After such a great debut I was really looking forward to reading Rónán’s follow up and was lucky enough to get sent a copy from Bluemoose Books to read and review. During a year where we are all just feeling raw, as though our nerve endings feel exposed to the world there is a great …
Book Review
Murder Most Unladylike
Just before Christmas (a couple of years back) we found out that Robin Stevens was coming to one of our local schools to talk to the pupils about her books and writing mysteries, have to say I jumped at the chance to organise something to support the schools librarian and the school (but also to …
Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain
Before I started working as a bookseller for Waterstones I would never have contemplated reading a book such as Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain. I would have looked at the blurb and thought ‘why would I want to read a story about real lives intertwining?’ I was far more interested in magic, dragons, …
Still Water: The Deep Life of the Pond
I was given Still Water: The Deep Life of the Pond as it is well known that I love a well written book on nature and the idea of rewilding. I had previously read Meadowland by the same author and really enjoyed the style of John Lewis-Stempel’s writing, so relaxed and almost poetic in his …
Mudlarking
I’ve always been fascinated by finding things on the shoreline whether they be old things discarded by humans, natural objects shaped by the sea, or evidence of past life in the form of fossils. When the opportunity came along to get a copy of Mudlarking I jumped at it. I’ve heard the name a lot …
My Sister, the Serial Killer
I’m not usually a thriller/crime reader but I was persuaded to read this as I was told the audiobook was excellent and since I was walking a lot right now during furlough why not give it a try? I used the library service to download it, RB Digital, and the system was really easy to …
The Goldfish Boy
Matthew is the last person to see Teddy before Teddy goes missing, can Matthew solve the mystery of the disappearance? Only one major difficulty stands in Matthew’s way to do this, Matthew has O.C.D. which makes it near impossible for him to leave his room and interact with people. Lisa Thompson writes a compelling and …
Dead Girls
How do you review a book so hauntingly horrific dealing with such a violent subject, do we talk about content, writing style, translation, presentation? I think we should just start at the beginning, what is the book about? In essence it is about the killings of three young women in Argentina during the 80s. Andrea …
Famished
Famished is the second book centred around food that I’ve read this month, though this one couldn’t be more different from the other, a tantalising collection of short stories with a central theme of food/eating/feasting/consuming. I was given an advanced reading copy by Influx Press to review, and I was really pleased as I had …
Hungry
I was lucky enough to get an advanced reading copy of Hungry from Hachette and was so pleased when it arrived almost the next day. It was going to be my whole reading for a whole weekend and I was going to savour it to the full, taking bite-sized reads throughout the weekend, but that …
Sisters
Just having finished Fen I was delighted to see that Sisters was up for request on NetGalley. I loved Daisy Johnson’s writing style in Fen, the giver of secrets and revealer of ancient mythologies. This continues in Sisters, on the surface a story of an intense sibling relationship and of modern calamities. September is the …
Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World
I asked for a reading copy of this as I was intrigued by the cover art work, it looked so beautiful. I am also highly interested in shining a light on women that have been hidden from history, either through the roles that they were allowed to have in society and/or by the conscious actions …