The Last Summer

 

by Judith Kinghorn

This moving story opens in June 1914 - the beginning of the long hot Edwardian summer preceding the First World War.  Clarissa lives a life of luxury at Deyning, her family seat in Sussex: the youngest child and only daughter of wealthy parents, she spends her time playing tennis and croquet, painting, and wandering about the beautiful grounds, waiting to marry a suitable husband.  Her older brothers, up at Cambridge or Aldershot, appear occasionally at Deyning with their affluent, carefree friends; Clarissa longs to be part of their grown-up world, and is about to be sent to a Paris finishing school, when her father, hearing rumours of worrying events in Europe, decides to postpone her trip.

Tom Cuthbert is the son of the Deyning housekeeper, but is - somewhat mysteriously - a student at Oxford.  Down for the long vacation, he is immediately attracted to Clarissa and she to him, but both know that any relationship between them is impossible; Clarissa’s beautiful but remote mother is especially determined that her daughter must not become involved with someone who is ‘not one of us.‘  Clarissa and Tom meet fleetingly during the summer, but their worlds are torn apart by Britain’s declaration of war on Germany.  Tom, together with Clarissa’s brothers, enlist, and within weeks most of the young male population of the country has disappeared to France and Belgium.  Clarissa spends the rest of the war in London; her family suffers tragic losses, as do all the families she knows.  

In 1917, a wonderful and devastating event changes Clarissa’s life forever; the secret that this forces her to keep almost destroys her.   After the war, nothing is the same, and although some survive, they are irrevocably damaged; whilst some lose family fortunes, others, liberated from old social strictures, find huge success in a new world.  Will Clarissa break free from the role society has given her?  Will she ever find true happiness?  And what is the secret that her own mother is so anxious to keep?

Judith Kinghorn has written a novel that manages to tell a touching personal love story whilst also breathing life into a turbulent period of British history.  This is the story not only of two people kept apart by prejudice and snobbery, but also of the way in which the 1914-1918 war - now almost ancient history to our children - affected every man and woman, whatever their social background.  The reader is there on the terrace at Deyning, listening to the young men’s enthusiastic response to Lord Kitchener’s rallying calls, but she is also there at the London stations, when those same young men, blinded by mustard gas, hold on to one another as they stagger back to a very different world. 

As I closed this book, I felt both satisfied and exhausted - I had been on a journey with Clarissa, and she and her family and friends had become real to me: this, I think, is the mark of a good story well told.

 

Reviewed by Rosemary Kaye

Every Time We Say Goodbye

By Colette Caddle

At the heart of Colette Caddle’s ‘Every Time We Say Goodbye’ is an enchanting and compelling love story. But as well as being a romance, the novel is also a story about the importance and endurance of friendship.

Running through the story is the triangle of friendship between Marianne and two friends she has known since childhood, Helen and Jo. The roots of their closeness lie in events from that time, and still endure now despite the different demands their adult lives have made on them.

When Marianne’s husband Dominic dies, she is thrown into turmoil. It seems that Dominic’s life has been full of things she knew nothing about. Her search for the truth, and the desire to protect her children and Dominic’s mother from finding out the worst about him, test her to the limit.

This novel is full of life and reality and packed with great characters. I particularly loved Marianne’s mother-in-law, Dot and Helen’s husband Johnny. And the way that they all rally round to help Marianne in her time of need is heart-warming. Romance also enters the story, and re-enters Marianne’s life in the form of Rob, a lover from her past. But Rob has complications in his own life, and they also threaten Marianne’s happiness.

With the warmth of friendship and the heat of romance, there’s plenty to keep you turning the pages. But add to that the intrigue and mystery surrounding Dominic’s life in the last few months before his death, and you have a compelling mixture which will prevent you from putting the book down at all.

A well-paced, beautifully written and very memorable read.

Reviewed by Helen M Hunt

Death Bed

By Leigh Russell

Followers of this blog will know that I’m a big fan of Leigh Russell and have been following the Geraldine Steel series with great interest. Geraldine is turning into a fantastic series character. Her personal life, with its secrets and frustrations, forms a sub-plot that flows through the four books so far and leaves unanswered questions for the future.

In ‘Death Bed’ Geraldine has moved from her local force in Kent up to London to work with the Met. The challenges of her relocation add a further layer of interest to the plot, and her new colleagues are an interesting bunch, especially DS Sam Haley.

Leigh Russell’s writing is always full of intrigue and danger, but in ‘Death Bed’ we’re taken to some very dark places indeed as the latest criminal to cross Geraldine’s path does his worst. When the bodies of two black girls are discovered in quick succession in North London, Geraldine is dragged into her most disturbing case yet as she has to track down the killer dubbed ‘The Dentist’ by the press.

This book isn’t for the faint-hearted, but I was gripped and it kept me awake at night as I was driven to read one more chapter. As ever, Leigh Russell makes her victims and their families seem astonishingly real and it is this that makes some aspects of this story so heartbreaking.

As ever, this is a well written, well plotted crime novel with fantastic pace and lots of intrigue. My favourite kind of read.

I highly recommend this book and would also encourage you to read the others in the series, ‘Cut Short’, ‘Road Closed’ and ‘Dead End’.

You can find out more about Leigh Russell here.

Reviewed by Helen M Hunt

Shadow Of Night

By Deborah Harkness

I started reading Shadow of Night and honestly if it were not for my full-time job and my adjunct faculty position I would have finished it days ago. It seems like everything and everyone conspired to keep me from reading my book so I took to reading a few words or sentences when I could, like just before starting work in the morning, during lunch, during commercials, in the parking lot while waiting for dinner to be ready for pickup. I was so wrapped up in what was happening next that I just realized as I closed the book that so much happened in this installment. I don’t want to write spoilers but suffice it to say there were not any threads left unattended, or, at least if there were I did not notice them. The historical aspects of this story continue and really are expanded upon which I guess is one of the great things about having a vampire who has been around for hundreds of years and has enough status that he has met some truly interesting figures from history. 

One of the great things about this book though is not just those historical figures but how Diana interacts with and affects the people she meets. Part of me wants to write a review that shows how overwhelmingly special I think this book is so that anyone who reads it will want to tell all their friends, family and even strangers about it and the other part of me keeps thinking read it over again right now and they’ll find out about it on their own.  Something else that I found to be really good was the poetry, some of which belongs to others but some of which belongs to Deborah Harkness.  “It begins with absence and desire. It begins with blood and fear.  It begins with a discovery of witches.” This is obviously a huge catalyst for much of the story, but, some of the beauty of this story lies in how the threads of the poem are weaved into different parts of the book. There is that tiny part of me that is also a scholar who loves reading this genre of book that wishes I had written it or could write something just as great that not only other scholars would love but those that love romance, fantasy, historical and travel would also love it. I’ve come full circle now and don’t suppose the last installment is ready for me to read since this one is just days from being released. I guess I’ll spend another year trying to ignore the fact that I’m waiting to see how it all ends. But, I will be eagerly awaiting the final book!

Review can also be seen at LadyTechiesBookMusings

The Cornish House

The Cornish House

By Liz Fenwick

I’ve been looking forward to reading this book for ages, partly because I know Liz, and hearing her talk about the book is inspirational, and partly because it’s such a fantastic story.

‘The Cornish House’ follows the story of Maddie as, following the death of her husband, she moves to Cornwall with her stepdaughter, Hannah, and tries to rebuild her life.

It’s a fabulous book for a number of reasons. Firstly, the characters all feel like old friends as soon as you meet them. The story revolves around Maddie and Hannah, but all the personalities that surround them are equally engaging. I particularly liked Tom, the elderly man who becomes very important to Hannah.

Secondly, as well as the human characters, there are two other important stars of the novel. One is the Cornish house itself – Trevenen. Central to the story, the house casts its spell over both Maddie and Hannah and is instrumental in everything that happens. The other is the Cornish setting. Liz Fenwick’s love of Cornwall comes through really strongly in the story giving it a strong sense of place and also of history.

The story is told partly through Maddie’s eyes and partly through Hannah’s. This device works well and allows the reader to empathise fully with both characters, even when they are at loggerheads with each other.

This is a great novel and I found that my desire to know what happened to Maddie and Hannah kept me turning the pages long after I should have gone to sleep each night.

It’s a touching story, sensitively told and ultimately leaves the reader with a feeling of having followed the characters through a life-changing time, and experienced with them all the highs and lows tied up with that. A brilliant read, and I can’t wait to read Liz’s next book.

Reviewed by Helen M Hunt

Grave Mercy

By Robin LaFevers

I was interested in Grave Mercy from the moment I caught wind of it on Goodreads.com. I am grateful to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for allowing me to obtain a copy of an ARC. The first thing that caught my attention in the synopsis was the sentence that said, “If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as a handmaiden to Death.” That sentence is full of contradictions. I may not be Catholic, but, I do not remember convents being full of assassins. I was under the impression that they were full of women married to God who spend their time praying and doing community service. Apparently there is more going on in some of those places than I initially thought!

Ismae is taken there when she is a young teenager and she is happy to serve St. Mortain after the life she has escaped where an entire village both feared and hated her. Robin LaFevers does an amazing job of telling the little details. You cannot help but become involved in Ismae’s life at the convent. She makes friends and finally knows what it is like to have people be kind to her and treat her like a human being.

I love reading about the history of things and places. History was part of my major in my undergraduate degree, though I did get fixated on the history of China’s dynasties. Whenever I read a book that uses real places I tend to take Internet fieldtrips. When I read that most of this story was taking place in Brittany I hit the Internet to see if there really was a St. Mortain and find out the history of this country.  I found information on Mortain but it looks like the storyline in Grave Mercy was a very well-developed story that Robin LaFevers did a wonderful job of developing. I was watching DVR recordings I have of re-runs of Passport to Europe and to my great surprise and delight I had one of what is now Brittany, France. Of course that tells me a lot about what the results of the fight that Brittany had with France to keep its independence.  This book tells the story about the hearts and minds of the people who fought so hard to keep Brittany its own independent country. Interestingly enough Brittany was full of British people so of course they would not want to be annexed by France.

Grave Mercy is full of court intrigue and in-fighting that is so underhanded that you cannot tell who is truly working on behalf of Brittany and who is working on behalf of the France regent. The interesting part of this also is that the duchess, Anne is only 12 years old and despite her royal background we really get to see the inner workings of how things were for women of all stations in this book. Can you imagine not being able to walk around a party unescorted by an adult male or female for fear of what it would do to your reputation? Well that has not changed all that much depending upon how you behave while walking around a party these days!

Character development was very well done in Grave Mercy. You did not always know who the bad guy was in this story. The fantasy elements were exciting and the mythology surrounding St. Mortain was interesting and I hope we will get to see that mythology developed more. The fight scenes, though occasionally one sided, were well written.  Death’s handmaidens were some kick-butt chicks. I am not sure how many books are in the series but, it appears the next book surrounds another of the girls from the convent. I look forward to that read!

Review by Lady Techie, and can also be seen at ladytechiesbookmusings.blogspot.com

Balancing On The Edge Of The World

by Elizabeth Baines

Balancing on the edge of the world by Elizabeth Baines is an intense collection of short stories, each on the theme of power – finding it, keeping it and losing it.

Baines’ characterisations are particularly vivid, ranging from comic to tragic but always retaining their believability. I laughed out loud in places but was incredibly moved and sometimes frustrated in others. The collection plays with different voices and points of view, keeping your attention from story to story, and I could clearly see the influence of Baines’ dramatic work for radio and stage.

The collection of 14 stories covers a lot of ground, from magic to metaphysics, while looking at “cool hard edges” and “the pain that had caused them”. My favourite pieces are Daniel Smith Disappears Off the Face of the Earth which contrasts one life-altering moment in the life of a teenage boy with “all the times and places in the history of the world” and Power, the haunting story of a young girl listening to her parent’s relationship fall apart.

This is Baines’ first collection and it is not an easy read. Each story demands concentration from the reader but, in return, delivers an appropriately powerful experience.

Reviewed by Claire Marriott