Book-Mad-Mum

The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena My rating: 4 of 5 stars Anne and Marco attend a dinner party at their neighbours house, leaving six month old baby Cora sleeping peacefully in her cot at home. Taking the baby monitor with them, and checking on her every half an hour, they settle down for a fun evening with their friends. When they return home at the end of the evening, they realise that their adorable baby has gone, her cot is empty, and Cora is no where to be found. The police are called and started unravelling the evening, and it is then that Pandora's box is opened. This is a great debut thriller from Shari Lapena, and was a real page turner with lots of twists and turns. If I'm honest, I was completely hooked at the beginning and then about 3/4 of the way through it, my mind started to wander and it didn't fully hold my attention to the end, but I think that's because I guessed the outcome, and was just waiting to see if I was...

Some Kind of Wonderful by Giovanna Fletcher My rating: 4 of 5 stars Lizzy and Ian have been a couple for as long as anyone can remember, and it appears to everyone that a marriage proposal is the next step. A romantic trip to Dubai surely is the perfect setting for the question to be popped?! But instead of the happy-ever-after moment, Ian confesses to Lizzy that he doesn't feel the same way as she does, and that he's not sure that he wants to be with her any more. After the initial shock of now being a singleton, Lizzy realises that Ian had many flaws and that she often went along with his decisions rather than speak out, and so she decides to rediscover the girl who used to wear shocking outfits and dance like a loon to Bananarama...she decides to live life and have fun again! I adored this book - it mirrored a part of my younger life, when my partner of nine years suddenly declared he didn't love me any more and off he went - I wish I ...

The Evacuee Christmas by Katie King My rating: 4 of 5 stars Twins Connie and Jessie live with their parents Barbara and Ted at Number 5 Jubilee Street in Bermondsey, South East London, and are quite a close knit family. With War looming, the family face a tough decision - do they stick together during the bombing, or do they split up for safety reasons. Ten year old Connie is determined to prove to her parents that she can look after her quieter brother Jessie. They get shipped off to Harrogate in Yorkshire with their pregnant Aunt Peggy and are billeted with the local vicar Roger, his wife Mabel and their troublesome son Tommy. Enemies and friendships are made but the city children discover that life is a little different to that back on the streets of London, and the Yorkshire children decide that they don't like the newbies taking over their town. Will life ever settle down especially in the run up to Christmas? I really liked this book, it wa...

Don't Wake Up by Liz Lawler My rating: 5 of 5 stars Alex Taylor is a doctor, working in a busy Casualty department, so imagine her horror when she woke up tied to an operating table, with a "surgeon" threatening to perform horrific procedures on her. When she wakes up again, she goes to hospital, insisting she's been raped, but it appears that she is unharmed, with no signs of sexual assault, and no one believes her horrifying story. Gradually, her colleagues step away from her, as does her family and her partner. Convinced she is going mad, Alex struggles to carry on with daily life, and then she encounters someone in the Casualty department who experienced a similar situation. This was an amazing thriller, which was extremely compulsive, I just didn't want to put it down. It sent chills down my spine, and even when I thought I'd figured it out, I was wrong!!!! I was given a free copy of this book in return for an honest an...

Christmas in London by Anita Hughes My rating: 4 of 5 stars Louisa Graham works in a New York bakery, and has big dreams to one day open her own restaurant specialising in desserts. Just before Christmas, at the end of a long day, Noah, a runner for a tv cookery programme walks into the bakery, and begs Louisa to sell him the cinnamon rolls that she'd been baking for the following day. The show that he works on, had a fire in their kitchen, and he needed something for the presenter Bianca to hold up in front of the camera. Noah returns the following day with good news and bad news - the cinnamon rolls were a huge success, but sadly, the presenter of the show developed an allergic reaction to them, and had to pull out of the filming of the annual Christmas Even Dinner TV special at Claridge's hotel in London. Then Noah offers Louisa the opportunity of a lifetime - to stand in for Bianca for the filming and before she knows it, she's on a b...

A Day at the Office by Matt Dunn My rating: 4 of 5 stars A Day At The Office is a must read for anyone who has worked in an office and had a crush on a co-worker, and let's face it, who hasn't at some point or another!!!! Valentine's Day is the day that most couples look forward to, and most singleton's dread, and it's no different for a group of workers at the Seek Software Office in London. Can a stolen kiss at the Christmas party progress to more, can a crush turn into a date? Cards and mysterious presents are exchanged during the day and the outcome? Well, you'll have to read it and find out for yourself!! It has laugh out loud moments, and if I'm brutally honest, a few moments when I guessed what was going to happen next, but the characters are adorable and so realistic. I wanted to hug Callum for being so insecure about his height, slap Nathan across the back of the head for lingering over a lost love, and I wanted t...

The Butlins Girls by Elaine Everest My rating: 3 of 5 stars The book tells the story of Molly whose parents have recently been killed in a car accident just after the end of WW2. With an ironmongers business to sort out, Molly is busy sorting out her parents affairs, until Harriet and Simon turn up out of the blue, claiming to be family, and insisting that her Mum and Dad stated in their Will that the house was left to them! With Simon getting more and more threatening every day, Molly decides to move away until their solicitor comes back from Europe to sort out their affairs, and she gets a job at Butlins as a Redcoat where she meets up with Plum and Bunty on her first day and the three of them forge a friendship. I really, really wanted to love this story and in fairness, it was nicely written, however if I am truly honest, I found the plot a bit flaky...Molly moved out of London, in fear of her "cousin" and "aunt" but took mana...

Love at the Italian Lake by Darcie Boleyn My rating: 5 of 5 stars Wow! Wow! Wow! I absolutely blooming loved this book and it so deserves a five star review. Sophia comes home from her stressful job one evening to find her boyfriend Lee in bed with another woman. This results in a life changing decision for Sophia who decides to jack in her pressurised job in the city, and go and visit her Nonna in Italy to see if she can figure out where she wants her life to go. After an encounter  at the airport she literally bumps into Joe and their friendship blossoms from there. Romance is in the air, but is it just a summer fling or could this be a happy ever after? Set in my favourite country of Italy, the descriptions in the book, actually took me there, I could feel the heat of the sun on my skin, the breeze of Lake Garda in my hair and when Sophia went to Verona, and visited Juliet's balcony, I actually squealed in delight as it is a place I have always wanted to g...

You Are Loved by Jo Platt My rating: 4 of 5 stars Grace Waterhouse is a successful author whose husband's left her for another woman, and they've just had a baby together. When she presents her latest novel to her literary agent and friend Neil, he dismisses it and says that she needs to go away and think about life. When her cleaner Rose goes away on holiday for four months, Grace decides to step into the breach and use the cleaning jobs as a distraction, and hopefully, a source of inspiratation. I must admit, when I first started reading this book, I didn't think I was going to like it...I wasn't sure where the story was going to go, and to be honest, who wants to read a book about a cleaner, but I will be the first to admit that I was wrong! I quickly fell in love with all the characters especially Neil and Gavin (who I would love to befriend and share a couple of bottles of wine with!) and Percy...don't get me started on Percy...

Late Summer in the Vineyard by Jo Thomas My rating: 5 of 5 stars Emmy works in a call centre and is struggling through life after the death of her mother. She lives with her dad who never fully recovered from his grief, and her sister Jody left to marry a wealthy businessman and distance herself from her working class family. When the bailiffs come knocking on the door, Emmy knows that she has to up her game to try and save the family home which has gathered arrears on the mortgage. She talks herself onto a training programme in France for a wine merchant, which the opportunity of becoming team leader bringing with it a bonus which could solve her finance problems. I loved this book and was transported to France on the best holiday of my life without ever leaving my house. The images that Jo describes are amazing, and I could see the vineyard, and the chateau on the hill, the Gita and the river. I could feel the sun on my back, smell the cheese and...

The Girlfriend by Michelle Frances My rating: 4 of 5 stars Laura is a successful tv producer and appears to have it all - a successful career, a wealthy husband, and a grown up son training to be a doctor. Life is going brilliantly until Daniel, her son, brings his girlfriend Cherry home to meet the family. Very slowly things start to unravel, and all is not what it seems with Cherry, but one evening, a lie is told and you see a darker side to one of the characters!! A brilliantly gripping psychological thriller, although you kind of guess the ending, but still it's well executed and I certainly didn't feel robbed at the end. View all my reviews

The Art of Hiding by Amanda Prowse My rating: 5 of 5 stars Nina is living the dream! She has a wonderful husband Finn, two sons who are excelling at their public school, a dream home, and is financially secure until that is, one fateful day when her life is turned up-side down following the death of Finn in a car accident. I couldn't put this book down, it gripped me from the very first sentence, and I really engaged with Nina and her sons, and especially in the way that although she may have gone through hell, she kept smiling and seeing the positive in life for the sake of her children, even though inside she was mourning the death of her husband and their previous life together. I sincerely hope this isn't the last we've heard of Nina, as I would love to find out where she goes from here. Amanda has an amazing ability to write stories that we all want to read, and characters that we can all relate to in some form or another. Well done Ms Prowse, a...

The Rome Affair by Karen Swan My rating: 5 of 5 stars Francesca Hackett (Cesca) has given up a career in Law to move to Rome and work as a tour guide, helping tourists see the real city. One evening after returning home after a night out with friends, Cesca finds a stolen designer handbag dumped in a bin, and vows to return it to its true owner. Socialite Viscontessa Elena Dei Damiani Pignatelli Della Mirandola is the owner of the bag, and the two women strike up an unusual friendship, resulting in Cesca agreeing to become Elena's biographer. As the story of her life unfolds, the lid on Pandora's box is lifted and a tragic secret is revealed. I adored this book which I read on a sunbed whilst on holiday!! Karen Swan is a brilliant author, and always makes the story lift off the pages so much so, that when you are reading it you will feel the heat of Rome on your shoulders, smell the aroma of freshly brewed coffee and your lips will drool as y...

The Woman at Number 24 by Juliet Ashton My rating: 3 of 5 stars I had this book on my TBR list for a while, and all my book worm friends had read it, and it was getting great reviews, so I was quite excited to eventually clear the other books on the list, and peel open the pages. I couldn't have been more disappointed. The story is about a house in Notting Hill and the group of residents that live behind the net curtains. The main character Sarah lives in the attic of the house as the stories of the residents unravel beneath her, unfortunately for her, one of those residents is her ex-husband Leo and his new wife. The premise of the book is enjoyable, however there are two twists within it, one involving a friend Smithy, and the other a neighbour Mavis, and the twist are exactly the same! Personally, I felt it was shoddy, lazy writing, and I felt robbed at the end of the book. I was quite surprised by the amount of good reviews! View...

The Honeymoon by Tina Seskis My rating: 4 of 5 stars Jemma is on her honeymoon. She is staying in a five star luxury resort in The Maldives which should be paradise but one evening her husband goes missing, but where has he gone? Suddenly, everyone on the island is a suspect and Jemma doesn't know how she can trust. Initially I couldn't stand Jemma, I thought she was selfish and overbearing, and I disagreed with a decision she made at the start of the story, but as the plot unfolded, I realised that she was being used and I ended up feeling sorry for her. The twist at the end made me gasp, as in my head I thought through every scenario except the one in the story! The description of The Maldives was brilliant and I found myself googling holidays there!! If you liked Girl On A Train, or Behind Closed Doors, you'll love this story. I was provided with a free copy of this book from Netgalley for an honest review. View all my rev...

Trouble at the Little Village School by Gervase Phinn My rating: 1 of 5 stars I was really disappointed with this book - it's the second one in the series and basically the plot line was pretty much a repeat of the first one. A child who ran away, the will-they-won't-they relationship of the village doctor and the school headmistress, and the on-going saga of whether the small village school would join forces with the bigger school in the next town. I don't feel that the book bought anything new and it just felt like a repeat of the first one, and considering that there are four in the series, I honestly don't know where the plot line will go for the other two. View all my reviews

A Night on the Orient Express by Veronica Henry My rating: 5 of 5 stars A Night On The Orient Express sees a group of passengers settling into their seats on board the train journey of a lifetime. We meet Emmie And Archie who won the trip as a prize on an online dating website, Adele and her granddaughter Imogen - who has been sent on the journey to Venice by her Grandmother to run a mysterious errand, famous photographer, Riley and his lifelong sweetheart Sylvie who make the journey each year for Sylvie's birthday, and Simon and new "step mum" Stephanie, who along with Simon's teenage children make the journey to try and bring the family together as a unit. As the infamous train rattles along the tracks, we hear of the tales of the passengers on-board and very quickly I felt like I was drawn into the story, with the wonderful descriptions of the marquetry on the inside of the coaches, to the smells and the ambience which soon had m...

Paper Hearts & Summer Kisses by Carole Matthews My rating: 5 of 5 stars Christie Chapman is a single mum who spends her days commuting into London on the coach from Milton Keynes to work as a PA in a solicitors office. What keeps Christie sane is her love of crafting, and as the coach rattles down the motorway to metropolis each day, she dreams of giving up the rat race and developing her hobby into a career. Christie's character was plausible and I really warmed to her, I wanted to be her friend and sit and do crafts with her over a glass or two of wine!!! Her parents who heled her a lot with childcare (of teenager Finn) were amazing and so supportive. Henry, the possible love interest was insipid and drove me insane, I just wanted to shake him and tell him to "man up!" I loved this book - for me personally it had everything in it I would want to read about - crafts with a little bit of romance thrown in for good measure (I'm a...

Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris My rating: 5 of 5 stars OH MY DAYS!!!! I am going to start this review by saying that you absolutely MUST read this book...I promise you won't be disappointed!!! Grace and Jack appear to have it all...he is a well off lawyer defending Domestic Abuse victims and Grace gave up a good job as a fruit buyer for Harrods to keep house when they married and also to prepare their home for Millie, her sister who has Downs Syndrome. The plan is that when Millie reaches the age of 18 she will leave her residential school to live with Jack and Grace. In the meantime, they entertain friends at dinner parties, and have exotic holidays, but all is not what it seems when the front door closes. Jack is actually a very sinister character and he is written in such a chilling way, that at times I honestly forgot to breathe when I was reading about him. Grace's character is very plausible, the way she initially gave in to his dema...

The Cake Shop in the Garden by Carole Matthews My rating: 5 of 5 stars I absolutely adored this book, and when I sat down to read it, sometimes it felt like the pages were turning themselves...I couldn't read it quickly enough!! Fay Merryweather runs a café from her home, and a cake shop aboard her narrow boat moored at the bottom of the garden in Milton Keynes. She has a domineering mother who has taken herself to her bed and runs poor Fay raged. She is in a completely dead-end relationship with Anthony and her sister who lives in New York is constantly begging for both emotional and financial support. When Danny Wilde strides up the garden one morning looking for work as an odd-job man, Fay's life starts to move in a different direction. I sometimes got frustrated that Fay just couldn't seem to use the word "no" and was used by everyone as a doormat. Saying that I loved her, and really wanted things to go her way. I was so dis...

The Pink Suit by Nicole Mary Kelby My rating: 2 of 5 stars This book seemed to have so much promise but sadly it failed to deliver. The story is based around the suit that Jackie Kennedy wore the day that JFK was assassinated and the fictional part of the book was the story of the young dressmaker who copied the original Chanel design in raspberry pink for the First Lady which became iconic but for all the wrong reasons. Before I read the book, I knew nothing about what actually happened to Jackie on the day of the assassination, I didn't know that she insisted on wearing the blood stained suit when her husband's successor was sworn in on Air Force One, declaring "let them see what they have done." The book was really just a narrative about sewing, Chanel, and now and then a few references to then references to Maision Blanche. I wouldn't recommend this book, it didn't really go anywhere, the story was the run up to the assa...

The Headmaster's Wife by Thomas Christopher Greene My rating: 4 of 5 stars I picked this book up from the Quick Choice section in my local library, and if I'm completely honest, I chose it simply because of the title. I seem to have a passion about reading books about Schools, which I think stems back to my childhood when I read and fell in love with the Mallory Towers books. I didn't know what the story involved, and so fell into the unknown, which was a lovely treat and I wasn't left disappointed. The book is in three parts, Acrimony, Expectations and After. When I read the first part, which tells the story of Arthur Winthrop, a middle aged Headmaster, who is found wondering Central Park naked, I loved him as a character and felt great sympathy for him. I must admit, that I did figure out one little twist in the first part straight away, but the other one at the end of that part of the book made me gasp! Then came Expectations, whic...

At Christmas I resigned from my job. For 18 months I worked as an Admin Assistant at a primary school...I adored working with children and the teaching staff blew me away with their commitment, creativity and the extremely long hours they put in to the education system. But, after working in the entertainment industry for 28 years prior to that, a school environment wasn't the correct fit for me, so I decided to jump ship. I've never walked away from a job, not knowing where I'm going next and it was a scary move, but I had to do it as I wasn't enjoying life at work, and when my other half told me that "I'd lost my sparkle" I knew it was time to move on and try something else. I had already decided in my head that I would take the month of January off, after all, who wants to work that month, it's dark, cold, dreary and depressing after the wonder of Christmas! January became February, and when February became March and I was living off my savings I ...

My Husband's Wife by Jane Corry *** (Three Stars) Lily and Ed are recently married and martial life isn't going as well as Lilly thought it would. Ed is an artist while Lily is a defence lawyer and finds herself defending Joe Thomas,  a man who drags her into his web of deceit but who also reminds  Lily of her late brother, Daniel. Lily and Ed  live next door to  Francesca and her daughter Carla who are Italian. Little Carla is subjected to bullying at school as she is "different" to the other children.  But as Francesca works hard,  Lily and Ed take to caring for Carla on Sundays and it is through this connection that Carla becomes parts of their lives permanently but not in a nice way. When a secret that Francesca has been holding is uncovered by Lily, Carla's life is pulled apart. I liked this book, and just when I thought I'd guessed what was going on, it then turned in a completely different direction, but it still all made sense....

When I Was Invisible by Dorothy Koomson My rating: 1 of 5 stars Was I pleased to finish this book?!!! It has to be one of the worst books I've read this year, and it was a complete and utter slog to get through. On paper, I should have loved it, because it featured lots of things that I like to read about-ballet, nuns and celebrity lifestyles, but what I found so annoying was the constant to-ing and fro-ing of the year, the location and the person in the story. The two main characters are both called Veronica Harper who meet at school aged 8 years old...one is Roni and the other calls herself Nika, and they soon become best friends, sharing a love of ballet, and it is at their ballet lessons, that a wedge appears that will change the course of both their lives forever. I think I would have loved this book if it hadn't kept leaping around, one chapter went from 1988 to 2012 to 2016 and covered Birmingham, London and Brighton. If you can read t...

The Secret by Kathryn Hughes My rating: 4 of 5 stars The book starts with the agonising story of Beth and Michael whose young son Jake is suffering from renal failure and is in desperate need of a kidney transplant. As if that wasn't bad enough, throw into the mix the fact that Beth's Mum has died, and has taken a secret with her to the grave. When Beth is going through her mother's things, she finds a newspaper cutting which holds the key to the secret. Initially I thought this was a straight transplant-in-search-of-donor story and that was ok but I have to say that the first 88 pages took a little reading. Then the story went back in time to the 1976 heatwave in England, and then for me the story became really interesting and everything started to make sense and I rattled through the pages. At the end there is a twist, which if I'm honest, made me feel like I'd been lead up the garden path throughout the whole story, but I suppo...

So! This blog has been up and running for a while now, and I think it's only fair that I tell you a bit about myself. I am a 46 year old Mum to one teenage regular son and a nine year old furry son called Stan, who is  of the Cocker Spaniel variety. I also share my life with my extremely patient partner  Richard who constantly turns a blind eye to my reading addiction, even though he doesn't share the addiction with me!!! I worked for Radio 2 as a Broadcast Assistant for 28 years, (believe it or not, I was a month shy of my 17th birthday when I started !) working on many of the fantastic shows. Who wouldn't like to meet Michael Buble or Gary Barlow over Breakfast, or share such brilliant creativity and laughter with their colleagues?  But when the carrot of voluntary redundancy was dangled under my nose two years ago, I decided to take a leap of faith, and leave the fur-lined rut that I was residing in, and I left. It was one of the hardest things ...

How to Find Love in a Bookshop by Veronica Henry My rating: 5 of 5 stars WHATEVER ELSE YOU DO IN YOUR LIFE - READ THIS BOOK!!!!! I grabbed this one day when I was popping into the library to return an item, having no intention of getting another one to add to my already endless To Be Read pile, but I saw it was a Veronica Henry book and as I'd listened to High Tide by her on Audible, I grabbed it from the Quick Choice shelf and smuggled it into my handbag before my "other half" could see that I'd borrowed "yet another book!" It was a few weeks before I got through the other books on the pile and found my way to this one, and all I can say is "Wow! Why did I wait?!" How To Find Love In A Book Shop is the story of Emilia who inherits her father's "quirky" bookshop in the Cotswolds, which is faced with possible closure due to spiraling debts. The customers of the shop all have their own stories to tell...

The Ballroom Class by Lucy Dillon My rating: 1 of 5 stars This story is based around ballroom dancing and when I picked it I was full of optimism of a Strictly-esque type of story full of glitter balls and sequins. Three couples join a new ballroom class, and they're all looking for some magic in their lives. Lauren and Chris are getting married, and Lauren dreams of having a fairytale wedding which gets her poor mum Bridget in trouble. Meanwhile Katie and Ross are looking for a quick-fix solution to their failing marriage even though neither is quite sure who's leading who anymore. I had great hopes for this book but it just dragged along and was quite boring and dreary. I didn't relate to the characters and actually wanted to scream at boring old Lauren, and shake Karen to make herself hat was happening around her, it was so frustrating! I should add that I listened to this book on Audible rather than reading the physical book, but it i...

A Wedding in Maine by Jen McLaughlin My rating: 1 of 5 stars I hate to do this, but I'm giving this book just one star and the reason is pure and simple...I couldn't bear to finish it. I very very rarely put a boom away that I haven't finished, I can't actually remember the last time I did it but this one I can't engage with. I picked it up in the supermarket as I liked the look of it, and it's being marketed as a James Paterson Bookshot which I thought would be a nice book to read in one sitting on World Book Day. However what I didn't realise when I picked it up was that it is not a stand alone book, it is the second part of a story that's already running. I've read books out of sequence before and the true talent with an author is that they are able to retell the story without boring established fans. Sadly, that didn't happen in this book. I got to page 43 of a 134 page book and I was still non the wiser a...

One Step Too Far by Tina Seskis My rating: 3 of 5 stars One morning, Emily Coleman ups and leaves her apparently happy martial home in Manchester, for a new hedonistic life in London. Emily has a secret and is running from it, but can she out run it or will it haunt her forever? When I first started reading this book I was completely immersed in the plotline, loved the story and I adored the style of writing. However, half way through I got a fed up, but only because I was getting impatient and wanted all the loose ends tied up (it was a bit like going to bed on Christmas Eve and wishing your life away for the surprises that you know are under the tree!) Tina Seskis didn't disappoint me, and when the story did start to unravel I could not stop reading it, I was completely engrossed in the story again, and couldn't turn the pages quickly enough. This book was compared on the cover to The Girl On The Train, but I actually think it was better. S...

The Idea of You by Amanda Prowse My rating: 4 of 5 stars Lucy and Jonah meet at a christening, fall in love, marry, and are over the moon when Lucy discovers she is pregnant, until at 11 weeks she starts to bleed and their hopes and dreams for the new addition to their family fade. I always find with Amanda Prowse's books that I can relate to the story in one way or another, and yet again I can because I sadly suffered a miscarriage, like Lucy at 11 weeks into my pregnancy and so I felt every emotion that was written. Every tear she shed, I did, when she got angry with life, I did and when she was thinking "why me?" I did too. This isn't a twee attempt at a subject that women still don't talk about, this was written from the heart and the characters were very true to life. I loved Lucy, and wanted to sit on the sofa with her, hold her hand and tell her that the pain of a lost child doesn't go away, you just learn to live wit...

Who Do You Love by Jennifer Weiner My rating: 2 of 5 stars Thank goodness that is over! I really hate posting bad reviews because I know that reading a book is a personal thing, and also, the author put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into the long writing process, however, this book just felt like pages and pages of cliches. Rachel is a young, white, middle class Jewish girl in hospital after having heart surgery. One evening, bored on the hospital ward, she wheels herself down to A&E in a wheelchair to watch the world go by. In comes young Andy, a mixed race boy with a single mum, from the wrong side of town, with a broken arm. Himself and Rachel get chatting and he goes off to have his arm examined and they never see each other...until...! What happens next is a lot of "bumping" into each other over the years, and a love affair that lasts a lifetime. I was really disappointed with this and found that reading it was like wading throug...

The Food of Love by Amanda Prowse My rating: 5 of 5 stars WOW! WOW! WOW! I should start this review by saying that I adore Amanda Prowse's books. I don't know what it is, but I always feel that there is a part of my life that she is writing about. The subject of this book is eating disorders (thankfully nothing I've encountered in my life) but I still felt that I could relate to the characters. Freya,a food writer and Lockie, a photographer have a wonderful, strong marriage with two teenage daughters Charlotte and Lexi. Food and healthy eating are a massive part of this family's life, so when the horrible disease of anorexia knocks on the door, and comes for an unplanned visit, the family do not know how to deal with this unwanted visitor. I found this book compelling to read, in fact, I stayed up until 1.30 in the morning to finish it, because this family became MY family, and I wanted to know how they all were at the end!! If you do nothing e...

The Assistants by Camille Perri My rating: 2 of 5 stars I had great hopes for this book, after being a personal assistant myself,mi was hoping for the bitchy stories of a corporate office, the politics and the office affairs, but sadly it wasn't the book was I thought it was going to be. Imagine a modern day version of the 9-5 film starring Dolly Parton with theft thrown in...it didn't feel like a new story to be, just an old one with a new twist. Saying that it was nicely written, but not a story I would recommend to my friends. View all my reviews

The Secrets We Keep by Jonathan Harvey My rating: 3 of 5 stars The whole book seems to centre around a left luggage ticket found in a jacket pocket after Danny goes missing five years against. What we do find out is someone has picked up the suitcase, but we don't find out what was in the suitcase or why Mim picked it up. Although I Liked this, there was a point when I felt I was wading through treacle although it did get better, but was a little far fetched at the end. I've read better Jonathan Harvey books. View all my reviews

Holding by Graham Norton My rating: 4 of 5 stars I listened to this book on Audible, with Graham Norton reading it himself, and it was brilliant. Set in the fictional Irish town of Dundeen, local, over weight Gardai PJ Collins is used to the slow sedate village Bobby, eating a fried breakfast, handing over speeding tickets and giving safety talks at the local school until....human remains are discovered when excavation work is being done on a farm. Down go the doughnuts, and PJ Collins has to step up to the plate, and solve the murder. Will the town ever be the same again as secrets are unleashed and we all know that once Pandora's box is open it is very difficult, neigh on impossible to get the lid back on. My family are from West Cork which is where this novel was set, and with Graham reading it, it bought the accents to life and made me giggle..I could imagine the scenery and landscape. Well done Graham, five stars...can't wait for the nex...

The Little Village School by Gervase Phinn My rating: 4 of 5 stars I loved this book!! I used to work in a school office but not in a village school, but I was interested to read it and I wasn't disappointed!! If you liked the Miss Read books then you will love this as it's just a more up to date version of using on Elisabeth Devine the new headmistress in school. You have all the usual characters that you would find in a village book, the gossip, the doctor and opinionated farmer which makes it sound like a really predictable read, which it probably was, but Gervase transported me from my home in Kent to the wonderful Yorkshire Dales. Really recommend this book. View all my reviews

Christmas Under the Stars by Karen Swan My rating: 4 of 5 stars I loved this book! Initially it was a little difficult to get into, and seems to me to be a little far fetched, but once I got past that I adored every single word! Meg and Mitch live in a wonderfully romantic log cabin in the Rockies and are just a week away from getting married when disaster strikes. Meg has to use the radio to summon help, but she's never used it before...however she manages to make contact with someone, someone who she later finds out is just out of this world! I read this during the Christmas period, so I had my twinkling fairy lights on the tree to add to the romantic nature of Canada in the winter. I love Karen Swan books, and she didn't disappoint me this time either. Recommend it as a lovely, festive read. View all my reviews

The Hotel on Mulberry Bay by Melissa Hill My rating: 2 of 5 stars Well! What can I say? I usually love Melissa Hill books but found this one quite a slog, and felt that a lot of the story was padding. Need and Anna have been married for years and run The Mulberry Bay hotel, she Anna suddenly dies and her daughter Elle returns from London for the funeral to find the hotel run down and ram shackled. Together with her sister Penny they try and find a way to salvage it. The whole Beatles sub plot I found both annoying and boring. All in all I was sadly disappointed in this book as I usually love Melissa Hill. View all my reviews