A deft meditation on loss that plays out levels of consequence on both personal and international stages. Mott allows the magic of his story to unearth a full range of feelings about grief and connection. – Aimee Bender, New York Times bestselling author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake Mott brings a singularly eloquent voice… Read More »

I’ve recently returned from a Baltic cruise on P&O’s Arcadia– a wonderful holiday, with the highlight being the two days we spent in St Petersburg. The Peterhof Palace, the Hermitage and Winter Palace, the Catherine Palace at Tsarskoye Selo – these are all settings that have all featured in so many of the books I’ve… Read More »

I was reflecting the other night on what it was that made a book a five-star read for me. When reviewing on Goodreads and Amazon, I’ve given five stars to a quite large number of books ranging from almost everything in the Choc Lit catalogue, quite a few recent psychological thrillers and some young adult… Read More »

In any list of my favourite-books-ever, there will always be a place for Matt Haig’s The Last Family In England. I loved that book, talked about it until people glazed over, lent out my copy (and bought a second so no-one lost out), bought copies for friends, quoted from it, and never looked at a… Read More »

I wrote a review for Goodreads back in January 2011 for Nigel Farndale’s novel The Blasphemer. Overall I loved it, but you’ll see that I did have some niggles, mainly around the modern story line. However, others plainly loved it too, because the book was shortlisted for the 2010 Costa Novel Award and (perhaps an even… Read More »

Like a number of other reviewers, I was drawn to this book by an email telling me it was “the book everyone’s going to be talking about”. That kind of pre-release publicity sometimes puts me off, but in this case it was absolutely right – this book was a fantastic read, full of twists and… Read More »

There’s always something a little unsatisfactory about reviewing the third book in a series. If you’ve read and loved the first two – Blue Monday and Tuesday’s Gone  – as I have, I must report that I thought this was the best yet. If you haven’t, don’t start with this one – although there are… Read More »

I really wanted to try this one – a few years ago I very much enjoyed Curtis Sittenfeld’s very clever American Wife, the fictional account of a First Lady with more than a passing resemblance to Laura Bush. Her other two books – Prep and The Man Of My Dreams haven’t made it off my… Read More »

Jamie Ford does it again.  I adored Hotel On The Corner Of Bitter And Sweet, Jamie Ford‘s first novel, with its tender love story holding its own against a vividly drawn background of war and racial tension.  I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but this novel steps it up another gear – if I wept… Read More »

Just a little bit about me before I tell you about the book.  I haven’t mentioned before that I have a degree in English Language and Literature – a 2:2 (a drinker’s degree, as Jeremy Vine called it last week…!) from Hull in 1977. I’ve always loved reading, and could show you notebooks from the… Read More »

I’m one of the very few people I know who hasn’t read The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, but I wasn’t really attracted to it. But the premise of this story drew me in: In 1972, two seconds were added to time. It was in order to balance clock time with the movement of the… Read More »

Marian Keyes wrote “Ella Griffin can make you laugh and cry in the turn of a page” and I couldn’t possibly come up with a better set of words to describe this lovely book. I loved Postcards from the Heart, but this one is – unbelievably – even better. Claire realises she is now the… Read More »

Peg is a library assistant, living in London with her partner Loz who is a chef in a wholefood restaurant.  Every week she visits Tankerton near Whitstable to visit her Nan, who now suffers from Alzheimers, in her bungalow, where her obese Auntie Jean lives in the extension and hasn’t moved from her bed for… Read More »

Back from my travels, and I’ll start catching up on my reviews again…. but I want to tell you first about the quite wonderful book that I read yesterday. Every so often a book comes along that hooks you from the very first page. This one was an extremely accomplished first novel that I read… Read More »

Apologies to all, no time to write reviews before I head off on a Baltic cruise at the weekend. I’ve read some wonderful books – Perfect by Rachel Joyce, One Step Too Far by Tina Seskis, The Humans by Matt Haig, Nigel Farnsdale’s The Road Between Us and Peter James’ latest Roy Grace, Dead Man’s… Read More »