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  Published: 2019, Legend Press Genre: Fiction Themes: Japan, love, grief, culture My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤ " Grief is the price we pay for love "                                                Queen Elizabeth II This really is the most beautifully crafted book, and if you read it you will have: Intrigue Romance Drama Heartbreak Desperation, then finally..... A renewed appreciation of the power of love Every page is written with the same neat precision as the folds in a Japanese kimono.  Care is taken to slowly build the story through the eyes of seventeen year old Naoko, who writes of her experiences in Japan in 1957, and alternately through Tori, a present day American woman whose father dies carrying a secret.   Tori's father served in the US Navy as part of the occupying forces based in Japan following World War 2, and in his final hours...

  Published: 2017, Penguin Random House Genre: Fiction Themes: Small town America, poverty, secrets  My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤ Secrets.   Secrets from the past or the present.  Secrets carried like a stone in a shoe, unseen but always there rubbing, rubbing and not going away.  Elizabeth Strout exposes the carefully hidden secrets kept by some apparently nice people from the rural town of Amgash, Illinois, and by the time you get to the end of this novel you will be watching your friends and neighbours wondering what they might be hiding from you.  We all like to make wild assumptions about people (well that is what gossip is for, surely?) but what if all that secret stuff came tumbling out?  How would they cope and how would it change them? The secrets in this book range from heartbreaking to downright horrible and the reader is a voyeur of the unfolding events.  I could almost hear my mother's voice warning me to 'Stop gawping and come alo...

  Published: 2020, Penguin Genre: Fiction Themes: missing person, witchcraft, Scotland, rural community My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤ So, this is my recommendation for your holiday read. (You'll thank me for this later!) You know that point on Boxing Day when it is just starting to get dark and you realise it's all over for another year, and you are pretty much done with Christmas now.  You had piccalilli with your cold cuts at lunch, and then remembered too late that pickle wasn't going to mix well with six strawberry creams and the last segments of your chocolate orange.  On top of that, your Nan is telling everyone for the eleventy billionth time that all they had for Christmas in her day was half a walnut and a puncture repair kit, but they were gratefull! This is the point when you need to get away and re-set your brain with a decent gothic spine chiller.  Snuggle down in a quiet corner in your new oversized hoodie and enjoy the much under-rated pleasure of feelin...

  Published: 2020, Canongate Books Genre: Fiction Themes: Life, death, regrets My rating(out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤ I stopped reading this book at page 34. No, no.  Don't get me wrong.  This is not a 'did not finish', I mean I had to just stop for a moment and contemplate the concept of a big Book of Regrets waiting to be read at the point when your body hovers on the cusp between life and death.  Author Matt Haig dangles the possibility that you could go back and make things different; go back and live the life that might have been, if only you had made a different choice.   That is what stopped me.   No wonder this book was a Sunday Times Number One Bestseller!  What an idea!  Not only can the lead character Nora go back and make another choice, if it turns out she didn't like that new life after all, then she can go back to the Midnight Library and pick another life and have another go.  The choices available are endless and every option f...

  Published: 2020, Picador Genre: Fiction Themes: Scotland, Scottish weather, Scottish holiday park, families My rating (out of 5):  ❤❤❤ It's raining. Several families are on holiday in wooden lodges overlooking a loch in Scotland. It keeps raining. Mothers and fathers attempt to keep their children amused/safe/dry. Plenty more rain. Sarah Moss introduces us to all the families who have taken up temporary residence in the little settlement of lodges and. through their individual chapters, we come to understand who they are and what they think about. Did I mention the rain? The woods around the lodges are living, organic ecosystems that move and breath just as much as the humans. Rain drips off the leaves and makes patterns in the water. The story takes place over a period of just 24 hours and for every family there are micro-risks snaking through their ordinary day.  You know something bad is coming because there are hints everywhere, but just remember patience is a virtu...

  Published:  2020, Faber and Faber Genre: Fiction Themes:  love, domestic violence, Trinidad, relationships My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤ If you distilled this story down to it's purest element, you would find a mother's love glistening strong and bright.  A love that refuses to give up, even when life seemed intent on testing it to destruction. Set in Trinidad, this is the emotionally charged story of Betty, who finds herself trapped in an abusive marriage to Sunil, and although she can deal with his drunken violence against herself, a line is crossed when he starts to mistreat her little son Solo.  Sunil was a good man when they married, with his dashing good looks and charming ways, but once he took to drinking regularly with his brother, it didn't take much for his temper to flare and she knew it wouldn't be long before her skin was bruised and sometimes bones broken.  He was always sorry of course, and he knew a shady doctor who would patch Betty ba...

Published: 2019, Penguin Random House Genre: Fiction Themes: Gender, relationships, race, sexual identity, social attitudes My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤ The dedication in this book is: ' For the sisters & the sistas & the sistahs & the sistren & the women & the womxn & the wimmin & the womyn & our bretheren & our bredrin & our brothers & our bruvs & our men & our mandem & the LGBTQI+ members of our human family.' Those last five words are the essence of it.  Whoever we love, whatever we look like, dress like, act like.  We are members of our human family.  We should be able to be who we want to be without judgement.  Except we're not there yet and there is still a long way to go.  This book helps to give context to some of the different ways people find love, and how that does not necessarily remain the same for a lifetime.   Bernadine Evaristo introduces us to a great many vibrant people, and you ...