Going Beyond the Blurb

Title: What Only We Know  Author: Catherine Hokin Blurb:  When   Karen Cartwright   is unexpectedly called home to nurse her ailing father, she goes with a heavy heart. The house she grew up in feels haunted by the memory of her father’s closely guarded secrets about her beautiful dressmaker mother   Elizabeth ’s tragic suicide years before . As she packs up the house, Karen discovers an old photograph and a stranger’s tattered love letter to her mother postmarked from Germany after the war. During her life, Karen struggled to understand her shy, fearful mother, but now she is realising there was so much more to Elizabeth than she knew.   For one thing, her name wasn’t even Elizabeth, and her harrowing story begins long before Karen was born. It’s 1941 in Berlin, and a young woman called Liese is being forced to wear a yellow star…   Have you ever read a book that has torn at your heartstrings so much that you just know it's going to leave a lasting impression for the rest of tim

TOP FIVE PLACES TO READ  I've been doing a lot of reading indoors recently and with a long weekend upon us (the last for a while 😭) and the hours allowed outside the house extended (6 hours a day where we are now 😀) it got me thinking about where my favourite places to read are, both indoors and outdoors so here are my top 5: Number 5: In a Queue This is something I only figured out the other week. I was reading from my kindle app, not with a physical book so not sure if that would make a difference but with supermarket queues being abnormally long lately, I found it passed the time really quickly by reading whilst waiting. I don't know why doing this has only occurred to me now. Maybe I've just never had to wait this long in a queue before (although thinking about all the times I've stood around in airports, I find that hard to believe) but in no time the queue had gone and I was another few pages through my current read.  Number 4: On the Bus

Since deciding a month or so ago to get my act together and become the writer I've been complaining for years that I desperately want to be, I've suddenly realised why I've procrastinated for so long...because it turns out that I'm finding the actual writing process far more terrifying than the excuses I've been convincing myself of for so long!  My biggest excuse for not writing would always be "I don't have time." The worst part is that sentence was normally followed up by "...I have to catch up on watching How I Met Your Mother on Netflix for the millionth time" or "there's no way I can write now with that pile of ironing just staring at me from the corner of the room." Needles to say, it was always something and it was so easy to convince myself that those weak excuses where justifiable. It's not that I never wrote...I wrote all the time and stories and characters were always popping into my head so that ove

May: Crime  Title: Keep Him Close  Author: Emily Koch Blurb:  Alice’s son is dead. Indigo’s son is accused of murder. Indigo is determined to prove her beloved Kane is innocent. Searching for evidence, she is helped by a kind stranger who takes an interest in her situation. Little does she know that her new friend has her own agenda. Alice can’t tell Indigo who she really is. She wants to understand why her son was killed – and she needs to make sure that Indigo’s efforts to free Kane don’t put her remaining family at risk. But how long will it take for Indigo to discover her identity? And what other secrets will come out as she digs deeper? No one knows a son like his mother. But neither Alice nor Indigo know the whole truth about their boys, and what happened between them on that fateful night. This is a story about two grieving mothers having been separated from their sons in two very different ways but due to  the same crime. You have Alice, a woman whose son

This is my round-up of Day Two of the Big Book Weekend! Please bear in mind that I couldn't get round to watching all of the events from each day so this is just a recap of those I did catch but there were so many other amazing events at the festival. If you didn't catch them live, you can head over to  MyVLF.com   and sign up for absolutely free and watch all the events again 😊 Saturday 9th May 2020 Interview with Neil Gaiman Day Two of the Big Book Weekend started off with a HUGE interview with the one and only Neil Gaiman!! I was introduced to Neil's work a couple of years ago by my boyfriend who insisted I watch American Gods and since then I've watched season one twice, I've seen season two, read the book and thanks to said boyfriend, have three more of his books on my bookshelf waiting to be read. So I was really excited to know that Neil was one of the guests at the Big Book Weekend. He was actually there to talk with Sam Weller about ano

Wow! What a day to kick off the Big Book Weekend! So many great authors to listen to and so many new books now added to my Goodreads/TBR lists.  I couldn't get round to watching all of the events from each day so this is just a recap of those I did catch but there were so many other amazing events at the festival. If you didn't catch them live, you can head over to MyVLF.com   and sign up for absolutely free and watch all the events again 😊 Friday 8th May 2020 Alexander McCall Smith  I started the day by listening to Alexander McCall Smith, presented by  Shoreham Wordfest , talk about his most recent book: The talented Mr Varg and give a reading from the book which was so exciting to hear. I've listened to McCall-Smith talk in person at the Jersey Festival of Words a few years ago and he is such an engaging person. Unfortunately, I have not got round to reading any of his novels over the years however I am very aware of his hit series, The No1. Ladies Detecti

So because I spent all of yesterday (Friday) watching events from the Big Book Weekend, Top 5 Friday sort of slipped my mind. But seeing as we celebrated VE Day in the Britain yesterday and Liberation Day today in the Channel Islands, I thought I would make that the theme of this week's Top 5 Friday and post it today instead 😊 So my list today are my top 5 favourite books surrounding WWII: Number 5: Hacksaw Ridge, directed by Mel Gibson Okayy, so this one isn't a book, it's a film (which is why it made number 5), but if this were a book it would be one of my absolute favourites! I came across this film one night whilst flicking through the TV channels and was instantly gripped. It's based on the real story of Desmond T. Doss   w ho was an   American  pacifist   combat medic during WWII. Due to religious and personal beliefs, when he enlists in the Army as a combat medic, he refuses to carry any form of weapon or firearm on him which sees him i