Book Reviews From The Bookbag

The Bookbag

Hello from The Bookbag, a 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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	How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship by Ece Temelkuran Politics and Society, Autobiography, History A little while ago a friend asked me if I thought that we were living through what in years to come would be discussed by A level history students when faced with the question Discuss the factors which led to... I agreed that she was right and wasn't certain whether it was a good or bad thing that we didn't know what all 'this' was leading to. I think now that I do know. We are in danger of losing democracy and whilst it's a flawed system I can't think of a better one, particularly as the 'benevolent dictator' is as rare as hen's teeth. Full Review
	A Danger to Herself and Others by Alyssa Sheinmel Teens, General Fiction They needed someone to blame, and I was the only available scapegoat. Their daughter was my best friend. Playing the scapegoat was the least I could do under the circumstances. Seventeen year old Hannah Gold was born mature – or so her parents tell her. She has dined in fancy restaurants, explored the most sophisticated corners of the globe and lived a life of luxury. Full Review
	When You Read This by Mary Adkins General Fiction Smith Simonyi and Iris Massey worked together for four years, during which time Iris left her husband at the altar on their wedding day. Smith, meanwhile, relied on Iris, but his attention was on making enough money to cover his mother's nursing home fees in Wisconsin, running the branding agency in New York and losing money gambling when the pressures got too much for him. He was devastated when Iris developed a terminal cancer and died at the age of thirty three. He was surprised too when he discovered that Iris had been writing a blog in the last six months of her life and her final request of Smith is that he gets the blog published as a book. Full Review
	The Day We Met by Roxie Cooper Women's Fiction This is an epic love story spanning ten years of 'will they, won't they'. Stephanie and Jamie are 'meant to be'. When they meet on an art course they have an instant strong connection but both are with other people. However, what I loved was that it's not a 'typical boy meets girl, falls in love and lives happily ever after' story. In fact far from it, without wanting to give too much away, the ending was both refreshingly unexpected and achingly poignant. Full Review
	Good Mood Food: Unlock the Power of Diet to Think and Feel Well by Charlotte Watts and Natalie Savona Lifestyle, Cookery I thought I was getting a cookbook: I liked the idea of a series of recipes which would make me feel happy. For once this isn't a case of 'if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is' - it's a case of getting something which could change your life for the better - for good - rather than a quick fix. Full Review
	The Last by Hanna Jameson Dystopian Fiction Jon Keller is in a hotel in Switzerland in the remote countryside when the world ends. He has no idea if his family is alive, he has no idea what's going on in the nearest city, or if the nearest city has been obliterated. Shocked, amid the mass hysteria and exodus, Jon decides to stay at the hotel rather than attempt to get to the airport and home. He's not alone, twenty other people also stay and gradually form a small community. One day, when helping the hotel manager, Jon finds the body of a girl deemed to have been killed before the world ended. The community descends into a deep mistrust as Jon becomes fixated on finding this girl's killer and finding the truth about what is possibly the last community on earth. Full Review
	Deviation by Luce d'Eramo and Anne Milano Appel (translator) Literary Fiction, Autobiography, Historical Fiction For those of you who have read books of life in the Nazi camps – and of course, for those of you who have not – this can be considered a next step. It begins, after all, with someone escaping Dachau and fleeing her work assignment during a bombing raid, and you'd not blame her one minute, as her career was deemed to be cess-tank cleaner and sewage unblocker by the Germans. In Munich, she stumbles on help to get her to what seems to be a camp for non-native civilians to look for work, or company, or transport elsewhere, either official or otherwise. But then the next chapter sees her going back into the camp next to Dachau once more, and by then eyebrows are being raised. Full Review
	Fast-track the I.T Journey - How to move from Supplier to Partner by Alok Ranjan Tripathy Business and Finance So, what brought me to this book? As the owner of a small business and a buyer of IT services I should be the senior partner in the relationship with my suppliers, but I've frequently found myself the junior partner and I've regularly been let down by them. I needed to know where I could improve that relationship and, by looking at the situation from the supplier's point of view, what steps I needed to take. Alok Tripathy's book looked as though it might provide help and possibly some of the answers as to how my suppliers could better help me. Full Review
	A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer Teens Harper's life is pretty disastrous at the moment, through no fault of her own. Her mother has cancer and not long to live. Her father has scarpered but not taken his debts with him. And her brother is forever getting into trouble. But Harper soldiers on nonetheless, despite coping with her own cerebral palsy. One day, she sees an attempted abduction of young girl and intercedes, only to find herself kidnapped in the girl's place. But even an imaginative girl like Harper couldn't have guessed where she was being taken... Full Review
	Loved to Bits by Teresa Heapy and Katie Cleminson For Sharing Loved to Bits is the heartwarming story of a boy's love for his bear. Bear's adventures with boy take him to all kinds of places and together they fight and defeat every obstacle put in their way, from the jungle to the sea. Inevitably mishaps occur on the way . The loss of an arm, a leg, an ear or an eye are nothing to Stripy Ted who shrugs off all injuries with a cheery don't worry, I've got one more. But boy loves him just as he is and won't hear of him being mended. His place, after all, is in Boy's bed. Full Review
	Louis and Louise by Julie Cohen General Fiction What would you be like, right now, if you'd been born a different gender? Would it simply be a matter of genetics, and your life would still have unfolded in the same way? Or would the way you had been raised affect who you became in life? This latest novel by Julie Cohen looks at all of the above, covering the stories of Louis and Louise, born on the same day, to the same parents, but in one storyline Lou is a boy, and in the other a girl. Does it really make a difference, the gender box that is ticked when we arrive in this world? We all know that men and women are treated differently, but this story really highlights how things have been in the past, how they still are, and prompts you to think about how they could be... Full Review
	The Closest Thing to Flying by Gill Lewis Confident Readers Semira is an Eritraen refugee, living in the UK with her mum and Robel, a man who controls their money, their food, and their every move in the UK. He threatens them that if they don't do what he says, they'll be sent home. One day, Semira finds herself buying an old hat on a market stall, strangely drawn to the bird that decorates the hat. When she takes it home she discovers there is an old diary hidden inside the hat box, written by a young girl called Hen over 100 years ago. Semira finds herself caught up in Hen's story, finding in it an escape from her own life that is full of hunger and loss. She finds that she is challenged by the girl in the diary, to speak up in her own life and fight for her place in the world. Full Review
	The Stone Circle (Dr Ruth Galloway) by Elly Griffiths Crime DCI Harry Nelson's life is complicated. His two oldest daughters are either living away from home or really should be. His youngest daughter was conceived in a (very) brief affair (let's not call it a one-night stand: there's more emotion in their relationship) with archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway. Michelle, Nelson's wife, knows about Kate and has been very understanding, but then there's the matter of her affair with a black policeman which she'd rather not have to discuss with her daughters. Nelson knows about it and knows that the baby which Michelle is about to deliver, could be Tim's. That's a lot to cope with - and that's before he gets to work. Full Review
	The Wedding Guest by Jonathan Kellerman Crime It was a bridesmaid who found the victim's body in a rather disreputable toilet at the wedding venue. She didn't know who she was and neither did the bride or groom. The bride wasn't particularly worried about the dead girl, but she was furious that someone had set out to disrupt her wedding. Baby (yes, that was what people called Brearley) didn't come across as being particularly likeable, despite the fact that she said that everyone liked her, and her groom, Garrett didn't inspire confidence either. Lt Milo Sturgis was the senior investigating officer and he called on the help of his friend, psychologist Dr Alex Delaware. Full Review
	The Great Wide Open by Douglas Kennedy Literary Fiction Douglas Kennedy's The Great Wide Open has been described as epic by just about everyone, and it often feels as though that was the intention. Though the novel often feels like a pastiche of the great American novel – epic in scope, preoccupied with matters of money and literature, fixated with New York – it often feels more like Kennedy is trying to reverse-engineer the concept altogether. Initially, the novel presents itself as an intimate study of family drama, in the latter half of the novel it smoothly turns to examining the turn of American society since the 70s, and the rapid rise of the hyper-capitalist neoliberal values that have dominated the west since the election of Ronald Reagan. Though it takes place over a twenty-year period between the 70s and the 90s, it notably always keeps one an eye on the present day (Trump, of course, makes an inevitable and slightly incongruous cameo) such that what happens links subtly into current affairs without ever explicitly referencing them. Full Review
	It Should Have Been Me by Susan Wilkins Thrillers, Crime It's seventeen years since DC Jo Boden's sister, Sarah, was murdered and her life since has been lived in the shadow of what happened. Jo was only eleven at the time and her parents' marriage broke up in the aftermath: her brother Carl opted to go and live with his father but Jo stayed with her mother who was mentally frail and not coping with everyday life. She wasn't pleased when Jo decided to join the police, but the job satisfies Jo. She's passed her sergeant's exams but in the Met these days it's a case of dead men's shoes and no one seems inclined to make way for the younger generation. Still, being a detective is better than being a PC and when the opportunity to go undercover comes up, Jo grabs it. Full Review
	The Resurrection of Jesus by Yancey Williams Literary Fiction In March 1990 two police officers entered Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. They left with thirteen famous paintings by Rembrandt, Degas and Vermeer. The frames remain empty to this day: whilst there might have been rumours about the whereabouts of the paintings, even promises that the case was about to be solved, the paintings are still missing. Yancey Williams has a theory, which he delaborates on in his novel The Resurrection of Jesus, and whilst his suspects might seem unlikely, who's to say that he's wrong? Forget the assertions that it was down to the Mafia and meet Jésus Ángel Escobar and Hiram Johnny Walker Quicksilver. Full Review
	Cold Bones (DS McAvoy 8) by David Mark Crime It all began almost innocently: DS Aector McAvoy was told by a concerned stranger that she and her son had regularly seen an old woman who lived in a nearby cottage but she hadn't been for a few days. Perhaps McAvoy could check that she was alright? No - she wouldn't go with him, but she'd tell him where the house was. And so McAvoy went, only to find the windows open on a freezing cold day - and inside an old lady was in her bath encased in ice. It might have been a tragic accident, but McAvoy suspected murder - and he thought that someone had watched the woman die. Full Review
	To Catch a Killer by Emma Kavanagh Crime, Thrillers If you're a detective on a murder squad one of the first things you learn is detachment. You develop a distance from the victim: it allows you do do your job with the minimum amount of emotion. That's relatively easy when you encounter your victim when they're already dead but DS Alice Parr met the woman they would need to call Jane Doe when she was alive, albeit only just. She was being tended by an off-duty paramedic who was struggling to cope with the fact that the woman's throat had been cut and she'd been stabbed several times. The attack had been called in by a dog walker and Alice had been walking to work when the call came over her Airwave radio. Full Review
	Fierce Fragile Hearts by Sara Barnard Teens It's two years since Suzanne hit rock bottom. She's had extensive therapy and a stint with a lovely foster family. And now she's eighteen and must leave the Looked After system. Suzanne is apprehensive but excited. She's found herself a job, a bedsit has been rented, and she's about to return to Brighton, the only place she's ever felt truly at home, and to Caddy and Rosie, her two best friends. Full Review