Category: Blog Tour

#BlogTour #BookReview The Sweetheart Locket by Jen Gilroy

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The Sweetheart LocketWelcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Sweetheart Locket by Jen Gilroy. My thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Orion Dash for my digital review copy via NetGalley. Do check out the posts by my four tour buddies for today, Kylie at Kitty-Kat Chronicles, Marg at The Intrepid Reader, Linn at Ellesea Loves Reading and Faye at imreadingmybook.

WinThere’s also a giveaway with a chance to win one of two Kindle copies of The Sweetheart Locket. Enter via Rafflecopter here.

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The Sweetheart LocketAbout the Book

What if the key to your present lies in the past?

London, 1939. On the eve of the Second World War, Canadian Maggie Wyndham defies her family and stays in England to do her bit for the war effort. Torn between two countries, two men and living a life of lies working for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Maggie’s RAF sweetheart locket is part of who she is…and who she isn’t.

San Francisco, 2019. Over twenty years after Maggie’s death, her daughter Millie and granddaughter Willow take a DNA test that’s supposed to be a bit of fun but instead yields unexpected results. Willow has always treasured her grandmother’s sweetheart locket, both family heirloom and a symbol of her grandparents’ love story. But now she doesn’t know what to believe. She embarks on a search for the truth, one she doesn’t know will reveal far more about herself…

Format: ebook (358 pages)             Publisher: Orion Dash
Publication date: 17th March 2022 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find The Sweetheart Locket on Goodreads

Purchase links
Hive | Amazon UK
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My Review

The book alternates between Maggie’s story starting at the outbreak of the Second World War and Willow’s in the present day (2019) as she searches for information about her grandmother’s life. It’s a search that initially will raise just as many questions as answers but possibly serve to lessen the distance that has developed between Willow and her mother, Camilla.

I found Maggie’s story particularly compelling, especially as it shines a light on the vitally important contribution women made to the war effort both at home and abroad, a contribution that often placed them in great personal danger. Willow’s research into her grandmother’s life allows the author to provide the reader with information about a secret wartime role performed by women not fully known about until recently. Inevitably, because of the book’s structure, the tension surrounding Maggie’s wartime experiences is lessened because we know she will survive the war. However, that’s not the same for other characters, injecting a welcome sense of jeopardy.

I liked the way the author brought out connections between the two women, despite the many decades that divide them. Both Maggie and Willow change over time, becoming more independent and determined to forge their own direction in life, even if that involves making a life in a new country. They become more willing to take risks in other ways too. There is a romantic aspect to both storylines although I thought Maggie’s was more believable, reflecting the fact that in wartime people have to live in the moment and snatch any chance of happiness.

I thought it was clever of the author to reflect the differences between then and now. For us, London at night with a sky bright with stars might be magical but for Maggie and others who lived through the Second World War it meant ‘bombing weather’, something to be feared rather than enjoyed. And for Maggie, clear skies has an additional significance linked to her wartime work.

Those who enjoy a mixture of tears of sadness and of joy in their historical fiction will find themselves well rewarded. There are also poignant, bittersweet moments and a few surprises, some more foreseeable than others, but given the fog of war not completely implausible. And after all, this is fiction. A neat touch is the epilogue which acts as a ‘what happened next’ for many of the secondary characters featured in the book.

The Sweetheart Locket is an absorbing dual timeline novel combining wartime drama, the uncovering of family secrets and new beginnings.

In three words: Romantic, engaging, heartwarming

Try something similar: The Girl From Bletchley Park by Kathleen McGurl

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Jen Gilroy Author Photo Spencer Studio Website Square 1080pxAbout the Author

Jen Gilroy writes sweet contemporary romance and dual timeline historical women’s fiction – warm, feel-good stories to bring readers’ hearts home. A Romance Writers of America® Golden Heart® finalist and shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists’ Association Joan Hessayon award, Amazon named her third book, Back Home at Firefly Lake, a ‘Best Book of the Month: Romance’ in December 2017.

A dual British-Canadian citizen, Jen lived in England for many years and earned a doctorate (with a focus on British cultural studies and social history) from University College London. Returning to where her Irish family roots run deep, she now lives with her husband, teenage daughter and floppy-eared rescue hound in small-town Eastern Ontario, Canada. When not writing, she enjoys reading, ice cream, ballet and paddling her purple kayak.

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#BlogTour #BookReview Nothing Else by Louise Beech

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Nothing Else Final Blog Tour BannerWelcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Nothing Else by Louise Beech. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Orenda Books for my digital review copy. Do check out the posts by my tour buddies for today, Jo at JaffaReadsToo and book blogger Intensive Gassing About Books.

Nothing Else Vis 3About the Book

Heather Harris is a piano teacher and professional musician, whose quiet life revolves around music, whose memories centre on a single song that haunts her. A song she longs to perform again. A song she wrote as a child, to drown out the violence in their home. A song she played with her little sister, Harriet.

But Harriet is gone … she disappeared when their parents died, and Heather never saw her again.

When Heather is offered an opportunity to play piano on a cruise ship, she leaps at the chance. She’ll read her recently released childhood care records by day – searching for clues to her sister’s disappearance – and play piano by night … coming to terms with the truth about a past she’s done everything to forget.

Format: Paperback (352 pages)    Publisher: Orenda Books
Publication date: 23rd June 2022 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find Nothing Else on Goodreads

Purchase links
Bookshop.org
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Hive | Amazon UK
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

Nothing Else Graphic 1

My Review

Having enjoyed many of Louise Beech’s previous novels – Maria in the Moon, Call Me Star Girl, I Am Dust and This Is How We Are Human – I think I can say a consistent theme of her books is the insightful exploration of relationships and her ability to take the reader on an emotional journey. Nothing Else is another interesting variation on this theme. (I’m going to apologise now for all the musical metaphors in this review.)

Heather’s decision to embark on a determined search for Harriet after so many years is not prompted by a pivotal event in her life but by a chance encounter and perhaps a general sense of dissatisfaction with her life, a feeling that she is drifting and there are ghosts of the past she needs to lay to rest. In particular, she nurses a sense of guilt that she failed to protect Harriet in the way an elder sister should.

The atmosphere of a modern cruise ship which is more like a floating hotel didn’t feel like an obvious place for Heather, although I can see it would appeal to someone seeking a sense of adventure. I did like how we see the power of music not only to entertain but to provoke memories, such as the lovely scene involving an elderly couple. (A neat touch is the book’s accompanying playlist containing many of the pieces Heather performs.)

As a pianist myself (although very much an amateur) it made sense to me that Heather would often see the world in musical terms. For example, boarding the ship along with other crew members, she likens the booming voice of the crew manager who greets them to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, ‘a bombastic work that uses artillery in the percussion section for effect’. In the same vein, she sees the crew with its mix of different nationalities and ages as a composition ‘that had used every note on the keyboard’.  These comparisons are in stark constrast to the jarring soundtrack of Heather’s childhood during which ‘unexplained sounds were rarely good’ and playing duets with her sister was a much-needed distraction.

Your view of what happens around halfway through the book will depend on whether you are a strong believer in fate.  I’ll just say that it does provide answers to the many questions that have haunted Heather and help to assuage the feeling of guilt she has been burdened with for so many years.

Nothing Else is an assured composition written in both major and minor keys. Although in musical terms I would describe the tempo as andante, it ends with a crowd-pleasing flourish akin to the rousing notes at the end of a symphony.

In three words: Emotional, heartwarming, absorbing

Try something similar: The Dust Bowl Orphans by Suzette D. Harrison

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Louise Beech Author picAbout the Author

All six of Louise Beech’s books have been digital bestsellers. Her novels have been a Guardian Readers’ Choice, shortlisted for Not the Booker Prize, and shortlisted for the RNA Most Popular Romantic Novel Award. Her short fiction has won the Glass Woman Prize, the Eric Hoffer Award for Prose, and the Aesthetica Creative Works competition, as well as shortlisting for the Bridport Prize twice.

Louise lives with her husband on the outskirts of Hull.

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