The Judas Scar - Amanda Jennings - Guest Book Review

Published by Cutting Edge Press 

Guest review by Leah Moyse

About the novel:

Will and Harmony's seemingly idyllic marriage is left shattered after she loses a baby she didn't realise she wanted. While at a friend's party, she raises the subject of trying again, and Will's reaction leaves her hurt and confused.

Removing herself from the crowd, she encounters an enigmatic stranger whose advances she rejects, only to later discover that the handsome man is Will's childhood friend from boarding school, Luke.

When Will, struggling to confront the culture of bullying that marred his childhood, reveals a secret too painful for her to bear, Harmony is left caught between the husband she loves and the promises made by an obsessive stranger...

Leah's thoughts:

I would like to start by saying I am a huge fan of the publisher Cutting Edge Press. They really push the boundaries and provide engrossing fiction that can be gritty, dark and intelligent.

This is a story of a marriage and difficult childhoods. An interesting look at how the events of our childhood can shape our futures, sometimes for the better but sometimes leaving us damaged and permanently scarred. In addition how emotional damage can actually affect our future relationships, decisions we make or don't make and how really some things can haunt us forever.

I must admit to not particularly warming to the characters, but for me this added to the feeling of wondering what they are really capable of and how far they would go. I really loathed Luke with a passion, such a seemingly unfeeling man who would stop at nothing to get what he wants. What really happened all those years ago at boarding school, to make him this way?

In places shocking, I was thinking to myself did that really just happen. Equally however I found it to be an ultimately sad story in that we can never have our childhood back and have a different start in life.

I thought this book was dark, brooding and the tension amongst the pages was palpable. I feel as if I have been on a roller coaster of emotions and didn't know until the final pages where the destination was. A relatively short novel at under 300 pages, but so much happens and so many issues are tackled. Amanda Jennings is a very good writer indeed, one not to miss and I will certainly be getting a copy of her first book, Sworn Secret.

About the Author:

Amanda Jennings studied at Cambridge and has worked at the BBC. She is married with three children and lives in Berkshire. Her website is: www.amandajennings.co.uk

Many thanks to Leah for reading and reviewing this novel for The Little Reader Library! Leah blogs at Reflections of a Reader, do visit and read her fab blog too!

Vivien's Heavenly Ice Cream Shop - Abby Clements - Guest Book Review

Published by Quercus

Guest book review by Tracy Terry

About the novel:

When Imogen and Anna unexpectedly inherit their grandmother Vivien's ice cream parlour, it turns both their lives upside down. The Brighton shop is a seafront institution, but though it's big on retro charm it's critically low on customers. If the sisters don't turn things around quickly, their grandmother's legacy will disappear forever.

With summer fast approaching, Imogen and Anna devise a plan. Rather than sell up, they will train up, and make the parlour the newest destination on the South Coast foodie map.

While Imogen watches the shop and conjures new marketing ideas, her sister flies to Italy to attend a gourmet ice cream-making course. But can their best-laid plans survive their warring family, tempestuous love lives - and the great British Weather? One thing is for certain - this summer will be like no other . . .

Tracy's thoughts:

What a wonderful cover, perfect for the book. What you can't see looking at the image is how the blue is actually embossed with the prettiest blue foil effect. 

Light and fluffy and ultimately just about as sweet as ice cream itself, whoever coined the phrase 'holiday read' may well have had this in mind.

And yet, with memories of a certain retro ice cream parlour I've visited since I was a child in mind, as much as I really wanted to like this book it somehow didn't quite hit the mark.

OK, so its Chick-lit and everyone knows that part of the appeal of Chick-lit is that the reader is guaranteed their happy-ever-after ending. Nothing wrong with that per se but in this instance there were just so many incidents which got the happy-ever ending treatment that there was no mystery whatsoever as to how the plots, for there were several threads to the story, might play out.

Still, on the plus side, there were some rather scrumptious sounding ice cream recipes at the end of the book which should keep fans of the foodie novel happy.

Many thanks to Tracy for reading and reviewing this novel for The Little Reader Library! Tracy blogs at Pen and Paper - do pay a visit there and read her fab book blog!

The Vanishing Witch - Karen Maitland - Guest Book Review

Published by Headline

Guest book review by Lisa Weir

Wow!  Just....WOW!!

A riveting, page-turning whopper of a book that had me captivated – in fact, positively bewitched – from the start.  Blending history, superstition, folklore, murder, mystery and witchcraft sublimely, this book is an absolute must-read for fans of historical fiction.

Set in Lincolnshire in 1380, we are swept away to the time of King Richard II, when, led by his advisor John of Gaunt, he raises taxes to an all time high; a price that the majority of peasants cannot pay leading to the infamous peasant’s revolt.

One such peasant is river boatman Gunter, struggling to pay not just the new taxes but the rents owed by him to rich landowner and wool merchant Robert of Bassingham.

Robert has his own problems with his cargoes going missing, losing him money but fortunately he has the friendship of a new widow to appease him; Mistress Catlin is as divine a specimen of womankind as ever there was and Robert becomes enchanted with the young widow, a welcome change from his scold of a wife but when his wife passes away and he takes Catlin to be his new bride, things don’t go as well as he would have wished in his new little family as jealousy and suspicion between servants and sons abound.

And who is the mysterious friar seen following the players of this novel?  What part has he to play in the bad luck and woes that befall Robert one after the other?

As the peasants struggle and eventually lead a rebellion that has seen no precedent and as Robert gradually loses control of all he holds dear, the reader becomes enmeshed in a world that comes alive in with the medieval superstition, the fear of witchcraft and the plain cruelty and greed that renders the rich richer and the poor poorer in these squalid and fearful times. 

I was utterly lost in this medieval world; each chapter is headed by a spell, charm or ancient lore which fascinated me; the author’s knowledge of the true facts of the Peasant’s Revolt and of ancient folklore are woven together so brilliantly they lend a magical and mysterious element to the story as the reader is tantalized by the puzzling events surrounding the characters and tries to work out whether witchcraft is indeed at work or if it is just the exaggerated workings of our brains throwing us off the real scent.....It might be a big read but it’s a read that will have you spellbound and leave you 100 per cent satisfied. 

Huge thanks to Lisa for reading and reviewing this novel for The Little Reader Library! Lisa blogs at The Book Addicted Housewife, do visit her fab book blog too!


Read an interview with the author on JaffaReadsToo blog.

Another Way to Fall - Amanda Brooke - Guest Book Review

Published by Harper

Guest review by Joan Hill

Emma has been very ill, fighting a comprehensive and aggressive battle against a brain tumour that has already destroyed her dreams of rising to the top in a glittering career, travelling all over the world. Her family, mother Meg and younger sister Louise have supported her throughout but, as our story begins, Emma, at twenty nine years old, is once again visiting her consultant Mr Spelling, hoping against all hope for those eagerly awaited words that will give her the ‘All Clear’. Sadly it is not to be and his words only confirm her greatest nightmare. Her fight so far has been pointless and there is nothing more that can be done to ward off her cancer’s virulent and relentless progress. She is going to die.

Regardless of this prognosis her mother Meg is unable to give up. She is determined to fight on, hoping to find a cure in a research programme or to join a trial of some new wonder drug. But Emma knows that if she is to realise her dreams and achieve the goals she had desired so fiercely she must find another way, a way to fit everything in she most desired in her life. She decides to write a book of what she hoped her life would be. She secretly taps it all out on her laptop and as she makes progress with her story, amazingly some of her dreams actually start to come true. With a new love in her life she imagines what she would want in their life together, their holidays and high days, the family they would rear and so the story develops, encapsulating her dreams with a heart-warming clarity. And then it starts to happen; dreams seamlessly merge with reality. She feels the story could be true as she dreams it so vividly.  Could it possibly all come true, right through a lifetime of togetherness? Could she be actually achieving an alternative future?

The ‘story within the story’ is an extremely effective method of moving on Emma’s story to its completion. The characters are strong and empathetic, all with Emma’s best interests and comfort in their hearts. The story is incredibly moving and I particularly loved Beth, the loving mother who would do literally anything for her sick daughter. Amanda Brooke put all of herself and her own experiences and attitudes into building this wonderful portrait of mother-love. She lost her young son to cancer and it must have been so hard to write some aspects of Emma’s story from Beth’s point of view. But she totally nailed it. I also loved the characterisation of her boyfriend Ben. He shone a bright light in her life and enabled her to complete her novel, helping her both emotionally and with the practicalities of writing a novel whilst weakening physically. I really enjoyed this novel and thank Lindsay most sincerely for inviting me to be a guest reviewer.

Many thanks to Joan for reading and reviewing this novel for The Little Reader Library!

Agent Dmitri - Emil Draitser - Guest Book Review

Published by Duckworth

Guest review by Mandy Jenkinson

Dmitri Bystrolyotov was one of the Great Illegals, a group of Soviet spies operating in the West between the two world wars. He was recruited in the 1920s and went on to lead a quite extraordinary life. He was a larger-than-life figure, courageous, charismatic, a master of seduction (he invented the modern “honey trap”), handsome, resourceful, and above all a committed Communist, dedicated to the service of his motherland.

Much of the trajectory of his life as a spy seems stranger than fiction, and that, for me, was one of the problems of this book. Emil Draitser has done an impressive amount of painstaking research, but still relies in part on Bystrolotov’s own memoirs, and Bystrolyotov is an unreliable narrator par excellence. He contacted the author back in the 1970s shortly before Draitser’s emigration hoping he would take on the task of writing his biography. Thirty years later and with increased access to the archives after the fall of the Soviet Union, Draitser set about the task. He admits to not being able to verify some of the events, but too often allows himself the luxury of speculating. Reconstructed conversations (which always sound false and stilted), cod psychological explanations of Bystrolyotov’s motives and actions, too much reliance on the memoirs, all made me distrustful.

Reading the tagline “The Secret History of Russia’s Most Daring Spy”, I expected the book to be more thrilling and exciting than it actually is. I was soon bored by the accounts of one incredible exploit after another. I found the book more interesting after Bystrolyotov’s ill-advised return to the Soviet Union, where instead of being feted for all he had done for his country, he fell foul of Stalin’s paranoia and was arrested and sent to the Gulag. His ordeal in the far North makes for some gripping reading. But essentially I just couldn’t engage with this man. He never truly came alive for me. Perhaps that’s inevitable with someone who spent much of his life pretending to be someone he wasn’t, and just as it’s impossible to really enter the heart and mind of many another super-spy, such as Kim Philby, perhaps such a biography is always doomed to partial failure. I would have liked to see more illustrations, but perhaps theses weren’t available.

Nevertheless, in spite of my reservations, this is an intriguing look into the world of high-level espionage, and a glimpse, at least, into the secretive world of Soviet intelligence. A pity about the lurid cover, though, one hardly appropriate for a serious biography.


Many thanks to Mandy for reading and reviewing this novel for The Little Reader Library. Mandy is an omnivorous reader who enjoys reviewing, for newbooks magazine as well as elsewhere, and enjoys discovering new authors.