Category: Blog Tour

#BlogTour #BookReview Every Shade of Happy by Phyllida Shrimpton

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Every Shade of Happy by Phyllida Shrimpton. My thanks to Amy at Head of Zeus for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my digital review copy via NetGalley. Do check out the post by my tour buddy for today, Frankie at Chicks, Rogues and Scandals.

Every Shade of HappyAbout the Book

Algernon is at the end of his life.
His granddaughter is at the start of hers.
But they have more in common than they think…

Every day of Algernon’s 97 years has been broken up into an ordered routine. That’s how it’s been since the war, and he’s not about to change now.

Until his 15-year-old granddaughter arrives on his doorstep, turning Algernon’s black-and-white life upside down. Everything from Anna’s clothes to the way she sits glued to her phone is strange to Algernon, and he’s not sure he likes it.

But as the weeks pass, Algernon is surprised to discover they have something in common after all – Anna is lonely, just like him. Can Algernon change the habits of a lifetime to bring the colour back into Anna’s world?

Format: Hardback (400 pages)          Publisher: Aria
Publication date: 18th August 2022 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find Every Shade of Happy on Goodreads

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Hive | Amazon UK
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My Review

Okay, I’m going to cut to the chase and say I was Team Algernon from the outset. Yes, he may be a little grumpy, rather lackadaisical about washing his smalls and definitely set in his ways but that’s just his way of coping with the world, particularly since the death of his wife, Evie. He feels she’s with him in spirit though, giving him a nudge when needed or the occasional gentle rebuke just as she did when she was alive. I loved everything about Algernon and, although he may be out of touch with modern technology – he favours a map over an app – perhaps he’s not wrong when he asserts a letter, a telephone call or a face-to-face meeting means more than an email, text or ‘like’ on an Instagram post.

It took me a little longer to warm to Anna’s mother, Helene. Initially, she comes across as someone who lurches from one crisis to another. Even Anna admits her mother is impulsive and clumsy, charging into things without due thought. It’s not Helene’s fault that she and Anna have ended up homeless but her precarious financial situation is the reason they’ve had to resort to living with Algernon. However, I came to admire the way Helene gradually gains control of her life, eventually finding something she’s really good at; as even Algernon is forced to admit.

Anna’s love of colour is about more than just wearing clothes of every hue or creating body art, it’s her form of self-expression. When forced to don a drab school uniform, she feels she’s no longer Anna, just a dull, grey version of herself. It’s one of the things, along with the upheaval of a new home, new school and having to leave her friends behind, that makes her retreat into herself, with only Gary her cactus for company. At this point I must mention one of my other favourite characters in the book – Jacob, the eldest son of Algernon’s neighbours – who literally catapults himself into the story variously performing the role of joker, protector, counsellor, delivery driver, cream tea devourer and much more besides. I also loved Jacob’s quirky sense of humour and his endless patience towards Algernon.

Dismiss any preconceived notion that Every Shade of Happy is the simple story of young Anna melting the heart of her grumpy old granddad because it’s much more nuanced than that. Although Anna and Algernon may appear to be running on parallel lines and that never the twain shall meet, in fact they have more in common than either of them thought. They just need a bit of guidance and encouragement to find out what it is. My first weepy moment was when an additional armchair was ordered – yes, really – and there were plenty of times after that I found myself reaching for the tissues.

There is a real warmth to the story perhaps partly because, as the author reveals in the Acknowledgments, the book is an ‘ode’ to her father whose wartime experiences were similar to Algernon’s, as was his reticence to talk about them.

Every Shade of Happy is a wonderfully affecting story told with warmth and wit.

In three words: Heartwarming, funny, touching

Try something similar: The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams

Phyllida_ShrimptonAbout the Author

Phyllida Shrimpton obtained a postgraduate degree in Human Resource Management, a career choice which was almost as disastrous as her cooking. Thankfully her love of books and writing led her to a new career as an author. Her young adult novel Sunflowers in February won the Red Book Award for YA Fiction in 2019. Having lived in London, The Netherlands and the Cotswolds with her husband, daughter, giant Saint Bernard and grumpy old terrier, she now lives on the Essex Coast in a place she likes to describe as being where the river meets the sea. Every Shade of Happy is her first adult novel.

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#BlogTour #BookReview The House at Helygen by Victoria Hawthorne

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The House at Helygen Blog Tour PosterWelcome to the final day of the blog tour for The House at Helygen by Victoria Hawthorne. My thanks to Katya at Quercus for inviting me to take part and for my review copy. You can read my thoughts on the book, which was published on 18th August, below.

The House at HelygenAbout the Book

2019. When Henry Fox is found dead in his ancestral home in Cornwall, the police rule it a suicide, but his pregnant wife, Josie, believes it was murder. Desperate to make sense of Henry’s death she embarks on a quest to learn the truth, all under the watchful eyes of Henry’s overbearing mother. Josie soon finds herself wrestling against the dark history of Helygen House and ghosts from the past that refuse to stay buried.

1881. New bride Eliza arrives at Helygen House with high hopes for her marriage. Yet when she meets her new mother-in-law, an icy and forbidding woman, her dreams of a new life are dashed. And when Eliza starts to hear voices in the walls of the house, she begins to fear for her sanity and her life.

Can Josie piece together the past to make sense of her present, or will the secrets of Helygen House and its inhabitants forever remain a mystery?

Format: Paperback (368 pages)        Publisher: Quercus
Publication date: 18th August 2022 Genre: Historical Fiction, Dual Time

Find The House at Helygen on Goodreads

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My Review

Moving between past and present, The House at Helygen starts off mysterious, progresses to sinister and concludes as full-on melodrama.  If you’re looking for a book with the vibes of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca or Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, you’re in the right place. The present day Helygen House even has a west wing previously destroyed by fire. And if you were looking for a modern day equivalent of Rebecca‘s Mrs Danvers then look no further than Josie’s mother-in-law, Alice, who in her habits and attitudes seems a woman ‘from another time entirely… who doesn’t live in the modern world at all’, closely followed by Eliza’s mother-in-law, Harriet, in the 19th century story.

Told from the point of view of two women, separated by over a century but who share many of the same experiences, plus the voice of a third woman through means of a journal, that narrative device beloved of historical novelists, The House at Helygen contains everything you might want from a historical suspense novel.

The author creates a brooding sense of menace which gradually builds as the house reveals it secrets and the dark past of the families who have occupied it. A silhouette glimpsed in a doorway, an unexplained cry in the night, a shadowy figure under a willow tree (very The Turn of the Screw), something scratching against a window ‘like fingers clawing to get in’.  And then there’s the disquieting atmosphere of some of the unused rooms of Helygen House where past and present seem separated by a mere whisper. Josie’s friend, Flick, sums it up well. ‘It just feels weird in here. Like something isn’t quite right. Like the air has been disturbed, and we’re trespassing. Like we shouldn’t be in here at all.’

The House at Helygen is a skilfully crafted story of obsession, secrets and what might be a grim inheritance.

In three words: Atmospheric, suspenseful, intricate

Try something similar: A Woman Made of Snow by Elisabeth Gifford

Victoria HawthorneAbout the Author

Vikki Patis is the bestselling author of psychological thrillers In the Dark (2021), The Wake (2020), Girl, Lost (2020), The Girl Across the Street (2019), and The Diary (2018). Girl, Lost, a top 100 bestseller on Amazon, was later longlisted for the Not the Booker Prize 2020. Her latest thriller, Return to Blackwater House, was published in March 2022 by Hodder & Stoughton.

She is represented by Emily Glenister at DHH Literary Agency and also writes historical fiction as Victoria Hawthorne. Her first historical suspense novel, The House at Helygen, was published in April 2022 by Quercus, with another to follow in 2023.

Vikki has also written articles for numerous publications. After being diagnosed with Perthes disease as a child, fibromyalgia in 2016 and coeliac disease in 2018, she tries to raise awareness of living with a chronic illness through her writing, and includes a diverse range of characters in her fiction. She lives in Scotland with her wife, two wild golden retrievers, and an even wilder cat.

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