Tag: advance review copy

#BookReview The Recovery of Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel @MichaelJBooks

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The Recovery of Rose GoldAbout the Book

Rose Gold Watts believed she was sick for eighteen years. She thought she needed the feeding tube, the surgeries, the wheelchair…

Turns out her mum, Patty, is a really good liar.

After five years in prison Patty Watts is finally free. All she wants is to put old grievances behind her, reconcile with her daughter and care for her new infant grandson. When Rose Gold agrees to have Patty move in, it seems their relationship is truly on the mend.

But Rose Gold knows her mother. Patty won’t rest until she has her daughter back under her thumb. Which is a smidge inconvenient because Rose Gold wants to be free of Patty. Forever.

Only one Watts will get what she wants. Will it be Patty or Rose Gold. Mother, or daughter?

Format: Hardcover (352 pages)       Publisher: Michael Joseph
Publication date: 5th March 2020  Genre: Contemporary fiction, thriller

Purchase links*
Amazon.co.uk | Hive (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Recovery of Rose Gold on Goodreads

My Review

I first became aware of this book whilst browsing the programme for last year’s Henley Literary Festival. The Recovery of Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel (along with the yet to be published Conviction by Hope Adams) was one of the 2020 debuts featured at the Michael Joseph Proof Party held aboard the river cruiser, Hibernia. You can read my review of the event here. Hearing Stephanie talk about her book made me keen to read it. I’m only sorry it’s taken me so long to do so.

Told from the alternating points of view of Patty Watts and her daughter, Rose Gold, the reader is witness to a chilling, sometimes unnerving, but always enthralling battle of wills. Both women have plans to which they allude in ominous fashion. Lines such as, “A rookie doesn’t challenge a master” or “Wattses are nothing if not meticulous”. It’s difficult to warm to either character but, as more and more information is revealed, it’s also difficult to forget they are both damaged and vulnerable individuals.

There’s a saying there are two sides to every story but are either of the stories the reader is hearing the truth? I suspect that, like me, readers may find their sympathies shifting back and forth between Patty and Rose Gold at different points in the book. I particularly liked the voice the author creates for Patty with her caustic asides about her neighbours and the neighbourhood (the perhaps appropriately named Deadwick). I chuckled at her observations on the town’s ‘Christmaspalooza’. “Two little boys hop off Santa’s lap after their parents take four million pictures. What happened to one and done? They’re not going in National Geographic, for Pete’s sake.”

From time to time, the author plays with readers’ expectations of the genre. For example, commenting about a particular character that in any other story they would turn out to be a serial killer.

20200306_121947At one point Rose Gold reflects, “People didn’t get excited by stories of forgiveness. They wanted bridges to burn. They wanted dramas that made their own lives seem normal.” If you want drama, a chilling insight into obsessive behaviour and a story with plenty of twists and turns, then The Recovery of Rose Gold is the book for you.

I received an uncorrected (signed) proof copy courtesy of Michael Joseph.

In three words: Dark, twisty, compelling

Try something similar: Real Life by Adeline Dieudonne

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bio-grid-2_FINAL_kindlephoto-496953907About the Author

Stephanie Wrobel grew up in Chicago but has lived in the UK for three years with her husband and dog, Moose Barkwinkle. She has an MFA from Emerson College and has had short fiction published in Bellevue Literary Review. Before turning to fiction, she worked as a creative copywriter at various advertising agencies. (Bio/photo credit: author website)

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#BookReview The Lost Lights of St Kilda by Elisabeth Gifford @CorvusBooks

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20200214_130225About the Book

When Fred Lawson takes a summer job on St Kilda in 1927, little does he realise that he has joined the last community to ever live on that desolate, isolated island. Only three years later, St Kilda will be evacuated, the islanders near-dead from starvation. But for Fred, that summer is the bedrock of his whole life…

Chrissie Gillies is just nineteen when the researchers come to St Kilda. Hired as their cook, she can’t believe they would ever notice her, sophisticated and educated as they are. But she soon develops a cautious friendship with Fred, a friendship that cannot be allowed to develop into anything more…

Years later, to help deal with his hellish existence in a German prisoner of war camp, Fred tells the tale of the island and the woman he loved, but left behind. And Fred starts to wonder, where is Chrissie now? And does she ever think of him too?

Format: Hardcover (288 pages)      Publisher: Corvus
Publication date: 5th March 2020 Genre: Historical Fiction

Purchase links*
Amazon.co.uk| Amazon.com | Hive (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Lost Lights of St Kilda on Goodreads

My Review

I absolutely loved Elisabeth Gifford’s last book The Good Doctor of Warsaw, so I approached her latest novel with eager anticipation; I was not disappointed. The Lost Lights of St Kilda is undoubtedly the best book I’ve read so far this year.

I confess I’d always thought St Kilda was an island but, as I learned from the book (and from the maps that form the gorgeous endpapers), it is in fact a group of islands. Hirta is the main island and the only one inhabited in 1927, when part of the book is set. However, to avoid confusion I’m going to refer to it, like the blurb does, as St Kilda.

I loved the descriptions of St Kilda and the details of the islanders’ life – “a daily struggle against nature”. (I wasn’t so sure about the island cuisine – ‘boiled oats with a salted puffin for flavour’ anyone?) I vaguely knew about the evacuation of the islanders but nothing of their history before that or the hardship of life there battling illness, cut off from the outside world for weeks at a time by storms, and living a hand to mouth existence from farming and the hunting of seabirds involving perilous climbs along cliff ledges. The sense of isolation is overwhelming. “Imagine a hill farm of some four square miles dropped in the middle of an Atlantic swell that even the sturdiest boats would think twice to sail and you have the situation of St Kilda.”

Moving between different timelines and points of view, each strand of the story – Chrissie’s life on St Kilda and Fred’s wartime experiences – would be enthralling enough in their own right. Woven together by the skilful hands of the author (much like a bolt of St Kildan tweed) they are simply wonderful.

Storytelling is a major element of the book, reflecting the oral tradition of passing down tales and legends from generation to generation; tales that are linked to the landscape, the sea and the weather. Chrissie gradually recounts her own story of growing up on St Kilda and her childhood friendship with laird’s son, Archie. Although used to being an object of fascination for summer visitors to the island, the St Kildans cannot know the chain of events that will be set in train by the return to the island of Archie and his friend, Fred, years later.

Fred develops an interest in recording the islanders’ stories and, through his study of geology, in telling the story of the island, created as it was by a volcanic eruption. As time goes by, that’s not Fred’s only interest. “All the heart and the beauty and the magic of that place distilled into the girl that was Chrissie.” Memories of his time on the island, and of Chrissie, will come to be a beacon of light in times of darkness and danger, giving him the courage and energy to battle on.

The Lost Lights of St Kilda is wonderfully romantic without being sentimental and a beautifully crafted depiction of a (now lost) community and way of life. It’s a story of love, betrayal, endurance and faith. “For what is faith but the sure hope of things that will come but are not yet seen.” I loved it and I’m sure all fans of historical fiction will too.

I received a review copy courtesy of Corvus and Readers First.

In three words: Romantic, emotional, compelling

Try something similar: The Watch House by Bernie McGill or The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason

FB_IMG_1581621051683About the Author

Elisabeth Gifford grew up in a vicarage in the industrial Midlands. She studied French literature and world religions at Leeds University. She has written articles for the Times and the Independent and has a Diploma in Creative Writing from Oxford OUDCE and an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway College. She is married with three children and lives in Kingston upon Thames. (Photo/bio credit: publisher author page)

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