Tag: NetGalley

Blog Tour/Book Review: This Is Me by Shari Low

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I’m delighted to be hosting today’s stop on the blog tour for Shari Low’s latest book, This Is Me.   You can read my review below.  Thanks to Vicky at Aria for inviting me to participate in the tour and for my review copy.

ARIA_LOW_THIS IS ME_EAbout the Book

This is… Denise.

Married to Ray, her first and only love, Denise has never for one moment regretted putting the husband she idolised on a pedestal above everyone and everything else. But, after forty years of marriage, he is gone, leaving Denise to discover that their perfect marriage was fatally flawed. Now she faces a future alone, but first she must face the betrayals of the past.

This is… Claire.

The estranged daughter of Denise, the woman who put her husband before her children, Claire took the opposite path and devoted her life to raising her family, sacrificing her marriage along the way. With her teenage sons about to flee the nest, she realises she may have left it too late to find her own happy ever after.

This is the story of two women, both alone, both cautionary tales of one of motherhood’s biggest decisions.

Who is more important, your partner or your children? And what happens if you make the wrong choice?

Format: ebook, paperback (372 pp.)    Publisher: Aria Fiction
Published: 2nd May 2019    Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com | Kobo
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find This Is Me on Goodreads

My Review

The prologue reveals one death provoking two very different reactions from mother and daughter, Denise and Claire. The reasons why, and for their estrangement, will become apparent over the course of the book through a series of flashbacks.

Some characters from Shari Low’s book, One Day in December, make a return appearance in This Is Me and there are brief references to events in the earlier book. I particularly enjoyed becoming reacquainted with the irrepressible Val and Josie – all wine, wisecracks and wisdom. They, along with her best friend Jeanna, form part of Claire’s support network as she struggles with her ’empty nest’ feelings now her two sons have left home. Her friends also provide the pretext for Claire’s reminiscences about her troubled relationship with her mother and father, her first meeting with future but now ex-husband, Sam, and their early years together. Along the way, Claire learns a few unexpected secrets as well!

Denise has no such support network meaning, although I found her life decisions and choices a challenge to comprehend, I could sympathize with the lonely situation she finds herself in and her despair at the things she discovers.

There was one character in the book I definitely could not sympathize with; in fact, who I loathed with a vengeance. Selfish, manipulative and deceitful, I simply couldn’t understand how a person could inspire such devotion. On the other hand, Claire’s ex-husband Sam, seemed a positive paragon.

The book presents the choice the two women make – between putting their children or their partner first – in pretty black and white terms. I’d like to hope in real life there are shades in between.

This Is Me is an engaging, emotional story about motherhood, relationships and the choices we often face in our personal lives. In some respects a cautionary tale, it’s also a celebration of female friendship and the possibility of new beginnings and, just maybe, second chances.

I received a review copy courtesy of publishers, Aria, and NetGalley.

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In three words: Heartfelt, emotional, engaging

Try something similar…One Day in December by Shari Low (read my review here)

ShariLowAbout the Author

Shari Low is the No.1 best-selling author of over 20 novels, including One Day In December, A Life Without You, The Story Of Our Life, With Or Without You and Another Day In Winter. And because she likes to over-share toe-curling moments and hapless disasters, she is also the shameless mother behind a collection of parenthood memories called Because Mummy Said So.

Once upon a time she met a guy, got engaged after a week, and twenty-something years later she lives near Glasgow with her husband, a labradoodle, and two teenagers who think she’s fairly embarrassing except when they need a lift.

Connect with Shari

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Blog Tour/Book Review: The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry

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The Way Of All Flesh Blog Tour Poster

Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry, the pseudonym of bestselling author, Chris Brookmyre, and consultant anaesthetist, Dr Marisa Haetzman.

The Way of All Flesh is the first in a series of historical crime novels. It has already been optioned by SunnyMarch for film/TV and has sold into seven territories to date.  Raven and Fisher will return in The Art of Dying, due to be published in hardback in August 2019.

My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Canongate for my review copy.  You can read my review below.

The Way of All FleshAbout the Book

Edinburgh, 1847. Will Raven is a medical student, apprenticing for the brilliant and renowned Dr Simpson. Sarah Fisher is Simpson’s housemaid, and has all of Raven’s intelligence but none of his privileges. As bodies begin to appear across the Old Town, Raven and Sarah find themselves propelled headlong into the darkest shadows of Edinburgh’s underworld. And if either of them are to make it out alive, they will have to work together to find out who’s responsible for the gruesome deaths.

Format: Paperback, ebook, audiobook (416 pp.)    Publisher: Canongate
Published: 2nd May 2019    Genre: Historical Fiction, Crime

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

Find The Way of All Flesh on Goodreads

My Review

The Way of All Flesh introduces the reader to Will Raven, about to start a prestigious medical apprenticeship but burdened by secrets in his past, an unhealthily close connection to a murder victim, ruthless debt collectors on his trail and a self-confessed dark side to his character.

Despite Raven’s initial determination that the death of a woman he was close to should not become just another unsolved murder of a ‘fallen woman’, readers need to exercise some patience for his investigation into the murder to get fully under way. Not, in fact, until other similar victims start to turn up. It’s some time as well before the initial antagonism between Sarah, housemaid to the Simpson household,and Raven gives way to an uneasy investigative partnership which Sarah is determined should be one of equals. “You will keep nothing from me, and in this endeavour, you will at all times treat me as your equal.”

The authors have created an interesting character in Sarah. Intelligent, independent-minded and keen to better herself, she nevertheless finds her ambitions thwarted by social conventions and preconceptions based on her gender. A theme of the book which the reader will find difficult to miss is the inferior status of women, at all levels of society, and the potential for their mistreatment by men. As Sarah observes, “…it wasn’t only women below stairs who would never be permitted to realise their potential. Those above could aspire to no more than marriage and motherhood.” The latter is exemplified by Mina, unmarried sister-in-law of Dr. Simpson, who finds herself dependent on others for financial support and valueless without the status of wife. And, of course, there’s Sarah who, despite her intelligence and self-acquired knowledge of medicines, finds even the role of druggist’s assistant out of reach because she’s a woman and for customers ‘only a man will do.’

Alongside the crime mystery element, the book conjures up the atmosphere of 19th century Edinburgh, both its gentrified streets and seedy alleyways. It also brings to life a time of medical and scientific experimentation in the search for developments in anaesthesia and surgical techniques. The monetary and reputational rewards for pioneers of such developments may be great and, as becomes clear, not all possess the scruples of others. They may go to any lengths, seeing their actions as ‘a necessary sacrifice on the altar of progress’.

As a historical crime mystery, the book is more of a slow burn than a raging conflagration but the pace does pick up markedly in the final chapters. Making forays into subjects such as photography and homeopathy, it’s nevertheless full of atmosphere and, in Raven and Sarah, introduces an engaging central partnership, that sets things up nicely for future books.

I received a review copy courtesy of publishers, Canongate Books, and NetGalley.

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In three words: Atmospheric, detailed, mystery

Try something similar…The Wages of Sin by Kaite Welsh (read my review here)

Ambrose Perry Author PicAbout the Authors

Ambrose Parry is a pseudonym for a collaboration between Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman. The couple are married and live in Scotland. Chris Brookmyre is the international bestselling and multi-award-winning author of over twenty novels, including Black Widow, winner of both the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year. Dr Marisa Haetzman is a consultant anaesthetist of twenty years’ experience, whose research for her Master’s degree in the History of Medicine uncovered the material upon which this novel was based. The Way of All Flesh is the first book in the series

Connect with Ambrose Parry

Twitter  ǀ  Goodreads