Category Archives: Fiction

Review: ‘Victoria’, by Daisy Goodwin

Published By: St. Martins Press

Publication Date: 22nd November 2016

I.S.B.N.: 9781250045461

Blurb

“They think I am still a little girl who is not capable of being a Queen.”

Lord Melbourne turned to look at Victoria. “They are mistaken. I have not known you long, but I observe in you a natural dignity that cannot be learnt. To me, ma’am, you are every inch a Queen.”

 

In 1837, less than a month after her eighteenth birthday, Alexandrina Victoria – sheltered, small in stature, and female – became Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Many thought it was preposterous: Alexandrina — Drina to her family — had always been tightly controlled by her mother and her household, and was surely too unprepossessing to hold the throne. Yet from the moment William IV died, the young Queen startled everyone: abandoning her hated first name in favor of Victoria; insisting, for the first time in her life, on sleeping in a room apart from her mother; resolute about meeting with her ministers alone.

One of those ministers, Lord Melbourne, became Victoria’s private secretary. Perhaps he might have become more than that, except everyone argued she was destined to marry her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. But Victoria had met Albert as a child and found him stiff and critical: surely the last man she would want for a husband….

Drawing on Victoria’s diaries as well as her own brilliant gifts for history and drama, Daisy Goodwin, author of the bestselling novels The American Heiress and The Fortune Hunter as well as creator and writer of the new PBS/Masterpiece drama Victoria, brings the young queen even more richly to life in this magnificent novel.

My Review

Biography in novel form. Not half bad either. The development of Victoria during her first few years as queen is developed and explored in a sympathetic manner and with skillful storytelling. Occasionally the biography breaks through the novelisation and it becomes very obvious that the author is dumping information rather than telling the story, but it only happens three or four times and barely detracts from the flow at all.

Definitely one for fans of Victorian history and Queen Vicky herself.

3/5

Review: ‘Body in The Box’, by E.R. Fallon

Published By: Joffe Books

Publication Date: 19th December 2017

I.S.B.N.: 9781912106004

BLURB

The frail body of a young boy is found discarded in an old cardboard box. Even in a hard-edged town used to deadly crimes, this touches a nerve.

BODY IN THE BOX is the first book in the Stygian Town mystery series featuring three very different homicide detectives.

Detectives Dino Copper and Terry Jackson have been partners and friends for years. Now a new detective is drafted in to join them: Rebecca Everhart. They must quickly learn to work together on the biggest case of their careers, the disturbing discovery of the ‘Body in the Box’, as it’s known by the captivated media and the city’s worried citizens.

The case takes the three detectives deep inside the lives of the insular Eastern European immigrant community and the world of unlawful medical practices. The case also evokes an eerie childhood memory of Dino’s, where a boy from his neighborhood vanished and was never seen again.

What appears to be a straightforward, modern-day murder case has more to do with the past than the present, and the detectives come to a genuinely unnerving — and life-threatening — conclusion.

Continue reading “Review: ‘Body in The Box’, by E.R. Fallon”

Book Review: ‘Nowhere To Run’, by Jack Slater

As usual, book received in return for an honest review. I’m going to do something I wouldn’t normally bother with but in this case I think it’s necessary, and add a content warning because of the subject matter.

CW: Child abuse, abduction, paedophilia, murder, suicide

 

Publication Date: 6th January 2017

Published By: HQ Digital

Format: ebook

Price: £1.99

I.S.B.N.: 9780008223588

Blurb

A missing child. A dead body. A killer on the loose.

Returning to Exeter CID after his son’s unsolved disappearance Detective Sergeant Peter Gayle’s first day back was supposed to be gentle. Until a young girl is reported missing and the clock begins to tick.

Rosie Whitlock has been abducted from outside her school that morning. There are no clues, but Peter isn’t letting another child disappear.

When the body of another young victim appears, the hunt escalates. Someone is abducting young girls and now they have a murderer on their hands. Time is running out for Rosie, but when evidence case relating to his own son’s disappearance is discovered the stakes are even higher…

Continue reading “Book Review: ‘Nowhere To Run’, by Jack Slater”

Review: ‘For the love of Emily’, by Joy Wood

Joy Wood is a local author, a nurse in Grimsby, that I met at a local authors event at Grimsby Central Library in the summer. What with Paris, university and being under the weather, it’s taken me a while to get her book read, but this afternoon I felt the need to read a paper book, so I picked up ‘For the love of Emily’ and got back into it.Continue reading “Review: ‘For the love of Emily’, by Joy Wood”

Review: ‘South’, by Frank Owen

Published by: Corvus Books (Atlantic Books)

Publication Date: 7th July 2016

I.S.B.N.: (Paperback) 9781782399612, (Ebook) 978178239812

Price: £12.99 (Paperback)

Book received from publisher in return for an honest review.

Continue reading “Review: ‘South’, by Frank Owen”

Review: ‘A Daughter’s Deadly Deception’, by Jeremy Grimaldi

Published by: Dundern

Publication Date: 6th December 2016

I.S.B.N.: 9781459735248

Continue reading “Review: ‘A Daughter’s Deadly Deception’, by Jeremy Grimaldi”

Review: ‘The Other Einstein’ by Maria Benedict

Publication date: 18th October 2016

Published by: Sourcebooks Landmarks

BLURB

A vivid and mesmerizing novel about the extraordinary woman who married and worked with one of the greatest scientists in history.

What secrets may have lurked in the shadows of Albert Einstein’s fame? His first wife, Mileva “Mitza” Marić, was more than the devoted mother of their three children—she was also a brilliant physicist in her own right, and her contributions to the special theory of relativity have been hotly debated for more than a century.

In 1896, the extraordinarily gifted Mileva is the only woman studying physics at an elite school in Zürich. There, she falls for charismatic fellow student Albert Einstein, who promises to treat her as an equal in both love and science. But as Albert’s fame grows, so too does Mileva’s worry that her light will be lost in her husband’s shadow forever.

A literary historical in the tradition of The Paris Wife and Mrs. Poe, The Other Einstein reveals a complicated partnership that is as fascinating as it is troubling.


My review

This was a really good novel, told in first person past tense, and narrated by Mileva Maric as she goes from an incredibly intelligent and optimistic student to a tired housewife with two young children and an absent husband. Obviously it is fiction but the book is well researched and delves in to the private lives of the Einsteins. Mileva Maric was an amazingly talented physicist and mathematician who was forced to give up all her work for her marriage and was probably instrumental in the four 1905 papers that made Albert Einstein’s name.

The writing was really fluid and easy to read. The only problem I had was with the occasional information dumps that didn’t quite fit into the plot.

Review: Zombie Nation book 1: Zombie Juice, by Samantha Warren

zombie-nation-1

Publication Date: 5th October 2016

Available from Amazon: UK, US

Ebook received in return for an honest review. 

The Kin twins, Kinley and Kincaid have lived in White Willows all their lives, almost sixteen years. They can just about remember the time before the zombie apocalypse. They live with their grandmother and help her run the town diner around their schooling. Soon they’ll finish school and become adults with more responsibility.

Then a convoy comes to town, bringing with it a new and deadly drug. And and new future for the twins.
This is a short book, only 80 pages long, but it was very enjoyable and certainly more original than some of the zombie apocalypse books I’ve read in the last year or so. The Kin twins are likeable characters and well-written, plot is well thought out and easy to read, and I like where it’s going. This book is a prologue to the series and we must wait to see where the author takes her characters.
There were a few editing errors, in word choice or grammar, which I’m sure will be ironed out before publication, but other than that I liked this YA novel.

Local Authors Reviewed: Part One

As you may remember, a few weeks ago I went to a local authors event to do some networking and get opinions on the best self-publishing platform and was given four books by local authors to review. Here are the first three.

As always, I received these in return for honest reviews. I am going to be very honest. Sorry.

Selected Poems, by Michael Nilsen (poetry)

Published by: Matador

Publication Date: October 2015

ISBN: 9781784624705

Price:£9.99

A collection of poems written over a 22 year period and covering a range of themes including nature, autobiography and surrealism.

My Review

The nature poems were the most affecting and well-written, with great imagination. Unfortunately most of the poems didn’t move me all that much although they could have a different effect on other people. Poetry is subjective like that.

The Crooked Link, by David Evardson (General adult fiction)

Published by:Self-published

Publication date: 2016

ISBN: 9781522901259

Price:Unknown

Stanley is a crook, a crook who happens to have stolen money from an even bigger crook in London. When he turns up in Cleethorpes with a plan to buy a house, if he can sell his London flat first. A chain of buyers and sellers build but the chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link, and this link is crooked.

My Review

The plot is good but the execution needs work. It feels like a first novel even though the author has written several books before. It doesn’t quite ring true enough to become immersed in the plot, although the attempt at local dialect is good.

Marikka, by Sam Hawksmoor (children’s fiction)

Published by: Hammer & Tong UK

Publication Date: 2015

ISBN: 9781511994224

Price: Unknown

Marikka flees from an arson attack on her home to the sea, where she meets Mika – a runaway working for a sinister, scarred man hiding from the world. Meanwhile her father, long thought dead, searches for her with the aide of ‘the girl who can read objects’.

My Review

The plot reminds me of an Enid Blyton novel that has been modernised, including the sinister, mysterious villains and the evil step-father. I really quite enjoyed it and I admit to bawling like a baby at end. I liked the main characters, the plot was good, the chapter titles funny and the writing fluent. There were editing errors, e.g. instance instead of instant, minor things I had to parse to get the gist of the sentence but nothing that a re-edit won’t fix. Definitely a good one for the young teenager before they move on to more challenging books.

I have just one other book to read, For the love of Emily by Joy Wood. I haven’t started it yet but I will soon. The books are piling up again on my to be read list. I’ve been working on craft projects and writing assignments. Before I start University at the end of September I want to get the non-fiction assignments of my Writer’s Bureau course completed. I’m almost done, I have one task left to do on the final non-fiction assignment, and I shall tackle that tomorrow.

For those following the Saga of the Bath, finally today, after nine and a half weeks, the landlord sent a plumber to replace the old bath with a shiny new one. Or, I should say, the letting’s agent did. I intend to wallow in that thing tomorrow morning.

Reviews, as promised :D

Two book reviews for you today, they’re not very long because it’s way too hot and muggy, and I’m still recovering from Paris.

Continue reading “Reviews, as promised :D”