Tag: Reading Challenges

#BookReview #Ad No Life for a Lady by Hannah Dolby

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No Life for a LadyAbout the Book

Violet Hamilton is a woman who knows her own mind. Which, in 1896, can make things a little complicated…

At 28, Violet’s father is beginning to worry she will never find a husband. But every suitor he presents, Violet finds a new and inventive means of rebuffing. Because Violet does not want to marry. She wants to work, and make her own way in the world.

But more than anything, she wants to find her mother Lily, who disappeared from Hastings Pier 10 years earlier. Finding the missing is no job for a lady, but when Violet hires a seaside detective to help, she sets off a chain of events that will put more than just her reputation at risk.

Can Violet solve the mystery of Lily Hamilton’s vanishing before it’s too late?

Format: eARC (328 pages)                 Publisher: Aria
Publication date: 2nd March 2023 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

Those looking for a light-hearted, cosy historical mystery will find they’ve come to the right place with No Life for a Lady. Violet is a sparky, likeable character who is determined to resist her father’s efforts to marry her off. There’s fun right from the beginning as Violet recalls the ways she’s managed to fend off potential suitors to date. This includes pushing one such unfortunate into a boating lake and inserting a hot teapot between herself and another.

It was unclear to me why Violet has waited ten years to make a serious attempt to investigate her mother’s disappearance but once she embarks upon it she has no intention of stopping. Except that her chosen detective turns out to be no ‘knight in shining armour’. (Violet, you should have trusted your instincts). Suddenly, Violet wonders if she’s really ready to find out her mother’s secrets and to have them become the talk of the ladies of Hastings, not to mention the men. She’d wanted discretion, wishing to keep the investigation from her father.

Although it makes for some slapstick humour, I wouldn’t have minded if the author had made Violet slightly less ditzy. She’s frequently tripping over things, bumping into lamp posts and even getting locked inside a price of furniture at one point.  She’s also rather naive although, to be fair, that does lead to some laugh out loud moments, such as Violet’s errand on behalf of a Mrs Monk, the same lady who corrects a few of Violet’s misapprehensions about ‘marital intimacy’.  And, for a prospective detective, Violet is a little quick to reach conclusions based on limited evidence, including about one particular person.  However, she’s up for pretty much anything – except house cleaning – leading one character to remark ‘You are the most infuriating female I’ve ever met’.

Set in 1896, there’s a nice depiction of a Victoran seaside town complete with bathing carriages, small boys dressed in sailor suits and ladies promenading in their finery, although I’m not sure the phrase ‘get his finger out’ would have been in common parlance then. If I’m wrong, I stand corrected.

Finding the solution to the mystery of her mother’s disappearance provides Violet with grounds for believing she has what it takes to become a detective. It also signals there is potentially more fun to come in the company of this particular Lady Detective.

I received a digital review copy courtesy of Aria Fiction via NetGalley.

In three words: Light-hearted, funny, entertaining

Try something similar: Duels and Deception by Cindy Anstey

Hannah DolbyAbout the Author

Hannah Dolby’s first job was in the circus and she has aimed to keep life as interesting since. She trained as a journalist in Hastings and has worked in PR for many years, promoting museums, galleries, palaces, gardens and even Dolly the sheep. She completed the Curtis Brown selective three-month novel writing course, and she won runner-up in the Comedy Women in Print Awards for this novel with the prize of a place on an MA in Comedy Writing at the University of Falmouth.  She currently lives in London. (Photo: Twitter profile)

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#BookReview Ponti by Sharlene Teo

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PontiAbout the Book

It is 2003, and in the sweltering heat of Singapore sixteen-year-olds Szu and Circe develop an intense friendship. For Szu it offers an escape from Amisa, her beautiful, cruel mother – once an actress and now the silent occupant of a rusty house. But for Circe, their friendship does the opposite, bringing her one step closer to the fascinating, unknowable Amisa.

Seventeen years later, Circe finds herself adrift and alone. And then a project comes up at work, a remake of the cult seventies horror film series ‘Ponti’, the same series that defined Amisa’s short-lived film career. Suddenly Circe is knocked off balance: by memories of the two women she once knew, by guilt, and by a lost friendship that threatens her conscience . . .

Format: Paperback (304 pages)    Publisher: Picador
Publication date: 23rd April 2019 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find Ponti on Goodreads

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My Review

The book moves between three different timelines: Szu’s account of her teenage friendship with Circe in 2003, Circe’s reflections in the present day, and Amisa’s story beginning in 1968. I have to say I found Amisa’s story the most absorbing, describing as it does how, as a result of a series of disappointments, she becomes the cold, distant mother we encounter through Szu’s eyes.  The sadness of Amisa’s story is that the shattering of her dreams is something she never really gets over.

Szu’s and Circe’s teenage friendship emerges from a shared feeling of being outsiders,  ‘citizens of nowhere’ in Circe’s words. It’s this sense that they don’t belong that initially draws them together.  But, despite being intense, it’s not an untroubled relationship because of their different backgrounds and life experiences. Looking back, Circe marvels at how brief what she terms the ‘Age of Szu’ actually was. She describes the gradual fracturing of their relationship, how being friends with Szu became ‘like carrying around a heavy, sloshing bucket of water’.

I could completely empathise with what Szu goes through but also understand what a vast amount of patience on the part of a friend would be required to see her through the worst times.  Circe, who in the modern day story seems to rid herself of partners in the same merciless way she does her tapeworm, I found less easy to like.

All three women are, in different ways and with varying degrees of success, trying to find their way through life.  It’s a well-crafted novel and an impressive debut. There was a lot I liked about it without completely falling in love with it.

In three words: Insightful, intimate, assured

Try something similar: Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie

Sharlene TeoAbout the Author

Sharlene Teo was born in Singapore in 1987. She has an LLB in Law from the University of Warwick and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, where she received the Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship and the David TK Wong Creative Writing award.  She was shortlisted for the Berlin Writing Prize and holds fellowships from the Elizabeth Kostova Flundation and the University of Iowa International Writing Program.

In 2016, she won the inaugural Deborah Rogers Writers’ Award for Ponti, her first novel.  (Photo: Goodreads author page)

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