Category Archives: #fiction

Three Hours, by Rosamund Lupton

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This has to be one of the best books I’ve read in a very long time. The action spans three hours during an attack on a school by what appear to be domestic terrorists, but that spare description really doesn’t do it justice. I’ve read Rosamund Lupton’s previous books but this one is undoubtedly her best so far. It’s a breath-taking read, she ratchets up the tension with every turn of the page and gets completely into the heads of her protagonists.

What’s so clever is the way she puts us right in the middle of the action in the school itself, into the minds of the teachers and pupils and the incredible acts of bravery and self-sacrifice which take place, and into the minds of the desperate families waiting for news of their children. It’s also an incredibly timely book, touching on themes of radicalisation and refugees, of belonging, and of the ways in which we ignore what’s really going on in people’s lives. From being in the room with a group of teenagers desperately trying to stay brave, to small children playing a terrifying game of hide and seek, while in the outside world, police investigators try to work out what’s going on and whether it’s safe to intervene, this is an extraordinarily gripping book.

I loved it so much that having raced through it a first time, desperate to know what happens next, I’m now reading it again in a more leisurely way – it’s one of those books which bears repeated reading, there’s so much richness and texture to it. Her descriptions are wonderful too, and it was a real heart-pounding, pulse-racing read.

I read this whenever and wherever I could grab a minute, I was so engaged in it. It was like going to the cinema to see a really good film, I couldn’t believe it when I got to the end, because I had been so transported by the story.

Three Hours will be published by Viking (Penguin UK) in 2020. I received a free copy via Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

You, Me And The Movies by Fiona Collins

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Sweet, frothy and heartbreaking all at the same time, You, Me And The Movies shows us the romance between film studies lecturer Mac Bartley-Thomas and student Arden as it unfolded decades earlier, showing us how it shaped their lives for years afterwards.  It’s unusual because while you’re busy following their romance, shown in flashback, at the same time you’re also rooting for a very different love story. 

It’s hard to say much more about the plot without giving it all away, but part of its charm was the way the story used famous films to bring Arden and Mac’s relationship vividly to life.  Bags of nostalgia, too, for what was, in a way, a more innocent, hopeful time.  I want to be clear, though, this isn’t only a romance, although there’d be nothing wrong with it if it were, this is a book which is as much about finding yourself and the value of friendship as it is about a love story. And, it was refreshing to read something which avoided the usual boy meets girl tropes.

Beautifully written, really vivid characters and setting. Oh, and don’t worry, you don’t need to have watched all the films in question in order to enjoy the book.  It kept me going through several train rides, drove me to fish about in my handbag for a tissue at one point, and has made me want to watch Pretty Woman all over again.

The Long Call, by Ann Cleeves

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Creating a character on which to build a potential series of books is no mean feat, and Ann Cleeves has form – once with Vera Stanhope and again with Shetland’s Jimmy Perez. But both of those series are as much about the landscape and location as they are their lead character, so I was interested to see how she would approach her new series and detective, featuring Detective Inspector Matthew Venn, set in North Devon. It’s an area that I have visited on a couple of occasions but don’t know well, and I was able to see it through her eyes, ‘the special light you only find close to the sea’.

One of the things I particularly liked about this first book in the series was the leading role given to people with learning disabilities (and their families), giving a wonderful window into a world that few of us understand.  As someone whose brother faces similar challenges, to have portrayals that go beyond the cliché of learning disability was wonderful. It made such a refreshing change to have proper, complex motives and choices attributed to people who are so often lumped together as ‘different’ and unable to rationalise the decisions they’ve made.

The story itself was absorbing, and it’s easy to see how the series could unfold. It was one of those books you read more slowly at the end than at the beginning, because although you really want to know what happens, you also don’t want it to end.  Can’t wait for the next one.

The Perfect Wife, by JP Delaney

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Can I just say, this book was not at all what I was expecting from the blurb, and it was all the better for it. A truly original premise, it tells the story of Abbie Cullen, wife to tech entrepreneur Tim, who wakes up after an accident to discover she’s an artificial intelligence, constructed from the memories of the ‘real’ Abbie years after her actual death.  So far, so clever, but this is much more than a smart idea. Abbie feels real to the reader, right from the opening sentence – “You’re having that dream again,” and you are immediately plunged into her reality.

At first, you believe the story’s about a man, desperate with grief, who creates an AI replacement for the wife he couldn’t bear to lose, with all the societal challenges this brings, but pretty quickly things take a darker turn. This really was the definition of a page turner for me, the pace and pressure ratcheting up the further into the book you get. This could so easily have become gimmicky and too much about the technology, but it’s the emotional connections and experiences which really drive the plot.

Make sure you put a good layer of suncream on before you open this book, because if you’re not careful you’ll get sunburned lying on your lounger, so distracted by what you’re reading that you forget to turn over.

The American Agent, by Jacqueline Winspear

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This is the latest in the Maisie Dobbs series, which follows the eponymous heroine through some pretty pivotal decades – pre WW1 and now into WW2, a time of enormous upheaval and social change. She’s an interesting character because she defies a lot of the conventions of the time, but is more nuanced than simply being a woman who takes on the role that a man might play in an investigation.  The thing about the Maisie Dobbs books is that they could so easily tip into lazy stereotyping and for me, manage to avoid that through vivid depiction of Maisie’s interior life. They are always meticulously researched and thick with period detail, worn lightly throughout.

In The American Agent, Maisie’s briefed to look into the death of a young American journalist, at the height of the Blitz. It takes in the work of the pioneering burns unit led by Sir Archibald McIndoe, the Spanish Civil War, female friendship and what it really means to be a mother, along with a hint of romance and a thoroughly satisfying ending.  This for me is the ideal Sunday afternoon book, to be read lying on the sofa to the accompaniment of rain sliding down the windowpanes. It absorbs your attention without being overwhelming, and at the end, you’re left with a sense that everything in the world has assumed its right place.

Swallowtail Summer, By Erica James

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This is the perfect book to read while lazing on a sun lounger or sitting quietly in a shady garden with a long, cold drink. It’s the story of a group of friends and their adult children who spend their summers at Liston End, a huge house set right on the water’s edge in the Norfolk Broads. Pretty early on, we learn that Alastair, the owner of the house, back from a lengthy sojourn abroad after the death of his wife, is about to unveil a decision that will affect the entire group. I won’t spoil the story by telling you what it is, suffice to say the course of action he decides to pursue results in all sorts of secrets coming to light.

There were a number of aspects of this story that I particularly liked. First of all, it portrayed complex, interlinked, multi-generational relationships in a way that was very true to life. It made a pleasant change to be following the love-lives of people in their sixties, whilst at the same time seeing similar threads being pulled through the lives and relationships of their children. This makes it all sound very worthy, and probably a bit dull, but it really wasn’t like that at all!

I felt as though I could see Liston End, the descriptions of life by the river and of the house itself brought the place vividly to life. And I loved the characters too, there were lots of sub-plots involving each of them which kept me riveted, wanting to know what happened next to each of them. I read this book over several sittings, swept along with the story and the people and felt extremely satisfied by the ending – something that isn’t always the case with a summer read, if you know what I mean.

If you’re looking for an absorbing, gentle read, with lots of twists and turns, sprinkled with a bit of escapism, then this is definitely one for you.

The Dead Ex, by Jane Corry

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Now, I’ve got to be honest here, I’d never heard of Jane Corry before her name came up on a twitter post announcing that two of her books were reduced to 99p on Kindle.  I was waiting for a couple of books I’d pre-ordered to be published and had been reduced to re-reading the Frieda Klein series by Nicci French (v.good) for about the fifth or sixth time. Did I mention I read all the time?

Anyway, I thought I’d give her a whirl, because you can’t go wrong for 99p, right? 

It was great! Very twisty-turny, and although I was certain there was a twist coming, I couldn’t work it out, and I LOVE that in a thriller. I also particularly liked the fact that one of the protagonists, Vicki, has epilepsy, which affects her memory and means she can’t be certain that she didn’t have something to do with her ex-husband’s disappearance – the man at the centre of the plot.  People in my family have epilepsy and I thought that Vicki’s experience was very well done – not overblown or overdramatised but giving great insight into what it’s like to live with the constant risk of seizures.

The plot was quite complex and for quite a way into the book it’s hard to work out the connections between the different protagonists, despite hints and foreshadowing. I think that’s one of the reasons I liked it, because as a reader I had to concentrate more on what was happening in the present and what ‘might’ have happened in the past, and how everyone was interconnected. I wasn’t entirely sure whether I liked some of the characters, but then again I suppose that makes them true to life, because who does like everyone they meet…

I didn’t realise this until I looked her up, but Jane Corry is in fact a Sunday Times bestselling author of a number of novels, and she has a new one out in about a week’s time, I Looked Away. Don’t you just love it when you find a new author and you have a whole heap of new books to read? Can’t wait.

The Bookshop on the Shore, by Jenny Colgan

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Jenny Colgan is one of my favourite writers for those days when you need to escape. Her books are always full of people you’d like to go out for a drink with, facing the kinds of dilemmas we all face, with heart and humour and courage. She tends to write books in clusters, that is to say, she creates a setting and furnishes it with various people whose stories you follow over the course of two or three novels. And the reason I make the point about setting, is because setting becomes as much of a character as any of the individuals whose lives we’re being welcomed into.

I adored her series of books about Mure, and The Bookshop on The Shore follows on (kind of) from The Little Shop of Happy Ever After, although it’s not essential to have read the first one in order to enjoy this one. Jenny’s love for Scotland’s wild, sweeping geography, along with the way she weaves the weather (I never knew the difference between the ‘gloaming’ and a ‘haar’ before) into the plot and the lead character’s experiences make the landscape part of the story.

Speaking of which, I won’t spoil it for you, but the thrust of the novel is a bit like a Von Trapp update only without Nazis. A young single mother ends up in the depths of the Scottish countryside looking after a troop of traumatized children for the local Laird whilst at the same time attempting to make a success of a travelling bookshop on behalf of the heroine of Little Shop of Happy Ever After, who’s having a baby. Her own young son (Hari) is late to speak, and there are some absolutely (and I use that word advisedly) heartwarming/funny/sad interactions later on in the book between young Hari and Patrick, the youngest child of the Laird. There’s a mystery to be uncovered, lessons about the different shapes and sizes that families now come in, and about the ways that children understand and express love, loss and everything in between. And of course, there’s a love story too.

I pre-ordered this one on Amazon and binge-read it as soon as it arrived, knowing that there will be the pleasure of then re-reading it at leisure, more than once, curled up on the sofa or lying in the bath instead of snatched moments standing waiting for the kettle to boil or crammed onto a busy train. Just perfect.

Queenie, by Candice Carty-Williams

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Have you ever loved reading something so much you deliberately slow down so you can savour every word? That’s how I felt about Queenie. I keep seeing reviews which hail her as the new Bridget Jones and that’s such lazy commentary. Queenie isn’t the ‘new’ anybody, she’s uniquely herself and all the better for it.

This is a book with a big heart and a protagonist who is utterly relatable.  There were times when I just wanted to reach into the pages and give her a massive hug, she became so real to me.  I mean, honest to God, we’ve all made hideous mistakes in our twenties, that’s part of growing up, but Queenie is so painfully vulnerable, so brave, and in the midst of everything still so much fun, you can’t help but love her.  Her experiences as a young black woman resonated massively with me, because her struggles are both universal and unique.  Some of it made uncomfortable reading, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing – the best writing will do that to you.  In that respect it was a window into a world I knew nothing about.

It’s not just Queenie herself I loved, her gang of female friends were so well realised too, like the mates I had in my twenties, there for you all the way. Her grandparents’ tough love when she needed it, and Queenie’s gradual realisation of her mother’s vulnerabilities were beautifully drawn. And, I liked the fact her story wasn’t about girl meets boy, girl loses boy, yada yada yada, that would have been far too trite an ending. This book was about how she found herself more than anything else, it was funny, moving, emotional and uplifting all at the same time. An absolute triumph.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton

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I kept seeing this book mentioned on Twitter, and then it won the Costa First Novel Prize, and now it’s popping up on all sorts of novel prize lists, including the British Book Awards and the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel Awards. Part of me almost rebelled against buying it and once I had I kept putting off reading it, I’d seen so many rave reviews.

Is it a crime novel? Well, sort of. It’s not as though you don’t know who the victim is right from the beginning, or even who the murderer is supposed to be, so there’s no mystery there. It’s the marmite of fiction, so far as I can see, because you’ll either absolutely adore it or you’ll end up chucking it across the room in frustration, there’s no room in between. I found it quite heavy going to start off with until I got to grips with the pattern and structure of the novel, but it is definitely worth persevering.

There’s a richness to the way it’s written, not just the ingenuity of the premise and plot, which make it a rewarding read. The characters are absorbing and the detailed historical research that the author must have done is worn lightly throughout, just enough scattered imagery and sensory colour to root you clearly in the period. He breaks all the rules you get taught when you’re first starting out trying to write a novel – multiple points of view, a plot that’s upside down and back to front, and a genre that’s hard to pinpoint. Yet it all works incredibly well, and it does have the pace and suspense of a thriller even though you already know whodunnit. Or you think you do. Kind of.

I’ve seen this book described as Quantum Leap meets Agatha Christie, but I think that leaves out the slight feeling of mysticism coming through the narrative. It’s ancient and modern all at the same time, and it made my head hurt to read (but in a good way).