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#BookReview Connectedness (Identity Detective 2) by Sandra Danby

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ConnectednessAbout the Book

To the outside world, artist Justine Tree has it all… but she has a secret that threatens to destroy everything.

Justine’s art sells around the world, but does anyone truly know her? When her mother dies, she returns to her childhood home in Yorkshire where she decides to confront her past. She asks journalist Rose Haldane to find the baby she gave away when she was an art student, but only when Rose starts to ask difficult questions does Justine truly understand what she must face.

Is Justine strong enough to admit the secrets and lies of her past? To speak aloud the deeds she has hidden for twenty-seven years, the real inspiration for her work that sells for millions of pounds? Could the truth trash her artistic reputation? Does Justine care more about her daughter, or her art? And what will she do if her daughter hates her?

Format: ebook (366 pages)              Publisher: Beulah Press
Publication date: 10th May 2018  Genre: Contemporary fiction

Find Connectedness (Identity Detective Book 2) on Goodreads

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

My Review

Connectedness is the second book in Sandra Danby’s series featuring freelance journalist and ‘identity detective’ Rose Haldane. Readers like me who haven’t read the first book, Ignoring Gravity, can be reassured that Connectedness works perfectly as a standalone. However, you may well find yourself wanting to go back and read the first book to find out more about how Rose’s own personal experience fuelled her interest in helping others to reunite with lost family members.

Connectedness moves between London in 2010 – when Justine, now an established artist, hires Rose to search for the daughter Justine gave away over twenty-five years earlier – and Spain in the 1980s. The impulse for Justine’s decision after all those years is the recent death of her mother and a feeling that now is the time to confront the mistakes of the past. She also feels increasingly aware of the contradiction between the emotional openness others see in her art and the secrets she keeps hidden away.

I particularly liked the parts of the book in which the young Justine travels to Málaga to study art, in the footsteps of Picasso. The reader experiences alongside Justine a different climate, food and lifestyle. It’s during this time that Justine falls in love for the first time but also makes a series of decisions that will change her life forever.

Back in the present day, it has to be said that Justine isn’t the easiest of clients and Rose is initially frustrated by Justine’s reticence and unwillingness to impart information. Gradually, Rose manages to break down the barriers Justine has erected around her earlier life. Eventually the pair find a common bond and Rose is able, with the assistance of some useful contacts, to make progress with her research. I won’t reveal the results but safe to say there are touching scenes towards the end of the book which also sees Rose pondering a new venture.

For Justine, her experiences inevitably provide the inspiration for making new art. “So she was exploring the idea of things that belonged together, which could be separated in space but never detached, because they were attached invisibly, forged together, welded, melded, stitched and linked. Flesh, stone, metal, biological matter, timber, people, family. Memories, knowledge, thoughts, experience, history.” In other words, connectedness; something I think we all cherish at this particular moment in time.

My thanks to the author for my copy of her book via NetGalley and for her patience in waiting for it to reach the top of my review pile.

In three words: Engaging, touching, emotional

Try something similar: The Vanished Child (Jayne Sinclair Genealogical Mystery #4) by M. J. Lee

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Sandra DanbyAbout the Author

Sandra Danby is a proud Yorkshire woman, tennis nut and tea drinker. She believes a walk on the beach will cure most ills. Unlike Rose Haldane in her ‘Identity Detective’ series, Sandra is not adopted. She writes about family secrets, identity and adoption reunion mysteries.

A dairy farmer’s daughter from the East Yorkshire coast, Sandra turned her childhood love of stories into an English degree and became a journalist. Now she writes fiction full-time. Her short stories and flash fiction have been published online and in anthologies. Sandra is now writing Sweet Joy, the third in the ‘Identity Detective’ series, set in London during the Blitz. She is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association ‘New Writers Scheme’. (Photo credit: Goodreads author profile)

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#BookReview The Artist and the Soldier by Angelle Petta

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About the Book

Two young men come of age and fall in love against the backdrop of true events in World War II.

It’s 1938. Bastian Fisher and Max Amsel meet at a Nazi-American summer camp, Camp Siegfried. Neither boy has any idea what to do with their blooming, confusing feelings for one another. Before they can begin to understand, the pair is yanked back into reality and forced in opposite directions.

Five years later, during the heart of World War II, Bastian’s American army platoon has landed in Salerno, Italy. Max is in Nazi-occupied Rome where he has negotiated a plan to hire Jews as ‘extras’ in a movie – an elaborate ruse to escape the Nazis. Brought together by circumstance and war, Bastian and Max find one another again in Rome.

Format: ebook (348 pages)         Publisher: Warren Publishing
Publication date: 1st May 2018 Genre: Historical fiction, LGBT

Find The Artist and the Soldier on Goodreads

Purchase links*
Amazon UK | Hive (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

The Artist and the Soldier is described as “exploring the true stories of Camp Siegfried, a Nazi-American summer camp in New York, and the making of the film which saved hundreds of lives”. Personally, I wouldn’t have minded if more of the book had focused on how camps like Camp Siegfried came to be run in America as it seems quite extraordinary now that young people should have been exposed to pro-Nazi propaganda at this time. Having said that, in her afterword, the author talks more about the inspiration for the book and you can also find out more in my Q&A with Angelle conducted ahead of its publication in 2018. (Unfortunately this will also demonstrate – to my shame – just how long this book has been in my review pile.)

Understandably, the main focus of the book is the relationship between Max and Bastian, both of whom are forced to hide their true sexuality. The author does a good job of conveying the confusion and uncertainty caused by their growing feelings for each other, the shifting dynamics of their relationship and also the exhilaration of finding someone with whom you can be yourself. Max and Bastian also share troubled home lives and have experienced family tragedy. Before their relationship can develop further, however, a shocking and, to my mind, unforgivable action on the part of one of them drives them in different directions.

The son of an Italian mother, Max takes up his Uncle Franco’s suggestion that he travel to Italy, where he eventually enrols in film school. Meanwhile Bastian, in an act of rebellion against his violent and pro-Nazi father, enlists with the US Army. ‘What would anger his father more than anything in the world? If he joined the fight against the Nazis.’ He is posted abroad and it will be many years until Max and Bastian meet again.

I confess I wasn’t a huge fan of the frequent “head-hopping” between the thoughts of different characters (occasionally within a single paragraph). I found it rather distracting and sometimes had to re-read a section to work out whose thoughts were being revealed. I much preferred the chapters later in the book written mainly or entirely from a single point of view. As it happens, this coincided with the change of location to wartime Italy and this was much the most interesting part of the book for me.

Bastian’s sister, Ilsa, makes an appearance in the second half of the book and I found her a particularly engaging character. Whereas I found Bastian difficult to like – even his sister describes him as “the king of self-preservation” – I admired Isla’s conviction that she could help to make the world a better place. Enrolling as a nurse, her intervention proves crucial on a number of occasions and I wished for a happier outcome for her.

The Artist and the Soldier combines an intense love story with the depiction of real life events. In doing so it shines a light on the courage and resilience of those who tried to protect others from the horrors of war.

My thanks to Angelle for my digital copy of her book and waiting so patiently for my review.

In three words: Intense, intimate, absorbing

Try something similar: Mussolini’s Island by Sarah Day

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Angelle Petta authorAbout the Author

Angelle Petta began writing novels over 15 years ago and has written in several genres.

​She holds an MA from Emerson College, and a master’s equivalency in Drama Therapy through the NADTA.  Angelle is a registered drama therapist and a PhD student at Lesley University.  She works as a Drama Therapist at an Expressive Arts Center in Virginia called A Place To Be.

​She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband, two delightful dogs, and one fat cat.

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