A Throne Of Swans by Katherine Corr and Elizabeth Corr

          This novel has all the usual Fantasy elements that you have come to expect and exists in an almost Medieval world, again pretty much expected of the genre.  Somehow this novel felt fresh and exciting to read and even though the familiar plotlines are scattered throughout there was just something special about the sum of the parts.  It is clear that the authors have thoroughly planned their world and even if their characters then began to take on a life of their of their own the world they populate is so strongly imbued with a sense of "reality" that it grounds the whole novel.

Whilst the sister authors profess that the idea germinated from Swan Lake, the plotline is sufficiently different from the folktale that apart from the odd nod the reader would not have known if we hadn't been told.  Yes, we have a princess of the Cygnus dynasty called Odette but there is no Odile.  Yes, there is the threat of her being turned permanently in to a Swan.  Other than that either I was so absorbed in to the story that I found it difficult to spot other nods or they are exceptionally well hidden.

The main story arc follows Aderyn of Atratys and picks up after the murder of her mother 6 years prior to the start of the story which starts with the death of her father.  All nobles must be able to shift in to their bird form but since the attack that killed her mother she has been unable to transform.  Thrust in to the position of Protector of Atratys Aderyn is caught between a rock and a hard place as she must travel to the Silver Citadel to pay homage to her Uncle, the King.

Full of courtly intrigue and a real sense of being out of your depth, Aderyn proves to be a wonderful narrator.  The Citadel pulses with life under her descriptions and her blundering first experiences of Courtly etiquette really bring the character to life.  Initially I did wonder how she was going to develop from seeming a pathetic, lost character to being the protagonist but her growth is natural and wonderfully handled.

With a host of supporting characters that are as wonderfully drawn as Aderyn this book really does draw the reader in.  There is a tendency to linger a little too much on internal monologues of despair which I felt unnecessarily slowed the story in places (hence 4 Stars instead of 5). 

There is a little bit of everything thrown in to the mix - social commentary (particularly the treatment of the Flightless by the Nobles), family ties, friendship, romance and the way that duty dictates the way your life is lived.  Mainly though it is a book about intrigue and shifting allegiances.  Fortunately it is pitched in such a way that as events unfold nothing feels overdone or unbelievable within the context of this ethereal world.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this book and I am very definitely looking forward to the next installment.  Forget the YA designation, if you are a fan of Fantasy books then this one will hit the spot nicely - actually, if you are a fan of Historical Fiction then it pretty much works as well.

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

Nothing Ever Happens Here by Sarah Hagger-Holt

First things first, I am way older than the target demographic for this book.  To be honest it really doesn't read like a children's book, it just reads like a very good story that happens to have a 12 year old as it's protagonist.  I will readily admit that I thoroughly enjoyed this story and following Izzy through one school term when her private life becomes very, very public.

The subject matter itself is a very sensitive one.  Being transgender and admitting it to yourself is difficult enough but then to have to admit to loved ones that you are not who you appear to be; especially if you are married with children is traumatising.  This story deals more with how it effects just one member of the Palmer family, 12 year old Izzy.  From her confusion about what to call her Dad to how this is going to affect her life it is constructed beautifully on an emotional level.

Yes, the issues are dumbed down to neat little soundbites and the familial disruption is kept to a minimum so that the author can make the subject matter suitable for a young audience.  Whilst there is a lot of simplification the main issues, as Izzy sees them, are addressed and the importance of a support network for all the family is stressed.  The bullying and ostracism Izzy feels at school are well drawn but their resolution feels too convenient and clear cut somehow and left me feeling a little cheated out of the harsher realities of school life and I didn't feel they were really representative of how spiteful school children are when they sense even the tiniest difference.

However, this is a wonderfully positive book about difference and being yourself.  The friendships within it, within and outside the family, are realistically drawn and I can see it being easy for a female audience in that Tween age bracket recognising Izzy's life in their own.  It also sets the scene for some important dialogue with children about not only LGBTQ+ issues but about life in general and the horrors that school can throw at you.  Best of all it is fun to read and the author knows how to get a character across on the page so that you genuinely care about what happens to them and are keen to keep reading.

I would recommend reading this through before giving it to your child to read as they WILL have further questions and a knowledge of the text will help you know where to pitch the replies.

I would love to see a YA novel or even an adult novel from this author dealing with the same subject - heck, you could even use the same family as Megan is 16 so would be a great foil for the YA protagonist and the adult book could be told from either the mum or the dad's perspective.

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

Welcome To New York by Luana Ferraz

As much as I usually enjoy this particular genre of story I became bogged down in this one and found it quite hard to finish. When Harry and Alana meet at the Green Leaf coffee shop it is your standard rom-com meet cute; nothing wrong with that it is a tried and tested device in both films and novels for a reason. It also allows us to explore why both characters are so determined to keep everybody else out of their business and what secrets they're hiding. So far so good.

Unfortunately, they couple up incredibly quickly and a good two thirds of the book are spent after they get together. Whilst this is not territory usually explored by the genre - we usually leave our protagonists after they admit their love for each other - I was willing to give it a go. The problem is that both characters are hiding things from the other and by the time they had visited Alana's family for the Holidays I found I was really not that interested in either character; they were simply words on the page and just not fully fleshed enough. I can't even remember if it was Thanksgiving or Christmas they went for, that's how bored I'd gotten of it by this point.

I also found the side stories of Harry wanting to set up a Tea Shop and Alana wanting to break on to Broadway very loose. All the time spent with both character's speculating on their future just felt like empty space.

None of which was helped by the fact I never actually felt like I was in New York or even in Oxford, there is no sense of place and really the story could have happened anywhere. Bit of a problem when the title leans so heavily on the location. It just felt like the author was writing about places she had no experience of and used a little bit of online searching to get a generalised touristic overview of the locales she wanted to use.

One of my biggest issues with this book was the language used within it's pages. I note the author is Brazilian and appreciate that English is, at best, her second language and that the book has not been translated from Portugese to English but written in English by the author herself. For this she is to be commended as I certainly could not hope to write even the most of sentences in anything but my mother tongue. However, it does lead to some interesting to some interesting word choices - commemoration instead of celebration. Unfortunately, the word "in" is consistently used in place of "on" and it such a glaring error that it began to take over the book for me. This really spoilt the book for me as it meant that I was constantly being jolted out of the story by grammatical mistakes and also by having to figure out what word was actually meant to be used. The book would have maybe, only maybe, received one more star from me had it been proof read by a native English speaker who could have corrected these mistakes.

Oh and giving Harry's brother William (explained by their mother being somewhat of a Royalist so I could let that one slide) a wife called Kate. Honestly?!?

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

White Truffles In Winter by N.M. Kelby

The most frustrating thing about this book was that it started strongly with the first couple of chapters drawing me in and ended strongly with the last two or three chapters being quite engrossing.  Regrettably, the 200 hundred odd pages inbetween just didn't cut it at it all.  Whilst the writing of a novel that takes a real person, of greater or lesser fame, and then weaves a story around them has lots of pit falls it can fall in to the easiest one to avoid is boring the reader.  I found this book inestimably boring.

The strongest sections of the book deal with Escoffier's relationship with his wife and also his rather dubious business dealings.  Slotted around this are ramblings about Sarah Bernhardt and his relationship with other famous people.  None of which ultimately lead anywhere or really add anything to the tale.  Throw in generous handfuls of culinary talk and the bemoaning of any language or way of cooking but French and it becomes tedious.  It isn't helped by their being no real timeline structure to the tale, the chapters feel like they have been thrown together in a random order as the story jumps from the present (approximately 1939) to any point in Escoffier's long life the author cares to take us.

Whilst Escoffier was undoubtedly a very talented chef and he certainly revolutionised the presentation of a menu in this book he comes across as boorish.  The man himself may well have been but this is a fictionalised account and no attempt has been made to gussie him up in to an empathetic character.  His wife, Delphine, gets quite a bit of page space but she never becomes a person on the page instead seeming to act as a foil for the author to show us another tiresome aspect of the chef.

Sadly, I could not wait to finish this book as I was determined not to leave it unfinished but I really did not enjoy vast swathes of prose.  At the end of the reading I was just relieved that it was done.

THIS IS AN HONEST REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK SUPPLIED COURTESY OF THE PUBLISHER VIA AMAZON.

The Last 12 Months

Well 2019 was definitely a year of ups and downs.  At least my reading didn't suffer (only 36 books less than 2018!) and after all, it is about quality more than quantity (although I do seem to be getting generally harder to impress).

Got to love Goodreads making it easy for me to keep track and I have a nasty habit of scrolling through my Year In Books on a regular basis.

I have found myself becoming tougher in my reviews and I have finally managed to stop myself from apologising for not liking a book.  Whilst I can appreciate how tough it is to get a book published or having the self-belief to even sit down and try to write one I am finally getting my head around the fact that my review is not going to make or break a book's sales and that ultimately I am not going to sway the opinion of a fellow Book Worm.  Yes, it might hurt the Author's feelings when I don't like something but the same is true of the appreciation of any artistic field; it is too personal an experience for both the creator and their audience to be without emotional cost.

Here's hoping that not only will I read plenty of good books in 2020 (hopefully some fantastic ones too) but that I will keep up the reviewing and not fall 12 or 15 books behind as I did on the regular in 2019.

One Christmas Kiss In Notting Hill by Mandy Baggot

One saving grace for this book is that it acknowledges that it has it's roots in the Richard Curtis Rom-Com Notting Hill.  After all all Isla and Hannah want is that perfect Kiss; that perfect Notting Hill Kiss - so you need the little locked resident's park, the will-they-won't-they romance, the tragic car accident that leaves one of the characters paralysed and in a wheelchair.  It even goes so far as to feature a plaster statue of Hugh Grant, presumably as William Thacker.  Nothing inherently wrong with a tribute, especially when it wears it so boldly on it's sleeve, especially as it manages to avoid using the "I'm just a girl" speech (but I did spend the latter half of the book waiting for it to make an appearance).

It was a cosy enough read but brought nothing unexpected within it's pages.  Girl (Isla) meets American boy (Chase) and both bring a lot of personal baggage to the story.  They dance around each other for a bit and go through the usual misunderstandings before realising that they are "meant to be".  Throw in a disabled, but positive and effervescent, sister and teenage daughter that never steps outside stereotype (grumpy, absorbed in technology and disparaging of her younger sibling and parents) and it is pretty standard fare.

Whilst the read was enjoyable enough I never felt invested in the story.  In fact some of it stretched plausibility of plot way too thin (you can't just "plant" artifacts and have the construction company assume they found treasure trove or an early settlement is one of many) and did bring enjoyment to an abrupt halt.  On the whole the plot needed to be set well side as it is paper thin and, for this reader anyway, bordering on the annoying.  The characters though are a different matter, they are richly written (on the whole) and do have just enough believability to keep your interest.  I did like that they were allowed to have vulnerabilities and could self-sabotage so nobody was "perfect" in the way they are often drawn in this genre.

The best that I could really say about this book is that I didn't feel like my time was wasted in reading it.  I did enjoy my time in this fantasy world but it wasn't without it's frustrations and annoyances.  I did take away the phrase Sugar. Honey. Ice Tea from it though as that amused me far more than is seemly.

Gravity Is The Thing by Jaclyn Moriarty

          3.5 Stars

The writing is bitty and disjointed.  A sentence truncated before it's meaning is passed on; a chapter of two lines and then one of ten pages.  The tale itself wandering backwards and forwards in half finished thoughts and thoughts that are extrapolated far beyond their worth.  All this to accurately reflect the thoughts passing through the mind of our narrator, Abigail.

Whilst I could understand what the author was trying to achieve here I did find that it began to irritate me, it all felt a little pretentious somehow.  Not deliberately so but almost as though the artifice of it all was peeking slyly at you in the blank spaces of the book and there is a lot of blank space; true there are many pages and many words to fill those pages but most of all there is space.  The space of what Abigail does not communicate and the strange space of what feels like over-sharing.

After reading the first 100 pages in one fell swoop when I picked the book up I found I was disinclined to continue.  The whole idea of The Guidebook and then the retreat just didn't hold my interest for any length of time.  When Part One was complete I wasn't sure if I really wanted to know what happened next, or if anything did - Spoiler Alert - nothing really happens except lives get lived.  It took me 11 days to decide to pick the book back up and finish it.

The plus points for me were the narrator's voice, it did seem to accurately represent a genuine person with all the seeming contradictions inherent in having a personality.  I just didn't particularly like the person that was telling the story to me.  The dichotomy of everything being her fault but that it was all somehow down to the Universe at the same time began to wear thin after a while.  I did enjoy her relationship with her 5 year old son but felt that Oscar was never a person in his own right to her, he was merely an extension of Abigail and her experiences.

It is cleverly written and I understand the whole "trying to understand why we are here and what we are doing and how can we make it better for ourselves, our loved ones and for the whole of humanity" BUT it just didn't do it for me.  There was too much sleight of hand involved here and it was front and centre and not disguised in any way.  I prefer a little disingenuity in my writing, enough so that I can take the character's hands and step in to their world for a little while.

I didn't hate it and some sections I actively enjoyed, there was just something missing for me.  Maybe it is the constant "not good enough" mantra that pervades Abigail's life and her search for that perfect state of being that put the final "meh" in to the book or it could just be this is one to file under "s'okay".  It did get an extra 0.5 stars for being daring in the writing style and presentation and allowing bitty and choppy to be used to show internal thoughts.

THIS IS AN HONEST AND UNBIASED REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE NOVEL RECEIVED VIA READERS FIRST.