romance – Cristina Sanders' blog

The Heart in Winter – book review

The Heart in Winter, by Kevin Barry

This is an intense Irish love story. An absolute, classic gem of a love story. Our lovers, Tom Rourke and Polly Gillespie, are hapless, feckless and doomed right from the start, but their love never falters. I say it’s Irish because the writer is Irish, the lovers are Irish and they begin their story in an Irish community with lots of drinking. Their all-encompassing love is very Irish. However, Tom and Polly are in Butte, a desolate mining town in the mountains of Montana; 1891, a cold winter. So the story is really a western! So far, so terrific.

The Curiosity – Book review

The Curiosity, by Stephan Kiernan

I’m going to give a bookie suggestion right up front. If you’re keen on reading a great story where we bring a man back to life from history, Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time is the one. It was one of my favourite books of 2024. Stephan Kiernan’s The Curiosity was published a decade earlier, same sort of story, with a modern woman falling for a reanimated gent with all his old-fashioned charms, but it has none of the raunchy chemistry that makes Bradley’s book such a hit. The Curiosity is interesting in parts, but…

Saltblood – book review

Saltblood, by Francesca de Tores

The cover has a tall ship under sail in a stormy sea, SALTBLOOD written in bold gold strapped across the middle and a promise of ‘A blood soaked story of piracy and prejudice’. Its a story of a girl brought up as a boy who runs away to sea and ends up as a pirate. Can a book get any more inviting than that? Well yes, it can, because I happen to know that the story is based on fact. How cool is that?

Writers & Lovers, Heart the Lover – book reviews

Heart the Lover, and Writers & Lovers, by Lily King

These are a pair of gorgeous stories about a woman growing up and her various boyfriends. Yes, it’s a love story, but not in the ‘trope’ sense (and God knows why anyone would read a ‘trope’). Straight away you know you’re in clever hands by the way King describes a character by the clutter in his garage: ‘…all the crap Adam has in here: old strollers, high chairs, bouncy seats, mattresses, bureaus, skis, skateboards, beach chairs, tiki torches, foosball. His ex-wife’s red minivan takes up the rest of the space.’ You know the guy already. Of her mother: “we talked on the phone, talked for hours sometimes. We’d pee and paint our nails and make food and brush our teeth.” You’re right there with the characters, in the scene. I made copious notes from these books in case someday I get to teach a writing class on character .

So Late in the Day – book review

So Late in the Day, by Claire Keegan

Cathal is one of those blokes a friend might go out with and say, you know, he’s OK. He’s got a job, not bad looking. We meet Cathal looking out of his office window where the day is good: sunshine; birds; the smell of cut grass; “so much of life carrying smoothly on, despite the tangle of human upsets and the knowledge of how everything must end.” Cathal is writing rejection letters for bursary applicants. And there we have it, Keegan gives us the heads up that this is not a happily-ever-after. In this poignant novella, the fact that Cathal is not one of life’s winners is revealed through the world around him.

Atmosphere – book review

Atmosphere, by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Interesting book on the life of an astronaut in training. In 1980, NASA is a male dominated place with the door just beginning to open to the ladies. Sometimes this inclusion feels very modern, with non-gender-specific spewing in zero gravity, sometimes it is fraught with the same old-fashioned misogyny that made the 1980s a confusing time to be a woman. During training, both physical and academic, Joan Goodwin excels. She also fails to fall for the many handsome and smart male astronauts who try to pick her up, and discovers (with surprise, having never thought of this before) that her inclinations lie elsewhere. She falls in love with a fellow astronaut. Vanessa. For reasons that seems unfathomable to us now, this is unacceptable on the programme and wider world and, if discovered, might end her career.

You Are Here – book review

You Are Here, by David Nicholls

You Are Here has a flat start. We are introduced to two seemingly introverted characters, both bruised by past loves, who are now so terrified about crossing their carefully constructed boundaries that they avoid most social connection. It makes a pretty dull first couple of chapters: one for each pessimistic narrator, but it’s pretty obvious, this being a romance, that these two will be thrown together against their will, dislike each other to begin with, argue, fall out, have a major crisis and get together for a happy ever after end. And so it happens. And it’s a great read!

The Essex Serpent – book review

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

We haven’t changed so much since Victorian times. They chased after mysteries, fell in love inappropriately, refused to be pigeon-holed, got passionate about causes, died bright-eyed of lingering illnesses, and tried to make the world a better place for the less fortunate. The Essex Serpent is very much a character story with a perfect selection of characters: each distinct, with their own needs and foibles, each with their own way of engaging with the others. If that sounds a bit trite it absolutely is not: there is no feeling of a manufactured band here, this is not one of those dreadful ‘found families’ stories. They just meld together all over the place and it’s magic.

Songbirds of Florence–book review

Songbirds of Florence by Olivia Spooner

Like a very many others, Songbirds of Florence is in my Christmas shopping basket. It’s a gift for a darling Italian friend, who is far too busy this week to read my posts. I think everyone is buying this book (and it was still at number one on 14th December, so they really are) for one simple reason. Because it will make the recipient feel good. Merry Christmas!

Intermezzo – book review

Intermezzo, by Sally Rooney

Sally Rooney gives us here an almost perfect story. Five main characters, interlinked, each well rounded and complicated with their own goals and challenges, a set up which could go one of many ways, some deep subplots and an ending all tied up. Sounds a bit contrived, perhaps? There is nothing very experimental, no sweeping poetical passages, nothing clever. No ramping up the heartbeat with triggers and button pushing. It’s just a story of five people. And with that simplicity, it is exceptionally good.

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