(Mini) Book Review: Her Name Was Rose by Claire Allan

(Mini) Book Review: Her Name Was Rose by Claire Allan

Monday, 16 July 2018

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I own a lot of books. Most of these books I’ve read already but needless to say there are a large amount of books that I have had on my reading list for quite a while, and I just haven’t gotten around to reading them yet. I’m sure I will read them at some point but you need to be in the mood for certain books, you know what I mean? So as I was browsing my TBR pile a few days ago, I realised that I wasn’t in the mood to read any of them, which was problematic considering how I’m supposed to be saving my money at the moment. I sent a tweet around asking for recommendations and quickly received quite a few. One of the books recommended was Her Name Was Rose by Claire Allan, and by God I am glad I was. I quickly bought a copy of it for Kindle (currently priced at 99p) and settled myself down to get stuck into it.

The story follows Emily, a lonely and isolated woman who is clearly incredibly damaged from previous experiences. It’s written from her point of view and you are really able to get inside her head and understand how much turmoil she has suffered from in the past. You are able to feel the pain that she is going through and understand the craziness behind her extreme actions. We meet Emily on the day of a horrendous accident, where a woman pushing her baby son is involved in a hit and run. Emily, reminded of her past, is sure that it was her who was being targeted and becomes overwhelmed with guilt, holding herself entirely responsible for the young woman’s death. She quickly envelops herself into the life of this young woman, taking on her vacant job at the dentist and befriending her grief stricken husband, all the while convinced that whoever killed Rose will soon come back for her. Emily is the ideal protagonist in this psychological thriller: she is both paranoid and intriguing and you continually question whether she’s imagining everything or not. 

Time and time again I witter on about how much I love psychological thrillers and this one was no exception to that rule. There is something so fulfilling about delving into a book that sends you on a whirlwind of questioning and doubt. As satisfying as I find it when I do guess who the perpetrator is, there’s nothing more satisfying than coming to the end of the book completely dumbfounded as to how it played out- good psychological writing allows you to be pulled into the novel, doubting every line of action and every character without question. The characterisation in Her Name Was Rose is fantastic – the characters and both endearing and likeable and you find yourselves getting completely absorbed within their tale. The book was a pretty quick read- the prose is simple and easy to get through, with the right amount of suspense to keep you hooked and not so much that you’re struggling to keep up with the plot. 

4/5

(Mini) Book Review: The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

(Mini) Book Review: The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

Saturday, 23 June 2018

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A few years ago, I wrote a blog post about Why I Read War Fiction and since then I’ve been slowly adding more and more books to the list of War Fiction that I’ve enjoyed reading. My most recent War Fiction read is actually less fiction and more historical fact – and a book, rightfully so, may I add, that has been on a lot of peoples’ radar over the last few months.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris is based on the true story of Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew who is sent to Auschwitz in 1942. Lale stands out from the rest of the people sent to the camps – he is well dressed, well educated and speaks a number of different languages. At home, he is known as being a lady’s man – a smooth talker. These language skills and seemingly his personality allows him to stand out and he is asked to become the camp’s Tatowierer, a job that carries multiple repercussions but also provides a number of benefits. As Tatowierer, he is given better sleeping arrangements, he accesses more rations – which he shares with the other prisoners, no less- and he is able to move around the camp much more freely than everyone else. In doing so, he meets Gita, a young girl who he falls instantly in love with and suddenly his reason to survive becomes all the more clear. His attraction to Gita is clearly instantaneous.

The book is particularly poignant in the sense that it depicts the horrors of the war at their worst, highlights the difficulty of survival in the bleakest of occasions, but also the beauty of life and appreciating it in its purest form. It’s about showing compassion to people who deserve it and not taking the little things for granted. Told to the author by Lale himself, it highlights the significant role that non-compliant people had in the war effort and how people on either side of the war front had to make difficult choices to survive. 

My love of history goes deep within me and having the opportunity to read such a book was just fantastic – knowing that the characters within the story were real and the story that they had to tell was just as real really affected me and made the story all the more enjoyable for me. The story – in spite of its somewhat bleak content- has a happy ending and it’s nice to see that sometimes, for some people during the war, there was a light at the end of the tunnel and they were allowed some happiness in their lives. 

I’m looking around for books with similar themes at the moment so if anybody has any recommendations then I’d be incredibly happy to hear them! 

Goodreads: The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed

Goodreads: The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed

Saturday, 7 April 2018

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I’m really getting back into the swing of this reading thing, aren’t I? Get me, with yet another book review! Last week, my friend and I were lucky enough to be invited to a brunch at Santa Maluco and inevitably, brunch led to a little shopping trip and a shopping trip wouldn’t be a true shopping trip if it didn’t end in new book purchases. I was quite good, all things considered, and only left Waterstones with two books: The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed and A Hero in France by Alan Furst. I’d heard a lot about the former online and thought it was about time I found out what all the fuss was about. The second book was a bit of a spontaneous purchase, but sounds like it’ll be right up my street – historical fiction at its finest. The Nowhere Girls is of course the purpose of this blog post so enough babbling on about nothing, Hol. Let’s get stuck into the review.

The Nowhere Girls is set in a high school in the States and revolves around a trio of girls who come together with the sole intentions of avenging the rape of a girl from their school. In a particularly misogynistic environment, the victim of the rape is made into a laughing stock and driven from the school with absolutely no consequences for the boys who committed the act. Grace Salter has just moved to the town after her and her family were run out of their town because of her mother’s more liberal views towards life in a particularly conservative church constituency. Rosina Suarez is the daughter of a family of Mexican immigrants who dreams of becoming the next big thing in the rock n roll world. Erin Delillo is neurodivergent, obsessed with Star Trek, and has a secret of her own that she hasn’t even shared with her best friend. Seperately, the girls lead lives that aren’t particularly intriguing – they are not cool, they are not popular, and they are certainly nothing special – but together they make up the forefront of the Nowhere Girls, a revolution created to fight sexual abuse and change the misogynistic views that had settled in the minds of the town’s inhabitants. As a group, they meet, inviting the female population of their school to join them – to raise awareness and collectively make the decision to refuse sexual contact of any kind until they start receiving the respect they deserve. They raise the importance of understanding that sex is not a right- it is something that someone chooses to do, without the sense of entitlement that a lot of the men around them seem to have.

The book focuses on the perspectives of multiple characters throughout and is incredibly poignant. It’s very rare that I read a book that has such a massive affect on me. I found myself unable to put the book down, whizzing through it in a matter of hours and feeling the need to talk all about it at every possible opportunity. Just like The Hate U Give, the book focuses on a topic that needs to be talked about and approached in a thoughtful way; and if people stop talking, remind them of it. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this book to some people, as there are quite detailed accounts of sexual assault, and there are also (intentional) examples of racism in the pages. Immediately, the principal of the school decides that the only person who could possibly be responsible for creating the group is Rosina, the ‘angry’ Mexican in a principally white town.

The book is dark- there’s absolutely no hiding that fact. In spite of this, it is beautifully written and gets its message across well and truly. It paints positivism and shames victim shaming. Amy Reed has done a mighty fine job here, and I’ll be recommending this book to everyone who asks for the foreseeable future.

4.5/5

Goodreads: What I Read in January 2018

Goodreads: What I Read in January 2018

Sunday, 11 February 2018

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It’s been an entire month since my last blog post and I’m very disappointed myself of slipping out of the habit of consistent blogging. I’ve been incredibly busy with work and haven’t had a minute to myself to sit down and divulge my thoughts and feelings, let alone sit down and write hundreds of words worth of book reviews and travel guides! This next week is half-term and I’m planning on giving myself lots of time to catch up on my blogging, alongside planning my lessons for next term, of course!

Despite this lack of time to write, I did make an effort to try and read (although granted a few of the books I mention here are books I’ve read with the children in my class at work) as much as I possibly could. Here are some of the books I read in the month of January, along with a few of my thoughts on them!

The Remains of the Day by Kazou Ishiguro has been on my To Be Read pile for a few years now. I went home to stay with my parents for a few days over the Christmas holidays, as I do every year, and whilst I was up there I finished the book I was reading. I hadn’t accounted for this happening, so I grabbed any old book off the shelves in my childhood bedroom and got stuck in. The Remains of the Day was the book I happened upon and I am incredibly happy that I did so. I’ve previously read Never Let Me Go by Kazou, and I absolutely loved that, so I had high hopes for another of his books. I enjoyed this one, granted not as much as I enjoyed Never Let Me Go. I found that the story was a little bit difficult to get stuck into, because of the language, but I will admit it is just as much the masterpiece as every claims it to be. The story was heart-breaking in the sense that our protagonist, a loyal and faithful butler, put every aspect of his being into being the best that he could possibly be in his role. In doing so, he allows himself to lose the sense of his own being and in his final days realises that his entire livelihood has left him feeling obsolete. A heavy read, but one that I will likely go back to in the coming years.

The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel is a book that a few of my friends have read and loved, so I was keen to read it myself. My little brother bought me a copy of this for Christmas and with my expectations incredibly high, I got stuck straight into it as soon as I could. After a very slow start, and a frantic message to the girls in my group chat who had recommended it to me to see just WHEN I was going to get as hooked as they promised. I needn’t have worried, of course, because the book was absolutely fantastic and I found myself in a situation where I couldn’t put it down. The story follows Lane through two different periods of her life and the circumstances that surrounded the mysterious Roanoke. After the death of her mother, 15 year old Lane goes to live with her grandparents and her cousin Allegra. A summer later, she leaves Roanoke and never looks back, unable to deal with the events that go on there. Flash forward in time and Lane is forced to return upon learning of her cousin Allegra’s disappearance. Nothing has changed in Roanoke and Lane has to relive everything about the place that made her leave in the first place. An absolutely spectacular read that left me gasping by the end!

We Found a Hat by Jon Klassen was a fun read of a book that I bought for shared reading in my class. I’m yet to read it to them but I’m going to use the book to support a PSHE lesson on sharing. It’s a very cutesy book about two turtles who find a hat and have to make a decision on which of the two of them will get to wear it.  

My class reader for January was Toto the Ninja Cat and the Great Snake Escape by Dermot O’Leary. I wasn’t aware that Dermot had even written a book before I came across a copy of it (signed, no less) in Waterstones in the New Year. After a quick look at reviews, a read of the blurb and a glance at the language level, I decided that it was definitely a book that the class would love. It took about ten pages for the entire class to be completely enthralled by it, each of them sat on the edge of their seats and asking if we could ‘not do spellings today’ and read the book instead! (No to not doing spellings, but they were much quicker at getting their coats on at the end of the day so they could listen to the story in Drop time!)

Another book we read as a class in January was Unfortunately the Milk by Neil Gaiman. As a huge fan of Gaiman myself, exploring his books for younger readers was high on my agenda and I was keen to get stuck in. Luckily, the kids were just as keen and loved this book almost as much as they loved Toto. They loved the ‘craziness’ of the story and were really eager to discuss whether or not they thought that Dad was telling the truth about his adventures to get their breakfast milk. A definite hit with both me and the kids.

I have plenty of books to get stuck into over the coming weeks, including a few book tours that I’m a part of.

What have you read recently that I need to get my hands on? Let me know in the comments!

Book Review: The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor

Book Review: The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor

Sunday, 7 January 2018

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When I comprised my Books of 2017 list towards the end of December, I was dead set on the fact that nothing could change my mind and pip a book to the post. The last week of December, after my post had been published and the decisions entirely made, I started reading The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor and around 40 pages in, I realised I had made a pretty awful decision. Not on reading the book- oh no. On posting my books of the year before the year was out; for The Chalm Man is arguably one of the best, if not the best, books that I read in 2017. As was the case with The Dry by Jane Harper that I read and reviewed last January, this book absolutely knocked me sideways and had me reading and reading, completely unable to put the book down. It was one of those books where I had to force myself to stop reading because I simply didn’t want it to end.

The book flips between two time periods, a kind of ‘then’ and ‘now’ between 2016, the book’s present day and 1986, the year when all the trouble started. It revolves around a group of five friends, but focuses primarily on and is written from the perspective of Eddie. Eddie is a teacher at the local secondary school, likes a drink and has seemingly struggled to deal with the death of his father to Alzheimer’s. He receives a letter in the post that he thinks is a joke, although definitely not a very funny one. The letter reminds him of the events of 1986 and the murder that still, in 2016, had questions unanswered. As children, the group of five, four boys and a girl, create a way of communicating using chalks, each of them using a different colour. Each symbol that they draw has a different meaning, whether it be a warning or telling them to meet somewhere in particular. This is all well and good until someone else starts using their method of communication, confusing matters and sending the group into matters of trouble.

Back to present day, incidents have cast certain members of the group aside. Nikki has long since moved away and Mike has been shunted from the group because of an unfortunate incident, permanently affecting the life Gav. When Mike gets in touch with Eddie with a proposition, everything changes and the chalk men start appearing again, reminding the group of everything they wanted to forget.

I absolutely LOVED this book (in fact, I’ve already recommended it to a few friends who I know are avid readers!). I couldn’t put it down, in spite of my attempts and every page was a twist in a completely different direction. The ending was thought-provoking and intriguing, and was definitely not to be expected. I immediately found myself attached to the characters and each one played a vital role in the story. Every little detail is meaningful and I wasn’t left with unanswered questions at the end. The writing style is intricate and beautiful which most definitely added to its success- it brings about a feeling of nostalgia, which I found funny as I wasn’t even ALIVE in 1986. I honestly can’t wait to see where C.J. Tudor goes next with her writing- she is without a doubt an author to keep an eye on.

A psychological thriller with a difference. 

5/5. 

The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor will be published on 11th January 2018 by Penguin: Michael Joseph. 

(* This book was kindly gifted to me for review by Penguin: Michael Joseph. All thoughts are my own and I have not received payment for this review.)