Tag: contemporary fiction

BlogTour #BookReview The Ends of the Earth by Abbie Greaves @centurybooksuk

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Ends of the Earth by Abbie Greaves which was published in paperback on 6th January 2022. My thanks to Laura O’Donnell at Penguin UK for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my review copy.

The Ends of the Earth PBAbout the Book

Some love stories change us for ever.

For the last seven years, Mary O’Connor has waited for her first love. Every evening she arrives at Ealing Broadway station and stands with a sign which simply says: ‘Come Home Jim’.

Commuters might pass her by without a second thought, but Mary isn’t going anywhere. Until an unexpected call turns her world on its head.

It will take the help of a young journalist called Alice, and a journey across the country for Mary to face what happened all those years ago, and to finally answer the question: where on earth is Jim?

Format: Paperback (404 pages)       Publisher: Century
Publication date: 6th January 2022 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

The book alternates between 2018 and the six years from Mary and Jim’s first meeting in 2005 and his disappearance.

I don’t think I’m alone in being touched by Mary’s determination to continue her nightly vigil, holding her handwritten, and by now rather tattered, sign or by her conviction that ‘love is nothing if not patient’. ‘She will not give up. No. She will wait and wait and then wait some more.’ Alice Keaton, a young journalist on the local newspaper, is certainly struck by Mary’s story. ‘COME HOME JIM. Who knew that three little words could be suffused with such yearning, such pain?‘ It’s a pain Alice can identify with because of her own experiences and this, along with her journalistic ambitions, is what motivates her to befriend Mary and then embark on the search for Jim.  In the process, Alice hopes to lay to rest some personal ghosts and perhaps find some peace of mind through helping Mary.

As we learn, it was love at first sight for Mary and Jim, and their early years together were idyllic. Although every couple have their ups and downs, there are soon signs that everything is not quite right with Jim. Mary can’t – or won’t – see the warning signs because she’s so in love with Jim and so grateful she’s found someone who says she is the centre of his world, someone who would go ‘to the ends of the earth’ for her. For a long time, Mary believes it was Jim who rescued her from an otherwise lonely life but in fact it’s the other way around and it was she who rescued him.

When the evidence of Jim’s struggles can no longer be ignored, Mary is determined to help him through it. After all, as she tells herself, ‘Love wasn’t about the moments when you were dancing on the ceiling, it was about picking one another up from the floor‘.  And Mary does try, even blaming herself for Jim’s low mood, and seizing on the brief moments when he seems like the ‘old Jim’ as a sign things are getting better.  But they’re not. Mary’s guilt only increases following Jim’s sudden disappearance and it is this that fuels her lonely vigil, placing her life effectively on hold.  As she remarks to Alice, sometimes not knowing is better than knowing.

The Ends of the Earth is described as ‘at once a love story and a mystery’ but the way those two elements play out may be not quite what you were expecting. As the author demonstrates, sometimes there are no easy answers and life must go on, albeit on a different path than you might have hoped for.

In three words: Tender, insightful, poignant

Try something similar: Lost Property by Helen Paris

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Abbie GreavesAbout the Author

Abbie Greaves studied at Cambridge University before working in a literary agency for a number of years. She was inspired to write her first novel, The Silent Treatment, after reading a newspaper article about a boy in Japan who had never seen his parents speak to one another before. Abbie lives in Brighton.

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#BlogTour #BookReview Wahala by Nikki May @RandomTTours @DoubledayUK

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Wahala BT Poster TwitterWelcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Wahala by Nikki May, a book you’re going to hear plenty about in the coming months. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Doubleday for my review copy via NetGalley. Do check out the posts by my tour buddies for today, bookstagrammers Elizabeth at libcreads and Anita at booksinherhands.

WahalaAbout the Book

See me, see trouble…

Ronke, Simi, and Boo are three mixed-race friends living in London. They have the gift of two cultures, Nigerian and English, though they don’t all choose to see it like that.

Everyday racism has never held them back, but now in their thirties, they look to the future – Ronke wants a husband (he must be Nigerian); Simi supposedly wants a child (well, her husband does); Boo is frustrated and unfulfilled, caught in a whirl of school runs and lustful dreams. When Isobel, a lethally glamorous friend from their past arrives in town, she is determined to fix their futures for them.

As cracks in their friendship begin to appear, it is soon obvious Isobel is not sorting but wrecking. When she is driven to a terrible act, the women are forced to reckon with a crime in their past that may have just repeated itself.

Format: Hardcover (384 pages)       Publisher: Doubleday
Publication date: 6th January 2022 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find Wahala on Goodreads

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Hive | Amazon UK
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My Review

Described as ‘a sharp, modern take on friendship, ambition, culture, and betrayal’, Wahala certainly lives up to its title which means ‘trouble’ in Yoruba.

There’s a Sex and the City vibe to the get-togethers of Simi, Boo and Ronke in bars and restaurants around London in the first part of the book. Being a low maintenance girl myself and the opposite of a social butterfly, I couldn’t quite relate to the obsession with fashion, the gossip over cocktails and the boozy lunches. I guess Ronke was the character I found most engaging perhaps because she seemed more down-to-earth. Her cookery skills helped and the inclusion of some of her recipes for traditional Nigerian food at the back of the book was a nice touch.  I liked the way the author explored the dynamics between the three friends and the pressures on those friendships that arise as the book progresses.

The ups and downs of Simi’s, Boo’s and Ronke’s relationships and the dilemmas they face – in some cases of their own making – are ones that could happen in any partnership, not just between couples of different ethnicity: competing career aspirations, different attitudes towards parenthood or simply feeling weighed down by domestic responsibilities. I have to say what follows seemed to me a case of ‘women behaving badly’ – Ronke being the honourable exception. The men in their lives were positive saints in comparison, especially the lovely Didier. I even had sympathy for Ronke’s boyfriend, Kayode, he of the poor time-keeping, obsessive support for Arsenal football club and fridge stocked only with beer and past its use-by date milk.

As soon as Isobel arrives on the scene with her demand ‘I want to know everything’ it becomes pretty clear her motive is not a genuine desire for friendship. ‘Isobel was good at collecting secrets, not so great at keeping them.’ She becomes an insidious presence in the friends’ lives and the catalyst for the trouble referred to in the title. This was the strongest part of the book for me. The reader sees, although Boo, Simi and Ronke do not, that for reasons of her own, Isobel is an expert in playing on their insecurities, doubts and frustrations – and, at times, their naivety – encouraging them to do things they otherwise wouldn’t have; the equivalent of waking up with a hangover and wishing you hadn’t drunk so much the night before, except with much, much more serious consequences.  As the fallout from Isobel’s actions play out, the book builds to an unexpectedly dramatic and explosive finish, one of those conclusions to a book that forces you to go back and re-read the prologue.

Wahala is a deft exploration of the fragile nature of friendship and how easily people can be manipulated.

In three words: Vibrant, insightful, quirky

Try something similar: Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

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Nikki May Author picAbout the Author

Born in Bristol and raised in Lagos, Nikki May is Nigerian-British. At twenty, she dropped out of medical school, moved to London, and began a career in advertising, going on to run a successful agency. Nikki lives in Dorset with her husband and two standard Schnauzers.

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