OPERATION TULIP by Deborah Swift @swiftstory

5 out of 5 stars

On Amazon (universal link)

On Goodreads

How I discovered this book: one of my 'go-to' authors!

In a Nutshell: Working for the resistance in Nazi occupied Holland, 1944

What a cracking book this is!  I loved it.  It's set mostly in The Hague in the Netherlands, as well as in other parts of the country under occupation, and in England.  Main character Nancy is assigned the most dangerous task of her life in the resistance - she must assume yet another identity, and get close to a high ranking Nazi officer.  Meanwhile, her beloved Tom, a coding expert in England, finds that he can no longer just wait for her, and makes plans that he knows are potentially perilous.

What made this book so compelling for me was the plot - unusual, as I'm usually all about the characters.  But this never lets up from the opening scene; it's perfectly paced, with more introspective passages complimenting the tension and action.  Deborah Swift brings the bleak terror of the occupied territory to life; I didn't know, before reading this, that the Dutch were kept in such appalling conditions.

It's a 'clean read' with no bad language, not even when streams of it would probably have been uttered, but the picture painted is so real, so raw that the characters' reactions all seem completely realistic.  This has been my favourite of this authors' tales of espionage in WWII; it's a real page turner!

LAKE OF WIDOWS by Liza Perrat #RBRT

 4 out of 5 stars

On Amazon (universal link)
On Goodreads

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

In a Nutshell: Emotional family drama.

Lake of Widows is set in France in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when not all attitudes had caught up with the Swinging Sixties and Women's Lib movement elsewhere in the West.  The main character is Adrienne, a timid woman lacking in confidence, who doesn't realise how much her whole personality has been subtly eroded by her manipulative husband, until an event when out shopping sends her head into rebellious overdrive, and she doesn't go home.

Then there is Blanche, who lives by a lake dear to Adrienne's heart; she is struggling with the reality that her husband is a treacherous conman.  Most of all I was interested in the story of Suzanne, a First World War wife whose life takes a turn for the worst when her husband returns from the Front.  All three women's lives intertwine in this beautiful setting, as they discover their own expectations for themselves, finding courage they did not know they possessed.

I found the part set in an insane asylum most interesting - I've read and watched a few books and documentaries that show how the treatment of the emotionally sick was, even in the 1970s, positively Dickensian.  I also loved Suzanne's story - I would have liked to read more about her and her husband.  As for the writing itself, it will make you want to visit L'Auberge de Léa, and stay there!

THE TOWN HOUSE and THE HOUSE AT OLD VINE by Norah Lofts

 5 GOLD stars (or possibly 10!)

On Amazon (universal link)
On Goodreads

How I discovered this book: the series is an all-time favourite of mine and I haven't read it for years - during a short hospital stay the time was right to return to it!

In a Nutshell: Family saga and chronicle of social change over 6 centuries.

This wonderful trilogy starts with the tale of Martin Reed, born the son of a serf in 1381, the year of the Peasants' Revolt.  Freed from his bonds, circumstances take him and his beloved, Kate, to the Suffolk town of Baildon, where they live in dire poverty and squalor.  In time, Martin builds a house.  This is the story of that house, and Reed's descendants, each new chapter told by one character further down the line.

Throughout the books, ghosts appear in the form of family characteristics (though sometimes in actual manifestations, too).  Cold fingers on the neck of the old man who hears his grandson saying that he longs to be a travelling musician, while knowing nothing of his ancestry.  The cunning trickery of a small girl is mirrored two centuries later.  The beauty, of course, is that we know more than the characters, which means that their innocent statements are often more pertinent than they realise.

I have several favourite characters in these first two books (I'm still re-reading #3); one which interests me a great deal is that of Ethelreda, a young girl who survived the flooding of the Fens during the land reclamation of the 17th Century.  All she knew, until she was found near death in her boat, was her life on a little island with her father.  Nothing else existed.  Every chapter is an utter gem, though.  I recommend this trilogy with every molecule of my reading brain!!!

UNHUMANS by Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec

4.5 out of 5 stars

On Amazon (universal link)

On Goodreads

How I discovered this book: Recommendation

In a Nutshell: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and how to crush them)

A highly readable and succinct overview of the worst communist revolutions of the past few centuries, making one realise why far left overlords do their best to blank out history - otherwise, why would anyone welcome in such a regime?  Because the great, just realignment of society never happens.  For the common man, everything gets much, much worse.  You thought you were living in a dictatorship before?  At least you could work for a living, own land, come and go as you pleased....

'Nothing is clearer in history than the adoption by successful rebels of the methods they were accustomed to condemn' (The Lessons of History, Will and Ariel Durant).

Any criticism of the Chinese Communist Party was condemned as right wing extremism; academics and writers were encouraged to speak out, air their viewpoints, after which they were forced into labour camps.   In Stalin's Russia, the peasants worked on the collectivised farms, but died of starvation.  In Mao's China, in the state-owned farms, the workers lived in dormitories.  They owned nothing but weren't very happy.  Anyone who owned cooking utensils was forced to smelt them down, to feed Mao's desire to be a great steel producer. All the farming equipment, too.  This policy resulted in the death of tens of millions.  Peasants resorted to eating sawdust, leather and manure.  Cannibalism was rife, and celebrated.  Churches were completely destroyed.  One would be forgiven for thinking that the aim was to create Hell on Earth.

Castro sold himself as a liberator, to a naïve population who had no idea how much worse their lives would be under his communist regime.  Posobiec and Lisec write about Cambodia, about Marxist Chile, about South African apartheid.  Every time, the results of the new order are the same.  Those at the top become richer, and millions of ordinary people die.

I felt that the 'how to crush them' section was a little idealistic, but it's a good book and I'm glad I read it.

NOWHERE MAN by Deborah Stone #RBRT

 3.5 out of 5 stars

On Amazon (universal link)
On Goodreads

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

In a Nutshell: complex domestic, psychological drama

This is the sort of story that makes you keep turning the pages because, even if you're pretty sure what's going on, you suspect that there might be another twist, and maybe even one more... 

Deborah Stone has a relaxed, flowing writing style that made this book an 'easy read'.  The plot was well structured, with the complex web of events and deceptions slotting together nicely, and all the intricacies and character history being woven in at just the right time.   

I did have a few issues with the novel as a whole, though.  For the plot to work as well as it did, both Diana and Angie needed to be unusually insular, with little or no social life, or awareness of anything outside their own tiny corner of the world.  The reasons for this are revealed over the course of the book but, having said that, many of the attitudes seemed to come from another era.  I wondered, at first, if the story was set in the 1970s or 80s.  A secondary character, Julia, I also found problematic; in her first scene she manages to eat almost an entire sponge cake, which was amusingly written, giving the extra detail that fleshes out a secondary character so well.  I thought the pudding was somewhat over-egged, though, her self-indulgence highlighted in almost every scene she was in.  I found the dialogue unrealistic, too, with these characters.

The males, however, worked much better.  Daniel's story was good to read, while Ben and Patrick were convincing, as was Diana's mother.

To sum up, the plot is compelling, and I did enjoy it - I'd recommend it to anyone who likes a cracking plot and is able to suspend disbelief - but aside from a couple of mentions of WhatsApp, the online world with all its possibilities (especially where scammers, tracking people down and the general gleaning of information are concerned) seemed to barely exist.  As a contemporary story, it didn't feel quite feasible.

TIME AND TIDE by Marie Keates @marie_keates #TuesdayBookBlog

4 out of 5 stars

On Amazon (universal link) 
On Goodreads

How I discovered this book: I'd read a couple of others by this author.

In a Nutshell: Dunkirk 1940, from several points of view

The time and place of this book, about the evacuation of Allied forces from Dunkirk in early summer 1940, is so well rounded out, as the author alternates between the story of the Hariph, Bert and Denis, who set out to take part in the rescue effort, of George and his friends in the Service Corps, trapped in the middle of enemy lines - and, lastly, the wives at home in Southampton, England.  The family connections and histories are quite complicated, with many names to remember, but they began to slot into my head after the first couple of chapters - proof that they became three dimensional!  The characters come from the author's previous series, so I did recognise some of them.

Marie Keates is something of an authority on the history of Southampton, and I liked reading such interesting detail as the delivery men at home using horses rather than vans because, unlike in the First World War, the horses had not been requisitioned, and fuel was hard to come by.  I was struck by the people's innocence in this earlier age, despite all they had been through, and also by the fact that their values were focused on the health and safety of others as well as themselves; a less self-centred era.

Time & Tide is a story about the bonds of friendship as well as family, about self-sacrifice, courage and faith.  Now and again I felt opportunities to create atmosphere and tension were missed, though this is a wartime family drama about the people of Southampton, inspired by many of the author's own relatives, rather than a dark action adventure; as such, I'm sure it will hit the mark for many readers.

USS PRIMIS: The First Starship by M H Altis #RBRT

 3 out of 5 stars

On Amazon (universal link) - available on Sept 30.
On Goodreads

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

In a Nutshell: Saving humanity by moving it 500 light years away - what could possibly go wrong?

At the start of this book, the story reminded me of Raised by Wolves, an HBO series I thought was inspired, in which androids are sent to a far away planet to raise children from protected embryos, after Earth is all but destroyed.  Great concept!  In the case of USS Primis, it's a team of astronauts with human and animal embryos, and the planet to which they travel in hypersleep is 500 light years away.  I loved the author's idea for how the sun is destroyed - that in a peace treaty, all nations agree to fire their nuclear weapons into space, with disastrous consequences.  No idea if this is what would happen, but it works here!

In a way this was like two novels  The setting up of the story was, I felt, far too long.  The first half is mostly told in captain David's 1st person, in the form of a captain's log/diary, etc.  He gives a description of each crew member, outlining various intricacies of their personality; I think this works on the screen but not in a novel, where it feels like an unnecessary 'information dump'.  In a film you see the face, which makes them more likely to stick in your head.  I prefer to discover a character by their thoughts, words and actions rather than being given an outline of their character traits.  Though the writing certainly flows and is most accessible, David's 'banter' mode of narrative in the first half of the book didn't really work for me.

After the character descriptions was a long section about their two months quarantine before lift-off day, which I found neither necessary nor convincing, as the crew seemed more like a group of students than mature, experienced astronauts, aware of the gravity of their mission.  I felt I was waiting for the story to start, all the way through the first half.

Then, book two.  So much better, and not what I expected at all.  Another great twist in the tale, this time told by an omniscient narrator.  No more details because *spoilers* - you should be as surprised as I was.  I am most interested in the short stories in which the plot moves in a different direction; I'd love to read about life on Nova.

To sum up - I think it needs a good, thorough developmental/copy edit by someone who really knows their stuff, to get rid of errors, and also to think through some of the content - the novel must surely be set far into the future, but the lifestyle and cultural references about the world they've left behind made it sound like they set off in 2024, or earlier.  I was also unconvinced by David not knowing (and being surprised) that the AI could track the exact whereabouts on the ship of any of the astronauts.  Wouldn't that be a most basic facility?  And one of them clearly has extremely dark psychological problems - would she have been chosen for a mission such as this?

However, it's a fabulous basic story with masses of potential, and the writing itself has a great deal of promise.  With input from an experienced editor who really knows their stuff, the best of both could be brought out.