THREE HOURS PAST MIDNIGHT by Tony Knighton

4 out of 5 stars

On Amazon UK
On Amazon.com
On Goodreads

How I discovered this book: it was submitted to Rosie Amber's Book Review Team, of which I am a member.

Genre: Hard-boiled crime

The Blurb:
  
His last job a disaster, a professional thief teams with an old partner eager for one last score – a safe in the home of a wealthy Philadelphia politician. But they are not the only ones set on the cash. His partner dead and the goods missing, he hunts for his money and the killer to find out that this may have been a job best left undone.


I liked this!  I enjoyed Tony Knighton's writing style, and it's a well-paced, cat-and-mouse page-turner with no unnecessary padding, and plenty of action. 

I felt the author must know the dark streets of Philadelphia well; it's highly atmospheric without being wordy or overly-descriptive.  Telling the story through the eyes of the violent thief anti-hero made me feel far more involved in the story than I might have done had it been told using a third person narrative; even though the thief is ruthless, with little disregard for anyone, I kind of liked him.  That's an art; making the reader like an unlikeable person.  

It's gripping, sharp, not too long, with excellently observed dialogue and convincing secondary characters.  Good job.  My only criticism is the Kindle price, from the point of view of those who might want to buy it; at over £5, it's more expensive than most full-length novels by more established authors.  The publisher might want to have a think about this, as it would be a shame to lose out on potential sales of a highly readable book.  It is available on Kindle Unlimited, though.

How do we discover the books we read?

Some months ago I did a quick count up of all the books I have reviewed on this blog, and did an analysis of how I discovered them.  The results were interesting, from both a reader and a writer's point of view.

I thought I would do another assessment of how I discovered the 99 books I have reviewed during this year only (I do not put all reviews on this blog; if I have little to say, the review might just be a couple of lines on Amazon). 

The results:

Favourite Author

This means I have bought/downloaded at least one other book by this author.  

In other words, a writer whose work I've enjoyed enough to want to read more.

38

Review Submissions

I am a member of Rosie Amber's Review Team; these are the books I have chosen from the list of those submitted to her blog for review.

28

Amazon Browse

Books that I liked the look of, mostly found in 'also boughts'

8

Twitter

Any book that I got to know about by talking to the author on Twitter

14 

Tweet

Bought/downloaded because a passing tweet from an author 

previously unknown to me piqued my interest

1

Book Blog

Chosen after reading a review or other article on a book blog

8

Friend

A friend's recommendation 

1

TV

A book bought because of my interest in a TV show or film

2

Thus, tips for writers.... !!

• Write decent books so that readers want to buy another one!
• Submit to book blogs
• Get books downloaded any way you can so they appear on more 'also boughts'
• Talk to people on social media

😁😁😁😁😁

THE FOREST AND THE FLAMES by Gemma Lawrence @TudorTweep

5 GOLD Stars

On Amazon UK
On Amazon.com
On Goodreads

How I discovered this book: Gemma Lawrence is absolutely my favourite writer of historical fiction, so I buy all her books as soon as they come out, and start reading them as soon as possible.

Genre: historical fiction, 11th century.

This is the second of two books about Matilda, the wife of William the Conqueror, and picks up the story just after the Battle of Hastings.  

I didn't know much about this period of history before; everyone knows of this most famous of historical dates, but I knew nothing about the problems that followed.  In this second book, Gemma Lawrence softens Matilda as she grows older and wiser, but does not attempt to glorify the harshness and brutality of the time, nor the terrible brutality that William forced upon the north of England; it was odd, in a way, to be reading a book in which one is rooting for the adversaries of the protagonists.  Of course the Anglo-Saxons rebelled.  That William had been promised the crown by Edward the Confessor meant little to them.  Matilda was partly English, and made many bold steps to calm the waters and bring about peace in the land.

What I loved about this book was not just the story, but how much I learned about the history of the time; this is no watery piece of fanciful fiction.  Gemma Lawrence shows what the towns, villages and landscape were like, how the people of the 11th century ate, travelled, dressed, cured their ills and lived their day to day lives, which were ruled by the ever-controlling church and its tales of the wrath of its ruler.  I thought, several times, how much more effective a ruler Matilda could have been had she been able to give her time and wealth to the people who needed it, instead of spending so much of both on appeasing this allegedly omnipotent being.

Matilda was an unusual woman of her time, the first to be recognised as a queen of England, and her marriage to William was unusual, too, in that the marriage was a happy one and William was faithful to her; indeed, after her death, he went into a terrible decline and returned to his brutal ways.  Also well documented in this book is his lifelong feud with his eldest son, Robert 'Curt-hose' (love that!).

At the end of the book there are notes about truth versus fiction and what happened to the graves of Matilda and William, and the continuing stories of their children... Gemma Lawrence talks of Matilda's granddaughter, also named Matilda, the daughter of Henry I of England and the first woman to be named as heir to the English throne.  She says she hopes to write her story one day, too; I hope she does.

I loved this book; if you liked the first one, you're in for an even bigger treat.

My Top 25 Books of 2017

I took a long time choosing my favourite 25 out of the just over 100 books I have read this year (not all reviewed on this blog).  Please click the title of the book for my review, which contains Amazon and Goodreads links.  The ratings given to my chosen books range from 4.5* to my rarely given 5 GOLD stars; all come highly recommended.   One writer shows up twice, another four times.

Genres:
Historical Fiction: 10
General contemporary/psychological drama: 6
Thriller: 4
Travel/Memoir/0ther non-fiction: 4
Zombie Apocalypse: 1

Numbers 25-11 are in no particular order.....

Everlasting by Jo Carroll 
Travel Memoir ~ Malawi

A Hundred Tiny Threads by Judith Barrow
Early 20th century family drama

Twisted Memories by Kate L Mary
Zombie Apocalypse

Victims by Joel Hames
Thriller

The Most Dangerous Enemy by Gemma Lawrence 
Book 3 of the Elizabeth of England Chronicles, about Elizabeth 1

Lad by Andrew Webber
Lad Lit

The North Water by Ian McGuire
19th century thriller

Fully Loaded by Blake Crouch
Short stories, mostly crime/thriller

Lion by Saroo Brierley
Memoir, family adventure/drama

Gone: Catastrophe in Paradise by O J Modjeska 
True life 1970s air disaster account

The Heart of the Conqueror by Gemma Lawrence 
Saxon/Norman historical fiction

The King's Mother by Judith Arnopp
Book 3 of The Beaufort Chronicles, about Margaret Beaufort

Faring to France on a Shoe by Val Poore
Travel Memoir

Whispers in the Alders by H A Callum
Coming of Age Drama 

A Tincture of Secrets and Lies by William Savage
18th Century Murder Mystery

 ~ The Top Ten Countdown ~

Shining brightly at Number Ten...

A Shiny Coin for Carol Prentice by Mark Barry
Contemporary revenge drama

Psychologically fascinating at Number Nine:

The Unravelling of Brendan Meeks by Brian Cohn
Contemporary psychological drama

 

Pleasing enough to reach Number Eight:

Pleasing Mr Pepys by Deborah Swift
Based on fact, 17th century drama/mystery.

A modest, unassuming Number Seven:

The Beaufort Woman by Judith Arnopp
Book 2 of The Beaufort Chronicles, about Margaret Beaufort 

Silently cycling along to Number Six:

The Silent Kookaburra by Liza Perrat
Dark 1970s Australian family drama.

First of my Top Five books of 2017 ~ at Number Five:

Strands of My Winding Cloth by Gemma Lawrence
Book 4 of the Elizabeth of England Chronicles, about Elizabeth I.

An outstanding debut at Number Four:

The Unrivalled Transcendence of Willem J Gyle by J D Dixon
Dark drama about a homeless man in Scotland.

Bronze medal: a wonderfully wicked Number Three

Wonders & Wickedness by Carol Hedges
Victorian Murder Mystery

A thrilling silver medallist at Number Two:

Jonah by Carl Rackman
WW2 Naval Thriller

And.... my Number One book of 2017....

Above All Others by Gemma Lawrence
Book 3 of The Lady Anne series, about Anne Boleyn

Thank you, wonderful authors, for many happy hours of reading ~ putting this list together was hard, as there were some I wanted to include that didn't quite make the final cut.  All my reviews have 'labels' at the end, showing author, genre, star rating, etc, and these can be clicked on to find other, similar books.  I hope you will give some of my Top 25 a try.  And if you like them, don't forget to stick a few words on Amazon to say so!

THE KING'S MOTHER by Judith Arnopp @JudithArnopp

5 out of 5 stars

On Amazon UK
On Amazon.com
On Goodreads

How I discovered this book:  I'd read the first two parts in this trilogy, and had been looking forward to the last, to the extent that I'd made a note on my calendar of its release date.

Review: The Beaufort Woman with a link to the review for The Beaufort Bride.

Genre: Historical fiction.

'All England for her death had cause of weeping'

Margaret Beaufort is one of my favourite women of history.  Being known not for her beauty or charm but for her piety and single-minded dedication to the fortunes of her son, Henry VII, she is often overlooked as an historical heroine.  I give a round of applause to this exploration of her character in Judith Arnopp's trilogy.

The King's Mother covers the period of her life when her beloved Henry had become king, and travels through the triumphs, the threats to the security of the new Tudor reign, the births of her grandchildren, and the deaths.  All the deaths.  It's always a challenge to write a historical novel from this time from the point of view of a woman, because the reader does not get to see the battles and other decisive moments that fill the history books; mostly, women were excluded from these.  But Ms Arnopp works around this masterfully, and I was engrossed in this book all the way through, completely absorbed in Margaret's life.

There are some lovely passages; as she gets older, she reflects on her life.  On her marriage to Henry Stafford: '..at the time I had not known I was happy.  Perhaps happiness is a feeling that can only be enjoyed in retrospect'

Also: 'As I grow older I realise our lives are nothing but a collection of memories, flawed recollections of a time and place that will never come again.  Once life is extinguished ... we become nothing more than an imperfect jumble of half-recollected stories in the minds of our children'.

I enjoyed how fact was so seamlessly merged with the author's imagination; especially entertaining were the prophetic scenes featuring Henry VIII as a child. From a midwife, when he is less than one hour old: '..with a temper like that, if he is not given what he wants, he will stop at nothing until he gets it'.  And, later, Henry himself saying that he wanted to be a king not like his father, but like his grandfather; of course, he would come to make the lusty, ebullient Edward IV look positively abstemious.  I also liked Margaret's mention of a certain adventurer called Mr Cabot who had gone in search of new lands and had no idea of what awaited him...!

Played by Amanda Hale in BBC's The White Queen

For all Margaret's good intentions, Ms Arnopp shows us well how far removed the aristocracy and nobility were from the common man, and how Henry VII gained a reputation for miserliness, with his insistence on heavy taxes that meant extreme poverty for some.  Margaret says: 'The people grumble against us.  I fail to understand why they cannot see it is for the good of England.'  Yet Arnopp shows Margaret as an extraordinarily strong but modest and contemplative woman who acknowledges her own faults, and, in later life, gives much to one of her favourite causes: education.

There are a few punctuation and editing errors that were a mild irritation (including my pet 'grrrr': the use of the word 'I', as in 'Henry and I', in instances when it should be 'Henry and me'), but I am sure they would not bother many readers as they did me, and I still have no hesitation in giving this book 5 stars, which I give neither lightly nor frequently. I thoroughly enjoyed it and recommend the whole trilogy most highly.

Margaret's tomb in the Henry VII Lady Chapel, Westminster Abbey

CHERGUI'S CHILD by Jane Riddell

3 out of 5 stars

On Amazon UK
On Amazon.com
On Goodreads

How I discovered this book: it was submitted to Rosie Amber's Book Review Team, of which I am a member.

Genre: Family/relationship drama, with themes of extramarial affairs, pregnancy, death, eating disorder.

Chergui's Child is the story of Olivia, whose aunt has just died; to her surprise, she is left a large amount of money in the will.  Olivia is a troubled woman; her relationship with her mother is difficult, to put it mildly, and she has an eating disorder.  Early in the book, she receives a letter that reveals a startling revelation; this sends her on a life-changing journey.

The novel alternates between her present dilemmas, which include her mother contesting the money left by the aunt, and the past, when she was a medical student having an affair with her tutor, Richie, whose wife had her own problems.  I'm a fan of this structure, and in this case the slow building up of the past-that-led-to-the-present made it much more interesting than just a straight story.

Olivia travels to France and to Gibraltar as more revelations provide missing pieces in her life's jigsaw.  Generally, the family dynamics of all characters involved are well drawn.  I did think that, generally, there was too much domestic/conversational minutiae that was not needed for the plot, and slowed it down.  Some of the characters came alive to me (Martin, Richie, Dorothy and Roz), some didn't; alas, for me, Olivia fell in the latter group.  The only emotion I felt towards her was slight irritation at her naïveté; she didn't understand that age-old cliché and truth of the mistress of a married man: that once you become problematic or needy you no longer supply the romantic fantasy, and are, thus, dispensible.  Mostly, I felt no connection with her.

I was a little unsure about the feasibility of some elements: Olivia is told about her inheritance by her own solicitor two days later after her aunt dies, and the funeral is the next day.  In my experience, it takes a couple of days even for the death certificate to come through, funerals take far longer than that to arrange, and I would have thought that Olivia's solicitor would have had to wait for instruction from executors, etc.  Also, in the flashback chapters, a tragic death takes place in Morocco that is central to the plot, but, again, I was unconvinced by some practicalities, and also the subsequent reactions of the character involved.

I liked many parts of this novel, but on the whole, for me, it lacked a spark that would have made it memorable.  But the writing flows well, and I am sure readers who like easy-read, emotional family dramas would enjoy it.

ON THE EDGE OF A RAINDROP by Sarah Brentyn @SarahBrentyn

4 out of 5 stars

On Amazon UK
On Amazon.com
On Goodreads

How I discovered this book:  I noticed it was on free promotion, via a tweet.

Genre: Flash and micro fiction, psychological

This collection of pieces was a good choice to read when I woke up today; just right for an hour in bed on Sunday morning.

From the blurb:

These are stories of lives on the edge.

A girl tortured by the world within her. A boy powerless to escape his home. A mother doomed to live with her greatest mistake. A man lost in a maze of grief.

Each raindrop provides a microscopic mirror of ourselves and those around us. But we can’t always trust what we see. The distorted images disorientate the mind, altering our view of reality.

(Please note: I had to change 'disorient' to 'disorientate', because I am English!)

I think I liked the first section, Mindscapes, the best; there are some beautiful and haunting snapshots of subjects' lives, perfectly written and evocative. The metaphors used are well chosen, without over-playing them.  All pieces are on the dark side, which I like. 

As with all collections I had my favourites, but I liked all of them.  Sometimes, I could see a whole life in a paragraph, so insightful and artfully captured are they. I think the collection would be enjoyed by anyone who likes to read poetry, or just admires the well drawn sentence.  It's the first I've read of Sarah Brentyn, and I'd most definitely recommend.  99p or available on Kindle Unlimited.

THE CHRISTMAS GHOSTS by Gemma Lawrence @TudorTweep

4 out of 5 stars

On Amazon UK
On Amazon.com
On Goodreads

How I discovered this book and why I chose it: I have read every single other book by Gemma Lawrence, and have recently rediscovered the appeal of short stories for when you don't have the headspace/time for starting a whole novel!

Genre: Christmas short stories.

This is a collection of five long short stories, all very different. My favourites are Hot Toddy, a beautiful story about a woman of nearly eighty who is visited by someone she loves very much, and the last one, The Christmas Ghosts itself, which is about a young woman who earns money by house-sitting for the wealthy, whilst trying to put together her first novel.  I liked this one because her life appealed to me; the solitude in the lovely house, the beautiful surroundings, the hours and hours of uninterrupted time to write.  I was amused by her rather childlike debut novelist fancies and fantasies, and nodded my head a few times about the difficulty she has in getting her friends and family to take what she is doing seriously.  Oh yes, and the Christmas ghosts themselves.  I can't tell you about them, because that would give away the story, but it's a lovely idea, and something I would adore; a view into the past.

I've only read historical fiction by this author, so it was interesting to see how she fared with contemporary stories, but I am happy to report that, yes, she can do this, too!  Another thing I liked about this collection was that it is not twee or 'heartwarming', as some Christmas stories can be; one of the ghosts is a mangled animal, and another wears a Nirvana hoodie. 😄