My enormously grateful thanks to the publishers, Avon books, for a copy of The Little Village Christmas by Sue Moorcroft in return for an honest review. Regular readers of Linda’s Book Bag might be forgiven for thinking I’m a bit obsessed by Sue Moorcroft as she’s such a regular feature! As a member of her street team it’s a real privilege to have access to Sue and her writing and I’m delighted to be reviewing The Little Village Christmas today. You can see other Linda’s Book Bag posts with Sue in the following links:

An interview with Sue Moorcroft

A guest post from Sue on over-sharing and my review of The Christmas Promise

A guest post from Sue on her fantasy holiday companions

My review of Just For The Holidays

A guest post from Sue on loving a village book

Published by Avon Books, an imprint of Harper Collins, The Little Village Christmas was published in e-book on 9th October and paperback on 2nd November. It is available for purchase here.

The Little Village Christmas

Alexia Kennedy – interior decorator extraordinaire – has been tasked with giving the little village of Middledip the community café it’s always dreamed of.

After months of fundraising, the villagers can’t wait to see work get started – but disaster strikes when every last penny is stolen. With Middledip up in arms at how this could have happened, Alexia feels ready to admit defeat.

But help comes in an unlikely form when woodsman, Ben Hardaker and his rescue owl Barney, arrive on the scene. Another lost soul who’s hit rock bottom, Ben and Alexia make an unlikely partnership.

However, they soon realise that a little sprinkling of Christmas magic might just help to bring this village – and their lives – together again…

My Review of The Little Village Christmas

When more than is anticipated results from the Middledip Community Wrecking Party, Ben and Alexia find their lives will change in ways neither could anticipate.

I adored visiting Middledip. I thought The Little Village Christmas was Sue Moorcroft at her very best, with exceptional plotting, wonderful settings and vibrant, flawed and believable characters whom I’d love to meet in real life. I can’t abide men with ponytails, but I thought Gabe was wonderful and as for Ben – well, who wouldn’t want to meet him! Alexia is a perfect embodiment of womanhood with just enough insecurity and self doubt alongside her feisty friendliness to make her someone I’d love as a friend. Even the animals Snobby, Barney and Luke deserve praise for their glorious contributions to the ambience and plot.

I thoroughly enjoyed the settings as many of the places like Yaxley, Peterborough and Crowland are within 10 miles of where I live so that I felt involved in the story on a very personal level and not simply as an impartial reader.

I was engaged with the narrative from the very first word until the very last. When I was reading The Little Village Christmas I genuinely resented real life interrupting me. I was always desperate to get back to the story and find out what was happening to people I had grown to know and love.

The only element I was less keen on was the title as I’m sure some readers will reject books they think are Christmas reads, but The Little Village Christmas is only marginally a book about that time of year. It’s more a book about friendship and family, mistakes and identity, individualism and community spirit – and most of all it’s a book about love in all its glorious forms.

I always enjoy a Sue Moorcroft story, but The Little Village Christmas touched me profoundly and is the perfect example of romantic fiction. I absolutely loved it.

About Sue Moorcroft

Award winning author Sue Moorcroft writes contemporary women’s fiction with occasionally unexpected themes. The Wedding Proposal, Dream a Little Dream and Is This Love? were all nominated for Readers’ Best Romantic Read Awards. Love & Freedom won the Best Romantic Read Award 2011 and Dream a Little Dream was nominated for a RoNA in 2013. Sue’s a Katie Fforde Bursary Award winner, a past vice chair of the RNA and editor of its two anthologies.

The Christmas Promise was a Kindle No.1 Best Seller and held the No.1 slot at Christmas!

Sue also writes short stories, serials, articles, writing ‘how to’ and is a creative writing tutor.

You can follow Sue on Twitter @SueMoorcroft, find her on Facebook and visit her website.

Lovely Jan Ruth’s Wild Water series of books have been on my TBR far too long so when Jan told me she had a new novella, Away for Christmas, coming out I thought it was high time I gave Jan’s writing a go. I’m so pleased I did and you can read my review below. Thanks so much Jan for the opportunity to read Away for Christmas in return for an honest review.

Published on 13th November 2017, Away for Christmas is available for purchase here.

Away for Christmas

Jonathan Jones has written a novel. Losing his job a few days before Christmas means the pressure is on for his book to become a bestseller, but when his partner drops her own bombshell, the festive holiday looks set to be a disaster.

When he’s bequeathed a failing bookshop in their seaside town, it seems that some of his prayers have been answered, but his publishing company turn out to be not what they seem, and when his ex-wife suddenly declares her romantic intent, another Christmas looks set to be complicated.

Is everything lost, or can the true meaning of words, a dog called Frodo, and the sheer magic of Christmas be enough to save Jonathan’s book, and his skin?

My Review of Away for Christmas

Jonathan thinks losing his job just before Christmas is pretty bad news. Little does he know there’s much more to come.

Away for Christmas was not what I was expecting. I had anticipated a chick-lit style cosy romance, but although there are some of those elements present, they are minimal in comparison to what is a fascinating insight into being an author and a masterclass in characterisation.

I think it shows how well Jan Ruth writes that I hated Jonathan throughout and yet was still totally absorbed in the narrative. I found Jonathan self-absorbed, delusional and deserving of a really good shake. His attitude to bloggers riled me and his naivety in dealing with his publisher astounded me and yet he was completely believable and real so that he had my full attention throughout and even managed to redeem himself. In fact, I’ve just realised I’ve commented on him as a real person rather than a creation of Jan Ruth which illustrates how convincing a person he is!

Although I think it’s the characters that make Away for Christmas so successful, I was impressed too because although Away for Christmas is a novella, the plot is satisfying and well developed, giving plenty to think about in family and social dynamics, relationships and the way we find our place in the world, making the read both interesting and absorbing.

However, having enjoyed Away for Christmas as a highly entertaining story, I’d love to see it used as a training manual for aspiring and unpublished authors so that they don’t make the same mistakes as Jonathan and instead actually have a flying start in the publishing world. Great stuff!

About Jan Ruth

Jan Ruth’s real writing story began at school, with prizes for short stories and poetry. She failed all things mathematical and scientific, and to this day struggles to make sense of anything numerical.

Jan writes contemporary fiction about the darker side of the family dynamic with a generous helping of humour, horses and dogs. Her books blend the serenities of rural life with the headaches of city business, exploring the endless complexities of relationships.

You can follow Jan on Twitter @JanRuthAuthor, find her on Facebook and visit her website. You’ll find all Jan’s books here.

I am indebted to Emily Burns for a copy of All The Wicked Girls by Chris Whitaker in return for an honest review. I thought Chris’s first novel Tall Oaks was fabulous and you can see my review of that book here.

All The Wicked Girls was published by Bonnier Zaffre and is available for purchase here.

All The Wicked Girls

Everyone loves Summer Ryan. A model student and musical prodigy, she’s a ray of light in the struggling small town of Grace, Alabama – especially compared to her troubled sister, Raine. Then Summer vanishes.

Raine throws herself into the investigation, aided by a most unlikely ally, but the closer she gets to the truth, the more dangerous her search becomes.

And perhaps there was always more to Summer than met the eye . . .

My Review of All The Wicked Girls

I previously read and loved Chris Whitaker’s Tall Oaks so I had extremely high hopes for All The Wicked Girls. I’d thought Tall Oaks was exceptional but All The Wicked Girls surpasses it and is sublime. What a writer Chris Whitaker is. He can show such depth through even the shortest of sentences so that I found myself on a complete roller coaster of emotion. I laughed. I wept. My heart broke for so many of those between its pages that I’m not sure I’ll ever be the same again. Several times I exclaimed aloud, most frequently for Raine, Noah and Purv, but also for Savannah, Black and Peach and indeed for just about every character between the pages of All The Wicked Girls.

In the same way the storm cloud gathers, the pages glower with suppressed violence, secrets and tension so that it is impossible to stop reading. When I slept I dreamt of the characters as they had pervaded my soul so deeply.

The religious fervour and belief, the deceptions and the love that Chris Whitaker reveals are almost too much to bear. I found his writing utterly heartbreaking, especially through Raine’s desperation to find Summer and the relationship between Purv and Noah because they are indeed they are so brave, so fierce and so beautiful. I wanted to take these three into my arms and hold them close until all their hurts had gone.

The plot is fabulous. Small town America lends itself to the claustrophobic feel so that the events fit the setting perfectly. At times I almost couldn’t bear what I was reading. I can’t explain more about the plot without spoiling the read but rest assured it is gripping, absorbing and brilliant.

I defy anyone to read Chris Whitaker and not feel they have been touched by genius to their very soul. All The Wicked Girls is utterly, utterly wonderful and I don’t have sufficient words to do it justice.

About Chris Whitaker

Chris Whitaker was born in London and spent ten years working as a financial trader in the city. When not writing he enjoys football, boxing, and anything else that distracts him from his wife and two young sons. Tall Oaks was his first novel.

You can find Chris on Twitter.

My enormous thanks to Jaime Frost at Harper Collins for a copy of The Woman at 72 Derry Lane by Carmel Harrington in return for an honest review. I so loved Carmel Harrington’s The Things I should Have Told You and her guest post that you can read here, that I jumped at the chance to read The Woman at 72 Derry Lane despite another 900+ books in the queue!

Already available in e-book and audio, the paperback version of The Woman at 72 Derry Lane is published on 16th November 2017 by Harper Collins and is available for purchase through the links here.

The Woman at 72 Derry Lane

On a leafy suburban street in Dublin, beautiful, poised Stella Greene lives with her successful husband, Matt. The perfect couple in every way, Stella appears to have it all. Next door, at number 72 however, lives Rea Brady. Gruff, bad-tempered and rarely seen besides the twitching of her net curtains, rumour has it she’s lost it all…including her marbles if you believe the neighbourhood gossip.

But appearances can be deceiving and when Stella and Rea’s worlds collide they realise they have much in common. Both are trapped in a prison of their own making.

Has help been next door without them realising it?

My Review of The Woman at 72 Derry Lane

Stella’s abusive husband Matt wants the impossible – a ‘perfect’ wife according to his definition of perfection – but life isn’t always perfect.

Well, well, well. Carmel Harrington has done it again. I adored every syllable of The Woman at 72 Derry Lane from the surprisingly violent opening to the final, utterly satisfying, word.

What makes Carmel Harrington’s writing so fabulous for me is her ability to involve the reader completely in the story. Before I was half way through I realised I had experienced so many emotions I was wrung out. I’d felt fear, humour, happiness, love and grief as acutely as if they were happening to me, let alone Stella, Skye and Rea.

There’s an irony in reading The Woman at 72 Derry Lane, because although it is ultimately a wonderful, life affirming read it actually made me dissatisfied with my life. I want to live in Derry Lane with Rea as my neighbour and I want Charlie as my hairdresser and Stella as my friend. The characters Carmel Harrington creates are so vivid, so real and so human that it’s impossible not to view them as real people. I felt as involved in their lives as if I were reading about my own experiences.

There are so many glorious layers to this story too, so that although love is very firmly at the heart of what Carmel Harrington writes, she isn’t afraid to tackle issues that might affect any one of us or someone we know. I thought Rea’s agoraphobia and Stella’s compliance in an abusive relationship were perfectly presented and so sensitively handled so that I understood them fully and empathised completely. I adored the way the threads of the story were woven together and as I don’t want to spoil the plot, I’ll just say the historical event was written fabulously with just the right level of detail.

Carmel Harrington is one of the best writers of emotionally involving narratives around and The Woman at 72 Derry Lane is her writing at her most outstanding. I absolutely adored this book.

About Carmel Harrington

Carmel Harrington is the bestselling author of The Life You Left and Beyond Grace’s Rainbow, voted Romantic eBook of the Year 2013.

Carmel lives with her husband Roger and children Amelia and Nate in a small coastal village in Wexford. She credits the idyllic setting as a constant source of inspiration to her. Carmel has the nickname, ‘Queen of Emotional Writing’.

Carmel writes emotional family dramas that share one common theme – strong characters who find themselves in extraordinary situations. She loves to dig deep and see how they cope, as they grapple with life-changing moments.

She is a regular on Irish TV and radio. Carmel is also a popular motivational keynote speaker, at events in Ireland, UK and US.

You can follow Carmel on Twitter, Facebook and her website.

My grateful thanks to Hayley Camis at Little Brown for a copy of The Girl in the Fog by Donato Carrisi in return for an honest review.

The Girl in the Fog was published in the UK by Abacus, an imprint of Little Brown, on 2nd November 2017 and is available for purchase here.

 

The Girl in the Fog

 

Sixty-two days after the disappearance . . .

A man is arrested in the small town of Avechot. His shirt is covered in blood. Could this have anything to do with a missing girl called Anna Lou?

What really happened to the girl?

Detective Vogel will do anything to solve the mystery surrounding Anna Lou’s disappearance. When a media storm hits the quiet town, Vogel is sure that the suspect will be flushed out. Yet the clues are confusing, perhaps false, and following them may be a far cry from discovering the truth at the heart of a dark town.

My Review of The Girl in the Fog

Detective Vogel is searching for missing Anna Lou Kastner and he’ll stop at nothing to solve the case.

The Girl in the Fog is a cracker of a book. Sublimely plotted it takes the reader on a roller coaster of a narrative. Of course I had it all worked out and of course I was completely wrong. Donato Carrisi leads the reader to erroneous conclusions with the same skill Vogel leads his investigations. The tension builds so that I kept telling myself I’d just read one more page until the whole book was devoured. I also need to say something about the quality of translation as not once did it feel as if I were reading a translated story. The prose flowed effortlessly, creating atmosphere and character exceedingly well and this is partly down to the skill of Howard Curtis too. I so appreciated the image of the fog, from the actual weather conditions when Anna Lou goes missing through the obfuscation of fact and lies to the foggy memory Vogel appears to have at the start of the book.

It’s always difficult to review this kind of thriller without giving away too much of the plot, so I’ll just say that I found it tightly written and very disconcerting, particularly the ending. It’s safe to say that we never really know our fellow human beings.

What is so engaging and clever about Donato Carrisi’s writing is his ability to create tension. My heart rate increased towards the end so that The Girl in the Fog truly is a thrilling read.

Although Anna Lou is the catalyst for events, she is barely present. Instead we get a fascinating insight into the minds of several men, but especially Vogel. He is devious, intelligent and manipulative and makes the reader question morality and whether the end ever justifies the means. For me, the requirement to think, to judge and, ultimately to be duped, makes The Girl in the Fog a story I thoroughly enjoyed.

The Girl in the Fog is a really good thriller and I recommend it most highly.

About Donato Carrisi

Donato Carrisi was born in 1973 and studied law and criminology. He won four Italian literature prizes for his bestselling debut The Whisperer. Since 1999 he has been working as a TV screenwriter, and he lives in Rome.

You can follow Donato Carrisi on Twitter @DonatoCarrisi and visit his website.

I’m delighted to be part of the launch celebrations for Wilde in Love by Eloisa James and to share my review today. My grateful thanks to Clara Diaz for inviting me to take part and providing a copy of Wilde in Love for review.

Published on 31st October 2017 by Piatkus, an imprint of Little Brown, Wilde in Love is available for purchase here.

Wilde in Love

The first book in Eloisa James’s dazzling new series set in the Georgian period glows with her trademark wit and charm. Things are about to get Wilde . . .

Lord Alaric Wilde, son of the Duke of Lindow, is the most celebrated man in England, revered for his dangerous adventures and rakish good looks.

Arriving home from years abroad, he has no idea of his own celebrity until his boat is met by mobs of screaming ladies. Alaric escapes to his father’s castle, but just as he grasps that he’s not only famous but notorious, he encounters the very private, very witty, Miss Willa Ffynche.

Willa presents the façade of a serene young lady to the world. Her love of books and bawdy jokes is purely for the delight of her intimate friends. She wants nothing to do with a man whose private life is splashed over every newspaper.

Alaric has never met a woman he wanted for his own . . . until he meets Willa. He’s never lost a battle.

But a spirited woman like Willa isn’t going to make it easy . . .

My Review of Wilde in Love

When he arrives back in England to notoriety after years abroad, Lord Alaric Wilde might find the greatest challenges lie closer to home than he imagined.

Oh my goodness. I haven’t read a book in this genre for ages and Wilde in Love has made me realise just what I’ve been missing. I thoroughly enjoyed this romp through a Georgian house party with Willa and Alaric.

Eloisa James conjures her country house part setting perfectly with a fabulous blend of characters and social mores so that I honestly felt like a fly on the wall. The costumes, manners and behaviours have all been so brilliantly researched that the era comes to life with vivid clarity. Willa’s inversion of convention brings these aspects into even sharper focus and the time delineated house party adds zest and pace to the story.

I loved the wordplay and wit, especially between Will and Aleric, so that the dialogue reminded me of a combination of Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde and made me smile frequently. Occasional references to Shakespeare, John Donne and Rousseau all added depth and quality to the read too and I enjoyed spotting the allusions in what is a really well researched picture of the Georgian era. The settings all have just the right level of details to afford the reader a clear and vivid image in the mind’s eye.

Alongside a certain inevitability to the plot there are twists and turns with potential for future books and I’d certainly want to read them, not least because I found the underpinning and mounting sexual tension hugely entertaining and engaging.

Wilde in Love was enormous fun to read, sparkling and witty, and a must read for lovers of historical, humorous and romantic fiction. I thought it was brilliant.

About Eloisa James

Eloisa wrote her first novel after graduating from Harvard, but alas, it was rejected by every possible publisher. After she got a couple more degrees and a job as a Shakespeare professor, she tried again, with much greater success.

Over twenty best-sellers later, she teaches Shakespeare in the English Department at Fordham University in New York City. She’s also the mother of two children and, in a particularly delicious irony for a romance writer, is married to a genuine Italian knight.

You can follow Eloisa on Twitter @EloisaJames, visit her website and find her on Facebook.

There’s more with these other bloggers too:

I’m thrilled to part of the launch celebrations for The Good Samaritan by John Marrs. I was lucky enough to read and review here another of John’s books, The One, which has become an enormous success and to interview John too here. When I was asked if I’d like to participate this time, I was desperate to know what John might tell himself with hindsight and luckily he agreed to write a letter to himself to tell me!

The Good Samaritan is available for purchase here.

The Good Samaritan

The people who call End of the Line need hope. They need reassurance that life is worth living. But some are unlucky enough to get through to Laura. Laura doesn’t want them to hope. She wants them to die.

Laura hasn’t had it easy: she’s survived sickness and a difficult marriage only to find herself heading for forty, unsettled and angry. She doesn’t love talking to people worse off than she is. She craves it.

But now someone’s on to her—Ryan, whose world falls apart when his pregnant wife ends her life, hand in hand with a stranger. Who was this man, and why did they choose to die together?

The sinister truth is within Ryan’s grasp, but he has no idea of the desperate lengths Laura will go to…

Because the best thing about being a Good Samaritan is that you can get away with murder.

A letter to myself, ten years ago.

A Guest Post by John Marrs

Dear John,

That makes it sound like I’m about to break up with you, doesn’t it? Well I’m not, so don’t worry. You and I are in this together, God willing, for the long haul.

You might be surprised to learn I’m actually writing this letter to you from ten years in the future. The year is 2017 and Donald Trump is president of America, Britain is leaving Europe, your musical heroes Prince, George Michael and Michael Jackson are all dead and the world’s most popular TV show is about dragons. No, really.

But I digress. John, you’ve been a journalist since you were 18 and you’re, what, 36 now? You’re living in London and you’ve made a career out of interviewing celebrities for the News Of The World (oh, that’s dead too.) That teenager who wore green dungarees and worked in Homebase during his school holidays is feeling more and more like a stranger to you now, isn’t he?

Well, you know how you’ve always had a hankering to write a book? Guess what? Ten years from now, it’s become a second job.

I know you don’t have any ideas in mind yet, only that the story might have something to do with traveling, like when you and your best friend Sean backpacked around America when you were 21. That’ll be book two.

At the moment, you lack the motivation to write. It’s been three years since your dad died and you’ve thrown yourself into your relationship and your work rather than dwell on how a terminal cancer ravaged his brain and turned that big, strong, warm giant into a shadow of his former self.

It seems hard to believe right now, but you’ll use his awful experience in your first book. It’ll be almost cathartic to give a character you love the same disease, but through the power of your pen, allow her to live the time your dad was robbed of. It’ll only be years later when you realise that writing is how you came to terms with his loss.

When you do finally get your arse into gear and write your book, it’ll be during the break-up of your marriage. Christ, I sound the harbinger of doom, don’t I? Well I’m sorry to be the barer of more bad tidings, but after being with your partner for eight years, you’ll have a civil partnership surrounded by all your friends and family only to split up 18 months later. It’ll break your heart and it’ll humiliate you. But writing will be the one good thing to come out of that whole sorry experience. It will help to divert your negative energies into something positive.

It’ll take you two years to finish that book, and then, proud as punch of it, you’ll send it out to 80 or so agents and they’ll be falling at your feet to take you on as the next big thing in literature. Well, that’s what’ll happen in your imagination. Because in reality, they won’t give a stuff. A handful of them will express a brief amount of interest in it, but it won’t amount to anything. You’ll have 110,000 words sitting in a file on your desktop with no-one to read it but you and your friends.

At this point John, and I can’t emphasise this enough, do not give up. Because someone will suggest self-publishing your book on Amazon, something you are unfamiliar with, but it’ll spark a kernel of interest inside you and will make you want to investigate the possibilities. You’ll wait a few more months first in the vain hope an agent might have been delayed in reading your book. But when it becomes obvious there’s nobody at the door, you’ll think sod it, and do it yourself.

Sales will trickle in at first, and then dry up. Don’t panic! Because they’ll start trickling in again and build up into a steady stream.

The journey will be a long one, and it’ll be an interesting one. And ultimately, it will alter many aspects of your life.

The book will prove to be a self-published success and generate enough of an audience for you to write a second book and then a third. And that’s when it’ll all start going crazy for you with two book deals and a TV option. I’m not going to ruin any more of the surprises to come, but let’s just say not having one of those 80 agents you wrote to won’t hamper you.

You’ll have some incredible times in the next decade John. You’ll hug your dog and cry your eyes out until the tears mat his fur; you’ll twice be made redundant, you’ll meet Mister Right, buy your dream home, you’ll marry again and be happier than you ever thought possible. You’ll read messages from strangers from around the world who want to reach out and you to tell you how much your books have touched them. You’ll wander into Waterstones and slyly rearrange their bookshelves, slipping yours to the front, and then wonder if it will ever sink in that you have written a book and that shops want to stock it.

And you’ll use all of these experiences, John, all of these emotions that have been good, bad, ugly and beautiful, in whatever you continue to write.

It’ll be the making of you, my friend, and I look forward to being with you for the ride.

With my very best wishes,

John, +10.

PS: Buy The Guardian on October 17, 2009. Trust me. It’ll change everything.

(Thank you so much John for a fabulous insight into your life.)

About John Marrs

John Marrs is a freelance journalist based in London, England, who has spent the last 20 years interviewing celebrities from the world of television, film and music for national newspapers and magazines. He has written for publications including The Guardian’s Guide and Guardian Online; OK!Magazine; Total Film; Empire; Q; GT; The Independent; Star; Reveal; Company; Daily Star and News of the World’s Sunday Magazine.

His debut novel The Wronged Sons, was released in 2013 and in May 2015, he released his second book, Welcome To Wherever You Are.

You can follow John on Twitter and find him on Facebook. There’s more with these other bloggers too:

My enormous thanks to Jess Duffy at Pan Macmillan for a copy of The Faithful by Juliet West in return for an honest review and my apologies that it has taken so long to read it!

The Faithful was published by Mantle, an imprint of Pan Macmillan on 15th June 2017 and is available for purchase through these links.

The Faithful

July 1935. In the village of Aldwick on the Sussex coast, sixteen-year-old Hazel faces a long, dull summer with just her self-centred mother Francine for company. But then Francine decamps to London with her lover Charles, Oswald Mosley’s blackshirts arrive in Aldwick, and Hazel’s summer suddenly becomes more interesting. She finds herself befriended by two very different people: Lucia, an upper-class blackshirt, passionate about the cause; and Tom, a young working-class boy, increasingly scornful of Mosley’s rhetoric. In the end, though, it is Tom who wins Hazel’s heart – and Hazel who breaks his.

Autumn 1936. Now living in London, Hazel has grown up fast over the past year. But an encounter with Tom sends her into freefall. He must never know why she cut off all contact last summer, betraying the promises they’d made. Yet Hazel isn’t the only one with secrets. Nor is she the only one with a reason to keep the two of them apart . . .

From the beaches of Sussex to the battlefields of civil war Spain, The Faithful is a rich and gripping tale of love, deception and desire.

My Review of The Faithful

It’s the mid 1930s and the fascists and communists are on the rise so when Hazel and Tom’s lives collide there will be reverberations.

Oh my goodness. The Faithful is exactly my kind of read. Firstly, there’s an era I didn’t know too much about so that reading The Faithful enriched my understanding of British history just prior to the Second World War. The balance of brilliantly researched authentic detail and wonderful fiction is spot on. Every syllable adds depth and nuance to the narrative so that I felt the tensions and the passions just as much as the characters did.

I thought Juliet West’s writing was so skilful. I loved the prophetic imagery so that, at times, The Faithful feels almost Shakespearean in its quality and I kept thinking of Macbeth with the portents woven throughout. It’s difficult to say too much without spoiling the superb plot.

The narrative is taut and affecting. I slowed down my reading towards the end as I knew how I wanted the story to end but until the last few pages I didn’t know if Juliet West had the same ideas for Hazel as I did and you’ll have to read The Faithful for yourself to see what I mean! Revelations reverberate and shock throughout and the layers of deceit pervading everything from the most mundane through the political to characters’ self-deceptions are realistic and disturbing. I hated Bea’s actions, for example, but her desperate need to belong and to maintain her family makes them completely understandable.

Indeed, I am slightly in awe of the way in which Juliet West manipulated me as a reader when it came to character. Francine is quite vile, but she’s equally vulnerable and pitiful so that although I wanted to loathe her, she had my sympathy instead. Even the louche Charles had my grudging understanding. This is characterisation at its most sophisticated.

The Faithful is a book about love and deceit, about the personal and the political and about how we convince ourselves of truths that have no basis in reality. This makes The Faithful a book about humanity and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

About Juliet West

Juliet West worked as a journalist before taking an MA in Creative Writing at Chichester University, where she won the Kate Betts’ Memorial Prize. Before The Fall, her debut novel, was shortlisted for the Myriad Editions novel writing competition in 2012. Juliet also writes short stories and poetry, and won the H E Bates short story prize in 2009. She lives in West Sussex with her husband and three children.

You can follow Juliet on Twitter @JulietWest14 and visit her website.

A little while ago, as part of the launch celebrations for Home is Nearby I was lucky enough to host an interview with Magadalena McGuire that you can read here. Today I’m thrilled to be sharing my review of Home is Nearby.

Published by Impress Books on 1st November 2017, Home is Nearby is available for preorder in e-book and paperback through the publisher links here.

Home is Nearby

1980: the beginning of the Polish Crisis. Brought up in a small village, country-girl Ania arrives in the university city of Wroclaw to pursue her career as a sculptor. Here she falls in love with Dominik, an enigmatic writer at the centre of a group of bohemians and avant-garde artists who throw wild parties. When martial law is declared, their lives change overnight: military tanks appear on the street, curfews are introduced and the artists are driven underground. Together, Ania and Dominik fight back, pushing against the boundaries imposed by the authoritarian communist government. But at what cost? ‘Home Is Nearby’ is a vivid and intimate exploration of the struggle to find your place in the world no matter where you are.

My Review of Home is Nearby

Country born Ania is off to start a new life as an art student, but events in Poland mean her life won’t be quite as she expects.

I have a confession. Initially I didn’t like Home is Nearby at all because I picked it up and started it three times, getting interrupted and not getting into the swing of reading it. However, I finally found a stretch of time where I could concentrate and as soon as that happened I was completely drawn in to the narrative and totally absorbed in every element of this beautifully layered and compelling tale.

Although I was aware at the time of the events happening in Poland around which the narrative is based, I had never really considered them from an individual perspective. Magdalena McGuire drills down through the layers of society so that the political, cultural and historical settings come alive from Ania’s viewpoint making everything personal, vivid and actually quite disturbing. Reading Home is Nearby narrowed that distance I think we have when we see things through the media and gave me an intense and immediate look into the lives of those affected. As a result I ended the book feeling moved and included.

Indeed, the characters were all so authentic and realistic so that I felt I knew them personally. I don’t want to spoil the plot but one small action from one of them (and you’ll have to read Home is Nearby for yourself to see if you know what I mean…) left me almost breathless with rage. I found myself talking to the characters, Ania and Dominik in particular, and giving them both advice and admonitions.

The quality of the writing is excellent. I have always considered art to be slightly pretentious and ’emperor’s new clothes’ but Magdalena McGuire’s writing helped me appreciate and understand what art’s various forms can add to our lives. I thought the exploration of the links between art and life was incredibly interesting.

However, it was the themes of loyalty, love, country, identity and, of course, what home is, that I found so affecting. The emotion I felt at the end of the book was physical so that the experience of reading Home is Nearby will stay with me for a considerable time.

Having begun not particularly engaged with Home is Nearby, I ended my read feeling as if I am a changed person as a result of Magdalena McGuire’s skilful, beautiful prose. What more can we ask of a book than that it changes our lives?

About Magdalena McGuire

Magdalena McGuire was born in Poland, grew up in Darwin, and now lives in Melbourne. Her short stories have been published in the UK and Australia by The Big Issue and The Bristol Prize, and by Margaret River Press respectively. She has published widely on human rights topics, including women’s rights and the rights of people with disabilities. She is an avid reader and particularly enjoys reading books about girls who like reading books. Her first novel, Home Is Nearby, is set in Poland, Australia and the United Kingdom, in the eventful period of the 1980s. She is also working on a collection of short stories that focus on questions of place, identity and unbelonging, particularly in cross-cultural contexts, as well as another historical fiction novel.

You can follow Magdalena on Twitter @Magdalena_McG and visit her website.

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I’m delighted to be sharing an extract from Christmas at Woolworths by Elaine Everest with you today. I’m just disappointed I didn’t have chance to read the book ready for today’s post. However, I do also have an extract from another of Elaine’s books, The Butlins Girls, that you might like to read here.

Christmas at Woolworths will be published by Pan on 2nd November 2017 and is available for pre-order here.

Christmas at Woolworths

Even though there was a war on, the Woolworths girls brought Christmas cheer to their customers…

Best friends Sarah, Maisie and Freda are brought together by their jobs at Woolworths. With their loved ones away on the front line, their bonds of friendship strengthen each day. Betty Billington is the manager at Woolworths, and a rock for the girls, having given up on love . . . Until a mysterious stranger turns up one day – could he reignite a spark in Betty?

As the year draws to a close, and Christmas approaches, the girls must rely on each other to navigate the dark days that lie ahead . . .

With so much change, can their friendship survive the war?

An Extract From Christmas At Woolworths

Prologue

June 1942

Sitting astride the powerful motorbike, Freda Smith removed a large leather gauntlet from her hand in order to pull tight-fitting goggles from her eyes. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and yawned. Although only the first day of June, the air was sultry and not a day for being covered from head to toe in a heavyweight motorcycle uniform. Freda felt sweaty and would have loved nothing more than to pull off her jacket and feel the wind on her skin as she sped through Kent towards her destination. It had been a long day and no doubt many hours lay ahead before she would see her bed. Gazing towards an angry orange glow that could be seen even in the afternoon sky, she knew her journey was almost at an end. She was close to Canterbury.

Freda had always thought the notion of travelling to Canterbury appealing and she’d planned to visit this famous city just as the pilgrims had done centuries before her. Never in a million years did she believe her trip would be to carry important orders to the Fire Service when Canterbury was under threat from the Luftwaffe. Ahead of her now was a city decimated by enemy action. As a volunteer dispatch rider for the Aux­iliary Fire Service Freda had longed for excitement, but she now realized that what lay ahead was death and destruction for this beautiful Kentish city and many of the people who lived there. After nearly three years would this terrible war never end?

Freda fervently wished she was back behind her coun­ter at Erith Woolworths, selling the popular Mighty Midget books and Lumar jigsaws that not only enter­tained the families but gave youngsters something to concentrate on during long nights when the country was under fire from the enemy. Life seemed so much easier then, even though she was often on fire-watch duties and had to sleep in her landlady’s Anderson shelter on many occasions. Knowing how lucky she was had made Freda yearn to do more to help this beastly war come to an end. She wondered what she’d discover when she reached the city walls. How would she find the fire sta­tion, where she was supposed to report once she reached Canterbury? Fear urged Freda to turn back and not get any closer to the burning city.

(And now I definitely have to bump Christmas at Woolworths up my TBR!)

About Elaine Everest

Elaine Everest, author of Bestselling novel The Woolworths Girls and The Butlins Girls was born and brought up in North West Kent, where many of her books are set. She has been a freelance writer for twenty years and has written widely for women’s magazines and national newspapers, with both short stories and features. Her non-fiction books for dog owners have been very popular and led to broadcasting on radio about our four legged friends. Elaine has been heard discussing many topics on radio from canine subjects to living with a husband under her feet when redundancy looms.

When she isn’t writing, Elaine runs The Write Place creative writing school at The Howard Venue in Hextable, Kent and has a long list of published students.

Elaine lives with her husband, Michael, and their Polish Lowland Sheepdog, Henry, in Swanley, Kent and is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, Crime Writers Association, The Society of Women Writers & Journalists and The Society of Authors as well as Slimming World where she can been sitting in the naughty corner.

Elaine Everest lives in Kent and is the author of bestseller, The Woolworth Girls. She has written widely for various women’s magazines and when she isn’t writing, she  in Dartford, Kent, and the blog for the Romantic Novelists’ Association.

You can follow Elaine on Twitter and find her on Facebook.

You’ll find all Elaine’s lovely books here.

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