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  Published: 2021, Simon and Schuster Genre: Fiction Themes: witchcraft, curses, love My rating (out of 5): ❤❤ I don't usually annotate books (mostly because they belong to the library and it would be frowned upon) but there are times when I was reading this book I just want to grab a pen and scrawl 'REALLY???' in the margin. For instance:  One of the principal characters, Kylie, wants to end a curse that has been put on her family so she seeks out a man who is known to be an expert in curses.  Because of his surname she suggests that they may have a common relative from centuries ago.... 'Tom realized who she was.  The seven-times great-granddaughter of a witch who had been married to his six-times great-grandfather.' Well obviously. Anyway, Kylie belongs to a family where the women are bloodline witches and the curse hanging over them was set to prevent them having their hearts broken through love.  They must avoid falling in love and if they don't abide ...

Published: Penguin, 2021 Genre: Fiction Themes: Ugandan Asians, family business, family dynasty My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤ This made me consider how much our lives can be influenced by those who came before us.  Decisions made by parents and grandparents can influence where we live; our moral boundaries; and how we view, and inwardly judge, others.  Even if we decide to do everything differently, there are times in our lives where we feel the pull of the family compass and all we want to do is to return to a familiar path. This is a debut novel and I struggle to understand how anyone can write so well at such a young age.  Hafsa Zayyan must be under 30 as this book won the Merky Book Prize and that is only open to people aged 16 - 30.  Apparently she wrote the whole thing in 6 months while continuing to work as a dispute resolution lawyer, and she is writing convincingly about a totally different culture to her own. The book is set in the present and follows Sameer ...

  Published: 2021, Penguin Random House Genre: Fiction Themes: White Supremacy riots, Thomas Jefferson, Monticello My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤ Ah, Thomas Jefferson.  Spokesman for democracy, American Founding Father, principle author of the Declaration of Independence and Third President of the United States.  All-round good bloke right? Well, maybe not quite so all-round as he had a bit of a blind spot when it came to owning people.  Mr Jefferson owned more than six hundred African American people during his adult life and they were all put to work in and around his magnificent house, Monticello.  If you look up Thomas Jefferson's page on the White House website there is no mention of these people at all, and quite near the top of the text there is a quote from one of Jefferson's private letters where he states: 'I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.'  No wonder Jocelyn Nicole Johnson ...

  Publisher: Head of Zeus, 2021 Genre: Fiction Themes: Ancient Pompeii, slaves, brothel My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤  If, like me, you spent most of your history lessons looking out the window and didn't really absorb very much about the ancient Roman Empire, nil desperandum, as you will still manage perfectly well with this book. Set in first century Pompeii, the story follows the life of Amara, a young Greek woman who has been shipped to Pompeii as a slave and then bought by the owner of The Wolf Den brothel.  As the daughter of a doctor, she was bought up in relatively comfortable circumstances, but a series of terrible events turned her life upside down and she is now trapped in an endless cycle of fear and degradation with almost no hope of escape.  Amara is one of a group of slaves working in the Wolf Den, and they do what they can to protect one another from serious harm, but Amara knows that if she wants anything better for herself, she must make the brothel ow...

  Published: 2021, W W Norton and Company Genre: Fiction Themes: Autism, single parenthood, astronomy, ecology My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤ Richard Powers is such a clever man that his intelligence practically bristles off him like electrified hair reaching up to tightly packed thought bubbles.  As well as being a Pulitzer Prize winning author, he is also a Professor of English and has more than a passing acquaintance with physics and computer programming. All this knowledge allows him to write about an astrobiologist, whose work involves modeling scenarios of possible life-forms that could exist in the diverse range of atmospheres to be found in space.  In contrast, the book also presents the idea that while we are so interested in finding life on planets too far away to see, we happily look the other way as our own non-human species of flora and fauna are being driven to extinction. In the book, Theo Byrne is a single parent trying to juggle his scientific career wi...

Published: 2021, Penguin Random House Genre: Biography/Self Help Themes: Will Smith My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤ I don't usually write a synopsis as part of my book reviews but I think I'll make an exception here because it won't take long.   Synopsis:  I am the greatest thing on two legs and whatever you do you will not be better than me. I really enjoy watching Will Smith's films, and as you can see from the photograph above, our family has contributed to his fortunes over the years.  The problem I had with his memoir is that it comes across as the latest marketing exercise for the Will Smith brand.  I felt that the whole project has been devised to move him across from his reputation for goal orientated high achievement to the new zeitgeist of emotional intelligence and vulnerability. Of course Oprah Winfrey is the undisputed queen of this new world, so even the mighty Will Smith had to obtain her stamp of approval before moving forward.  There wa...

  Published: 2020, Tinder Press Genre: Fiction Themes: Elizabethan England, birth, death, women My rating (out of5): ❤❤❤❤❤ When the first Queen Elizabeth ruled our land, women were the gatekeepers of life.  They pushed and pulled life into the world and it fell to them to wash the dead in preparation for burial.  In the years between, they did what they could to bring children to maturity and offer comfort to the old and ailing as they neared the end of their time.  Women understood the fragility of life and those with a special gift for healing passed down remedies from mother to daughter. The book title is the name of a small boy, but what we really learn about is the life of women.  Women from young to old, rich to poor and no matter what their position, the greatest threat to their lives was childbirth.  Nothing more natural but every delivery was a contest between life and death and only the strong would win through. Maggie O'Farrell has captured ...