⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This book continues the excellent children’s book travel series featuring twelve year old Amanda as she visits remote locations, where she joins us in learning about history and culture, and manages to also squeeze in time for adventures and solving a mystery or two. In this book, Amanda visits…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Wow. This book passed the lump-in-the-throat test. With flying colours. Reading the last few pages, my emotional reaction was sudden and visceral and my head unmistakably fuzzy as I closed the book. Who do we really know for sure? How far are we willing to go to protect the…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This book is an absolute delight! Or should I say - Phantastic! Meet Gracie and Rodney - two ghostly spirits (who also happen to be children of about twelve years old). This spectral duo have haunted the Amberwood Ballet School for Girls for approximately two centuries, where they (mostly)…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Stephen Connor is a cop, a man who feels himself to be often misunderstood, and yet does his best to do the right thing, as he is, at the end of the day, including mistakes and all the messiness around them, “an honorable man, in a difficult job”. In…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ What a gorgeous book. Quiet and unassuming, this book takes you into the mind of Maren Markey, as she re-lives her junior-high and high school years through an old journal she finds and reads as she is preparing to move away from home to college. Equally suitable for a…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This book is great fun, and the perfect introduction to what I’m sure will be one terrific crime series. Clay Wolfe (oh, what an awesome name!) Is a former Boston homicide detective, who has now moved back to his home town, the idyllic Port Essex, situated on a coastal…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “Where hope is found” is an intense emotionally-driven story about a young woman, Marissa, dealing with horrendous loss and desperately trying to make it through to the other side of her overwhelming grief. With the help of her family, including her brother Owen and their children, Marissa relocates to…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The House of Rougeaux is a sweeping multi-generational family history, beginning in the late 18th century on the isle of Martinique where we are introduced to the healer Abeje (Marie) and her brother Adunbi (Guillaume), bonded slaves and the children of Iya, who was herself brought over from Africa…
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️➕ I found this gorgeous picture book incredibly endearing. (It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that I teared up at the end of it, so touched was I by the messaging and so deeply did it resonate with me). From the very first notes, drifting across the park to…
This outstanding addition to the DCI Alan Banks series, (#27), delivers everything you would expect from this author, (whose characters just keep getting better with age) and at the same time, introduces a bit of a wistful and nostalgic tone that makes me wonder if changes are afoot in this…