This Green And Pleasant Land by Ayisha Malik

          This is a book with so many levels that really one read through probably hasn't done it justice.  It is complex and multi-faceted and you find yourself drawn thoroughly in to this world that Ms Malik has created for us.  A world that is strangely familiar but manages to feel like it is one that only ever existed in the imagination, a place of nostalgia and of comfort but a place that only ever appeared in stories.  A Little England that our collective consciousness recognises and yearns for but that has never had a real place on the planet but that we have a faith that it existed and could exist if we only knew how to get there - a nirvana of English properness, old-fashioned but modern, full of upright propriety but truly inclusive and welcoming.

The strange thing about the book is not that the author can see both sides; it is her tale, her characters and they dictate their own behaviours.  It is that she can make the reader see both sides.  I found myself variously empathising with the pro-Mosque faction and then realising that the anti-Mosque faction had valid points too.  Personally speaking I have no Faith and have religion-based issues but to each their own and if it gives you happiness, hurts nobody and brings your soul peace then for goodness sake do it.  Somehow this seemed to be a message through the book too - live and let live, do the best you can and be the you that gives you contentment and peace.

On the face of it this book is about a small English Village that has accepted a Muslim couple in to their fold.  Bilal and Mariam with their son Haaris may be the only three brown faces in the village but they are included, they belong.  That is until Bilal's mother asks him to build a Mosque with her dying breath.  Suddenly their whole world changes, worse the whole village changes as it begins to fracture against change - some standing with Bilal, others opposing him.  At first I felt a sinking in my heart about this but as the plot develops and you realise how intricate each character is, their own personal back stories you can't help but be enchanted.

Shelley is the archetype of the Village busybody.  She runs the local Village Committee with the same iron fist she ran her school.  Her views are clearly delineated and she sees no need to change.  Then you slowly realise that her life is empty without the Village, her marriage is moribund and she is deeply, deeply lonely. 

Richard is the local Vicar who has a sure and certain Faith.  His Faith though isn't enough, personally he is all at sea and still searching for his niche, even after 15 years at the local church he isn't sure where he fits.  He has not lived up to his own expectations and now he is experiencing feelings, feelings that disturb him and leave him wondering how he should live.

Bilal is stuck, stuck between a Faith he isn't really a part of but is strangely defined by.  Stuck with a stomach ulcer that plagues him.  Stuck in the grief of a lost mother.  Stuck with a Khala who is now his responsibility.  Stuck between doing what he promised and stuck not knowing what is right.  Even worse he feels stuck in a marriage that is unravelling.

As the story unfolds it is Khala Rukhsana who is the catalyst for change.  Who through her simple devotion to Allah.  Her trust in Kismet.  Her ability to let people just be.  It is she who helps the village to reset, to admit their personal failings and move towards a better life.  Khala Rukhsana is the touchstone of the book, a truly beneficent soul who asks little of others but that they just slow down and accept life and themselves.

I could go on and on about the intricate relationships, the intricate personalities in the book but that would take another 450 pages and I am sure a review should not be as long as the book.  This Green And Pleasant Land urges you to look at yourself and to ditch your preconceptions about others and about yourself.  It urges you to really look around you and to look closely at those you see every day and to realise that they are a person too.

Even if you only surface read the book and take it all at face value it is a wonderful story that sucks you in until you realise hours have passed whilst you wandered the Village Green and dodged Tom's Red Robin Bush, maybe even whilst you popped in to The Ox for a refreshing drink or several.  Although you will find it hard not be sucked in to the subtler undercurrents and undertows.

A wonderful read that I was sad to complete.

THIS IS AN HONEST REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK RECEIVED FROM READERS FIRST
       

The Witch's Tower by Tamara Grantham

I usually enjoy a good twist on a Faery Tale but somehow this one just fell consistently short of the mark for me.  It may not have been helped by the fact that the story of Rapunzel was never one of my favourites or it may just have been that it seemed to be based on the more sanitised version of the tale peddled by Disney (Tangled is an awesome movie though!).

Somehow I never felt a sense of the world that Gothel and Rapunzel existed in.  It was all too fractured and disparate with no real meat on the bones of the places.  There are forests and desert lands and even icy mountains to contend with but they don't come alive in your imagination as you read, they remain on the page.  This may be because little description is given to them - this can help your imagination spark and create the lands for yourself or it can leave you feeling that you have no knowledge of the place our characters inhabit.  Unfortunately, for this reader, I found it to be the latter.

We then have a range of characters that we are introduced to.  Gothel who is guarding Rapunzel as penance for her mother's curse that put her in the tower.  Raj who was the Princes' squire, the Prince who is now trapped under the same spell in the tower because his heart is not pure enough to save Rapunzel.  Together they must go on a quest to get the one thing that cut Rapunzel's hair and so break the spell.  As is the nature of quests they will somehow manage to draw together a motley band who help them - in this case a dwarf cursed to shape shift to a wolf (yes, THAT dwarf - we all know his name even if he doesn't), a dark elf who plays a fine lute but would rather get drunk and a mysterious maiden who becomes a fire breathing dragon thanks to a curse.

You know, writing it all out like that makes it sound quite fun and enjoyable.

Sadly, it really wasn't.  I never got to really know the characters as they all seem two dimensional at best.  Gothel in particular drove me to distraction and as the bulk of the book is about her and told from her perspective you can see the problem.

Strangely, this is one case where I think a few more pages would have benefitted the story.  Give it more room to breathe, more room to help the reader picture the exotic fairyland locales  It would have also allowed the motley crew to have a little more camp fire downtime on their quest and so given them the chance to get a personality going on the page.  Instead of they were here and then they were at this stop on their journey and then they sleep under the stars and then they are here.  It really is moving from one set piece to another.

By the time they got to the Ice Mountains and we finally meet Gothel's evil aunts I will admit I was just reading to finish the book.  There are no real surprises to be found in the ending either - everything falls in to place as you expected it to from the start.  Not necessarily a bad thing but unfortunately the getting there was, and I don't like saying this, boring.

Not one for me, which is a real shame as the genre itself is usually so good.

One Last Greek Summer by Mandy Baggott

What would it be like to be 21 again?  The last ten years of your life wiped away, no more responsibility just that wonderful fortnight you spent in the sun with your best friend.  Too much drink, watching the stars come out over the beach and still being awake to watch the sun rise over it, dancing all night inbetween.  Ah the pure hedonism of the 21 year old on holiday.  A bit different when you are 31 but visiting Corfu again gives Beth and Heidi the chance to revisit that period of their lives and Heidi is determined that they are both going to be 21 Again for these two weeks.

The story starts fairly unconventionally with a divorce party.  It is supposed to be a surprise for Beth but she is watching the preparations from her office whilst trying to hide.  The problem being that the man she is getting divorced from is the owner of the company - fortunately he is away on business so the workforce feel safe celebrating.  From there it meanders through a couple of chapters as Heidi tries to convince Beth to just go for it and celebrate the divorce by rekindling their last holiday in Corfu.  Eventually convinced they head to head to the island together and Beth can only think of two things - how to get her stubborn wedding ring off and the holiday romance she had with Lex the last time they were there.

The book reads like a love letter to Corfu.  The author clearly loves the island and takes you to several beauty spots as the women while away their days in the heat of a blue, blue sky.  The food is rhapsodised about alongside the white beaches and cool forests.  Throw in some boisterous nightlife and quiet tavernas and it is the perfect holiday location.  Honestly, the Corfu Tourist Board should have Ms Baggott on commission.

Initially I really adored Beth.  She comes across as brutally honest about herself and has no qualms admitting (to herself at least) that hers was never more than a marriage of convenience and that love never entered the equation.  Charles could make her terminally ill mothers last years so much more comfortable and was happy to do so.  That was enough for Beth then, but now she almost resents him for it.  As the book progresses she began to irritate me a little bit and I felt like I wanted to grab her shoulders and give her a good shake.  Despite her initial signs of being fairly settled about who she is soon becomes apparent that the only thing she is honest about are her feelings towards Charles and that this strength does not hang over in to other areas of her life.  I think it is this ditheriness that began to grate.

We also get to spend some time with Alekos, a native to Corfu and trying desperately to achieve his dreams whilst holding the family together.  His mother Margalo is depicted as a controlling harridan and is deeply unpleasant.  She was perhaps the worst character in the whole book as she has no depth and is just this virago who feigns illness to keep her son tethered to their small farm.  Alekos has other plans though and is hoping that with his cousin Elektra and some Kumquats he can break free.

It doesn't take long before Beth and Heidi's holiday world collides with Alekos and Elektra's and, unfortunately, once it does you know exactly how things are going to turn out.  There are some misunderstandings, collapsing ceilings and dance floor hijinks before you finally get there but yes, you were right about the ultimate destination.  Then again, when you pick up this genre you do so in the true and certain knowledge that everything is going to work out, you just want the fun of getting there.

To be entirely honest I would have probably enjoyed this book far more if I had been on holiday and not trying to squeeze it in around 12 hour work shifts.  For me this is not a full 4 Star book, it is more a 3.75 but, for once, I rounded up.

THIS IS AN HONEST AND UNBIASED REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK RECEIVED VIA THE PIGEONHOLE.

The One That Got Away by Annabel Kantaria

This is a fairly solid book that starts off really well.  Stella and George meet up at their school 15 year year reunion and events begin to spiral beyond their control.  You see they were childhood best friends, that then morphed in to so much more and then George, George decided that Stella wasn't enough for him and left her in the lurch for one of the popular girls, Ness.  Somehow Stella is still alone and George is married to Ness, both of our main protagonists though are very successful business people and have made their own impressions on the world.  Neither of them really needs the other but this is about want and not need.

Part One of the book works really well.  The push and pull between Stella and George; each of them being given the space to explain their side of the story and lay bear their obsessions.  The voices are nicely distinct but I couldn't help but feel that George was somehow lacking on the page and that we never really get to know him in the way we know Stella.  By the end of the first section, moving through the tension of will/they won't they cave in and have an affair, will they both throw caution to the wind and break George's marriage for a legitimate relationship of their own, I was thoroughly hooked.

Unfortunately we then get in to Part Two and it becomes all a little bit too predictable and there is no doubt about what is happening between George and Stella.  Virtually from the very start of this section the reader knows exactly where this is going and how it is going to play out.  Even worse, for me, I felt that there were strong links to Gone Girl in Parts Two and Three - right down to a diary that is not what it seems. 

The third and final part is just bizarre.  Sure enough the characters get what is coming to them and the peripheral bunch of characters that populate the village get the wrong end of the stick.  Then, instead of a nice tidy ending the author decides that what it really needs is the twist of retrograde amnesia.  It left me wanting to bash my head on the wall hoping that I could wipe that out of my own brain.

As a whole it starts strongly and deteriorates throughout the telling until, by the end, you agree with George and Stella - it just all needs to end.  Maybe if it hadn't been made so clear to the reader what was happening in the George/Stella relationship it would have been a much better read, it was just a little too transparent on the plot for me.

The Last Week Of May by Roisin Meaney

I will have to be really careful about what I say about this book, it will be so easy to give the events of this one week in a small Irish town away.  Considering the time frame and relative size of the location where we are transported by the Author an awful lot happens to a large range of people.  That is the real beauty of the story, the various people that litter it's pages.

May has a rather eccentric outlook on life these days, rather than follow the usual career path she has decided that life is too short so she hires herself as a Jill of All Trades and she loves it.  This also means that she is our link between the disparate bunch of characters we meet; they are either, friends, family, neighbours or her clients.  It is a simple enough device but it is used to great effect in this book.

I was going to list the other range of characters but found that I could not really mention any of them without giving away a little bit of the plot.  Considering this is really a book about people it is very strong on plot and each person's personality is an intrinsic part of the plot.  Very deft writing that I found completely sucked me in.  The only issue I had with it was some of the coincidences were just a little too much for believability and the travelling necklace was a bit of a bone of contention as well - I felt that it was overplayed just a little.

Although only split in to 7 distinct chapters - one for each day of the week - each chapter is split in to multiple smaller tales, each giving a view in to one character's current situation throughout the day.  Told more or less chronologically you do find yourself jumping between some characters multiple times during that chapter.  By keeping to a more or less third person telling of the tale you never feel at a loss as to who is the focus of this particular section, which was a relief as with such a wide ranging cast of characters it could have been a disaster.

The stories told deal with aging, homophobia, adultery, domestic violence, the search for love, mother love and, above all, friendship.  Beautifully told and completely engaging I can heartily recommend this read.

The Missing Years by Lexie Elliott

          The basic premise of the book is that Ailsa Calder is left her mother's half of her former childhood home, a remote Scottish Manse.  This leads her to reminiscences of her father who has been missing since she was 7 and to reconnect with her half sister Carrie.  It also gives her time to pause and consider her role as a field news producer and her subsequent relationship with a much older broadcast journalist.

Slotted in to the Crime and Mystery genre by the publishers, you do start to wonder where either of those fit in.  Is it the mystery of her father's death?  Is it the crime of the diamonds that went missing with him?  Certainly her father, Martin Calder, plays a large part in the book despite being missing.  Each chapter is preceeded by a short paragraph detailing what Ailsa thinks he might be up to, where he might have vanished to and very much hinging on the fact that he is alive.  Then, as events at The Manse start to catch up with her the thoughts become darker as she presumes he has met his death in a multitude of countries, in a multitude of ways.

Then you have The Manse itself, the house is very definitely set up as being a character in it's own right.  Initially this works well.  From Ailsa and Carrie's arrival at the property and the claustrophobia Ailsa feels, despite the sheer size of the property.  Unfortunately, the early tension is dissipated by the glacial pace of the story.  There is a constant rehashing of how Ailsa feels watched and unsafe in the house, how she can't sleep, how things happen but she is not sure if she is imagining them or if they are real.

I really struggled with this book as nothing really happens that draws you in to the story or the characters.  Ailsa herself is pretty much moribund and whiny, Carrie is flighty and never really exposes herself to the reader.  Even worse you then have the friendly neighbour who intrudes on their first night and his bizarre sister.  A range of stereotypical villagers who are either super friendly or completely antagonistic to the sisters.  The biggest issue is that it treads water for around 300 pages and then everything rushes to an ending that is, not to put too fine a point on it, ludicrous.

It turns out that there are lots of little crimes revealed in the book, there are some mysterys that get answered, and some that don't.  However, the main thrust of the book seems to be trying to unsettle the reader and give the impression that The Manse is somehow sentient.  I'm not entirely sure what the author was going for with the tale but it falls through so many gaps of genre and disappears down it's own plot holes frequently that it is pretty much unreadable in it's current format.  There is a good story battling to get out but page count seems to have triumphed and resulted in a book twice the length it needed to be to really ratchet up tension and involve the reader.

THIS IS AN HONEST REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK RECEIVED FROM READERS FIRST.
       

The Night Raven by Sarah Painter

This book just didn't seem to ever really settle in to any sort of flow; even when it ended I still felt like I was settling in to the locations and the characters and getting my head around the overall premise.  The central disappearance of a Crow family member merely serves to introduce us to Lydia's family and, by extension, some of the other London powerful 4 and never really acts as more than a manipulation of the reader to introduce us to Crow family lore and the Fox clan.  It provides the opportunity to reveal the historical "facts" of the Crows but never really works as its own situation.  There is no jeopardy associated with Madeleine's disappearance at all and, as a reader, I never really much cared about the whys, wherefores or if she was living or dead.

Then again, I found that I wasn't really invested in any of the characters.  Lydia is pretty much meh on the page and I still don't feel that I know much about her other than she is easily manipulated, can communicate with willing spirits, has been kept on the outskirts of the Family and wants to be a Private Investigator.  Sounds like a lot I suppose but these are all superficial things in getting to know a character, as to her personality and what drives her I have no real idea - apart from caffeine, she does like her caffeinated beverages.

I found it frustrating to read as the bare bones of a good tale are all there, they just never really get fleshed out in this first book; so much so that I do wonder if the 2 books in this series were intended to be one longer work and the publishing house hacked them in to 2 or the author was failing to meet deadline so it was forced as a compromise.  This is a shame as an Urban Fantasy there is so much potential here and I would happily read the second book in the hope that the world is expanded more and that I actually start getting to know Lydia.