[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 + An absolutely beautiful read, this book resonated so powerfully with me that it was difficult to see it end. Deeply evocative, the author captures perfectly the heady rush that comes with being eighteen, on the cusp of adulthood - a time so jumbled up with innocence,…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟 Benji is a black Labrador, and interestingly, also a narrator of this book, which features a dog’s-eye view of the complications that can arise in seemingly perfect human lives. Meriel, the main (human) protagonist, and the story’s second-provided POV, believes herself to be happily married. Until the…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟 A gentle look at love, as it ages, batted about and corrupted by the passage of time, as long-held fears, insecurities and secrets, do their dirty work in darkness - leaving us to wonder, is it ever too late to start again? Prickly and somewhat unlikable, Meena…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 ➕ If the Earth itself (wait, make that the “Universe”) could write, this would be its creation. Deeply wise, there’s a core of truth captured with such aching beauty that the images, ideas, and feelings so seamlessly poured into this work surround you, in the manner of…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 This is the fourth edition of the Hedgehog Hollow series, and the first one I have read - a situation I would love to remedy quickly! Based in the dreamy countryside of Yorkshire Wolds, this delightful book reads like a visit with friends, an extended “family” of…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ In parts tender, and almost entirely tragic, I found this short novella incredibly moving. A gentle, compassionate and insightful look at origins, or sources - of identity, shame, grief, anger, despair - (and interestingly, of words themselves) and the roots that provide definition, and a past, that…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “He was everybody’s son, but he belonged to no one”. A complex and poignant portrait of what it means to be a mother, a father, or a son, and what it feels like to have this most central of identities suddenly ripped away. When we first meet…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2 An epic and life-changing journey, paused and then culminated, decades later, as our main protagonist, Dan, travels the road to Kathmandu, Nepal. Dan, an often strung-out hippie kid from England, seeking mystery, excitement, adventure, and most of all, freedom from his “cultural straightjacket”, completes a drive…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] Join me in this Q&A with Dr. Gail Aldwin, author of “This Much Huxley knows”, as Gail discusses her writing, inspiration and other fascinating facts about the creative process. Q. Where did the inspiration for This Much Huxley Knows come from? A. The idea came from my debut novel The String…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2 “I don’t know what to do with the thoughts flying around my head so I stand up and spring my arms high. Perhaps, I can touch the sky. I have a little laugh because it’s a fun idea and the words high and sky make an…