⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ [responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] Spellbinding. Poignant. Inspirational. Brimming with the naturalism of Barbara Kingsolver and the authenticity of Anne Tyler, this book reached and filled a Covid-fueled paucity I wasn’t fully aware of. “What was there to be afraid of in this place where everything was as you saw it -…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ [responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] My stop today on the @rrbooktours1 #blogtour for the YA/NA book @Catwalk by @nicolegabor “I was sick of following the rules”. What teenage girl hasn’t dreamed of chucking it all in - college, suburbia, ( and parents), and heading for a new beginning in the bright lights…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ [responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] “The Five Things” is an evocative, gentle book that wraps you up and pulls you into its beguiling world. We first meet Wendy, the main protagonist and our narrator, when she is a young child, aged around nine, living in the South of England in a small…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2 [responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] Like sinking down on a pillowy featherbed, from the very first pages this book enveloped me. Layered with richly textured characters, (and reminiscent to me of reading Joanna Trollope, or even Kate Atkinson) this lovely book reminds us of the power of emotional connection to heal…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ [responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] An intimate and emotional character-driven saga that works it’s way deep inside your heart - “What we carry” is a heart-wrenching story of grief, of loss, and of the patterns we learn early in life to manage our pain that can distort and warp our line-of-sight to…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ [responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] My stop today on the #RandomThingsTours blog tour for #AstralTravel by @ElizabethBaines Stories. Within Stories. Within other stories. This brilliant book is about the stories we tell ourselves, how we learn to handle the realities we cannot escape from, and exactly how much of our truest selves…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Emotional. Thoughtful. Poignant. Eva (Evangeline) is a twenty eight year old woman, a photographer, who is fascinated with old and crumbling things. Eva becomes part of a group of “urban explorers” who visit derelict and abandoned buildings - each of them looking for beauty and yearning for a connection…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️➕ This book took my breath away. Literally. Towards the very end of the story, I became aware that I was holding my breath, allowing in only tight short intakes, afraid to disturb the rhythm of the space I had dropped into, not wanting it to ever end. This is…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ What happens when your world is suddenly unrecognizable - when everything, everyone, you thought you knew; in fact, you built your life around; is suddenly, dramatically (explosively) shifted. Meet Lexi Greenwood. Wife. Mother. Friend. Lexi and her family live in a quiet middle-class British suburb just outside of London.…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I adore first-person present-tense novels. There is something so claustrophobic, so intense, so jumpy about being in another person’s head as their world unfolds - whether real or imagined, you feel it all, and in the slowly building structure of a novel that reads like a emotionally-dizzying journal, the…