Laura

So in the spirit of the festive season I decided to delve into the second book in the Carrington's department store series by Alexandra Brown aptly named Christmas at Carrington's. For those who read my blog and reviews avidly you'll know I had a bit of a split opinion on Book 1 in the series but was willing to give it another go with book 2 and I did approach this with the open mind that I promised.

All of the characters are back in Book 2 and we open with Georgie beginning her relationship with hunky owner of Carrington's Tom, Sam her best friend and cafe owner trying for a baby and her other bestie Eddie tentatively beginning his relationship with boyfriend Ciaran. It all descends into chaos as a reality TV crew descends on the store a la Mary Portas and Georgie finds herself the laughing stock of the store. Tom disappears on a glamorous world tour of the major fashion houses and Georgie is left wondering what happened to their relationship.

This second book in the series suffers from some of the old issues of book 1 - a gullible and hugely naive leading character who is occasionally a little too cutesy. The story also is a little too similar to book 1 whereby scheming bimbo comes in and tries to “improve” the store leading to mass understanding between Georgie and her beau. Some of the story is a little implausible especially at the end where everyone and their granny seems to be a minor celeb. Overall It is at points just a bit samey....that said.....it does have something redeeming in it. It still has a great deal of heart. It has a certain feel good factor about it. Some of the relationships are really nicely written and you stick with it for that reason and it makes what would otherwise be an averagely poor book somewhat less average.

I'm in a pickle now though as there is more to come in the series and I'd be disappointed to find another book with cracking potential become another carbon copy of 1 & 2....the characters and relationships have great potential so please Miss Brown don't let us down!

This book was riding high in the Amazon best seller list for a while, at the bargain price of 99p I ignored it for a while but then the reviews seemed very favourable so I thought I'd give it a try. The story of Kirsty & her boyfriend Jamie who buy their first flat together and move in with grand plans for a happy future together and the promise of a quiet life.

From the night of the housewarming party odd things begin to happen. Hoax calls to the fire brigade, pizza deliveries they didn't make, odd mail. They don't think much of it. They make friends with their neighbours downstairs Chris & Lucy and soon they begin socialising together. Then their friend Paul is seriously injured on a karting day that Chris has invited them all on and things turn sour. Letters complaining about the noise they make, recordings of them making love and odd deliveries start arriving and it's clear their neighbours are behind it. Just how far will they go to make life a misery.

Promising plot? It should have been. It had flashes of genius about it, Kirsty falling pregnant and going through a pregnancy under all the strain. The spiders appearing mysteriously in their flat. There were some interesting bits but despite the promise I found it all strangely dull. I didn't buy it.

At the start of the book Lucy and Jamie are really close and yet by the end she doesn't even feature. It's like she just exits the last quarter and stops caring. I didn't understand why she wouldn't have fought harder for the man she loved. Jamie's descent from computer programmer to criminal was dubious. I just didn't believe it. It wasn't credible.

It was worth 99p but I wouldn't pay any more than that for this book. I'd give it a miss.

I have been doing really well knocking out lots of series I've been planning on reading this year and having now completed all of the Cassandra Clare novels I was looking for an intriguing new series to pick up as we move into the second half of 2017 and I had heard such wonderful things about Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Cycle that it didn't take me long to delve into The Raven Boys.

This book was one I wasn't quite sure how I would get on with, sometimes as I'm an older adult reader of Young Adult fiction I sometimes do find some novels just don't quite grasp me due to the writing style and content but I have to be honest that The Raven Boys was a book I flew through in a few days and did enjoy very much. It's difficult not to be intrigued when the very first thing we learn in the narrative is that one of our lead characters Blue has been told that if and when she kisses her true love he will die.

This revelation leads us to a major discovery about this book which is that the paranormal and psychic worlds will play a large part in this series as Blue has been raised in a house full of psychic women and is indeed about to take part in the St Marks' Day ritual at her local ruined church where she and her mother go annually to see the spirits of those who will die within the next 12 months. Blue herself is unable to see the undead, instead she is an amplifier for the powers of those who can, however on the night of St Marks' she sees the spirit of a young boy named Gansey, a pupil of the local private school Aglionby. Her aunt informs her that if she is able to see him this means one of either two things, either he is her true love or she killed him.

With this revelation under her belt it is then somewhat worrying when Gansey stumbles into her life seeking a psychic reading from her mother in order to help him find the local ley lines which will lead him to the body of a dead Welsh king who Gansey hopes to raise from the dead with the help of his friends Adam, Ronan and Noah, the members of the books title The Raven Boys.

This book is full of twists and turns, all of them based in the supernatural and the mystery surrounding the ley line in their town of Henrietta and it's a gripping journey that you slip through without really realising how quickly the chapters are flying by. It is also helped by the sheer range of characters within and their different personalities. I loved Gansey who is seen as others as being the ultimate privelleged rich boy with his whole future ahead of him but instead he is the father figure to his friends, their rock and the one who has everyone's backs. In return they give him unquestioning loyalty and support him in his strange search for a dead Welsh king of whom they otherwise would not have known.

I also loved the character of Adam, the obligatory scholarship kid who has struggled his whole life to attend the school which will give him the opportunity to escape his lot in a small town life and run from his abusive father who beats him badly. I found it nice that despite the author moving immediately to bring Blue and Gansey together she allows a relationship to develop between Blue and Adam which leaves us wondering just how if Blue's true love is Gansey this will leave Adam feeling as the series moves on.

For me though one of the most intriguing characters was Ronan, the bad boy of the group, the one who is struggling to remain in school due to non attendance and bad grades who is at odds with his family. It is clear Ronan has just lost his father and is struggling to come to terms with this and it is clear that we have not fully uncovered the secrets in his story and there is going to be lots more to explore as the series progresses through the remaining 3 novels. I especially loved that Ronan, whilst often sullen and withdrawn is the one who ultimately stands up for Adam and helps him escape the abuse he is suffering at home.

All in all this novel really was hugely enjoyable, the ending did leave me with lots of questions about why characters made the decisions they did. The last sentence left me thinking if I'd just totally missed a page as it literally leaves you hanging on a sentence which is going to take lots of explaining but I'm sure is linked to the title of the second book in the series. I am definitely excited to dive into book 2, The Dream Thieves and would give this one a 4 out of 5 stars.

Very occasionally a book comes along that makes you truly stop and focus on something you think you've understood and makes you look at it in a whole different way. Prisoner of Night and Fog by Anne Blankman is just one such book, one worthy of so much more than just 5 stars in a review because you know it's story will stay with you beyond the closing of the pages.

I found this book in the teen section of our local library whilst supervising my 3 year old who was searching for Peppa books. It's cover was immediately engaging and the back of the book compelled me to read it. It's the story of 16 year old Gretchen Muller who lives in Munich with her mother and older brother Reindhard. After the death of her father her family have been taken under the wing of her “Uncle Dolf” whom the rest of the world know as Herr Hitler.

She has been brought up within the shadow of the National Socialist party in Munich and is held up as the poster child of what Hitler views as a good German girl. He had taught her about art, music and culture and she believes fully his beliefs that Jews are dangerous and should be removed from Germany.

That is until she witnesses her brother beating up a Jewish man in the street and sees that he is scared and not dangerous at all. In trying to help the man she is brought to the attention of Jewish journalist, Daniel Cohen, who recognising her tells her he has information about the death of her father. Through their investigations she begins to realise that “Uncle Dolf” isn't being honest about his plans for resettling Jews outside Germany and instead has a much more dangerous plan.

This book is a wonderful blend of reality and fiction, mixing real historical figures such as Hitler and Eva Braun with fictional ones such as Gretchen and Daniel. It's got a murder mystery mixed amongst the historical teachings about the National Socialists in Germany before their election to power and the battles between Socialism and Communism.

It takes us into the world of Hitler outwith the party, his strange behaviours in his own homes, his habits and appetite for young girls. It gives a glimpse of a man on his way to power in Germany and the people who tried and failed to stop what would reshape the world.

I absolutely loved the blending of real and fiction and the lead character was wonderfully well written. A really special book which makes you stop and consider what it must have been like to move in circles close to such beliefs and the danger you could incite by daring to question them.

There is a sequel to this book planned for early 2015 and I absolutely cannot wait to spend more time with Gretchen. I wasn't ready to slip into Christmas book mode quite yet and needed something a bit more fulfilling after the fluff of my last book and this was a wonderful joyful delight. I am now feeling compelled to read more of a similar feel and may delve into The Book Thief which I've been saving.

Emily Barr is an author I used to read very regularly several years ago but after finding a lull in her storylines I had taken a break for a while and it was only when I saw The Sleeper advertised that I felt I wanted to try one again. The cover and the story outline on the jacket grabbed my attention and drew me in.

This is the story of Lara and her husband Sam, they have relocated from London to Cornwall in a bid to slow life down and start a family but after IVF has failed and their savings have run out Lara finds that actually she isn't fulfilled by her marriage and she craves escape from her quiet domestic life in Cornwall and agrees to take a job in London, to which she will travel each Monday by sleeper train and return each Friday by the same method. Her husband Sam doesn't want her to go, preferring to have her close by but Lara persuades him and she begins a 6-month contract in the city.

Some months later she finds herself loving life away from her husband, she likes the challenges of her job, the big city life and most of all she has found herself a lover Guy, a fellow traveller on the weekly sleeper train. She is suddenly making plans to leave her husband and begin a new life with Guy, just as soon as they both tell their respective spouses. Before they have the chance, however, Guy's body is found on board the sleeper train and Lara has vanished and everyone is left with no other conclusion than she must be responsible for his death. The only person who seems to think Lara isn't responsible is her quiet, introverted neighbour Iris who has only met Lara a few times but has reason to suspect her friend was hiding secrets in her past that may explain her disappearance.

This book was a really difficult one to immerse myself in initially and that is because I didn't particularly like Lara at the outset. She is portrayed, I found, as a selfish individual. She has a loving and attentive husband who is providing her with a wonderful lifestyle and yet she doesn't seem happy, she is chasing escape from him and intends on doing so whether or not he wants her to. Once she begins her commute to London she almost finds him an inconvenience that she has to deal with each weekend, putting on a front and pretending to be happy. She has fractured relationships with almost everyone in her life and family and at times I found her personal skills to be somewhat lacking. She seems devoid of emotion and I didn't enjoy the first section of the book because I just couldn't gel with her at all. From the point where she if offered the job in London to the point she disappears the book is told firmly from her perspective and this meant there was no escaping her.

Moving into the second section of the book we move to Iris as the narrator as she takes on the mystery of who murdered Guy, the man Lara was sleeping with and the potential explanation for where Lara has gone. Iris is a more sympathetic character but again we immediately realise things aren't quite right. She also has a partner with whom she lives and things are clearly not well in their relationship either, she has had a lottery windfall and yet she is hiding it from her boyfriend and making plans to leave, perhaps without telling him. Her fascination with Lara and her life is unusual if not only in the fact that they had only met a handful of times and yet so convinced is she that her friend is innocent she travels to London and starts digging up Lara's past in order to prove it. Iris is much easier to have sympathy with as a character and in this section of the book we realise the reasons for her strange relationship and find ourselves understanding her lifestyle and the need to perhaps break away from the home in which she lives.

This book really was a bit of a mixed bag, there were great points where I'd be pulled in by the narrative and the mystery and I'd be right on board, desperate to find out what was going to happen and then there were those moments I'd be scratching my head and thinking why the author had possibly thought this plot twist was a good idea. There is so much going on by the end of the book that the eventual conclusion is a bit underwhelming. It's all so sordid and strange and inappropriate. In fact, it leaves the whole book feeling like a bit of a muddle. We had all these stories early on in the book that seem to be cast aside in favour of a new direction that we never fully go back and address some of the plot created at the start. We never pay more than a backwards glance to Lara's poor husband nor the wife of the man killed on the train. It seems a bit of an investment on the author's behalf to create them at all if only to ignore them later.

I wanted to love it, I wanted to say that I had rediscovered a wonderful author but instead I found that what had stopped me reading her novels was still the same issue I had with them now. In pursuit of a twisted, word wide mystery Emily Barr is still taking her plot lines a few steps too far, in their complexity she is losing the readers empathy for her heroines who are often self centered and not particularly endearing. I think it may be another while before I read her books.

This book is just such an enticing proposition, a beautiful retro cover and promises of a lovely story as sisters Anna & Imogen take over the Brighton Ice Cream shop left to them by their grandmother.

Anna is the solid, stable sister in a relationship with divorced dad Jon. Imogen is the free spirit who is travelling around Thailand and journeys home to help take over the business. It has the setting for a great tale.

I found that what offered so much promise at times fell a little flat. Too much story, not enough book to do it in. We meet the family matriarch Vivien at the start of the book an her legacy is left behind but it's not fully explored, she's a bit player and it would have been nice to have blended her story a bit more with that of her granddaughters. In fact that seems to be the ongoing fault with this book.

Story lines are introduced then almost thrown aside as we move into the next. Anna's journey to Florence learning to make gelato should have been a book on it's own. The backstory of their father's breakdown, Anna & Imogen's stories all jumble around vying for attention and none really get it. It feels rushed and a little empty, it didn't pull enough emotion out for me.

The result was the characters remained one dimensional and a little fickle. The shop never quite the story, yet it was sold as the story. I just felt like I'd ordered Italian Gelato and ended up with cheap supermarket vanilla. It wanted to be up there with Colgan's Rosie Hopkins yet it let itself down.

It's a pleasant summer read but it won't remain with me as a favourite.

This is a perplexing review to write if only because that is how the book left me feeling - very very perplexed.

It is the first book I have read by this author and did so because it seemed to be so very highly regarded and many people hailed it as better than Gone Girl. Now I didn't love Gone Girl but I saw it's wasted potential and hoped this book may alleviate that frustration. Instead I felt very very unmoved by this book.

The book begins with a trial at the Old Bailey in London which will become central to our tale and fails to give an details about what had happened nor why our lead character is on trial.

Our lead character Yvonne Carmichael is a genetic scientist and very well educated scientist in her mid 50's who one day whilst attending a select committee at the Houses of Parliament meets a mysterious stranger whom within less than one hour has secreted her down to a secret crypt beneath the Commons and had sex with her. Now this I found did not endear me to our leading lady. The whole way in which her companion was behaving immediately had me wanting to scream “He's an absolute player”, for such an educated and intelligent woman she seemed to show very blatant lacks of common sense or good judgement.

At so many points I struggled with Yvonne, her absolute lack of judgement, her blatant disregard for her husband, who whilst far from perfect seems to be exceptionally understanding, and finally she came across as a bit of a cold fish.

The book for me ebbed and flowed, it would stall for a chapter then suddenly the action would propel us forward again, enticing us by dropping hints about how Yvonne would end up in court. I expected it to be earth shattering and groundbreaking when it came - it wasn't - it was actually a little dull. There lacked any real sense of danger or of sinister goings on, really all it boiled down to was a mundane affair with a man whom Yvonne never really took the time to get to know and all I could keep saying was “Well if you will drop your knickers for someone within an hour you really cannot be surprised when they do something unhinged” and to clarify I mean this firmly in regards to her affair in the book and not the other circumstances within with her colleague so please do not fear that I justify his actions.

All in all it was an average read, I finished it but won't really reflect back on it with much fondness.

So I've surpassed my good reads target for 2017 and now I'm trying really hard to continue on with series I've started this year trying where I can to progress them and keep myself engaged before too much time passes and I lose touch with the characters and plotlines. I read The Raven Boys a few months ago and having heard really good things about the second book in the series it made sense to delve into The Dream Thieves and spend some more time with Blue and her Aglionby boys.

Book 2 is a direct continuation from The Raven Boys and picks up immediately from where we left our characters but what becomes clear about this book is that it is going to be focused on Ronan Lynch, the darkest and most dangerous of the group of Raven Boys. With the reveal at the end of The Raven Boys that Ronan was able to take things from his dreams and bring them into the real world, we were left wondering just how this would link into the story of Gansey's search for Glendower the lost Welsh King.

To be honest this book didn't progress Gansey's search for Glendower by much. This book is really about Ronan exposing his secret to his friends and then exploring how it links to his past and his father's death and coming to terms with how to use and control the power that he has. All of this is done against the ticking timebomb of people who are trying to find the mysterious Greywarren an object which is allegedly linked to the gift Ronan has.

Initially, I struggled to gel with the book, for the first few chapters I considered putting it down and coming back to it later but slowly I kept going and then bit by bit I realised I was working my way through it and actually fairly quickly. I became more engaged by Ronan's story and actually one of the characters I probably wasn't meant to like became my saviour, Kavinsky. Kavinsky was like a breath of fresh air. He was a little bit dangerous, lurking around on the sidelines and then suddenly he became a vital part of this book and any chapters which featured Ronan and Kavinsky shone for me. I am sure I was not meant to like him quite so much but against the lack of plot movement in this book he was a shaft of light.

I am still struggling a little with Adam's character as the books progress, he has gone from being quite a stand up trustworthy guy to being dark and a little isolated from the other boys. His ongoing need to do everything alone and to raise himself from the circumstances of his birth is beginning to grate a little. Yes he does work towards redemption towards the end of this book but I found I didn't enjoy reading about him as much this time around.

I am still in love with Gansey, he didn't feature as strongly in this book as the search for Glendower took a back seat but he is still the father figure, the one watching out for everyone and I love that he and Blue are starting to draw together and any time they were together on the page was lovely. But can we just take a moment to talk about Noah, and that kiss! That was one of the really standout moments in this book for me.

I enjoyed this book but I couldn't give it a 5 star rating because for me Ronan's story was almost a standalone book that could have been read apart from the Glendower story. I'm hoping that book number 3 will return to the central story and will allow our characters to be more evenly featured in the narrative.

I bought this book at the reduced price of 99p at Christmas time not because I had a burning desire to read it but mainly based upon the reviews previous readers had accredited it with and the fact it sounded intriguing.

When I began reading I wasn't quite sure what to think, it was based in present day to begin with which was strange to me as from what the blurb had said it had to me suggested a slightly historic time frame. It begins in a hotel in Amsterdam with main character Theodore Decker clearly in some significant trouble and talking about how he feels responsible for the death of his mother.

From this point we are taken back to 13 year old Theo's world and the day of his mothers death which we learn is not his fault but leads to an act on Theo's part which will shape his whole future and a chance meeting with a stranger which will lead him to people who will become very important to him.

This book is a masterpiece in 700 pages, it has dark points and is a gritty read. It's characters are shade and light, as exemplified by the character Boris who is Theo's best friend. A Russian illegal immigrant with a propensity for drugs and drink who leads Theo down some very dark paths. He is also Theo's saviour at points and a true friend. There are a real variety of characters throughout who flit in and out of Theo's life bringing our story through a multitude of varied and often nail biting scenarios.

This is a book not for those uncomfortable with ongoing pages about gratuitous drug and alcohol use. I began to get a little weary of it at points but it is central to the storyline. It is a book which at points pulled me along so fiercely I wanted to shut myself away in a room and just read and read till I had absorbed it all.

It is not the best book I've ever read, it didn't fit my normal genre but I have a distinct feeling it will have imprinted itself on me more deeply than many books I've read so cleverly was it crafted and so different from other novels in it's telling. I was tempted to give 5 stars but felt unfulfilled by the end almost willing myself to have a happy ending that never came.

This book is based around 3 women and how their lives at the start of the book are separate but become inextricably linked by the end.

Cecelia is a woman with it all, 3 beautiful daughters and a loving husband. When she finds a letter in the attic from her husband to be opened in the event of his death. She opens it and uncovers a secret that devastates her family.

Rachel is a grandmother who is struggling to come to terms with the death of her teenage daughter over 20 years ago. Tess is betrayed by her husband who admits he's having an affair with her cousin.

This story brings them all together as the contents of the letter affect all of their lives. It is a good read, not too emotional or overly taxing.

I found the ending a little weak, I wasn't sure that I believed Rachel's character would have been so lenient or that after fighting for so long she'd be happy not to bring things to a head.

This is the second book I've read by this author and find her to be good but not outstanding. This seems to be a very popular read in the book charts just now but whilst it's good I'm not sure it's worthy of the hype.

It's been quite a while since I picked up a book that I haven't seen recommended by Booktube or by an author I know a significant amount about. This book I saw on my local library shelf and there was just something about its cover that called to me and made me pick it up. The thing with books like this is sometimes they end up being returned never having been read but last week I asked my husband to pick my next book and this is the one he picked for me.

I loved this book so much, it is a significant 550 pages and is categorised as Young Adult which overall I would agree with but it's not for the faint-hearted reader and does contain a fair amount of sexual and gory content. It's a historical fiction novel set in around the 1500's in Europe in a fictional country where we are following the lives of a variety of characters in the Royal Court.

This court is governed by a King, Christian and his wife Isabel whose children are all very ill and unfortunately, their children all seem to be dying. There is much speculation as to why and we follow the stories of Ava, a seamstress in the Royal Court, Midi an attendant in the Royal nursery, Queen Isabel herself and at other times we dot in and out of various court attendants and members of the nobility as we are led through the story of the day to day intrigue and politics of this Royal family and those who would seek to manipulate them to their own ends.

Because of the multiple voices in the book it moves at pace, the chapters are not overly long and so we move from person to person gaining quickly lots of different views and information about what is going on and how it is impacting both those of the lower classes through to the King and Queen themselves. It has very much a Tudor feel to the court with medicine, astrology, and rumors of witchcraft and sorcery the order of the day and oft times these are used to apportion blame or to raise speculation around events at court.

I couldn't put this book down. I fell in love with the characters of Ava and Midi wholeheartedly, the fact they are not traditional heroines and are equally drawn into plotting for their own advancement in the court but often find themselves in that position because of their lowly rank and through the manipulation of them by others. They are strong lead characters who despite initial misgivings about each other pull together when required to help each other.

I cannot believe I have not heard more about this wonderful book, how it has been overlooked is really beyond me. I could happily have read another 500 pages set in this wonderful world. It's a firm 4 out of 5 stars from me with an absolute guarantee I will be recommending this for months if not years to come.

This was a lovely novelette revisiting the characters and setting of Tracey Garvis-Graves' The Island.

This story starts with a strange young man arriving at the home of Anna & TJ, the desert Island survivors from On The Island. He tells them he has the answer to who the strange skeleton was that they found when they were marooned on a deserted island.

We are then taken through the story of Owen, the Islands' previous inhabitant and his story. How he chose to live on the island for over a year and what he did during his time there.

It was a quick read and easy to work my way through. It was lovely to be reminded of TJ & Anna's story and find them still happy and to revisit the island and figure out how some of the things Anna & TJ found got there.

Well worth reading if you enjoyed the novel and are looking for a quick fix to extend your enjoyment of the characters.

Dan Brown revolutionised the writing world with The Da Vinci Code, his clever use of the hidden meanings behind old works of art was inspired, and a professor trying to work out the hidden codes was exciting. Now 4 books in and the magic is beginning to lose its sparkle.

The joy of reading Da Vinci Code was that the works of art referenced were renowned and well known - instantly you could recall them and see what Langdon was seeing. In Inferno the references are more obscure and unless you are intimately acquainted with Florence you may find yourself - as I did - googling your way through the book looking for pictures just so you can visualise what is happening and get the mood of the book. Now this is all very well if you had to do it say once a chapter but it was literally every few pages, sometimes more than once a page. That lost it's appeal quickly.

If this were Inferno's only flaw it could be forgiven but it's just so darn confusing. By the time of the big climax I literally was lost in who was who, who chased who when and what for, what was real and what was smoke and mirrors and i really didn't care.

And the ending - I don't want to give anything away but how does Brown move on from it. To say in a later book it was all put right and everything is now okay is to trivialise the message but to not do so would mean writing in a world which is not real.

it's not worth it's hardback price, paperback maybe. It did have a few gripping moments but overall it was very very tedious and was only worthy of being thrown on an Inferno.

This book is introduced in the Foreward by the husband of the author who talks us through the difficult journey that his wife underwent while writing this novel, her battle with cancer that would eventually take her life before she completed it, or so he thought. He talks about finding her written notes that contained the last few chapters in their most basic form and so with their inclusion he went ahead and published this novel as she would have wanted him to do.

It's a tale set in a dark and dismal post war London, where rationing is still going on and people are perfectly willing to take things from a booming black market in order to supplement the meagre amounts they are living on despite the fact the war is now over and the men are home. The book opens with the discovery of a woman's body in an area of bombed out land in the east end of London, the detective investigating the murder has no idea who she is or how she comes to be lying strangled in an area of waste ground with no identification and no clue as to who is responsible for her death.

The book flits back and forward between the life of the victim Lilian Frobisher and the investigation into her death and it's circumstances. We learn that Lilian's life is not a happy one, her husband Walter has returned from war but their loveless marriage is still no better than it was before the war and in fact for Lilian life was better during the war when she'd happily spend a night with a GI or soldier in order to get access to the perks they could offer her such as stockings or a little lipstick. In fact her husband's return is making her so unhappy she dreams of running away and starting a new life where her looks will allow her to trade for a better standard of life.

From the detective's perspective he finds himself dismissing the case as one that is now ‘commonplace' in the landscape postwar, many woman are to be found selling themselves on street corners and the streets are full of many dodgy characters who will happily sell illegal wares on the blackmarket and crime really is the only career which seems to be paying.

This book was for me a really interesting one. At the time I'd been watching the BBC show, “Further Back In Time For Dinner” and I happened to be watching the week about the 1940's where they explored the attitudes to people being offered black market rations and the struggle to survive on the meagre amounts of meat that families were offered and the dreadful reconstituted foods that they had to survive on. It helped me to bring the time frame of this book to life and to perhaps understand more the state of mind that Lilian found herself in. At times she appears to be a difficult character, one who isn't always likeable but one who is clearly long suffering, struggling to find glamour in a very austere and bleak post war world and who just longs to hang onto her youth for a little longer before it fades forever. She doesn't have years ahead to wait for the good times to return as then she will have faded forever into the background where younger girls are more appealing.

For me this book was a read that kept my interest throughout, I found myself thinking about it and it's characters throughout the day and they would keep calling me back, longing to find out more about the murder and how Lilian did come to find herself strangled. Subsequently though the ending for me didn't quite provide a fulfilling package. Now yes, we need to bear in mind that perhaps it's author only just managed to get her ideas outlined for the concluding chapters before unfortunately she passed away and you do find a difference in the descriptiveness of the last section, however for me it was around the murderer and the reasons for their actions.

I don't want to give anything away but I found that it never fully offered an explanation other than it was an effect of war. An unfortunate incident caused by a man who the war has left wounded and who cannot provide any more explanation than that. I would have personally liked a little more background to this character as he did only pop into the story in the first person tense on a couple of occasions and it might have been nice to have read a little more.

Overall, a good read and enjoyable if you like war time settings and one I think will stand out in my memory, for me a more conclusive explanation for the murder would have made it a better more comprehensive read.

Now I've hit my good reads target for 2017 I needed to have another focus to drive my reading till the end of the year and so I'm now trying to get through as many books in series I've started before the end of the year to try and increase my completed sets of series before the year is out. Having just started Throne of Glass a few weeks ago I decided now was the ideal time to delve back in and read Crown of Midnight, the second book in the series, before I forgot too much about it.

I enjoyed Throne of Glass and the story of Celeana Sardothien, the girl assassin who won the competition to become the King's Champion and his trained killer. Picking up immediately after the end of Throne of Glass we follow Celeana as she begins her new job and the demands the king makes upon her to dispatch his ‘enemies' on his behalf. All is not as it seems though as Celeana is struggling with the job as she begins to find that those she is sent to kill are not bad people but simply those who are trying their best to stop the power hungry King of Adarlan's ongoing monopoly of their lands and the death and destruction his power brings.

Struggling with her conscience we follow Celeana as she continues to build her friendships back in the Glass Castle. She is growing closer to the Head of the King's Guard, Chaol, and their feelings are moving towards something more than just friendship. Her best friend, Princess Nehemia, is helping her to understand the terror's that face her people now the King of Adarlan has taken over their lands and finally she is trying to stay away from the Crown Prince Dorian who she doesn't want to lead into danger through a close relationship with her.

This book was absolutely non-stop action. From the very first chapters it had me gripped. I liked Throne of Glass but Crown of Midnight really raised the bar on this series for me. I hadn't grasped what the hype around this series was really all about till I read this second instalment. Whereas book one spent quite a bit of time world building and had lots of characters who came in and then left again as part of the competition to find the King's Champion in Crown of Midnight we have a more tight knit cast, most of whom we have met before and we are all about expanding their stories and knitting them all together more.

This book was a reasonable read, at about 440 something pages but I read it in just over a day, sitting up to the small hours of the morning finishing it because I literally could not put it down. Every time I thought I'd caught my breath and it was calming down it would be off again in another direction full speed ahead. It has magic and mystery from the first book and we continue to explore the mysterious Wyrdmarks and how they link to the world of the past and present. We have a kick-ass heroine who is amazing to read about because you almost never quite know what she is going to do, you just know that it will be awesome. There is backstabbing and intrigue in the court of Adarlan, questions over who can be trusted and who cannot and that is one of my favourite aspects of the books. Finally there is a wonderful romantic element with the ongoing relationships Celeana has with both Chaol and Dorian.

The book ends with a really stunning revelation which sets up book 3 wonderfully and raises the excitement levels for what will happen next. It gives us a glimpse that the next instalment will expand the world even further and introduce even more aspects and characters than we've had before, including some Fae!

This book was really good, I liked it so much more than book 1, it hit all the points I needed it to and reassured me that this series does have the potential to live up to A Court of Thorns & Roses. It is a thoroughly deserved 5 out of 5 stars for this one.

Rachel Hore has made it her speciality to write books which seek to tie together stories from the past with those of today. Writing characters who find solace in their modern lives and dramas through the actions of her characters in the past living similar lives.

In The Memory Garden this formula is used to explore the life of Mel, an art history lecturer who takes a sabbatical to write her first book. Travelling to Cornwall she rents a cottage on the estate of Merryn Hall and meets it's handsome owner Patrick. Working together they begin to restore the gardens of the hall and in doing so discover the paintings and stories of a mysterious new artist.

The book then flashes back to the days of pre WWI and the life of servant at the hall Pearl who leads us through the story of the paintings. It was these parts of the book that I fell in love with and longed for them to be longer and more frequent. They were beautifully written and so evocative of that pre war world.

Hore has written another wonderful book which ties together the worlds of both Mel and Pearl. Using the flashback technique can be tricky though if not one of your stories holds up to the other. You can find yourself longing for more of one whilst feeling tepid about the other. Whilst I could have spent more time with Pearl this wasn't a reflection upon the story of Mel and Patrick, my only criticism being the sight long winded ending. We seemed to take a long time to conclude Mel's story going round one or two too many houses before reaching her end. This was a shame and was where I wishes Pearl could have been more prevalent.

It was a lovely setting for the book, on the Cornish Coast and looking at the world of artistry in the area at that time was wonderful. Hore has again proven she has the capability to enrapture and fully immerse her readers in the past. A wonderful read.

The Selection was a wonderful book, just the right mixture of fairy tale and Hunger Games and as a result I couldn't wait to start book 2 in the trilogy The Elite.

In book 2 we find 6 girls left competing for Maxon and the crown. America and Maxon still have a wonderful relationship but there are many things to stand in the way of true love.

This was a book of 2 halves, the first mirrored book 1 in that it was light and frothy and full of romance and girly friendships and backstabbing between The Elite. The second half is much darker, we start to see a different side to Maxon and his family which suggests all is not well and darker forces are at work that are in charge of who might win the prince's hand in marriage.

I found this book more frustrating, the love triangle between America, Maxon and Aspen began to grate on my nerves a little. I'm finding Aspen difficult to like as a character. I want to give America a shake and tell her to stop sabotaging herself and realise that she's not being very discreet. The warnings are clear in this book about what book 3 could hold in store.

With no sign of book 3 any time soon that's a little annoying as I'd like to know the conclusion but I'm hoping Cass will not fall into the Hunger Games trap and give us a wonderful first book, build the tension with rising revolts in book 2 only to have a disappointing and war filled third. Please restore some romance and meaningful relationship between America & Maxon in book 3 and don't turn our prince into a fickle man.

So firstly before we begin I think that we can remove the belief, 12 months after the books publication, that people don't know that Robert Galbraith is in fact a pseudonym for perhaps the worlds most financially successful author J K Rowling. After some rather shaky reviews about her other foray into adult fiction, The Casual Vacancy, I wonder why anyone would be surprised that she decided to cloak herself in secrecy for the release of this book. She need not have been worried however.

The Cuckoo's Calling is a wonderful book, it is a thing of great beauty. It evokes those old fashioned Agatha Christie novels where the story is centralised around wonderful detective work based not on science and DNA but on observation of people, their relationships and secrets. Cormoran Strike, Rowling's central character is enigmatic and engaging whilst remaining mysterious. He may be described as being of physical ilk to manage himself in a difficult situation but we get the sense he'd never need to as he too darned clever.

This book has a very simple premise, which is that 3 months prior a supermodel fell to her death from her home balcony. The death was labelled suicide and her brother wishes the case investigated, refusing to believe the police. What follows was a wonderful series of long luxurious chapters where Strike introduces us to the key players in Lula Landry's life prior to her ‘suicide'. There is no great action, no blood and ogre and nobody dying every second chapter. Instead we get lots of beautiful dialogue between Strike and the people he meets as they recall their memories of the days leading up to Lula's death.

Through these memories the story builds, we learn of inconsistencies, family troubles, hidden agendas and secrets. We never meet many of the characters more than once but they are discussed by other characters as part of their recollections and they literally leap off the page. We don't need to spend chapters building their back stories to intrigue us, Rowling weaves her characters so well that the snippets of information we gather and the connections she makes between all her cast make it perhaps the most engaging book I've read all year.

I was literally hard presses to put this book down, I just wanted to keep reading more and more. I was literally raving about it the whole time I was reading, I just couldn't help bursting over with intrigue and anticipation at finding out who, if anyone, had in fact killed Lula Landry.

Rowling has done a wonderful thing, she's shown that she is not a one trick pony. She has demonstrated her ability to produce work under a different genre and for it to be critically acclaimed. I truly applaud her for that, I also applaud that even when her pseudonym was so trust crushingly exposed in the press she has continued to use it for the second novel in this series. She could have simply cast it aside and said “well now I know you liked it I don't have to pretend”. I am gut bustingly excited about the release of The Silkworm, the second Cormoran Strike, this month. I cannot wait to dive into another adventure with her detective and for another mystery to unfold.

I know there are fans who say she will never ever write anything as good as Potter, or she should have kept writing stories about the boy wizard - I however feel that Harry's journey was always a finite one and Rowling has moved on. I am just overjoyed she's doing so in a way that continues to engage, challenge, stimulate and reward me as a reader.

So occasionally I like to delve into the Young Adult genre to enjoy some escapism much in the way that even at 38 years old I still enjoy watching shows like Pretty Little Liars. E Lockhart's We Were Liars was widely recognised as one of the standout Young Adult books of 2014 and so I decided to give it a try.

The first intriguing thing was the introduction from the publisher asking readers to please whilst enjoying the book try not share anything with other people who hadn't read it so as to avoid spoilers for other people. So as a reviewer I am going to do my best to review the book whilst avoiding sharing anything more than I need to in order to abide by their wishes.

The story essentially focuses on Cadence Sinclair who we learn at the outset has been subject to an “accident” which has left her with severe headaches. We also learn that her summers are spend holidaying on her families private island with her grandparents, mother, aunts and cousins. The 3 eldest cousins Cadence, Johnny and Mirren along with Gat an outsider form close friendships and spend idyllic times there together.

We are essentially led through the summer of Cadence's accident and the one two years later in a series of flashbacks and memories returning to Cadence piece by piece. The story is so well put together that before you even blink you are 25%, 50% or further through it and time has passed you by. I read it in just over a day so engaging and addictive was the story.

It is to be fair not an overly long book, much in the style of If I Stay and I can fully understand why it has become so highly regarded amongst its target audience. The idyllic setting and wealth surrounding the characters is a great backdrop, it has that feeling of Revenge about it. We are given small crumbs throughout the book which make the story clearer but when the big reveal came it did so suddenly and without warning and was not what I could have predicted at all.

I find it nice that I can still pick up books of this genre and enjoy them because it truly allows you to take a real escapism moment away from books aimed at your age group which can often become bogged down in marriage, families and the struggles which sometimes its nice to pretend you don't have yourself.

I couldn't recommend this book highly enough it was excellent, a nice quick read with a great story and an ending which was worth waiting for.

I love Hallmark Channel, it's movies and tv shows are so heartwarming and enjoyable and when I saw the trailers for Debbie Macombers Cedar Cove with Andi McDowell I instantly wanted to view it, however I hate watching adaptations from books without having read the book first.

So I delved into 16 Lighthouse Road, the first in Macombers Cedar Cove series and was immediately captivated by the small Washington State town by the sea where a small town full of warm people weave their tales together. Centered around town judge Olivia Lockhart andthe other residents of the town each book in the series is designed to feature different peoples stories whilst other characters fade in and out.

I loved this first book, sharing the stories of Cecelia and Ian who find themselves denied an easy divorce by Judge Lockhart after the loss of their baby daughter, mixed with the mystery of the nursing home resident Olivia's mother begins visiting. Finally the story of Olivia's best friend Grace who's husband Dan simply vanishes one day after a rocky patch in their marriage.

Simple stories, beautifully told and with the promise of more to come I was hooked with this series. I found that I wanted to move to Cedar Cove just to share a coffee with Olivia and Cecelia and slip into their lives. Each story was individually told yet woven together beautifully. Atmospheric and wonderful. An absolute joy and I'm now even more keen to delve into the tv show.

This book was a recommendation based on my wish list from Amazon. Immediately that I read the product description I was intrigued and couldn't wait to read it.

The story of Claire & Ben who have suffered years of trying to have a baby. Their need for a baby taking over their lives, which seem from the outside to be otherwise perfect. One of those outsiders looking in is Ben's best friend and single mum Romily. Seeing her friend's pain she agrees to be a surrogate for them, the only problem being she's in love with Ben.

This is a wonderfully written book. The way in which Cohen entangles the lives of Claire, Romily and Ben is a joy to read. The contrasting approaches to life shown by Romily and Claire and the way they begin the book as strangers linked by Ben but find themselves drawn together less by the baby and more by respect and friendship is lovely.

It's a book which is fundamentally about relationships and expectations of life and how we cope when we don't know what is best. It is about the two women's attempts to cope with a scenario that ideally they'd both rather not have had to face and ultimately it's about the love they all share for Thing, the baby they all dearly love.

This book is absolutely deserving of all 5 stars and more, it was a wonderful read. Very much worth trying.

I was really excited about reading Cupcakes at Carringtons, the cover art is lovely and the cover blurb enticing so I made sure I was ready to begin reading this immediately it was delivered to my Kindle.

It sounded like a perfect recipe for a good book - Carrington's a small department store is failing in the recession and the store and it's staff (chiefly Georgie in Ladies Accessories) need to downsize staff numbers. How will this impact the store and it's close knit team, who is the mysterious new salesperson Tom and what exactly does the scheming analyst in charge of the restructure have in store.

I found the book started well but lost it's way a little - there were a lot of characters introduced very quickly, not touched upon for several chapters then they'd dot up again making me have to think hard about who they were then off they'd flit again for ages. The main character does lack proverbial backbone but to be fair does have redeeming qualities. The love triangle at the books core is a little weak and clearly designed to be followed through into subsequent instalments which adds to the overall lack of closure at the end of the book.

I liked many of the characters and the setting is a great concept but some of the plot lines were over-complicated and under written. I'd give Carringtons another whirl with book 2 but maybe in the Sale this time???

The A Court of Thorns and Roses series has been everywhere in the book world this month as the release of the third and last book in this trilogy had its release in May and everyone has been going crazy to read it. The author of these books seems to be held in such high regard by book lovers I literally had to give these books a try and see if they lived up to the hype everyone has been giving them.

Categorised as Young Adult books these can often be found in the bookstore with a warning sticker on the front stating that they do contain scenes that may not be suitable for younger teen readers due to scenes of a sexual nature and I would wholeheartedly state that up front, these are not books for the younger end of the Young Adult reader market but instead should be aimed at older teens and beyond.

This story is classed as a fairy tale retelling, loosely based on the Beauty & The Beast story but having read it I'd say that whilst yes you have themes from that fairy tale in there it isn't something that leads this book entirely or consumes the story. The story of Feyre, a young girl who lives in a poor and bleak village trying to keep her father and two sisters fed and cared for any way she can we find her at the start of the book hunting for whatever food she can to get them through the winter. She kills a wolf in the forest and brings his hide home to sell for what money she can. What she doesn't know is that the wolf she killed is actually a faire who has crossed the border between the fairy lands and the human world. We learn that years before the human world had been ruled by the Faire and that their retreat left the human world a desolate place, but now years later more and more incidents of Faire crossing the wall and harming humans are occurring and no one knows why.

Feyre is visited by a faire who tells her that because she killed the wolf she must either die to give a life for his life or she must come with him and live in the Faire world for the rest of her life. With little option, she goes with him back to his home where she finds out that he is the High Fae and ruler of one of the seven fairy courts, his specifically is the Spring Court but there also exist the Summer, Winter, Autumn, Dawn, Day and Night courts. Instead of being unkind to her, Feyre finds that Tamlin is kind and thoughtful and only wishes for her to be happy and content. From there we are swept into a story of their growing love for one another.

The first 70 or so pages of this book were reasonably slow paced, Maas has a huge amount of scene and character setting to do and this takes us some time to achieve so initially the action is limited instead focusing on Feyre and the circumstances of her family and the travelling to the Faire world and her becoming familiar with all the characters of that world. What happens after this initial scene setting though is just magical. Maas paints her Faire world in such vivid clarity that it springs off the pages. Each and every chapter is filled with even more colourful characters and such a wonderfully gentle way in which she develops the relationship between Tamlin and Feyre.

The entire first half of this book is set entirely in Tamlin's Spring Court and focuses closely on this aspect of the story but we are aware all the time of shadows on the edge of this world creeping inward and that all is not well in the Faire world and that a dark shadow hangs over them all. Tamlin himself is cursed never to be able to remove the mask he wears and show his true self and Feyre is aware that something terrible cast this curse but doesn't know what. This leads us into the action-packed second half of this book which explores this curse.

I literally devoured this book in 2 days, I could not put it down. If I wasn't reading it I was thinking about it, it's written so vividly that it really stays with you in your mind. The characters are really engaging and we have a great mixture of the good and evil. It struck me as being a little bit like Game of Thrones meets Beauty & The Beast. There is all the fairytale love in part 1 and then all the vicious, violent politics of the seven courts and their ruler in the second. We even have a villain so evil she'd make Cersei Lannister look like Snow White. It is breathtaking. The second half of the book is all action, there is so much adventure and danger for Feyre that she has to overcome and the introduction of great new characters that expand the world and help us to understand just where this series may be going as we move into Book 2, A Court of Mist & Fury.

There are great moments where the plot unveils itself a little more and gives you a little more information as a reader and those are the points where I was shouting at my book, those Oh My God moments that have you wanting to jump into the pages and get involved. Awful twists and turns that really affect you emotionally and such excitement.

I loved this book so much, it was spectacular. It was by far one of my favorite books I've read this year so far. It was so much more than just a fairy tale retelling it was the setting up of what I know is going to be an amazing series moving forward.

I've read all Kinsella's previous novels, literally creased with laughter at the exploits of Rebecca Bloom and loving the standalone novels like Twenties Girl.

Wedding Night was not my favourite of the books, I felt that the premise for the book was weak, the storyline didn't go far enough at the end towards concluding the characters stories and there seemed to be a rather tired author.

It lacked pace and punch, it also lacked real romance. The characters didn't seem to gel well together

I almost lost track of how many times I've started this book and then stopped over the past few years. It feels great to have eventually come to it, with more knowledge and a fresher perspective on its predecessor and accompanying series, at last with the ability to enjoy and devour it. And devour it I did in only 2 days and I absolutely loved it.

Picking up immediately after City of Bones, the first instalment of The Mortal Instruments series, we are immediately allowed a glimpse of Valentine Morgenstein hatching his latest progression in his plans to destroy the Shadowhunters as they currently exist and twist them to his view of the world. There are some truly shocking moments in this book as the story unfolds and Valentine goes to more extreme lengths to make his plan come to fruition and some of these moments were real OMG moments where you catch your breath and feel real grief for things and people who have become familiar to you throughout both City of Bones and The Infernal Devices series. The story that was very much laid out in the first book is allowed to progress with much more vigour in this second book and moves us more speedily without the need to introduce the world we are reading about. This gives it more pace and, as a result, you fly through the chapters without even noticing how quickly you are doing so. I was astounded by how I couldn't put this down, when I wasn't reading it I was thinking about it.

I loved that this book expanded the world in which the book was based, we introduced more characters which added depth to the story and more people for us to love and care about. Not that I don't love Jace, Clary, Alec, Isobel and Simon but having their parents join the narrative and the inquisitor to add light and shade to the story made it feel a more rounded book and gives us a sense that the world is growing and will continue to grow as the series progresses as 6 books is a LOT to focus on only the characters from City of Bones.

I also have to give Kudos to Cassandra Clare's writing as she makes no bones about the fact that her villain Valentine is a very persuasive individual, intelligent and with strong morals who manages to enchant those around him. The scenes with him and Jace are a testament to this and as he speaks to Jace of why he is doing what he is you almost as a reader find yourself thinking that you can see his point from other events which have happened in the book. You know you shouldn't but you do and you have to stop yourself being drawn in by him.

There are some twists and turns in this book I felt were quite surprising. Simon, our mundane best friend to Clary takes a whole new journey in this book and whilst I could see where Clare was going with this from early chapters I wasn't so convinced by the end of the book. It would appear that she's developed a whole new kind of hybrid downworlder to suit her purposes and I kind of wasn't too sure about that. I am interested in it though and keen to see where she takes it in the next book as he is a brilliant character and you need him to keep Clary from becoming too wrapped up in the world of Shadowhunters and he keeps her connected to the girl she was at the beginning of Book 1.

I am now feeling invested in this series, much more than I was when I tried to read it first time round. I actually care about what happens to these characters and know that this month I hope to work through at least books 3 and 4 although if I read them as quickly as I did this then who knows where I may end up? I gave this one a 4 out of 5 stars as I do think it's still got scope to grow as the series goes on and to give this 5 stars gives me nowhere to go as it does get better.