Hello and Happy Saturday! Another week to avoid the news and send your thoughts and prayers to all the innocent people whose lives are being destroyed…. I keep hoping that sanity will break out and things will change…
On to books…. a fairly quiet week for me reading wise. I keep finding myself doing other stuff when I should be reading but still managed to read 3 books this week. There may have been 2 new additions to the netgalley shelf as well!
Here’s my look back.
BOOKS FINISHED
SUNDIAL by CATRIONA WARD – 5 STARS
LEAN ON ME by SERGE JONCOUR – 4 STARS
CHOUETTE by CLAIRE OSHETSKY – 5 STARS
BOOKHAUL
To Netgalley we go….
THE HOLIDAY BOOKSHOP by LUCY DICKENS
publication date – 7th July 2022
One woman. One island. A bookshop in need of revival…
Jenny has never been a risk taker. But when her best friend takes off on an American road trip, Jenny finds herself saying yes to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of her own and accepts the role of a bookseller in the Maldives.
The island of Bounty Cove Cay is everything she’d hoped for: white sandy beaches, glistening turquoise waters and palm trees bursting with coconuts. But it’s not all plain sailing…
The resort bookshop is far from thriving and, in an unexpected twist, management are threatening closure.
Can Jenny throw her rulebook to the wind and turn things around before it’s too late? And might she find her own happy ending along the way?
DUCKLING by EVE AINSWORTH
publication date – 1st April 2022
What if your neighbour asked you to watch her seven-year-old daughter for an afternoon, and didn’t come back?
Lucy’s life is small, but safe. Every day she goes to work, checks in on her unstable, alcoholic father, then spends her evenings watching old Columbo reruns, isolating herself away from the rest of the community on her South London estate.
Her routine is all that she can handle, given what happened in her past.
So when her new neighbour Cassie asks Lucy if she could look after her seven-year-old daughter Rubi, she is reluctant to agree.
Then when the hours pass, and then days, and Rubi’s Mum doesn’t come back, Lucy’s worst-case-scenario is now her reality. Lucy is not only responsible for herself anymore. She is responsible for a scared little girl who needs her help.
Something has happened to Cassie, and Lucy must find her before it’s too late.
And an e-book to enjoy …..
DEATH AT FRIAR’S INN by ROB KEELEY
out now.. Amazon £3.99 (at time of posting)
Dinner at an Inn of Court takes an unusual turn when a corpse falls onto the Benchers’ Table. A battleaxe and a rubber glove are found at the scene. A trophy has been stolen. But who could have wanted the Porter dead – and why?
Aspiring barristers Tom and Becca set out to investigate. But another murder isn’t far away…
Rob Keeley is an established award-winning author of children’s novels, short stories and picture books, including the Spirits series. Other credits include the award-listed stage play Mr. Everyone, and Chain Gang and Newsjack for BBC Radio. Death At Friar’s Inn is his first novel for adults and draws on his own experiences training as a barrister.And a book purchase from Waterstones with a voucher that was burning a hole in my purse!…
THE MOUNTAINS SING by NGUYEN PHAN QUE MAI
With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Tran family, set against the backdrop of the Viet Nam War. Tran Dieu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Noi, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Ho Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that will tear not just her beloved country but her family apart.
Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Viet Nam, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves, while showing us the true power of kindness and hope. This is celebrated Vietnamese poet Nguyen Phan Que Mai’s first novel in English.
CURRENTLY READING
Books and Me! 
Yay you got rob Keeley’s book as well! xx
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Really looking forward to it this weekend! Let’s hope we have good things to report back to him haha! xx
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I just finished Lean on Me and really loved it. It’s one of those books where I’m struggling to write a review that does it justice.
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oh blimey, I know exactly what you mean! Very difficult to get across the effect it has on the reader! Good luck with the review writing!! 😉
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The translators did a superb job I thought because I really forgot I was reading a book originally written in another language. So that’s one sentence of the review done!
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