How far would you go to protect your family? Could you forgive those who have wronged you? And even if you could, can you ever truly go home? Billed as a novel for those who enjoy books by Raymond Chandler and John Grisham, John Hart’s second book, ‘Down River’, is a dark and atmospheric trip […]
‘Mummy blogging’ is big news lately. In what seems to be a backlash against the mythical ideal of Perfect Parenting, especially Perfect Mothering, and Instagram worthy (#SoBlessed) family life, many bloggers are choosing to share their lives with small children, warts and all temper tantrums, last-minute school run dashes and all. Some particularly entertaining voices within […]
I love unreliable narrators. So when I saw this story in which the main character openly announces, ‘Sometimes I lie’, well, I was hooked even before I read the rest of the blurb. This is journalist Alice Feeney’s debut novel and, yes, for fans of psychological thrillers, it is absolutely as good as it promises. What’s it about? […]
If you could turn back time, would you choose a different life? What a question! Would you? After reading the first few chapters I was intrigued but concerned – had I already worked out exactly what was to come and why? If so, 475 pages could feel like quite an effort to reach a conclusion […]
Motherhood. Poetry. Madness – or time travel? Welcome to Helensburgh – home to the young English poet W.H Auden and, years later, English poetess, Dora Fielding, in (English poet) Polly Clark’s emotionally fraught debut novel. What’s it about? Newly married and pregnant, Dora moves to Helensburgh hoping that her new life will engage her as […]
Babies. Toddlers. Pre-schoolers. They’re delightful and amazing and awful and infuriating, switching seamlessly from adorable minx to terrible brat – and back again – in a matter of seconds. (“I said say SORRY to your SISTER. Say SORRY TO YOUR SISTER NOW! Oh, what a lovely cuddle. Ah, I’m sure she loves you, too, she […]
Ah, school holidays with young children. It’s an inescapable opportunity to spend hours shouting “stop, NO, don’t touch that, say sorry to your sister” quality time with my little boy, while managing the needs of his even littler sisters, so the immediate question is: what can I do to get us all out of the house? Somewhere fun, […]
Recently I inherited a Kindle. This was lovely for two reasons: 1. I needed a kindle after mine was incapacitated by the twin efforts of a small, impatient child and the relentless force that is gravity; 2. My grandfather and I had always shared a love of words, so it seemed appropriate that I should […]
It’s not often that a book leaves me so uncertain. This was my Mother’s Day gift from my little readers, which was received with pleasure and promoted to the very top of my TBR pile. As the title and blurb suggests, it’s a book about motherhood (very definitely so: the fathers are mostly absent), and […]
I love reading about forensics. Catching a criminal because of tell-tale threads of fibres or revealing smears of vital DNA is at the heart of shows like CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) and many a crime novel. There’s something so compellingly CERTAIN about forensic evidence…even when competing criminalists are arguing that a piece of evidence supports […]