I absolutely love Natalie Haynes – her writing is excellent and her podcasts (‘Natalie Haynes Stands Up For The Classics’) are both enlightening and witty. She can take some impossibly complex ideas and make them engaging, accessible and entertaining – this is exactly how I like my Classics and I just wish that my lecturers at university back in the mists of time had been half as funny when we looked at Homer!
Continue reading Book Review: ‘Divine Might’ by Natalie HaynesTag: books
Book Review: ‘Hunted’ by Abir Mukherjee
Wow! The pace of this book is incredible – this is one you’ll pick up, read at every opportunity and it will have to be prised out of your hands!
I really loved Abir Mukherjee’s Wyndham and Banerjee historical crime series, but I didn’t know whether I’d feel quite the same about a modern thriller as they aren’t my usual fayre. I’m quite happy to report that I loved this too.
Continue reading Book Review: ‘Hunted’ by Abir MukherjeeBook Review: ‘The Ministry of Time’ by Kaliane Bradley
This was such an odd book! I think mostly in a good way, but it really wasn’t what I was expecting.
The story focused on a top-secret project where selected figures from the past have been ‘rescued’ from death in their own time periods and transported to the future. In this future, each of the ‘expats’ from history are assigned a ‘bridge’, a civil servant to help them acclimatise to their new existence. One of these visitors from the past is Commander Gore, an explorer who – as far as the history books are concerned- died on a failed expedition to the Arctic in the Victorian era. He is assigned to a female ‘bridge’ and so begins the process of learning about the modern age. However, nothing (and especially secret time travel, it seems) is simple and the project soon proves to be more dangerous than was envisaged for all involved.
Continue reading Book Review: ‘The Ministry of Time’ by Kaliane BradleyBook Review: ‘The Midnight Feast’ by Lucy Foley
I’ve enjoyed previous books by Lucy Foley, so was pleased to be granted a review copy of ‘The Midnight Feast’. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley – opinions, as always, are entirely my own.
This book centres on the opening of an exclusive resort, The Manor, on the beautiful Dorset coast. Guests flock to the high-end luxury and anticipate a fabulous solstice feast, all overseen by the owner of the great house, Francesca. However, the site has a dark past and some of the guests are perhaps not welcome. When a body is discovered at the base of the cliffs the day after the solstice party, the police have a task on their hands to unravel the events of the past that have brought The Manor and its guests to its latest tragedy.
Continue reading Book Review: ‘The Midnight Feast’ by Lucy FoleyBook Review: ‘You Are Here’ by David Nicholls
Ahhh, so I know there’s a lot of fuss about Nicholls’ ‘One Day’ at the moment because of the Netflix series, but that’s not what brought me to this book. I absolutely loved Nicholls’ ‘Starter for Ten’ (great book, lovely film) and hoped for more of the same.
I can confirm that ‘You Are Here’ is also a great book. Thanks to NetGalley for my review copy.
This book alternates chapters told by Marnie (long term single and lonely Londoner) and Michael (getting divorced, keen walker and countryside-lover). They’re brought together by a mutual friend on a loooooong walk across the Lake District and then – who knows? – maybe even over to the opposite coast. The epic journey starts with a group of unlikely walkers setting off from the west coast of the UK with accommodation booked along the way. The weather isn’t great, the walkers aren’t all very keen, and gradually the numbers dwindle – allowing new friendships to be built between unlikely characters.
Continue reading Book Review: ‘You Are Here’ by David NichollsBook Review: ‘A Stranger in the Family’ by Jane Casey
I absolutely love this series! This is Book 11 in the DS Maeve Kerrigan series – and it’s yet another brilliant, tense and precisely-plotted police procedural. You’ll want to clear the diary for this one as you won’t easily put it down.
The story opens with Maeve being called to what seems to be a murder-suicide of an older couple, the Marshalls. However, things don’t quite make sense at the crime scene and the investigation soon becomes a double murder. This would be tragic enough, until the couple’s links to a child’s disappearance 16 years previously are uncovered – and it seems that the motives for the double murder lie in the earlier tragic event. It’s up to Maeve to unravel the truth about the Marshalls and the cold-case of the missing child – as the answers are inextricably joined.
Continue reading Book Review: ‘A Stranger in the Family’ by Jane CaseyBook Review: ‘Dark Rooms’ by Lynda La Plante
It’s that time again – an update on #TeamTennison and the mission to read all of the Tennison series before the publication of the latest book in summer 2024!
Thanks to Compulsive Readers for my spot on the team and to Zaffre Books for my review copies of the novels. As always, opinions are entirely my own.
So, we’ve got to Book 8, ‘Dark Rooms’, and it’s another gem. It does feel like every book in the series is different and unique – we are a long way from formulaic here!
Continue reading Book Review: ‘Dark Rooms’ by Lynda La PlanteBook Review: ‘How to Raise a Viking’ by Helen Russell
I enjoyed Russell’s ‘The Year of Living Danishly’ and so was pleased to be granted an eARC of ‘How to Raise a Viking’. I’m really intrigued about the Danish/Nordic/Scandi way of life and loved Russell’s chatty and self-deprecating wander through her experiences of (firstly) living Danishly and (now) raising Viking children.
Continue reading Book Review: ‘How to Raise a Viking’ by Helen RussellBook Review: ‘The Haven’ by Fiona Neill
I’ll admit the blurb pulled me into this one – a sixteen year-old girl waking up in the forest with no memory of what happened. She has a head injury and there doesn’t seem to be anyone around…except a police team who visit occasionally and seem terrible at solving things! What happened?!
Continue reading Book Review: ‘The Haven’ by Fiona NeillBook Review: ‘Unholy Murder’ by Lynda La Plante
Thanks to Compulsive Readers and Zaffre Books for my place on #TeamTennison! It has been a delight to read the Tennison series, following Jane Tennison from her first police job to her role here as a Detective Sergeant. Thanks for my copy of the book for review – opinions are entirely my own.
In this – the seventh in the series – Jane is called in to investigate the death of a young nun found inside a sealed metal coffin by a group of builders developing an old convent. At first, nothing seems amiss – but closer inspection of the body suggests that the woman could have been murdered. As senior police officers try to write it off as a cold case, Tennison is not so convinced and works to uncover the identity of the nun – and how she came to be in the ground.
Continue reading Book Review: ‘Unholy Murder’ by Lynda La Plante