Book-Mad-Mum

  All The Broken Places is the follow up story to the Boy In the Striped Pyjamas – a book which had me sobbing on a packed commuter train many years ago. This time we hear the story of 91 year old Gretel, Bruno’s elder sister who is now living in London and trying to put her dark past behind her, but she finds that she cannot shrug off the guilt of her father’s War Crimes. Now a widow with a grown up son and living in Mayfair, Gretel finds herself defending a young boy who has moved into the apartment below. This is another thought provoking read yet again from John Boyne. It is a powerful tale following on from Bruno and Shmuel. A beautiful book which will stay in your heart forever.

It is no secret that I am a massive fan of Amanda Prowse's books and I have also been extremely lucky to meet her and I can personally vouch for the fact that her bubble personality lights up, not only the room, but the whole street and is also extremely infectious. You don't leave a meeting with her feeling down in the dumps and so to read her very honest and open book about her insecurities of her weight and body image really took me by surprise.  I found that there were times reading this memoir that I wanted to laugh with her, cry with her and more often than not, I wanted to reach through the pages of the book and hug her - if only Kindle offered that facility! You couldn't read a more candid book about body image and I think every single woman in her early 20s should read this and know that more often than not, if's ok not to be ok, but also have a chat with a friend when you feel like that as you don't go through things on your own. 

    It’s the last night in October 1999 and the clocks are going back. Will and Ella are teenagers at the fair with a group of friends and that’s where their love affair began.   Fast forward through marriage, children and empty nest and life suddenly takes a jolt for Ella. She remembers back to the night when she first met Will and recalls bits of a conversation with a woman in a green coat and red scarf. Facing a crisis in her marriage, Ella has to confront the past to see if her marriage has a future.   I am really mixed about how I felt about characters in this book- there were times when I loved Ella’s strength yet there were other times when I found her really annoying and irritating especially when she spoke to Robin – she seemed to regress into a teenager.   Will and Ella’s friend Cole was another enigma for me – he was a constant in their life and almost a cuckoo in the nest, but no one seemed to notice and there were times when I really w...

  Algernon is a 97 year old widower living in Essex. His life is routine based, punctuated by the carriage clock which he got as a retirement present from his office job. However, his 15 year old granddaughter Anna lives in an offbeat world where colour and body art are her main survival aids. Anna and Algernon have never met, but soon their very different lives will collide. When Anna’s Mum Helene splits up with her partner Harry, they find themselves homeless and having nowhere to live, they relocate to Essex to stay in Algernon’s small home while they get their lives back on track. Anna “the child” is told to sleep in “the shed” but this turns out to be a sanctuary and not the dog kennel that she originally thought it would be. This heart-warming story is told through three generations of one family, granddad Algernon, daughter Helene and granddaughter Anna and the journey they all go on to get to know each other and to try and face the demons that their past threw at them. ...

  MY FAVOURITE READ OF 2022 SO FAR... After 17 years of an unhappy marriage, Anna finally leaves husband Conor and moves in with James, but both have “baggage” - Anna has two children, Jack and Grace and James has a teenage daughter called Bella. The “blended” family isn’t exactly the Brady Bunch that Anna and James had hoped for - the kids hate living in their new set up but just how do they all live together in harmony?   I absolutely loved this book but I think it resonated with me, because I am a Step Mum, and when I first met my partner’s daughter she was a teenager and my own son was Jack’s age so there were a few similarities, but not that many and my son certainly didn’t share our bed!!   Anna’s ex husband Conor was an absolute idiot, a man-child and I hated him from day one as he used his children to get back at Anna, and his behaviour at Jack’s birthday part was just unforgivable. Anna also annoyed me at times as she was constantly making excuses fo...

  It’s the 1990’s, Pulp, the Verve and The Stereophonics are in the charts, the National lottery was launched and the internet for most people, was just a twinkle in the eye. The order of the Sisters of Saint Philomena are down to just three last nuns and the convent needs a lot of repairs. With no money and no new novices coming in they face a dire future. Sister Cecilia, a 90 year member of the convent starts praying for a lottery win and after that a series of small miracles start to unfold. I loved this book, but think it was helped by the fact that my grandma worked in a convent in Ireland, and so I was always around nuns from a young age, and was fascinated by their lives, so for me this felt like a trip down memory lane. There were some occasions in the book when I was really surprised by the behaviour and attitude of Sister Margaret, but then you discover why and it all fits into place, and the intertwined story of Matthew and George was a delight to read.

    The Love Of My Life – Rosie Walsh   Emma is married to Leo and together they have a young daughter Ruby who they both adore. They are a perfect family unit…or are they? Almost everything that Emma has told Leo about her life is a lie! When Emma suffers a serious illness, Leo, an obituary writer for a newspaper, copes by doing what he knows best – researching and writing about his wife’s life. But as he starts to unravel the truth, he discovers the woman he loves doesn’t really exist. Even her name isn’t real. When the very darkest moments of Emma’s past finally emerge, she must somehow prove to Leo that she really is the woman he always thought she was . . . But first, she must tell him about the other love of her life. This book for me was a slow burner – up until 50% of the way through I couldn’t quite engage with it – we knew from the get go that there were secrets in Emma’s life and I wanted things ...