Category: Reviews

My Week in Books – 16th March 2025

whatcathyreadnextLeave a comment

On the blog last week

Monday – I shared my review of Warrior (Agricola #2) by Simon Turney.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Books That Include A Favorite Theme or Plot Device and I chose Whole Life Stories.

Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading. 

Friday – I published my review of A Death in Berlin by Simon Scarrow as part of the blog tour.

Saturday – I published my review of The Paris Dancer by Nicola Rayner.

New on my shelves

Viper in the Nest by Georgina Clarke (ARC, VERVE Books)

London’s streets are sinister. But what if the real danger lies closer to home?

London, June 1759. When a charmless civil servant takes his own life, Lizzie Hardwicke, who plies her trade in the brothels of London whilst also working as an undercover sleuth for the magistrate, is alone in wondering why.

Lizzie’s search for answers takes her from the smoke-filled rooms of fashionable gambling houses, where politicians mix ambition with pleasure, to the violent streets of Soho, ready to erupt with riots in the sultry summer heat.

Then a gambling house owner is brutally murdered, and Lizzie finds herself tangled in a chaos that she cannot control. The darkest of secrets threatens her friendship with William Davenport, the magistrate’s assistant. Revealing the truth could send her to the gallows.

The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (eARC, Mantle via NetGalley)

Following the murder of her husband in what looks like a violent street robbery, Hannah Cole is struggling to keep her head above water. Her confectionary shop on Piccadilly is barely turning a profit, her suppliers conspiring to put her out of business because they don’t like women in trade. Henry Fielding, the famous author-turned-magistrate, is threatening to confiscate the money in her husband’s bank account because he believes it might have been illicitly acquired. And even those who claim to be Hannah’s friends have darker intent.

Only William Devereux seems different. A friend of her late husband, Devereux helps Hannah unravel some of the mysteries surrounding his death. He also tells her about an Italian delicacy called iced cream, an innovation she is convinced will transform the fortunes of her shop. But their friendship opens Hannah to speculation and gossip and draws Henry Fielding’s attention her way, locking her into a battle of wits more devastating than anything she can imagine.

What I’m currently reading

Look out for…

  • Book Review: Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall

Book Review – The Paris Dancer by Nicola Rayner

whatcathyreadnext4 Comments

About the Book

Paris, 1938. Annie Mayer arrives in France with dreams of becoming a ballerina. But when the war reaches Paris, she’s forced to keep her Jewish heritage a secret. Then a fellow dancer offers her a lifeline: a ballroom partnership that gives her a new identity. Together, Annie and her partner captivate audiences across occupied Europe, using her newfound fame and alias to aid the Resistance.

New York, 2012. Miriam, haunted by her past, travels from London to New York to settle her great-aunt Esther’s estate. Among Esther’s belongings, she discovers notebooks detailing a secret family history and the story of a brave dancer who risked everything to help Jewish families during the war.

Format: Paperback (368 pages) Publisher: Aria
Publication date: 13th February 2025 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find The Paris Dancer on Goodreads

Purchase The Paris Dancer from Bookshop.org [Disclosure: If you buy books linked to our site, we may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops]

My Review

This dual timeline story moves back and forth between Miriam’s journey of discovery into the past of her recently deceased great-aunt Esther and Esther’s experiences growing up in Paris, including during the German occupation of that city. I thought both storylines were strong and, in fact, could have been novels in their own right. However, the frequent connections and parallels between the two women’s experiences binds them together in a satisfying way.

The book description is a little misleading in that the sections set in wartime Paris are told by means of a memoir written by Esther. We never hear Annie’s story first-hand which means that some of her experiences, even quite significant and traumatic ones, we only learn about by means of letters or conversations recalled by Esther. For me, Annie was the most interesting character so I regretted she wasn’t given a narrative of her own.

Both Esther and Miriam harbour guilt about the part they played in past tragedies, the nature of which are only gradually revealed. And they have both experienced fractured family relationships. Miriam’s experiences have resulted in a tendency to self-sabotage (although she prefers to think of it as self-protection), believing that any relationship she forms is destined to end in disaster. Luckily (no pun intended) she has a encounter of the ‘meet cute’ variety with a man who resists all her attempts to push him away. (I did think his character could have been more developed.)

As we learn, for much of Esther’s life, she was prevented from forming the relationship she really craved. Her memoir, written specifically for Miriam, whilst describing the horrors that Jewish people suffered at the hands of the Nazis, is also her way of demonstrating that it is possible to move on from terrible experiences and find fulfilment, if only you have the courage to take a chance.

The author’s professional and personal interest in dance is evident in the novel, especially in the scenes set in the Bal Tabarin theatre in Paris, renowned for its spectacular floor shows, daring tableaux and gorgeous costumes. In Miriam’s story, learning to dance is shown to be both an act of self-expression and intimacy. And how, especially in the case of the tango, the concentration required to master the intricate steps can provide a temporary distraction from external worries.

Despite some reservations about the narrative structure, I found The Paris Dancer an absorbing story with moments of real tension and emotion.

I received a digital review copy courtesy of Aria via NetGalley.

In three words: Dramatic, emotional, insightful
Try something similar: The Paris Network by Siobhan Curham

About the Author

Author Nicola Rayner

Nicola Rayner, born in South Wales, is a novelist and dancer writer based in London. journalist. She is the author of The Girl Before You, which was picked by the Observer, picked by the same newspaper as a debut to look out for in 2019, optioned for television and translated into multiple languages. Her second novel, You and Me, was published by Avon, HarperCollins in October 2020.

In her day job as a journalist, Nicola has written about dance for almost two decades, cutting her teeth on the tango section of Time Out Buenos Aires. She edited the magazine Dance Today from 2010 to 2015 and worked as assistant editor of Dancing Times, the UK’s leading dance publication, from 2019 to 2022. She continues to dance everything from ballroom to breakdance, with varying degrees of finesses.

Connect with Nicola
Website | X | Instagram | Facebook