Review: If You Go Away by Adele Parks

If You Go Away by Adele Parks
Publisher: Headline Review
Release date: 4 June 2015
Rating: *****

Back cover blurb: 1914. Vivian, a young, impassioned debutante is hurried into a pedestrian marriage to cover a scandal. War breaks out on her wedding day - domestically and across Europe. Quick to escape the disappointment of matrimony, her traditionalist husband immediately enlists and Vivian has no alternative than to take up the management and running of his estate - after all, everyone is required to do their bit. Even pretty, inadequately-educated young wives. Howard, a brilliant young playwright rushes to the front to see for himself the best and the worst of humanity; he cannot imagine what the horror might be. In March 1916, when conscription becomes law, it is no longer enough for him to report on the War, it's a legal requirement that he joins the ranks. Howard refuses, becoming one of the most notorious conscientious objectors of the time. Contd...

If You Go Away is Adele Parks' 15th novel. Her first foray into historical fiction resulted in one of my favourite novels of last year; Spare Brides. I wasn't sure that this could be improved upon, but If You Go Away is quite possibly Adele's best work yet.

Vivian (our main protagonist) is brilliant, but naive, beautiful but headstrong. She is wealthy and used to getting her own way when we meet her, but when WW1 breaks out on her wedding day she is forced to revaluate the planned life ahead of her. She moves away from London to be with her husband in the country, but it is a lonely place for Vivian and she does not settle immediately.

Aubrey is not the husband that Vivian wanted, the one that everyone told her she deserved. But he is the one that society has said she must have, after a terrible misjudgment on her behalf. It is inevitable that he will go away to War and Vivian cannot help but be thankful for that.

Howard is determined, determined not to go away to fight, and cannot be dissuaded once he has set his mind on something. He is not (at least in my mind) as Society would have him labelled 'a Conchie' (A conscientious objector). He is most definitely not a coward, and he will not be the first man to suffer for standing up for his beliefs.

When Vivian struggling with the loneliness of unfamiliar surroundings, befriends Enid, she has no idea that Enid's suggestion for her to become involved in the day to day running of her own land will set her on a collison course with Howard, Enid's son. After a eye opening stint on the front working with a newspaper reporter Howard returns home to his Mother, to the country, more determined than ever not to fight.

Vivian and Howard come from very different backgrounds. Previously a playwright in London, Howard has seen both sides of the war; back home and on the front. But it is the troubles of the homefront that bring them together when Vivian employs Howard to help with her land whilst her husband is away. The events that follow undoubtedly change both of their lives beyond recognition.

Few female writers I have come across are prepared to write about the brutality and horror of War as honestly as Adele has done with this novel and I hope that she is recognised for this. Her characters go on some remarkable journeys through this novel and emerge at the end infinitely better human beings although their situations have changed dramatically.

A beautifully written passionate, love story laced with tragedy, and Parks' trademark honesty; If You Go Away is a novel of epic proportions. And the ending? Well it is a glorious finish to the perfect novel. I can't recommend it highly enough.

I might be biased as a huge fan of Adele's work, but this is 100% my favourite novel of this year so far, and will probably be my stand out novel of 2015. I'm not sure if she has any more historical work up her sleeve- but I am quietly hoping that she does.

If You Go Away is available TODAY from Amazon online and Headline.

Finding the one: a selection of short stories is also available now.

  

A massive thank you to Georgina Moore at Headline and Adele for sending me my gorgeous limited edition proof.

Review: the Confectioner's Tale by Laura Madeline

the Confectioner's Tale by Laura Madeline

Publisher: Black Swan

Release date: 23 April 2015

Rating: ****

Back cover blurb: What secrets are hiding in the heart of Paris? At the famous Patisserie Clermont in Paris, 1909, a chance encounter with the owner’s daughter has given one young man a glimpse into a life he never knew existed: of sweet cream and melted chocolate, golden caramel and powdered sugar, of pastry light as air. But it is not just the art of confectionery that holds him captive, and soon a forbidden love affair begins. Almost eighty years later, an academic discovers a hidden photograph of her grandfather as a young man with two people she has never seen before. Scrawled on the back of the picture are the words ‘Forgive me’. Unable to resist the mystery behind it, she begins to unravel the story of two star-crossed lovers and one irrevocable betrayal.

The Confectioner's Tale is an evocatively woven tale of forbidden love and family secrets, told from two very different time periods.

Cambridge, 1988. Petra Stevenson is studying for a PHD. She is distracted by Hall, the man who has been appointed as her Grandfather's official Biographer. Petra is convinced that Hall only wants to make money from a possible scandal that her Grandfather was involved in in Paris in the early 1900s and is determined to do everything she can to stop him.

Paris 1909. Guillaume (or Gui) Du Frere is working on the railways as a labourer when he by chance meets Mademoiselle Jeanne Clermont, the daughter of a famous Parisienne confectioner. Their backgrounds could not be more different, Gui sends money home to his Mother every pay day and sleeps alongside the other labourers in a hut near the Railway. Jeanne lives an opulent existence, having had a privilege upbringing. But there is a connection between them.

When Gui saves Jeanne's life during the despair of the Paris floods, her Father is desperate to avoid a scandal. He offers Gui money to stay quiet, but Gui asks for something he wants more than money; a chance to be close to Jeanne, and the exquisite artwork of the patisserie. He wants a job.

Jeanne's Father is happy to oblige thinking that Gui will be poor at the job, and will soon be out on his ear. But Gui's cold labourers hands make him a natural with pastry work, and soon he is moving upwards from the lowest ranks of the kitchen. But of course Gui's real reason for working so hard in the kitchen is for the chance to see Jeanne.

As Petra puts together pieces of her Grandfather's history together like a puzzle from old photographs and letters she begins to wonder what exactly in Paris, a place she can't ever recall her Grandfather discussing. Letters from .J.G. Stevenson to G Du Frere suggest every hint of the scandal that Hall is trying to dig up, but Petra is convinced there is more to the letters than meets the eye. But can she uncover the truth before her Grandfather's name is tainted forever?

The Confectioner's Tale is a beautiful novel both inside and out, and will leave you wanting to visit a Parisien Patisserie immediately.

the Confectioner's Tale is available to buy now from Amazon online and all good book shops.

    Thank you to the publishers who approved my request via netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Review: After the Bombing by Clare Morrall

After the Bombing by Clare Morrall
Publisher: Sceptre
Release Date: 27 March 2014
Rating: *** 
Back cover blurb: On the night of May 3rd, 1942, fifteen-year-old Alma Braithwaite and her fellow boarders at Goldwyn's school huddle in an air-raid shelter as bombs rain down on Exeter in one of the Baedeker raids. By the time the girls emerge, half the school is in ruins and the city centre has been destroyed. Twenty-one years on, Alma lives alone in the family house and teaches music at her old school. She's moderately content, until the death of the long-serving headmistress brings a new broom in the form of the steely, modernizing Miss Yates. A new student starts too - the daughter of a man Alma hasn't seen since 1942, when he played a pivotal role in her life. Suddenly, Alma is taken back to the summer that followed the raids, a summer of numbing loss yet also of youthful exuberance, friendship and dancing. 

I expected to love this book, but I was left a little disappointed by the ending. I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, but I feel it leaves a few things unanswered. Maybe there's a sequel in the pipeline that I don't know about. Or maybe ''After the Bombing'' just has 'one of those endings'?

'After the Bombing' opens with a descriptive prologue about the RAF bombing Lübeck in Germany and the trail of devastation left in the bomber's wake. The chapter closes detailing Hitler's plans for retaliation, devastation over the cities of Exeter, Bath, Norwich, York and Canterbury.

Exeter is where we first meet our protagonist, Alma Braithwaite a fifteen year old boarder at Goldwyn's school for Girls, woken during the night by her best friend Curls (Jane Curley) amidst Hitler's retaliation bombings.

The girls make it safely to the schools newly built Air raid shelter where the spend the rest of the night. When they awake, it is to the death and destruction of some of the worst bombing of WWII and for some, their lives are changed forever.

Twenty One Years later, Alma is still at Goldwyn's, this time as a teacher, rather than a naive schoolgirl. Her quiet and calm existence is disturbed by the arrival of a new headmistress and a new pupil, the daughter of a face from her past that she can't forget. Alma, certain she had moved on, is forced to relive her teenage years and the losses that she and her friends suffered.

'After the Bombing' as a fictional historic account of World World Two is a great novel, as 'just' a novel, I'm not sure I'd have read to the end.

After the Bombing is available from 27 March 2014

You can pre-order it now from Amazon and Sceptre

Thank you to the publishers who approved by request on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Review: The Visitors by Rebecca Mascull

The Visitors by Rebecca Mascull
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Release Date: 2 January 2014
Rating: ****

Back Cover Blurb: Imagine if you couldn't see. Couldn't hear. Couldn't speak... Then one day somebody took your hand and opened up the world to you. Adeliza Golding is a deafblind girl, born in late Victorian England on her father's hop farm. Unable to interact with her loving family, she exists in a world of darkness and confusion; her only communication is with the ghosts she speaks to in her head, who she has christened the Visitors. One day she runs out into the fields and a young hop-picker, Lottie, grabs her hand and starts drawing shapes in it. Finally Liza can communicate. Her friendship with her teacher and with Lottie's beloved brother Caleb leads her from the hop gardens and oyster beds of Kent to the dusty veldt of South Africa and the Boer War, and ultimately to the truth about the Visitors.

The Visitors is the second historical fiction novel I've picked up in less than a week. It was kindly sent to me by Wish List books, and by the time I'd read the first few lines I was hooked.

The Visitors is a beautiful tale of friendship, romance and learning how to overcome disability. It follows the protagonist, Adeliza (Liza) from birth, right through to adulthood.

Liza is born partially sighted (from what I can gather), but after contracting a fever at the age of Two, she is left both deaf and blind, plunged into darkness and silence. Unable to communicate with her beloved family, Liza becomes increasingly frustrated and angry. Her only communication is with the Visitors, the ghosts that she speaks to in her head.

One day Liza escapes from her monotonous routine with her Nanny and runs out into her Father's hop fields where her hand is taken and drawn on to by a complete stranger, who we learn to be Charlotte (Lottie), a young hop picker whose family help Liza's father out every summer.

Lottie has had tragedy in her own life, her sister died at a young age and was blind, which is how Lottie learned to 'finger speak'. Lottie is taken on to help Liza, and we never hear of 'Nanny' again, as Lottie teaches Liza more and more, their friendship blossoms into something beautiful and she is introduced to the rest of Lottie's family. She is particularly taken with Lottie's beloved brother Caleb. I could almost sense that this would have a major impact later on in the book, but I wasn't entirely sure how. I don't want to give anything away, but Caleb is pivotal to how the story ends and I guess in some way also, to the woman that Liza becomes.

The Visitors themselves are also crucial to how certain events play out, but again I don't want to give anything away. I'm not usually a fan of 'ghost' stories, but this novel was so much more...

I still can't quite believe that this is a debut novel as it is so well written. I can't wait to see what the author comes up with next!

You can purchase the Visitors from Amazon online and all good book shops.  

Review: Spare Brides by Adele Parks

Spare Brides by Adele Parks
Publisher: Headline Review  

Release Date: 13 Feb 2014
Rating: *****

Back Cover: (TBC I was sent a proof copy): New Year's Eve, 1920. The Great War is over and it's a new decade of glamour and promise. But a generation of men and women who survived the extreme trauma and tragedy will never be the same. With countless men lost, it seems that only wealth and beauty will secure a husband from the few who returned, but lonely Beatrice has neither attribute. Ava has both, although she sees marriage as a restrictive cage after the freedom war allowed. Sarah paid war's ultimate price: her husband's life. Lydia should be grateful that her own husband's desk job kept him safe, but she only sees his cowardice. A chance encounter for one of these women with a striking yet haunted officer changes everything. In a world altered beyond recognition, where not all scars are visible, this damaged and beautiful group must grasp any happiness they can find-whatever the cost.

Wow. What a novel.

I love historical fiction, and I love Adele Parks, so I was very excited to receive the proof copy of Spare Brides that was very kindly sent to me by Georgina at Headline. I've been eagerly awaiting this novel for a while and I was not disappointed.

I distinctly remember saying after reading 'The State We're In' that it was Parks' best yet. I was wrong. Spare Brides is definitely Adele Parks' best novel to date.

The novel is set in the early 1920's and tells the stories of Lydia (our main protagonist), Ava, Beatrice and Sarah who are all struggling in different ways to cope with the new world that they find themselves in after the war.

Lydia is struggling with with fertility issues, and a husband that she is not even sure that she loves. Ava is adored by literally everyone, but seems to have no sense or purpose. Sarah is happy enough, widowed, lonely and concerned about her friends' well-being, and Beatrice Sarah's sister is desperately lonely. Never the most attractive girl, she is finding it impossible with the shortage of men after the war to find anyone to marry, and fears she will end up an old maid.

The period is something that the author seems to adapt to writing effortlessly, as if she has always written so. In fact, this, is her first foray into historical fiction, but she writes about the period beautifully, describing the stunning gowns, accessories, fine dining and stately homes of the time, without shying away from the devastation that has been caused by the great war and the effect that it will have on the novels characters and their future.

Lydia we meet as she is getting ready to attend a New Year's Eve soiree, her biggest dilemma at the time is what on earth she is going to wear, as the frock that she had ordered from her favourite fashion house has not arrived. In the opening chapters, we see Lydia as wealthy, popular and perhaps a little selfish, certainly not living in the 'real' world. But this changes as the novel progresses, and she meets someone that will turn her life upside down, quite literally.

Her friends are less than encouraging, trying to persuade Lydia away from the temptation that is calling her. But she is not listening. She cannot and will not listen. So they take matters in to their own hands, with shocking and upsetting consequences. They believe they are doing what is right for her. Lydia knows they are wrong, but how can she prove them otherwise?

Well... I'm afraid you'll have to read it for yourselves to find out. I can guarantee you won't be disappointed!

Spare Brides is available from 13th February 2014.  You can pre-order it now from Amazon and Headline.