I was delighted to be invited onto the blog tour for ‘Voices of the Dead’, the fourth novel featuring Dr Will Raven and Sarah Fisher. Thanks for the copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Blog Tour: ‘Voices of the Dead’ by Ambrose Parry
Tag: science
Non-Fiction Audiobook Recommendations
Regular visitors to my blog know that I’m an insomniac with an audiobook habit! Here’s some of the best I’ve listened to recently…
Continue reading Non-Fiction Audiobook Recommendations
Fantastic Non-Fiction
I read a lot of non-fiction – probably something that makes me a bit different from a lot of book bloggers who (quite rightly) focus on the wealth of glorious fiction out there. I love fiction, read fiction and spent my academic life on (classic, modern and feminist) fiction.
But I have insomnia and a night-time non-fiction audiobook habit!
With this in mind, I thought I’d update on some of the brilliant non-fiction books that I’ve listened to or read recently.
Continue reading Fantastic Non-Fiction
Book Review: ‘Lessons in Chemistry’ by Bonnie Garmus
This was one of my most anticipated reads of 2022 so I was delighted to be granted a review copy – thanks to NetGalley for my copy in exchange for an honest review.
The story is about a highly gifted Chemist, Elizabeth Zott, who is carrying out important research at the Hastings Research Institute – even though her efforts are often belittled and her work stolen by the men around her. After all, it’s the early 1960s and women can’t expect sexual equality – except Elizabeth Zott absolutely does. Her uncompromising stance gets her into trouble but also attracts the attention of older, Nobel-prize-nominated Calvin Evans. An unconventional relationship ensues – one that leaves Elizabeth with a dog, a daughter, and a hit TV cooking show. Things don’t work out as planned at all, but Elizabeth has the strength to work with whatever is thrown at her.
Continue reading Book Review: ‘Lessons in Chemistry’ by Bonnie Garmus
Book Review: ‘The Spirit Engineer’ by A J West
I am so ashamed that this book sat on my NetGalley shelf for so long! I was missing an absolute treat – and I’m not alone in my opinion as this was recently voted as Bert’s Books’ Book of the Year by readers on Twitter.
The story opens in Belfast in 1914, a city still grieving the loss of the Titanic two years before. A scientist, William Crawford Jackson, is working at the Institute and living in the city with his wife, Elizabeth, and three children. Having suffered a personal loss in the Titanic sinking, Elizabeth is reeling with grief and, like many of the city’s residents, open to the new ideas of spiritualism that oppose everything her sceptical husband stands for. When he hears mysterious voices at one of Kathleen Goligher’s seances, he starts on a quest to discover the truth…
Wow, this is such a cleverly-plotted book! As I followed William on his lengthy journey to find answers, I found myself really unsure what to think about spiritualism – and this is an absolute strength of the novel. Are the practitioners genuine conduits between the living and the dead, or are they frauds looking to play on other’s grief? Are those who attend the seances merely naive and silly, or pitiable figures whose emotions are being manipulated? West keeps his cards incredibly close to his chect until the end of the novel. As William vacillated in his own thoughts, I found myself being pulled along and as keen for answers as he was.
The setting of the book is also a triumph – a perfect historical moment for this story and some genuinely creepy settings, from the Goligher’s seance room to the austere halls of the Institute with their sinister statues. There are some truly frightening elements in play here and West uses them well to create a sense of rising horror – the images of the Titanic victims that keep being recalled are horrific and vivid and the sensory description slightly stomach-churning at times.
William Crawford Jackson is a brilliant choice of narrator – he is both based on a real person (as is Kathleen Goligher) and wildly unreliable as he narrates his experiences. His voice is distinctive and strong – he starts out as a kind of mildly comic Edwardian man in the model of Charles Pooter from ‘The Diary of a Nobody’ and then expands into something much more multi-dimensional and complex. Lady Adelia Carter begins as a snobby Lady Bracknell character, yet also takes quite a journey over the course of the novel. The characterisation is pitch-perfect throughout, and there is the added bonus of cameos by Arthur Conan Doyle (himself an advocate of spiritualism) and Harry Houdini (for the history nerds like me!)
I can also imagine this is a gorgeous book to have a physical copy of as there are some beautiful illustrations that start each of the novel’s main sections.
There is so much to love about this novel and I recommend it highly to all lovers of cleverly-plotted and immersive historical fiction. For me, this is up there with the best writing by authors like Sarah Waters, Laura Purcell and Andrew Taylor. I really wish I had read this sooner and it is one that will stay with me for some time to come. The end – when it comes – is surprising and eye-opening and entirely unforeseen. I defy anyone to predict it – although you will have fun trying.
If you’d like a copy of this book (and you do!), please use my affiliate link below. Thanks for supporting my blog with any purchases.
Book Review: ‘The Dark’ by Emma Haughton
As I’m much too ginger to really enjoy the sun, I’ve developed a bit of a fascination with cold places. Holidays in Alaska, Russia or Norway – count me in! With that in mind, it was the setting of Antarctica that brought me to this book – and I am so glad it did.
Thanks to NetGalley for my copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
The story opens with Kate, our main character and a medical doctor, arriving at a research station in the Antarctic. She has her own reasons for taking the remote job and steps at short notice into a role recently held by a doctor who died in an accident on the ice. As the team shrinks down to core staff for the winter, only 13 people remain at the facility, When that number becomes 12, Kate begins to question whether the death is part of a bigger picture. Not knowing who she can trust, she begins a dangerous investigation…
This is a genuinely tense and exciting thriller – I couldn’t put it down as I watched Kate navigate her way through some excruciatingly tense events and situations. Given the fact that Kate is herself an unreliable narrator (not a spoiler), I was drawn into guessing and second-guessing all the time. I didn’t manage to get anywhere near the solution but I had a lot of fun trying.
The setting is the real strength of this novel. The dangerous and inhospitable Antarctic surroundings really add to the tension, especially when the research facility closes down to core staff only for the 24 hours a day darkness that the winter season brings. Haughton perfectly captures the peril inherent in living in such extreme conditions – the disorientating and unnavigable whiteness, the reliance on generators and supplies, the lack of contact with the outside world. There is a real sense of claustrophobia that will probably be a whole lot more understandable to readers now after the various Covid lockdowns!
The day to day realities of living in these remote conditions make up a lot of the novel and Haughton seems to have done some seriously extensive research into this. Between all the heart-in-mouth moments, I found it fascinating to see how people cope with living in these circumstances. Details about clothes, weather, food supplies, communications, the base’s layout and the science experiments are woven into the fabric of the novel seamlessly. So interesting, but so extreme!
I loved the fact that this is essentially a mystery with a closed circle of suspects. There is no way anyone can come from outside, so the reader is left to guess which of the research station’s ‘inmates’ is dodgy – and there is an international and diverse cast to choose from. I did find it a bit tricky to remember who was who at the beginning – a reference list would have been handy. I found myself really liking some characters before (like Kate) remembering that they could easily be a criminal!
I’d recommend this to anyone who loves truly tense thrillers – the monotony of daily life at the research centre (although I found this bit really intereresting!) is perfectly offset with the paranoia that everyone could be an enemy. If you like psychological mysteries with a finite number of possible suspects (think along the lines of Ruth Ware and Catherine Cooper books) then this is for you.
As for me, as much as I love cold places, I will give Antarctica a miss!
If you’d like a copy of this book (out on 19th August) then please use my affiliate link – thanks for supporting my blog with any purchases.
Header photo by Torsten Dederichs on Unsplash
Blog Tour: ‘The Bone Code’ by Kathy Reichs
Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for ‘The Bone Code’ by Kathy Reichs, the latest in the forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan series of thrillers.
With thanks to Random Things Tours and publisher Simon and Schuster for my copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Blog Tour: ‘The Three Locks’ by Bonnie MacBird
Welcome to my stop on this blog tour for ‘The Three Locks’, a Sherlock Holmes adventure, by Bonnie MacBird.
This tour is organised by Random Things Tours. The novel was published on 18th March, 2021, by Collins Crime Club.
‘And Now For The Good News’ by Ruby Wax
I really like Ruby Wax and – to be honest – felt like I needed to read some good news in 2020, so this seemed like a good book for me right now.
This book is packed with ‘good news’ – ways in which humanity is making steps forward in various fields that are often unreported by the doom-and-gloom mass media.
It was really heartening to read of some really positive projects and people really making a difference, from a global project setting up ecovillages to those individuals helping refugees on the front line in camps in Greece. There are some really worrying and harrowing stories alongside the cheeriness – it is useful (but sad) to see the extent of the problem before Wax shows us the people and projects trying to fix the issues.
Wax also looks at technological advances and the ways in which businesses are embracing more sustainable models and developments in education so that schools become more than exam factories. In order to do all this, she travels widely and meets lots of interesting people. This all makes for engaging reading as Wax relates all this with her trademark humour and self-deprecation.
One of the slightly odder things about the book is that it was written pre-pandemic so it doesn’t grapple with that at all. However, Wax has added some footnotes and a little bit of an introduction to explain this so it is not a problem – just strange to read the optimism with the hindsight of what has actually happened!
All in all, this is an uplifting and hopeful book and one that I would recommend to anyone who feels that the world is headed in the wrong direction. I can’t quite embrace the mindfulness that Wax endorses so enthusiastically, but I’m totally on board with all the other messages in this engaging and positive book.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Header photo with thanks to Jon Tyson for sharing their work on Unsplash.