#20BooksOfSummer21 THE ISLAND HOME by LIBBY PAGE #BookReview

This is book 14 of my 20 Books of Summer 2021

ABOUT THE BOOK

Alice’s world is tiny but full.

She loves the community on Kip, her yoga classes drawing women across the tiny island together. Now Lorna’s arrival might help their family finally mend itself – even if forgiveness means returning to the past…

So with two decades, hundreds of miles and a lifetime’s worth of secrets between Lorna and the island, can coming home mean starting again?

PUBLISHED BY ORION

MY REVIEW

This is a wonderful story of facing up to the past and reconnecting and in such a wonderful setting! It’s full of characters that you take to your heart, and understand their pain and frustration, and watching their story unfold just fills your heart with glee!

Lorna and her daughter Ella are leaving London and heading to a remote Scottish Island where Lorna grew up, but left in haste 20 years ago and doesn’t mention. Ella is excited to be meeting up with ‘family’ after so long, but Lorna is extremely anxious and unsure if they are doing the right thing. Immediately you are intrigued as to what happened 20 years ago that made her so desperate to escape.

Alice lives on the Island of Kip, with Jack (Lorna’s brother), and is desperate to meet her sister in law and niece for the first time as Jack never mentions them. He’s very reluctant to discuss what happened in the past and the events of recent years have made him even more reticent to discuss his sister and their childhood.

Seeing how Lorna reacts to being ‘home’ makes the story more intriguing and it doesn’t take long before she’s thinking about the past and her childhood, and how to talk to Jack about what happened when he was 14 and his big sister just upped and left him behind.

The community is so welcoming I wanted to move up there! It’s lovely to see how everyone helped everyone out, a big change from London for Lorna where she was on her own bringing up her daughter with very few friends, and only her job as a teacher to keep her going. The more time she spends on Kip, the more her old character is revealed and the dreams and passions she forgot about and time allows her and Jack to start to share memories – good and bad – and the truth of what happened finally begins to reveal itself.

This is a story that just shows how reconnecting with ghosts from the past and confronting those memories you tried to forget allows you to find ways to move on and I just loved it all!

★★★★★

Advertisement

#BookReview THE 24 HOUR CAFE by LIBBY PAGE

ABOUT THE BOOK

Welcome to the café that never sleeps. Day and night Stella’s Café opens its doors for the lonely and the lost, the morning people and the night owls. It is many things to many people but most of all it is a place where life can wait at the door. A place of small kindnesses. A place where anyone can be whoever they want, where everyone is always welcome.

Meet Hannah and Mona: best friends, waitresses, dreamers. They work at Stella’s but they dream of more, of leaving the café behind and making their own way in life.

Come inside and spend twenty-four hours at Stella’s Café; a day when Hannah and Mona’s friendship will be tested, when the community will come together and when lives will be changed…

PUBLISHED BY ORION

PURCHASE LINKS

Amazon 

whsmith

hive.co.uk

MY REVIEW

I found myself totally captivated by the goings on of the staff and customers of Stella’s, a 24 hour cafe by Liverpool Street Station, that becomes a ‘family’ to those who frequent it, however briefly! There’s a story behind everyone and it was so fascinating to be a ‘people watcher’ with each chapter, while the main story revolves around the 2 waitresses – Hannah and Mona. Best friends and flat mates, who both moved to London with different artistic dreams but their career paths haven’t quite gone to plan, but they still live in hope despite constant disappointment!

They work long shifts so there’s a lot of time for them to reflect on their pasts and to look forward to what they hope, as well as connect with the different characters that they see come into the cafe. There’s Dan who is a student and still coming to terms with the death of his mother, and finding it difficult to ask for help financially. A chance chat with an insomniac writer also in the cafe brings him some hope, and it’s the coming together of people who would never normally meet up that really made this book for me. Everyone is equal in the cafe and it gives people a time to sit, take time out from the world outside and to feel safe over a cuppa or breakfast! There’s also John, the Big Issue seller, a stressed out new mum, an older couple looking forward to a new life together, the city worker losing his job and more – all really different kinds of people who have an interesting story to tell.

It also brilliantly explores the role of female friendships. Mona and Hannah were brought together when sharing a house with other friends, and they instantly hit it off and got a flat together and it is fascinating to see how their friendship evolves over the years, especially with new career opportunities and boyfriends on the scene – how sometimes the things you find most stable and comforting can quickly change in the blink of an eye.

I adored The Lido, and feel just as warmly about The 24 Hour Cafe! The author has a brilliant way of inventing characters and making them so appealing to read about – their different approaches to life and all the problems thrown in their way – and it’s a book I highly recommend!!

★★★★★

#BookReview The Lido by Libby Page

ABOUT THE BOOK

A tender, joyous debut novel about a cub reporter and her eighty-six-year-old subject—and the unlikely and life-changing friendship that develops between them.

Kate is a twenty-six-year-old riddled with anxiety and panic attacks who works for a local paper in Brixton, London, covering forgettably small stories. When she’s assigned to write about the closing of the local lido (an outdoor pool and recreation center), she meets Rosemary, an eighty-six-year-old widow who has swum at the lido daily since it opened its doors when she was a child. It was here Rosemary fell in love with her husband, George; here that she’s found communion during her marriage and since George’s death. The lido has been a cornerstone in nearly every part of Rosemary’s life.

But when a local developer attempts to buy the lido for a posh new apartment complex, Rosemary’s fond memories and sense of community are under threat.

As Kate dives deeper into the lido’s history—with the help of a charming photographer—she pieces together a portrait of the pool, and a portrait of a singular woman, Rosemary. What begins as a simple local interest story for Kate soon blossoms into a beautiful friendship that provides sustenance to both women as they galvanize the community to fight the lido’s closure. Meanwhile, Rosemary slowly, finally, begins to open up to Kate, transforming them both in ways they never knew possible.

In the tradition of Fredrik Backman, The Lido is a charming, feel-good novel that captures the heart and spirit of a community across generations—an irresistible tale of love, loss, aging, and friendship.

Published by Orion

Hardcover page count – 384

Purchase Links

Amazon UK

Hive.co.uk

Book Depository

MY REVIEW

I adored this book! From the first few pages you are immediately drawn into the world of Kate, who is struggling with anxiety in the world she lives in and often shuts herself away in her flat. She works at the local paper and is soon given the chance of writing a story about the local Lido which is soon to be demolished. Kate doesn’t know that working on this story is set to change her life and her outlook and help banish some of those demons living inside her head.

Rosemary is 86 and a regular swimmer at the Lido. It has become her second home since the loss of her beloved husband, and the thought of it no longer being there springs her into action to try and save the little piece of heaven that means so much to her and many others in the community. To the ‘men in suits’ it is just a building, but to those who use the Lido it means so much more – where romances start, friendships are made, childhood memories abound – and to lose that can be devastating for those living in the area.

Kate is sent to interview Rosemary and the most wonderful and touching friendship begins these two women and it was just a delight to read how this bond strengthens throughout, how they both help each other personally and of what can be achieved when people in a community pull together.

I loved the sense of community throughout, and also how we see that despite the struggles that both characters face throughout, there is always that thread of hope and how unlikely friendships blossom. Kate and Rosemary are two amazing characters as well – Kate suffers with anxiety and you get a real sense of the terror she often feels in those moments when the walls seem to be closing in on her, and Rosemary is still struggling with life without her beloved George and it was so joyous to look back on their life together through her eyes.

I had tears in my eyes by the end but my heart was filled with so much love and all the feels and I cannot recommend this book highly enough!  If you loved Eleanor Oliphant by Gail Honeyman, or A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, then this is the book for you!

                                               🏊🏊🏊🏊🏊