Book Reviews From The Bookbag
The Bookbag
Hello from The Bookbag, a book review site, featuring books from all the many walks of literary life - fiction, biography, crime, cookery and anything else that takes our fancy. At Bookbag Towers the bookbag sits at the side of the desk. It's the bag we take to the library and the bookshop. Sometimes it holds the latest releases, but at other times there'll be old favourites, books for the children, books for the home. They're sometimes our own books or books from the local library. They're often books sent to us by publishers and we promise to tell you exactly what we think about them. You might not want to read through a full review, so we'll give you a quick review which summarises what we felt about the book and tells you whether or not we think you should buy or borrow it. There are also lots of author interviews, and all sorts of top tens - all of which you can find on our features page. If you're stuck for something to read, check out the recommendations page.
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Book of Lies by Teri Terry
As teenage fiction Book of Lies has all the usual themes -- confused sense of identity, relationship troubles, difficult family backgrounds... But it also has another element: the supernatural. The story starts when identical twin girls (the charmingly named Piper and Quinn) are reunited as teenagers, having been separated at birth. We follow their journey as they discover each other and reveal the complexities of their shared family, their terrifying dreams and sinister non-human abilities. As with all good supernatural stories, there are hints of witchcraft, hounds of death and family curses. Full review...
The Girl on the Liar's Throne by Den Patrick
Lucien doesn’t want to declare war on Landfall and its Silent Queen, Anea, whom he grew up with as an Orfano. She runs a dictatorship of militant suppression and suffering which is rather unlike her. Unbeknown to Lucien, the throne of Landfall is occupied by Eris, an imposter and puppet used by those with far fewer scruples. Anea herself is imprisoned in the palace oubliette surrounded by Myrmidon, a half-human army created by Erebus. There's little chance of her escaping or getting very far if she did. However, for Anea 'little chance' is a challenge, not a preventative. Full review...
Quick Quack Quentin by Kes Gray and Jim Field
Quentin is a very downhearted duck because his quack is too quick. In fact all he can manage is a Quck. This will never do, so Quentin visits his local doctor to see if there is anything he can give him to make things better. Sadly, although the Doctor is swiftly able to diagnose Quentin's problem, he cannot provide what he needs. Quentin really needs an A so waddles off on search of one. On his journey he visits a succession of animals who, whilst being sympathetic to his plight and helpful in their own way, only manage to subtly change his problem rather than solve it. Therefore, poor Quentin's quest for the missing vowel continues. Full review...
Thanks for the Trouble by Tommy Wallach
Parker hasn't spoken a single, solitary word for the last five years. He hasn't started applying for college yet, either. Not that he'd likely get in: his grades are rubbish and he spends as much time skipping school as he does attending class. He has also developed a petty theft habit, which he indulges in well-heeled hotels. Oh dear, I hear you saying. It's not as though there aren't reasons for Parker's behaviour, there are, but reasons don't help much. Full review...
The Aliens are Coming by Ben Miller
Next time that you are away from the towns and cities, wait until it gets dark and then look into the night sky. If you are lucky enough for it not to be raining, you will likely see hundreds of stars in the sky. Each one of these could be a Sun just like our own and each of these Suns could have planets orbiting it. Now times this number a million fold and you can start to fathom the number of stars and planets out there – surely the human race is not a complete fluke and there are aliens out there? Full review...
13 Minutes by Sarah Pinborough
If you think about it, you can count several things in 13s. It probably took me 13 months to find a book more emotionally satisfying than this author's previous release, The Death House. It probably took me 13 seconds to accept by email the chance to read this title. You can almost hear Andy Warhol changing his adage to '13 minutes of fame', considering that the Internet he would never have known about just makes fame even faster to achieve than ever, and one of those social media starlets – as far as the hive of Brackston Community School is concerned – Natasha Howland, was clinically dead for 13 minutes, before she was fished out of a frozen river one pre-dawn January morning. This utterly dramatic teen read is concerned with the fight for her to work out why she was in that river, although it's mostly taken from the point of view of a girl on the edge of her circle, Becca. Full review...
We Are Not FROGS! by Michael Morpurgo and Sam Usher
After the storm the frogs and the toads all came out onto the lawn to play long jump. This was the frogs' choice as they could jump further and the toads just wanted an easy life. But - through a series of unfortunate incidents involving lorries, dogs, children, a cart and an ice cream container, first the toads ended up in the ice cream container and after they sold the frogs down the river in exchange for being put into a muddy ditch, the frogs - all twenty two of them - were in the same prison and it was only thanks to Mutt the dog that they escaped. Full review...
Man of Good Hope by Jonny Steinberg
A Man of Good Hope is the remarkable biography of Asad Abdullahi. It tells the story of a Somalian boy abandoned at eight years of age and his journey to adulthood. It is also a testament to the human spirit and its capacity to survive. Epic in its scope it covers a journey that stretches the length of the continent of Africa. In a time when the mass migration of people has never been, more in focus it tells the story of what it really means to be a refugee by someone who has experienced it all his life. Full review...
Ray Davies: A Complicated Life by Johnny Rogan
Most of Britain's most popular and successful songwriters of the last 150 years, from Gilbert and Sullivan and Lennon and McCartney, to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice and Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb, have been partnerships. The only solo writer in the same league is Ray Davies, front man of The Kinks from their formation in 1963 to their final performance in 1994. While this mighty tome is partly an account of the group's tortuous thirty-year history, it is also first and foremost, as the title says, a biography of Davies himself. Through interviews with the Davies brothers, Ray and his younger brother Dave, the group's guitarist and only other constant member of the line-up, other group members, managers, friends and associates, Rogan has given us as complete a book of the man as we are ever likely to get. Full review...
Beloved Poison by E S Thomson
St Savior's is a crumbling infirmary – its walls stuffed with ambition, jealousy and hatred. Six tiny coffins, each containing dried flowers and mouldering rags, are uncovered inside the decaying chapel. A silent outsider, with secrets of her own to hide, is determined to discover the truth. And in a trail that leads from the bloody worlds of dissecting table and operating theatre, through to the squalor of Newgate Prison and its gallows, Jem Flockhart faces a ruthless adversary. As the destruction of St Savior's looms, the dead are unearthed, the living are forced into impossible decisions – and murder is the price for secrets to be kept… Full review...
Boundless: Adventures in the Northwest Passage by Kathleen Winter
Luck has a lot to do with this world. It was probably luck that let Kathleen Winter fill the post of unofficial writer-in-residence on a ship coursing through the Northwest Passage. It was doubtless luck that someone had told her to be ready and packed to accept any invite life might give you, only days beforehand. Some fortune meant she had grown up in Newfoundland, and so knew the weather, conditions and liminal locations and wildlife she might encounter. It's bad luck that between when she travelled, in 2010, and filled her pages with talk of Sir John Franklin's lost boats and lost bones, and 2016, when I read this paperback version of the results, his prime ship has been found (if not what people allege will be revealed). It's vitally fortuitous, however, that someone with her writing nous was able to travel the waters before something else, much more permanent, changed – the heinous climate change problems that are certainly upsetting the world up there. Full review...
Lilith: Eden's Planetary Princess (The Michael Archives Book 1) by C E Robinson
35,000 years ago a war in heaven bleeds onto the planet Eden. King Joshua's angels are being harvested, their essence drained off and their remaining bodies no good for anything apart from a euthanasia; a fate from which they can't be reincarnated. From this good essence is created evil Nephilim, creatures at the bidding of Satan's Overlords. Out of this battle between good and evil a planetary princess arises and this first book in the Michael Archives records her journey: the journey of Lilith from ordinary to extraordinary. Full review...
Afterlight by Rebecca Lim
A freak motorbike accident that claims the life of your parents is really all it takes to make your world fall apart. You might hope that a new beginning in a different high school is going to jumpstart your life; that a chance to reinvent yourself as just Sophie Teague, rather than Sophie-The-One-Whose-Parents-Died might just be all you need to get by. But before Sophie gets the chance to find out, she is visited by Eve. Eve isn’t like other girls. She is beautiful and mesmerizing and Eve needs Sophie to be her go-to girl. Because Eve can’t do much for herself since she died. Eve is a ghost and dealing with the dead who have unfinished business could be the biggest challenge of Sophie’s life. Full review...
Beep Beep Beep Time for Sleep by Claire Freedman and Richard Smythe
Bedtime books are a great way of winding a toddler down before they go to sleep, but haven't they all been done before? Coming up with something a little different that encourages a child to nod off is not always easy and new ideas can be a little bizarre when you think about it. Do bulldozers really need to doze off at the end of the night? At least we will have fun listening to all the machinery as it goes off to bed. Full review...
Wilfred the (Un)Wise by Cas Lester
Back in Ye Olden Days young Wilfred lands himself a dream apprenticeship training – learning how to be a wizard under the instruction of Wincewart the Withering, Castle Mage and Soothsayer of Wallop in the Wold. But learning magik isn't easy and things can go drastically and hilariously wrong – like accidentally transporting himself one thousand years into the future, where he meets a girl called Bel who loves doing magic tricks herself. Full review...
One Life: My Mother's Story by Kate Grenville
This memoir could so easily have become a sentimental tribute to Grenville's mother. But somehow, the author has managed to make it so much more than that. Full review...
Fox by Anthony Gardner
Ok. When reviewing a thriller, you have a dilemma. Because the plot is the point, you see. You don't want to give too much away because it's not just the denouement that's a spoiler; it's the whole thing. But you do have to give potential readers a decent idea of what they'll be getting. So here is my stab at interesting you while still keeping you guessing about Fox. Full review...
The Little Book of Woodland Bird Songs by Andrea Pinnington and Caz Buckingham
Take a well-put-together board book (don't worry about it being a board book - no one is going to say that they’re a bit too old for a board book once they see it), add exquisite pictures of a dozen birds - one on each double-page spread - and then fill in the details. You'll need the name of the bird in English and Latin and a description of the bird in words which a child can understand but which won't patronise an adult. Then you'll need details of where the bird is found, what it eats, where it nests, how many eggs it lays, how the male and female adults differ and their size. Then you need a 'Did you know?' fact and this needs to be something which will interest children, but which adults might not know either. Does it sound simple? Well it isn't, but 'The Little Book of Woodland Bird Songs' does it perfectly. And there's a bonus, but I'll tell you about that in a moment. Full review...
Alice Jones: The Impossible Clue by Sarah Rubin
She's a bit of a loner, and she'd definitely prefer to work on proving an obscure theorem or two than spend time with the rest of her class. Still, the fact remains that Alice is rocket-science brainy, she's as determined as a hungry chimp in a banana shop, and she has the dry droll wit of the old fedora-wearing gumshoes of yesteryear. Look out bad guys, there's a new detective in town, and she won't give up till you're sporting a shiny pair of regulation handcuffs. Full review...
Those Girls by Chevy Stevens
Those girls don't have it easy. Jess, Courtney and Dani are grafters. Teen girls with a mum who is gone and a father who is barely there, they have a lot to contend with. They're hard workers but life is not glam, out of the farm where things are dusty, dirty and, at times, dangerous. Full review...
Winnie-the-Pooh by A A Milne and E H Shepard
Is there anyone who doesn't know about Winnie-the-Pooh? You might know him as Pooh Bear and even if you haven't read the stories you'll know about playing Pooh Sticks or The Bear of Very Little Brain. This first book about the bear, originally published in 1926, has been translated into numerous language, including Latin - and that edition featured on the New York Times bestseller list. It's difficult to believe that Pooh will be ninety in October 2016, not least because he's ageless and the books which feature him are not in the least dated. Full review...
Blue and Bertie by Kristyna Litten
Bertie is a creature of habit. Every day is predictable but Bertie likes the certainty of the routine. I know how he feels. One day, though, something happens. He oversleeps and when he wakes up the others are gone and he is all alone. Although he still ventures out, he gets a little lost and is soon quite upset. Enter Blue who is just like him but oh so different too. Full review...
In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
Nora Shaw hasn't seen her friend Clare since Nora left school ten years ago and didn't look back. Now working as a crime writer and living in London, she is naturally surprised when she receives an invitation to Clare's hen party – a weekend in a woodland cottage in the Northumberland country. Curious as to why Clare would invite her after all these years Nora reluctantly agrees to come, but as the weekend unfolds something goes very wrong and old secrets are slowly revealed. Full review...
Mungo Monkey to the Rescue by Lydia Monks
Fans of lift the flap books may have come across Mongo Monkey before as he has a series of adventures that always seem to entail lifting up some things and flapping others. The interaction in the books is very enjoyable, but sometimes it feels like you are just following a monkey and his family around on a normal day. Couldn't creator Lydia Monks combine this touch and feel element with a story that actually goes somewhere? Perhaps Mungo's day out with his Dad will be key. Full review...
I Love You Already by Jory John and Benji Davies
You may have met Bear and Duck before; one is a recluse who just wants to go to sleep, whilst the other is full of energy and just wants to play. The friction between the two may have been resolved by the end of Goodnight Already by Jory John and Benji Davies, but that does not stop Duck from wondering if Bear really likes him or not. Do our best friends really have to tell us they love us, or should we just assume by their actions that they do? Full review...
Death Wears a Beauty Mask by Mary Higgins Clark
In 1972, Mary Higgins Clark began writing a novella entitled Death Wears a Beauty Mask. She struggled with the story and put it aside, where it lay forgotton for several decades. When the author rediscovered the manuscript amongst some old files, she decided that she liked it and was ready to complete the long-awaited ending. Death Wears a Beauty Mask joins some of her other works, both old and new, in an entertaining collection of short stories full of mystery and suspense. Full review...
Beautiful Broken Things by Sara Barnard
Caddy and Rosie have been best friends for years and even going to different schools hasn't parted them. And this is the summer that Rosie intends to be different. She'll get a boyfriend, finally. Perhaps even lose her virginity. And experience a Significant Life Event. But the best laid plans and all that... Full review...
Behind Closed Doors by B A Paris
On the face of it they look like the perfect couple. Jack is handsome and a dedicated lawyer. He's never lost a case in his work with battered women. He looks like a loving husband too. His wife, Grace, is elegant and a brilliant housewife. Her sister Millie has Down's Syndrome but Grace is her guardian and they're close. She and Jack go to see Millie at her school most weekends and she'll soon be coming to live with them when she's eighteen. You might wonder why Grace is very careful about what she says in front of Jack and why you can never get her on her own and you're probably a little bit curious as to why Grace is never available for social events during the day when she doesn't work, but there's a very simple answer. Grace is a prisoner. Full review...
Hamish and the Neverpeople by Danny Wallace
Ok. You may know this already but Hamish recently saved the world. And now he is about to meet the Prime Minister, who wants to say thank you. Very much. But things don't quite go to plan. The Prime Minister appears to have gone quite mad. Something about pants. And one by one, people start following him. Before he knows it, Hamish is pulled right into the thick of a second threat to humanity, this time involving the Neverpeople. The same Neverpeople he's been told his father was helping during his personal battle against evil. Full review...
