Stormy Weather Reading

Autumn reading is coming your way a bit late this year since today is the 1st December, so I have re-titled. Stormy weather has continued into winter, it seems… So the best thing for everyone to do is settle down with a good book whenever possible. And here are some great options:)

 

The Secret Room by Jane Casey ****

For an entire series, Maeve and Josh have been caught in an exhilarating web of sexual tension, and this continues nicely in ‘The Secret Room’.

Maeve is investigating the murder of a woman in an up-market hotel (she was found in a bath of boiling water; dead, of course 😉) and lo and behold, Josh is also on the case. Meantime, his personal life is unravelling. His partner Mel is found a victim of a vicious assault and he is suspect number one. Despite being ordered not to, Maeve is compelled to step in and do her own investigating. She knows Josh and she knows he could not have committed such a crime. But people do uncharacteristic things when pushed to breaking point. Could he have? Would he have? And can Maeve find out the truth?

Jane Casey juggles all the skittles of these two cases, along with the personal lives of her key players in her usual skilful way. The book is expertly written and structured, and totally gripping. As always, the characters jump off the page and into the reader’s heart and mind. Highly recommended.

 

When I First Held You by Anstey Harris **** +

Anstey Harris mentions in her acknowledgements that this story of adoption, of secrets and lies, love and betrayal, was inspired by her own family history. She too was born in a Mother and Baby Home; sadly, she never knew her birth mother Christine, who surely would have been so proud of her daughter and her exploration into women’s dilemmas and lack of choices in the 1960s and preceding.

Judith is shocked when after fifty-six years, James re-enters her life. In that time, she has tried to come to terms with her loss and she has enjoyed a fifty year-long relationship with Catherine, a successful artist, who has now died, leaving Judith with another painful loss to bear.

Can she forgive James enough to listen to his explanations about what happened in the 1960s, in Glasgow and beyond? And can she forgive the betrayal she was unaware of? Will their meeting just increase their sense of loss, or is there a way that it can become a new beginning?

As always, Anstey Harris writes perceptively with sensitivity and precision, delving deep into the characters’ emotions and interior lives. In so doing, she has created an excellent and thought-provoking read. Highly recommended.

 

Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller **** +

Claire Fuller uses a dual-narrative timeline in the single viewpoint of Peggy. In the earlier timeline, Peggy is eight years old. Her mother, Ute, is a concert pianist, her father, James, a ‘survivalist’, a man who belongs to a group of people who are preparing an underground cellar for the prospect of nuclear war.

When Ute goes on tour, Peggy and James camp out in the garden and practise a survivalist’s way of life. But after a phone call with Ute and an argument with his friend Oliver, James decides to take things a step further.

In present narrative time, we meet Peggy, now aged seventeen, newly re-united with her mother and brother, coming to terms with life in London back at home, after years with her father in the wilderness.

Fuller draws us effortlessly into Peggy’s perspective, which feels authentic and which is never over-explained. I guessed the ending, but that didn’t spoil the book for me – it only confirmed the likely and almost inevitable in a sad and thought-provoking read which has stayed with me.

 

The Surf House by Lucy Clarke ***

This destination thriller takes us to Morocco with Bea, a reluctant model, who is getting fed up with being controlled, feeling she should not eat, and living a life she never really wanted. So, she quits, and is immediately put in danger of not only losing all her worldly goods, but worse… She is saved by Marnie, a fierce but good-natured surfer girl, who rescues Bea and takes her to the Surf House, the guest house she runs with her partner Ped. Bea can work there in return for board and lodgings – but will she get her passport back and will she be free to leave?

At the Surf House she becomes involved with the surfer gang, including the charismatic Aiden, and by default in the mysterious disappearance of Savannah, another traveller, a year ago. But are these people hiding a secret? In helping to solve the mystery, Bea gets rather more than she bargained for.

Lucy Clarke employs the usual twists and turns and viewpoint changes to tell her story. She is particularly good at describing the sea and the thrill of the surf and it is easy to want to continue turning the pages. A good read.

 

A Dry Spell by Clare Chambers ****+

Nina lives with her teenage son James, and when she sells her old car, James begins a relationship with Kerry, the girl whose father bought it for her. This is the start, Nina feels, of James moving away from her. He spends his time with Kerry, they are having sex, and maybe even taking drugs, Nina suspects. When she receives a phone call from Hugo, an old friend, Nina feels that the past is coming to get her. Enter the timeline of teenage Nina in a relationship with Martin and lusting after Guy, while (with Hugo) the four of them set off on an adventure to Arabia which leads to tragedy.

Meanwhile Jane is having trouble with her three-year-old daughter Harriet, with whom she can’t seem to make any connection. Jane is married to a headmaster, but she has gone off sex and only an unlikely friendship with the eccentric Erica seems to make her feel better.

Clare Chambers weaves these two stories and two timelines together beautifully and for a long time we have no knowledge of the connection, although since this is Clare Chambers, we know that there must be one. Sure enough, the two worlds collide and more drama ensues, along with a fair amount of ironic humour and some resolution. It has been a long dry summer. But one that has to end…

All the characters are beautifully drawn, the book is witty and compelling and I loved it. Highly recommended.