Emma's Bookish Lifestyle

The Choice: Embrace the Possible by Edith Eger My rating: 5 of 5 stars I have read many books on the holocaust and it's survivors but apart from Anne Frank they have mainly been from the perspective of male survivors. What I regarded so highly in this book was both Edith Egers writing style and was astounded by her ability even all these years on to not only face the horror head on but use it for the benefit of others. She admits early on that "I am happiest when I am alone, when I can retreat into my inner world...". Something that is constantly referred to is the choices she has had to make and that have been such an integral part of her life and whether focus should in fact be on those things we lose or to the things we do have in our life. One quote from her mother has stuck with me even now "No one can take away from you what you've put in your mind". I still find it awe inspiring the inner strength and determination to kindl...

The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is a thriller in the veign of Gone Girl, and although I can agree to some extent I do feel that authors should not be compared as it can be the kiss of death to a premise. In this case I really did enjoy this book, I read it during a stay in hospital and found it light heartedly drawing me in however, not as intense in the suspense or so I thought.....making it easy to read for hours on end. The story begins with Vanessa and her husband Richard and their married life together, until he begins an affair with his secretary at work (cliche I know but stick with it!). When it falls apart so does Vanessa's life and she immerses herself in the pain of her failed relationship and where it went wrong. Vanessa however is far from blameless and when Richard becomes engaged to Nellie and provides her with the love and security she craves, as her wedding looms ever closer she feels that she is not alone...

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss My rating: 5 of 5 stars This darkly poignant and compelling novella draws you in from the first pages and holds you to the very end. The tale of Sylvie and her summer's experience with her family and small group of university student's opens her not only to the experience of iron age living but to the devastating climax of her time living as an iron age villager. There are trigger warnings for violence in this book however, these are delicately handled and Sarah Moss had an almost lyrical way of writing that both draws you in to the surroundings and it's modern connection to times now past. At times Sylvie is portrayed as just a teenager desperately seeking normality and yet at times darkly mirrors the demise of an iron age sacrifice. This book is so far one of the best books of my year and I cannot recommend it highly enough. View all my reviews

The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas My rating: 5 of 5 stars This book is a time travel story with a thriller twist spread over three timelines. We join the story in 1967 with four female scientists who are developing a means of time travel however, on the cusp of becoming pioneers in the industry one of them suffers a mental breakdown calling the validity of the research into question. Along with the pioneers, we meet two further characters in Ruby, a grandchild of the scientist who had a breakdown and Odette a university student who discovers a body with no explanation for the preceding events. This story is beautifully written with a strength of character, purpose and plot so compelling, it was hard at times to put it down and return to the real world. @Katemascarenhas has an ability to interweve both plot and sub-plot seemlessly to draw you deeper and deeper into the story whilst the sub-characters add depth and detail to the overall story. I...

Retribution Road by Antonin Varenne translated by Sam Taylor This book begins in 1852 Burma where Sergeant Arthur Bowman, a member of the East India Company, is sent on a mission during the 2nd Anglo-Burmese War.  The expedition fails and he and his men are captured and subjected to horrible torture, only ten escape with their lives. Years later we join Sergeant Bowman in London, battling his demons through alcohol and opium.  When he finds a mutilated corpse in a sewer, the victim appear to have suffered the same torturous torments he was subjected to in the Burmese jungle.  Convinced that the culprit is one of the men who shared his fate in Burma, Bowman resolves to hunt the killer down. Plunged into darkness Arthur Bowman (now a transport police officer) will search for vengeance and redemption for the events that happened in 1852. Plot Development  "After I had found the main places and acts of the story and had ordered and read books about the...

An Ocean of Minutes  by Thea Lim The premise of this book is that the US has been hit by a deadly flu pandemic. Its 1981 and Frank has caught the virus and his girlfriend Polly is left with the difficult choice of risking everything, leaving him and taking a leap of faith into the future. With the use of time travel, there are some trying to thwart the virus, but this comes at a high cost.  Polly must sign up for a one-way-trip to the future and has to work of the cost of the trip to enable Frank to receive the lifesaving treatment he needs. Polly arranges to meet Frank in Galveston, Texas of the future when she arrives in 1993.  Unbeknownst to Polly there has been an administrative error and she is re-routed to 1998 and Frank is not at the meeting point. This book is based around dual timelines, introducing the couple of Frank and Polly to us in 1979 when they first meet and begin their relationship together, alongside the alternative future G...

the darkness by Ragnar Jónasson My rating: 4 of 5 stars Firstly I would like to thank Michael Joseph for the opportunity to give a true and honest review of this book. This is my first experience of a Nordic Noir Thriller and I have to say I am so glad I started with Ragnar Jonasson. He is a well-respected author from Reykjavik and began his career at the age of 17 translating the works of Agatha Christie into Icelandic. This particular novel was the runner-up of the Novel of the Year Award 2015 in Iceland. This is a start of a new trilogy based around Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdottir a member of the Reykjavik police force who is being forced into early retirement by her commanding officer. Hulda uses this conversation to utilise her final days investigating the cold case of a young female asylum seeker found dead in the remote countryside. Her death was ruled as a suicide after a short investigation, but it soon becomes clear to Hulda that there is a...

The Hoarder by Jess Kidd My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is the story of Maud Drennan a carer and unwanted psychic. Maud see's saints and things others can't see. So when she starts working with the belligerent Cathal Flood she finds herself drawn into the mysteries of his home. Hidden amongst the detritus of his hoarding in his grandios house she finds he begins to open up to her. With the assistance of her housebound transgendre landlady and her troop of saints, Maud begins to uncover what lies beneath the strange activities taking place at Cathal Flood's home and finds herself not only flashing back to events from her past when her sister when missing but also being sought by someone trying to ensure the truth of the past remains hidden. This was something I listened to on audio book and I have to say that the narration of Aoife McMahon and her irish lilt was extremely cathartic and enjoyable to listen too. Aoife managed to relay the humour and carry th...

A Portable Shelter by Kirsty Logan My rating: 4 of 5 stars I am not one to always get on with a book based in magical realism however, I had heard such good things about this book I could not resist giving it a chance. This book is based on a gay couple Ruth and Liska who have moved to a remote coastal cottage in Scotland while Ruth carries their first child. Each of them spends time telling the baby stories containing moral and life lessons from what they have learnt. This includes many magical realism tales including selkies, werewolves and child-eating witches. They agree not to tell stories to the baby so each of them are relaying their tales in secret from each other. I really did enjoy the small tales included within the overall story of Ruth and Liska however, was somewhat disappointed when the concluding story was about Death. I felt sad that the child was not born during the final pages of the book and felt extremely curious to find out with a mot...

This was a Buddy Read Book and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  Deborah Smith's immaculate translation opens us up to the darkness and human tragedy that exists in North Korea at this time.  Bandi means Firefly and what an apt name that is as the writing of this author shines a light on the oppression, darkness and harshness of existence under a dictatorial regime. This group of short stories will haunt you long after you have read them and reassess the good fortune many of us take for granted in the West. These stories are fictional but clearly drawn from the visual experiences of Bandis family, friends and associates. This author has amazingly decided not to defect to South Korea but to stay in his home state grasping the hope that the cracks of reality may one day splinter the dictatorship of modern slavery wide open and allow these oppressed people a glimpse at true freedom. I have given it 4 stars purely because I did not finish one story as the lyrical literary to...

The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor My rating: 5 of 5 stars If you are a lover of a good thriller, with an element of death but not an overwhelming amount of blood and gore, this could definately be the book for you. This book spans two decades the catastrophic events during 1986 between a small group of friends. That was the year that Eddie met Mr Halloran he gave them the idea for the chalk figures as a means of leaving secret messages amongst each other on the paths of Anderbury. Mr Halloran is the man who experiences the atrocity at the fairground and understands what Eddie experienced that day. Thirty years later in 2016 Eddie is now Ed and believes that he has left his scarred childhood behind for the dull existence of a middle aged school teacher who never left the town where he grew up. That is until he receives an envelope through the door with a single piece of chalk...... This book is dark and compelling, drawing you in with an initial event of such horror ...

God Help the Child by Toni Morrison My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is my second book by Toni Morrison, I have to say I did struggle with some of the language when I read Beloved so entered this with nervous trepidation. I did not need to worry, this was a light writing style in comparison to that of Beloved. The story is about a women called Bride, she is an ebony-black, attractive and successful women tormented by an event in her childhood which made her tell a despicable lie which had long-term repercussions on anothers life. Her falsehood continues to haunt her into adulthood. But sometimes your actions have far reaching consequences not only for yourself but those around you. Bride loves Booker, a man with a past held so tightly in check that nobody really appreciates the complexity of his character. These two people are a complex emotional typhoon circling the drain that could lead them to drown in despair or face the blameless sins of their childish selves...

The Complete Maus   by Art Spiegelman My rating: 5 of 5 stars This graphic novel depicts the life of Art Spiegelman's father's experiences during the Holocaust of World War II, it shows his story image by image of his life as a young man before the war, his marriage and subsequent experiences as a Jew in pre-war Poland. Then fact that his story is portrayed using animals to depict specific characters for example, Cats as Germans, Pigs as Polish, Mice as Jews and Dogs as Americans, does nothing to detract from the hard hitting events of this survivors tale. This story depicts the personal account of a man's experience during a dark and repugnant time in our history which I feel nobody should be able to forget. Not only does the content set out the events that occurred during this devastating time but it also includes the emotional aspect of the events both as individuals, survivor's and as a family. I cannot recommend this book highly enough which is why I h...

The Two Houses by Fran Cooper The Two Houses sit grey and brooding beneath a pale sky. They cling to the hillside, cowering from the wind, because always, before everything up here, there is the wind. The Two Houses were not always two. But if it is human to build - even up here, in this blasted northern hinterland - it is human to break, too. After an acclaimed career in ceramics, Jay herself has cracked. Recovering from a breakdown, she and her husband Simon move to the desolate edges of the north of England, where they find and fall in love with the Two Houses: a crumbling property whose central rooms were supposedly so haunted that a previous owner had them cut out from the building entirely. But on uprooting their city life and moving to the sheltered grey village of Hestle, Jay and Simon discover it's not only the Two Houses that seems to be haunted by an obscure past. It becomes increasingly clear that the villagers don't want them there at all - and wh...

These Dividing Walls   by Fran Cooper My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars During the course of one hot summer in the back streets of the left bank of Paris, in number 37 Rue des Eglantines a building holds the stories, solitude and secrets of it’s residents lives. Within the confines of their homes people are unaware that soon the things that divide them will collapse and they will all be affected by the events of that heady summer. Into this summer comes Edward Rivers, an Englishman with his own story taking an attic room from a friend, Emilie in her Aunt Frederique’s building to give him an escape, time to grieve the loss of a loved one. Immediately upon reading this book there is an intrinsic feeling of the quaint back streets of Paris that at times feel more claustrophobic than quaint, especially through the course of the characters stories, this was due to the growing intensity of the events instilling an ever deepening dark mood along with the taut heat of the summer. At tim...

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson My rating: 5 of 5 stars This book follows the life and reincarnations of Ursula Todd. This immensely moving story starts with her unfortunate birth and death by strangulation of the umbilical cord in February 1910 and leads us through the twists and turns of not only her's but her families life through two world wars and a number of reincarnations. Ursula battles both for her own singular existence whilst trying to maintain a strong moral compass, whilst struggling to remain somewhat detached from the overall impact on those surrounding her both family and friends. I would highly recommend this book to all historical and literary fiction lovers, the way that Kate Atkinson has written this book takes you by the hand on a winding path to which you are uncertain where it may lead next, or the fateful cost it may have on Ursula and the Todd Family. There is a loosely fitting sequel to this book "God in Ruins...

The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar My rating: 1 of 5 stars This book is set in 1785 when a merchant Mr Hancock is handed into his possession a shrivelled body of a mermaid in lieu of a ship he was expecting to return. This starts an event of trying to recoup his losses by displaying the oddity to those of interest at a sum. Angelica Neal is a women used to being kept but has fallen on hard times, her previous lover has passed away and she finds herself fighting for survival and recognition to keep herself out of the high paid establishments and prostitution that will be her plight. Instead Angelica seeks a new lover and a higher status than that previously achieved. Despite the high acclaim from my fellow Book Tuber's unfortunately this book did not quite meet my expectation. I found this book to read in a very slow and dry manner which left me unable to connect either with the content of the story or unfortunately the characters....