Tag: books

#TopTenTuesday Maturing Nicely – The Oldest Books On My To-Read List #TuesdayBookBlog

whatcathyreadnext17 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

  • Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want.
  • Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.
  • Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists.
  • Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is My Unpopular Bookish Opinions. Unpopular opinion (sorry), this one didn’t appeal. Instead here are the ten books (poor little things) that have spent the longest time on my Want-To-Read shelf on Goodreads.

  1. Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson – this one has been on my shelf so long (ahem, since 2013) it could be in a museum
  2. Case Histories (Jackson Brodie #1) by Kate Atkinson – Kate, it’s nothing personal, honestly
  3. Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey – she’s tucked away with all the other unread books on my Kindle most likely
  4. Trigger Mortis by Anthony Horowitz – I know, shoot me Anthony, why don’t you
  5. The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel – Hilary, if you write a book nearly 900 pages long what do you expect?
  6. Any Human Heart by William Boyd – …would forgive me for not having read this yet
  7. The Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor – it’s OK, there are only another five books in the series after this one, I‘ll catch up in no time
  8. Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee – it took over 60 years for this to see the light of the day so the nine years it’s spent on my shelf is a mere fragment of time, surely?
  9. Everyone Brave Is Forgiven by Chris Cleave – but will I be?
  10. Mutiny on the Bounty by John Boyne – John, I’ve read lots of your other books, don’t make me walk the plank because of this one

See anything in my list you think I should blow the dust off, in some cases literally? What’s the oldest book you have in your TBR pile?

Book Review – The Belladonna Maze by Sinéad Crowley

whatcathyreadnext1 Comment

About the Book

An old house can hold many secrets. Hollowpark in the west of Ireland certainly does. At the heart of the gardens is an intricate maze, named after a deadly poison, belladonna. If you know the way through, it’s magical, a hiding place and playground like no other. If you don’t, it’s a place of fear and sinister riddles, where a young girl once went missing and was never seen again.

Grace comes to Hollowpark as a nanny for young Skye FitzMahon. Soon the mysterious past of Hollowpark has seduced her. Who is the woman she sometimes glimpses in an upstairs window? Or the apparition who keeps showing up unexpectedly, pleading, ‘Find me’. And how can she fight her growing attraction to Skye’s father?

Format: ebook (361 pages) Publisher: Aria
Publication date: 5th May 2022 Genre: Historical Fiction, Dual Time

Find The Belladonna Maze on Goodreads

Purchase The Belladonna Maze from Amazon UK

My Review

I always feel dual timeline stories are a challenge to pull off successfully. Often they really don’t work for me, usually because I find one of the storylines more engaging than the other. Unsurprisingly, as a lover of historical fiction, it’s usually the one set in the past. I think the author managed it here though because the two storylines – one set in the mid-19th century and the other in 2007 – are woven together using a touch of the supernatural so it always feels there’s an underlying resonance between the two. A third storyline set in the mid-1970s involving the unsolved disappearance of a local girl helps tie them together as well. Despite being a supernatural sceptic, I was able to accept that Hollowpark, given its age and location, might hold many secrets. And if you’re going to suspend disbelief anywhere about ghostly apparations and ancient curses then surely Ireland is the place.

I liked the way the author introduced a character to enable her to weave into the story some of Ireland’s troubled history. In particular, the so-called ‘Great Hunger’ whose main cause was the infection of potato crops by blight. It reached its peak in 1847 and because so many people were dependent on potatoes for food and income, it resulted in a death toll of around 1 million. It also sparked a mass exodus with many people leaving Ireland for America among other places. This is also neatly reflected in the book later on.

The combination of history and mystery kept me absorbed in the story and there were a few good reveals which you’d expect from an author who also writes crime novels, although I did have my suspicions about the perpertrator fairly early on. There were a few creepy moments when Grace finds herself alone in the largely uninhabited house and the maze of the book’s title takes on a distinctly sinister aspect at times. Personally I found the relationship that develops between Grace and Patrick, her employer, unconvincing. Having only Grace’s point of view meant the attraction felt one-sided. I also thought it was rather too quickly and conveniently wrapped up.

The Belladonna Maze is a well-crafted story that will appeal to fans of dual timeline stories with a touch of the supernatural. I listened to the audiobook version narrated by the author. She did an excellent job, her Irish accent giving a real feeling of authenticity to the characters and dialogue.

I received a review copy courtesy of Head of Zeus via NetGalley.

In three words: Engaging, suspenseful, atmospheric
Try something similar: The House at Helygen by Victoria Hawthorne

About the Author

Author Sinéad Crowley

Sinéad Crowley is a writer and broadcaster, whose three DS Claire Boyle crime novels were all nominated for the ‘Best Crime’ category at the Irish Book Awards, with the first two becoming Irish Times bestsellers. She is currently Arts and Media Correspondent with RTE News, the Irish national broadcaster. (Photo: Goodreads)

Connect with Sinead
Instagram | Bluesky