Difference between revisions of "Book Reviews From The Bookbag"

In the early seventies Brian Thompson met Elizabeth North, both of them part of failing marriages which would have died without any intervention on their parts. They became friends, they fell in love but they never felt the need to marry and would be together until Liz's death in 2010 at the age of seventy eight. Both are authors - Thompson would maintain that North was the better writer - and North would perhaps have said that she should have made that clear. A Corner of Paradise tells the story - not of the homes they lived in - but of the joy of their relationship. Full review...

Grace: Her Lives - Her Loves: The startling royal exposé by Robert Lacey

Twenty-five years before another so-called fairytale royal romance which turned out to be anything but, one of America’s most beloved screen goddesses crossed the Atlantic and married into the principality of Monaco. The ceremony in 1956 was hailed as the wedding of the year, but like the later and similar event, it was not the happiest of unions. Full review...

The Spring of Kasper Meier by Ben Fergusson

Thrillers

Germany may be defeated as the embers of World War II grow cold but Kasper Meier is making the most of it. His trade in black market goods and casual private investigation work augment the meagre rations for him and his dying father. When a woman asks him to find a missing British airman he refuses – it's not really his line. She blackmails Kasper and still he refuses but then the note arrives: This is bigger than you. You don't have a choice. Queers still die in Berlin. Find the pilot. It seems that he's been seen with another man and now he has a decision to make that will either cost or save his life. Full review...

Decay: 2 (Tesla) by Mark Lingane

The city has been rebuilt for war. The waves of cyborg attacks are just the beginning – what follows is more devastating. Not only that but also the flood of refugees surging in daily is as much of a problem as a resource. Actually in one or two cases the word 'problem' is a bit of an understatement. In the middle of this hell Seb and Melanie are doing their best to fight and survive, although survival doesn't look like an option once they realise they have to go into the enemy's hive and bring the battle to the cyborgs. Full review...

Don't Even Think About It by Sarah Mlynowski

Something weird happens after 10B get their flu shots - they develop telepathy. There are good points - they know what other people think of them, they can cheat on tests, and they have the upper hand in conversations with others. But there are some drawbacks as well - not only do they no longer have any secrets from each other, but also, knowing what other people think of them can be a two-edged sword! High school is hard enough to survive when you're normal - will being an Espie make it even more difficult? Full review...

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

General Fiction

Ove (pronounced 'Oo-veh') is a man of principle who tries to do the right thing, ensure the no parking area remains so, is a good Swedish citizen and tries to be civil to his neighbours (even the foreign ones). However he comes over as a total grump. He was even ousted from his position as Chairman of the Residents Association by a vicious coup. Indeed, he's the sort of person who, when life gives him lemons, finds that they're rotting in the middle. There's so much more to his story than that though; a story that started a long time ago. Full review...

Since You've Been Gone by Morgan Matson

Sloane and Emily are best friends. Until Sloane disappears. She and her parents have vanished. There’s been no phone call, text, or e-mail. Then, two weeks later, Emily gets a list in the mail from Sloane, giving her tasks to do. If she does them all, can she find her way back to Sloane? Full review...

Dragon Shield by Charlie Fletcher

"Dragons don't exist,"whispered Jo. But even those three short words sounded more like a wish than a statement of fact.

Something dark and sinister is going on at the British Museum. An ancient power has awoken and it has stopped time. People are frozen like statues. Only Will and his sister Jo are still moving. The only humans still moving, that is. The dragons are moving. They're spitting real fire, too. And they're attacking Will and Jo. A glorious golden girl comes to their rescue, followed by an angel and a muse. And Will and Joe are plunged into a world where statues are alive and where good battles evil. Why are they still moving? Who is behind the stopping of time? And will they ever get Mum back? Full review...

Milly and the Mermaids by Maudie Smith and Antonia Woodward

Mermaids are a great way to stretch young imaginations. Imagine living in an underwater world, swimming with the fishes in a pleasant way (rather than in a Mafioso way). This is exactly the type of excitement that Milly longs for in ‘Milly and the Mermaids’ by Maudie Smith and Antonia Woodward. When her parents take her on a trip to the seaside, all she can think of is finding a Mermaid, but do they really exist? Full review...

Landline by Rainbow Rowell

General Fiction

Georgie McCool has always known what she's wanted and pursued it until she has it. She got her dream job writing comedy, she's about to get her own show, and she got her dream guy, Neal.

Only, she's not so sure she has him anymore. Full review...

The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy) by Marie Rutkoski

Kestrel has two alternative futures ahead of her. As the daughter of a general of a vast, expansionist empire, she can make a politically advantageous marriage or she can enlist in the military. Kestrel doesn't want either and her life is spent in a delicate game of manoeuvres with her father as she tries to put off the decision. Full review...

Boy In The Tower by Polly Ho-Yen

Wonderful, wonderful story about a lonely boy, his agoraphobic mother and building-eating plants. That could never work, right? Wrong! It's a must read and you won't ever have read anything quite like it before. Full review...

Secrets of the Tombs: The Phoenix Code by Helen Moss

Egypt – a land of mystery and beauty, where history surrounds you and death is always present. There are treasures to uncover, riddles to solve and a colourful and exotic world to explore. A perfect setting for this, the first in a new series of thrillers which combines intriguing landscapes, archaeology and adventure. Much of the architecture and scenery in this book really exists and can be visited, including some of the tombs and museums, and many readers will feel inspired to seek further information about this most exciting and dramatic of locations. Full review...

The Professionals by Owen Laukkanen

Crime

The professional criminal is the type of person who gets in, does the job and then gets out again. Sounds like the perfect way to stay undetected as a lifelong miscreant, but does not sound like the most exciting narrative for a story. Instead, take a bunch of young kidnappers who are drunk on their own success, whose racket goes wrong one day when they pick up the wrong mark. Watching their lives spiral out of control would be a much more thrilling read. A read just like The Professionals. Full review...

Borgon the Axeboy and the Dangerous Breakfast by Kjartan Poskitt and Philip Reeve

A real Barbarian breakfast has to have two elements – fun, and danger. So when Borgon wakes up wanting to prove himself to be the last of the really crazy and brave savages in Golgarth Basin, it's not enough to just give his parents a batch of crocodile tails – especially when his mum Fulma can't eat them as it's her teeth-sharpening day. So off he goes in search of a ridiculously dangerous breakfast, such as a Barbarian might only eat once or twice. The mysterious food source certainly provides a lot of danger, and the book itself provides a lot of fun too. Full review...

My Teacher is a Monster! (No, I Am Not.) by Peter Brown

School can be a difficult place for children, especially if your teacher is a stomping, roaring monster like Miss Kirby. Bobby spends most of his time worrying about what to do about his monster of a teacher, and the best place for him to think about it is in the park. He goes there one day to contemplate the situation, but who does he meet? Miss Kirby! She isn't stomping or roaring though, she is feeding the ducks. Full review...

Wendy Quill is Full Up of Wrong by Wendy Meddour and Mina May

Meet Wendy Quill. She's a big-hearted and big-haired primary schoolgirl, and not everything goes right in her world. When she is allowed to use her brand-new, second-hand bike to go to the shops for the first time on her own, she slightly squishes an old lady, and has to worry about the police presence at school the following day. She feels anxious when she's compromised herself with flapjacks and not being in the right gang at school. The only good bits of her life are the best friend she has, how loyal her invisible dog is, and the fact that when she wants to read her older sister's diary a ghost gets it down from a too-high shelf for her. No, honestly it does. Hey, I've read this book and I know what happens if you lie – so it has to be the truth. Full review...

OMG! I'm in Love with a Geek! by Rae Earl

Hattie Moore is determined that this year she’ll find true love - could it be with Goose, the boy next door who she's starting to think of as more than just a geek, or will he only ever see her as a friend? If she finds another boy, will he get jealous? And now she's found her real dad, will she get to know him properly? Full review...

One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rainforest by Wade Davis

Travel

As someone who has always enjoyed learning about the Amazon, and with plans to travel to South America next year, this book practically screamed at me to be reviewed. And, although a little tough going and long-winded in parts, I'm glad I had the opportunity to get lost in Davis' incredible work of non-fiction. Difficult to describe in terms of genre, this book combines history, politics, science, botany and culture. It is delivered through a biographical account of Davis' own travels and as a memoir to Richard Evans Schultes, an ethnobotanist well known for his work and travels in the Amazon and Wade Davis' highly regarded mentor. Full review...

The Mill Girls by Tracy Johnson

History

The Mill Girls is a collection of true stories based on interviews with women who worked at Lancashire's cotton mills during the war years. Leaving school at the tender age of 14, the girls were thrown headlong into the world of work, at a time when jobs were plentiful and the benefits culture we know today was non-existent. The choice was a simple one: work or starve. Conditions were harsh, the mills noisy, dangerous and dirty and pay was low. Despite this, many of the women look back at their time 'in mill' with warm fondness and nostalgia. Full review...

Fiddlesticks! by Sean Taylor and Sally Anne Garland

This is the story of a Mouse with very helpful friends, maybe even a little too helpful! Each time they fix something in his new, almost perfect house, they break something else. Things escalate until there is almost nothing left of the house at all and poor Mouse is despairing. What will he do to make things better and, more to the point, where will he live?! His friends soon come to the rescue and manage to make amends. Full review...

Stalemate by Alan Hamilton

Crime (Historical)

In the summer of 1930 Walter Bruce was told that he had an incurable illness. With nursing care and an easier job he might have a few more years to live - but without them he had a matter of months. The solution would seem straightforward but Bruce had a wife - and she demanded to be kept and was far too selfish to be his nurse. Life might have continued much as it was, but Bruce discovered that his wife had been deceiving him about her age and background - and with two of his business colleagues. The solution was obvious: he would devise the perfect murder and then live out his final years in comfort. Bruce was a chess player and he approached the problem much as he would a game of chess - but even the best plans rarely survive contact with reality. Full review...

Marshmallows for Martians by Lee Wildish, Adam Guillain and Charlotte Guillain

What kid doesn't like sweets or aliens? This book combines the two as George packs up and leaves his house on a mission to Mars to find out what sweets aliens love best. He builds a spaceship and takes off, meeting some very surprising aliens along the way. From the first page, I knew I would enjoy this story and I wasn't disappointed at all. I laughed throughout and looked forward to turning each page to find out what happened next. Full review...

Angela Merkel: The Chancellor and Her World by Stefan Kornelius

You have to admire the lady, this rather awkward and shy daughter of a staunch Lutheran pastor who himself had been born as a Polish Catholic. His daughter studied with such intelligence and application that soon brought her academic success particularly in Russian and finally in Quantum Chemistry. At the age of 26, she obtained her doctorate and - in passing, it rather seems - her first husband, the physicist Ulrike Merkel. Her rise to power was rapid and took place through the period in which the DDR collapsed as Russian policy under Gorbachev changed. Along with a wry and dry sense of humour Angela Merkel’s personality is the embodiment of the characteristic known in German as fleissig - hardworking, sedulous, diligent and assiduous. Full review...

Blazing Star: The Life and Times of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester by Alexander Larman

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, was the ultimate 'live fast, die young' icon of the Stuart age, the seventeenth-century embodiment of 'Hope I die before I get old'. Restoration dandy, satirist and pornographic poet, he died a lingering death at the age of 33, racked by venereal disease and alcoholism. If he is remembered at all these days, except by those familiar with the history or literature of the age, it is as the James Dean or the Keith Moon of his day, a hellraiser whose poetry was heavily suppressed for many years by the censors. In fact much of his verse was not published under his name until long after his death, and as most of it was only circulated in manuscript form during his lifetime and a good deal destroyed by his mother after his death, it is uncertain how much does still survive. Full review...

The Care and Management of Lies by Jacqueline Winspear

Historical Fiction

The long hot July of 1914 is a good one for friends Kezia and Thea. Kezia marries Thea's brother, Tom, bringing them even closer as life-long friends. Kezia then learns how to be a farmer's wife, translating her love into imaginative meals – sometimes overly so. Out of the two friends, Thea is the passionate one, fighting for women's universal suffrage and, as war approaches, pacifism. However, when war starts, Thea goes to the front as well as Tom, leaving Kezia at home to be more than the farmer's wife; necessity dictates she's now the farmer. Full review...

Shadow of the Wolf by Tim Hall

Fantasy

The child Robin Loxley is mysteriously separated from his father during what had been a routine foray into the forest. In grief and bewilderment Robin becomes a loner, choosing to raise himself. He's more than happy with the solitary lifestyle until he meets Marian Delbosque, spoilt daughter of local gentry. Their friendship is cemented as they play together but their future won't all be childish games. They have a quest and Robin, as a winter-born, has a destiny that he can't begin to guess. The clue is in the mysterious words he heard whispered in the forest after his father's disappearance: Not yet. Too soon. He must suffer the wounds. Full review...

Star for a Day by Jean Ure

Dyslexia Friendly

Lucy French (Luce to her grandad) is thirteen and she lives with said Grandad, Mum - and eleven-year-old Lola. Lola's the one who gets all the attention, is able to loosen Mum's purse strings with a pout of her lip and who was upset when she only got Highly Commended in last year's Talent Show. This year she will, of course, require a completely new outfit and the undivided attention of the family - and that not long after she's had a new outfit to go to a party. Lola is gorgeous, bubbly and brims over with confidence.

Lucy isn't - and doesn't. Full review...

Revenge by Yoko Ogawa and Stephen Snyder (translator)

Short Stories

A woman waits for a long time at a village bakery, her mind only on the strawberry shortcakes she wants to buy, and the strange reasons that make the purchase so important to her. A boy is invited by a girl at school to a posh French restaurant – with strawberry shortcakes on the menu – in order for him to provide moral support as she meets her estranged father for the first time. Nearby, a woman enjoys an unusual relationship with her elderly landlady, who keeps finding unusually-shaped carrots in her vegetable garden. A man reflects on an unusual relationship with a writer who for a couple of years at least was a step-mum to him, even as she went dotty in talking to herself. Unusual relationships, vegetables, motives – and strawberry shortcakes – are prevalent in this fascinating look at a sunlit yet dark world, which makes for a superlatively clever read. Full review...

Eye Spy by Tessa Buckley