Review Copy – Page 29

By Sword and Storm by Margaret Skea

Published on August 20, 2018August 20, 2018 by Margaret2 Comments

By Sword and Storm (The Munro Scottish Saga Book 3)

Two of the best historical fiction books I’ve read in recent years are Margaret Skea’s Munro Scottish Sagas, Turn of the Tide, and A House Divided, both of which transported me back in time to 16th century Scotland and France, specifically to the world of the feuding clans of Cunninghame and Montgomerie.

By Sword and Storm is the third book in the Munro Saga. It stands well on its own but I recommend reading the earlier books to get the whole picture of what happened in the years before. It is now 1598 and the Munro family, Adam, his wife, Kate, and children, Robbie, Maggie and Ellie are living in France. Adam and Robbie are in the Scots Gardes, serving Henri IV of France: Adam is a colonel and Robbie is a sergeant. The Scots Gardes were an elite Scottish regiment whose duties included the provision of a personal bodyguard to the French King.

The story is well grounded in research and based on historical facts, seamlessly interweaving fact and fiction. It is complex novel with several plot lines, locations and characters, some based on real historical figures and others fictitious, such as the Munro family. There’s a useful list of the main characters and a map at the start of the book and a glossary and historical note at the end.

As the story begins the French Wars of Religion are drawing to an end and the Edict of Nantes has established religious freedom, placating the Catholics whilst making concessions to the Huguenots – but not in Paris or at the French court, where Protestants are still banned from openly practising their religion. When Adam saves Henri’s life as a shot is fired from the crowd, he and his family are summoned to live at the French court, despite their religious beliefs. Life in Paris holds many dangers for the Munros, especially for Robbie when he falls in love with a girl from a Huguenot family.

Back in Scotland some members of the Cunninghame and Montgomerie factions are still feuding, notably Hugh Montgomerie, the Laird of Braidstane and William, the son of the head of the Cunninghame clan, whilst other clan members try to maintain the peace. James VI has banned duelling but that doesn’t deter Hugh and William. Meanwhile, Hugh’s wife, Elizabeth, pregnant and left on her own in the depths of winter with only her children and a servant for company, faces her own dangers.

There is so much to enjoy in this book – first of all the story itself, expertly narrated, full of tension and surprise, and also the characters. But I also loved the personal touches, revealing what life was like in the 16th century, how both ordinary people and royalty lived, and the dangers that faced them in their daily lives, particularly for women in childbirth and sickness and for those who dissented from the established religion.

I loved all the details about the French court, in particular about Henri’s mistress and the relationship between her and Kate. As in the earlier books Margaret Skea writes such beautifully descriptive passages, bringing to life the details of the French court and of the landscape in both Scotland and France as well as the dangers of travelling by sea.

This is ostensibly the end of the Munro saga – but Margaret Skea has revealed on her blog that she is hoping to revisit the Munro story at a later date. I hope she does, but if not this is an excellent end to the series.

Format: Kindle Edition – also available in paperback
File Size: 1339 KB
Publisher: Corazon Books (Historical/Saga) (11 July 2018)
Source: Advance copy from the publisher
My rating 4*

The Rules of Seeing by Joe Heap

Published on August 12, 2018 by Margaret10 Comments

Harper Collins|9 August 2018|416 pages|Review copy| 2*

Nova, an interpreter for the Metropolitan police, has been blind from birth. When she undergoes surgery to restore her sight her journey is just beginning – she now has to face a world in full colour for the first time. Kate, a successful architect and wife to Tony, is in hospital after a blow to the head. There, she meets Nova and what starts as a beautiful friendship soon turns into something more.

Nuanced and full of emotion, The Rules of Seeing poignantly explores the realities and tensions of a woman seeing the world for the first time – the highs and lows, the good and bad.

I thought from reading the blurb that this would be a book I would enjoy reading. The idea of a book about a blind woman whose sight is restored sounded enlightening – how she learned to interpret what she can see, having been born blind. And I did enjoy that aspect of this book. It does give an excellent insight into Nova’s struggle to cope emotionally with a world she can now see as well as hear and touch, and learning what it all means. And I liked the Rules of Seeing that she compiles from her experiences, although I think they are only loosely linked to the main story.

But, this isn’t just the story of a blind person learning to see and it’s not the main focus of this book which is Kate’s relationship with her husband and with Nova, and I didn’t like Kate’s story; the violence and anger of her husband, Tony was hard to read. If this had been referred to in the blurb I wouldn’t have chosen to read this book. I also found the pace very uneven and by the end of the book I thought it was too drawn out and I just wanted it to end.

One of the drawbacks of reading a review copy prior to publication is that you can’t read the beginning of a book. And if I had read the opening pages I wouldn’t have chosen it. It is in the present tense – there are some books that work well for me in the present tense and it certainly helps if I like the plot, but this isn’t one of them. I didn’t like the constant changes of scene -a bit like watching a drama or film where the action is filmed with a hand-held camera constantly changing focus, zooming in and out. It makes me feel claustrophobic. The use of the present tense in this book made me feel I was watching TV with the audio description turned on, explaining what is happening on screen.

It’s a pity as the basic concept is good and the characters came over as real people. I’m sorry I just couldn’t like it.

Thank you to Harper Collins and NetGalley for my copy of this book for review.

No Further Questions by Gillian McAllister

Published on August 6, 2018 by Margaret2 Comments

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I was hooked right from the start of No Further Questions by Gillian McAllister. It plunges straight into a trial as Martha sits in the courtroom listening to expert witnesses being questioned and cross-examined about the death of her baby, Layla, just eight weeks old. Her sister Becky is accused of murdering her. Becky was looking after Layla, a difficult baby who cries and screams endlessly, whilst Martha was away in Kos, organising a school for refugee children and her husband, Scott was away at a work conference. She found Layla dead in her cot and denies killing her. It looked like a cot death – until the postmortem showed otherwise – and the police are convinced it was murder.

This is a tense, tightly plotted book, narrated from several viewpoints, but mainly alternating between Martha and Becky, revealing their thoughts and emotions as they relate what had happened. Despite being very different characters with different lifestyles Martha and Becky love and trust each other – otherwise Martha would never have left Layla with Becky. Martha doesn’t want to believe Becky is guilty but as the trial proceeds, as medical and social worker witnesses as well as neighbours and a school teacher present their accounts it looks increasingly bad for Becky. And yet, and this shows how real this trial and these characters came over to me, I couldn’t believe she had done it either.

Despite being written in the present tense, I was gripped by this book. I didn’t want to stop reading it and when I wasn’t reading it I was thinking about it, about the characters and their relationships, about how they had got themselves into such a terrible situation. Gillian McAllister presents such a complex subject, with great insight into human nature, with characters that are not perfect (as none of us are) – they each have their flaws and make questionable decisions, so it is next to impossible to untangle the truth from supposition.

This is simply an excellent book, and it is without doubt one of the best books I’ve read this year.

Thank you to Gillian McAllister, the publishers and NetGalley for my copy of this book for review.

Format: Kindle Edition ( also to be published in paperback on 18th October 2018)
File Size: 2892 KB
Print Length: 421 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1405934603
Publisher: Penguin (2 July 2018)-

Do Not Disturb by Claire Douglas

Published on August 3, 2018 by Margaret2 Comments

COULD YOUR DREAM HOME BE YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE?

This is the second book by Claire Douglas that I’ve read – the first was her third novel, Last Seen Alive, which I thought was excellent (you can see my review here). So I was keen to read her latest novel Do Not Disturb – I wasn’t disappointed!

Description:

After what happened in London, Kirsty needs a fresh start with her family. And running a guesthouse in the Welsh mountains sounds idyllic.

But then their first guest arrives.

Selena is the last person Kirsty wants to see. It’s seventeen years since she tore everything apart.

Why has she chosen now to walk back into Kirsty’s life? Is Selena running from something too? Or is there an even darker reason for her visit?

Because Kirsty knows that once you invite trouble into your home, it can be murder getting rid of it . . .

Kirsty, husband, Adrian and their two daughters, Amelia aged 11 and Evie aged 6, together with Kirsty’s mum, Carol have just moved to a house in a little village in the Brecon Beacons in Wales. The house, a big double-fronted Victorian house with pointed roof gables and arched windows, had been empty for several years and they have renovated it to run it as a guesthouse. It had been their dream for years and when the opportunity arose to move away from the frantic pace of life in London it seemed the ideal fresh start, particularly as Adrian had just recovered from a breakdown and had left his job in order to write.

The book opens as Kirsty is woken by shrill screams and finds her mother crouched over a body. It then moves back to the events leading up to this scene beginning two months earlier as they work on getting the guesthouse ready. Amelia isn’t too happy at the move and thinks the house is jinxed and Evie has started to walk in her sleep. Kirsty and Carol have a tense, awkward relationship and Adrian seems detached from the rest of the family. The locals are unfriendly and hostile to the family, regarding them as outsiders, even though Kirsty is Welsh, and there are tales that the house is haunted.

This is a novel with many family secrets that only gradually come to light and right from the start things go wrong beginning with the arrival of the first guests. Amongst them are Selena, Kirsty’s cousin and her little daughter, Ruby, a skinny, disabled child in a wheelchair. Selena and Kirsty fell out seventeen years ago after a major row and haven’t met since then. Kirsty’s brother Nathan and his wife Julia arrive and they too are having problems. Dead flowers arrive on the front doorstep. Evie says she’s seen a ghost, and that things have been moved in her bedroom, Kirsty worries that Adrian is heading for another breakdown and when a man from their past turns up things go from bad to worse. Kirsty can’t work out who she can trust or believe and I began to think that maybe I couldn’t trust Kirsty either.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It is full of atmosphere, from the brooding Welsh mountains, their tops hidden in the clouds, the cold and rain, the almost Gothic house – was it really haunted? – to the moods of the characters and their tangled and unsatisfactory relationships with their secrets and lies. It looks at the nature and role of parenthood, of mother/daughter and husband/wife relationships and questions how far you would go to protect your loved ones. It’s a book that kept me guessing for most of the way. The ending, which I had guessed, after discounting most of the suspects, left me feeling quite unsettled, leaving several situations that could easily go wrong. It certainly gave me food for thought.

Many thanks to Michael Joseph – Penguin Books and NetGalley for a review copy.

Format: Kindle Edition, available now – also in Paperback to be published 9 August 2018)
File Size: 3618 KB
Print Length: 400 pages
Publisher: Penguin (1 Aug. 2018)
Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
Language: English
ASIN: B079NPZMBY

The Tudor Crown by Joanna Hickson

Published on July 23, 2018 by Margaret6 Comments

The early life of Henry VII

Description:

When Edward of York takes back the English crown, the Wars of the Roses scatter the Lancastrian nobility and young Henry Tudor, with a strong claim to the throne, is forced into exile.

Recently widowed and vulnerable, his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, forges an uncomfortable alliance with Edward’s queen, Elizabeth Woodville. Swearing an oath of allegiance to York, Margaret agrees to marry the king’s shrewdest courtier, Lord Stanley. But can she tread the precarious line between duty to her husband, loyalty to her son, and her obligation to God and the king?

When tragedy befalls Edward’s reign, Richard of York’s ruthless actions fire the ambition of mother and son. As their destinies converge each of them will be exposed to betrayal and treachery and in their gruelling bid for the Tudor crown, both must be prepared to pay the ultimate price…

Little is known about Henry Tudor’s early life and this novel covers the time he spent in exile when he was fourteen years old up to the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 when he was twenty eight. The son of Edmund Tudor and Margaret Beaufort, Henry was born in Pembroke Castle in Wales. As a Lancastrian claimant to the throne, Henry’s life was in danger and so, together with his uncle, Jasper Tudor, he fled the country after Henry VI was killed in 1471 and Edward IV took the throne. They were aiming to seek refuge in France, but storms drove them to land in Brittany (I hadn’t known that Brittany was not part of France at that time). Where they spent the next fourteen years.

If I knew little about Henry VII, I knew even less about his mother Margaret Beaufort. She was only thirteen when Henry was born and saw little of him during his early life in Wales and subsequent exile in Brittany. The Tudor Crown is told from both her perspective and that of Henry’s, including letters between them telling of their plans for Henry’s return to England.

The funny thing about historical fiction, to my mind, is that although I know the outcome of events as I read I found that I was willing Henry on and wondering how he would be successful. Joanna Hickson has brought the period to life, capturing the danger and frustration and hopes for the future that both Henry and Margaret experienced. I could visualise the scenes, particularly the storm at sea and the perilous landing on the shores of Brittany, Henry’s fictional love affair with Catherine de Belleville and the account of the Battle of Bosworth. She has filled the story with characters that have their own personalities. In particular I grew to like and admire Margaret Beaufort. She comes across as an intelligent and compassionate woman, loyal to her son, always ready to help him financially and ambitious for his future.

I think this is a good mix of fact and fiction – in her Author’s Note Joanna Hickson explains that ‘with the odd exception’ the people Henry met and the places he went to existed but their characters and descriptions are from her imagination. She say she ‘has never doubted that Richard was responsible for the deaths of the Princes in the Tower’ in contrast to other accounts that I’ve read, particularly Sharon Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour in which she portrays a very likeable Richard and a different solution to what happened to the Princes.

I really enjoyed reading this book, and as in all good historical fiction Joanna Hickson has included details of the sources she has used in her research for The Tudor Crown. Now, I’m hoping she will write more books about Henry’s life after he became King.

Many thanks to Harper Collins and NetGalley for a review copy.

Amazon UK link

Ruined Stones by Eric Reed

Published on July 20, 2018 by Margaret8 Comments

Ruined Stones combines two of my favourite genes – crime fiction and historical fiction. It’s set in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1941 during the Second World War, where Grace Baxter, who has recently moved from Shropshire, is working in the Women’s Auxiliary Police force in a small sub-station. As the young policemen have joined up, the police are recruiting women but their duties are restricted and they can’t make arrests.

The body of a young unidentified woman is found in the ruins of a Roman temple not far from the police station. Grace is assigned to interviewing the neighbours but no one admits to seeing or hearing anything suspicious during the night due to the blackout and the fog. The police initially think it could have been an accident or suicide, but why are the victim’s legs and arms arranged into the ancient symbol of the reverse of the Nazi swastika?

Grace comes from a line of ‘wise women’ and is sensitive to the remains of the Roman temple, sensing something unthinkably old and powerful in the pagan ruin. Then another body is found, implicating Mavis, Grace’s landlady, although there are number of other suspects as well. Mavis, is viewed with suspicion by her neighbours because of her friendship with a Dutch refugee, Hans, who some believe to be a German. When the murdered man is identified as Mavis’ husband, Grace finds her life in great danger as she investigates the mystery and finally discovers the culprit.

I enjoyed this mystery, with its convincing characters, set against the backdrop of the war, as the Germans repeatedly bomb Newcastle and the inhabitants seek shelter in the crypt of the local church, which takes a direct hit. It provides an interesting look at life during the war, complete with black marketeers and criminals taking advantage of the blackout, and the prejudice and fear shown to foreigners and strangers. I was also interested to see the attitudes to women and their work for the police during the war and the hostility towards them from the public and from police officers. And I also enjoyed the hint of the supernatural through Grace’s own background.

This is the second book featuring Grace Baxter – the first is The Guardian Stones, set in the remote Shropshire village of Noddweir, where Grace’s father was the village constable until he joined the armed forces at the start of the war.

‘Eric Reed’ is the pen name of husband and wife, Mary Reed and Eric Meyer. Mary spent her early life in Newcastle and the setting in this city is depicted as it was in 1941, apart from two imaginary streets. The temple ruins, dedicated to the local god Antenociticus, still exist – you can see a photo and information about it on the English Heritage site. There is a glossary of Geordie dialect words and phrases included in the novel at the end of the book.

Many thanks to the authors and Poisoned Pen Press for a review copy.

Amazon UK link
Amazon US link