I read SEVEN books! I am really chuffed with that as Voyager is over 1000 pages alone!
It was a mixed bag some I loved, some I disliked and some I didn't connect with,
Voyager (Outlander Series Book 3)~Diana Gabaldon
First let me state that this book in written in Claire's voice and that is one from the 1940/60s
and also from the perspective of the 1700's so that kind of language is used. If you are sensitive to bad language, racist views, and the way women are thought of in the 18th century than you will not like this book at all. When reading the Outlander series you first off have to remember that this is hundreds of years ago, society has moved on alot since then, and even Claire's 1940s thoughts seem somewhat dated. Things where different then, the world smaller, different was scary and not trustworthy, things that where okay in society then aren't now, women where owned in marriage, and slaves where bought, remember these things before you read and review this book.
I loved the ending of Dragonfly In Amber but it also left me heartbroken! With the show also ending I knew I had to read on in the series and see what happens next.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
It's 20 years later and Claire is back in Scotland after Frank's death with her daughter
They find out that Jamie didn't die at Culloden, so with the help of Roger Wakefield the adoptive son of the Claire's friend from the 1940's Renverad Wakefield, they set about trying to find out what happened to Jamie. They find out history books can be wrong as they try to tell fact from fiction.
The book is told in different POV and I was really glad that Diana gave Jamie a voice in this book and the chapters where we found out what had happened to him after Culloden where some of my favourites. I found myself reading through these chapters at speed, turning the pages quickly to see what happens next.
Jamie was of course changed and as the book went on I found myself not liking Jamie as much as in the other books. He is still Jamie but much rougher around the edges I missed his humor from the previous books but what made me dislike him was when was he more or less left his flesh and blood in England without a backwards glance! I know he had to go but he didn't seem very upset when leaving young Will!!
I really enjoyed the first half of the book finding out what happened to Jamie, while in the 1960's Claire, Brianna and Rodger digging for clues. I liked the then time jump to the 1760's and meeting the original characters again. Fergus, Ian and Jenny where a delighted to rediscover 20 years later but there was so many new characters that it was so hard trying to remember them all, yet not many of them stood out, bedsides John Grey who I loved!
The second part of the book was action packed but I had a little bit of a slump reading the second half of the book. I had really enjoyed everything up till then, finding out what happened to Jamie, MacDubh, Claire's life in Boston, Claire time jumping, the print shop, the photographs of Brianna, the brothel, 30 year old Fergus, meeting Jamie's nieces and nephews, going back to Lallybroch, and the whole Laoghaire mess. Then they then board a ship into the unknown to try safe Jamie's nephew Ian and from then on it one thing after another it was too much! Smugglers, black magic, pirates, voodoo, treasure, and a jack the ripper style murder it was overkill in a book that already had so much else going on in it! I felt a little bored at the throw everything at them and see what happens kind of thing that went on in the second half of the book.
I found myself want to know what was happening back in 1960's Scotland between Roger and Brianna who I hope Gabaldon goes back to in the next novel in the series
At the start of the book I felt like I never wanted it to end, but by the second half of the book I was ready for it to end! This is the first book in the the three I have read that I thought was a little too long maybe 200 pages too long.
That being said I really enjoyed this book the Outlander books for me a like a reading rollercoaster, with ups and downs, twists and turns. I would give it a four star rating for the first part of the book alone. It doesn't have the major cliffhanger like Dragonfly did, but it did leave me wanting more, more of Jamie and Claire but also for me I really want to know more about Roger and Brianna. I need a little break to process everything that happened in this book and the TV show but will be reading Drums of Autumn in the Autumn time!
Spectacles A Memoir~Sue Perkins
I don't read alot of biographies but I really love Sue Perkins and knew this would be a funny read
Not alot of books have me laughing at 9am in a hospital room waiting on a CT scan but this book did! Looking back at the hospital appointment I should of been feeling, nervous and annoyed at the waiting time, but because of this book I didn't care and was laughing while getting strange looks from other patients the whole time!
This was a pleasure to read, the Sue on paper is the same Sue you get on TV. She doesn't have a front and I love the what you see is what you get. She doesn't go into too much detail in certain parts of her private life this isn't going to be a tell all memoir with deep shocking secrets, but what you do get is a very funny book with a huge heart at the center of it.
I laughed my arse off in the hospital waiting room while reading the stories of herself and Mel's early comedy duo days and then almost cried coming home on the bus while I read the letter Sue wrote to her beloved deceased dog. I loved the written conversations she had with various people, the doodles and pictures she had from her childhood.
If you are looking a funny read and like Sue Perkins (all you Top Gear fans can pi** off)
I encourage you to give this a go, it will have you laughing before you can say BAKE!
The Marriage of Opposites~Alice Hoffman
I have read a number of Hoffmans books so when this popped up on my Goodreads recommendations I decided to give it a go. I had also see alot of good things about this on Goodreads and Booktube.
I have to admit I was slightly disappointed, it didn't capture my imagination at all in the way other Hoffman books have, and I found it a struggle to finish it.
It tells the story of Rachel who has grown up on the island of St Thomas, she dreams of the day she can leave the island and live in Paris. She is a dreamer and very headstrong which is frowned about in her small tight knit Jewish community. Her Father arranges a marriage for her to a man twice her age while she doesn't love him at all, she deeply loves his three small children and agrees to marry him for that reason alone. Time passes and she soon has four children of her own before the age of 30! Her husband dies suddenly and she is left with alone and frighten. Enter the love of her life her husband's younger nephew because of Jewish laws there love is frowned upon and they are treated like outcasts. Still there love grows stronger and they have children together there youngest being the famous painter Camille Pissarro. There are the other subplots of Rachel's best friend Jestine and her daughter Lyddie and later Camille. While I found the story beautifully written and the plot interesting, the pacing was quite slow at times and I just couldn't connect with this book at all.
I found the characters all quite unlikable, the main character Rachel is self centered, rude and a know it all. Her friend Jestine is underdeveloped and comes across as naive and silly, most of the other characters are dull and underdeveloped. I did enjoy the first half of the book better, while I didn't like Rachel as a main character her story was much more interesting to tell and the descriptions of St Thomas are just stunning and a joy to read. When the book shifts POV to Camille the plot slows down to an almost stop. While I kept reading I didn't feel any connection to the characters or plot and for me it was a bit of a disappointing book.
Delicious~Ruth Reichl
The cover was the thing that really drew me to this book, plus it's a book about good food so I thought I was on to a winner! Sadly I didn't like this book at all, couldn't get into the style of writing and the characters are a bit of a cliche.
Billie is a food writer with amazing baking skills but doesn't bake anymore due to her tragic past. She is a fish out of water in the big city, but she is beautiful behind her glasses and baggy clothes. Every who meets her loves her, everyone wants to be her friend, her new boss is in awe of her, her gay best friend gives her a makeover, suddenly men are falling at her feet and it was just a bit much!!
While the food parts where well written there where also very boring, and actually felt like there where took from a food critic instead of the beautiful descriptive writing of a fictional writer.
In the offices of Delicious magazine Billie finds a secret library and old letters from WW11
but I stopped reading after that, not even the promise of a WW11 romance could save this novel for me!
I done what I don't normally do and put the book down! I didn't connect with any of the characters, the story was full of cliches and after last month I didn't want a book to cause me another reading slump!
The Sacred River~Wendy Wallace
This book wasn't what I expected at all! I thought it would be some sort of historical fiction
between Victorian London and Ancient Egypt but it takes a different turn.
I really enjoyed this book and it stayed in my head a while after reading it
In Victorian London Harriet Heron a 22 year old, is lying on her sick bed, she is what her Mother calls an invalid and has been most of her life due to asthma. Her doctor hints that there is nothing much more he can do for her now and death is near. Harriet wants to live before she dies and pleas with the doctor to convince her Mother that warmer climates will help her. The place Harriet wants to go above all others is Egypt she has been fascinated with the history of the place since a child.
Harriet's mother Louisa will do anything for her beloved daughter but leaving the safety of London is not something she really wants to do, especially since there is a big chance her past will catch up with her. A past she has kept hidden and has been hiding for almost her whole life.
Lastly Harriet's aunt and Louisa's sister in-law Yael is asked to join the women on there trip. Yael is a spinster, a devout christian and carer to her Father. The last thing Yael wants to do is go on a trip up the Nile!
This is a very character driven book with a lot of dialogue, the three women are all a personal journey through out the book. I really liked the three female lead characters, although very different I could relate and understand each of them. While I was expecting a big adventure story and more about ancient Egypt, what I got was a journey of self discovery from three very different women.
I really enjoyed that this was a different slower paced novel. I read it quickly wanting to know if Louisa's secrets and past would come to light, if Yael could break the safety barriers and help the poor of Alexandria, and lastly if Harriet would find the peace, love and health she is looking for.
It was well written with beautiful descriptions of Egypt but I wanted more the novel is quite short and when it ended I found myself wanting to know what happened next!
I guess that's a good compliant! I will definitely be reading more of Wendy Wallace in the future!
Rare Objects~Kathleen Tessaro
This book started off really good and I found myself wanting more
but the more I read about the main character Maeve the more I began to dislike her
This is another historical fiction novel set on the 1930's Boston and New York
when we meet Maeve she has been to the big city lost her chance at making it there
and spent time in a Mental Hospital. All of which her Mother doesn't know about, she needs a job and to get it she needs to make herself less Irish looking! The job is working at an antiques shop, while working there she meets Diana a beautiful woman from a very blue blood Boston family who she had originally briefly meet in the mental hospital in New York.
One of the things I disliked about Maeve is she doesn't learn from her lessons. After everything that happened to her in New York she quickly falls back into bad habits. She lead a double life in New York and she does it in Boston, attending lavish parties and events with Diana.
This really annoyed me about the character of Maeve and I found her unlikable, Diana wasn't much better but I could tolerate her character. There was a few things that I thought wouldn't happen at all, like Maeve actually getting the job in the antiques shop, and also the fact that her Mother seems to be a strict Catholic yet helps her daughter with her double life and puts up with her staying out all hours of the morning.
It is a long book and it did seem to drag a little for me. I kept waiting for the story to pick up and the story arcs to move along. I did enjoy reading about this time period and the great depression in Boston, but when I finish the book I just felt meh! The characters and the story didn't leave much of an impression on me.
Letters To The Lost~Iona Grey
The past weekend was bad for my chronic illness so I spent most of it
reading this book and getting swept up in this beautiful WW11 love story
I think this was one of my favourites books of the month
It's a very well written historical novel set in 2011 and WW11
I don't read much historical fiction set in WW11 anymore I went through a phase of just reading that time era when I was a teenager. I think I turned myself off reading about it because of the amount that I did read it in my teenage years! This novel reunited me with love for reading about this era and I get wait to read more!
This book tells two intertwining stories in 2011 Jess is running away from her past and squatting in an old run town abandoned house. While she is there she discovers a shoe box of old letters from WW11 meanwhile Will is trying to discover any living relatives of the owners of the house that Jess is squatting in. A letter arrives from Dan the author of the letters in the shoe box, Jess reads it and it strikes something in her, she wants to find Stella the woman Dan had to leave behind after the war.
In 1943 Dan met beautiful but married Vicar's wife Stella. Stella's marriage looks picture perfect but there is alot more going on behind closed doors. She doesn't want to fall for Dan but she does and he shows her what love truly feels like. This is war time and Dan is an American bomber pilot and of course life and love in war time never goes smoothly.
This book was a joy to read, the book is quite long with over 500 pages but I got through it so quickly as the story and characters are so engaging. I did guess some of the storylines at the start of the book, like the truth behind Charles Stella's picture perfect Vicar husband and who the owner of the house really was, but that didn't take away from me reading the plot. It's so well written that Grey really got across the sense of how bad war time rationing was which can be missing in other war time books, like when a tin of peaches, a bit of butter and a square of chocolate seemed like heaven.
It's a wonderful book and for some reason it reminded me of when I read The Notebook
it has that sort of beautiful love story but at the seem time totally different.
This is the author Iona Grey's first novel and I can't wait to read more from her.
What Oisín has been reading this month
Shouty Arthur~Angie Morgan
Oisín has been loving this book this month
About a little boy who is very loud (quite like Oisín at the moment)
and his big sister who tries to teach him about wildlife and being quiet!
It's a lovely little book which Oisín picked out from the library!
So that what we have been reading how about you?
