Book-Mad-Mum

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...