19 Jul 2019

Book Review / Concerto by Hannah Fielding

When Catriona Drouot, a young music therapist, honours an opera diva's dying request to help her son, Umberto Monteverdi, recover his musical gift, she knows it will be a difficult assignment. She had shared a night of passion with the once-celebrated composer ten years before, with unexpected consequences.

The extent of her challenge becomes apparent when she arrives at her client's estate on the glittering shores of Lake Como, Italy. Robbed of his sight by a nearfatal car accident, the man is arrogant, embittered and resistant to her every effort to help him. Still, Catriona sings a siren's call within him that he cannot ignore.

Caught up in the tempestuous intrigues at Umberto's Palladian mansion, Catriona discovers that her attraction to the blind musician is as powerful as ever. How can she share what she has hidden from him for the past decade? Soon she realises that hers is not the only secret that is rippling uneasily below the surface. Dark forces haunt the sightless composer, threatening his life - for the second time.

Concerto is a sensual and romantic story of lost love and forgiveness, destiny and difficult choices, and of a heroine determined to put things right at last.


Published:     1st August 2019
Publisher:  London Wall Publishing
Goodreads :  Click here
Series or Stand-Alone:  Stand-Alone
Source:  Review Copy from Author




MY REVIEW

Words almost escape me with how beautiful this story was.

We follow Catriona Drouot in two different time lines.  We have the past where she is a young woman living with her mother with dreams of being an opera singer.  It is then where she meets Umberto Monteverdi, who is a world famous musician.  They have a whirlwind romance of a matter of days, I believe, where it ends with Umberto having to leave to follow his career and Catriona left broken hearted.

We also have the present day, where Catriona is a music therapist.  She is approached by Umberto's mother to ask for her help.  It is then that she learns that Umberto has been left blind after an accident and has not taken it well.  After a little time to think, Catriona decides to help Umberto and that is where the story really begins.

What I loved the most was the romance, both in the past and in the present day. I was certainly rooting for them when they first met but it seemed that from the first moment they met again that they were destined to be together.

Along with the above, you also have a mystery.  Many years before, at Umberto's mansion at Lake something happened to one of Umberto's girlfriends, who had new discovered she was pregnant.  Although this is a smaller aspect of the story to start with it does come back into play later in with a very important plot twist.

A truly wonderful, romantic story that will sweep you away... 






18 Jul 2019

Book Review / Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander

An approved textbook at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry since publication, Newt Scamander's masterpiece has entertained wizarding families through the generations. 

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is an indispensable introduction to the magical beasts of the Wizarding World. Scamander's years of travel and research have created a tome of unparalleled importance. Some of the beasts will be familiar to readers of the Harry Potter books - the Hippogriff, the Basilisk, the Hungarian Horntail ... Others will surprise even the most ardent amateur Magizoologist. This is an essential companion to the Harry Potter stories, and includes a new foreword from J.K. Rowling (writing as Newt Scamander) and six new beasts!








Published:     1st June 2001
Publisher:  Arthur A Levine Books
Goodreads :  Click here
Series or Stand-Alone:  Part of the Hogwarts Library, Harry Potter
Source:  Owned



MY REVIEW

This was such a fun read.  I decided to pick this up as an audio book partly because I thought that would be more entertaining and partly because the copy that I purchased was read by Eddy Redmayne, who played Newt Scamander in the movie adaptation.  

This copy of Fantastic Beasts was more of an encyclopedia of exactly what the title says it is - Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.  Normally, I would not have found that very interesting to read but listening to it and having it been told by Eddy Redmayne just made it come to life for me, interesting and very funny in places also.  

Such an enjoyable quick read that I would highly recommend picking up the audio version. 

17 Jul 2019

Book Review / The Spider Dance by Nick Setchfield

To avoid spoilers, below is the description for The War in the Dark, which is the first book in the series.

A genre-defying page turner that fuses thriller and speculative fiction with dark fantasy in a hidden world in the heart of Cold War Europe.

Europe. 1963. And the true Cold War is fought on the borders of this world, at the edges of the light.

When the assassination of a traitor trading with the enemy goes terribly wrong, British Intelligence agent Christopher Winter must flee London. In a tense alliance with a lethal, mysterious woman named Karina Lazarova, he's caught in a quest for hidden knowledge from centuries before, an occult secret written in a language of fire. A secret that will give supremacy to the nation that possesses it.

Racing against the Russians, the chase takes them from the demon-haunted Hungarian border to treasure-laden tunnels beneath Berlin, from an impossible house in Vienna to a bomb-blasted ruin in Bavaria where something unholy waits, born of the power of white fire and black glass . . .

It's a world of treachery, blood and magic. A world at war in the dark.


Published:     UK Release 16th July 2019
Publisher:  Titan Books
Goodreads :  Click here
Series or Stand-Alone:  Book 2

Source:  Review Copy from Publisher


MY REVIEW

What an interesting second book in the series.   We are back with Christopher Winter but this time he knows a bit more about his history.  There are many twists and turns in this story, some I have to admit I was expecting but there were one or two that took my by surprise and I loved that! 

I always find it hard to put a full description of what happened in a second book in a series as I don't want to spoil the story for those who have not read it yet, but I am thoroughly enjoying this series - I am hoping this is going to be a series rather than just a duology!  For me, this was fast paced and action packed, along the same pace as the first book, The War in the Dark.   This is a great mix of mystery, thriller, action, supernatural-ish and something that I just can't put my finger on but I am sure there are many more genres mixed into this that I didn't realise at the time!

Would highly recommend picking this up but maybe read the first book in the series up first (The War in the Dark) so you can get the bigger picture of the story, in particular the back story of the main character Christopher Winter, before delving into this one. 

16 Jul 2019

Book Review / The Weight of a Thousand Feathers by Brian Conaghan



Child experts will tell you that I'm way too young to carry such a burden of responsibility on my tender shoulders. But really, what do they know?' Who is Bobby Seed? He's just your average sixteen-year-old - same wants, same fears, same hang-ups. Dull, dull, dull. But then there's the Bobby Seed who's a world away from average. 

The Bobby Seed who has to wipe his mum's backside, sponge her clean three times a week, try to soothe her pain. The Bobby Seed whose job it is to provide for his younger brother, Danny, to rub his back when he's stressed and can only groan and rock instead of speak. That's Bobby Seed. Same, same, same, yet different, different, different ...









Published:     14th June 2018
Publisher:  Bloomsbury
Goodreads :  Click here
Series or Stand-Alone:  Stand-Alone

Source:  Review Copy from Publisher


MY REVIEW

Simply put, this book blew me away.

We follow Bobby Seed who is the main carer for both his brother who is, I believe, autistic, and his mother who has MS.  For a teenager to take on such responsibility, I would expect that person to fall apart or break in some way.  Bobby Seed was made of stronger stuff. He is strong for his mother and brother, he takes care of the home and his family and also goes to school.  That is a lot for any person to take on, let alone a sixteen year old.  This change for Bobby when he starts to attend a therapy group to help him cope with what is happening in his life.  There, he discovers more about himself and even makes friends.

What I liked the most about this book was that it did not glorify any of the issues that you come across, it simply shows what Bobby does in each and every circumstance.  It may not always be the best choice but it shows what he chooses and explains why.  

This book really is an emotional rollercoaster and a very important book that should be read by everyone, especially for those who are going through similar circumstances. 








14 Jul 2019

Book Review / The War in the Dark by Nick Setchfield

A genre-defying page turner that fuses thriller and speculative fiction with dark fantasy in a hidden world in the heart of Cold War Europe.

Europe. 1963. And the true Cold War is fought on the borders of this world, at the edges of the light.

When the assassination of a traitor trading with the enemy goes terribly wrong, British Intelligence agent Christopher Winter must flee London. In a tense alliance with a lethal, mysterious woman named Karina Lazarova, he's caught in a quest for hidden knowledge from centuries before, an occult secret written in a language of fire. A secret that will give supremacy to the nation that possesses it.

Racing against the Russians, the chase takes them from the demon-haunted Hungarian border to treasure-laden tunnels beneath Berlin, from an impossible house in Vienna to a bomb-blasted ruin in Bavaria where something unholy waits, born of the power of white fire and black glass . . .

It's a world of treachery, blood and magic. A world at war in the dark.



Published:     17th July 2018
Publisher:  Titan Books
Goodreads :  Click here
Series or Stand-Alone:  Book 1  

(although Goodreads does not say this is part of a series, it is)
Source:  Review Copy from Publisher



MY REVIEW

I can probably say with about 99% accuracy that I have never read a book quite like this one before.  It has a great mix of history, suspense and the supernatural.  I can sometimes find that picking up a book that is purely historical can be a bit dull but with this story adding in the suspense and a bit of the paranormal, it takes this story to a whole new level! 

We follow Christopher Winter in this story.  At the start, you don't really know that much about this character and, to be honest, I don't think he knew much about himself at that time.  There are secrets to discover in this book and even more that Christopher has to find out both in the story and about himself.  There is a very interesting twist nearer the end of this story that I really wasn't expecting but gave a whole new meaning to the story and the main character.  This is the part that I liked the most about this story, secrets and history, and I get the feeling that there will be a lot more to come in the next book!

This was such a fun read, if you can call such a dark and suspenseful novel fun!  I am very intrigued to pick up the next book. 



8 Jul 2019

Guest Post / LF Robertson (Author of Next of Kin) - Everything New Is Old Again: Getting Inspired by Folk Tale

 


The third novel by L.F. Robertson, starring death row attorney Janet Moodie.

Janet Moodie, death-row attorney, is hired to work on the appeal of Sunny Ferrante, a glamorous woman who has been sentenced to death for arranging the murder of her wealthy husband. As Janet delves into the case, she becomes sure that that Sunny is innocent. But Sunny is hiding something. Who is she protecting--and is she really prepared to die to save them?












When I was a small child I had a set of books, called My Book House, a compilation of
children’s literature: poems, nursery rhymes, and fairy tales. The books were old even then;
judging by the illustrations, they must have dated from not long after the first World War. One
of my favorite fairy tales in them was Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” the story
of two children, Kay and Gerda. Kay, the boy, ties his sled to the Snow Queen’s sleigh (dumb
move, needless to say) and is spirited away by her and imprisoned under a spell in her palace of
ice; and Gerda sets out to find and rescue him. I believe the theme Andersen had in mind was
that of religious faith and love, but when I read the story as a child, I saw in it a hero’s journey
for girls. Gerda gradually conquers her fear and lack of confidence as she travels north searching
for the Snow Queen and Kay. She is helped and hindered along the way by strangers, human and
animal; my favorite among them was the robber girl, a budding highwaywoman as tough and
domineering as Gerda is timid and diffident. She gives Gerda her pet reindeer to carry her on her
journey, and after a long ride through the frozen arctic night, Gerda finds the Snow Queen’s ice
palace and releases Kay from her enchantment, solving a word puzzle he had been unable to
decipher.

I’ve thought, over the years, that the work I chose, criminal defense, involves a lot of
rescuing, or attempting to rescue, flawed people from the worst consequences of their mistakes.
Death penalty cases, in particular, require journeys, figurative and literal, to trace the path of a
client’s past life through searches of old records and documents and meetings with family,
friends, and other witnesses. When I decided to write my first novel, Two Lost Boys, I wanted to
show people how that journey worked and how it feels, through the eyes of a defense attorney
trying to save the life of a condemned man: the random walk of investigating a case and not
knowing which paths will yield evidence and which will lead only to dead ends; finding out who
will talk to you, and what you’ll learn; the help and kindness you receive in unexpected places;
the wounds you inevitably reopen and the trauma you reawaken; the guilt you feel about it; and
the anxiety of knowing that everything you can do may not be enough to save your client’s life.
Some way into writing it, I noticed the resemblance between what was happening in the book
and Gerda’s adventures in Andersen’s story. For awhile, my working title for the book became
The Snow Queen. My second and third books, also about death penalty cases, have turned out to
echo that theme in different ways.

Many writers and film-makers say that there are only a certain number of stories, and
most story and movie plots are a riff on one of them. Several of Terry Pratchett’s wonderful
fantasy novels take a fairy tale or two and smush them together or turn them in unexpected
directions, as do some movies, for example Shrek and The Princess Bride. The hero’s journey is
a stock theme, both in literature and movies. So are variants of Snow White, Sleeping Beauty,
Rapunzel (sent up hilariously in Monty Python’s Holy Grail), the Frog Prince, Beauty and the
Beast, Cinderella, and even Rumpelstiltskin, as well as stories from the Bible and Greek and
Roman mythology. “The Snow Queen” itself was an inspiration for the movie Frozen.
Some people seem to be natural writers, never lacking for new ideas, clever plots
sprouting like lettuce seeds in their amazingly inventive minds. I’m not one of them. I’ve never
made the acquaintance of Shakespeare’s “muse of fire that would ascend/ The brightest heaven
of invention;” I imagine, in fact, that my muse is a lot like me, hesitant, unassertive, and afraid
of heights. I struggle to find ideas for stories and work out the details of plots. It was a surprise
to find that I had inadvertently borrowed my own novel’s plot from a fairy tale, and it made me
think about how fiction pays homage to other myths and legends that resonate in Western culture
and what a fertile field they are for writers in need of ideas, an archive of plots simply waiting to
be tweaked and twisted by any aspiring novelist.

I may never get beyond the heroine’s journey, and then again, I may one day look at one
of those other stories and think, possibly,“What if the queen did not guess Rumpelstiltskin’s
name, and he took her child and raised it as his own, and years later was found and charged with
kidnaping?” or consider following “Sleeping Beauty” past its end and exploring the comic
possibilities of marrying into a family who had wakened in the present after being asleep for a
hundred years. For that matter, I wonder what kind of life Gerda had after coming home to
Copenhagen; having learned how strong she was and what she was capable of doing, can she go
back to being the compliant girl of her childhood? There may be the basis of a book in any of
those ideas -- or not. But my anxious muse and I feel more creative for thinking of them and
grateful that the old tales and myths exist to inspire us.



7 Jul 2019

Book Review / The Power of Less by Leo Babauta



With the countless distractions that come from every corner of a modern life, it's amazing that were ever able to accomplish anything. The Power of Less demonstrates how to streamline your life by identifying the essential and eliminating the unnecessary freeing you from everyday clutter and allowing you to focus on accomplishing the goals that can change your life for the better.

The Power of Less will show you how to:


Break any goal down into manageable tasks
Focus on only a few tasks at a time
Create new and productive habits
Hone your focus
Increase your efficiency
By setting limits for yourself and making the most of the resources you already have, youll finally be able work less, work smarter, and focus on living the life that you deserve.





Published:     1st January 2009
Publisher:  Hachette Books
Goodreads :  Click here
Series or Stand-Alone:  Stand-Alone

Source: Owned


MY REVIEW

OK, so I have to admit that when I first picked this up I thought this would be more about minimalism and having less in the home but this turned out to be a book about breaking down your tasks (taking in less) and being more productive, which wasn't a bad thing as I was definitely interested in learning more about this too. 

What I liked about this book was that there was not a lot of 'fluff'.  When I say fluff, I mean using long words that you have to use a dictionary to figure out what on earth they are saying and long winded descriptions meaning that when you got to the end of that particular description you really didn't know what in the world was going on.  This book was straight forward and was more of a point by point guide to this is what you should do and this is what I do.   I was actually surprised to learn that a lot of this is what I already do but there was a lot here that I could do to improve myself and certainly a lot that I have taken away from this and now do myself. 

This is a great book to pick up if you want to find a way to structure your day to be more productive or just get  more organised or if you have already found a bit of a way to doing that, there are great tips in here that you could add to your preexisting routine that could make the structure of your day a lot more easier. 






2 Jul 2019

Book Review / The Colorado Kid by Stephen King


Stephen King's bestselling unsolved mystery, THE COLORADO KID -- inspiration for the TV series HAVEN -- returns to bookstores for the first time in 10 years in an all-new illustrated edition.

On an island off the coast of Maine, a man is found dead. There's no identification on the body. Only the dogged work of a pair of local newspapermen and a graduate student in forensics turns up any clues, and it's more than a year before the man is identified. And that's just the beginning of the mystery. Because the more they learn about the man and the baffling circumstances of his death, the less they understand. Was it an impossible crime? Or something stranger still...? No one but Stephen King could tell this story about the darkness at the heart of the unknown and our compulsion to investigate the unexplained. With echoes of Dashiell Hammett's THE MALTESE FALCON and the work of Graham Greene, one of the world's great storytellers presents a moving and surprising tale whose subject is nothing less than the nature of mystery itself.




Published:     4th June 2019 (originally published 4th Oct 2005)
Publisher:  Hard Case Crime
Goodreads :  Click here
Series or Stand-Alone:  Stand-Alone
Source:  Review Copy from Publisher




MY REVIEW

I am, very slowly, working my way through all of Stephen King's novels (I may be a while as I hear there are three or four...!) and, honestly, I was looking for a short burst of something mysterious and this hit the right spot.  What a great story. 

I went into this story not really reading the description on the back or really knowing a whole lot about the story apart from what it says on the front of the cover and I was hoping for something different; something other than the normal mystery where something happens, someone investigates and then someone gets caught.   This is not one of those stories.

This story mainly focuses on three reporters (two older reporters and one reporter new into the field) where the two older reports are talking about an unsolved mystery that they came across many years ago, where a man is found dead on a beach.  The majority of this book is discussing the case and what might have happened.  What I actually loved about this story was the ending where it was left open ended as to what actually happened.  This story is, very much, left to the readers imagination to figure out what they think might have happened.  For me, I just sat back, relaxed and enjoyed the ride with the characters playing a very big part in that. 

I would highly recommend this story purely for the story and the characters.  If you are one of those readers who likes an ending that is final, with a clear conclusion, then maybe this story might not be for you but for those who like to be kept guessing - you need to give this a go!