Category: Reading Challenges

#BlogTour #BookReview A Ration Book Victory by Jean Fullerton @rararesources

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A Ration Book VictoryWelcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for A Ration Book Victory by Jean Fullerton. My thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Corvus for my digital review copy. Do check out the posts by my tour buddies for today, Rachel at Rachel Brimble Romance and Joules at Northern Reader.

There’s also a (UK only) giveaway with a chance to win one of 6 signed copies of A Ration Book Victory. Enter via Rafflecopter here.

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  3. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over.
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A Ration Book VictoryAbout the Book

In the final days of war, only love will pull her through . . .

Queenie Brogan wasn’t always an East End matriarch. Many years ago, before she married Fergus, she was Philomena Dooley, a daughter of Irish Travellers, planning to wed her childhood sweetheart, Patrick Mahone. But when tragedy struck and Patrick’s narrow-minded sister, Nora, intervened, the lovers were torn apart.

Fate can be cruel, and when Queenie arrives in London she finds that Patrick Mahon is her parish priest, and that the love she had tried to suppress flares again in her heart.

But now in the final months of WW2, Queenie discovers Father Mahon is dying and must face losing him forever. Can she finally tell him the secret she has kept for over fifty years or will Nora once again come between them?

And if Queenie does decide to finally tell Patrick, could the truth destroy the Brogan family?

Format: Paperback ( pages)        Publisher: Corvus
Publication date: 5th May 2022 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find A Ration Book Victory on Goodreads

Purchase links
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Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

Hive | Amazon UK
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My Review

A Ration Book Victory marks the end of an era in more ways that one. Firstly, as the title suggests, it sees the end of the Second World War. Secondly, it’s the sixth and final book featuring the Brogan family. It’s a series I’ve loved since I picked it up at book two, A Ration Book Christmas. That was followed by A Ration Book Childhood, A Ration Book Wedding and A Ration Book Daughter. (There was also a novella, A Ration Book Christmas Kiss.)

A Ration Book Victory not only allows readers to catch up with the Brogan family as the end of WW2 approaches but also explores the early life in Ireland of the formidable matriarch of the clan, Queenie – or Philomena Dooley as she was known then. It’s a tender story of early love that might not have stood up on its own but works well alongside the goings-on in the Brogan household in the final months of the war. However, although the war in Europe may soon be over there’s still fighting continuing elsewhere and not everyone is yet out of danger.

What an extensive clan the Brogan family have become! The book gives us an endearing picture of a multi-generational household, where everyone pitches in and there aren’t many problems that can’t be solved over a cuppa.  It’s a family that includes a surprising amount of diversity including adopted and illegitimate children, and interracial relationships.

The book has a beautifully judged balance of humour – a case of mistaken identity during the VE Day celebrations springs to mind – and moments of sadness. I doubt many will have a dry eye as Queenie faces up to the impending death of the man she has known – and loved – for fifty years, Father Mahon. And I’m quite sure readers like me will be praying that characters such as Nora Mahon and Aunt Pearl get a suitable come-uppance.

I thought A Ration Book Victory was the perfect ending to the series with all of Ida’s and Jeremiah’s children branching out and moving on, as are they themselves. ‘The world had changed, and the Brogans had changed with it.’

In three words: Warm, emotional, engaging

Try something similar: The Woman with the Map by Jan Casey

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Portrait_Jean-1022 RNA resizedAbout the Author

Born and bred in East London Jean is a District Nurse by trade and has worked as a NHS manager and as a senior lecture in Health and Nursing Studies. She left her day job to become a full-time writer in 2015 and has never looked back.

In 2006 she won the Harry Bowling Prize and now has seventeen sagas published over three series all of which are set in East London.

She is an experienced public speaker with hundreds of WI and women’s club talks under her belt, plus for the past fifteen years she has sailed all over the world as an enrichment speaker and writing workshop leader on cruise ships.

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#BookReview In Place of Fear by Catriona McPherson

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In Place of FearAbout the Book

Helen leaned close enough to fog the mirror with her breath and whispered, ‘You, my girl, are a qualified medical almoner and at eight o’clock tomorrow morning you will be on the front line of the National Health Service of Scotland.’ Her eyes looked huge and scared. ‘So take a shake to yourself!”

Edinburgh, 1948. Helen Crowther leaves a crowded tenement home for her very own office in a doctor’s surgery. Upstart, ungrateful, out of your depth – the words of disapproval come at her from everywhere but she’s determined to take her chance and play her part.

She’s barely begun when she stumbles over a murder and learns that, in this most respectable of cities, no one will fight for justice at the risk of scandal. As Helen resolves to find a killer, she’s propelled into a darker world than she knew existed, hardscrabble as her own can be. Disapproval is the least of her worries now.

Format: Hardback (336 pages) Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Publication date: 14th April     Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Crime

Find In Place of Fear on Goodreads

Purchase links
Bookshop.org
Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

Hive | Amazon UK
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

The book has some really fascinating information about the birth of the NHS and the difficulty of  overcoming people’s disbelief that health services are now free. I had not come across the role of a medical almoner before and it took me a little while to work out exactly what it comprised. The author certainly succeeds in depicting what life was like for the poorer inhabitants of Edinburgh: living in crowded and often insanitary housing, existing on poor diets and lacking knowledge of how to prevent common diseases. The theme of women’s health, infertility and motherhood run throughout the book.

In the opening chapters, we learn a lot about Helen’s family and their domestic background. Helen’s determination to forge a career meets with opposition from her mother who can’t see why she would want to do anything other than start a family with her husband, Sandy. Unfortunately, there’s a big stumbling block to this, the nature of which Helen won’t fully understand until later in the book. In the meantime, she’s just patiently trying to help Sandy recover from his experiences as a prisoner-of-war. He is reluctant to talk about what he went through in any detail but it has left him with a fear of enclosed spaces.

The use of Scottish dialect, although giving authenticity, did impair my reading experience. (I appreciate this would not be the case for Scottish readers.) Sentences like, ‘She couldn’t stop the weans from palling around the back greens and the front streets, although she told Helen not to give killycodes if she could help it’ left me mystified and had me searching online for clarification. There were phrases I didn’t know the meaning of – drookit (soaking wet, drenched) or hackit (ugly) – and others that had a different meaning to the one I was used to – bunker (a table top or kitchen counter) or press (cupboard).

For me, the book never really lived up to the publisher’s description of ‘gripping’. The mystery element unfolds really slowly although it takes some interesting twists and turns towards the end of the book revealing a distinctly unpleasant side of Edinburgh life. The author slips in some neat deflections and one or two surprises.  However, the skip ahead in time at the end of the book and the late introduction of a new character made the conclusion feel a bit rushed.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of Hodder & Stoughton via NetGalley.

In three words: Detailed, authentic, absorbing

Try something similar: The Unquiet Heart by Kaite Welsh

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Catriona McPhersonAbout the Author

Catriona McPherson was born in South Queensferry. After finishing school, she worked in a bank for a short time, before going to university. She studied for an MA in English Language and Linguistics at Edinburgh University, and then gained a job in the local studies department at Edinburgh City Libraries. She left this post after a couple of years, and went back to university to study for a PhD in semantics. During her final year she applied for an academic job, but left to begin a writing career.

These days, McPherson lives with her husband on a farm in the Galloway countryside, where she spends her time writing, gardening, swimming and running. (Bio: Goodreads/Photo: Twitter profile)

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