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.
There are currently 16,117 reviews at TheBookbag.
Want to find out more about us?
New Reviews
Read new reviews by genre.
Read the latest features.
The Forever Watch by David Ramirez
Great science fiction is made up of many parts, but three things are vital for it to become a classic; world building, story and character. If one of these three elements is slightly below the others, a great novel can be punished. In ‘The Forever Watch’ by Daniel Ramirez we have a fantastic world in the form of the spaceship Noah, a great character in the form of Hana, but does the story quite match up to the rest? Full review...
Riot by Sarah Mussi
It is 2018 and Britain is still in recession. Years of austerity have devastated the country. Banks are going under. Unemployment is rising. The cost of welfare is soaring. Prisons are overflowing. And the population is still rising. Something has to give. The solution? Forced sterilisation of all school-leavers without a secured place in higher education or a guarantee of employment. The programme has started with prisoners but the legislation to roll it out across the population is about to go through parliament. Unsurprisingly, there is a growing popular protest against it. Full review...
Charlie Merrick's Misfits in Fouls, Friends, and Football by Dave Cousins
The world, we are told, loves a trier, and Charlie Merrick is one of the world's biggest. His only hobby and only skill is in football, but his intent is never matched by his actual talent – a statement that stretches to most of his team-mates. With several under-12s league games under their belt and with no points to their name, Charlie must try his hardest to get the squad working as a team, which is hard considering what he has to put up with, and even harder when he makes some very unfortunate decisions… Full review...
The Girl Who Was Saturday Night by Heather O’Neill
The time: the 1995; the place: Quebec. The Tremblay family have espoused the cause of Quebeçois separation from English-speaking Canada for many years. Etienne Tremblay has been a prominent, political folk singer throughout the childhood of Nouschka, his daughter, and her identical twin brother, Nicolas. The young children themselves appeared on stage frequently and have been brought up much in the public eye. Their father is almost always absent from their life as he feeds his selfishness on public adoration. Their mother only existed for them as a name in a hit song about a one night stand. They were cared for by Loulou, a loving grandfather lacking any influence over their behaviour. Full review...
Tease by Amanda Maciel
Emma Putnam killed herself and it was all Sara's fault. If Sara and her other mean girl friends hadn't hounded and bullied Emma to the ends of the world, Emma would still be alive. And so now it's Sara's turn to be ostracised - by her old friends, by the community in which she lives, and even by the media. Full review...
The Queen's Hat by Steve Antony
A naughty gust of wind comes along and blows the Queen’s hat right off her head. Her Majesty simply cannot be seen bare headed, and so she follows it in hot pursuit. Full review...
The Bubble-Wrap Boy by Phil Earle
Tiny Charlie Han is an outsider at school, whose only friend is Sinus, a fellow outcast. At home, he suffers from an overbearing mother and a quiet father who won't stand up to her. But Charlie believes that everyone's good at something, and when he finds a special talent for skateboarding, it might be the start of something special - if his mum's constant need to keep him safe doesn't get in his way. Full review...
The Farmer's Away! Baa! Neigh! by Anne Vittur Kennedy
Flobba dob. Eh-oh. Or should I just stop the words completely and communicate with a swanee whistle? From the Flowerpot Men to the Teletubbies via the Clangers, the substitution of ‘real’ words with made up language and sounds has always been controversial. So I’ll level with you straight away and spoil the ‘surprise’ of The Farmer’s Away! Baa! Neigh! by revealing that, bar the title, there are no proper words in this book. When this book is described as being told in the animals’ own words it means quite literally that. Barks. Hisses. Neighs. Cheeps. And lots of them. For 32 pages. Full review...
The Glass Bird Girl by Esme Kerr
Edie is a new student at Knight’s Haddon boarding school – but not just any new student. Planted there by her uncle, who can fix anything, she’s been given a mission – to investigate the problems his client’s daughter, Russian princess Anastasia is having. But what seems like it’ll be a straightforward case of schoolgirl bullying is actually much more complicated, and dangerous. Full review...
How to be Well Read: A guide to 500 great novels and a handful of literary curiosities by John Sutherland
Being well read is rather like having good manners: it's something that we all aspire to but there's always a nagging doubt that there's something lacking in what we've achieved. That is, of course, why a book with the title How to be Well Read pulled me in so successfully with its promise of being a guide to five hundred great novels and a handful of literary curiosities. Was I going to find that ultimate list of books which I would have to read to ensure that I could think of myself as well read? No - I was going to find something far more useful and interesting. Full review...
The Abduction by Jonathan Holt
The teenage daughter of a US Army Major is kidnapped when off basecamp at a Venetian nightclub. She is abducted by a masked team during the carnevale celebrations, when people not wearing masks are more conspicuous than those whose identities are hidden. Everything about the abduction seems perfectly orchestrated leaving very little in the way of clues apart from the very fact that it is carried out with such military precision. Full review...
Waterfire Saga: Deep Blue by Jennifer Donnelly
Four thousand years after Orfeo defected as one of the six magical leaders of Atlantis, created the most evil of monsters, and the island sank below the sea, Serafina is preparing for a ceremony that will confirm her as the heir to a Mer realm. Sera will sing a songspell to her people and become betrothed to the prince of another Mer realm. But Sera is plagued by a strange dream, in which witches of Mer legend warn her of terrible danger to come. And when her friend Neela arrives for the occasion, she confesses that she has had the same dream. Full review...
Red Shadow by Paul Dowswell
It's Moscow in 1940. Misha's life transformed when his father was offered a job in the Kremlin by his old revolutionary comrade, Stalin. Misha's life is easier in many ways than those of his peers - he lives in a spacious and comfortable flat, and he has plenty of good food to eat.
But Russia is at war - currently allied to Hitler's Germany but about to be betrayed by them. And Stalin is both paranoid and unstable - this is the time of the purges and nobody is safe from denunciation. Full review...
Judges by Andrea Camilleri, Carlo Lucarelli and Giancarlo De Cataldo
I'll confess that it was the name of Andrea Camilleri which brought me to this book. I'm a long-time fan of his Inspector Montalbano series and a recent reading of a spin-off novella had proved to me that the concise nature of his full-length novels was no fluke. In Judges we had another novella - worth buying for its own sake - and the bonus of two more stories from better-than-decent Italian authors. All that was needed was a glass of wine and a comfortable chair. Did the book live up to expectation? Full review...
The Devonshires: The Story of a Family and a Nation by Roy Hattersley
According to the back of this book, ‘the story of the Devonshires is the story of Britain’. That’s an extravagant claim, but it contains more than a germ of truth. Certainly one would be hard-pushed to find an aristocratic, non-royal British family who has more consistently been central to our history since medieval times, as this detailed chronicle demonstrates. From the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII presided over in part by Sir William Cavendish, father of the first Earl, to the big business that their ancestral home Chatsworth House in Derbyshire has now become, the somewhat inaccurately geographically-named Devonshires have often been, or helped to, contribute to, part of the fabric of Britain’s past and present. Full review...
Eric the Boy Who Lost His Gravity by Jenni Desmond
Everyone gets angry sometimes. Maybe all it takes is someone queue-jumping, or in the case of my toddler, all it takes is the wrong colour cup, or someone playing with the one toy in the world that he wants right at that moment! The challenge for children growing up (and for adults too sometimes!) is how to deal with that anger. This story is about what happens when a little boy called Eric gets angry. Full review...
How to Catch a Star by Oliver Jeffers
The boy makes various attempts to catch his star. He spends most of the day waiting for a star to appear, and when one finally does he tries climbing a tree, or dragging his father's lifebelt to lasso the star down. Each attempt, however, fails. Finally, down by the shore, he sees a star that has fallen into the sea. He walks along the beach, hoping that the star will wash up on the sand and, finally, it does! They boy and the star walk away together, hand in hand. Full review...
Those Magnificent Sheep In Their Flying Machine by Peter Bently and David Roberts
The sheep on the hillside live a pretty sedate lifestyle, grazing on green grass day after day. One morning they hear a mighty ZOOM overhead and go to check out where the noise is coming from. To their delight, they see rows of aeroplanes lined up in the field below, ready for a race. The inquisitive sheep decide to hop inside a big yellow aeroplane and before they know it, they have accidentally pressed the start button and are flying high above the hills! Full review...
Rex by Simon James
Tyrannosaurus Rex is the scariest dinosaur around. He can pull whole trees out of the ground, crush boulders with his bare claws and chase away the other dinosaurs with his mighty roar! Everything changes one night when he finds an abandoned egg in a cave. A baby dinosaur pops out and decides that T.Rex is his Dadda. Full review...
August Folly by Angela Thirkell
Richard Tebben came down from Oxford in June with an undistinguished Third and little idea of what he wanted to do with himself. It was a pity that money dictated the need to remain in the Barsetshire village of Worsted (just a little way from Winter Overcotes) with his family and others who were not really up to scratch (his mother had taken a First...) particularly as there was little in the way of diversion other than Mrs Palmer's Greek play, into which everyone was roped willy-nilly. Then the Dean family arrived for the summer, impossibly glamorous and accompanied by six of their nine children and Richard was immediately smitten by Rachel Dean, mother of the family and more than twice his age. Full review...
Maybe One Day by Melissa Kantor
Zoe and Olivia are best friends. They do everything together - until Olivia is diagnosed with a terminal illness. As she tries to fight against death, Zoe wants to support her. But how can you adjust to a life where you might have to be without one of the people you love most in the world? Full review...
A Woman's Story by Annie Ernaux
After spending two years in an old people's home, Annie Ernaux's mother finally succumbs to Alzheimer's Disease. It has been a terrifyingly protracted end, and one that has spawned feelings of absolute helplessness in her daughter, who watched as her mother's life crumbled before an 'imagination' that bore 'no relation to reality'. Yet Ernaux's distress is also fuelled by the realisation that she'll 'never hear the sound of her [mother's] voice again', and by the fact that the fraying bond between the present and the past has finally been 'severed'. Impulsively, Ernaux decides to recreate that past, hoping to 'bring her [mother back] into the world' through a piece of writing. In short, she is 'incapable of doing anything else'. Full review...
The Wives of Los Alamos by TaraShea Nesbit
1943: In the US a group of men, women and children are uprooted from their homes with hardly any notice and after being sworn to total secrecy. Their destination is a hastily knocked up, unfinished small town in the New Mexico desert; a place where muddy water drips from the taps and their lives are turned upside down for nearly 3 years. This isn't mass abduction by a malevolent power but the US government's plan to end WWII. The men (and some of the women) are scientists, the place is Los Alamos, the site of the project that will result in Robert Oppenheimer stating Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." His story has been well documented in the past; now the voices belong to the Los Alamos Wives. Full review...
Keep The Faith by Candy Harper
Faith is back, and trying to pick between the awesomely wonderful Ethan and the gorgeous but not all-that-interesting Finn (my bias, not hers!) Other stuff is happening but there's little point going into details about it because let's face it, with characters like Candy Harper's they could be doing ANYTHING and it would still be amazingly good. Full review...
Roomies by Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando
Roomies tells the story of two girls, EB and Lauren, who are about to move into college together to share a room. It's not a college tale, though - it takes place before they get there, as they get in touch and start to open up to a stranger about their lives, hopes and fears, while always remembering this is someone they're going to be meeting in real life and spending a lot of time with very soon. Full review...
Marooned in Manhattan by Sheila Agnew
After her mother's death, Evie has to move to Manhattan to live with her uncle Scott, who she doesn't know too well. Initially she's convinced that she'll take him up on his offer to let her return to Ireland and move in with her godmother at the end of the summer. Between helping him out in his veterinary practice, making new friends, and getting to know the city, though, Evie starts to wonder whether she should stay in New York - but one person wants to take the decision out of her hands. Will she be able to make the choice for herself, and if so, where will she end up living? Full review...
Ash Road by Ivan Southall
The North Wind is blowing. It's churned its way across two thousand miles of Australia, and it brings with it ferocity, and an endless dryness. Above, below, to either side of it, and in front of and behind it, is heat. This is a summer in the early 1960s and the land is suffering above-century heat. Unfortunately, through pure accident, three young lads out camping in the bush have started a fire, and it's getting worse and worse under the conditions that are ideal for it. Although in the leeward side of a large reservoir, the small community of Ash Road would surely suffer if the conflagration were to become big enough to threaten them – and it is, it is… Full review...
Solo by William Boyd
Like Sherlock Holmes, Alice, or even the characters from the Bible, James Bond is no longer just the property of its original author. Ian Fleming may have had the imagination to create Bond, but since Casino Royale rolled onto the scene Bond has been a changing man who mimics the times he currently finds himself in. William Boyd’s Solo reverts back to Fleming’s original timeline and continues the story of that Bond, but is this a reflection of the past or today? Full review...
