Mari’s Book Club

This review tries to cover the latest two books I’ve read recently: Where are the Grown-ups and Unsettled. They’re very much not a pair, so don’t expect one to cover both memoir and the challenges of change… Interestingly, I love both these books – which are very different– but disagreed with a great deal of… Read More

It’s a really personal choice: why we read, what we read, and when… Reading the Amazon reviews, I was struck by the number of readers who  said they ‘couldn’t engage with the characters’  Or that ‘the characters all do far too much overthinking,’  or ‘talk too much the same’ or ‘are too articulate about their… Read More

Here’s a relaxing read for any of us who have enjoyed school stories or even wondered how, if not given to the National trust, a stately home can occupy its retirement years. Debbie Young (Author of the Sophie Sayers cosy mysteries) has now created a girls’ private boarding school just a mile or two down… Read More

I have enjoyed this warmly told story about a struggling psychologist’s journey towards his own healing through taking on the case of a ‘selective mute’ migrant. Each of the two main characters, Dr Mike Lewis and ‘Johnny Two’ have problems of fear and denial reactions to traumatic events, and we follow their parallel journeys towards… Read More

by Philip S. Davies Books to Treasure (2018) Paperbacks £8.99 I’ve just completed reading this author’s Destiny series of novels for Young Adults, featuring Katelin, the reluctant and somewhat rebellious young Queen of Anestra. These second two books, very different from one another, complete the story of how Katelin, having succeeded to the throne on… Read More

This is a long overdue review of a fantastic book by an inspirational author. Rachel Held Evans, born into Southern U.S. evangelicalism, began questioning the ‘givens’ of Biblical faith and lifestyle as she grew into a young adult. Rather than giving in to those in her community who sidelined or justified her concerns about faith… Read More

About the author: Ali Bacon lives near Bristol, where she’s actively involved with the local writing community. She has read her short stories at many literary festivals. I met Ali when we were both reading from our work at the first Hawkesbury Literary Festival (in 2015) and we both hope to be there again this year, reading and… Read More

About the author: Sally Bayley now teaches English at several Oxford colleges … but she grew up in a dreary, dilapidated house on England’s south coast, in a strange dysfunctional family. In this literary memoir, she attributes her  successful escape to the books she read – each of them a ‘classic’ of  its time and… Read More