Ethan's Voice - Rachel Carter

Ethan is eleven-years-old and he lives with his mum and dad on a canal boat. He hasn't spoken for some time, around four years, though he can't remember quite when he stopped speaking, or why he did. He is currently schooled at home by his mum, but near the beginning of the story there is talk about him possibly trying to go back to school one day. This is something that terrifies Ethan. He is content learning at home and spending time at the pond. Then one day Ethan meets Polly, who is newly arrived on the canal with her mum Jackie; she is temporarily separated from Polly's father. Polly is missing her dad but despite this she is a happy, friendly and kind girl and proves to be a wonderful influence on Ethan. Together they enjoy various outings around the canal, sharing activities.

Ethan writes down in a notebook what he cannot say out loud so that he can still communicate with Polly. Their connection means though that she understands a lot of what he is feeling and sometimes a nod from him is enough. Polly helps Ethan and with the aid of her friendship and kindness, he starts to recall memories that are painful, and may go towards an understanding of why he stopped speaking. Between them they start to piece together what may have happened in his past that led to his silence.

Ethan's Voice is a well written story of friendship and kindness. A sweet, joyful and believable friendship is formed between Ethan and Polly, and both of these likeable characters came to life for me as I read. Despite Ethan not speaking we still get to know him, and Polly, and I became involved in his tale and felt his story was told clearly, honestly and with sympathy by Rachel Carter. It's an enjoyable, moving tale, an accomplished debut written with warmth. 

With Ethan's story that he himself is writing about a knight, the author creates a clever extra little layer that parallels the main story. The story also looks at how parents try and protect their children and how misunderstandings can inadvertently arise, and though primarily focussed on Ethan and Polly, I got a strong sense of his parents' anxiety and love for him too. I believe this book is aimed at children aged 9 years old and up, and that would seem about right, though I very much enjoyed reading it myself as an adult.

Published by Scholastic

Between the Lines - Jodi Picoult and Samantha van Leer

Illustrations by Yvonne Gilbert & Scott M. Fischer

'There is a completely different world that happens between the lines.'

Delilah is a fifteen-year-old girl who keeps re-reading the same book. It's a fairy tale, which she discovered in the school library one day, the librarian having originally found this very special edition. Delilah studies hard and isn't one of the popular girls in her high school. She does have one best friend, Jules. Delilah loves the familiarity of this particular book, called Between the Lines. She enjoys the fact that there is a happy ending, and that each time she reads it, she takes comfort from the fact that there are no surprises. Also, the main character, Prince Oliver, never knew his father, and as Delilah lives alone with her mother, she feels empathy with his situation too.

One day, something magical occurs; one of the pages is different to how it looked before, and then Prince Oliver moves, and looks at Delilah and speaks directly to her. He tells her that characters within the story exist when the pages are closed too, and that he would like to change his life, to experience more than the limitations of his current role. 'We all have lives outside the lives that we play when a Reader opens the book. ' He wants to break free from the book, and he shares this with Delilah. They find an attraction and common ground between them at the dissatisfaction with aspects of their lives. But is there any way for them to help each other, and to be together.

This magical tale was written by established, highly successful author Jodi Picoult and her daughter, Samantha van Leer, who had the original idea behind the story, and presented this to her mother as a suggestion for a book. The storytelling is creative and intriguing, and I enjoyed having the three different voices of Delilah, Oliver, and the original fairy story itself. This multiple narrator viewpoint is a familiar feature of Picoult's adult novels. Delilah is a likeable character, struggling through the difficult teenage years, and the characters in the fairy story are very entertaining, most of all when we meet them 'behind the scenes' so to speak, when we learn how they really act and behave when they are outside of the story. 

What also made the book special I felt are the beautiful illustrations, both the ones that are a full page, and the smaller images that appear alongside or in the text; these are charming and embellished the story nicely. 

I enjoyed reading this story, and in parts I felt it was very imaginative and clever. I think I enjoyed the initial section of the novel the most, as the two characters get to know one another and discover more about each other's lives. I do enjoy Jodi Picoult's novels, so it was interesting to read this different work and see how it played out. I was a bit unsure at times about the direction of the story, and how things would unravel. Certainly though, the concept is such an interesting one - 'Did you really think that a story exists only when you're reading it?' I think this will be enjoyed most by the younger end of the young adult reading market. 

Published by Hodder & Stoughton

Reviewed for amazon vine

The Girl on the Stairs - Louise Welsh

'This city is full of ghosts, most of them harmless. It's the living you have to watch out for.'

Jane comes over to Berlin to join her partner Petra, who is already living and working there. Jane doesn’t know anyone else in Berlin other than Petra’s brother and his partner, and her German isn’t fluent, so straight away she feels rather alone and isolated there. She is six months pregnant when she arrives. Jane takes an interest in the teenage girl, Anna, living next door with her father Alban Mann, when she meets them and then overhears voices, and she pieces together what she thinks is happening.

I liked the setting of Berlin with its own ghosts, and the ruined building behind the flats they live in, looming and casting shadows over their place:

'...any sound in the courtyard caught her attention and when everything was silent there was the shadow of the derelict building darkening the room. Even when she looked away she could feel the backhouse's presence, brooding at the corner of her eye.'

There is the graveyard nearby. It all creates or contributes to the unsettling, uncertain mood of the book. The atmosphere is dark, confined, brooding, always the hint of someone lurking, flashes of movement, silhouettes; this creates such tension.

Jane is a compelling and complex lead character. She is persistent and won’t be dissuaded from what she thinks is the truth. She doesn’t always do what you think she ought to, or what you might expect, which makes for interesting fiction. Jane gets very involved with pursuing her train of thought. She clearly believes in what she thinks has happened, but is she seeing things clearly, or imagining things that aren't really there, or haven't really happened? She seems to exist in a state of paranoia, both about what is going on around her, and at times about her relationship too.

This is a dark, haunting novel. The story builds and as the tension increases I enjoyed it more and more, and felt it got better and better until I was gripped, and felt that there's a very good writer at work here, creating this sense of unease within the reader. It's a fairly short novel, written in spare prose with evocative descriptive passages and effective dialogue that always adds to the plot progression. I liked it a lot and will be looking out for other books by this writer.

Published by John Murray

Reviewed for Amazon Vine

The Underside of Joy - Sere Prince Halverson

'I know now that the most genuine happiness is kept afloat by an underlying sorrow.'

Ella has a wonderful husband in Joe, and a happy family with children Annie and Zach, as well as the extended family offered by Joe's large Italian family, all settled in rural Elbow, in northern California. After her previous, unhappy marriage ended, she left and chanced upon this new, fulfilling life, living happily with her new family and seemingly having little to worry about. Then tragedy strikes them from nowhere, as Joe passes away after a tragic accident. Ella must pick up the pieces, but she has more to contend with than just the immense grief and loss at Joe's death. The childrens' birthmother Paige, whom Ella has always understood had left Joe and the children to fend for themselves, now appears at Joe's funeral, and seems to now want to once again become involved in Annie and Zach's lives. Additionally, Joe's grocery store, which is steeped in family history, is in much more trouble than he had ever let on to Ella, and she has to try and contend with the bills and demands of the failing business as well as everything else. 

This is an emotional read with depth. It immediately involves the reader in the situation and the many new, unexpected challenges facing Ella. She shows great determination and strength of character to carry on. It's an intriguing situation to form the basis of the story; a birth mother who has ostensibly given up all rights to her children, and admitted in the past she doesn't want to be with them as she couldn't cope, but now returns saying she wants to be their mother, and then a stepmother who loves the children and has been their Mummy every day for the past three years. Who are the children better off with, if it comes to a custody battle? How can they all do the right thing by the two children, whilst trying not to cause anyone else heartbreak?

At times the story was very sad, so much grief to be endured, so much loss. Ella has to deal with so much, and just when you think she has got to the hardest part, another challenge comes along which forces her to consider very deeply what is the right thing to do, morally. It's an incredibly hard decision and she comes under pressure from those around her. I think she takes the only path that could offer her a future free of guilt and anxiety. Then there is Paige. Was it post-natal depression that led her to struggle so much with her children? We discover more as the story unfolds. There were moments where I don't think I could have been as strong as Ella manages to be.

The author also deals with issues such as painful, buried history, one of them touching on the past of this Italian family in the wider context of America in the twentieth century, and weaving issues that affected previous generations of their family into having a significance, a lesson almost, with regard to the main storyline about Ella. The story depicts the dangers of people not opening up to each other, but instead keeping their mouths shut and hoping things will go away, leaving truths to be uncovered that have long been hidden.

Nature is represented strongly here, something close to Ella's heart. I felt the giant redwood trees of California were a vivid, ever-present backdrop to the story, and very symbolic at times for Ella and her situation:

'I loved the way redwoods grow in circular groves, reproducing through 'suckers' - shoots that root in the ground and form new trees - which draw nourishment from the mother tree, even from its roots after the tree is long gone...hundreds, even thousands of years. And yet, if you were to take the younger shoots away from the mother tree and attempt to replant them, they would most likely wither and die.'

The Underside of Joy is a well-written, accomplished book for a debut. It kept me turning the pages throughout. I enjoyed the wider cast of characters as well as the main ones. The author is herself a stepmum and so has evidently been able to draw on her own experience in creating this work of fiction.

I enjoyed this book and I would certainly read more by this author. 

Published by HarperCollins

Reviewed for Amazon Vine

Tigers in Red Weather - Liza Klaussmann

'They were supposed to be different, different from all the people who didn't want things and didn't do things and who weren't special.'


This debut novel put me in mind of the fabulous Revolutionary Road, and also, of course, The Great Gatsby. The setting is the East Coast of America, Martha's Vineyard, and predominantly Tiger House, the family estate there where Nick and her cousin Helena have grown up. As the novel opens, it is the end of World War II, and their lives are on the cusp of change. Nick's husband Hughes is returning home from the war, whilst Helena is moving to Hollywood to marry Avery Lewis. 

Five main characters narrate this story in turn, and within each of the five narratives, the writer shifts about in time, forwards and back too. Nick, her husband Hughes, and her cousin Helena, and then their children Daisy and Ed. Nick is enigmatic, she loves Hughes yet wants more. At one point Nick imagines escaping her life and running off to Paris, I found each of the different viewpoints interesting in their own ways. Their longings, their disappointments, the complicated relationships, secrets, betrayals, and the dissatisfaction at the paths their lives have taken; this is all shared with us as we glimpse key moments in their lives. A murder occurs, and a body is discovered in their neighbourhood by Ed and Daisy, which causes intrigue and adds to the unsettling feel. 

The reader gets the opportunity to view certain events through the eyes of more than one of the characters, and see the different interpretations, some very strained relationships. The shifts in time within the narratives mean the reader needs to keep on top of events in the story. 

It is extremely atmospheric; it seems to absolutely capture the time and place; I could almost taste the martinis, see the bathing suits, feel the summer heat. This is primarily a novel about human relationships, the author makes astute observations through these flawed characters about how people's expectations change and hopes and dreams are derailed, relationships disappoint, and life doesn't lead where people had hoped it would. Whilst I was interested in where their lives would take them, I struggled to care very deeply for any of the characters, and something held me back from loving this book.

Overall I found this an enjoyable, impressive debut novel which swept me away to another country, another time and setting, to meet these intriguing, unsettled, often unhappy people and share a glimpse into their lives and their different world. I really love the beautiful cover design on this book, the colours, the font and the image suits the book so well. 

Published by Picador on 2nd August 2012


Reviewed for Amazon Vine

Missing Persons - Nicci Gerrard

'You can't tell with people - you think you know them and then you discover you don't. We're all mysteries, to each other and to ourselves...'

Isabel Hopkins takes her son Johnny off to start his course at University. She is very sad to leave him, and feels lost when she arrives home having left him there. He is a sensitive, kind and loving son. They keep in touch as he settles in. Then she stops hearing from him, she can't get hold of him on the telephone, and he isn't replying to letters. Johnny's father Felix discovers that the University doesn't know where Johnny is either, and that he hasn't been attending his lectures or submitting his work. Frantic, his parents visit the University, talk to his tutor, his flatmates, but no one can tell them where he is. Then they contact Will and Baxter, friends from school, anyone who may have some idea where Johnny has gone.

The cover copy, or synopsis, for this novel clearly tells us that this is not Johnny's story, although I have heard the author describe the novel as being haunted by Johnny. Instead, it is the story of the impact of his disappearance on Isabel and Felix, his parents, of his sisters, Tamsin, and in particular Mia, and his friends. Everyone who cares about him, and who care about his family. It is a frightening, frustrating situation for them all. The author portrays in depth the struggle to cope with Johnny's disappearance. How can someone they love, who is such a fundamental part of their lives and of the family, just vanish, and no longer be in contact with them. There has been no incident, no upset they can think of that has triggered this; they seemed a loving family, as Mia explains: 'It was like a bad dream, the kind of thing that happens to other people, not to a family like us: middle class, comfortably off, apparently happy.'

The novel offers a detailed portrait of how Johnny's disappearance affects those he was close to, primarily Isabel, Felix and Mia in different ways. Mia is his younger sister and to her, Johnny was something of an idol and a hero, she was close to him and feels his absence deeply. As the story progresses, we learn how her life is weighed down and shaped by her loss, and by her experience of seeing how her parents changed as people due to their anguish. 

For Isabel, and for Felix, live is utterly changed, and their marriage is tested to the absolute limits, as they each react and attempt to cope in their own separate ways. Isabel loses weight, can't eat, can't sleep or think straight. She holds on to a blind optimism and denial, buying Christmas presents and keeping Johnny's room ready as if he will walk back in very soon. It's intensely sad reading how she changes and withers as the days pass by, she is desperate, suffering, agonising about the fact that she feels her son must have felt that he couldn't turn to her. She blames herself, not recognising that perhaps Johnny chose to go away, not because of something his parents did or didn't do, but because he needed something different himself. She has the support of close female friends Jenny and Leah doing what they can to help. No matter how severe the strain that Isabel feels under, Felix believes:

'that she was stronger than him, because she could bend and therefore would not break. She was like those sea grasses that would lie flat against the earth in a storm but gradually straighten when the wind died down. She was crushed and broken, but she endured and she would never give up. She had absorbed grief and fear into her body and made it part of her flesh and blood, but he had held it at arms length...'

Felix's way of coping and wanting to feel useful initially is to plunge himself into researching every aspect of Johnny's life in a vain attempt to discover anything that might suggest why he has gone. His study at home, formerly for his academic work, becomes a place dedicated to this research, and he goes beyond Johnny and starts to collate information on other missing people. He becomes 'a lonely detective, embroiled in his investigation. There was masses of information but not a single clue.' Through Felix the author offers us a glimpse of the practical ways and means of trying to find a missing person, but to me the novel is always ultimately about the human story, the emotional turmoil and agony.

I found this a very emotional and insightful book, not a quick read, and due to the nature of the story, very bleak at times, with so much despair, self-destruction, sadness and guilt felt and experienced by these characters. I had to read and digest a little at a time, and then come back to the book. I felt compelled to finish reading and discover the ultimate outcome to the events. I have enjoyed novels written by this author as part of the Nicci French collaboration with Sean French, and this individual work is an interesting contrast to those novels, with a slower pace, more contemplative, examining human emotions in depth. 

Published by Penguin

4/5


Below is a video of the author talking about his novel.

Black Heart Blue - Louisa Reid

'Why should I have to stay in his prison, why should everything I'd ever loved be taken from me? If only I could get away. But how?'

This novel tells the story of twin sisters Hephzibah and Rebecca. Hephzi is described as being beautiful, whilst Rebecca is disfigured. Their lives are desperately unhappy, with cruel, uncaring parents. The twins are desperate for love, and it is hard for them to cope under the circumstances within their family. Their mother is weak, unemotional and submissive, whilst their vicar father is verbally and physically abusive towards them, and they suffer terrible abuse and cruelty at his hands. This creates a tragic situation, where the girls feel trapped by him. When Hephzi tragically dies, Rebecca must somehow try and find a way to get herself out, away from The Father and The Mother, as she referrs to them. But it won't be easy. The girls have been educated, if it may be called that, at home by their mother, and 'her specialist subject was misery.' Somehow they manage to persuade their mother to insist to their father that they be allowed to attend college, and then they are faced with trying to fit in in this new and unknown 'normal' world. Hephzi copes much better with this than Rebecca.

In the first part of the book, the narration is taken up by Hephzi before her death, and by Rebecca after Hephzi has died, with the chapters alternating between these two perspectives. This is a great way of telling the story, gradually revealing significant moments from both girls lives', and gradually revealing the different characters to the reader. We learn from Hephzi how she strove to establish some sense of normality, making friends, beginning to take part in social activities when and where she could. Rebecca gives us an insight into how Hephzi's death has changed things, and how terribly trapped and alone she now feels. She alone takes up the story in part two.

On the day of her sister's funeral, Rebecca writes: 'I've recorded today as another black day and it's there, a story inscribed hard on my heart. The tales I keep hidden within are many; if you ever open me up then you'll read the proof. Look inside, peel back skin and flesh and bone, and there you'll find a library of pain...some things are too terrible to tell and those words are buried deep.'

Only their grandmother offered kindness: 'Our twelfth birthday. Hers were the only presents we received; hers was the only kiss, the only smile, the only laughter.'

The language vividly conjures the mindset and dark, unhappy feelings in Rebecca's heart at some of her lowest moments: 'The week faded, grey and black and brown. The sky outside the window was concrete, as hard as heartbreak. I wondered where the summer had gone; perhaps the sun had died too.'

This is an absorbing but at times immensely sad and truly heartbreaking tale; at times there is horrendous treatment. I felt deeply angry and sad at times, yet I know that cruel behaviour like the mental and physical torment depicted here can and does go on in the real world.

The narrative voice is captivating throughout. The author is perceptive and demonstrates the determination and power of the human spirit in the face of cruelty and repression; the story is not without hope. It's an incredibly powerful and emotional story. I read it over the course of one day in only a couple of sittings because it grabbed hold of me so strongly. This is a book I keep thinking about.

I think the cover of the Penguin edition with the image of Rebecca standing by Hephzi's grave is stunning. 

This amazing and truly compelling story is a crossover young adult book, and I certainly got an awful lot from it as an adult reader, and was very impressed by the author's insight and writing. I am excited to read what she writes next. 

Published by Penguin and Puffin. 

4.5/5


You can follow the author on twitter @louisareid and on facebook LouisaHRReid and visit her website here to find out more about her and the book.


Reviewed for amazon vine.

The Last Summer - Judith Kinghorn

'I watched you, and I'd never seen anything or anyone as beautiful.'

This novel takes us into the world of Clarissa Granville, a young woman approaching her seventeenth birthday, living a happy and privileged existence with her family at their wonderful country house, Deyning Park. The house itself, and the landscape around Deyning are vividly described, the lush gardens, the expansive grounds, the lake. We meet Clarissa at the start of the summer of 1914, enjoying lovely summer days with her three brothers and the rest of her family and friends. She is introduced to handsome, clever Tom Cuthbert, who is the son of the housekeeper at Deyning. He is recently returned from University, and is back staying with his mother. Tom is invited to a party at the main house and there Clarissa meets and is spellbound by him, and he by her. Their time together during that summer ignites a love and burning need for each other that will be with them forever. Then the world begins to change, and the impending war will alter all their lives permanently. 

The author has crafted a mesmerizing love story, and totally captured a time and an age now gone forever. And she has portrayed in period detail the times as they were, and then how the war changed everything, shattered lives, destroyed families, and changed society. The generation who lost so many brothers, cousins, friends; irreplacable. There is such deep sadness and loss.

'The intoxication of youth, snuffed out, extinguished in a matter of months, left in its place only a numbing sobriety. Far too many young souls had alread been sacrificed, too many lives shattered. And to those of us left standing, impotent, on the sideline, with splintered hearts and broken dreams, light had all but vanished from our lives.' 

Judith Kinghorn captures the way the world has changed for Clarissa's mother, accustomed to the fineries of life at Deyning, then experiencing how life alters and she is forced to adapt to new circumstances. For others, the world offers new opportunities.

The luxurious life and situation Clarissa is born into dictates the route her life is expected to take. There is little chance for her to take any decisions of her own. 'None of us, no matter our situation or circumstances, could pick up the pieces of life as it had once been, before the war. We had all been changed, and our lives as we'd known them had gone, and gone for ever.'

But in the years after the War, things begin to change. It seems it may be possible, as society changes and the constraints of tradition and history are being broken, for a woman such as her to shed her background and become independent, to work, to live freely; something she could never have contemplated before: 'Had I ever been free? I'd never, not once, had any say in my life, in my destiny. It had all been decided long ago, by my parents, and then by Mama...I'd always been owned, but never by me.'

There is another love story hidden within the pages, with short extracts from letters scattered throughout the main narrative; another love story, which is revealed at the end of the novel. 

I didn't know this story would take such a strong hold on my heart.

I genuinely loved this book. It is an absolutely wonderful romantic novel. It gripped me completely from start to finish, it wrung my heart out. Clarissa is a wonderful first-person narrative voice, we are with her as she grows up and close by her side as she makes her way through life, making mistakes, gaining experience, learning about herself, and Tom is a marvellous romantic leading man, who finds, after the horrors of war, that a changing society offers new advantages to someone like him, but will he ever be good enough to be accepted by Clarissa's Mama? 

I thought about the characters. I became wrapped up in the love story of Clarissa and Tom. Theirs is an all-consuming love. Neither of them could ever love anyone else. For them, in their hearts and souls, there is only each other. They implore each other, 'don't let me go. Never let me go.' But they seem destined never to be together. The time and place is wrong, or the circumstances. I had to know how this would end. The passion and the pain of separation of these two people seemed to live beyond the words on the page, to have jumped from the page and become real to me; I cared deeply as to the outcome.  

Tom is so handsome, I could picture him. 'He shone. For there was a light that emanated from him, his soul, his substance.' This idea of him as a brilliant light that disarms Clarissa, a potency strong enough to overwhelm her.  'For there was something about him - his face - that dazzled me, quite literally dazzled me: as though he were a light much too bright to gaze upon directly. And in that light I was naked; every sensation amplified; each thought audible. I think I fell quite in love with him too myself whilst reading!

I read the penultimate chapter through tears. I was bereft on finishing this story. It reminded me that we have to grasp happiness where and when we can.

A beautifully written and utterly lovely romantic novel that is certainly amongst my favourite reads this year so far.

Published by Headline Review.


5/5


You can follow the author on twitter @judithkinghorn and visit her blog here.


Reviewed for amazon vine and for the publisher, thanks to them for sending a copy of this novel.

Heft - Liz Moore

'I would remind myself of how many people there were like me, & how many people fall into the despair of loneliness...'

This is a review where I have to be careful not to be over the top, because, plainly said, I loved this book so, so much.

Arthur Opp, at around 550 pounds, is extremely overweight, and he hasn't left his large home in Brooklyn in ten years. He was an academic, but no longer works, supporting himself through money from a father he never sees, and ordering everything from food to books online and having it all delivered to his door. He tells us his home was once 'very lovely inside and out', but has now fallen 'into a sort of haunted disrepair', and he hasn't seen the upper floors in a decade. His only real friendship, since his friend Marty passed away, is an infrequent correspondence with an ex-student of his, Charlene Turner, and the novel commences with a frank letter that he is composing to her. 

Kel Keller is a talented baseball player in his last year of highschool. His mother, Charlene, wants him to consider college, but he is not academically minded and is instead aiming for a place with a major league team straight out of school. His life isn't the seemingly easy, privileged existence of his fellow students at Pells Landing. He lives in Yonkers, and commutes to the prestigious school everyday, having a place there only because his mother used to work there. But his mother not only no longer works, she can no longer cope with life, and spends her days drunk for the most part, something which Kel has had to live with, and hide. Charlene writes to her old acquaintance Arthur Opp, asking if maybe he could advise her son Kel about colleges. 

The story is told alternately by Arthur and Kel, both of whom are endearing and wonderful voices. Arthur and Charlene connected as two lonely souls. She told him once how she felt she was invisible. He tells us 'I am one of the world's lonely', and that he 'felt destined for solitude' right from the beginning of his life, before then even, he was 'very certain that one day it would find me, so when it did I was not surprised & even welcomed it.' He has ways of consoling himself, through food especially, and has imagined that there is 'an oversoul of loneliness', a way that all those who are lonely in the world are somehow connected, and there is a reason for it.

'There was a delicious romance in being utterly alone, & I told myself I was nobler for it, & that there was a purpose to my solitude, O there must be.'

Liz Moore has captured how loneliness feels. How a person can withdraw from the world and years can pass by, spent in this solitude. In Arthur and Kel, she has created two wonderful, damaged, loveable characters whose lives are gradually drawn closer together through the strand that connects them; the life of one woman, herself lonely and destroyed. Slowly, their lives begin to shift. The appearance in Arthur's life of Yolanda signifies his first real contact with the outside world for a long time. An unlikely but wonderful friendship begins.

Meanwhile, the huge change in his life, partway through the story, takes Kel full circle, sees him spiralling down into despair, and leaves him longing 'to collapse into myself until I no longer exist, I want to live in my mother's house and never go out.' This passage sounds like Arthur. Kel wants to isolate himself from the world now. Are these two very different people actually rather alike? What has happened to make Kel feel this way? What will happen to them both?

The story moves along beautifully, it gripped me from the very start; it has surprises for us along the way, and is enjoyable and very poignant. I felt that the author really cared about these characters. It is a story filled with sadness and hope, and told in an intimate, warmhearted way. I loved, cared about, rooted for and was thoroughly convinced by Arthur and Kel and their lives throughout.

Thank you for a really brilliant book Liz Moore. The characters have stayed with me, and this story is certainly in my top reads of the year so far. 

Published by Hutchinson.


5/5

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The Playdate - Louise Millar

'You never know who you can trust with your own kids.'

Callie and Suzy are neighbours on Churchill Road in north London, close to Alexandra Palace. Callie's daughter Rae has a heart condition and she has to be careful not to over exert herself. American Suzy has a son, Henry, who is friends with Rae, and also she has twin sons. New neighbours Debs and her husband Allen move into the street, next door to Suzy. Callie is separated from husband Tom, whilst Suzy's husband Jez seems to spend every hour of the day working, with little time for her or the children. Callie and Suzy have formed a kind of friendship through the friendship of their children Rae and Henry, offering support to each other and often sharing childcare duties.

Callie hasn't found many of the other mothers at Rae's school to be at all friendly, feels left out, and so has found that she has come to rely on Suzy and her support more than she would perhaps like to. As the novel opens, we meet Callie trying to prepare herself to draw back from her reliance on Suzy.

The lives of the three neighbours become linked, but what is lying underneath this calm facade? Who is genuinely to be trusted? You know that you can expect something, but what?

I found myself immediately drawn into the story and interested in the characters, and I stayed interested throughout. It's a page-turner, a quick read with fairly short chapters, alternating between the three neighbours Callie, Suzy, and Debs. Callie's story, her life with Rae and her secrets, are at the centre of the novel and her story is told in the first person. The everyday concerns of the school run, friendships, relationships are portrayed, characters are established, and the story builds slowly and steadily. But there is a darkness lurking somewhere, only hinted at, and towards the conclusion, the author really ratchets up the tension, and as we learn more about each of the three characters' pasts, we being to piece together where the danger really lies, as the truth slowly emerges, and the tale builds to a tense finish.

This novel makes you think about your friendships, how you judge people, whether someone is really a friend or a stranger, and who has your best interests at heart. It gives an insight into the psychology of how a controlling, manipulative person behaves, and is a stark reminder that you really never know who you can totally trust.

I enjoyed this book, and would read more from this author in the future.

Published on May 3rd 2012 by Pan.


4/5