Tag: dual time

#BlogTour #BookReview Finding Edith Pinsent by Hazel Ward @rararesources

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Finding Edith Pinsent Full Tour Banner

Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Finding Edith Pinsent by Hazel Ward. My thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my digital review copy. Do check out the posts by my tour buddies for today, Madeleine at Ramblingmads and Preena at Bookshortie.

Finding Edith PinsentAbout the Book

Netta Wilde has a task to complete. She’s agreed to go through the late Edith Pinsent’s diaries and possessions personally. The problem is, she’s been busy sorting out her own life.  But she’s in a better place now. She’s free of her manipulative ex, has a new love in neighbour, Frank and has reunited with her kids. What better time to begin Edie’s story?

But the path to discovery is not easy. There are missing diaries to contend with, boxes of memories to uncover and revelations that turn everything on its head. Revelations that make Netta question if her own life really is sorted. Delving deeper into Edith’s history, Netta is overtaken by a need to revisit her own past and put things right, but to do that she has to find the two people who once meant everything to her.

As her two challenges intertwine, Netta realises that Edith had a purpose for her. One that she must fulfil. Bit by bit, the house yields a lifetime of secrets and the real Edith Pinsent begins to emerge. But will it be the Edith everyone thought they knew?

Format: Paperback (402 pages)       Publisher: Hope St Press
Publication date: 9th January 2022 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find Finding Edith Pinsent (Netta Wilde #2) on Goodreads

Purchase links
Amazon UK
Link provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

Finding Edith Pinsent is the follow-up to the author’s earlier book, Being Netta Wilde. I haven’t read the first book and, although I think this would have given me a better understanding of Netta’s character, the author includes enough references to earlier events in Netta’s life to make it possible to read Finding Edith Pinsent as a standalone.

The book has a dual timeline structure with the reader witnessing events in Netta’s life in the present day (2019) whilst at the same time following her as she discovers more about Edith’s life, including why Edith (known as Edie) was so determined someone should reveal her story. Although Netta’s life and house (which was Edie’s former home) is filled with family and friends, at times she feels rather alone despite her lovely neighbour, Frank. Netta is still carrying some emotional baggage from previous relationships and is pondering on her future.

As Netta reads Edie’s journals she begins to feel a connection with her; that, in a way, she and Edie are ‘kindred spirits’ because of what they have both experienced. Indeed, as the book progresses, more and more parallels between the two women’s experiences become apparent. As Netta reflects, ‘Their stories were different but the themes were the same. Love, loss, grief and shame.’

Although I found myself becoming more engaged with Netta’s story as the book went on, the heart of the book – at least for me – was Edie’s story. It’s a story of gaining independence, experiencing first love and, like so many others during wartime, suffering loss. The prejudice encountered by those who found themselves in the position that Edie does is vividly described and I found Edie’s ostracism by her family and her struggle to cope alone heart-breaking. Edie comes across as a person with a great capacity for love, with an open heart and a trusting nature. At times this makes her vulnerable. As a result, she suffers disappointment when she discovers others do not feel as deeply or as sincerely as she does. As a result  she finds herself separated from those she loves the most and searching for some meaning in her life in other ways.

By the end of the book it’s clear there was much more to the old lady introduced to us in the opening chapter than we might have imagined. Indeed, to quote the title of the book’s final chapter, we discover  that she did indeed lead ‘an extraordinary life’ witnessing many changes in society and its attitudes.

Finding Edith Pinsent cleverly combines two stories that, if told separately, might have appealed to different types of reader. Blending the contemporary storyline with the historical storyline provides something for everyone I think. I particularly admired the author’s ability to create characters who, despite their flaws and sometimes dubious decisions, you really grow to care about. A third book in the series is due to be published later this year.

In three words: Heart-warming, touching, insightful

Try something similar: The Girl From Bletchley Park by Kathleen McGurl

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Hazel WardAbout the Author

Hazel Ward was born in inner city Birmingham. By the time the city council packed her family off to the suburbs, she was already something of a feral child who loved adventures. Swapping derelict houses and bomb pecks for green fields and gardens was a bit of a culture shock but she rose to the occasion and grew up loving outdoor spaces and animals.

Strangely, for someone who couldn’t sit still, she also developed a ferocious reading habit and a love of words. She wrote her first novel at fifteen, along with a lot of angsty poems, and was absolutely sure she wanted to be a writer. Sadly, it all came crashing down when her seventeen-year-old self walked out of school in a huff one day and was either too stubborn or too embarrassed to go back. It’s too long ago to remember which.

Against all odds, she somehow managed to blag her way into a successful corporate career until finally giving it all up to do the thing she’d always wanted to do. Shortly after, she began to write her debut novel, Being Netta Wilde.

Hazel still lives in Birmingham and that’s where she does most of her writing, although she spends a lot of time in Shropshire or gadding about the country in an old motor home. Not quite feral anymore but still up for adventures. For updates on Hazel’s books, freebies and various other bits of stuff you can join Hazel’s Reader’s Club here.

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Finding Edith Pinsent

#BlogTour #BookReview The Bookseller’s Secret by Michelle Gable @RandomTTours

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Bookseller's Secret BT Poster

Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Bookseller’s Secret by Michelle Gable. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Harper Collins for my review copy.

Booksellers Secret Graphic 2About the Book

In 1942, London, Nancy Mitford is worried about more than air raids and German spies. Still recovering from a devastating loss, the once sparkling Bright Young Thing is estranged from her husband, her allowance has been cut, and she’s given up her writing career. On top of this, her five beautiful but infamous sisters continue making headlines with their controversial politics.

Eager for distraction and desperate for income, Nancy jumps at the chance to manage the Heywood Hill bookshop while the owner is away at war. Between the shop’s brisk business and the literary salons she hosts for her eccentric friends, Nancy’s life seems on the upswing. But when a mysterious French officer insists that she has a story to tell, Nancy must decide if picking up the pen again and revealing all is worth the price she might be forced to pay.

Eighty years later, Heywood Hill is abuzz with the hunt for a lost wartime manuscript written by Nancy Mitford. For one woman desperately in need of a change, the search will reveal not only a new side to Nancy, but an even more surprising link between the past and present…

Format: Paperback (400 pages)               Publisher: Graydon House
Publication date: 11th November 2021  Genre: Historical Fiction, Dual Time

Find The Bookseller’s Secret on Goodreads

Purchase links
Bookshop.org
Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

Hive | Amazon UK
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My Review

Alternating between London in the present day and during World War 2, the book is told from the point of view of American author, Katie Cabot, in London to visit her friend Jojo, and Nancy Mitford, at the time the author of three not very successful novels.

Initially, I wasn’t sure if the dual timeline structure would work but as the book progressed I enjoyed how more and more paralells between the two women emerged. For example, both are struggling to come up with ideas for their next book, are either in or trying to move on from unsuccessful relationships and have experienced health issues.  The inclusion of the present day timeline and Katie’s curiosity about the possibility of discovering a lost manuscript by Nancy Mitford allows the author to drip-feed into the story details about Nancy’s life, her wartime activities, her eccentric childhood and, in particular, her infamous sisters.

What links the two women is Heywood Hill bookshop, where Nancy worked during the war and which Katie visits on the recommendation of her friend. A neat touch is the similarity between the women’s first impressions of the bookshop. Katie notes its ‘dusty chandeliers, the cob-webbed tinged corners and nooks’ whilst Nancy describes its ‘cluttered shelves, cob-webbed corners, and teetering stacks of books’.  (I wonder if it is purely coincidence that Katie’s most successful novel, and the only one stocked by the Heywood Hill bookshop, is called A Paris Affair and the author’s first book was entitled A Paris Apartment?)

I particularly enjoyed the sections written from Nancy’s point of view which are lively and gay, and seem very much Nancy in style. I loved her witty repartee with her friends and her waspish comments about other authors. For example, Ernest Hemingway is dismissed as ‘the biggest bore on earth’ and Evelyn Waugh, although supposedly a friend, as ‘a workaday, bloated drunk in a bowler hat’.  The banter between Nancy and her friends is mirrored in Katie’s jokey conversations with the man she meets in the bookshop and who, she discovers, shares her own interest in Nancy Mitford’s wartime experiences. You may not be completely surprised that initially Katie does not particularly take to the gentleman concerned. However, as we learned from Pride and Prejudice, first impressions can be deceptive. Talking of romance (potential or actual), I found the way the author describes Nancy’s relationship with her French Colonel especially touching.

As Katie struggles to come up with an idea for her next book (resisting everyone’s suggestion that she simply write a sequel to A Paris Affair), she is reassured that ‘Every writer struggles, even the late, great Nancy Mitford’.  As we now know, Nancy did finally overcome that struggle and write her most famous novel, The Pursuit of Love (to which she did write a sequel, Love in a Cold Climate).

I really enjoyed The Bookseller’s Secret and it has definitely made me want to read more of Nancy Mitford’s books, and to re-read The Pursuit of Love.

In three words: Absorbing, lively, engaging

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Michelle Gable Author PicAbout the Author

Michelle Gable is the New York Times bestselling author of A Paris Apartment, I’ll See You in Paris, The Book of Summer, and The Summer I Met Jack. She attended the College of William & Mary, where she majored in accounting, and spent twenty years working in finance before becoming a full-time writer.

She grew up in San Diego and lives in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California with her husband and to daughters.

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