#BlogTour: THE HOUSE WE CALLED HOME by Jenny Oliver @JenOliverBooks @HQstories @LilyCapewell

The HousePublication: 12th July 2018 by HQ

The house where Stella and her sister Amy grew up never changes – the red front door, the breath-taking view over the Cornish coast, her parents in their usual spots on the sofa. Except this summer, things feel a little different…

Stella’s father is nowhere to be seen, yet her mother – in suspiciously new Per Una jeans – seems curiously unfazed by his absence, and more eager to talk about her mysterious dog-walking buddy Mitch.

Stella’s sister Amy has returned home with a new boyfriend she can barely stand and a secret to hide, and Stella’s husband Jack has something he wants to get off his chest too. Even Frank Sinatra, the dog, has a guilty air about him.
This summer, change is in the air for the Whitethorns…

 

This novel is 400 pages long and yet I read it in less than two days because I was completely addicted. First of all, I loved the characters. They are engaging, realistic, and very very likable. There is Stella, who left Cornwall and the family home at eighteen after a fallout with her father and, since then, she has been back just for quick visits. Now she is a journalist with her own successful column about motherhood, even though she can’t seem to understand her teenage son, Sonny, who is a tech genius and seemingly very wise for his age. Her husband Jack does everything she asks and their younger daughter Rosie is adorable in her own innocence. Her younger sister Amy has always been the baby of the family with everyone taking care of her. Now, she is living in London on her own, trying to prove to her family that she can do it on her own, especially now that she is pregnant after a one-night stand. When their father suddenly leaves the family home without an explanation, both women travel to Cornwall to figure out what is going on, Amy followed by Gus, the father of her baby, and my favourite character with his wittiness and charm. Their mother Moira doesn’t seem too concerned by the disappearance of her husband. She finally feels free from being the wife of a man who demanded all her attention and, for once, she is thinking just about herself.

I really liked the author’s writing. This is my first Jenny Oliver’s novel (I really need to catch up) and I found her writing clear and distinct. The narration flows easily with the right amount of descriptions and dialogues, with hilarity, emotional moments, and a few twists. Each character has their own stories and a few secrets that entertain and kept me glued to the page because, just like the characters, they are realistic and engaging.

THE HOUSE WE CALLED HOME is a story about family, about forgiveness, and about growing up and I loved everything about it, from the first to the last page. It’s a compulsive and refreshing read and I’d like to thank HQ and Lily Capewell for inviting me to take part in the blog tour and for providing me with a copy of this immersive summer read.

The House We Called Home Blog Tour

#BlogTour: MAKE OR BREAK by Catherine Bennetto @cathbennetto @harriett_col @simonschusterUK @BookMinxSJV @TeamBATC

Make or Break

Publication: 12th July 2018 by Simon and Schuster UK

Jess, a 29-year-old Londoner with a Kate Beckett fringe and a tendency for dramatics, gets taken on a surprise trip by her long-term boyfriend, Pete, to attend her best friend’s last-minute wedding in South Africa. Jess imagines sun, sand, wine and safaris. And returning to London with an ethically mined diamond on her left hand…
 
But this holiday isn’t set to be quite the fairy tale Jess has planned… Suddenly she finds her world tilting on its axis, and things are only set to get worse when Jess returns home…
 
Catherine Bennetto is back with her trademark wit and an equally hilarious cast of characters who will have you rooting for them from the first page.

 

After reading her first novel, How Not To Fall In Love, Actually, I was really looking forward to read more by Catherine Bennetto and I wasn’t disappointed because MAKE OR BREAK is a brilliant and completely absorbing novel and I’d like to thank Simon & Schuster UK and Harriett Collins for inviting me to take part in the blog tour and for providing me with a copy of  the book.

I laughed so much reading this book. If you are like me and you read during your commute, expect strange looks from people around you who don’t understand why you giggle every couple of minutes while reading a book.

Jess leaves for a holiday to South Africa with her boyfriend Pete to attend her best friend’s wedding and also to spend some quality time with Pete. But noyhing goes as planned, starting from the airport, and she also manages to antagonize the entire cabin crew during her flight. Luckily, not everything goes wrong and Jess not only finds new friends, but she takes the reader with her in her exploration of the beautiful African country: from music festivals to food markets, from safari to beaches with penguins walking and swimming around.

The protagonist of the novel is Jess. Let me say right away that I really loved this character. She is down-to-earth and funny. She has internal conversation with her wicked self and also with a dog called Flora. She is caring and selfless, spending all her free time helping her sister Annabelle to take care of her two young children. She suffers from anxiety and she sees the most dramatic outcome in every situation. The outcomes she comes up with are so funny that I can’t help but share some of my favourite: from poachers shooting her because, somehow, they mistake her for a rhino to her sister ending up in jail because Jess went to South Africa and nobody was checking on Annabelle’s 7-year-old son Hunter (probably) googling “how to make a bomb”. And let’s not forget a very disastrous butterfly effect in which a butterfly flaps her wings in Kent causing a chunk in Australia to break off and families to be divided and new maps to be drawn.

The characters are hilarious and very likable and the plot is completely entertaining. I laughed from the first to the last page and, even during some emotional scenes, the author manages to insert some humourism that is not out of order and lightens up the situation. MAKE OR BREAK is a refreshing, witty, and compulsive read and I am already looking forward to whatever the author writes next.

Make or Break Blog Tour Banner - FINAL

Catherine BennettoCATHERINE BENNETTO was born in New Zealand to a British father and Kiwi mother. She studied a variety of things at University, including Design and Biomedical Science, before settling on a career in television production.

Catherine, her husband and their two young boys have spent the past few years being permanent residents of nowhere – going where the work takes them. They’ve lived in Australia, England, the Caribbean, Hungary, Malaysia and South Africa, and have learnt some useful tricks for entertaining children along the way.

In 2013 she gained a place on Curtis Brown Creative’s inaugural online novel writing course. How Not to Fall in Love, Actually is her first novel.

#BookReview: FATAL INHERITANCE by Rachel Rhys @MsTamarCohen @TransworldBooks @alisonbarrow

Fatal InheritancePublication: 26th July 2018 by Doubleday

She didn’t have an enemy in the world… 
until she inherited a fortune 

London 1948: Eve Forrester is trapped in a loveless marriage, in a gloomy house, in a grey suburb. 

Out of the blue, she received a solicitor’s letter. A wealthy stranger has left her a mystery inheritance but in order to find out more, she must travel to the glittering French Riviera. 

Eve discovers her legacy is an enchanting villa overlooking the Mediterranean sea and suddenly, life could not be more glamorous. 

But while she rubs shoulders with film-stars and famous writers, under the heat of the golden sun, rivals to her unexplained fortune begin to emerge. Rivals who want her out of the way. 

Alone in paradise, Eve must unlock the story behind her surprise bequest – before events turn deadly…

Reminiscent of a Golden Age mystery, Fatal Inheritance is an intoxicating story of dysfunctional families and long-hidden secrets, set against the razzle-dazzle and decadence of the French Riviera. 

 

 

I completely immersed myself in this novel about secrets, unexpected inheritance, celebrity parties, and the beautiful south of France. The protagonist of the novel is Eve Forrester, a woman who travels to the Riviera to find out more about the unexpected inheritance she just received. Eve’s life is quite dull, spending her days waiting for her husband to come home from work, so, when Guy Lester, a man she’s never heard of, leaves her a share in his house in the south of France, she can’t wait to escape her boring suburbia life to spend time partying and sunbathing among actors and writers. While she quickly finds new friends in Sully, an American author, and the Cornell family, Eve is not welcomed by the Lesters who are surprised as much as her that their father left her a share in their house. And, while she tries to find out more about her connection to Guy, there is also someone who is trying to get rid of her.

I really liked the character of Eve. It was fascinating to watch her change and become her own person when she arrives to the Riviera. She is no longer the young woman eager to please her husband and her mother – with whom she has a complicated relationship – and I rooted for her as she refused to go back to England to her husband and delayed the sale of the house until she found out more about the mysterious inheritance.

The novel is set in 1948, right after World War II, and the author perfectly depicts an Europe still trying to recover, from parents grieving for their children died in battle to suspicion towards people believed to be linked to the Nazis. But the Riviera is full of wealthy people looking to forget all of that with actors and writers partying and remembering the golden age before the war (I loved the references to the Fitzgeralds and the Murphys).

I am ashamed to admit that this is my first novel by Rachel Rhys (who writes also under her real name Tammy Cohen), but I plan to catch up soon, because I really enjoyed her riveting and engrossing plot, her atmospheric setting, her engaging characters, and her captivating writing style, and I’d like to thank Alison Barrow and Transworld for providing me with a proof of this charming and entertaining novel.

#BookReview: AN UNWANTED GUEST by Shari Lapena @sharilapena @TransworldBooks @ThomasssHill

An Unwanted GuestPublication: 26th July 2018 by Bantam Press

We can’t choose the strangers we meet.

As the guests arrive at beautiful, remote Mitchell’s Inn, they’re all looking forward to a relaxing weekend deep in the forest, miles from anywhere. They watch their fellow guests with interest, from a polite distance. 

Usually we can avoid the people who make us nervous, make us afraid.

With a violent storm raging, the group finds itself completely cut off from the outside world. Nobody can get in – or out. And then the first body is found . . . and the horrifying truth comes to light. There’s a killer among them – and nowhere to run. 

Until we find ourselves in a situation we can’t escape. Trapped.

 

You can almost imagine it. An isolated inn with no phone signal. A snow storm that traps the guests inside the inn. A group of people who don’t know each other and don’t trust each other. And a dark and suspenseful atmosphere worth of an Agatha Christie’s novel. Mix it all up and you have the gripping new novel by Shari Lapena.

Told by many points of views, the protagonists of this novel are a group of completely different people. From a journalist back from Afghanistan and suffering of PTSD to a defense attorney looking for rest. From a newly engaged couple happily in love to a woman trying desperately to save her marriage. Add a writer looking for inspiration, a young man trying to make some money, a woman worried about her friend, and a husband who doesn’t know how tell his wife he’s not in love with her anymore. What all these people have in common? They are all trapped in the beautiful and isolated Mitchell’s Inn, in the state of New York, and they are all hiding a secret.

One morning, they wake up to find that there is no electricity in the inn and that there is a body at the bottom of the stairs. Nobody can’t get in and nobody can’t get out, so the killer is one of the guests. And as the body count raises, the guests start to suspect each other and I found really intriguing to see how each character reacted in that situation of danger and suspicion.

As a fan of Agatha Christie (And Then There Were None is one of my favourite novel), I really enjoyed this novel (I almost expected Hercul Poirot to turn up and solve the case). The author doesn’t give anything away and I couldn’t figure out who the killer was until it was revealed. The slow-paced narration and the different points of view fit perfectly in the story and I really didn’t expect the ending.

It wasn’t only reading about snow storm during a heat wave that made me completely engrossed in the new novel by Shari Lapena. It is unpredictable, full of twists, with a claustrophobic atmosphere and the author’s unique writing style and I’d like to thank Thomas Hill and Transworld for providing me with a copy of this thrilling and engrossing novel.

 

 

 

#BlogTour: SLEEPER 13 by Rob Sinclair @RSinclairAuthor @PoppyStimpson @orionbooks

Sleeper 13

Publication: 28th June 2018 (paperback) by Orion

Smuggled to the Middle East as a child.

Trained as one of the most elite insurgents of his generation.

Forced to do things no one should, for a cause he couldn’t believe in.

But as his brothers were preparing to kill, he was looking for a way out.

Now, on the eve of the deadliest coordinated attacks the world has ever seen, he finally has his chance.

He will break free and hunt down those who made him a monster.

He must draw on all his training to survive.

He is SLEEPER 13.

A jihadi group that trains its members to become terrorists since they were young. Children taken from their homes, away from their families, and taught to kill. Even though I knew that this is a work of fiction, it sounded too real and credible.

One of the protagonists of this novel is Talatashar (number thirteen in Arabic), but that is not his real name. His real name is Aydin Torkal, he has a sister, a mother, a father, and he lived in London until, when he was just a boy, he was taken to Afghanistan to train at the Farm, a jihadi camp, together with twelve other young boys. He is taught to kill, to torture, and to build bombs. But, unlike the other boys, Aydin has never believed in the cause and, years later, on the eve of a big terrorist attack around Europe, he decides to break free and stop the attacks. Even if that means killing the brothers he grew up with.

The other protagonist is Rachel Cox, an agent of MI5. She has been investigating Aydin’s terrorist group for months and she knows something big is about to happen, but, as people around her start to die, will she be able to stop it before it’s too late?

Rachel and Aydin are very similar characters. They both questions orders and don’t follow the rules if they think these are wrong, no matter the cost. Aydin never believed in the cause and, during the training, he questioned the moral behind what is taught and for that he is punished. Rachel often challenges her boss and risks her job and her life to do what she knows is right.

SLEEPER 13 is fast-paced and action-packed. We are taken all throughout Europe as Rachel and Aydin chase the jihadi group from France to England, to Germany, Belgium, Italy, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Spain. The multiple narrative and the flashbacks keep the tension high. I found the flashbacks particularly distressing and thought-provoking as Aydin describes children being brainwashed and turned into killers, as he describes his fears, his hopes to see his family again, and as he gives the details of the brutality of the training at the Farm.

There are many dramatic and emotional moments. And there are many many moments of suspense that kept me on the edge of my seat. SLEEPER 13 is an engrossing, provocative, and superb novel and I am already looking forward to the sequel, Fugitive 13, out next year. I’d like to thank Poppy and Orion for providing me with a copy of the book and for inviting me to take part in the blog tour.

 

Sleeper 13 blog tour banner

Rob is the author of the critically acclaimed and bestselling Enemy series of espionage thrillers featuring embattled agent Carl Logan, with over 200,000 copies sold to date. The Enemy series has received widespread critical acclaim with many reviewers and readers having likened Rob’s work to authors at the very top of the genre, including Lee Child and Vince Flynn.

#BookReview: THE WIVES by Lauren Weisberger @LWeisberger @HarperFiction @fictionpubteam

The Wives

Publication: 12th July 2018 by HarperFiction

He set her up. They’ll bring him down.

Emily Charlton does not do the suburbs. A successful stylist and image consultant to Hollywood stars, she cut her teeth as assistant to legendary fashion editor Miranda Priestly in New York. But with Snapchatting millennials stealing her clients, Emily needs to get back in the game – and fast.

She holes up at the home of her oldest friend Miriam in the upscale suburb of Greenwich. And when Miriam’s friend, model Karolina Hartwell, is publicly dumped by her husband Graham, a senator with presidential ambitions, Emily scents the client of a lifetime.

It’s not just Karolina’s reputation that’s ruined. It’s her family. And Miriam and Emily are determined he won’t get away with it. First they’ll get Karolina’s son back. Then they’ll help her get her own back. Because the wives are mad as hell . . .

 

Lauren Weisberger is one of these authors I always like to read, no matter what she writes. I love her writing and her characters. Two years ago, she managed to make me interested in tennis with her book The Singles Game and now she is back with one of my favorite characters from her novels. When I was reading The Devils Wears Prada and Revenge Wears Prada my favourite character wasn’t Andy, the protagonist, but Miranda Priestly’s other assistant, Emily Charlton. I enjoyed her determination and her fierceness and I am really happy the author wrote a book focusing on her.

No more calls in the middle of the night, no more demanding, unclear, and crazy requests. No more Miranda Priestly and Runway. And no more New York because Emily and her husband Miles have moved to sunny Los Angeles. Now Emily is a celebrity consultant but she is losing her clients to the younger competition. She is still though and sassy as usual, but also caring (even if she tries to not show it too much). After she flies to New York for a consultation and she is fired before she is even hired, Emily decides to spends a few weeks in Greenwich, Connecticut, with her friend Miriam.

Miriam and Emily met in college. Miriam was a successful lawyer, but after leaving her job, having three children, her husband selling his start-up, and the family moving from Manhattan to Greenwich, Miriam starts to doubt her decisions, her marriage, and her life in general.

At 37, Karolina is still a beautiful woman. A former model and the wife of a senator rumored to be the next president, Karolina’s life focuses on her son. Her life turns upside down when she is arrested for a DUI and her husband divorces her and banishes her to Greenwich. She knows she’s been set up and she is ready to do anything to clear her name and get her son back.

Between baby showers and sex toys parties, these three women will rely on each other to get what they want. I loved reading about their friendship and how they support each other. These three women are completely different from each other and yet their friendship is true and loyal.

Full of hilarity, unexpected moments, and engaging and likabeble characters, THE WIVES is a riveting novel about strong female friendship and women empowerment. If you liked The Devil Wears Prada, you are going to really love this novel. It is the perfect summer read to enjoy by the poolside (if you can) and I’d like to thank Harper Fiction for providing me with an early copy of this brilliant novel.

Book Review: THE FRENCH GIRL by Lexie Elliot @elliott_lexie @CorvusBooks

The French Girl

Publication: 5th July 2018 by Corvus

She appears, lithe and tanned, by the swimming pool one afternoon. Severine – the girl next door. It was supposed to be a final celebration for six British graduates, the perfect French getaway, until she arrived. Severine’s beauty captivates each of them in turn. Under the heat of a summer sky, simmering tensions begin to boil over – years of jealousy and longing rising dangerously to the surface.

And then Severine disappears.

A decade later, Severine’s body is found at the farmhouse. For Kate Channing, the discovery brings up more than just unwelcome memories. As police suspicion mounts against the friends, Kate becomes desperate to resolve her own shifting understanding of that time. But as the layers of deception reveal themselves, Kate must ask herself – does she really want to know what happened to the French girl?

 

Six friends, a house in France, a week to relax and forget about studying and work. Then nineteen-year-old Severine, beautiful and charming, enters the scene and something goes terribly wrong because, the night before they leave to go back to England, she disappears. Emotions (and hormones) are high, the alcohol is flowing, and there are disagreements and discords between the six friends. So what really happened?

Kate Channing’s memories of that week are not pleasant and she doesn’t know what really happened the night Severine disappeared. Ten years later, she is a former lawyer who just started her own headhunter company. When Severine’s body is found in a well by the house where they were staying and the police arrives to question her and her friends, Kate knows that she has to retrieve her memories to figure out what really happened to Severine.

When Kate finds out that Severine’s body has been found, she starts allucinating her, seeing her (and her skull) everywhere she goes: when she is having meetings with potential clients, when she is having dinner with her friends, when she is taking a bath. I started asking myself if the allucinations where caused by guilt. Is she seeing Severine because of her remorse? Did she kill Severine? Or did she know who really killed? Even though the author does a good job casting doubts about Kate’s character and sincerity, I couldn’t help but like her. She feels real, she always speaks her mind, and she is a loyal friend.

The story is slow-paced, the writing is brilliant and captivating, and there are a few good twists. The suspense is not always high because the novel focuses not only on the crime, but also on Kate’s relationship with her friends, both in the past and in the present, which I also found intriguing and absorbing.

I truly enjoyed THE FRENCH GIRL. It’s engaging, gripping, and fresh and I’d like to thank Corvus for providing me with a copy of the book.

 

Book Review: LAST TIME I LIED by Riley Sager @riley_sager ‏@EburyPublishing

Last Time I LiedPublication: 12 July by Ebury Press

Have you ever played two truths and a lie?

Emma’s first summer away from home, she learned how to play the game. And she learned how to lie.

Then three of her new friends went into the woods and never returned. . .

Now, years later, Emma has been asked to go back to the newly re-opened Camp Nightingale. She thinks she’s laying old ghosts to rest but really she’s returning to the scene of a crime.

Because Emma’s innocence might be the biggest lie of all. . .

 

Let me start this review by saying that I was so engrossed in this book that I missed a few tube and bus stops and I almost walked into a lamppost (reading and walking at the same time is a dangerous activity). LAST TIME I LIED is gripping, it’s dark, it’s jaw-dropping and I wasn’t able to put it down.

The protagonist of this novel is Emma Davis. When she was thirteen years old she was sent to spend six weeks to Camp Nightingale, an exclusive summer camp for girls. Because she arrived late to the camp, she was put in a cabin with three older girls, Vivian, Natalie, and Amanda and she was flattered when beautiful and charming Vivian took her under her wing. But, one night, the three girls disappeared and they were never found and Camp Nightingale was closed.

Fifteen years later, Camp Nightingale opens agains its doors. Emma is an artist who just had her first showcase in an art gallery and she is asked to go back to camp to teach art to the girls. She is still obsessed by the disappearance of the three girls and she sees this as her chance to finally discover what happened to them.

The story is told from Emma’s point of view, but I found her an unreliable narrator. She’s been keeping secrets about the night Vivian, Natalie, and Amanda disappeared. Also, she is haunted by the guilt and the past and she keeps allucinating Vivian, so you can’t really trust what she says. The flashbacks to the past not only helped me to understand better the character of Emma, but also the character of Vivian – a true Queen Bee who knew how to manipulate people – and the events the led to her disappearance.

Secrets are at the center of this novel. The girls used to play a game of “two truths and one lie” and everyone seems to be hiding something about the events of fifteen years earlier, everyone has secrets. Between the atmosphere of an horror movie and the twist after twist that took me by surprise, the suspense is always high.

I’d like to thank Ebury Press for providing me with a copy of LAST TIME I LIED and so giving me the chance to read this thrilling, compulsive, and chilling novel.

 

 

Book Review: THE DEATH OF MRS WESTAWAY by Ruth Ware @RuthWareWriter @HarvillSecker

The Death of Mrs WestawayPublication: 28th June 2018 by Harvill Secker

When Harriet Westaway receives an unexpected letter telling her she’s inherited a substantial bequest from her Cornish grandmother, it seems like the answer to her prayers. She owes money to a loan shark and the threats are getting increasingly aggressive: she needs to get her hands on some cash fast. 

There’s just one problem – Hal’s real grandparents died more than twenty years ago. The letter has been sent to the wrong person. But Hal knows that the cold-reading techniques she’s honed as a seaside fortune teller could help her con her way to getting the money. If anyone has the skills to turn up at a stranger’s funeral and claim a bequest they’re not entitled to, it’s her. 

Hal makes a choice that will change her life for ever. But once she embarks on her deception, there is no going back. She must keep going or risk losing everything, even her life…

 

Ruth Ware is back!!! I still remember how completely engrossed I was in In A Dark Dark Wood, surprised that it was a debut novel, and now, three years later, I get excited when she has a new novel coming out. With a very likable main character and a gripping and suspenseful plot, THE DEATH OF MRS WESTAWAY has quickly become my favourite Ruth Ware’s novel.

Harriet “Hal” Westaway is 21 years old and she makes her living reading tarot cards at a pier in Brighton. Her mother died in a hit-and-run three years earlier and she has never met her father. She is also broke and she owns a lot of money to a loan shark. So when she receives a letter from a lawyer to inform her that she is one of the heirs of the estate of a Mrs Westaway, Hal thinks this is her chance to solve her problems and travels to Corwall to claim her inheritance. But she didn’t expect three sons estranged from their mother for years, a house full of secrets, and a past that it is slowly revealed.

I really liked the character of Hal. Even though she pretends to be someone else to inherit Mrs Westaway’s estate, she is a good genuine person. The only family she ever had was her mother and she’s been completely alone since her death. By pretending to be Mrs. Westaway’s lost granddaughter she hopes to get not only a bit of money that will get the loan shark off her back, but also a new family.

The family secrets, the gothic oppressive mansion in decline, and, also, an old servant who can’t cook and seems to know more than she should create a gothic atmosphere worthy of an Agatha Christie’s novel. The house in itself is a character of the novel with its secrets and its strange vibe that I almost expected a ghost to make an appearance.

If you are looking for an entertaining and intelligent novel, this is the one for you. THE DEATH OF MRS WESTAWAY is one of my favorite novels of 2018, an unsettling, gripping, and propulsive read that shows that, once again, Ruth Ware is really good at what she does.

#BlogTour: THE READING PARTY by Fenella Gentleman @FGentleman @MuswellPress @annecater

The Reading PartyPublication: 14th June 2018 by Muswell Press

It is the seventies and the colleges of Oxford are finally opening their doors to women. Sarah Addleshaw, young, spirited and keen to prove her worth, begins term as the first female academic at her college. She is in fact, her college s only female Fellow . Impulsive love affairs with people, places and the ideas in her head beset Sarah throughout her first exhilarating year as a don, but it is the Reading Party, that has the most dramatic impact. Asked to accompany the first mixed group of students on the annual college trip to Cornwall, Sarah finds herself illicitly drawn to one of them, the suave American Tyler. Torn between professional integrity and personal feelings she faces her biggest challenge to date.

 

I have to admit that I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this book. I found the cover very intriguing and the mention of a reading party really drew me in. Then I started reading the book and I fell in love with the story and the main character.

The protagonist of the novel is Sarah Addleshaw. In 1976, she is the first female fellow at one of the colleges at Oxford University, which, at the time, was a novelty and Sarah had to costantly prove herself in front of her male colleagues. She is also chosen to lead, along with a senior male colleague, Dr. Loxton, to lead the annual Reading Party that, for the first time, will host a group of mixed students.

First, we are in Oxford where see Sarah as she struggles to fit in among her male colleagues and she prepares for the Reading Party. Then, we move to Cornwall, in a secluded cottage, where a group of students of different background and culture and two tutors spend the next seven days together, studying, taking long walks, and doing group activities. Sarah is not much older than the students, so, sometimes, you can see her struggle with her position in the group.

I loved that the novel is set in the world of academia and that the author put together a group of interesting characters with different views and different goals, and I was intrigued by the dynamics of the reading group. The one character that mostly left an impression on me was Sarah. She is intelligent and thoughtful and I found very authentic. Even though she is constantly judged and observed by her male colleagues, she is not afraid to speak her own mind. The novel is set in the 1970s, but because of the theme of gender equality, it still feels relevant.

I found THE READING PARTY beautifully written and I would recommend it if you are looking for an engaging, riveting, and readable story. I’d like to thank Anne Cater and Muswell Press for providing me with a copy of the book and for inviting me to take part in the blog tour.

 

The Reading Party Blog Tour poster

 

 

FFenella Author pictureenella Gentleman studied PPE at Wadham College, Oxford, when it went mixed. She participated in two reading parties in Cornwall. After graduating she worked in publishing, before moving into marketing and communications in the professions. She lives in London and North Norfolk.

 

 

Amazon UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reading-Party-Fenella-Gentleman/dp/1999811720/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523901133&sr=1-1&keywords=fenella+gentleman