Laura

This is the first Veronica Henry book I've read and I was drawn to it, I imagine like many readers, by it's glorious setting - the romantic, classic and glamorous Orient Express. Set on board the train's famous journey from London to Paris it was beautifully atmospheric and a wonderful setting for a novel.

The setting for the book was not it's only charm however, this novel followed a number of different stories. Emmie & Archie who have won their trip courtesy of a matchmaking website competition, Sylvie & Riley who have been lovers for years but are reaching their twilight years and long for stability, the blended family with two troubled teens and Imogen who is travelling to Venice to collect a painting on behalf of her grandmother Adele from a mysterious friend Jack. The way in which their stories intertwine are beautiful. We bob backwards and forwards between present day and Adele's past looking into each story intertwined.

Occasionally in books like this where authors try to pack in lots of intertwined stories you can sometimes feel you are granted only snapshots or that some characters are given less time. Henry though does a remarkable job of ensuring each story is defined in it's own right and that each is concluded. It is an extremely well written story, it evokes real atmosphere of travelling on board the world famous train and of it's destination Venice. It made me yearn for the chance to one day experience this famous journey and the Hotel Ciprianni.

I would love to spend more time reading Veronica Henry if all her books are of this calibre.

Louisa Clark is back, in this third book in Jojo Moyes series Me Before You we are reunited with the girl with the bumblebee tights as she journey's off to New York to live the life of adventure she promised Will Traynor she would have following his death. This series is one that is not without its critics, many people struggled with the central themes of book 1 whilst others fell in love with the story but we found that in Book 2 it was difficult to move on from the heartbreak of Me Before You and to follow the journey of Louisa without her love and friend Will beside her. I know I was left feeling a little lackluster after book 2 and was therefore surprised when Book 3 was announced.

Despite my reservations about After You I still needed to return and find out what Louisa was going to get up to in Book 3 and to find out if she had as yet reached the potential, her true love believed her capable of. And so the book begins with Louisa jetting off to begin a new job in New York, as assistant to the wife of a wealthy American millionaire. All is not as it seems though and she finds her new boss, Agnes, to be fragile and struggling with replacing the first wife of her husband who still holds great sway in the social circles in which she now has to mingle. Agnes is holding back many secrets and Louisa whilst trying to be a good employee and friend finds her new job more difficult than she could have imagined.

I loved that Louisa is off on her own in this book, forging her way in a new world. She has learned much from her time with Will but is now ready to apply it all, along with her quirky fashion sense and sense of friendship to her new role. Whilst much of the initial part of the book focuses on this I found as the book progressed I fell more in love as we began exploring all the other characters she meets in New York. The tetchy neighbour Mrs. De Witt and her yappy pug dog who seems desperate to take a bite out of Louisa whenever they meet. The enigmatic doorman of the building where she lives and his wonderful wife who are fighting to save their local library and the mysterious Josh who she meets at a society event who seems interested in more than just friendship.

It's a difficult book because we know Louisa's heart belongs back in England with her family and her boyfriend Sam but she is forging a new future in a world she loves and this is bound to cause difficulty and Jojo Moyes explores that beautifully in this book. She takes Louisa on the next stage of her journey in this book and we see her become independent and capable of all Will told her she was before his death.

I liked this book so very much, I loved it much more than After You because in this book Louisa's grief has passed the raw stage and we find her discovering her new normal and getting back to planning a future and I liked that we got to share her journey and in such a way that she stays true to her self in all situations. I would recommend this highly.

This book was a recommendation to me from my mum. She's heard it had good reviews and had been likened to One Day and thought it would be my cup of tea. So I downloaded a sample from Amazon and read the first 3 chapters in record breaking time.

From the very outset as the lead character Emily walks away from her marriage and disappears to London to start a new life it grips you. The author weaves a tale of mystery as she flits backwards and forwards between Emily's old life and new and even back through her childhood and her relationship with her husband Ben. This was where the sample took me and I was so hooked I immediately downloaded the rest of the book.

I read it in just over 24 hours, I was gripped. The way in which Emily leaves her old life behind and starts anew is really well crafted. It really does make you question how she could possibly leave behind her family and swap it for a grotty London flat-share.

Mixing this with childhood tales of her tenuous relationship with her twin Caroline and the story of how her twin became the dysfunctional one of the pair, always in trouble and driving a wedge into the family leads you to a real sense of impending doom.

To be fair though Emily is not a perfect heroine, in the second part of the book she's not that likeable. Her new life is questionable and she's unraveling pretty quickly all around talk of the one year anniversary of the event that has clearly caused her to run away to begin with. When her new life does unravel it does so in spectacular fashion an in a way that made me feel the heroine was actually becoming quite difficult to like.

The big secret hinted at in the cover blurb was actually very touching, not as dramatic as I'd expected but devastating and redeemed Emily for some of her earlier behaviour (but not totally). The author has clearly written the book very cleverly so as to ensure that you cannot see it coming.

It has a nice ending, one that again is built to slowly and with some mystery to it and with a real sense of closure around all the characters. All the loose ends are tied up nicely so as to leave you with a sense of satisfaction.

This was a good book, not a comparison to One Day which was much more emotionally evocative but this had a darker undertone. It is very much worth reading and will grip you throughout so be warned not to make too many plans as once you start reading you'll find it hard to stop.

So I had just bought myself the new Jojo Moyes book and realised I still hadn't read “The Last Letter from Her Lover” so before reading the newest offering my meticulous nature drew me towards the earlier novel.

I have to admit to being a little lost with this novel because the story I was reading didn't seem to correlate with the one on the dust jacket which promised the tale of Jennifer in the 1960's alongside a modern day tale of Ellie but at 65% of the way through the book Ellie still hadn't made her entrance into the novel. Instead the story was very firmly a Mad Men-sequel tale of Jennifer a society wife who falls in love with a journalist and agrees to leave her mining magnate husband. It is a twisted tale of near misses and missed opportunities as Anthony and Jennifer long to be together.

It is an atmospheric book which oozes glamour and the opulence of the early 60's and the politics of the time, drawing on themes such as the early discoveries of the dangers of asbestos poisoning and political unrest in South Africa. It makes a great background for the book and for a torrid love affair. Much of the book is dedicated to the growing love between Jennifer and Anthony and their attempts to be together and the staid and rigid marriage between Jennifer and her husband Lawrence. In fact so much of the book has passed by the time the secondary character of Ellie is introduced that it really shifted the book significantly and changed the pace quite late on. Initially I was unsure but quickly we learn there are similarities between the women and are drawn into Ellie's world and we are keen to follow her search for the owners of Jennifer & Anthony's love letters.

This book had such a lovely story at the end but my only disappointment was I felt it might have benefited from an epilogue just to tie everything together. This is such a wonderful read and a very unique storyline which was greatly enjoyable and up to Moyes very high standard. can't wait to read the new novel now.

I was really excited to read Always and Forever, Lara Jean by Jenny Han. This book forms the final chapter in the To All The Boys I've Loved Before trilogy and I was desperate to know how Lara Jean's story was going to conclude and also a little sad because it was to be the last book with these wonderful characters.

Picking up shortly after the end of P.S. I Still Love You, the second book in the trilogy, we find Lara Jean living through her senior year of high school and going through all the rights of passage that come with that event such as college applications and decision making about her future, graduation, prom and her final summer at home before she leaves to go to college. She is still very much in a relationship with Peter Kavinsky and they are a great couple but they are facing questions about how things will change when they both go to college and bearing in mind that Lara Jean's mom always used to say that you should never go to college with a boyfriend.

What continues to make these books special though is all the accompanying events that run alongside those related to Lara Jean herself. The thing I have enjoyed most about this trilogy is the fact that it has remained very much invested in the emotions and dynamics of Lara Jean's family. Margot, her elder sister, is still away at St Andrew's University, little sister Kitty is feisty and confident and preparing to enter puberty and their dad has fallen in love with their neighbour across the street and is for the first time finding happiness himself away from his precious girls.

This entire series has stood on the strength of Han's character writing, we really root for all of the characters, not just Lara Jean. I love Kitty, she has remained a high point through all of the books. There are difficult transitions for Margot in this book as she finds family dynamics changed by her father's new relationships when she comes home and your heart breaks for her as she tries to adapt. We also have those little family moments that they navigate together like when Margot brings her college boyfriend home and pushes the boundaries by saying he won't sleep in the guest room but with her, leaving her father upset and angry.

This book does take us on a rollercoaster journey, we share in Lara Jean and Peter's planning as the plan to go to the same college but then are devastated (if not surprised) when that doesn't work out and then we find ourselves praying Lara Jean finds the right place for her to be in the year ahead without being too focused upon her relationship alone.

It's a book about endings, moving on in life and the excitement of the future even though it can sometimes be terrifying. It was a wonderful ending to the stories and I will sorely miss Lara Jean and her crazy family and all her friends. It felt like there could or should be more but at this point I know there are no plans to continue the story but I will always wonder how Lara Jean enjoyed Korea, how did she settle at college, how does Kitty fare when her big sister leaves home and whether she and Peter manage to stay together forever. I'll miss you Lara Jean.

After being recommended to watch The Notebook and enjoying it immensely I popped along to my local library to try and borrow the book, instead of finding The Notebook on the shelf I found this sequel and thought I'd give it a try.

This is a beautiful story about what it means to keep a marriage alive throughout the many ups and downs that life throws at us and the mundane routines of every day life. I found it an absolute joy to read and at many points found myself sympathetic to the needs of both lead characters and the battle between trying to provide financially for your family and the sacrifices that brings versus the need to be there for the memorable stuff like birthday parties, sports days and school plays.

Marriage is all about compromise and hard work and this book illustrates this perfectly - I was crying buckets at the end of this book. Beautiful and well written and I preferred it to The Notebook.

I have been a Sarah Millican fan for a few years now, I love her straight talking and no-nonsense approach and her down to earth style. As the new year rolled around I needed a book to kick off the new year and get me through those initial days after all the festivities stop and reality sets in with a bump. I could think of no more perfect book than How To Be Champion by Sarah Millican.

This book is a really interesting one, it's part autobiography and advice guide to life from Sarah Millican herself. It's a joy to read. Instead of giving us a life account from birth to the present day she dedicates chapters to different topics such as Things She Learned From Her Father, Her Divorce, The Bafta's Article. Through each chapter, she recounts her own life experiences in a style only Sarah can deliver and then each chapter is capped off by her own little slice of advice for us the reader in relation to the subject matter of that chapter.

The things I learned about Sarah from reading this book were immeasurable, she has clearly got a strong family background with parents who were devoted to her. She was brought up with a strong work ethic and the support to follow her dreams. Yes, she had an unsuccessful marriage that left her reeling but she has moved on and she is stronger for it and now happily married to her comedian husband and living the country life with her dogs and cats.

This book was perfect for the New Year doldrums and had some really great laugh out loud moments that come through loud and clear in Sarah's Northern accent. Her view of life is really healthy, she is aware of her faults and open about her insecurities and she makes a wonderful narrator and her stories about her time working in the Job Centre and WH Smiths in her time before she started following her Comedy career are wonderful and show her as a hard working girl who has always understood the need to work hard and be nice to people.

If you want a book to drive you to change your life then maybe Sarah's isn't for you but for me it reinforced my own values and helped me to feel a little more secure in my own view of my self. She is a Champion for the ordinary woman in all of us. Those of us who have bad days where we know we've not always got on the most co-ordinated outfits but we deal with it, when we have cooking disasters and she helps us to find the strength to laugh at ourselves a little more, some great advice on staying in Travel Lodges when we are away on a work trip and finally to accept help when we need it.

A really strong 5 star book for me.

This book had been one I'd been saving for myself for some time. I'd heard wonderful things about it and I hoped that it's promised tale of magical fairy tales and a mysterious house called The Hazel Wood would give me a great fantasy tale to lose myself in. I was, unfortunately, going to be disappointed.

This book firstly was just not full of characters I fell in love with, set in contemporary New York setting we follow Alice, a young girl of seventeen whose grandmother has just passed away. Her mother disappears and she is then told that she must stay away from The Hazel Wood. The Hazel Wood is the estate of her deceased grandmother where she lived as a recluse for much of her life, having written a book full of dark and mysterious fairy tales.

I could not click with any of the characters in this novel. They were all written quite superficially and as a result, we never really scratch the surface of their emotions. Alice is quite one dimensional and also we have so many characters coming in and out of the story so quickly that we fail to bond with any.

I DNF'd this one at around 50% of the way through as by this point we hadn't even reached the mysterious Hazel Wood and I was losing the will to live with this book. There was none of the magical fantasy I'd wanted from this book, instead we get a few snatches of some dark tales that Alice's grandmother is said to have written but they are disjointed and don't add much to the narrative. Alice instead comes across as unhinged and slightly mad and it was more a weird Wonderland vibe than a magical dark fairy tale.

I was disappointed by this, however, I am learning this year that I am not gaining anything by plowing through books I don't enjoy. I'd rather cut my losses and move on. I was frustrated not to have the strength to finish this one but this is still very much the exception rather than the norm.

There was a time, before the stories hit the big screen and the secret got out, where a small collection of avid book lovers fell in love with a little character called Harry Potter. Not everyone knew about the secret and when you read the books you got the opportunity to build the Wizarding World in your own imagination before the iconic faces of Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson were assigned to the roles of Harry and Hermione. It was a magical time and one difficult to recreate and yet here I think Jessica Townsend may have done just that.

The Trials of Morrigan Crow, the first in her new series Nevermoor, is a children's fiction novel about 10 year old Morrigan who has been classed as a cursed child for her whole life and held accountable for everything that goes wrong in her home town. Morrigan also lives with the knowledge that on her eleventh birthday she will die because that is just what happens to cursed children. However, on the eve of her 11th birthday a stranger by the name of Jupiter North bursts into her world and helps her cheat death by magicking her away to the mysterious world of Nevermoor.

Nevermoor is a world full of unusual sights and sounds, a huge cat who can talk, a hotel where the rooms adapt to create the room you would love the most, Vampire Dwarf's and a strange society known as the Wundrous Society where each year children compete to join their ranks through completion of 4 unusual magical trials. Morrigan finds herself thrust into the trials for the Wundrous society with the help of her patron Jupiter but the road ahead will not be easy.

This book was something really very special, from the very first chapter it is full of magical innocence. The world Townsend creates in Nevermoor is full of colour and magic and amazing characters that you fall in love with. Morrigan is a wonderful lead character, she is a child who has been devoid of affection and love in her home life but finds warmth and friendship in Nevermoor's colourful characters. Her relationship with her patron Jupiter is one that will be full of mystery but you hold faith with Jupiter's belief in our heroine and his amazing strength to pull her through.

I flew through this book, I couldn't stop reading, each chapter is so full of new discoveries about the world of Nevermoor and gives you plenty of characters to cheer for and those you just distrust and dislike on sight plus with the mysery of the strange Mr Jones who keeps appearing and offering Morrigan a change to form an alliance with his mysterious boss Ezra Squall there is much to engage us plotwise.

Book 2 in this series is scheduled for release later this year and I cannot wait to read it. I have a feeling that like Harry Potter once this reaches the awareness of the general public it has the potential to become iconic.

This book was recommended to me by my mum who kept going on about how it was the best book she had ever read so I decided I'd give it a go after reading through the first chapter of The House At Riverton in a book shop and deciding I liked the authors style of writing.

I absolutely loved the way that the book interweaved the different characters throughout the novel and didn't find it too difficult to get to grips with different chapters being set in different time frames, if anything I found the variety nice and it kept the book moving along building the story beautifully to it's conclusion.

Throughout this book I kept trying to second guess what the authors intended plot was going to be, she continually surprised me and moved the goalposts and I thoroughly enjoyed the way she weaved all the characters together.

I'd seen the TV book club reviewing this and was dead keen to get stuck into it - however, once I began reading I found this book quite difficult to stick with and quite slow paced.

Written in a style whereby alternating chapters follow 2 different stories, one of Erica and Beth, 2 sisters returning to their grandmothers home which they have now inerited and the other following their great grandmother Caroline and her life in turn of the century American Oklahoma territory.

The chapters about Caroline were gipping and well written and I could have read a whole book about these characters. The chapters about the 2 sisters trying to come to terms with the dissapearance of their cousin Henry over 20 years earlier were a bit slow for my liking - by less than 100 pages in I'd already guessed the big reveal that was going to come at the end of the book and found myself skimming these chapters a little because they just didn't grip me.

I was a little dissapointed with this book - it promised a great deal but delivered less than I expected. It could be simply that having read the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo first and it being so jam packed with action that nothing was really going to match up.

After reading Empire of Storms I felt I needed to catch my breath and read a book based in the real world in order to counterbalance all the fantasy I've been reading recently and Far From The Tree had popped up in a great offer in my local bookshop and so I picked it up for a steal!

Contemporary fiction can be a bit of a hit or a miss for me. Sometimes they can really touch you and leave you feeling you've read something really special or they can be too light and fluffy and you kind of wish for more from them. I'd heard lots of people say they had fallen in love with Robin Benway's Far From The Tree and so I hoped this would fall into the first category of an emotional read.

This book is definitely more of a Young Adult read, it follows 3 siblings who have been born to the same birth mother but who have either been adopted by other parents or in the case of Joaquin spent their lives bouncing around the foster and care system. They have never met each other before but when Grace gives birth to a daughter aged 16 and makes the choice to give her to adoptive parents she begins to wonder more about the mother who gave her away and the story she may be hiding. Grace sets out on a journey of self-discovery, firstly tracking down her brother Joaquin and sister Maya and then trying to persuade them to all go in search of their birth mother.

This definitely had it's fair share of emotional moments. Grace's story is wonderful to read and she is instantly likable and you root for her from the outset and give thanks to her adoptive family who are there for her through her pregnancy and the adoption process afterward, supporting her and looking after her.

Similarly, Joaquin is an amazing story to read as he has had a very different upbringing to his two estranged sisters having been passed from foster family to foster family, some okay but others that have scarred him. He is scared of being hurt and rejected and as a result, could be pushing away the one family who will always be there for him.

Rounding out the trio was the character I least bonded with Maya. Maya is the most outspoken, the youngest and probably most spoiled of the 3 siblings. Her adoptive family has some issues and she is part of a family where just after her adoption her parents got the one thing they'd always dreamed of, a biological child of their own. This has always hovered as a cloud for Maya but at times she comes across as a little too centered on herself and she is the one who challenged me as a reader the most. At times I'd want to flick past her chapters but she does have some interesting points of view but she doesn't read as strongly as Grace and Joaquin.

I read this book in just under a day. It was a quick and dirty contemporary. It wasn't as emotional as I'd expected. Some people spoke of tears reading this book, maybe I'm just really hard-hearted but whilst I was touched by the story it didn't resonate with me to that extent. I enjoyed it but couldn't say it was worth more than a 3.5 out of 5 stars for me.

For someone who has never read a James Patterson novel before I read the first women's murder club novel I have to say I am hooked.

Book 4 didn't disappoint, more from the endearing Lyndsey Boxer and her friends - although in this book it was nice to see the format change a little as Lyndsay moved to the little town of Half Moon Bay and the girls features a little less in the storyline.

My only criticism of the book is it seemed that the initial storyline of Lyndsey shooting the two teens seemed to suggest it would be a big feature of the book and it actually petered out to very little consequence - I felt it could have been further brought back in at its conclusion.

Am I absolutely gripped by these books - absolutely and cannot wait to move into number 5. Compared to Dan Browns tedious Inferno this book actually was smoking hot

Cecelia Ahern has always been a bit of a hit or miss author in my view, never quite achieving the heady success of her stand out P.S I Love You. With ‘One Hundred Names' though she may have captured the joy of her earliest work.

Kitty is a journalist who after wrongly accusing a teacher of abuse finds herself jobless and a figure for hate and scorn. She has lost her way personally & professionally and to make it worse her mentor Constance has died of cancer. As a tribute to her friend she agrees to write the one story her friend always wished she'd published. All she has is a list of 100 random names with no apparent connection.

Kitty's journey is not just about the story but one of self discovery and it contains lots of lovely sub plots which intertwine beautifully and whilst seeming to have nothing in common lead us to a very satisfying conclusion. I found it uplifting, a real boost post-christmas and a joy to read. Ahern writes her main character so well the change in her throughout the novel is subtle moving her from being dissatisfied with herself to rediscovering the joy of journalism through the people she meets and the stories they tell. A journey I wouldn't have missed for he world

At long last we have the conclusion to Throne of Glass, a series that has taken us on such a crazy wild and emotional journey over the course of the past 6 books and finally, we have the concluding book which needs to wrap up so many character arcs and delivery a fitting conclusion to Aelin's story.

Throne of Glass has been a series that seems to be falling out of favour a little, I've come across a few people who over the past 2 or 3 books have given up on the series feeling that it has failed to deliver. I think if we as readers are all honest there has been at least one point over the past 6 books where we've questioned if we were ever going to stop having new characters introduced and how on earth all the threads of this world were going to become interlinked. There have been some lows along the way but for me the gripping emotional highs of Sarah J. Maas' writing have always kept me invested in her characters enough that I had to keep going.

Kingdom of Ash is not a book for the faint-hearted, at nearly 1000 pages it is hefty and you have to really invest yourself in this for the long haul. It took me around a week to get through it as you can't rush through, there is so much going on and so many different perspectives to follow that you want to savour them all. Also, because we know as the book progresses that all the threads of the story will come together in what we hope is an epic ending we want to make sure we don't miss any important clues along the way. So it's not a quick read but we get lots of time with all of the characters Maas has built over the series and who her readers have invested their heart and souls into, Manon, Dorian, Elide, Lorcan, Gavriel, Aeidon, Lysandra, Abraxos, Chaol, Yrene, Rowan and of course the magnificent Aelin.

This book is not just an intricate journey it's a highly emotional one too. Being the concluding book in the series and with a huge epic battle on the horizon, we know that not all of our characters are going to be left standing on the final pages. We are sure to lose people along the way as our group battle to save Terrasen from Erawan and Maeve. With this in mind, Maas builds the tension admirably again and again throughout the book. We think everyone is safe, we have a high and a step forward only to have our hopes crushed and danger to glimmer on the horizon. It's a brutal book, there's chapter after chapter of battles against Erawan's dark forces and it's bloody and dark and leaves you with your hopes dashed and praying for miracles.

When the moments come when we say goodbye to characters we've fallen in love with it hits so hard. I don't cry often reading books but Kingdom of Ash had me sobbing, like proper ugly crying. I was heartbroken. It crept up on me not because of the deaths themselves but because of the beautiful way Maas handles the reactions of the remaining characters to their loss. It was beautiful. Emotionally this book left me drained emotionally and yet highly fulfilled.

When I started the book I thought there was no way Maas could possibly bring all of the stories to their conclusion and yet Kingdom of Ash is a triumph, it is everything I wanted from the final book. It has some really touching moments that take us all the way back to book 1 and remind us as readers of the journey some of these characters have been on together, journeys that perhaps over the past few books have diverged from each other but Maas takes time to pull it back to the very beginning and gives lovely nods to the origins of the story. It leaves you feeling that the path we've all trod together through the seven Throne of Glass books was one that will stay with you, that has been something very special and has left these characters imprinted on our hearts.

I am going to miss so many characters from this series. I want to know more, I want to know what all their future stories look like and yet, on the other hand, I don't, sometimes it's nice to have that internal picture as a reader of what you see them doing beyond the close of this book. All I know is that I can see me thinking of the often and fondly and with great love.

My local library managed to get this one for me in the week between Christmas and New Year which was nice timing. The story of Lou, the workaholic father of two who spends his entire life letting his family down as he focus solely on his rise up the corporate ladder started out well. As he gets homeless man, Gabe (Gabriel), a job in his office postroom over the festive period things are all happy and fine. Things start to unravel though when Gabe appears at unexpected times and begins to ferret his way into Lou's life, questioning his choices and generally making him rather paranoid. Until this point all is well with the book.

From there things start to wierd out a little and Gabe becomes more than meets the eye as he provides Lou with a Christmas ‘gift' that will seemingly solve all his problems. But can there ever really be an easy answer to all life's problems?

I liked the start of this book very much, I liked the relationship between Lou and his wife and the chapters when Cecelia wrote about this were inspired and touching however I do feel the book was cut rather short, didn't particularly like the ending and felt that an opportunity to really touch emotions was missed.

Worth reading - yes as a Christmas read - bit pointless at other times of the year but not as good as her previous offerings.

I've been reading A LOT of fantasy this year, full on epic fantasies that are often really lengthy and in-depth and after finishing the mammoth that is The Priory of the Orange Tree I felt the need for a little break, a little bit of contemporary and so I picked up Beartown by Fredrik Backman.

I have heard nothing but amazing things about Backman's books and have been promising myself to get to them but when I saw this on the library shelf I couldn't stop myself from picking it up. I knew a little about its plot, that it was about a hockey-mad small town in the middle of nowhere where a young girl accuses the town's hockey star of rape and the fall out around the events as the town takes sides.

This book was hiding something much more between its pages though, I quickly fell in love with this book because what I found Backman did so well was to be able to introduce a whole myriad of characters from Beartown and make us care about all of them, whether they were a central character or one of those on the periphery. Each and every person lets us into their world and tells us about their world in Beartown and what it means to them and this makes for a powerfully emotional story that feels multi-dimensional and full of amazing relationships.

Through lots of hockey analogies and coaching techniques, we delve into whether or not the town and the hockey team might be to blame for what has happened, whether they have raised the team in the town to believe they are untouchable. We also explore the divide between how boys are treated by the community versus the girls. It's a highly volatile story and one that will prick at the conscience.

I haven't read much contemporary at all over the past year or so, I could count on one hand the number of books of this genre as often I haven't enjoyed them as much but I loved Beartown. I really enjoyed the beautiful writing of Backman and I am now desperately awaiting arrival at my library of the second Beartown book in the series, Us Against You which will allow me a chance to spend more time with all the wonderful residents of this small town.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough and it stands out as one of my favourite books of 2019 so far.

This book has been one of the most highly anticipated spring/summer releases this year, written by Paula Hawkins of The Girl On The Train fame it is her second novel and it's almost as though the literary world is waiting to see can she deliver another smash hit or will it be a case of ‘one trick pony'. I read Girl On The Train fairly quickly after it's release and whilst I enjoyed it I must confess to being surprised that it attracted as much attention as I did and that it made it all the way to movie status. I was therefore intrigued to read Into The Water to give me a second opportunity to assess the writing abilities of this new but very successful author.

This story is set in a small town next to a river and opens when the body of single mother Nel is pulled from the river, with everyone making the assumption it was most likely a suicide. A few months earlier a teenage girl from the town met a similar fate in the same river and questions remain unanswered about her death also. In fact, the river holds many secrets about the different women who have died in it over the years and this book is about their stories and the secrets the town holds about how they met their fate.

We are generally fairly used to thrillers with multiple perspectives, it is a popular format in literary fiction today but Hawkins takes this one stage further. In the first 50 pages of this book, there are literally so many characters introduced that it makes your head spin. None of the stories they are telling link together smoothly it is absolutely a snapshot of their own points of view on Nel's death and whether it was a suicide and about what a controversial character she was in her life and the very differing opinions of her. This multiple to an excess perspective meant that it took me some time to really relax into this book, the first quarter leaves you a little confused, having to check you are beginning to place just who each character is and their links to the others. I imagine that like other lower rated reviews of this book it could be that this writing approach has meant that, like me, you are left actually not really caring what happened to Nel.

As the book progresses past the first quarter you suddenly begin to realise you are becoming more familiar with everyone, you don't need to keep thinking so hard about it and you begin to relax more into the story. You are able to focus more on the history of the town, the dark secrets that it holds and begin to understand that there is much more that needs to be answered about Nel's death. However, one thing that is clear is that this town is particularly disturbed. The secrets that run through it touch everyone in it and there are a lot of stories we touch upon along the way, some which evoke more sympathy than others.

I liked this book, a bit like Girl On The Train I found that the author did pull me through with her short snappy chapters. You'd sit down and say you'd read one more and suddenly you were 5 chapters later and thinking how you got there. Naturally, as this is a mystery novel I don't want to delve too much into the plot for fear of ruining the experience for other readers but I will say that I felt the ending didn't leave me totally fulfilled. Whilst some of the characters stories concluded nicely and we were able to see them beginning to move on, other parts left us with frustrating unresolved issues that niggled.

I have to be honest and say that I think this book is going to be one you will either really love or be like myself a little ambivalent about it. I am not sure that in a few months time it will have stuck with me. I am fairly sure that it will sell many many copies but I would put it on my ‘good but not outstanding shelf'

I must be upfront and declare myself absolutely obsessed with Hamilton the musical, from the first time I heard it I've been hooked and it's helped both me (and my children) learn so much more about the history of the United States and the key figures in its establishment. Coming from the United Kingdom this is something we do not generally cover in our education system and it's been great to learn through a medium so engaging as the music and lyrics of this wonderful show. Of course, one of my favourite relationships in the show is that of Alexander Hamilton and his wife Elizabeth Schuyler and when I saw this book it immediately caught my attention.

Melissa de la Cruz has been known for writing Young Adult books for a while and previously has penned the novels that accompany the Disney Descendants franchise. For me this nearly put me off this book altogether as I wasn't quite sure I wanted someone to take the Hamilton romance and simply translate it from stage to page and add a lot of Young Adult sugar coating on top. I didn't want it to taint my enjoyment of the love story because it was being dumbed down for a younger audience.

You can imagine my surprise therefore when I found this novel to be written in a style that immediately pitches itself as both intelligent and informed. This is not simply someone who has seen the show and decided to further romanticise the story. Instead, there has been significant research into the Schuyler family and the relationships between Eliza and her two sisters Angelica and Peggy. There is not simply an exact copy of the chain of events portrayed in the musical but instead, this story of Alex and Eliza's love takes us through several years where initially they didn't find it easy to like one another and events surrounding the war threatened to see Eliza dislike Colonel Alexander Hamilton quite significantly.

In this story, we find that rather than being the meek and somewhat giddy character she can appear in the show Eliza was hugely involved in the war effort, proactive and greatly intelligent. Her two sisters are instead the more vivacious characters who found it easier to mingle in the society their station raised them to

The only disappointment I had with this book was that once we reached the Happy Ever After moment when Eliza marries Alexander the story comes to its close, now fans of the show will know that this was very much only the beginning of their story and that there is much still to tell. I had hoped a little glimpse into this and felt that I could have cheerfully kept reading for another 200 or so pages. I wanted to know about the raising of their family, their changing relationship and the challenges they faced as Alexander grew more involved in the establishment of the new United States of America.

This book was much much better than I had anticipated, I flew through it in only 2 days and I would recommend it to any fans of the musical. It's not simply a cliched retelling but an intelligent and well-written novel which enhanced my understanding of a romance which took place against the backdrop of huge change and revolution.

Kingdom of Brass is a book I've heard only good things about this year and I've really enjoyed books based in the more Arabian style settings since I was young. There is something really exotic and magical about the Egyptian feel and desert sands that make you feel you are truly escaping to a mystical land and City of Brass brings all of these elements together to give us a book filled with magic, folk tales, tribal histories and politics.

It took me ages to read City of Brass but this was absolutely not a reflection on the book, I had to put it down for a while in order to read some short loan new release books that had arrived at my local library but even taking a few weeks break I was still able to pick right back up about 30% of the way through and immerse myself back in the beautiful writing of S. A. Chakraborty because the story is utterly engaging and full of so many different threads.

Starting out in Cairo we follow Nahri, a thief and con artist who is trying to survive on her wits and a gift of healing. Unintentionally she summons a Djinn called Dara who arrives to save her from the magical Ifrit who magically appear and try to kill her. Before she knows it she is off on a flying carpet with the strangely attractive and mysterious Dara who tells her to escape the Ifrit she must go with him He tells her she is part of the Daeva tribe known as the Nahid tribe who used to rule over the Daeva people in the city of Daevebad, her people are now extinct having been hunted to extinction by the current ruling family and that he plans to take her there so she can give hope to her people and hopefully lay claim to her home.

Running alongside Nahri's story we have that of Prince Alizyad, the second son of the current King of Daevabad. He is struggling with the inequalities he sees around him and how the pureblooded Daeva people treat those of mixed blood, known as the Shafit. The Shafit are treated as second class citizens and have children stolen from the or women sold into prostitution. He is determined to try and help change things in his homeland but to do so he must go against the laws of his father and betray his family.

This story is one rich with political intrigue. There are lots of times when we are treated to information about the origins of our current political state in Daevabad, the wars that were fought that brought an end to the rule of the Nahid family and how the Shafit people have come to exist and how our current King has begun with good intentions to help them but now is reneging on those promises. I found this made it a really immersive book, I loved building this exotic and complex world in my mind and liked having the detail about how we got to where we are. It built slowly and even at the end of City of Brass there are still unanswered questions about aspects of the past we know we need to uncover that this gives us a real hunger for book 2, Kingdom of Copper which is due for release in 2019. I did get a little confused at points with Daeva v's Djinn and some of the different tribal alliances but I'd keep reading a little more and most times things would iron themselves out.

This was also a book where we have wonderful alliances forming and reforming throughout. We begin with Nahri's blossoming friendship with Dara and then as the book progresses we watch as she meets Prince Ali and gets to spend time with him and learn more about Daevebad and his family, despite knowing that his family overthrew her own Nahid tribe years before. There is lots going on and we have a really good triangle between these 3 and I loved both Dara and Ali and couldn't decide which one I wanted to cheer for as both gave a different perspective to the world in which Nahri finds herself and with this book you are never quite sure of the evil lurking from the past which is greater.

An amazing ending with this book, there's so much for us to explore when we get Kingdom of Copper next year. We get a cliffhanger ending with real mystery as to who a particular character might be and whether Nahri might actually be the last surviving member of her family. I am really excited to get the second installment in this series.

Absolutely deserving of a 5 out of 5 stars from me and definitely a contender for one of my best books of 2018.

Book lovers will know that feeling you get when you read a very special book, that breathlessness as it leaves you just fulfilled and emotional and often a little heartbroken that it is over. It has been a little while since I've had a book that has touched me quite as much as The Last Namsara did.

I am such a lover of Fantasy as a genre and this book had it all for me, dragons, royal and political intrigue, people fighting for their right to rise and be free, romance and intense friendships. The blurb on the book hinted at what was inside but it couldn't even scratch the surface of the amazing story that would unfold within its pages.

The story of Asha, daughter of the dragon queen, she has always been known as the Iskari the King's dragon slayer. Since dragons turned against her people it has been her job to lure them and kill them. She uses the forbidden old stories that are outlawed to lure them and no one must find out that she still tells the old stories. She is betrothed to her father's commandant of his armies a cruel and vicious man who everyone lives in fear of, she has only days till her wedding and no sign of escape until her father tells her that the oldest dragon of all has returned and if she can kill him it will break the promise of betrothal and give her freedom from her fiance.

As Asha fights to gain her freedom she meets a slave boy who will change her world. He will help her to learn things about herself and her destiny she never thought possible. He will lead her into an uprising by the slave people and show her a world she never could have imagined.

This book truly gripped me from the outset. The characters are incredible. Asha is wonderful to read from the perspective of, she is fierce and loyal and at the start of the book very driven by the rules and status she follows in her home. Throughout though she takes all of the twists and turns that are thrown at her and grows so much and rises to meet those challenges in a strong, brave and intelligent manner. The book itself is full of amazing characters, some of which we get only small glimpses of in this novel but which I'm sure we are going to get to see much more of in the second book in this series The Caged Queen.

The format of this book really worked for me, you'd get a few chapters of the action of the story then it would break away to tell one of the old forbidden stories of Asha's people and through these we learn a huge amount about the history of the world and the political landscape and how we arrived at the current state of play. It helps to outline Asha's history and relatives and helps to build the world immensely for the reader. These were some of my favourite parts of the book.

This book has a setting which to me felt reminiscent of Arabian Nights. It was full of Eastern culture and references and I love that setting so it also helped me to fall in love with this book. The thing that got me most of all though was the dragons. Oh my, those dragons. They were incredible. I loved them so much. The way that they are used to help Asha's character to develop and grow and the way they communicated with her and became part of her story was beautiful to read. There is a bit at the end of the book that just rips your heart out and Kristen Ciccarelli leaves you weeping as a reader. It was beautiful.

I am so blown away by this book. It has built the world that we are clearly going to split wide open in Book 2, we have many players on the board we as readers are emotionally invested in and I am so excited so see where we go next. The twist on the ending of this book was one I didn't see coming and now we know Asha's future and that she still has much to do to fulfil her destiny means this is absolutely one of the must read sequels for me and this has just become my absolute favourite book of this year so far.

This book has been such a phenomenon in the last year but strangely it has been mostly on the shores of the USA, in the UK I've heard fewer people talking about it and as a result as much as I waited and waited for my local library to get a copy it still remains elusive on the shelves. Finally, I decided I couldn't wait any longer and decided to go ebook on this one and I am so glad I did. It's one of those wonderful times when a books hype totally lives up to and exceeds your expectations.

Taylor Jenkins Reid gives us a sizzling tale of old Hollywood glamour as we follow ageing Hollywood movie star Evelyn Hugo as she approaches the age of 80, finally ready to share all on her life and seven marriages she asks for a young and unknown journalist to come and interview her in a tell-all exclusive. Through their time together Evelyn lifts the lid on her journey from Hell's Kitchen to Los Angeles and the things she did to climb the ladder of success in the movie business. From the days of the old studios who ruled the world to the modern world of movie making.

The character writing by Taylor Jenkins Reid in this book is exceptional. Her lead character of Evelyn Hugo itself is a complex one as she paints her as a woman happy to do whatever is needed to reach the top, even sleeping her way there but yet she is also a character for whom we feel immense compassion and respect and by the end of the novel it takes a while to remember that she is only a character in a book and not go running off to Wiki her online. The different marriages we are taken through in her own voice are each complex and fascinating to read about but it is the things that we don't expect about this book and that I won't disclose her for spoiler reasons that make it something truly magnificent.

I have been reading all fantasy all the time for some months now and this was a badly needed break and I devoured it. I flew through it because I simply could not put it down. We know that Evelyn's story is wrapped up in that of Monique her interviewer but we aren't sure how and we are teased throughout about how and why she asked the unknown Monique to write her story. It's a twist that when it comes is surprising and yet Taylor Jenkins Reid handles it beautifully and with compassion.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It was a beautiful, evocative and atmospheric story and didn't just make me understand why everyone else loved it but could very well be a book that stays with me for some time to come. A strong and early 2019 read that could very well be a top read of this year.

Having spent quite a bit of time recently reading Fantasy novels I decided to try and take a different turn and squeeze in a little Young Adult Thriller between my Fantasy novels of choice that I have on my To Be Read shelf. Being a child of the 70's I have seen and loved the brat pack movie The Breakfast Club and as I'd heard that One of Us Is Lying by Karen M McManus had somewhat of a vibe of that movie about it as well as a mystery aspect I decided I would give it a try.

This is the story of 5 teens who are sent to after-school detention together. Bronwyn, the high achieving student with an Ivy League future ahead of her. Cooper, the school's baseball star, who is being scouted for the minors and offered lucrative scholarships for when he leaves school. There's Addy, the popular prom princess who has a long-standing relationship with the most popular boy in school. Nate is the delinquent, serving probation for drug charges he's a misfit from a difficult home life who's reputation proceeds him. Finally, there is Simon, the guy who runs the school gossip mill on an online app where he posts rumours about things from pregnancies to who's cheating on who and the scary thing is how accurate these rumours prove to be.

During their time in detention, Simon collapses after a drink of water and dies shortly thereafter after an allergic reaction. Suddenly the police are questioning whether it was an accident, after all the following day's online post Simon was due to release contained damning stories about all of the people who were in the room with Simon at the time. For Addy, Bronwyn, Cooper, and Nate their worlds are thrown into chaos as their secrets are spilled and people begin to question which one of them is responsible for Simon's death.

The premise of this book sounded excellent. It contained enough mystery on the blurb of the book to really grab my attention and so I delved in expecting to be hooked by the story pretty quickly. The story got moving really quickly as we join the story immediately as the said detention begins and we are treated to different character perspectives from the 4 suspects throughout the book as we get narration from them all individually. It doesn't give a long lead into the events of Simon's death and therefore most of the book is focused on the events following the incident as opposed to what happened in the room during Simon's death.

I didn't find myself as hooked in the story as I had anticipated with this book. I liked the characters and found that whilst their relationships with each other were wonderful to read about I truly did not care enough about finding out who had killed Simon to really engage with the story. This is because Simon was a horrible person, truly not a nice guy at all. We find out information about him throughout and read about the effects of his gossip mongering on the people he left behind and it is very difficult to find empathy with him. Had I really cared who did it I think I would have found this more suspenseful but instead I just wanted to shake the hand of the person who put an end to his ongoing destruction of people's lives.

I also didn't find the book built the suspense well at all. It read less as a mystery novel and instead focused more on the teen angst of the 4 suspects and their lives and the dirt that Simon had on them all at the time of his death. It isn't done in a way that leads us to suspect anyone more than another but instead leaves you thinking that these are decent kinds with nothing to hide and you root for them. You don't want to suspect anyone as they are all good at heart and have made mistakes but don't deserve the wrath brought upon them as a result. As the book progressed I began to have an inkling about what had actually happened and therefore the ending did not come as a big shock for me. It kind of made sense in context of the characterisation throughout the book and meant all the loose ends were tied up a little too neatly.

I couldn't say I loved One of Us Is Lying, it was an okay read. I could only give it 3 out of 5 stars though as it lacked a little bit of the real tension that I like in a thriller.

This book immediately captured my imagination when I read that it would focus upon the MMR vaccine and the potential consequences of not vaccinating your children. I have been that parent scared by all the mixed reports on the MMR vaccine and took it so seriously that I arranged separate vaccines for my eldest children and would have done the same for my younger 2 had the UK not stopped providing access to a stand alone mumps vaccine.

This book takes us into the world of Isobel and her husband Eric, who find out whilst on holiday with a group of friends that their eldest child, Gabriella, has measles. Isobel had been worried about the links between the MMR vaccine and autism, driven in part by her experiences of seeing one of her friends deal with the challenges of raising an autistic child, and subsequently her children are all unvaccinated.

The issues begin when Gabriella's contact with Isobel's best friends baby, Iris, leads to her also contracting the disease leading to Iris losing her hearing completely. Suddenly Isobel begins to feel like public enemy number one. Her best friend Ben issues legal proceedings to sue her for the damage caused to Iris' hearing, her own husband seems to blame her for not having vaccinated the children stating that he'd indulged her choice but never agreed with it and all their friends seem to be picking sides.

It was a really interesting plot for a book, I really could empathise with Ben's anger that his ‘perfect' child has been taken away from him and he wants to make someone responsible, even if this meant his character was not always portrayed in the most sympathetic light. I also found the sections where he and his wife Maggie struggled to manage the decision about whether to have cochlear implants for Iris really insightful and it was these parts I found best rather than the constant hand wringing of Isobel trying to come to terms with what had happened as a consequence of her decision, yet she never seemed to take any proactive steps to deal with her choice.

I was never pro MMR but I was always very wary of not vaccinating at all and so I couldn't find sympathy with her choice as she was portrayed as an educated, reasonably affluent woman who had she researched at the time of her children's youth could have vaccinated without risk through single vaccines. The way her character was written she was portrayed as a slightly over bearing and neurotic mother so I found it difficult to think she wouldn't have explored this nor that the author would have taken time to outline why Isobel didn't make this choice.

All in all this book was about acceptance, Ben's acceptance of the daughter he has now versus the perfect child he expected and this was a great part of the book as it seemed by the end we'd reached that point. I had to take stars off though due to the slightly irritating ending which seemed to simply set the book right back to the start. It was infuriating not to follow it through further and leave the reader hanging and defeated for me the strength of the acceptance theme in the book by bringing it back to our shortcomings as humans and parents.

It was an okay read, my first by this author and it's subject matter sounded great but for me it's tendency to remain quite superficial let it down.

My husband has always been a huge Michael J Fox fan but is not a reader so his copy of Lucky Man has been read only once - by me and I really enjoyed it and found Michael J Fox to be a hugely entertaining, warm and very funny person who was happy to honestly reveal his faults and mistakes.

Therefore when I saw he had released a second book I immediately requested it and looked forward to reading it. This time around he splits the book into 4 sections looking at the things in life that have kept him positive since his Parkinsons diagnosis over a decade ago - family, politics, faith and his foundation. In each section we gain a glimpse behind a man who has had to redefine his persona over the years as he was forced to give up his acting career due to his illness and how he coped with the huge loss this left in his life.

An outstanding writer he is very entertaining, made me laugh out loud on several ocassions, was incredibly thought provoking about some of the issues surrounding stem cell research and also very gracious about some people who have directly hit out at him in the past few years as he tries to make progress towards a cure for Parkinsons Disease.

Absolutely inspired reading, I flew through this book and came away from it feeling that I'd learned something without having been preached to and with a new respect for Michael J Fox's ability to never give up.