A road trip can drive anyone over the edge—especially two former best friends—in bestselling author Ann Garvin’s funny and poignant novel about broken bonds, messy histories, and the power of forgiveness.
Widowed Samantha Arias hasn’t spoken to Holly Dunfee in forever. It’s for the best. Samantha prefers to avoid conflict. The blisteringly honest Holly craves it. What they still have in common puts them both back on speed dial: a mutual love for Katie, their best friend of twenty-five years, now hospitalized with cancer and needing one little errand from her old college roomies.
It’s simple: travel cross-country together, steal her loathsome ex-husband’s VW camper, find Katie’s diabetic Great Pyrenees at a Utah rescue, and drive him back home to Wisconsin. If it’ll make Katie happy, no favour is too big (one hundred pounds), too daunting (two thousand miles), or too illegal (ish), even when a boho D-list celebrity hitches a ride and drives the road trip in fresh directions.
Samantha and Holly are following every new turn—toward second chances, unexpected romance, and self-discovery—and finally blowing the dust off the secret that broke their friendship. On the open road, they’ll try to put it back together—for themselves, and especially for the love of Katie.
This is a great book, I laughed out loud, I cried, and I beamed whiled reading it. It was entertaining, enthralling, witty and moving. The book is filled to the brim with adventures, worries, courage, forgiveness, discomfort and so much else. I don’t want to give anything away but Ann Garvin has delivered an absolute gem that I cannot recommended enough. A 5 star read.
Ray is about to find out, whether he’s ready or not. His ‘deceased’ twin sister, Ravynn, is warning him of impending disaster, but Ray can’t seem to convince himself, or his wife, that he’s not crazy.
But Ray isn’t the only one communicating with his sister. Ravynn’s surviving daughter, Amelia, seems to know things that defy reason, in a time when reason is slowly slipping away.
When Ray’s brother-in-law offers evidence of something terrible coming in the form of prophetic journals Ravynn wrote before her death, Ray can’t doubt the truth any longer. The world is falling down.
The family struggles to hold themselves together as the world they once knew and understood begins to collapse all around them, leading up to a cataclysmic end.
Can Ray save his family in time?
This is a multi-faceted dark and gothic novel that strips down and bares the layers of the human condition and examines human’s ability to decipher logic behind trauma. Ravynn is such a dynamic character and I particularly enjoyed the incorporation of her journal that not only allowed her story to be heard and a sense of foretelling but also allowed her to be ever present.
I also loved the two-timeline element of the story as well. There are so many layers and elements intertwined within the story that I simply could not put it down and I don’t want to give away any of the plot as I want readers to experience in the same vein that I did and so all I will say is I highly recommend it. I wish I could give it a higher score than 5 stars.
Fed up with her comfortable and dull-to-boredom life, Liv takes the bravest leap, leaving it all behind. Unfortunately, the crux of her issues – her entrenched, well-kept emotional guard – tags along for the ride.
With the spirit of change burning from every pore and a determined plan to break free from her self-oppressed lifestyle to enjoy life’s simplest pleasures, she moves half way across the globe to a peaceful Spanish coastal town.
With an aim to feel whole again, liberated and happy by herself, Liv begins her journey while maintaining weekly-cyber therapy sessions with her long time, questionable shrink.
As Liv finally begins to enjoy her new life and experience the varied goods the exotic country has to offer, a sudden major turn leads Liv to be swept into the most tantalizing roller coaster of her life.
A turn that leaves her questioning everything she thought was right.
The story follows Liv who quits her boring life and makes the conscious decision to escape the norm and push to follow through. She decides to travel to Spain and live there for a while in order to free herself from the daily grind, to leave it all behind and feel more alive and inspired, and start her life anew. She rents a lovely small apartment and makes new friends, but it is her encounter with Sebastian is what really shakes up her boring old patterns. After an amazing and unforgettable one night stand, Liv and Sebastian realize that together they are a perfect match.
Immersing herself fully into a different culture, speaking a different language, and dating a Spanish man was all she needed for her abroad experience to be complete. Falling in love happened when she least expected it and she was not searching for it. They both surrender to passion and don’t worry about love changing their plans.
At the start of the novel, I found it very slow paced and quite hard to get into, but I was determined to stick with. After the initial few chapters, it had captured me and I was along for the steamy ride. Leaving Me Behind is essentially a story about hopes/dreams and finding love in an unexpected place, along with some very steamy scenes filled with desire, love and angst, with a very uplifting ending.
Liberalism and freedom wilt in the clutches of autocracy. Anarchy and unrest threaten the old order. And powerful enemies plot the fall of the once mighty Ottoman Empire. These are dangerous times…
Istanbul, 1903.
Sultan Murad V has been imprisoned for almost thirty years ever since his younger brother, the autocratic ruler Sultan Abdülhamid II, usurped the Ottoman throne. Murad now languishes behind the high walls and heavily-guarded gates of his ‘gilded cage on the Bosphorus’. But the waters of the Bosphorus run deep: assassins lurk in shadows, intrigue abounds, and scandal in the family threatens to bring destruction of all that he holds dear…
For over six hundred years the history of the Turks and their vast and powerful Empire has been inextricably linked to the Ottoman dynasty. To one family. Can they, and the Empire they built, survive into the new century?
The Gilded Cage on the Bosphorus is the sweeping first book in ‘The Ottomans: The Story of a Family’ historical fiction series. A beguiling and mesmerising tale of love, duty and power set against the opulent backdrop of Imperial Istanbul.
The book follows the lives of the people – fathers, mothers, sons and daughters – who made up this branch of the Ottoman Imperial family in the waning years of the dynasty. It brings to life their joys and tragedies and so opens a window into a part of history that’s is little known- if at all- in the West.
The way in which the book is written was very reminiscent of Hilary Mantel and other great historical fiction writers, the author has a genuine gift of making social history immensely fascinating, informative and enjoyable all-in equal measure.
It is a superbly researched, beautifully detailed and heart-wrenching account that I could not put down and I didn’t want it to end. I smiled, I cried and I hoped and for that reason it is a 5 star read.
When Anu and her family move to a small village in the English countryside, she is desperate to put down roots in her new community. To her dismay, not everyone is welcoming. Is it her? Must she change to fit in?
In her quest for answers, she sets out to peel back the layers of her life, examining all that has made her who she is. Truth, she finds, is often uncomfortable and unpalatable. And rarely provides answers.
At a crossroads, Anu needs to determine which is the right path for her — acceptance from within or without?
Young mother Anu has always felt like an outsider. Moving away from her own family in India where her mother and half-siblings ignored her, and into a new life in England, this feeling continues in a variety of ways, in particular, a distinct disconnect from the other mothers — and women in general — that she sees all around her. While her husband Ravi seems to be getting on quite well with his work colleagues and other friends from all backgrounds.
Among the British mothers, her shyness limits her from nourishing friendships, yet she is too westernised to fit in amongst the Indian women and their cliques/friendship groups and any extended family she has she harbours resentment for based on past issues.
As her daughter Neha grows older and matures through school the plot traces Anu’s own development as she tries many different friendships as she struggles to find her people both as a woman and as a mother.
This is a beautifully written novel and I imagine it will resonate with a lot of readers for several different reasons. For me it resonated as I often struggled to find friendships and the ones that I cherish the most are ones that were found in later life. The author totally encapsulated how it must feel to be a migrant in a new country and the concerns and hurdles that they have to overcome just to fit in and be a part of society in ways that – I am ashamed to say – I may not have thought about before. It was very reminiscent to me of Brink Lane and Big Little Lies both are books that I adored.
The book had a lot of characters that the reader had to keep up with and although this took nothing away from the novel sometimes it took me a second to locate which character was being spoken about at that time.
This is a 5 star read for sure and I couldn’t recommend it enough to anyone.
The Salpetriere asylum, Paris, 1885. Dr Charcot holds all of Paris in thrall with his displays of hypnotism on women who have been deemed mad, hysterics, and been cast out from society. But the truth is much more complicated – these women are often simply inconvenient’, unwanted wives, those who have lost something precious, or wayward daughters. For Parisian society, the highlight of the year is The Mad Women’s Ball, when the great and good come to gawk at the patients of the Salpetriere dressed up in their finery for one night only. For the women themselves it is a rare moment of hope.
Genevieve is a senior nurse – after the childhood death of her sister Blandine, she shunned religion and has placed her faith in Dr Charcot and science. But everything begins to change when she meets Eugenie, the 19-year-old daughter of a bourgeois family who have locked her away in the asylum. Because Eugenie has a secret – she sees spirits. Inspired by the scandalous, banned work that all of Paris is talking about – The Book of Spirits – Genevieve is determined to escape from the asylum (and the bonds of her gender) and seek out those who will believe in her. And for that she will need Genevieve’s help…
” Truth be told, whether free or incarcerated, women were not safe anywhere. Since the dawn of time, they had been the victims of decisions that were taken without their consent. “
The topic matter of this, Mas’ debut novel is intriguing, darkly interesting and incredibly and important. The novel is set in the 1880’s and tells the story of women that have been declared mad and committed to an asylum simply as they refused to play the role with which society inflicts upon them and so someone (often their husbands/families) has deemed this the best way to get rid of them and make the problem go away in a respectable manner. When taken into the asylums the women became known as the hysterics and were treated as research subjects in a prison like setting. This novel has the opportunity to provide an excellent look at the way women were treated at this time by institutions and by society as a whole, however some parts of the narrative just didn’t hit the mark and felt quite fumbly – however this could have been a translation issue and when read in the language it was written in it may come across more together.
The story follows protagonist Eugénie, a young woman who has the ability to see dead people reads Le Livre des Esprits – one of the first works based around spiritualism- and is committed by her father, as well as following the story of Geneviève, a nurse who starts to doubt whether what happens at the Salpêtrière asylum is morally right. While these two join forces, the yearly “Mad Women’s Ball” is approaching, where Parisians can enter the ward and dance – yep you guessed it another entertainment spectacle that entails staring at suffering women.
One of the aspects I Loved as an English Literature/History major is that the book contained genuine historical figures from within the field the book is based in such as Dr. Charcot, the famous French neurologist; Joseph Babinski, a French-polish professor of neurology; Alan Kardec, leader of the French Spiritualist movement, and many more. This really gave a sense of the book being well researched and a lot of care taken over the details which is important to me as a reader of historical fiction.
All in all, I found the novel slightly underwhelming, not because of the storyline as the story behind the book is amazing and actually has a lot of potential, however the author literally told the reader everything they needed to know and more – leaving nothing to the imagination. We were told why each character does things, why what happens is bad, how everything is connected. As a reader I like to know things but also make inferences for myself and have questions brought on by the narrative, characters, plotline and so firth and sadly for me this was lacking with this novel. Thus, sadly I can only give it 4 stars, although this has not put me off from reading anything that the author writes in the future.
When son Freddy comes home and admits he has done something terrible, Sarah and husband Tom are in a difficult position. Do they tell the police or try to cover it up to protect their son? Faced with a dilemma that could not only threaten the happiness of the family but also their marriage.
The novel had a steady pace (as all of Jane Corry’s masterpieces do) and spanned several timelines which is an aspect I love in books, the intertwining of the back storyline and the current time thread was so cleverly done and linked together so masterfully it was a pleasure to read.
At the end of each chapter is a section in italics that could be attributed to any number of the characters suffering through these events, although slightly confusing as the reader doesn’t know who is having the thoughts it adds a clever sense of foreshadowing and serves as a reminder that there is something deeper to this story than just the memories of a couple that have hit hard times.
An interesting aspect of the novel is that all of characters were flawed and were slightly unlikeable but the one I disliked the most was Tom who had a hard and distant outlook towards his family. The character I found myself warming to the most was Sarah, although instances that occurred in the book also made her unlikeable in some respects.
The storyline wraps up in its own way, with a complete resolution to the traumas that each character goes through, but not without some sort of cost or consequence. As a reader it made me think and question how much someone would go to protect their child and the lengths that I myself would take. It was a stark reminder that the innocence of children doesn’t last forever and that one mistake can change the course of everything as well as the experiences that have shaped a human being will also shape them as a parent and their children as adults. It was particularly poignant to be able to reflect on this through Sarah’s eyes.
As always, the style of the writing made this a very easy and quick read. A definite 5 star rating from me.
I was provided In the Mirror A Peacock Danced by Justine Bothwick as an ARC through NetGalley in return for an honest review. All opinions are my own and thanks is extended to the author, publishers and NetGalley for allowing me to do so.
Set against the lush backdrop of early 20th-century India, In the Mirror, a Peacock Danced – the debut novel from Justine Bothwick – is the moving story of one woman’s journey back to herself.
Agra, 1938: Eighteen-year-old Florence Hunt has grown up riding horses past the Taj Mahal and chasing peacocks through her backyard under the critical gaze of her father. Increasingly enamoured with his work on the booming railway, Florence yearns to know more, but finds herself brushed away, encouraged only to perform the more ladylike hobbies of singing and entertaining guests. So when a dazzling young engineer walks into her life, she finds herself not only gripped by secret lessons in physics but swept entirely off her feet.
Portsmouth, 1953: Fifteen years later, Florence finds herself pregnant and alone in post-war England – a far cry from her sun-drenched existence in India. Struggling to cope with the bleakness of everyday life in a male-dominated world, Florence is desperate to find the woman she used to be. But when someone from her past reaches out, Florence might just have a chance to start over.
Soaring from the shimmering heights of the big top to the depths of heartbreak, can Florence find the happiness, independence, and passion she once had in order to start living again?
An articulately written story about a woman’s poignant journey to free herself from the binds that society has placed upon her. She feels torn between the obligations thrust upon her by her family and the dreams and aspirations she has for herself in a future without restrictions. An exquisite retelling of her youth allowing the reader to yearn with her for what her life could have been if life and reality had not come into play.
The narrative was well written and as a reader allowed me to be swept up into India and feel drawn to the magnetism and desolation of the landscape even though it is a country that I have never experienced for myself – something I hope to change one day. The character of Florence definitely does a lot to add to the storyline and the pastimes that she undertakes and her aspirations which were so different to the time that she lived in really gave it that added depth for me.
This for me was a lovely aspect of historical fiction as I especially love reading about cultures and countries different to my own and this is a book I will happily read again. Highly recommended. 4 stars.
I was provided Las Biuty Queens by Ivan Monalisa Ojeda as an ARC through NetGalley in return for an honest review. All opinions are my own and thanks is extended to the author, publishers and NetGalley for allowing me to do so.
Drawing from his/her own experience as a trans performer, sex worker, and undocumented immigrant, Ivan Monalisa Ojeda chronicles the lives of Latinx queer and trans immigrants in New York City. Whether she is struggling with addiction, clashing with law enforcement, or is being subjected to personal violence, each character choses her own path of defiance, often responding to her fate with irreverent dark humour. What emerges is the portrait of a group of friends who express unquestioning solidarity and love for each other, and of an unfamiliar, glittering and violent, New York City that will draw readers in and swallow them whole.
I always find short stories fascinating when the stories interconnect and it gives the reader the opportunity to really get to know the characters in a variety of settings and this really didn’t disappoint.
In the book we see the characters picking up clients to try to survive whilst also dreaming about being beauty queens and finding love, we see them persecuted and discriminated against by the police as well as hiding in fear from ICE as well as hard hitting topics such as mental illness and addictions.
The reader also gets to see the past through the characters eyes as they think back on the struggles and hard times they had in their home towns from poverty stricken settings, bullying and societal constraints and toxic masculinity.
The author has done something rare that speaks volumes for their talent which is take a topic that should be dark and heavy reading and made it light, witty and engaging. The characters were loveable and I found myself championing them all the way through. I would highly recommend this book to everyone, even if this isn’t your usual type of reading. You will not regret it. A solid 4 stars
I was provided Circus of Wonder by Elizabeth Macneal as an ARC through NetGalley in return for an honest review. All opinions are my own and thanks is extended to the author, publishers and NetGalley for allowing me to do so.
1866. In a coastal village in southern England, Nell picks violets for a living. Set apart by her community because of the birthmarks that speckle her skin, Nell’s world is her beloved brother and devotion to the sea.
But when Jasper Jupiter’s Circus of Wonders arrives in the village, Nell is kidnapped. Her father has sold her, promising Jasper Jupiter his very own leopard girl. It is the greatest betrayal of Nell’s life, but as her fame grows, and she finds friendship with the other performers and Jasper’s gentle brother Toby, she begins to wonder if joining the show is the best thing that has ever happened to her.
In London, newspapers describe Nell as the eighth wonder of the world. Figurines are cast in her image, and crowds rush to watch her soar through the air. But who gets to tell Nell’s story? What happens when her fame threatens to eclipse that of the showman who bought her? And as she falls in love with Toby, can he detach himself from his past and the terrible secret that binds him to his brother?
Moving from the pleasure gardens of Victorian London to the battle-scarred plains of the Crimea, Circus of Wonders is an astonishing story about power and ownership, fame and the threat of invisibility.
After reading the Doll Factory I didn’t think that it could get any better and then I read Elizabeth Macneal’s second book and omg! She has created a brilliant story in which History is seamlessly married to the Strange and the phantasmagorical. A tale where Light and Shadow coexist and is set in the era of mass hysteria frenzy over curiosities, circuses and anything to do with spiritualism. Through the eyes of the characters the reader can see the streets of London for all its filth and its glamour. She provides a perfect portrayal of Victorian England and more specifically Victorian London.
In short, Circus of Wonders is an incandescent and besmirched tale of love and self-determination filled to the brim with a beautiful and richly detailed prose. It is gothic, macabre and a perfect piece of historical Victorian literature. A very worthy 4.5 stars
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