

Melissa is sixteen and she's a bit of a loner at school. She has one friend who is sensible and who I'm like, Melissa! Stop treating her badly! Melissa is obsessed with Lily and her channel and has tickets for a meet and greet with her. Melissa gets talking to some girls in her year and ends up hanging out with them. There's a boy they hang out with in the sixth form and Melissa quite fancies him and she ends up starting a blog or YouTube or whatever and pretends that he's her boyfriend. She gets deeper and deeper in and ends up not knowing up from down. It's easy to see how she ends up where she does.

I liked how the book got resolved and I thought Melissa matured a lot and made reparations when she needed to. I liked Lily and like her ending - I hope she was happy! I'm giving this four out of five and recommend it for teens. 

Nesting By Roisin O'Donnell - Review

My friend Stacey was raving about this book and wanted me to read it, so I requested it at the library and picked it up in the middle of May. I loved it and really recommend it. I would love to read something else by Roisin so will definitely be keeping an eye out for her!

The book is about Ciara, a young mum of two. She is married to Ryan and I think her kids are called Sophie and Ella but I'm writing this over a month later so I wouldn't swear to that. Ryan is abusive towards her. The book starts where the family goes to the seaside and he insists that the girls go swimming even though it's like April or something, and too cold. The girls are in wetsuits that are too small for them because Ciara has squirrelled away the money that Ryan gave her for new ones. The day is a disaster and when they're back at home she makes a split second decision to leave. She packs up a few things and gets in the car and leaves. 

She sleeps in the car overnight and the next day tries to find help. Ryan is obviously blowing up her phone demanding to know what has happened and begging her to come home. She gets housed in a hotel in Dublin city centre, where the fifth floor is taken up by people - women mostly - in similar situations, who are victims of Ireland's housing crisis. She tries to leave the country as her mum and sister are in Sheffield, where Ciara and her sister grew up, but Ryan has put a block on the kids' passports. Ciara has previously left Ryan for three weeks, but went back. 

In the hotel the inhabitants of the fifth floor aren't allowed to leave by the main staircase etc. Each room has a family in and everyone is trying to make the best of it. Ciara gets quite friendly with the woman next door and with one of the staff in the hotel, who is trying to learn English as a second language. 

Ciara is pregnant again which obviously adds to Ryan's rage. She talks about how he was violent when Ella was only a few months old and how she had to spend the whole night with her back against Ella's  bedroom door in case he turned more violent towards her. He has raped her at night previously, but he tells her that he's not abusive because he has never physically hit her. To the outside world, he looks like a catch. He's a civil servant and he attends mass regularly. His mother gets on at Ciara to go back to him too. 

It's not so much the leaving but it's the staying gone. Ciara has no way to support herself and Ryan has told her that she isn't allowed to teach in Ireland because she gained her degree in England - which turns out not to be true. Ryan uses the girls to manipulate her. It was done so well that the reader totally understood where Ciara was coming from and why she felt totally turned upside down.

I wanted her to succeed, of course. I wanted only the best for her and I wanted her to get money and find some friends and be able to be by herself, coparenting with Ryan I guess even though he was a dick towards her. I want this for all women in this situation and this is a brilliant book showing what can and does happen when a woman dares to leave. 

I really would recommend this and am giving it five out of five. 

 

The Surrogate Mother by Freida McFadden - Review

I've only read The Housemaid by Freida McFadden I think, and I liked it, so on a trip to The Works I picked this up along with two books by Megan Lally who I haven't even heard of, but I was intrigued by the premise of the books so I got all three for £7.50 or whatever it is. I will get to them soon....... probably. I picked this up towards the middle of June. It is compelling in the same way that The Housemaid is, but I didn't like it anywhere near as much. 

The protagonist is Abby. She is an advertising executive and works under a woman called Diana? Dinah? Something like that. The two of them get along, but Diana is a bit annoyed because Abby has been undergoing fertility treatments and stuff for years. Abby is married to Sam, who is a Maths professor at the local university. And he's very good looking. It's important that you know this because it's mentioned about 683 times. But he doesn't know he's good looking! That's important to know too. 

At the very beginning of the book Abby is having a baby shower at work. She's just thrilled it's finally her turn. She and Sam are adopting a baby from a pregnant teenager in like Texas or whatever. Abby is about to take a ton of parental leave and is looking forward to time with her baby. But then Sam arrives and tells her that the adoption has fallen through - the teenager has decided to keep the baby. Abby is obviously devastated. She's been through years of infertility and she's just fed up. 

Then her assistant, Monica, who is a very capable assistant, such a godsend, offers to be Abby's surrogate. She's young, she's probably fertile, and she is sure she can do it. Abby is thrilled and sets about convincing Sam. He takes a lot of convincing, but eventually he agrees to it and they all go to a clinic and Monica gets pregnant. She has signed a contract which I am entirely sure would not stand up in any court of law which guarantees Abby and Sam the baby when it's born.

But then weird things start to happen. Abby is sure that one of Monica's ultrasounds is at X time so she turns up then, only to find that she's late and the ultrasound has already happened, with Monica and Sam only there. Abby thinks it's the stress getting to her, but Monica has a terrible secret and it means Abby and the baby are in danger. 

I liked the premise but I thought the way it played out was just stupid. Abby made a bunch of stupid decisions and could have just opened her mouth and communicated with people, Sam especially, but she doesn't. I thought some of the twists were visible from space they were so obvious, and some of them just didn't make sense. I'm giving it three out of five. 

 

Alice Austen Lived Here by Alex Gino - Review

I picked this up in Portal bookshop in York, which is a queer bookshop that also sells badges and fun stuff like that, and has a cafe upstairs and plenty of events happening - it's a really cool place to go. I visited in June with my friend Lucinda. I bought just this book, and picked it up soon after. I love Alex Gino and would love to have read everything they write, so I was glad to buy this. 

It's about a non binary kid called Sam who lives in New York with their mother and father I think. They are close friends with a queer family who live on a lower floor in their building - a woman, her non binary partner, and their baby. Sam also walks the dog of someone in the building, I don't remember her name but I loved her. From their bedroom window, Sam can see the Statue of Liberty and it's a statue that means a lot to them. Their best friend, TJ, is also non binary. They have a busy family that Sam is sometimes jealous of. 

At school, the kids get given an assignment to enter a competition. They have to write a report about who there should be a new statue of in their home borough of Staten Island. Some kids write about Henry Hudson - been done, coloniser, never even came to the area, Sam and TJ are bored of that one - and others write about Alexander Hamilton because one of them is vaguely related to him, which she shoehorns into every conversation haha. Sam and TJ don't know who to write about but eventually learn about Alice Austen, who was a photographer. She lived with a woman for decades and took quite frank photos of herself and her friends. I hadn't ever heard of her so it was interesting to learn more about her as Sam and TJ did too. 

I liked the book a lot and I think for a middle grade audience it was perfect. It explained a lot of things about queer identity and I liked how Sam came more to terms with themself and their place in the community. For me personally it was a bit so so, but I understand I am not the target audience and I think it would hit different with them. I will say that I didn't feel a particular emotional connection with Sam unlike in Melissa or Rick, which perhaps let it down a bit for me. But in all, a good book! 

As an aside but relevant to this post - I reviewed a queer picture book called Princess Pete for Global Comment, where I write occasionally. I wrote about why LGBTQIA+ books are essential for all kids, under the umbrella or not. You can read it here. 

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld - Review

This was yet another of the books that my friend Janet had recommended when it was just 99p on Kindle, so I bought it. I picked it up at the beginning of June and took quite a while to read it, because it is quite long. I did enjoy it but I wouldn't rush out to read something else by Curtis Sittenfeld even though I know people rave about her. 

The book is set at an elite boarding school in Massachussetts. Lee Fiora is fourteen when she arrives and way out of her depth. She's from the middle of nowhere in Indiana, from a normal family. She was clever enough to get a scholarship to Ault, the school, but when she gets there she's just one clever kid in a whole raft of them. And everyone else is rich and from the 'right' family. They have the right things like flowered bedspreads but Lee doesn't - something which marks her out as a scholarship student. 

The book spans all four years of Lee's high school career at the school. She has a huge crush on Cross Sugarman, the most popular boy in her year. One day late in her freshman year she gets to spend the day with him and some friends, which intensifies her crush. She knows he'll never look at her, though. She has just one friend, who she ends up sharing a room with for the next three years. 

The most popular girl in the school is Aspeth, who eventually asks Lee for a haircut and she ends up being the hairdresser for the whole school. She is thrilled that people want to talk to her but eventually realised that this job is a bit beneath her. 

I liked the setting of the school and thought it was so cloistered and had its own language which showed the 'them' and 'us' of it all. I did think it was a bit too long and I would have liked just a bit more plot, but I understand that's not overly the point of the book. In all I'm giving it four out of five. 

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. 

Gone For Good by Sarah Crossan - Review

I started reading this book ages ago and then stopped for some reason, but then it was downloaded on to my Kindle so when I was on the plane and had finished The Wedding People, I only had a few books to choose from so decided to go back to this. It did take me a bit of time to get back into it, but I read quite a lot on the plane and then I was hooked so had to read the rest of course. 

The novel is told in verse like all of Sarah Crossan's novels. My only criticism of this is that I just want more! I want more detail in the book and verse novels just don't have the space for it! I think it's so clever to write with these constraints though. It takes quite some skill as a writer!

The book is about Connie, a teenaged girl. She is abducted from her bed in the middle of the night and taken to one of those camps for 'wayward' teens. She has been having a difficult time as her mother died and her dad quickly got with someone else - Wendy - who has been making unwelcome changes to the house. Something happened and Connie got into trouble, and now she's at a camp. She's certain that her dad wouldn't have sent her there but the camp counsellors waste no time in telling her that that's not true. Connie is heartbroken and really needs to heal.

Life is of course brutal in the camp. There are sadistic staff and one of her roommates, who I think was called Florence, or similar, is the type of person who snitches on everything that happens. People start to tell Connie that the previous occupant of her bed, Becky, has gone missing and no one knows what happened to her. Connie starts to unravel the truth, but it's slow going. And she has to suspect everyone, including dishy British guy Alex. 

I liked the book a lot and am glad I got round to reading it. I'm giving it four out of five. 

The Wedding People by Alison Espach - Review

 

My friend Janet does a round up monthly of books that are 99p on Kindle and she often has recommendations, and it often costs me about a fiver when I go through and buy a few. It's like the opposite of a problem, really. Anyway she had recommended this so I bought it, and I picked it up towards the end of May when I was on holiday in Morocco. Weirdly there was a woman sitting round the pool who was reading this in paperback. I would probably have spoken to her about it but she was asleep! 

I read the end of this while travelling back from Morocco, so I got really into it because I read so much while I was on the plane. My friends were sleeping so I had plenty of uninterrupted time! 

The novel is about a woman called Phoebe Stone. She has recently got divorced from her husband. Max. They are both academics and he has been having an affair with someone in the department. They have had a difficult marriage with a bunch of failed IVF treatments. Phoebe is completely bereft and really struggling with life, and then her beloved cat (Harry? Henry) dies. She leaves his body in the cellar and sets off to a luxury hotel. She once read about the hotel in a magazine and decides she will go there to kill herself. 

When she gets there, there is a week long wedding going on. The bride, Lila, is outraged that Phoebe is there and staying in the best suite. Phoebe says she is going to kill herself and Lila is further outraged because that will ruin her wedding. Phoebe takes a bunch of her cat's painkillers and lays down to die, listening to the start of the wedding celebrations that is happening below. 

She doesn't die and heads down to the hotel hut tub. She flirts with a man there and tells him she would like to fuck him, but he tells her he's involved with someone else. In the morning, Lila comes to talk to her. Half the wedding party are hungover and Lila would like Phoebe to come and join a boat party to make up numbers. Phoebe eventually goes and then meets the groom, Gary - who is of course the man in the hot tub from the night before. 

Phoebe gets roped in to be Maid of Honour when Lila's cancels, and Lila tells everyone that she and Phoebe know each other from the gallery where she works. Phoebe ends up getting massively involved in everyone's drama. Gary has a daughter and his wife died; he is still close to her brother Jim. Juice, the daughter, doesn't like Lila and the feeling is entirely mutual. It's a whole mess!

The book is compelling and interesting. I liked Phoebe and felt really sorry for her; life has dealt her a rough hand and her ex husband is a proper dickhead. I liked the story a lot and would definitely read something else by the same author. I've seen that this has been optioned for a film too, and I would definitely watch it. I'm giving this five out of five. 

The Women by Kristin Hannah - Review

In February 2023 I read The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah and thought it was absolutely brilliant. I must have said this to my friend Stacey at some point and she read it and loved it too. She told me about The Women at some point and said that among her friends, those that had read it first had preferred it over The Nightingale, and vice versa. She had preferred The Nightingale because she knows France better and coule imagine it really well - which is one of the reasons I loved it too! However The Women is set in the Vietnam War and one of my special interests is the Vietnam War, so I was really keen to see what I thought. 

I started this book on the day that I went on holiday to Morocco with two of my friends. The flight is four hours and they both slept or dozed, so I got a big chunk of reading done. On holiday itself, though, we were busy the first few days and were going to bed early, so I had less reading time than I might have. I finally finished it on the 25th, the Monday of our week away. I loved it and would really recommend it. I can't choose between the two books because they're both great!

The book is set in the late 1960s. Frances McGrath is the youngest child and only daughter of a rich family that live in California in a pretty fancy community. Frankie's brother, Finley, is about to join the Navy. The family is a military family and her father, Connor, has a wall of familiy photos in his offce, where all the man are in their military uniforms and the women are only shown on their wedding days. Her mother is quite cold and obsessed with getting Frankie married off so she can carry on the country club life. 

Frankie has trained as a nurse but wants something more out of life. After seeing off her brother to the Navy Frankie decides she will sign up. However, the Navy won't take her until she's been nursing for over two years. But the Army have no such compulsions and before too long she's in basic training. Her parents are shocked and appalled and beg her to reconsider but no, Frankie is off to Vietnam. 

She arrives at an army hospital not too far from Saigon. She's billetted with two women whose names I now forget, but one of them is white and one is Black. They start to show her the ropes. In the treatment areas she is thrown in at the deep end - men arrive desperately injured, quickly evacuated from fighting via helicopter, and have to be assessed immediately. Some can be saved and some need to be comforted as they die. It is chaos and there's more blood and guts than Frankie thought possible. 

She quickly learns lots of nursing and becomes a skilled and capable nurse. She parties with other nurses and doctors, trying to unwind from the horrors that she's seen. She nearly has a dalliance with a man but he's married and Frankie won't do that. She goes out into the nearby villages with other medics to treat some of the locals and to vaccinate the children and so on. 

Later in the book she is moved up north in Vietnam to a place that is much closer to fighting and where things are even more difficult. I don't want to spoil anymore of the first half of the book but Kristin Hannah really gets across the horror, the chaos, the exhaustion, the constant living on edge, etc. 

The second half of the book is about Frankie's life once she gets home. She tries to get a job but finds that her learning in Vietnam counts for little. She suffers from nightmares and clearly has PTSD, like a lot of Vetnam vets do and did. She tries to access Veteran help but is told it's not available to her as she wasn't 'in combat'. She's repeatedly told that 'there were no women in Vietnam'. More than once she loses her temper because SHE WAS THERE.

She gets involved in the anti war protests, which I found really interesting too because I didn't know a lot about it. I didn't know so many veterans turned on the war once they were home, disgusted by what they had been put through. 

I loved Frankie and rooted for her the whole way through. I loved the personal things she went through and I thought the depiction of the war was so well written. I would recommend this book so much and am giving it five out of five. 

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix - Review

I think my friend Sarah bought me this book for my birthday, just because she saw it and thought I would like it. I picked it up in mid May, although I then had to put it down because I had to read books for blog tours, so I didn't finish it until the 21st of May. I do think it was a bit too long and could have been edited down a bit, but generally I really liked it. 

The novel is set in 1970 in a maternity home for pregnant teenagers. Neva is six months pregnant when her parents find out, and her dad drives her to Miss Wellwood's Home in Florida, and abandons her there. All the girls there are given the names of plants so that they do not know each other's true originas - Neva becomes Fern. She is rooming with Rose, who wants to keep her baby and who has wild ideas about running off to California with her baby's dad, and Holly, who is thirteen years old, about to turn fourteen, and who is, at the beginning of the book, mute. There are tons of other girls around too. 

The girls are made to work around the home. They have to meet with the doctor, who patronises them and dismisses all their health concerns. If he feels they are putting on too much weight he puts them on a diet. Miss Wellwood owns the home after the death of her father - she is nasty and non sympathetic. There's a nurse and a social worker too. Girls must work until just before their due dates, when they are permitted to rest. They go to birth their babies, give them up for adoption, and are permitted to rest at the home for a little longer before returning to their families. All their parents have stories about where their daughters are - looking after a sick aunt is a popular cover story. 

The mobile library visits every couple of weeks and Miss Parcae is the librarian. The home insists on 'worthy' books for the girls, but one day Miss Parcae gives Fern a book called How to Be a Groovy Witch. Along with Rose and Holly, and a new girl, Fern tries to do some incantations and spells. And surprisingly, they seem to work. But Miss Parcae isn't who she seems and the girls are in danger...

I did really like the book but I also thought it was too long. It needed editing down a bit. I did like Fern a lot and I loved the stories around the other girls. I thought it had a little of the Magical Negro trope in the form of the two women who work in the kitchen of the home and I would like that to be unpacked a little more in reviews, especially reviews by Black people. But I generally did like it and found it very creepy and gothic. I'm giving it five stars for pur enjoyment. 

The Heartstopper Yearbook by Alice Oseman - Review

I was passing through the library - fortunately Penistone Library is open again so my craft club can meet there again! - and noticed this book in the Young Adult section. I've read all the Heartstopper books and really enjoyed them, and I of course love the TV show so I picked this up. I read it very quickly but it isn't very long and quite a lot of it is drawings. But I loved it!

There are lots of words from Alice themself, including and introduction and including a lot of chat about their artistic process and their story planning. There's Nick and Charlie in their first incarnation, years and years ago, and loads of chat about how the artwork moved on to what we've seen in the comics and the books. 

There are also little snapshots about some of the secondary characters in the books, like Darcy and Tara, which I also thought were really cute. This was a cute little look into Alice's work and what goes on behind the scenes in making a story like Heartstopper. I'm giving it five out of five because it was just cute!

PS did you know that I have three Heartstopper leaves tattooed on my arm? One yellow, one green, and one blue. They're adorable. I hope one day I can show them to Alice at a convention! 

My Husband's Wife by Alice Feeney - Review

I saw Alice Feeney talk about this book at Stockport Noir back in January and I really liked the sound of it so I requested it at the library. It finally came in - it was in high demand - and I read it at the beginning of May. 

The very beginning of the book is good. Eden Fox and her husband Harrison have recently moved to the seaside - I imagined it to be like Dorset or Devon but I'm not sure if it's specified - and are living in a gorgeous weird old house called Spyglass. Eden is about to have an exhibition of her art in the town they have moved to, and she goes for a run to run off some nerves. When she gets back to the house, her key won't go in the lock. She knocks, and Harrison answers with a woman who looks eerily like Eden next to him. He says that's his wife and he doesn't know Eden at all. She is obviously extremely confused and the police are called, but she can't prove that SHE is Eden Fox and this woman is an interloper. 

Then there's Birdy's point of view. She has been told she is dying and she is pretty alone in the world after the death of her only relative, her mother. But then a long lost grandmother dies and she inherits Spyglass. She doesn't think she's ever been, but when she gets there she realises that she has, that she spent time there when she was a child. She is sorting through her grandmother's mail when she finds a card outlined in black. It's from a company that says it can predict exactly the day when you will die. As Birdy is dying she gets in touch with them. 

It turns out that Harrison, Eden's husband, is the owner of the company that can predict your death, and also that  Birdy is a police officer who then starts investigating what's going on with Spyglass. 

The book just lot its way for me. There's loads of plot holes and ridiculous things happening and so many coincidences that it really stretched the bounds of possibility for me. I'm not the only one - the internet is full of people complaining about this book. I wouldn't reach for anything else by Alice Feeney because this just didn't impress me that much. I'm giving it three out of five. 

 

The Secret Lives of Murderers' Wives by Elizabeth Arnott - Review

I got this book on Netgalley, so thank you very much to Penguin for granting me access to this. I received an electronic copy of the book for review purposes, but was not otherwise compensated for this review. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

I really liked this book and would definitely read something else by the author. I was intrigued by the premise - about actual wives of murderers in the 1960s - and the book did not disappoint. 

Beverley is the main character of the book. She had no idea that her husband was a killer, of course, until he was arrested in the family home. She is struggling to get her life back on track. People in the neighbourhood hate her and she's trying to protect her kids from the brunt of it. She lives in fear and has to barricade herself into the house at night. She has met two other women with serial killers for husbands. Elsie is quiet and reserved and her husband was similar, but also turned out to be a killer. Margot was married to a governor or senator or something, someone in politics, who was also a killer. She masks her pain by drinking too much. 

Beverley is speaking at a police conference when a call comes in about a murder and the chief takes off. Beverley is having an affair with one of the men who arrested her husband and she gets to know a bit more about the girl who was found dead. She fears that another serial killer is on the loose, but the police don't agree with her. She enlists the help of Elsie and Margot to help her uncover the truth. 

It's like a fun romp of a book - the women are irrepressible despite what life has thrown at them and it's easy to like them and want them to succeed. I also definitely wanted a drink with them! There's an air of gothic about the book - there's a heatwave and everything is oppressive in the California sunshine. There's the Manson killings kind of as an undercurrent, which I definitely liked. 

I'm giving this four out of five, I thought it was a great book and I'll look out for more! 

Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth - Review

I actually saw this book in a motorway service station when I was travelling to Birmingham in February, and I was really tempted to buy it, but resisted temptation of buying this and something else. But then I looked later and it was only 99p on Kindle so I bought it. I read it while I was in Rome! And flying there and back. I loved Rome and highly recommend it, and this was a good book to read while I was travelling. 

The book is about sisters Sarah and Juliette and has a dual narrative - one in the 90s, and one in the now, when Sarah is 42 and Juliette is just turning forty. I am forty-two and am enjoying reading about women my age - especially when there was a dual narrative which was so reminiscent of my own life in the 90s. 

Sarah is single, and lives in London. She's from Manchester originally where Juliette still lives with her mediocre husband and two children. Their mother was pretty neglectful and I don't remember much said about their dad at all, but I did read this over a month ago so maybe I've just forgotten by now. (I am kind of sorry that my reviews are so far behind, but I'll get caught up.... eventually). Sarah's life is pretty empty but she knows she doesn't want Juliette's life either. 

Anyway, she rents a campervan for the two of them to go on a trip to the Scottish Highlands for Juliette's birthday. It's a bit run down and causes them no end of problem but that's half the fun of it. There's no mobile signal at the campsites so Juliette can't speak to her children. Neither of the women like going over to the showers and loos, either, which I found very relatable and hilarious. They've had a bit of a tempestuous relationship over the years and things do flare up but it's obvious there's a lot of love between the two of them even if they don't always understand each other.

In the dual narrative, it's the late 90s and Sarah is fifteen. She is obsessed with boy bands, sex, underage drinking, and her teacher, Mr Keaveney. She is convinced that they are in love and that once she leaves school and turns sixteen, they will go to Gretna Green and get married and everyone will accept this. I knew girls who were obsessed with teachers in the 90s and I think Emma Jane got this so perfect, just bang on for what it was like back then when you FEEL so deeply. When bands do mean EVERYTHING and when a crush feels like it will kill you. 

It's obvious that something happened in the 90s that has repercussions on today, and I thought I guessed it, but I was a bit wrong. I do think the ending didn't quite live up to the rest of the book. I wish it had been a bit different. 

But I did really like the book; I liked Sarah a lot and really felt a lot of her life. I will definitely read something else by Emma Jane Unsworth and I am giving this four out of five.