REVIEW!! Yours Cheerfully by A J Pearce

Image description: the cover of Yours Cheerfully has a pastel blue title text and an illustration of a typewriter on a pastel pink background

London, November 1941.

Following the departure of the formidable Henrietta Bird from Woman’s Friend magazine, things are looking up for Emmeline Lake as she takes on the challenge of becoming a young wartime advice columnist. Her relationship with boyfriend Charles (now stationed back in the UK) is blossoming, while Emmy’s best friend Bunty, still reeling from the very worst of the Blitz, is bravely looking to the future. Together, the friends are determined to Make a Go of It.

When the Ministry of Information calls on Britain’s women’s magazines to help recruit desperately needed female workers to the war effort, Emmy is thrilled to be asked to step up and help. But when she and Bunty meet a young woman who shows them the very real challenges that women war workers face, Emmy must tackle a life-changing dilemma between doing her duty and standing by her friends.

As I said when I first read A J Pearce’s first novel – the delightful Dear Mrs Bird – some books really do come along at just the right time. And after the rough ride that was 2020, it feels like we could all do with some cheerfulness and support in our lives. So it really is the perfect time for the irrepressible Emmeline ‘Emmy’ Lake and her colleagues at Women’s Friend to make their return in Yours Cheerfully!

It’s all change at Women’s Friend following the departure of the formidable Henrietta Bird. The good-natured Mr Collins has assumed the role of editor and Emmy is now free to assist the understanding and practical Mrs Mahoney on the problem page. More importantly, however, Women’s Friend has been given An Important Task.

Called for a high-level meeting at the Ministry of Information, Emmy and the rest of the Women’s Friend team are tasked with helping to recruit female war workers. Emmy is thrilled to be asked to step up and help but, when she and her best friend Bunty meet a young widowed mother on the train, she begins to realise the challenges faced by some of the women trying their best to do their duty to the country. Before long, Emmy is back on the campaign trail and getting involved in helping her new friends as only Emmy can – but what is she prepared to risk to stand up for her friends?

A J Pearce has done a fantastic job developing her returning characters – and bringing in some interesting new faces. Emmy grew so much during the course of Dear Mrs Bird and, in Yours Cheerfully, we see her develop further as both a young woman and a young journalist. I really empathise with Emmy because she does make mistakes and she sometimes gets herself into a right tangle – but her heart is always in the right place and, whilst she’s becoming increasingly aware that sometimes you can’t just push away your worries, she’s determined to Make a Go of It and do her best to support her friends, her family, and her beloved boyfriend Charles.

I also really loved the focus of Yours Cheerfully, with its depiction of women’s war work and the challenges faced by working mothers – challenges that still haven’t been adequately solved to this day. As with its predecessor, there’s a real sense of the challenges of wartime life beneath Emmy’s cheer and spirit, and the novel doesn’t shy away from depicting the tragedy and often grim realities of the war years.

This is also bought across in the other strand of the novel – Emmy’s relationship with her boyfriend, Captain Charles Mayhew. Although now stationed back in England, the demands of the war place constant constraints on Emmy and Charles’s relationship – and there’s the ever present possibility of redeployment to contend with. I loved how Pearce balanced Emmy’s pride in Charles with her worries about him being sent back into the front lines of the fighting.

As with Dear Mrs Bird, there is an accomplished lightness of touch in Yours Cheerfully. A J Pearce has, yet again, walked the line between the realities of life on the UK’s Home Front in World War II and the uplifting, hopeful story of Emmy and her friends with great skill. As I said in my Dear Mrs Bird review, the deft lightness of touch that allows such a story to work on so many levels is a real testament to the skill of the author.

The story does work perfectly well as a standalone so readers unfamiliar with Emmy could certainly dive straight in here – although I’d recommend picking up the first book anyway because you’d be missing a treat otherwise! Fans of Dear Mrs Bird are, however, sure to adore Yours Cheerfully – it really is the perfect sequel, and an ideal novel for picking up and diving into to take your mind away from the challenging times we find ourselves in.

Yours Cheerfully by A J Pearce is published by Picador and is available now from all good booksellers and online retailers including Hive, Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Wordery.

If you can, please support a local indie bookshop by ordering from them either in person or online! Some of my favourites include Booka Bookshop, The Big Green Bookshop, Sam Read Booksellers, Book-ish, Scarthin Books, and Berts Books. 

My thanks go to Camilla Elworthy at Pan Macmillan and to Picador for providing a copy of the book in return for an honest and unbiased review.

Reviews on The Shelf are free, honest, and unbiased and I don’t use affiliate links on my posts. However if you enjoy the blog please consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi!

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BLOG TOUR!!! White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector by Nicholas Royle

Image description: the cover of Nicholas Royle’s White Spines showing blurred white-spined Picador classics on a bookshelf shelf, covered by orange, black and white title text and blurb

A mix of memoir and narrative non-fiction, White Spines is a book about Nicholas Royle’s passion for Picador’s fiction and non-fiction publishing from the 1970s to the end of the 1990s.

It explores the bookshops and charity shops, the books themselves, and the way a unique collection grew and became a literary obsession.

Above all a love song to books, writers and writing.

Like most book bloggers, I love a book about books – and I’ve reviewed a few on this blog since its inception, with Cathy Rentzenbrink’s Dear Reader being a recent favourite. So when a bookish memoir blurbed by Cathy (she “didn’t want it to end and would like a gargantuan infinite edition”) crossed my blogging doorstep, I wasn’t going to say no to giving it a read!

White Spines is, as its subtitle suggests, about books and book collecting. A mix of part-memoir and part narrative non-fiction – with occasional detours into bookshop conversations and various surreal dreamscapes – the book details Nicholas Royle’s love of (obsession with?) his collection of white-spined Picador fiction and non-fiction. Like all good books about books, however, White Spines is more than the sum of its apparent parts. Whilst Royle’s passion for Picadors and love of book collecting provides the backbone of the book, White Spines is also a love letter to literature more widely, and to the power of books to captivate, enthrall, and transform.

Royle talks with wit, charm and intelligence about the joy of discovering a good secondhand bookshop, or the exhilaration that the bookworm feels at discovering a pristine edition on a charity shop shelf. He also captures perfectly that bookish obsession with presentation – the frustration of a publisher changing cover design mid-series, the horror of the TV tie-in cover, and the desire to curate shelves of matching, beautiful spines. In his conversations with author and publishing friends, he brings across the inherent exuberance of conversations about books, from the discovery of new authors to the joyful dissection of a shared read.

Anyone who has ever lost themselves having a rummage through a second hand bookshop, accidentally fallen into a charity shop for a ‘quick look’, or contemplated how to fit several new purchases onto already bulging shelves, will find themselves in White Spines. Although my own reading taste is quite different to Royle’s, I found myself nodding along or smiling in agreement with so many of the incidents and experiences that he recounts.

White Spines also provides some insight into the business of publishing. Royle talks to a number of former and current Picador authors, illustrators, and staff to consider how the ‘white spine’ paperback list was built, how the covers were chosen, and why the list (which includes an impressive collection of both authors and titles) became the cultural force that it did during the 1970s, 80s and 90s.

That said, the book is not a ‘publishing memoir’, nor is it a documented history of Picador or an account of all of their titles. It is, as I said at the start, a love letter to books and, more specifically, to book collecting. To the physicality of books – to the desire to hold a physical object in your hand before putting it on your carefully curated shelf with its fellows, or the intrigue that comes with finding a letter or note left in a book by a previous reader.

White Spines is a book that spoke to the part of me that loves seeing the stripy spines of my Penguin English Library editions next to each other on the shelf, as well as the part that’s a sucker for a beautiful cover or stunning endpapers. It made me think about the times I’ve found receipts or train tickets in books and wondered about the people who put them there – and about the times I’ve given books with my name or ephemera in away and wondered what will become of them. It is, in short, an ode to the book and a journey of delight through the pleasures of being a bookworm.

White Spines by Nicholas Royle is published by Salt and is available from all good booksellers and online retailers including Hive, Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Wordery. You can also support the publisher by buying from them directly on their website.

If you can, please support a local indie bookshop by ordering from them either in person or online! Some of my favourites include Booka Bookshop, The Big Green Bookshop, Sam Read Booksellers, Book-ish, Scarthin Books, and Berts Books. 

My thanks go to the publisher for providing a copy of the book in return for an honest and unbiased review and to Helen Richardson for organising and inviting me onto this blog tour. The tour continues until 20 July 2021 so do check out the other stops for more reviews and content.

Reviews on The Shelf are free, honest, and unbiased and I don’t use affiliate links on my posts. However if you enjoy the blog please consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi!

Image description: blog tour banner for the White Spines blog tour showing the book cover (described above), tour dates/stops, and publisher information. Tour dates run from 15-20 July with one blogger posting per day. Tour posts can be found and followed using the #WhiteSpines.

BLOG TOUR REVIEW!!! The Beresford by Will Carver

Everything stays the same for the tenants of The Beresford, a grand old apartment building just outside the city…until the doorbell rings…

Just outside the city—any city, every city—is a grand, spacious, but affordable apartment building called The Beresford. There’s a routine at The Beresford. For Mrs. May, every day’s the same: a cup of cold, black coffee in the morning, pruning roses, checking on her tenants, wine, prayer, and an afternoon nap. She never leaves the building.

Abe Schwartz also lives at The Beresford. His housemate, Sythe, no longer does. Because Abe just killed him. In exactly sixty seconds, Blair Conroy will ring the doorbell to her new home and Abe will answer the door. They will become friends. Perhaps lovers.

And, when the time comes for one of them to die, as is always the case at The Beresford, there will be sixty seconds to move the body before the next unknowing soul arrives at the door.

Because nothing changes at The Beresford, until the doorbell rings…

Having read Will Carver’s Nothing Important Happened Today and Hinton Hollow Death Trip, I thought I was well prepared for a trip to the dark side of life when picking up The Beresford. Then I opened up his latest novel, The Beresford, and immediately met and unassuming young man considering how best to dispose of the corpse of his neighbour. Yes, Will Carver is back in all his unconventional and chilling glory. Welcome to The Beresford, leave your soul at the door…

As usual with one of Will Carver’s books, it seems prudent to talk triggers before we head any further into this review. If you’ve read my reviews of Nothing Important and Hinton Hollow, you’ll know Carver writes deliciously dark books – and doesn’t pull punches when it comes to describing the darker sides of human existence. The Beresford is no exception – it might, in fact, be his creepiest and darkest novel yet – so consider yourself duly warned if you’re of a squeamish disposition. Triggers here for death, murder, corpse disposal, drug use, alcohol abuse, some gore/graphic descriptions, and domestic violence – as well as plenty of strong language and a pervading sense of what one critic has called Carver’s ‘bedsit nihilism’.

Why then, does one read such a grim novel? Simply put, Will Carver’s books are always exciting and original and, like his previous work, The Beresford takes the reader on a fantastical, all-too-plausible, journey into the dark heart of the human experience.

The Beresford is an elegant – and surprisingly reasonable – apartment building in a perfectly ordinary city. Its tenants, with the exception of owner and building stalwart Mrs May, are restless and transient; either running to or away from something in their lives. Quiet and unassuming Abe just wants to be left alone with his books. New girl Blair is escaping the confines of small town life. And, until recently, artist Sythe was alternating between creating and burning his work. I say until recently because, as the book opens, the artist formerly known as Sythe is now a cooling corpse on the floor of Abe’s apartment. As one tenant ‘exits’ The Beresford, another arrives. Always exactly 60 seconds later. And as the novel goes on, we’re going to get through quite a few changes of tenancy…

Without saying any more and ruining the many twists and turns of the plot, The Beresford is Will Carver on top form. Grimly dark and with a pervading sense of existentialist dread throughout, this a propulsive and thought-provoking ride into the darker facets of everyday life. As with Carver’s previous books, there is also a deliciously macabre humour running throughout – some of the situations that characters find themselves in border on the ridiculous, whilst some of the questions they have to ponder (such as exactly how much drain cleaner one needs to dissolve a human body) are posed in a darkly comic way.

The characters themselves are also compelling – although you might not want to get too attached to any of them! From the shadowy presence of the mysterious Mrs May through to the dark undertones of Abe’s seemingly quiet and bookish countenance, each of them has their own motivations, desires, and fears – and Carver is brilliant at unpicking and dissecting these to propel the plot forwards, as well as at taking some sharply observed stabs at various facets of modern life – social media, organised religion, and millennials to name but a few.

Chapters are short, sharp, and shocking – making for an utterly compelling and page-turning read that will leave you desperate to know what happens next! Consider this your warning that you may not want to start this book late at night if you’ve got anything on the next day – it’s such a compulsive read, you’ll be staying up well into the wee small hours to finish it!

As I’ve said before, Will Carver’s books won’t be for everyone. They’re sinister and quirky and a bit gruesome – and he’s a writer who delights in taking readers for a walk on the dark side. But his novels are, consistently, some of the most original that I’ve read, and never fail to hook me in and leave me reeling. As a standalone, The Beresford makes the perfect jumping off point for entry into the Carver-verse – so if you’re not read any of his previous work, consider this your invitation into his addictive yet terrifying world! And for existing fans of Carver, The Beresford is, for my money, his best book yet!

The Beresford by Will Carver is published by Orenda Books and is available now in ebook and from 22 July 2020 in paperback from all good booksellers and online retailers including Hive, Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Orenda Books.

If you can, please support a local indie bookshop by ordering from them either in person or online! Some of my favourites include Booka Bookshop, The Big Green Bookshop, Sam Read Booksellers, Book-ish, Scarthin Books, and Berts Books. 

My thanks go to the publisher for providing a copy of the book in return for an honest and unbiased review and to Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for organising and inviting me onto this blog tour. The tour continues until 30 July 2021 so do check out the other stops for more reviews and content.

Reviews on The Shelf are free, honest, and unbiased and I don’t use affiliate links on my posts. However if you enjoy the blog please consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi!

BLOG TOUR REVIEW!!! A Statue for Jacob by Peter Murphy

“This debt was not contracted as the price of bread or wine or arms. It was the price of liberty.” -Alexander Hamilton

Kiah Harmon, a young Virginia lawyer, is just emerging from the most traumatic time of her life when actress Samantha (“Sam”) van Eyck walks into her office, unannounced, with the case of a lifetime. She asks Kiah to recover a 200-year-old debt from the U.S. Government – a debt that Alexander Hamilton may have acknowledged.

The selfless generosity of Sam’s ancestor, Jacob Van Eyck, in making a massive loan of gold and supplies at Valley Forge, during the freezing winter of 1777-1778, may well have saved George Washington’s army, and the War of Independence, from disaster. But it reduced Jacob to ruin. Despite the government’s promises, the debt was never repaid, and this hero of the American Revolution died in poverty, unknown and unrecognized.

Two hundred years later, Sam and Kiah embark on a quest to change that. But first, they will have to find the evidence, and overcome a stubborn Government determined to frustrate their every move. Will there ever be a statue for Jacob?

Peter Murphy’s latest novel, A Statue for Jacob, is an intelligent and compelling blend of contemporary legal thriller and historical mystery that sees young lawyer Kiah Harmon face off against the US government in pursuit of a centuries old debt.

When Samantha van Eyck walks into Kiah’s office to ask if she does debt collection work, the last thing Kiah expects is to be pursuing a loan that dates back to the War of Independence. But, according to Sam, Eyck family legend has it that their ancestor Jacob van Eyck loaned substantial sums of gold and supplies to Washington’s army during the freezing winter of 1777-1778, bankrupting himself in the process. Jacob made the loans in good faith – and in pursuit of liberty – but according to his descendants, the US government never repaid his patriotism and Jacob died in penuary. Now Sam wants justice for Jacob – and official recognition of his contribution towards the nation’s founding.

So begins Kiah and Sam’s investigation into the van Eyck family archives – and a court case that soon sees US government lawyers Dave and Ellen working alongside Kiah to outwit a sinister and shadowy foe that doesn’t want the truth about Jacob’s loans to come to light.

In addition to a suspenseful legal thriller, Peter Murphy has created a twisty historical mystery in A Statue for Jacob. I was fascinated to learn that the book is based on the true story of Jacob de Haven, with which the author – a former judge and lawyer himself – was involved. This lends the courtroom proceedings an authentic air, although Murphy has done an excellent job of explaining the sometimes complex procedures of the US claims court and wider justice system in an easily digestable and understandable way.

Indeed, A Statue for Jacob is a very easily digestable book overall. The story rattles along from the very first page, and the characters are wonderfully relatable. Kiah makes for an extremely likeable central protagonist – a young lawyer just emerging from some traumatic personal events and trying to rebuild her practice from the ground up. Her courtroom opponent Dave Petrosian is similarly pleasant – dedicated, hard-working, and genuinely interested in discovering the truth, even if that isn’t wouldn’t be the best outcome for the government. And some of the supporting cast are brilliant, with Kiah’s outspoken but dedicated secretary Arlene raising a laugh more than once!

As a Brit whose knowledge of the American War of Independance is primarily based on having seen the musical Hamilton, I also found the insights into American history – and the winter spent by Washington at Valley Forge – to be fascinating, and the legal argument around the US Constitution a fascinating and compelling one.

As I mentioned above, I rattled through A Statue for Jacob in a matter of days. With a compulsive mix of courtroom drama and archival discoveries, it has the page-turning quality found in the novels of Blake Crouch, Dan Brown, and John Grisham. I’d love to read more about Kiah and Dave in the future so fingers crossed that Peter Murphy considers starting a new series featuring his latest legal protagonists – because on the basis of A Statue for Jacob, I’d be eager to read about what comes next!

A Statue for Jacob by Peter Murphy is published by Oldcastle Books and is available now from all good booksellers and online retailers including Hive, Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Wordery.

If you can, please support a local indie bookshop by ordering from them either in person or online! Some of my favourites include Booka Bookshop, The Big Green Bookshop, Sam Read Booksellers, Book-ish, Scarthin Books, and Berts Books. 

My thanks go to the publisher for providing a copy of the book in return for an honest and unbiased review and to Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for organising and inviting me onto this blog tour. The tour continues until 16 July 2021 so do check out the other stops for more reviews and content.

Reviews on The Shelf are free, honest, and unbiased and I don’t use affiliate links on my posts. However if you enjoy the blog please consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi!

BLOG TOUR REVIEW!!! We Need to Talk by Jonathan Crane

It’s 2019 in Sudleigh, a market town not far from the south coast.

It’s not a bad place to live, provided the new housing development doesn’t ruin it, but most residents are too caught up in their own disappointments, grudges, and sores to notice.

Former lounge musician Frank wants to pass his carpet business to his nephew Joe, killing the boy’s dream to become a chef. Sharp-elbowed phone-sex operator Heather will stop at nothing to become the manager of the golf club. Gap-year Tom is cleaning toilets but finding unexpected solace in his Chinese house-share. Miss Bennett keeps putting her house on the market when she doesn’t want to move.

Do they all know how their lives are linked? Meticulously observed, We Need to Talk offers a jigsaw puzzle of unwitting connections for the reader to assemble. The finished picture is a hyper-real, unflinchingly honest portrait of multi-jobbing, gig-economy Middle England on the eve of Covid, confirming some preconceptions while gently upsetting others.

I usually read books to escape from the often grim day to day realities of the news cycle – especially in the last couple of years. But every so often, a book catches my eye that promises an unique assessment of the ‘state of the nation’, and a glimpse into the hidden depths of our everyday existence – and We Need to Talk is definitely one such book.

Set in 2019, We Need to Talk provides a perfectly poised and intricately observed snapshot of a small English market town post-Brexit and pre-pandemic. Not far from the south coast, Sudleigh is an encapsulation of Middle England – and its residents have all the petty gripes and first-world problems that you’d expect (as well as some actual problems, which you possibly wouldn’t).

Martin has been reluctantly pressed into service to oppose the proposed housing development – much to the dissatisfaction of his wife, district councillor Bridget. Eighteen-year-old Tom has been forced to leave home by his mother’s malicious new boyfriend – and is making ends meet through cleaning jobs whilst he saves for university. Former lounge musician Frank wants to retire – and is disappointed that his nephew Josh seems less than keen to talk on the family carpet business. Newly widowed George is throwing himself into the garden that his beloved wife never got to create – much to the concern of his daughter Emma. Sheila is under pressure to put her house on the market – even though she doesn’t want to move. And Tony, creative writer and pressured academic, is finding it tough to get anyone to appreciate his latest avant-garde work, The Jazz Cats – least of all his girlfriend Lydia.

Chapter by chapter and person by person, We Need to Talk provides a meticulously observed and wickedly funny depiction of small town life in Middle England today. From the perils of the gig-economy, to the small nuances of neighbourhood life, and the deeper interpersonal connections that we make – or fail to make – with those around us. From nuisance neighbours and terrible parents, to worried daughters and spiteful colleagues, We Need to Talk has it all – and treats it all with the same wry and unflinching gaze.

Although We Need to Talk is a novel, its a novel as jigsaw puzzle and, for me, each chapter felt like a little short story all on its own. Characters do flit between chapters – it’s quite fun seeing them flitting in and out of each others lives as the book progresses – and there are some characters that we return to more than once as the book progresses, but this is really a multi-layered portrait of a community and the people within it than a novel with a singular narrative drive or character.

As such, it won’t be for everyone – the pull comes from being interested in the community, and in musing over the various ways the characters drift together and apart and what this might say about modern life in the UK today. At times, I have to admit, I did find some elements of it quite distressing – and depressing – because Jonathan Crane has done such an excellent job of capturing the petty squabbles and gossipy grudges that so often distract from the real issues that many people face. What kept me reading was the meticulous observation, the focus on individuals as part of a wider picture – and the regular moments of wicked and wry humour which punctuates the book.

Gossipy, perceptive, and darkly funny, We Need to Talk is a picture of small town life in an increasingly divided nation. Readers of Jonathan Coe’s Middle England and John Lanchester’s Capital will surely enjoy the book, as will those seeking a short, sharp ‘state of the nation’ read.

We Need to Talk by Jonathan Crane is published by Lightning Books and is available now from all good booksellers and online retailers including Hive, Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Wordery.

If you can, please support a local indie bookshop by ordering from them either in person or online! Some of my favourites include Booka Bookshop, The Big Green Bookshop, Sam Read Booksellers, Book-ish, Scarthin Books, and Berts Books. 

My thanks go to the publisher for providing a copy of the book in return for an honest and unbiased review and to Emma Welton from DampPebbles Tours for organising and inviting me onto this blog tour. The tour continues until 14 July 2021 so do check out the other stops for more reviews and content.

Reviews on The Shelf are free, honest, and unbiased and I don’t use affiliate links on my posts. However if you enjoy the blog please consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi!

BLOG TOUR REVIEW!!! The Lost Girls by Heather Young

In the summer of 1935, six-year-old Emily Evans vanishes from her family’s vacation home on a remote Minnesota lake. Her disappearance destroys her mother, who spends the rest of her life at the lake house, hoping in vain that her favourite daughter will walk out of the woods. Emily’s two older sisters stay, too, each keeping her own private, decades-long vigil for the lost child.

Sixty years later Lucy, the quiet and watchful middle sister, lives in the lake house alone. Before she dies, she writes the story of that devastating summer in a notebook that she leaves, along with the house, to the only person to whom it might matter: her grandniece, Justine.

For Justine, the lake house offers a chance to escape her manipulative boyfriend and give her daughters the stable home she never had. But it’s not the sanctuary she hoped for. The long Minnesota winter has begun. The house is cold and dilapidated, the frozen lake is silent and forbidding, and her only neighbour is a strange old man who seems to know more than he’s telling about the summer of 1935.

Soon Justine’s troubled oldest daughter becomes obsessed with Emily’s disappearance, her mother arrives with designs on her inheritance, and the man she left behind launches a dangerous plan to get her back. In a house steeped in the sorrows of the women who came before her, Justine must overcome their tragic legacy if she hopes to save herself and her children.

As soon as I heard about The Lost Girls, I jumped at the chance to request it from NetGalley. Dual timeline? Historical mystery? Woman discovering herself whilst finding out long-buried family secrets? It all sounded like Unread Books catnip!

In the summer of 1935, six-year-old Emily Evans vanishes from her family’s remote lake house. Her distraught mother refuses to leave, staying at the family’s summer home in the hope that, one day, her lost daughter will return. Emily’s two older sisters, eleven-year-old Lucy and thirteen-year-old Lilith, also stay behind. Years later, Lilith’s granddaughter Justine receives word that her great-aunt Lucy has died – and left her the Lake House and all of its contents.

Stuck in a stifling relationship and with two small daughters to provide for, Justine jumps at the chance for a fresh start. But the Lake House is far from welcoming. The long Minnesota winter is just beginning and the house is more dilapidated than Justine remembers. Her only neighbours – a pair of quiet and reclusive elderly men – are cautiously friendly, but seem to know more about Justine’s family than they are letting on. With the arrival of her erratic and unreliable mother and controlling ex-boyfriend, Justine’s new start is soon in danger of repeating old history. And then her troubled eldest daughter starts asking questions about a long ago summer in 1935…

As you can hopefully tell from that brief synopsis, The Lost Girls is a page-turning and compelling mystery set over dual timelines. Alternating between Justine herself in the present day, an elderly Lucy writing down her recollections of that long ago summer, the mystery of what happened to Emily gradually unravels alongside Justine’s present day woes and conflicts to create a complete picture of a family haunted by long-buried secrets and betrayals.

Although compelling, the plot is relatively sedate for the first half of the book. There’s quite a lot of setup to establish the characters and the setting, which really helps to build the tension for what ended up being a pacy and explosive second act! I really loved the sense of place that Heather Young manages to convey. She captures both the nostalgia of Lucy’s childhood summers by the lake – all sunlit evenings and rising emotions stifled by the heat – and the cold isolation of the modern day Lake House, frozen in time just as much as it is frozen within the wintery Minnesota landscape.

The characters were, for me, a little harder to like. Although I could sympathise with Justine, I sometimes struggled to empathise with her inability to cut her ties and make a new life for herself and her girls. Although I don’t want to give any spoilers, there are a couple of characters in her life that I would have given the heave-ho much sooner – and before events turned dramatic!

Lucy was, for me, the more compelling voice in the narrative. Although often irrational and petulant, she comes across as a typical eleven-year-old girl, caught somewhere between childhood and her teenage years – and aware that her older sister Lilith is growing up and leaving her behind. The revelations about Lucy’s life and family are also utterly devastating – and really put into perspective some of the events that have come beforehand in the book, as well as some of the ripples that feed through to the present day narrative.

Although primarily a mystery, The Lost Girls does also deal with family dynamics and family secrets. Although it tackles the subjects with sensitivity, trigger warnings should be noted for sexual abuse, child abuse, gaslighting, and coercive control.

Overall, The Lost Girls is a captivating story of loss, guilt, hope, redemption, and escape. Its dual narratives are handled with great skill to make for an enthralling mystery of one family’s secrets and lies over the space of 64 years. Haunting and intriguing, The Lost Girls is sure to appeal to fans of Rachel Hore and Kate Morton, as well as to anyone seeking a compulsive and compelling read.

The Lost Girls by Heather Young is published by Verve Books and is available now as an ebook and to pre-order in paperback from all good booksellers and online retailers including Hive, Waterstones, and Book Depository.

If you can, please support a local indie bookshop by ordering from them either in person or online! Some of my favourites include Booka Bookshop, The Big Green Bookshop, Sam Read Booksellers, Book-ish, Scarthin Books, and Berts Books. 

My thanks go to the publisher and NetGalley UK for providing a copy of the book in return for an honest and unbiased review and to Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for organising and inviting me onto this blog tour. The tour continues until 09 July 2021 so do check out the other stops for more reviews and content.

Reviews on The Shelf are free, honest, and unbiased and I don’t use affiliate links on my posts. However if you enjoy the blog please consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi!

BLOG TOUR!!! Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon

Evie Thomas doesn’t believe in love anymore.

Especially after the strangest thing occurs one otherwise ordinary afternoon: She witnesses a couple kiss and is overcome with a vision of how their romance began . . . and how it will end. After all, even the greatest love stories end with a broken heart, eventually.

As Evie tries to understand why this is happening, she finds herself at La Brea Dance studio, learning to waltz, fox-trot, and tango with a boy named X. X is everything that Evie is not: adventurous, passionate, daring. His philosophy is to say yes to everything–including entering a ballroom dance competition with a girl he’s only just met.

Falling for X is definitely not what Evie had in mind. If her visions of heartbreak have taught her anything, it’s that no one escapes love unscathed. But as she and X dance around and toward each other, Evie is forced to question all she thought she knew about life and love.

In the end, is love worth the risk?

My love for YA seems to be growing. Having dipped my toe in the water with The Inheritance Games and The Cousins – both mystery-thrillers (a genre that is very much my comfort zone), I decided to venture beyond comfort into the heady world of YA contemporary romance and give Nicola Yoon’s latest novel Instructions for Dancing a go. And I am so glad I did because I LOVED this book!

Instructions for Dancing tells the story of Evie – former avid romance reader and believer in true love. I say former because when the book opens, Evie is in the process of donating all her romance novels to the local Little Free Library. Ever since she walked in on her Dad kissing a woman who wasn’t her Mom, Evie’s stopped believing in love. Because what good is love if it ends up in heartbreak?

When her visit to the Little Free Library results in a mysterious meeting that ends up with Evie being able to see the outcome of various relationships, she becomes even more convinced of her theory. Love might be magnificent whilst lasts but no matter how bright it burns, it only ends in heartbreak – bitter break-ups, ruined friendships, and loneliness. However, when Evie pursues the other ‘gift’ that her mysterious benefactor has given her – a battered book called ‘Instructions for Dancing’ – she is forced to re-consider. The book leads her to the La Brea Dance Studio – and to her new dance partner X. Determined to live in the moment, and with a ‘say yes’ philosophy, could X be the antidote to Evie’s cynicism? Or is theirs also a love story that is doomed to have an unhappy ending?

I absolutely loved both Evie and X. As well as being perfect for each other, their chemistry is brilliantly conveyed on the page. Smart and snarky, Evie is a brilliant narrator – and her anger and bitterness is completely understandable given what has happened to her and the huge changes that have been wrought in her life as a result. X (short for Xavier) is also carrying hidden baggage – dealing with the loss of someone close to him and trying to figure out how to live his life and fulfil his dreams. They felt like real, fully rounded characters, and their romance felt natural and progressive rather than insta-love.

I also adored some of the supporting characters. The plotline with Evie and her relationship to her Mom and her Dad is really sensitively handled – redemptive without being twee is probably how I’d put it. And the dance school sections are an absolute scream – Evie and X’s instructor Fifi is definitely my favourite character and every scene with her in it had me laughing out loud at her dialogue (“No rocking side to side. You are not little teapot.”). I also really like Evie’s friends Martin, Cassidy, and Sophie.

Instructions for Dancing wholly captures what it is to be in your late teens – that feeling of being full of potential and ready to explore the world. But also of being scared of letting go the cherished things of your childhood, and the realisation that adult life – and adult emotions – may be much more complex than romance novels sometimes make out.

I laughed a lot reading it – and I also cried a bit too. No spoilers, but there are moments in this novel that will rip your heart out and stomp on it a bit so it might be a good idea to have some tissues handy, especially as you get towards the end. That said, the slight shift in tone didn’t feel out of place with the more light-hearted parts of the book. This is a novel that wears its comedy and its heartbreak side-by-side and, as such, celebrates life in all its wonderful, tragic, messy glory. I absolutely adored it – and I’d recommend it to anyone looking for an uplifting book about the importance of living life to its fullest.

Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon is published by Penguin and is available now from all good booksellers and online retailers including Hive, Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Wordery.

If you can, please support a local indie bookshop by ordering from them either in person or online! Some of my favourites include Booka Bookshop, The Big Green Bookshop, Sam Read Booksellers, Book-ish, Scarthin Books, and Berts Books. 

My thanks go to the publisher for providing a copy of the book in return for an honest and unbiased review, and to The Write Reads for organising and inviting me onto this blog tour! There are lots of other reviews and spotlights on the tour so follow the hashtags #InstructionsForDancing, #TheWriteReads and #UltimateBlog Tour for more reviews and content!

Reviews on The Shelf are free, honest, and unbiased and I don’t use affiliate links on my posts. However if you enjoy the blog please consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi!

BLOG TOUR!!! A Murder at Rosings by Annette Purdey Pugh

When Mr Collins is found stabbed to death in Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s garden, simmering tensions are revealed beneath the elegant Regency surface of the Rosings estate.

The prime suspect is Mr Bennet, who was overheard arguing with Mr Collins over the entail of Longbourn in the days before the murder was committed, and who stands to benefit more than anyone from the Rector’s death.

His daughter Mary uncovers a scandalous secret that holds the key to the murder. Can she prove her father’s innocence in time to save him from the gallows?

As a lover of all things Austen, I have eagerly devoured several Austen-adjacent novels and ‘sequels’ over the years. Most have centered on Elizabeth Bennet: she’s fought zombies (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), and solved a murder (Death Comes to Pemberley) but, more recently, other characters have come to the fore. From servants (Longbourn) to Charlotte Lucas (Charlotte), to Mary Bennet (The Other Bennet Sister), Austen’s most famous novel seems to invite infinite re-tellings.

Annette Purdey Pugh’s debut novel, A Murder at Rosings, is an imaginative addition to this contemporary tradition, moving the action away from Longbourn and Pemberley to Rosings, the home of the formidable Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Mr Collins, one-time suitor to Elizabeth Bennet and heir to the Longbourn estate, has been found stabbed to death in Lady Catherine’s garden.

The pompous vicar was overheard arguing with Mr Bennet in the days before his death – and it appears Mr Bennet may be the only person who benefits from the Rector’s death. It is left to Mary Bennet, with the support of her new friend Anne de Bourgh, to try and uncover the key to the murder. As the official investigation gathers pace, Mary uncovers a scandalous secret that could change Rosings forever.

Offering an interesting perspective on some of Austen’s well-known characters, A Murder at Rosings is an entertaining ‘cosy’ mystery (although there is mention of and allusion to sexual assault and sexual coersion, albeit without any graphic language or content) with plenty of twists and turns, as well as an insight into the ‘below stairs’ life of a great house such as Rosings.

Whilst characters remained true to Austen’s depictions of them, Annette Purdey Pugh has fleshed out ‘incidental’ characters such as Mary Bennet and Anne de Bourgh with nuance, developing character traits from Austen’s novel to create fully rounded and believable characters that have additional depth. Lady Catherine, for example, remains aloof and opinionated but is shown to also be a genuinely caring mother and a reasonable employer.

In addition, Purdey Pugh has created some interesting original characters – the local magistrate, Sir John Bright, acts as a reasoned and reasonable principle investigator into the crime and is ably – if naively – assisted by local constable Robert Archer. There are also plenty of red herrings to detract from the main plot – a pair of suspicious stable boys, a frightened young orphan – that keep the pages turning and the mind whirring!

My only quibble is that, despite the blurb, Mary doesn’t really do much ‘investigating’ – this is not like Elizabeth in Death Comes to Pemberley, placing herself at the forefront of the investigation. She does discover a crucial piece of evidence but if you’re looking for a Bennet centered book, Murder at Rosings isn’t it. Sir John and Archer lead the investigations and Murder at Rosings is, on the whole, an ensemble affair featuring a range of Austen’s characters – such as Mary – in ‘walk-on’ parts. Still interesting, but arguably not ‘as advertised’ in the blurb.

Imaginative and interesting, this was a light and engaging mystery that ably expands on Austen’s original whilst remaining true to the spirit, character, and style of her works. Pacy and page-turning, the central mystery has some intriguing twists that will keep you guessing, whilst Austen fans are sure to enjoy revisting some of her beloved characters in a new setting.

A Murder at Rosings by Annette Purdery Pugh is published by Honno and is available now from all good booksellers and online retailers including Hive, Waterstones, Bookshop.org, and Wordery.

f you can, please support a local indie bookshop by ordering from them either in person or online! Some of my favourites include Booka Bookshop, The Big Green Bookshop, Sam Read Booksellers, Book-ish, Scarthin Books, and Berts Books. 

My thanks go to the publisher for providing a copy of the book in return for an honest and unbiased review and to Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for organising and inviting me onto this blog tour. The tour continues until 30 June 2021 so do check out the other stops for more reviews and content.

Reviews on The Shelf are free, honest, and unbiased and I don’t use affiliate links on my posts. However if you enjoy the blog please consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi!

BLOG TOUR!!! A Public Murder by Antoinette Moses

‘My mother was a very difficult person, Inspector, and not always a very nice one. I can think of any number of people who would want her dead.’

For DI Pam Gregory, unravelling the murder of archaeologist Stephanie Michaels was always going to be hard, but she had no idea it would change her life.

In this remarkable crime debut, award-winning author Antoinette Moses takes the reader on a gripping journey from Cambridge to Crete to find a story that has been hidden for decades.

If you’ve been following the blog for a while, you’ll know that I love a good police procedural – Sarah Ward’s Connie Child series is a favourite of mine, and earlier this year I really enjoyed the first of A J Cross’s forensic mysteries, Dark Truths. And now, thanks to Antoinette Moses and A Public Murder, I have another series to look out for when I head for the bookshop!

A Public Murder introduces the reader to DI Pam Gregory. Smart, compassionate, and resilient, Pam has worked through both professional challenges and personal hardships to become the head of the East Anglian Special Operations Unit (EASOU). Although her boss would rather she spent more time on the paperwork and less time in the field, the unit is producing results, and the book opens with Pam and her team successfully wrapping up a long-running County Lines case.

Rather than celebrating their success however, Pam and her team are thrown straight into their next case when renowned archaeologist Stephanie Michaels is found dead – brutally stabbed and then ceremonially displayed on the horns of the Cretan bull at the centre of her new exhibition. Initial investigations show that there are many people who might have wanted to kill Stephanie but, as the investigation continues, the clues increasingly point towards Crete – and to a Cretan vendetta that may threaten Stephanie’s daughter, Jen.

With both the media and the political spotlight upon her, Pam is in a race against time both to find Stephanie’s killer and protect the future of her team. But as she lands in sunny Crete and begins to learn about the real Stephanie, Pam is forced to re-evaluate the priorities in her own life – and her own hopes and dreams for the future.

I have to admit that, when I started A Public Murder, I wasn’t 100% sure I’d get on with it. The book opens with the brutal killing of a cat, and the murder of Stephanie is also fairly gory. Animal death and gore are usually two of my bookish no-no’s but, in this instance, they really are the hardest hitting sections of the book – get past the first couple of chapters, and you’re in more gentle procedural territory, albeit with some mentions of or allusions to marital/domestic violence, drug use, alcohol abuse, racism, sexism, gaslighting, torture and violent crime. In all fairness, the violence is not excessive either – the way Stephanie and Skimbles (the cat) are killed does end up being very relevant to the story, so its essential not gratuitous.

I instantly warmed to DI Pam Gregory. She’s a fantastic lead character – smart but compassionate, she combines being a tough, resilient, and professional detective with a more in-secure and uncertain personal core. As such she felt well-rounded and fully realised, and I found myself as interested in the personal journey that she undertakes as the professional one.

The supporting characters are, for the most part, also well realised. I really like Josh, Pam’s second-in-command at EASOU, as well as Stavros, her liaison in Crete. Nikos Leotakis, the Cretan billionaire pulling the strings behind the scenes, was also a great character, and his involvement added an element of both glamour and danger to the case. I did, however, feel there were slightly too many named characters at times. Pam’s EASOU team, for example, are fairly large and I kept expecting some of them to make more of an appearance than they did. There were also a few subplots – mostly involving interpersonal relationships within the EASOU team – that felt somewhat redundant to the overall story, as well as some head-hopping from character to character that, often occurring without notice, took a little while to get used to.

This did not, however, detract from my enjoyment of that story. The central mystery of who killed Stephanie Michaels is a compelling one and I really enjoyed following Pam and her team as they carefully eliminated suspects and motives. I did feel that the Cretan part of the book would have benefitted from a little more space – without wanting to spoil anything, the killer and their motives are introduced a little late and I felt that the last 30 pages raced a little too quickly, with some rather sudden changes in tone and character, especially in the case of Stavros.

I also really enjoyed the depictions of both Cambridge and Crete. You can tell that the author is familiar with both locations and, especially in the case of Crete, the scenery and lifestyle were both vividly evoked on the page. I could practically imagine myself sat in the heat and eating all the delicious Greek food that is described! And I was fascinated to discover not only Stephanie’s life in Greece – which includes an important involvement in some little known Greek history – but also to follow Pam’s own journey of self-realisation on the island.

A Public Murder is a thrilling and accomplished police procedural that is sure to appeal to fans of the genre. With an intriguing and original main character, a compelling plot, and some fabulously realised locations, it’s the perfect summer read for crime fans – and I’m really looking forward to finding out what happens to DI Pam Gregory and her team next!

A Public Murder by Antoinette Moses is published by Black Crane Press and is available now from all good booksellers and online retailers including Hive, Waterstones, Bookshop.org, and Wordery.

If you can, please support a local indie bookshop by ordering from them either in person or online! Some of my favourites include Booka Bookshop, The Big Green Bookshop, Sam Read Booksellers, Book-ish, Scarthin Books, and Berts Books. 

My thanks go to the publisher for providing a copy of the book in return for an honest and unbiased review and to Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for organising and inviting me onto this blog tour. The tour continues until 04 June 2021 so do check out the other stops for more reviews and content.

Reviews on The Shelf are free, honest, and unbiased and I don’t use affiliate links on my posts. However if you enjoy the blog please consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi!

BLOG TOUR!!! The Lock In by Phoebe Luckhurst

Ellen and Alexa have survived hangovers, dodgy landlords and most of their twenties together.

But can they survive this?

One Saturday morning, while nursing The Hangover from Hell, a flooded kitchen leads best mates Ellen and Alexa, and hapless housemate Jack, into their attic to turn off the water supply.

But when Ben – Alexa’s date from the night before – walks in, the door slams, the handle breaks and all four of them are trapped.

Cue The Worst morning-after-the-night before.

As the hours tick by, Ellen nurses her sore head and watches as her best friend falls for this handsome stranger.

Only for a horrifying realisation to hit. She is sure she knows Ben from somewhere.

Frantically searching her memories, Ellen tries to piece together exactly how they’ve met before.

When a distant memory finally comes to her, she desperately wonders: could Ben really be who she thinks he is . . .

And more importantly, what on earth is she going to do about it . . .

Every so often you need a breath of bookish fresh air to reinvigorate your reading life. For me that often means turning to genres and books that I don’t read regularly – rom-coms being one of my ‘refresh’ go-to genres. Add in a locked-room element, some nineties nostalgia, and some all-too relatable protagonists, and you’ve got a book that – for me at least – was bookish fresh air and reading fun times stuck between two covers.

The Lock In is the story of millennial housemates Ellen, Alexa, and Jack. Ellen and Alexa have known one another since university – and having survived many a night out and the perils of early adulthood, are now negotiating love, landlords and early career perils in the lively London suburb of New Cross. Housemate Jack, meanwhile, is the slightly wobbly third wheel to Ellen and Alexa’s longstanding friendship.

When Ellen wakes up with the mother of all hangovers to find the kitchen under several inches of water, its the start of a very unusual Saturday. Deciding to search for a stop-cock in the attic (the fuse box was there, makes total sense right?), Ellen and her housemates soon find themselves locked upstairs – along with the charming but worryingly familiar Ben, Alexa’s Hinge date from the night before.

Stuck in the attic with no phone signal, no way out, and a kitchen that is still rapidly filling with water, the novel follows Ellen, Alexa, Jack, and Ben as they attempt to MacGyver their way out of the situation – and keep their relationships intact whilst doing so.

There is a strong element of the ludicrous about The Lock In – the novel is a, at its heart, a Generation Rent farce and, as such, it casts a comical side-eye at many experiences that will be familiar to those who grew up in the nineties, attended university at as the new millennium dawned, and are now rattling through their thirties and wondering when they’re supposed to be ‘grown up’. From MSN Messenger conversations to the CBD period products, Phoebe Luckhurst successfully takes aim at many of the staples of millennial culture whilst also conveying the concerns a generation trapped in cycles of rented housing, dating apps, and entry level jobs.

Given the premise, you do have to suspend disbelief a little to fully appreciate some aspects of The Lock-In. Even at the height of my university years, I doubt I’ve had begun my hunt for the water stop cock in the attic, for example. But get past the more ridiculous elements of the premise – and some of the deus ex machina that conveniently help the plot along it way – and there are plenty of laughs to be had here. I frequently laughed out loud at the situations the hapless housemates found themselves in, and I really enjoyed the interactions between the four main characters.

I also really liked the characters – despite not always seeing them at their best! Whilst I related most to Alexa, I found Jack’s awkwardness and Ben’s good natured-ness charming. Ellen – probably the most complex of the four – provides much of the comedy in the novel, with her slightly spikier personality and ability to place her foot firmly in her mouth at all times. Whilst not always likeable, her fallibility is very relatable – and her decade-long friendship with Alexa is really well portrayed.

Whilst the plot is a little thin on the ground in places – there really is only so much you can do with four people trapped in an attic – The Lock In whips along at a brilliant pace. I read it over a weekend and it would make for the perfect holiday read. The ending was, admittedly, a little disappointing – not because of what happens but because I wasn’t sure how much some of the characters had developed as a result of what happens to them during the book.

That said, I’m not sure you pick up a book like The Lock In for character development and serious meaningful life changes – or at least, that certainly wasn’t why I picked up this book and so those less developed elements didn’t bother me. I wanted a fun read and The Lock In certainly provided that in spades – I chuckled my way through Alexa, Ellen and Jack’s escapades and regularly laughed out loud at certain all-too-relatable paragraphs (reading too much into MSN Messenger conversations? Totally been there).

As a light-hearted and feel-good read about the perils and pitfalls of contemporary life, The Lock In is a perfect comedy balm. As I said at the start of my review, it was a breath of bookish fresh air in my reading life and I’d recommend it to anyone else looking for a feel-good rom com for the millennial generation.

The Lock In by Phoebe Luckhurst is published by Michael Joseph and is available as an ebook now, with hardback publication on 22 July 2021. The book is available to order/pre-order from all good booksellers and online retailers including Hive, Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Wordery.

My thanks go to the publisher for providing a copy of the book in return for an honest and unbiased review and for organising and inviting me onto this blog tour. The tour continues until 30 June 2021 so do check out the other stops for more reviews and content – and follow #TheLockIn to find out more!

If you can, please support a local indie bookshop by ordering from them either in person or online! Some of my favourites include Booka Bookshop, The Big Green Bookshop, Sam Read Booksellers, Book-ish, Scarthin Books, and Berts Books. 

Reviews on The Shelf are free, honest, and unbiased and I don’t use affiliate links on my posts. However if you enjoy the blog please consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi!