Hannah Morgan-Lewis

Not bad, although not exactly a popular social history type book. This is mainly an architectural survey of the period with some social history thrown in. I wouldn't say it is as accessible as some books covering the period, and as some reviewers have noted it does seem to list quite a few people at the beginning. I think it's worth persevering though, as I found it an interesting survey with some well chosen illustrations. I haven't read the Kindle version, but I would imagine it would be better to read this in the original hardcover considering the illustrations.

Great plot and I really liked the way that the author handled the alternative history. I think that the thing I really liked about it was the way that Sansom portrays ordinary people coping with extra-ordinary situations. The characters are realistically portrayed, flaws and all, suffering the same kind of doubts that anybody would.

Took a while to get going but overall I enjoyed it. Once the plot got going, it improved and I will probably read the rest of the books in the series at some point, although I'm not that much in a hurry. Interesting to compare it to the series, I think that the book may have been let down by centring the evil on Lynne who tended to come across as a bit, well, generic bad guy who has no real redeeming features, and her husband barely gets a mention. Malcolm, on the other hand is a bit ‘meh', okay, he becomes slightly more rounded once you realise that he's not all good, but he still doesn't overflow with character. The others are a bit more interesting, particularly the paranormal characters. The extract from the next book looked promising though.

Don unfortunately does not have the capacity to do justice to this story, and the resulting book is a bit of a mess in my opinion. The writing doesn't flow that smoothly in either the first part (the history of Solange, Scarlett's maternal grandmother) or the second part (narrated by Ruth in dialect. Both are confusing and I found the book difficult to follow.I found the pacing poor in that the writer seemed to concentrate on certain parts of the story (particularly Solange's story) in great detail but then skip over large parts. I wanted to know more about Ellen but that seemed a bit beyond him.
The characters come across as being rather one dimensional and despite the sheer amount of tragedy the book encompasses it is curiously unemotional - deaths just sort of happen and are skipped over without much of a pause, inconvenient characters suddenly die and Ruth pops up all over America meeting everyone vaguely connected to GWTW (the Butler family do not need to be in it just to explain her taking a dislike to Rhett, as far as Mammy in GWTW is concerned, if she dislikes him it's because she knows he's got a bad reputation and a habit of leading Scarlett astray, I don't think we need a big back story about how his father killed her husband).Don certainly doesn't get inside anyone's head either. Ruth loses pretty much all the people that she loves in tragic ways but just sort of gets over it. I understand that as a slave she wouldn't have had much of an opportunity to grieve but give the reader something to work with.
Finally, I don't think it works particularly well as a spin-off from GWTW. I didn't mind Rhett Butler's People but I don't think that many of the characters in this book behave in the way that either I imagined them to or how the society of the time would have let them behave - as far as Scarlett dressing up as a boy riding all over the countryside is concerned, I think she would have either ended up assaulted or have developed such a reputation that no-one would have gone near her and all that stuff about Ashley just staying inside reading was a bit out of character too - part of the reason he is so admired by society in GWTW is that he's clever and accomplished at all the manly pursuits like hunting and riding. He can be a bit wet in GWTW but I don't think the Scarlett of Ruth's Journey would have looked twice at the wet blanket that is the Ashley of Ruth's Journey. Anyway, this would have been a good idea but it is disappointingly executed.

Really interesting and well-told history of the Fitzwilliam family and the village of Wentworth. Not just illuminating about the house and the family, the book also goes into detail in particular about the lives of the miners who supported the family's wealth and status.

This is quite an odd book and it is difficult to interpret both the author's intentions and the motives of Mabel, the first person narrator. The whole book is from the point of view of the ugly duckling Mabel who becomes friends with the glamorous Ev and her family. As I grew more and more frustrated with the utterly self-obsessed Mabel I began to wonder if the author was portraying her as an unreliable narrator and if we are supposed to dislike her? She certainly turns out just as unlikable as any of the family she exposes. Everything she discovers is pointed out in VERY BIG LETTERS, particularly the incest, like the readers are unable to draw their own conclusions. Birch is flagged up as a bad guy from half-way through the novel by his cruelty to the dog, from there he is only a tiptoe away from becoming a Nazi Art looting father of incestuous children.
Anyway, the first half increasingly reads like a YA novel about the relationships between the young people, and I got increasingly impatient for the mystery element, as all Mabel seemed to be doing was mooning over Ev and Galway (was it me or did he just seemed to be sort of tagged randomly with Mabel? All of a sudden he showed up and fell in love with her even though they had nothing in common other than her creepy obsession with his family?). The second half veers into overblown Gothic with the discovery of the incest, art looting and the murder, up until the horrible end where Mabel marries rescues Lu, marries Galway and the bad guy drowns. It just seems a bit, well, preposterous that everything get tied up so neatly and Mable ‘wins' becoming part of the Winslow family.
I think I judged this harshly because with all the Paradise Lost references and some of the techniques she used such as deliberately obscuring the time setting, I was expecting this to be a bit more literary. As it was, I found it quite frustrating to read.

A really great idea for a book, executed brilliantly. This is the kind of book you could read in chunks but I read it quickly. The writing was lively, it was interesting & the illustrations were well chosen.

Mostly when I read books I have some sort of idea where the author is going and what point they are trying to make, but not with this book. It just seems to meander on and on. I felt I had to finish it but was left with a disapointing sense of ‘Is this really it?' I don't have a problem with depressing books or emotionally scarred protagonists but I didn't really find this book had much of an emotional resonance, perhaps because I found the narrator quite annoying, particularly with the ham-fisted philosophy. Theo didn't develop as a character, he just seemed to stay 13 in my head, probably because of all the drug taking. It ended up feeling a bit like reading a rather pretentious YA novel with added drug addiction.

Very odd but enthralling, I think this would make a great film. Arthur and his fiance are pursued by the grotesque occultist Oliver Haddon who vows revenge on them after Arthur hits him. It's a short read but with some great characters.

I loved this historical gothic mystery set in Wales. I found the mystery a complete page-turner with all sorts of classic gothic elements included. The characters were well-observed, particularly Henry, the doctor who stumbles into the mystery, and Linette, the daughter of the house where he goes to work. I also really appreciated how the author writes so lovingly about Wales; its landscape, people, language and folklore. I will definitely be looking up her other work.

Tooth achingly sweet, two characters who just always do and say the right thing. I wasn't particularly interested in the teenage son's dramas and the ex-wife just got blamed for everything then conveniently disappeared at the end. Even the sex was so damn polite and nice

I don't give up on a book often, but this “biography” is terrible. Says more about the author than the subject. Mailer analysis the work of some other misogynist biographies and produces an over-written, hyperbolic, patronising book about Marilyn. I haven't read anything that has made me this angry in a while!

I thought the writing style and the use of Austen's characters was fine, but it never really gripped me and the pace was patchy at times. Although Darcy looks into the crime, I'm not sure that he could really be called a detective as such, considering the way that the book turns out. There are great chunks of novel devoted to the legal system of the time, which although interesting did slow the plot down somewhat.

Not as Gothic as I was lead to believe from the description, Anya Seton weaves some Gothic elements such as the brooding mansion into more of a straightforward historical romance novel describing how tenant farmers rebelled against landowners as the heroine is swept off her feet by the brooding landowner. The historical parts are quite interesting and the depictions of Nicholas and Miranda seemed well handled. It reminded me a little of GWTW crossed with Rebecca. A little dated, but the plot moves along nicely and it was an enjoyable holiday read.

A history book that uses recently released sources to lay conspiracy theories about the survival of the Romanov family to rest. This is obviously well researched with a full bibliography of sources at the back, and is filled with a surprising number of illustrations for a short book. Cook goes into a great deal of detail about the last few months of the family.

However, I did have reservations about the book. Whilst there is a bibliography of sources divided into themes, I found it strange that there were no proper footnotes or endnotes. Whilst I don't always read all the footnotes, I suppose I find it reassuring to know exactly where the historian has found their information and to tell what angle they are taking with it. Also, I thought this lacked analysis. Most of the book was taken up with the description of what had happened, a small chapter at the end described what was in the newly released documents, then the rest was taken up with the original sources. I felt like I might as well just read the sources direct. The lack of analysis made the history somewhat dry and overall I found this quite an odd book.

It's always interested seeing what Powers will make of a literary biography, and I enjoyed this spin on the life of the Brontes. Emily takes centre stage, but this is about Bramwell too. Plenty of gothic elements including werewolves, ghosts, curses and a cult. It was atmospheric and I thought it was decently written but didn't particularly have anything that new to say about the family, especially the petulant Bramwell. Emily was far more interestingly written as a character.

Glad to have finally finished. It was okaaay, but I found the characters rather irritating.

Think I was one of the few people who started this book having somehow missed that it was based on Oedipus Rex (what can I say, I'm not quite with it at the moment), so it was a bit of a surprise when I got to the patricide and finally twigged. So the central premise of the book was somebody else's plot that we already know, but that didn't detract from the characters, particularly Diane, who was wonderfully flawed. I think I got the sense that we knew more about her than about Ed, somehow there was a sense (deliberate I think) of never quite knowing Ed. Although the three main characters were somewhat unpleasant, they were never completely dis-likable.
Having read some other reviews, I've seen that some people found Guterson inserting himself into the book in the form of a pilot who is obsessed with anagrams to be an irritatingly affected literary device. I can't say I found it more annoying than Coupland appearing in JPod, and I quite liked Guido the annoying pilot.
It gets three stars instead of four because, whilst I found it well-written and diverting, I don't think it will stay with me for very long, nor do I think I would want to re-read it in the future. I may, however, have a look at some of the author's other books.

Okay, so it was clever. Quite readable (though I could definitely put it down frequently). But at the same time somehow quite annoying. As another reviewer commented, it's like Ben Elton without the jokes, and with an extra helping of smug on the top. I got bored of the rants about modern life - how people are disconnected from real life, how the education system is failing and the endless stuff about hedge funds and banking. Also, I couldn't find it in myself to like or care about the characters, I felt like they were more generalisations than anything. Perhaps this is what Faulks wanted, yet another comment on how self-centered and stereotypical we've all become. Add the re-occurring ‘mysterious' bicyclist and it adds up to quite a disappointing book.

Enjoyable historical novel, it seemed well researched and well written. The characters were engaging, particularly the women, although I thought that Francesca was a bit wet at times.

Not sure if I am being a bit harsh, think I'd give it more of a 2.5. It was okay but I don't think it will be staying with me for that long and I found it quite hard to concentrate on, kept having to read over parts I'd already read. Depiction of the heroine and the first person narration was alright, but she wasn't that appealing. In fact, none of the characters were that appealing or memorable. I thought the ending was a bit strange, particularly the sudden romance. And I have to say, considering the book was written by a historian it didn't really read as completely authentic. I'm not calling myself an expert, I've just read quite a lot of books either set in the period or written in the period. Just little details like somebody talking about the Scarlet Pimpernel (fictional character from a series of books which were published in 1905 appearing in a 19th century novel?), or having a bath with taps in a brothel in 1820? It sort of reminded me of a 99p Kindle novel.

I loved A Discovery of Witches but had to drag myself through a lot of this one. The middle bit was particularly dull with the wedding and her integrating herself into Elizabethan society, and that took me ages to get through. I originally liked the book because I found it different and quite intelligent, but this one reminded me a bit too much of middle-aged Twilight. It has the aspects that I particularly disliked like the sudden amazing ability to become pregnant and the obsession with no sex before marriage. Thankfully, Diana hasn't become quite as irritating as Bella (yet). I don't really have a problem with people playing around with vampires, but I think there should be some sort of downside to it, not that everything is wonderful and the couple are just so amazing they defy the very laws of nature so that the author can make life absolutely perfect for them in time. I didn't like the bit where he took her blood to ‘discover all her secrets' either, that was a bit creepy and controlling.
Anyway, hopefully the final book will be better and it'll get back to the manuscripts and less about the romance and their dull family life.

The writing is beautiful, but I had trouble getting into it. I think if I read it another time it would've made more sense, I just don't have the concentration at the moment.

Less irritating than the first book due to less use of reported speech, so an extra star for that. Rosnia got short shrift as a character, I think maybe Fay dislikes writing about her? Her romance is completely sketched over. The portrayal of parties with the Royal family (Isobel advising the Queen about what crown to have) and a subplot about clairvoyancy were a bit well...ridiculous, but entertaining. I found Mrs. Baum the Zionist scientist far more interesting. Don't read if you want realistic anachronism free historical fiction.

So Lawrence is obsessed with female sexuality? So he uses quite lurid prose to describe how we should run off and find a penis to worship? I am not sure if I'm supposed to like him or revile him, all I know is I both enjoy his writing and find it frustrating at the same time, and wherever I become too frustrated I have to remind myself of what he was trying to achieve, a state whereby men and particularly women could be honest about their sexuality. Yvette, the heroine, may come across as being hopelessly naive and downright annoying at times, but I still enjoyed reading this and found it quite powerful in places. The ending was rather abrupt though, but I suppose that is to be expected from a novella.