Book Review: The Lost and Found Life of Rosy Bennett by Jan Birley

Last Updated: 8 June 2021

AD* | Rosy loved her London life – her job in a designer shop, her gorgeous West London family house and of course her gorgeous family (although young sons are enough to test anyone at times). All that disappears when, one unremarkable morning, after one unremarkable school run, her husband collapses on a crowded tube carriage and dies.

As she struggles her way through the grief, she discovers her husband’s secret life: secrets accounts, secret deals that their solicitor knew nothing of, secret debts and what looks like a secret “very close friend” at least.

Totally unprepared and suddenly in debt, Rosy is forced to leave London to start a new life with her incredibly reluctant boys in the countryside. Can angsty urban teenagers cope with farm life, let alone enjoy it? More to the point, can their mother? It’s certainly not going to be easy but when you are at rock bottom the only way is up.

Book Review: Something Old, Something New by Darcie Boleyn

Last Updated: 8 April 2024

AD* | Will you marry me…again?

When Annie Thomas agrees to give her ex away at his wedding to his boyfriend, she thinks she’ll be fine. With her three children at her side, she can handle anything. Then she finds out her gorgeous first ex-husband Evan Llewellyn is flying in from his glamorous life in New York to attend as well!

An unexpected pregnancy ended their relationship and as she stumbles through the ups and downs of life as a working single mum – helping everyone else find a happy ending along the way – Annie refuses to believe their old and incredibly hot spark can still exist.

It’s only when she and Evan are forced to face up to the past together that they’ll discover if they can have their own happily ever after too!

Book Review: City of Shadows by M.J. Lee

Last Updated: 5 June 2021

AD* | A family has been found murdered in the heart of 1920s Shanghai. But what could have compelled them to open the door to their killer?

Inspector Danilov has always taken a unique approach to solving his cases. So, when he’s asked to investigate the violent death of a fellow police officer, killed in action, he doesn’t think twice about turning his attention to a different case altogether: the brutal murder of the Lee family, found massacred in their own home.

How could the deaths of an ordinary family account for a shooting halfway across the city? And what clues lie with the letter found clasped in the dead girl’s hand? Inspector Danilov’s instincts tell him he’s close. But when the investigation reveals deep corruption at Shanghai’s core, Danilov faces a choice: probe further, and expose the evil underbelly of the city? Or shy from duty…and keep the few people he loves safe?

Book Review: The Beach Hut by Cassandra Parkin

Last Updated: 5 June 2021

AD* | A novel about love, loss, memory, and family relationships.

It is autumn time and on a peaceful Cornish beach, Finn and his sister Ava defy planning regulations and achieve a childhood dream when they build themselves an illegal beach hut. This tiny haven will be their home until Ava departs in midwinter for a round-the-world adventure.

In the town, local publican Donald is determined to get rid of them. Still mourning the death of his wife, all he wants is a quiet place where he can forget the past and raise his daughter Alicia in safety. But Alicia is wrestling with demons of her own. 

As the sunshine fades and winter approaches, the beach hut stirs old memories for everyone. Their lives become entwined in surprising ways and the secrets of past and present are finally exposed.

Book Review: Diamond Boy in the Rough by Helen Faul

Last Updated: 5 June 2021

AD* | What if he couldn’t control it? What if he didn’t want to?

Alfie Diamond, flat on his back, chilled to the bone in the freezing, unforgiving snow.

Shocked, dumbfounded but even so secretly excited, still tingling from the thrill, if that was the correct word to use, from his near-death experience but then again maybe it was just the mind-altering effects of hypothermia, who knew?

The images that had flashed before him during his “first” mind-blowing Awakening were alien to him, jumbled, super-fast messed-up glimpses of things to come and things of the past, but whose past, certainly not his, he would remember, surely, wouldn’t he?

The faces didn’t register, the language fell on deaf ears and yet he inexplicably felt connected, suddenly his life gained a sense of direction, no more bobbing about like a cork in the open ocean.

Purpose and motivation were coming his way, that much he had acutely been made aware of as the nerve endings of his brain cells fizzed with adrenaline-infused blood.

He was on a precipice, he could lay there and continue to stare up at the descending snowflakes, let the raw, biting cold take him or he could grab this adventure with both hands steamrolling into a new unknown future, a future born of a secret so far back, so distant into the past it would surely send him to hell and back.

Evil would seek to destroy him, Good would look to him as a saviour, him a naive, curly-haired East End boy, youngest of six children, average school grades, slight misfit on the outer edges of the obligatory social groups, not fit enough to be considered a 'Jock', not clever enough for the nerds and certainly not fashionable in his tatty t-shirt, shorts and scruffy trainers to be one of the 'beautiful people', a square peg in a round hole, well this square peg had been enlightened, today Alfie Diamond was reborn and if he ever got up onto his feet again, his first steps would be into a dangerous new world, a world he hoped included the beautiful stranger whose silken long hair trailed across his face as she hovered over him as he slipped in and out of consciousness, a world he hoped would not chew him up and spit him out.