My Bookish Weekly Wrap Up!

Hello all! Hope everyone is well! A much brighter mood for me this week – thankfully no more stabby feelings!! – and I’m trying to work out if my mood has improved due to having read less books this week – just 2!! – or the fact that I’ve bought more books to add to the TBR mountain?!!! If it is the latter, then I highly recommend buying books everyday of the year just to keep you happy!!

So here is a little run down of my week in bookish form…

BOOKS FINISHED 

The Forgotten Room by Ann Troup  –  4 stars

Can the past ever be forgotten?
As soon as nurse Maura Lyle sets foot inside the foreboding Essen Grange, she feels shivers ripple down her spine. And the sense of unease only increases when she meets her new patient, Gordon Henderson.
Drawn into the Henderson family’s tangled web of secrets and betrayals, Maura can ignore the danger lurking behind every door no longer. Even the door she has been forbidden from opening…
Essen Grange is a house with dark and cruel intentions. But now that darkness has turned on her, can Maura escape before it’s too late?

This was a fabulously creepy read for me and I loved every minute of it! Lots of secrets from the past revealing themselves in a shocking story that keeps you guessing from start to finish!

WHITEOUT by RAGNAR JONASSON

 

Two days before Christmas, a young woman is found dead beneath the cliffs of the deserted village of Kálfshamarvík. Did she jump, or did something more sinister take place beneath the lighthouse and the abandoned old house on the remote rocky outcrop? With winter closing in and the snow falling relentlessly, Ari Thór Arason discovers that the victim’s mother and young sister also lost their lives in this same spot, twenty-five years earlier. As the dark history and its secrets of the village are unveiled, and the death toll begins to rise, the Siglufjordur detectives must race against the clock to find the killer, before another tragedy takes place. Dark, chilling and complex, Whiteout is a haunting, atmospheric and stunningly plotted thriller from one of Iceland’s bestselling crime writers.

No review from me yet on this one as I’ve read it ahead of the Blog Tour that I’m part of! So check back here on the 11th November for my thoughts and more information….. spoiler alert…. I raced through it!!

BOOK HAUL

MADE IN JAPAN by S.J. PARKS

A young girl traces her mother’s steps all the way from London to Japan to search for the father she never knew.

Hana arrives in Tokyo with only two words in her mind: The Teahouse. She’s a long way from home in East London and still fresh from the loss of her mother. But her grief has sent her across to the other side of the world to find out who she is, and for Hana that means finding the Japanese man she has never met, her father with only these two words as clues.

Made in Japan is a beautifully woven story of a mother and daughter who, decades apart, tread the same streets of glittering Tokyo looking for that something that might complete them.

This arrived from the publisher ahead of the blog tour that I will be taking part in at the end of the month and sounds like a fascinating read.

MAN WITH A SEAGULL ON HIS HEAD by HARRIET PAIGE

 

A gull falls from the sky and strikes a council worker on the beach below. From that moment on he is obsessed, a crazed visionary depicting the scene and the unknown figure with in who filled his view at the moment of impact. The mysterious beauty of his creations draws others to him, but can they lay hold of that which possesses him? And what of his anonymous muse?

Have heard nothing but good things about this book as it was nominated for the Not the Booker Prize.  It is also set in Essex so that always makes me want to read it!

NOT THOMAS by SARA GETHIN

 

The lady’s here. The lady with the big bag. She’s knocking on the front door. She’s knocking and knocking. I’m not opening the door. I’m not letting her in. I’m behind the black chair. I’m waiting for her to go away.

Tomos lives with his mother. He longs to return to another place, the place he thinks of as home, and the people who lived there, but he’s not allowed to see them again. He is five years old and at school, which he loves. Miss teaches him about all sorts of things, and she listens to him. Sometimes he’s hungry and Miss gives him her extra sandwiches. She gives him a warm coat from Lost Property, too. There are things Tomos cannot talk about – except to Cwtchy – and then, just before Easter, the things come to a head. There are bad men outside who want to come in, and Mammy has said not to answer the door. From behind the big chair, Tomos waits, trying to make himself small and quiet. He doesn’t think it’s Santa Claus this time.

When the men break in, Tomos’s world is turned on its head and nothing will be the same again.

Another book that I’ve been recommended by reading various reviews online and a book that I think might make me cry!!

BUNNICULA by JAMES HOWE

BEWARE THE HARE!
Is he or isn’t he a vampire?

Before it’s too late, Harold the dog and Chester the cat must find out the truth about the newest pet in the Monroe household — a suspicious-looking bunny with unusual habits… and fangs!

Found these online so treated myself for Halloween as having  a pet bunny of my own I do love to read about them!! These look fun and easy to read  and I’m just hoping it doesn’t give my bunny ideas of turning!!

CURRENTLY READING

Just a couple on the go at the moment…

Florence Grace by Tracy Rees

Florrie Buckley is an orphan, living on the wind-blasted moors of Cornwall. It’s a hard existence but Florrie is content; she runs wild in the mysterious landscape. She thinks her destiny is set in stone.

But when Florrie is fourteen, she inherits a never-imagined secret. She is related to a wealthy and notorious London family, the Graces. Overnight, Florrie’s life changes and she moves from country to city, from poverty to wealth.

Cut off from everyone she has ever known, Florrie struggles to learn the rules of this strange new world. And then she must try to fathom her destructive pull towards the enigmatic and troubled Turlington Grace, a man with many dark secrets of his own

This is my current bedtime read and I’m really enjoying it! The author has a real gift of making you care about the characters and setting them in an intriguing setting.

THE SECRET LIBRARY by OLIVER TEARLE 

As well as leafing through the well-known titles that have helped shape the world in which we live, Oliver Tearle also dusts off some of the more neglected items to be found hidden among the bookshelves of the past. You’ll learn about the forgotten Victorian novelist who outsold Dickens, the woman who became the first published poet in America and the eccentric traveller who introduced the table-fork to England. Through exploring a variety of books—novels, plays, travel books, science books, cookbooks, joke books and sports almanacs—The Secret Libraryhighlights some of the most fascinating aspects of our history. It also reveals the surprising connections between various works and historical figures. What links Homer’s Iliad to Aesop’sFables? Or Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack to the creator of Sherlock Holmes? The Secret Library brings these little-known stories to light, exploring the intersections between books of all kinds and the history of the Western world over 3,000 years.

Reading this as part of Non-Fiction November and already learning so much about the history of books – and it is making me add more to my want to read list!!

So that is how my bookish week has been! How about yours?! Good, Bad, Indifferent?!  Love to hear what you’ve been reading and what you recommend!!  Not sure how much reading will get done here over the next few days as we have relatives staying for the weekend but hopefully a normal reading service can be resumed from Monday!!

HAPPY READING!!

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