Difference between revisions of "Newest Women's Fiction Reviews"
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==Women's Fiction== | ==Women's Fiction== | ||
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| + | |author=Fiona Gibson | ||
| + | |title=The Great Escape | ||
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| + | |genre=Women's Fiction | ||
| + | |summary=Hannah, Sadie and Lou have all known each other since their student days in Glasgow. That was thirteen years ago and since then, although they have kept in touch, they have not seen as much of each other as they would have liked. Sadie is married to Barney and is the mother of twin babies. She is trying to adjust to life in a country village and to fit in with all the other young mums who always appear to do things so much better than her. Lou lives in York with Spike, her boyfriend since college days. She has had to put her dreams of being a jewellery designer on hold while she supports herself and Spike (who does very little) by working in a soft play barn. She often thinks that there must be more to life but does not have the courage to break free. Hannah loves her fiancé, Ryan, but finds the open hostility from her future stepchildren hard to take and this is the reason why the imminent wedding is so daunting. They all need some time out which is why the others jump at Hannah's suggestion of a weekend away visiting their old student haunts. | ||
| + | |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847562604</amazonuk> | ||
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{{newreview | {{newreview | ||
|author=Marlene S Lewis | |author=Marlene S Lewis | ||
Revision as of 18:34, 10 February 2012
Women's Fiction
The Great Escape by Fiona Gibson
Hannah, Sadie and Lou have all known each other since their student days in Glasgow. That was thirteen years ago and since then, although they have kept in touch, they have not seen as much of each other as they would have liked. Sadie is married to Barney and is the mother of twin babies. She is trying to adjust to life in a country village and to fit in with all the other young mums who always appear to do things so much better than her. Lou lives in York with Spike, her boyfriend since college days. She has had to put her dreams of being a jewellery designer on hold while she supports herself and Spike (who does very little) by working in a soft play barn. She often thinks that there must be more to life but does not have the courage to break free. Hannah loves her fiancé, Ryan, but finds the open hostility from her future stepchildren hard to take and this is the reason why the imminent wedding is so daunting. They all need some time out which is why the others jump at Hannah's suggestion of a weekend away visiting their old student haunts. Full review...
Ruth by Marlene S Lewis
The late 1950s saw a lot of changes in society but they were late in coming to Ruth's home in the Owen Stanley range in Papua New Guinea. Ruth, the only daughter of plantation owner John Madison, was still in her late teens and away at boarding school for much of the year, but when she returned home one of the first people she wanted to see was her great friend Tommy. They'd grown up together but there was no possibility of the relationship being taken any further as Tommy - despite being light skinned - was the son of one of the black plantation workers and certain 'standards' were expected of Ruth. Full review...
A Life Lived Ridiculously by Annabelle R Charbit
Maxine is from a Jewish family who think that as her 20s are nearing their end, she should be married. Maxine, for her part, hasn't found anyone to interest her and is more concerned with combining her job and her studies and getting away from the yoke of her parents. She is also worried about her possessions and worries that she has too many and that they make her flat look untidy. She just can't get her flat organised the way she likes it, either, with the light not being quite right and never quite being able to decide which room her television should be in. Full review...
The Two Week Wait by Sarah Rayner
Up in Yorkshire , Cath and Rich aren’t sure their future can include children following her major illness, which would be ok if she didn’t want a baby so badly. In Brighton, Lou hasn’t had quite the same infertility issues but has problems of her own that might get in the way of the tick tock of her body clock. The two women don’t know each other, and in spite of what you might expect, don’t get to know each other, but their stories sit side by side in this tale of the trials and tribulations of fertility treatment. Full review...
The Wife Who Ran Away by Tess Stimson
Kate's life is far from easy. She earns a great deal more money than her husband Ned, and works long hours... but her boss seems to be trying to edge her out. She pays not just for their mortgage, but for her mother's too, and fees for their teenage children Guy and Agness who are in expensive private schools. Full review...
The Child Inside by Suzanne Bugler
Rachel Morgan feels that she does not fit in anywhere. Certainly not with all of the other mums at her son Jono's posh school. Certainly not with all the happy jolly families on the beaches when they are on holiday. And most of all, she no longer feels that she fits in with her own little family. Nothing ever feels right and she continually feels isolated on the outside looking in. Of course, these feelings lead to an increasing sense of dissatisfaction which she can only deal with by dwelling on what she perceives as her happier past. Full review...
Shakespeare's Mistress by Karen Harper
The conceit of Shakespeare's Mistress is that Shakespeare was married to Anne Whateley the day before he was married to Anne Hathaway, and Anne W remained the love of his life, with an affair (if you can have an affair with your 'wife') continued in London where the same Anne was also the famed dark lady of his sonnets. There is some basis for this theory in that the parish records do show a mysterious entry into the register for just such a contract the day before the Hathaway marriage but although the author claims this is 'faction', it's very much at the fiction end of that scale and is really a 'what if?' piece. Full review...
Falling for You by Giselle Green
Rose is full of worries and insecurities. Her father is frail, her mother died some years previously. Rose is desperately hoping for a letter offering her a place at the university of her dreams... but has no idea how her father will survive without her there to look after him. Full review...
The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E Smith
The story takes place over the course of only twenty four hours but so much happens during that small amount of time. It starts when the reader meets Hadley having missed her flight to London by a mere four minutes. As it turns out, those four minutes are some of the most significant of her life, as they result in her booking a later flight and consequently meeting Oliver with whom she is seated throughout the journey across the Atlantic. Full review...
Maine by Courtney Sullivan
The Kellehers' beach-front holiday home in Maine was built on a plot of land won in a bar-room bet at the end of World War II. It's not in the same league as the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port but there are a couple of substantial properties on the plot and there's still room to spare. It's a place of indulgence, secrets and the sort of burning cruelty which you only get in families who care for each other - some of the time. Maine is essentially the story of a summer at the property - but the seeds of what happens were, of course, planted long ago. Full review...
The Golden Thread by Monica Carly
It was a sad day when Claudia Hansom retired as headmistress of Kingdown School. The staff respected her, despite the fact that she was always somewhat distant and the children did well under her charge. She was a stickler for discipline and the pupils accepted this – but once again there was no love. No, the sadness was all Claudia's, for what was she to do with the rest of her life as the ex-head teacher living alone with her cat? Her mother had died when she and her sister were teenagers and her father not long before she retired. There hadn't been any contact with her sister was forty years. She might imagine doing some writing, but the reality was that the life ahead of her was empty. Full review...
The House of Eliott by Jean Marsh
When Evangeline and Beatrice's father dies, the two sisters discover that he has left them with very little money and without any qualifications with which to support themselves. They struggle to find suitable employment before accidentally discovering their talents as seamstresses and fashion designers. The book follows their journey of independence after their father's death, and the new relationships they begin to build without him dominating their lives. Full review...
Pear Shaped by Stella Newman
One night Sophie was out with her friend Laura. They met a couple of men and there was an immediate chemistry between Sophie and James Stephens. He was good looking, charismatic, great fun and obviously attracted to Sophie. The fact that he was rich (complete with Maserati) didn't matter to her - but it didn't do any harm either. What's not to like? Well, there's nothing 'not to like' but just the odd thing that might give some pause for thought. He's forty five and never been married - and has a history of dating super-slim models. But - he is obviously very taken with Sophie and she falls head-over-heels for him. Full review...
Off the Rails by Beryl Kingston
A young girl from a Yorkshire village was weeping, begging her mother to be allowed just one more night at home, but the carter was waiting for her. The girl was fifteen, unmarried and pregnant. She was to go any stay with her aunt until the baby was born and she would be Mrs Smith whose husband had died at sea. The father of the baby was actually a village boy, George Hudson, who would prefer to pay a fine for bastardy than make an honest woman of the girl. He too ended up leaving home over the matter. In the years to come the paths of Jane, along with her daughter Milly, would cross and recross with Jane swearing that she would have vengeance. Full review...
Landfall by Helen Gordon
'Most people at one time or another of their lives get a feeling that they must kill themselves; as a rule they get over it in a day or two' ('How Girls Can Build Up The Empire: the handbook for Girl Guides' 1912)
Excerpts from the handbook precede each section of Landfall and it is hard to know what to make of them – other than to take on board that women are not, by any stretch, the weaker sex, just the more emotional one 'They can even…shoot tigers, if they can keep cool'. Full review...
The Forgotten Lies by Kerry Jamieson
In the mid-thirties, the golden age of Hollywood, three aspiring starlets shared a studio house on Lantana Drive as they waited to hear if they were going to have a career in the movies – or not. Charlotte (soon to be Carlie for acting purposes), Verbena, known to her friends (and only her friends) as Bee and Ivy were desperate for the role of a lifetime, which would put their name in lights. There was an added appeal. Whoever won would star opposite Liam Malone – good looking, charismatic and very married with six children. It wasn't just a case of being able to act. Their lives would be under intense scrutiny. Full review...
Watch Over Me by Daniela Sacerdoti
Eilidh Lawson thought that life was finally looking up. She'd struggled through years of failed fertility treatments despite knowing that her husband was seeing someone else. Their marriage had crumbled around their feet – but then Eilidh found that she was pregnant. Despite being only ten weeks into the pregnancy she wore a maternity smock – and that was the day she lost the baby. Months of heartbreak, depression and hospitalisation followed until one day she decided that enough was enough. She was leaving her home, her marriage and most of her possessions and she was returning to her childhood home in the Highlands of Scotland. She was never going to risk that sort of hurt again. Full review...
The Very Picture Of You by Isabel Wolff
Ella is a portrait painter, living in London, single but ok with it. She’s 35 years old – a fact wedged rather unsubtly into the first page of chapter one – and her younger sister is getting married. It could be the start of something a bit samey, or it could be the start of something a bit special. Lucky for us, it’s the second one, and the story develops in an intriguing and quite unusual direction. Full review...
Highland Storms by Christina Courtenay
The publisher, Choc Lit Limited, gives a fair idea of what kind of read this book is. Romance with a capital R. Courtenay decides to go back in time to a Scotland rather weary of battles but strong in image especially in terms of the countryside. Is the book's purple hue suggestive of the purple heather to be found all over this area of Scotland, I wonder. It all conjures up a deeply romantic setting for many, myself included. Add in the odd fairy-tale castle or two and it's even better. Full review...
Fiennders Abbey by Jean Marsh
In was the end of the nineteenth century and the family at Fiennders Abbey might lead much more leisurely lives than the staff who kept the house running as it should, but their fortunes were inextricably linked. Mary Bowden was the tweenie when we first met her – she did all the dirty jobs which were beneath those higher up the ladder – as well as being the daughter of the gamekeeper. She was also intelligent, ambitious and very attractive with her straight, milk-blonde hair. As a child she'd always been very friendly with Richard, the son of the house, but it's not a friendship which either of their mothers wishes to foster. Full review...
San Marco: The End of the Road by Margaret Henderson Smith
When we last saw Harriet Glover she had just been stood up at the altar by her long-term partner, Mark but rescued and proposed to by the man she has lusted after for quite a while – Joris Sanderson. Harriet knows something else too. She knows that she's pregnant and that the father of the child is not the man she was going to marry, but the man who has now proposed. Complicated? Of course it is. This is the woman who could make Frank Spencer look like a miracle of organisation. She's going to have to do something quite spectacular this time around. Full review...
The Generation Game by Sophie Duffy
Do you remember The Generation Game TV show, with old Brucie and then Larry Grayson managing the mayhem? Where were you when Charles and Di got married? What about when Diana died? There's plenty of reminiscing to be done in this book as Sophie Duffy takes us from the 1960's to 2006 through the life of her character, Philippa, in a book that fleets from funny, heartwarming moments to real sadness. Full review...
The Ugly Sister by Jane Fallon
Abi hasn't really had much of a relationship with her sister Cleo since Cleo was discovered on the street and morphed into a successful and well known model. It's now more than 20 years later, and the sisters are hardly what you'd call close. But, with a summer to kill and nowhere really to kill it in, Abi takes up her sister's offer to move into her plush Primrose Hill pad and spend some 'quality time' with the family. Except...Cleo's idea of quality family time is to go to the gym. Or the spa. Or a comeback casting. Anywhere really, as long as it's away from them all. And with brother in law Jon at work during the day, Abi quickly starts feeling like the hired help, shuttling her nieces around town and seeing to their every need. Full review...
The Haunting by Alan Titchmarsh
We don't know whether or not Harry Flint was a good history teacher – but we do know that he's disenchanted with the job and determined to make a change. His marriage to a lawyer only lasted a few months and Harry feels – rightly or wrongly – that he needs a complete change. He buys a ramshackle cottage, determined to spend some time restoring it as well as investigating his family history and the lives of the saints. Honestly – I know what you're thinking – he is rather more fun than all that sounds. Well, he is - some of the time. Full review...
Persuade Me by Juliet Archer
A decade before we meet Anna Elliott she had fallen in love with Rick Wentworth when they were both working in France. Her father, Sir Walter Elliott of Kellynch and Minty, a family friend persuaded her to give up the relationship and take up her place at Oxford. She now lectures about Russian literature, but it still unmarried and largely at the bidding of her father and her two elder sisters. Rick Wentworth, meanwhile, has been in Australia, but he's now returned to the UK on a tour to promote his best-selling book. It's an academic work about sea life, but the picture of a half-naked Rick on the cover and the title Sex in the Sea means that Rick – and his book- are in demand. Full review...
Night Road by Kristin Hannah
Lexi and Mia are best friends, and Mia and Zach are twins, and Lexi and Zach hardly hate each other either. They're not so much a couple of friends or brother and sister as they are a circle that goes round and round and never ends, and despite mother Jude's initial reservations, their unconventional arrangement seems to work. It's not like she's not got enough on her plate anyway. It's senior year of high school and the pressure of college applications and future plans is driving them all crazy, but when an event on the eve of graduation changes all their lives forever, there's nothing they wouldn't give to return to those stress-filled days of the before to escape the after that now torments them. Full review...
Untying the Knot by Linda Gillard
I've often wondered why it's not axiomatic that a man should stand by his woman – although perhaps it couldn't be set to music quite so easily – but Fay had failed to stand by her man. To make it worse, she was an army wife and they just don't desert – and Magnus was a hero. He'd been in bomb disposal and despite being blown up had briefed his number two about the bomb before he was taken off to hospital. He was good-looking, charismatic – and divorced. Fay knew that marrying Magnus had been a mistake – but she also admitted that the biggest mistake of all was divorcing him. Full review...
The Importance of Being Myrtle by Ulrika Jonsson
The front cover is lovely; it's good enough to frame and along with the intriguing title will help to draw readers in, I think. The blurb on the back cover suggests a cosy, domestic read. I was looking forward to it. We initially get all the sorry details leading up to Austin's untimely death. On the local bus, of all places, as he made his way to work. A kindly Italian/Australian man called Gianni sees it all happening (in fact Austin dies in his arms). We also get a lot of background info on Gianni, right at the very beginning, which I thought slowed up the story somewhat. Full review...
The Red Thread by Ann Hood
The Red Thread Adoption Agency has been successfully placing abandoned Chinese girls with loving American families, desperate for children, for many years when we join them. Named for the mythical Chinese belief that people who are destined to be together are connected by an invisible red thread, an immense amount of work goes in from both countries to make the process as smooth and straightforward as possible, and to ensure the matches are, if not magical, then at least perfect. Maya, the agency’s owner, knows all the children she has placed and spends a great deal of time with the prospective parents before they come anywhere near their potential daughters. Full review...
Monday to Friday Man by Alice Peterson
Gilly (that's with a 'G', you notice) was engaged to Ed, but a fortnight before their wedding and with the gifts piling up, he changed his mind. So Gilly was left on her own at the age of thirty four with a mortgage to pay on her house in Hammersmith and only a shop job to support herself. She really didn't know what she wanted to do with her life but as a stop-gap she decided to take in a Monday-to-Friday lodger. This would give her some income, company during the week and the house to herself at weekends. It seemed like an added bonus when the man she finally settled on was, well, rather tasty. Jack Baker seemed to have a lot going for him – and a job in reality television. Full review...
Fallen Angels by Tara Hyland
The front cover suggests romance with a capital 'R' along with the rather sugary title. The blurb on the back tells us we'll be travelling back and forth between various parts of the globe. The story opens with the Prologue: San Francisco in 1958 and there's a new-born baby girl taken to a local orphanage. It's a common occurrence sadly but this one stands out. We're told why towards the end when all the pieces of the jig-saw come together. Full review...
Stolen by Susan Lewis
'Stolen' starts over thirty years ago with a harassed young mother and her three small children travelling on the tube. The children are messing about and it's no wonder that, when it is time for them all to get off, things become difficult. This results in the eldest child, Alexandra, being left in the carriage while the mother frantically attempts to stop the train. A kindly looking man gestures that he will get off with the little girl at the next stop and will wait for the mother. That is how it is left so the reader cannot be sure exactly what has happened although I definitely had my suspicions. Full review...
What the Nanny Saw by Fiona Neill
Ali Sparrow is twenty-one and has just dropped out of university (albeit hopefully temporarily) as she needs to earn some money, so becoming a nanny to a rich family seems ideal when she sees Bryony Skinner's advert. Soon Ali finds herself central to the Skinner's vast home and life on the rather exclusive Holland Park Crescent in a house that extends way beyond the usual two floors. Full review...
Star Struck by Jane Lovering
Skye Threppel had a year of memories wiped out in a car accident which cost the lives of her best friend and fiancé. The physical scars were healing – although they were still very visible – but, eighteen months on, she struggled with meeting people and being anywhere but the cosy womb of her little terrace house in York. She used to be an actress but the accident has ruined her career and her confidence. It was a massive step when her friend Fe (that's short for Felix, by the way) persuaded her to go with him to the 'Fallen Skies' TV convention in Nevada - giving her a chance to meet Gethryn Tudor-Morgan, the actor she idolises. Full review...
Breakfast in Bed by Eleanor Moran
Amber is a chef in the throes of a sticky divorce who has quite enough on her plate (and the plates of her customers) without the terror of working for a wunderkind-slash-horrendous-dictator celebrity chef. So, because this is chick lit and the inevitable is, well, inevitable, that's just where she finds herself, landing a new job in the kitchen of Oscar Retford. Full review...
The Baby of Belleville by Anne Marsella
Jane de Rochefoucault, an expat living in Paris with her aristocratic husband, is just an ordinary mother fighting her way through the challenges of early parenthood from nursing to itsy-bitsy-spidering. However, Jane's life certainly isn't all about diaper-changing and Tupperware. Far from it. When three of her Muslim friends decide to organise a highly dangerous slave emancipation Jane is forced to rely on her family's history of law-breaking and dodgy contacts to make sure the plan succeeds. And on top of all her maternal and culinary responsibilities Jane becomes the interpreter/secretary/personal shopper for a celebrity intellectual employer which isn't all it's cracked up to be. Full review...
