holiday reading – Cristina Sanders' blog

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 Bookshop Dectectives, Dead Girl Gone – Book Review

The bookshop Detectives, Dead Girl Gone, by Gareth and Louise Ward

A disclosure before I write this review. I know these guys. They are good friends and their bookshop is my local. I love the shop, I love the staff, and I love them. They are terrifically supportive of local writers. That makes writing an honest review of The Bookshop Detectives either very difficult or absolutely lovely and, (well, you can guess what is coming as I don’t review books I don’t like) this is one hundred percent the latter. It’s terrific.

The Night She Fell–book review

The Night She Fell, by Eileen Merriman

Eileen Merriman is delightful. I shared accommodation with her at a book festival last year and we sat by the fire in the evenings drinking wine and chatting about writing, YA books, families, life. I should have locked my door.

Forgotten on Sunday–book review

Forgotten on Sunday, by Valé Perrin

This was a recommendation from my French Canadian friend. She’s young. All her friends loved it. Valérie Perrin is a best selling author in France, and her previous novel Fresh Water for Flowers was a massive hit. But does it work in translation and enchant an older audience? Hell, yes.

The Axeman’s Carnival – book review

The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey

Last book of the year and an absolute favourite. I devoured this in a couple of long sessions after Christmas and it’s a splendid read, just perfect to take on holiday (or mooch in the hammock at home ignoring things, as I did). I hand on heart recommend this to anyone. It’s such a great yarn. Very rural kiwi.

The Book of Two Ways – book review

The book of two ways, by Jodi Picoult

There are a whole lot of things to unpack in this book; I feel like I’ve come home from holiday and the case has exploded open on the bed. Books and memories and clothes falling out and there’s Egyptian sand through everything. Here is a great novel for chatty book clubs — but perhaps not recommended if you have judgemental grumps (like me).

The Egypt thing first — it’s magnificent. A great setting for a book, we see writing on the walls and dip in and out of caves and uncover stories thousands of years old. Picoult’s son is an Egyptologist and I bet the pair of them had some great mother/son talks on the original, ancient “Book of Two Ways”. Feels compellingly authentic and pretty wonderful. A simple story in situ would have been perfect.

When to kindle

To kindle or not to kindle?

I know, I know, — holding a paperback is lovely. It’s full of nostalgia for your lost childhood, it seems more authentic, somehow, than reading from a screen, there’s the weight of it in your hand that tells you how bloody big the book is and you know when you’re nearing the end. You can flick back to the name of the bloke you’ve forgotten which was on the top left a few pages back and balance it on it’s spine to see if it falls open at the saucy bits (everyone does that, right?)

Before we were yours – book review

Before we were yours, by Lisa Wingate

This novel contains two stories that we know will connect. We can guess, but don’t know the full details until the end. It is based on shameful historical fact that makes us keep reading through the slightly klutzy text in the hope that, bloody hell, if this is true let’s make sure it never happens again. It goes on my “good holiday read” shelf. Probably wouldn’t take it to book club.

The interesting story is the one of a twelve-year-old river kid in Tennassee in 1939. Her mother is birthing twins on the houseboat and the black midwife walks out because she doesn’t want a dead white woman on her hands. When her father leaves for hospital in the skiff, the girl and her 4 siblings are kidnapped. This is a retelling of a bogey story as old as the hills (stabs me in the heart every time), with an orphanage, cellars, beatings, gruel, death and starvation until the cute blond kids get sold off to wealthy but infertile couples. The kids’ past disappears like the river and there is no psychological help for them ever apart from what they can cobble together themselves. It’s horrible.

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