Category: Reviews

#WWWWednesday – 5th June 2024

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WWWWednesdays

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

Currently reading

The Heart in WinterThe Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry (eARC, Canongate via NetGalley)

October, 1891. Butte, Montana. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers.

Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and balladmaker, but also a doper, a drinker and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington.

A thunderbolt love affair takes spark between Tom and Polly and they strike out west on a stolen horse, moving through the badlands of Montana and Idaho. Briefly an idyll of wild romance perfects itself. But a posse of deranged Cornish gunsmen are soon in hot pursuit of the lovers, and closing in fast . . .

Book cover A Beginner's Guide to Breaking and Entering by Andrew Hunter MurrayA Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering by Andrew Hunter Murray (Hutchinson Heinemann)

Property might be theft. But the housing market is murder.

My name is Al. I live in wealthy people’s second homes while their real owners are away. I don’t rob them, I don’t damage anything. I’m more an unofficial house-sitter than an actual criminal.

Life is good. Or it was – until last night, when my friends and I broke into the wrong place, on the wrong day, and someone wound up dead.

And now … now we’re in a great deal of trouble.

Recently finished

The Comfort of Ghosts (Maisie Dobbs #18) by Jacqueline Winspear (Allison & Busby) 

French Windows by Antoine Laurain (Gallic Books)

Nathalia, a young photographer, has been seeing a therapist. Having accidentally photographed a murder, she finds that she can no longer do her job.  Instead, Doctor Faber suggests that she write about the neighbours she idly observes in the building across the street. But as these written snapshots become increasingly detailed, he starts to wonder how she can possibly know so much about them. With each session, Doctor Faber and his mysterious patient will get closer and closer to the truth. But are the stories Nathalia submits each week as she claims… (Review to follow)

What Cathy Will Read Next

AlvesdonAlvesdon by James Holland (eARC, Transworld via NetGalley)

The village of Alvesdon has been home to the Castells for generations. But the year is 1939 and the peace and tranquillity there is about to be shattered once more by the stormclouds of war in Europe. As three generations of the family gather, they must all face the prospect of their lives being transformed beyond recognition the moment Britain declares war on Germany.

When the inevitable happens and Britain finds itself at war, the younger members of the family and farm workers are called up to fight and those who remain must battle to keep the home fires burning and the farm afloat. The gentle certainties of rural life are replaced by the urgent clamour of war, in the air, at sea and on land, where events unfold with dizzying rapidity and unexpected consequences.

Book Review – The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear @AllisonandBusby

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About the Book

Book cover of The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear

London, 1945. The capital is the backdrop for many struggling with demons unleashed by the recent World War. Maisie Dobbs is drawn into the story of a group of squatters, including an ill demobbed soldier, who have set up camp in the Belgravia mansion of her former in-laws Lord and Lady Julian Compton.

Her attempt to help brings to light a decades-old mystery that concerns her first husband, James Compton, who was killed while flying an experimental fighter aircraft. The deeply personal inquiry leads her to the second man, who is fighting the darkness of his own conscience following a secret mission.

It is an investigation that will challenge so much of what Maisie understands about her life and forces her to look at the past and the many mirrors that could have been reflecting something other than she had come to believe was truth.

Format: Hardcover (360 pages) Publisher: Allison & Busby
Publication date: 4th June 2024 Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery

Find The Comfort of Ghosts on Goodreads

Purchase The Comfort of Ghosts 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

The Comfort of Ghosts is the eighteenth – and final – book in the author’s Maisie Dobbs series. As such it’s partly a curtain call for many of the characters readers have encountered over the previous seventeen books. There are references to past events which would make it possible to read it as a standalone but I’d really recommend devouring the series from the beginning.

The ‘ghosts’ of the title are also very much present: people lost in the war, those who survived but are changed forever and those who must live with the consequences of their actions. And the evidence of the war is all around in damaged buildings, damaged people and a country deep in debt. ‘We’ll all be happy to leave the war and get on with the peace, such as it is, but it’ll be a good long time before it lets go of us, won’t it?’

If there’s a theme to the book, it’s change. For some it’s enforced change because of what they have gone through, for others it’s new opportunities at home or abroad. And the country is changing too, such as the establishment of the National Health Service and the building of new homes with modern amenities.

What hasn’t changed is that Maisie can’t resist getting involved in a mystery nor can she ignore the plight of people in peril. Bringing together the analytical skills learned from her deceased mentor, her trusted team of helpers and her admirable powers of persuasion, she seeks to get to the bottom of a mysterious death that no-one seems to want investigated. In the process she is forced to confront memories of her own personal tragedies but also to recognise the good fortune that has come her way: a loving husband and daughter, and a close-knit circle of family and friends.

I thought The Comfort of Ghosts was a beautifully balanced blend of heartbreak and hope for the future, and the perfect end to a wonderfully entertaining series.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of Allison & Busby via NetGalley.

In three words: Moving, intriguing, satisfying
Try something similar: V For Victory by Lissa Evans

About the Author

Author Jacqueline Winspear

Jacqueline Winspear is the author of the New York Times bestselling Maisie Dobbs series. Her stand-alone books include The Care and Management of Lies, The White Lady and her memoir, This Time Next Year We’ll be Laughing. Originally from the United Kingdom, Winspear now divides her time between California and the Pacific Northwest. (Photo: Goodreads author page)

Connect with Jacqueline
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