Today I am pleased to welcome a new weekly event. It is Friday Book Snippets, combining Book Beginnings on Friday and Friday56, co-hosted by Anne@HeadFullofBooks and Olivia at Bemused and Bookish.
Directions: Share two snippets (a sentence or short paragraph) from a) the book’s opening and b) page 56 (or another page) from the book you are currently reading. No spoilers, please.
I like this idea of using any page number for the second snippet.
One of the books I’m currently reading is It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell. This is her latest book, published in June this year.
The book begins with a Prologue:
4 June 2005
I liked the girl. She had a nice smile. She was friendly. I could tell she liked us.
Page 4:
On the eighth day of May 2026, Jane Trevally does something terrifying.
She invites an estate agent into her home.
Page 51:
She has never told Tony about the night she went home with a complete stranger on the flimsy promise of a job. She’s certain he would not judge her, not all these years later, but still, she can’t quite bring herself to let him see the desperate broken fool she’d once been.
Description from Amazon UK:
It was the night she almost died.
Newly divorced and feeling a little lost, Jane Trevally agrees to accompany a man she doesn’t know to his house in the darkest corner of Hampstead Heath.
She’s offered a drink. She steps inside.
And then she hears a scream.
Jane runs.
Twenty five years later, Jane finds herself outside the same house, this time to return a dog who’s been found near her home. A dog whose owner has just been reported missing.
A fleeting glimpse of a haunted looking woman through the window sends Jane on a mission to uncover the house’s secrets – secrets more terrifying than she could have ever imagined.
And she can’t stop thinking:
It could have been her . . .
I’ve enjoyed all of Lisa Jewell’s books that I’ve read, so it’s no surprise that this one too is promising to be just as good.
Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!
The optional theme this month, which is Something to Savour. I’m including books that have been on my TBR a long time, some of them are also long books, some very long books. Some of them I’ve had, and still haven’t read, for very many years. I began cataloguing my books in 2007 on LibraryThing, so the books listed for 2007 are books I’d already acquired before then.
These are books that I’d almost forgotten about, some double shelved and so hidden behind others. Some I think I haven’t read as there are so long. The links in the titles of each book go to Amazon UK.
On an ill-fated art expedition of the Southern Shan State in Burma, eleven Americans leave their Floating Island Resort for a Christmas morning tour – and disappear. Through the twists of fate, curses and just plain human error, they find themselves deep in the Burma jungle, where they encounter a tribe awaiting the return of the leader and the mythical book of wisdom that will protect them from the ravages and destruction of the Myanmar military regime.
High-spirited, witty and passionate, Elizabeth Gaskell wrote some of the most enduring novels of the Victorian age, including Mary Barton, North and South and Wives and Daughters. This biography traces Elizabeth’s youth in rural Knutsford, her married years in the tension-ridden city of Manchester and her wide network of friends in London, Europe and America. Standing as a figure caught up in the religious and political radicalism of nineteenth century Britain, the book looks at how Elizabeth observed, from her Manchester home, the brutal but transforming impact of industry, enjoying a social and family life, but distracted by her need to write down the truth of what she saw.
New York, 1945 – Sara Smythe, a young, beautiful and intelligent woman, ready to make her own way in the big city attends her brothers Thanksgiving Eve party. As the party gets into full swing, in walks Jack Malone, a US Army journalist back from a defeated Germany and a man unlike any Sara has ever met before – one who is destined to change Sara’s future forever.
But finding love isn’t the same as finding happiness – as Sara and Jack soon find out. In post-war America chance meetings aren’t always as they seem, and people’s choices can often have profound repercussions. Sara and Jack find they are subject to forces beyond their control and that their destinies are formed by more than just circumstance. In this world of intrigue and emotional conflict, Sara must fight to survive -against Jack, as much as for him.
In this mesmerising tale of longing and betrayal, The Pursuit of Happiness is a great tragic love story; a tale of divided loyalties, decisive moral choices, and the random workings of destiny.
Roger Dykmans, a university student, is living with his brother Hans, an international emissary who’s secretly working against the Nazis. As time goes by, Roger finds himself increasingly drawn to Magda, Hans’ Jewish wife, and soon they are involved in a passionate love affair. But their secret world is turned upside down when Magda and her young daughter, Anna, are arrested by the Nazis. The Gestapo make a deal with Roger: if he hands over information about Hans’ operations, they’ll set Magda and Anna free. Suddenly, Roger is faced with an impossible decision – should he betray his brother to save the woman they both love?
Spanning decades and continents, The Things We Cherished explores the strength of true love under the worst of circumstances.
In 604 AD, Edwin, the deposed king of Northumbria, seeks refuge at the court of King Raedwald of East Anglia. But Raedwald is urged to kill his guest by Aethelfrith, Edwin’s usurper. As Edwin walks by the shore, alone and at bay, he is confronted by a mysterious figure–the missionary Paulinus– who prophesies that he will become High King of Britain. It is a turning point.
Through battles and astute political alliances Edwin rises to great power, in the process marrying the Kentish princess Aethelburh. As part of the marriage contract the princess is allowed to retain her Christian faith. But, in these times, to be a king is not a recipe for a long life.
This turbulent and tormented period in British history sees the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon settlers who have forced their way on to British shores over previous centuries, arriving first to pillage, then to farm and trade–and to come to terms with the faith of the Celtic tribes they have driven out.
M is for The Master Bedroom by Tessa Hadley – 352 pages, a TBR since 2008.
Kate Flynn has always been a clever girl, brought up to believe in herself as something special. Now Kate is forty-three and has given up her university career in London to come home and look after her mother at Firenze, their big house by a lake in Cardiff. When Kate meets David Roberts, a friend from the old days, she begins to obsess about him: she knows it’s because she’s bored and hasn’t got anything else to do, but she can’t stop.
Adapting to a new way of life, the connections Kate forges in her new home are to have painful consequences, as the past begins to cast its long shadow over the present…
B is for Blood Hunt by Ian Rankin, writing as Jack Harvey – 432 pages, a TBR since 2010
It begins with a phone call. Gordon Reeve’s brother has been found dead in his car in San Diego. The car was locked from the inside, a gun was in his hand. In the US to identify the body Gordon realises that his brother has been murdered. What’s more, it’s soon obvious that his own life is in danger.
Once back in Scotland he finds out his home has been bugged by professionals. But Reeve is a professional too. Ex-SAS, he was half of a two-man unit with someone he came to fear, then to hate. It looks like his nemesis is back…
E is for An Equal Music by Vikram Seth – 496 pages, a TBR since 2013.
A chance sighting on a bus; a letter which should never have been read; a pianist with a secret that touches the heart of her music . . . AN EQUAL MUSIC is a book about love, about the love of a woman lost and found and lost again; it is a book about music and how the love of music can run like a passionate fugue through a life. It is the story of Michael, of Julia, and of the love that binds them.
R is for Ralph’s Party by Lisa Jewell – 368 pages, a TBR before 2007.
Meet the residents of 31 Alamanac Road . . .
Ralph and Smith are flatmates and best mates. Nothing can come between them – until the gorgeous Jemima moves in. They’re both falling for her, but which one of them does Jem want?
Upstairs, Karl and Siobhan are happily unmarried and have been for fifteen years – until Cheri, in the flat above, fixes her sights on Karl. Why should a little problem like his girlfriend get in her way?
Sooner or later it’s all going to come to a head – and what better place for tears and laughter, break ups and make ups than Ralph’s party?
Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.
This week I’m featuring Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell, one of my TBRs that I bought two years ago. It’s a standalone book, first published in 2017.
It begins with a Prologue:
Those months before she disappeared were the best. .
Chapter One begins:
Laurel let herself into her daughter’s flat. It was, even on this relatively bright day, dark and gloomy. The window at the front was overwhelmed by a terrible tangle of wisteria while the other side of the flat was completely overshadowed by the small woodland it backed onto.
Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
Post it.
Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.
Page 57 (page 56 is blank):
Laurel was alone. Her family was broken. There was nothing left. Literally nothing.
Blurb:
She was fifteen, her mother’s golden girl. She had her whole life ahead of her. And then, in the blink of an eye, Ellie was gone.
Ten years on, Laurel has never given up hope of finding Ellie. And then she meets a charming and charismatic stranger who sweeps her off her feet. But what really takes her breath away is when she meets his nine-year-old daughter. Because his daughter is the image of Ellie. Now all those unanswered questions that have haunted Laurel come flooding back.
What really happened to Ellie? And who still has secrets to hide?
Random House UK, Cornerstone| 6 August 2020|407 pages| Kindle review copy via NetGalley
Lisa Jewell is one of my favourite authors and yet I struggled to read Invisible Girl. I struggled to get interested in it at first and at about 25% I nearly gave up. But I can’t give up on a book by a favourite author, so I carried on.
The book description below is what made me want to read it:
It is nearly midnight, and very cold. Yet in this dark place of long grass and tall trees where cats hunt and foxes shriek, a girl is waiting…
WhenSaffyre Maddox was ten something terrible happened and she’s carried the pain of it around with her ever since. The man who she thought was going to heal her didn’t, and now she hides from him, invisible in the shadows, learning his secrets; secrets she could use to blow his safe, cosy world apart.
Owen Pick is invisible too. He’s thirty-three years old and he’s never had a girlfriend, he’s never even had a friend. Nobody sees him. Nobody cares about him. But when Saffyre Maddox disappears from opposite his house on Valentine’s night, suddenly the whole world is looking at him. Accusing him. Holding him responsible. Because he’s just the type, isn’t he? A bit creepy?
I struggled because it is slow-going, the narrative jumps around between Saffyre, Owen and Cate (the long suffering wife of Roan, a child psychologist) and also between the present and the past tenses. I was never really sure where the story was going.
The blurb tells you the the bare bones of the plot. It’s a mystery revolving around secrets – what was the terrible thing that happened to Saffyre, what are the characters hiding, why does everybody shun Owen and are they all unreliable narrators? I was never really sure and didn’t trust any of them. It certainly doesn’t hold back on some of the most unsavoury aspects of life – sexual harassment, abuse, self-harm, in-celibates, on-line forums and so on. It’s the slow pace that made it drag for me and lessened any sense of tension about what was going to happen. All is explained by the end – apart, that is, from one final thread that is left hanging.
Lisa Jewell’s Acknowledgements are interesting, in that she explains how she writes. Until she has finished a book she writes it is ‘just me and my (three) typing fingers and my weird imaginary world.’ She doesn’t do research because it puts her off her stride and she doesn’t like editorial input when she is writing. But when she has finished then, as she describes it, all these magical people appear and fix her imaginary world. Of course, then she thanks all those people, her editors, sales and marketing and publicity teams.
Her methods have worked enormously well in all the other books of hers that I’ve read and I’ve been enthralled, mystified and captivated by them – but just not this one, I’m sorry to say.
My thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for my copy and I wish I could have been more engaged and enthusiastic about this book.
Random House UK Cornerstone|8 August 2019|464 pages|e-book |Review copy|5*
Description:
In a large house in London’s fashionable Chelsea, a baby is awake in her cot. Well-fed and cared for, she is happily waiting for someone to pick her up.
In the kitchen lie three decomposing corpses. Close to them is a hastily scrawled note.
They’ve been dead for several days.
Who has been looking after the baby?
And where did they go?
Just like the other books by Lisa Jewell that I’ve read The Family Upstairs is totally absorbing and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s full of suspense and drama and is very dark indeed.
It’s a complex novel told alternately from three of the characters’ perspectives, Henry, Lucy and Libby, spanning over 25 years, telling the story of two families, who together combined make one completely dysfunctional family, living in 16 Cheyne Walk, London. The house is dark, mysterious and steeped in a malevolent atmosphere, with panelled walls, locked rooms, a secret staircase and a full-size cannon in the front garden. And within its walls the family lived in fear, locked away from the outside world, dominated by a megalomaniac.
At first little is clear, the reader is left to work out the characters’ relationships and wonder about why the baby is found, healthy and well cared for in a cot upstairs, whilst the rest of the house is empty apart from three dead and decomposing bodies lying on the floor below. Next to the bodies a note indicates they committed suicide and asking that the baby, Serenity, who was ten months old would go to ‘nice people’. There were signs that other people had occupied the house, wardrobe doors were flung open, food was found in the fridge, books left lying open on the floor and crockery left in the cupboards. But who they were and why they left was a mystery.
And so the whole story gradually unfolds with many twists and turns as layers of secrets and lies are revealed. It’s complicated but very readable, and completely compelling. And it ends on a seemingly innocent question that I found distinctly chilling.
Many thanks to Random House UK Cornerstone for an e-book review copy via NetGalley
After I’d enjoyed reading Watching You by Lisa Jewell so much I looked for more of her books to read and borrowed I Found You from my local library.
Blurb:
Surrey: Lily Monrose has only been married for three weeks. When her new husband fails to come home from work one night she is left stranded in a new country where she knows no one.
East Yorkshire: Alice Lake finds a man on the beach outside her house. He has no name, no jacket, no idea what he is doing there. Against her better judgement she invites him in to her home.
But who is he, and how can she trust a man who has lost his memory?
My thoughts:
I Found You plunged me straight away into the mystery of the identity of the man Alice Lake found sitting on the beach at Ridinghouse Bay (a fictional seaside resort) in the pouring rain. He can’t remember who he is, or how or why he is sitting there. And, of course, I thought he must be Lily Monrose’s husband, Carl who has gone missing. These two strands of the story are written in the present tense. They alternate with another strand written in the past tense about events that took place 22 years earlier when a family of four, teenagers Kirsty and Gray, with their parents, are spending their summer holiday in Rabbit Cottage, a former coastguard’s cottage. That holiday changed all their lives.
One of the things I liked about this novel is its strong sense of place. Ridinghouse Bay is a small seaside town with the usual attractions for holidaymakers – a pub, a seafood restaurant, cafe, a beach bar and a fairground . And there is a map showing all the locations around the Bay.
Alice’s cottage is tiny, an old coastguard’s cottage built over three hundred years ago.
Beyond her window, between Victorian street lights, a string of sun-faded bunting swings back and forth in the boisterous April wind. To the left there is a slipway where small fishing boats form a colourful spine down to a concrete jetty and where the great dreadful froth of the North Sea hits the rocky shoreline. And beyond that the sea. Black and infinite. (page 2)
Alice is a bit eccentric, a generous and kind-hearted woman, living on her own with her four children and three dogs. The cottage is too small for her family, cramped, with low ceilings that slope and bulge, but she invites the man in to stay in the studio/shed in her back yard which is where she makes art from old maps to sell on the internet. The children decide to call him ‘Frank’ and she tries to help him remember what had happened to him. Then Frank begins to have flashbacks and thinks he may have killed someone.
Lily, meanwhile is trying to find Carl. They had met and married in the Ukraine and although she has spoken to his mother on the phone she has never met her. The police tell her his passport is a fake and his mother isn’t answering her phone, but she finds her address and goes to see her. But the house is empty.
I read this quickly, it’s very readable. The characters are realistically drawn with depth – and the puzzle about Frank’s identity kept me guessing. It’s not as clear-cut as it first appeared and I kept changing my mind as I read on. It certainly isn’t the ‘cosy’ mystery, that the opening pages seem to indicate, but it is a story that me gripped as the tension rose to a dramatic and violent climax.
I’ll certainly be looking out for more of Lisa Jewell’s books to read.
There will be a new Lisa Jewell novel – The Family Upstairs which is out on 25 July. Her earlier books are:
Ralph’s Party (1999) Thirtynothing (2000) One-hit Wonder (2001) A Friend of the Family (2003) Vince and Joy (2005) 31 Dream Street (2007) The Truth About Melody Browne (2009) After the Party (2010) The Making of Us (2011) Before I Met You (2012) The House We Grew Up In (2012) The Third Wife (2012) The Girls (2015) aka The Girls in the Garden I Found You (2016) Then She Was Gone (2017) Watching You (2018)
BooksPlease 