Category: reviews

The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is one of the most famous tales ever told, but what if their violent delights did not end in such woe? What then for the star-crossed lovers, once doomed to burn so bright and brief?

Against the turbulent backdrop of early fifteenth century Italy, Romeo and Juliet return home after twenty years in exile. Accompanied by their two grown children and a bold young soldier, they arrive in a city still plagued by the bloody feud of their families. With old Lord Montague now dead however, is there a chance to finally end the bloodshed or will old enmities and new interests mean the death of all they love?

Blending fact, fiction and homage, against the backdrop of Duke Visconti’s campaign to dominate northern Italy, Shakespeare’s characters act in conjunction with real-life figures to ask “what if?” and forge a whole new future for the beleaguered city.

Tom Lloyd was born in 1979 in Berkshire. 

After a degree in International Relations he went straight into publishing where he still works. 

He never received the memo about suitable jobs for writers and consequently has never been a kitchen-hand, hospital porter, pigeon hunter, or secret agent. 

He lives in Oxford, isn’t one of those authors who gives a damn about the history of the font used in his books and only believes in forms of exercise that allow him to hit something. 

Visit him online at http://www.tomlloyd.co.uk.

My thoughts: I know of Tom Lloyd as a fantasy writer and a good one but this is something a bit different. What if Romeo and Juliet didn’t die? What if Romeo’s poison was a dud and Juliet woke up and found him still alive? Then they ran away, to Milan, where they found safety with the Duke and Romeo became a lawyer and now it’s twenty years later and they’re returning to Verona for the first time.

Accompanying their friend who has been sent to act as Governor of Verona by the Duke of Milan, Visconti (a real figure of the time), as advisors. They’re bringing their children, Estelle and Mercutio, to see their home city and potentially, maybe, reconcile with their families.

Verona is still a city divided between Capulet and Montague. Juliet’s parents still live and her father’s brutality seems to know no limits. Romeo’s parents are dead and a cousin now holds the title of Lord Montague. Street brawls and duels are still the norm and the ordinary folk live in fear.

But the return of the heirs to the houses offers a new way forward if the city is willing to try.

Capturing the essence and language of Shakespeare isn’t easy, I know, I’ve tried it, but this flows and is full of clever little references to not only Romeo & Juliet but other plays and poems, a delight for a nerd like me, but for the lay person too. Blending historical fact into Shakespearean fiction, this is an enjoyable and intelligent read.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

A stunning and unexpected portrait of Lucy Maud Montgomery, creator of one of literature’s most prized heroines, whose personal demons were at odds with her most enduring legacy—the irrepressible Anne of Green Gables.

“Dear old world,” she murmured, “you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.” —L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, 1908

As a young woman, Maud had dreams bigger than the whole of Prince Edward Island. Her exuberant spirit had always drawn frowns from her grandmother and their neighbors, but she knew she was meant to create, to capture and share the way she saw the world. And the young girl in Maud’s mind became more and more persistent: Here is my story, she said. Here is how my name should be spelled—Anne with an “e.”

But the day Maud writes the first lines of Anne of Green Gables, she gets a visit from the handsome new minister in town, and soon faces a decision: forge her own path as a spinster authoress, or live as a rural minister’s wife, an existence she once called “a synonym for respectable slavery.” The choice she makes alters the course of her life. With a husband whose religious mania threatens their health and happiness at every turn, the secret darkness that Maud herself holds inside threatens to break through the persona she shows to the world, driving an ever-widening wedge between her public face and private self, and putting her on a path towards a heartbreaking end.

Beautiful and moving, After Anne reveals Maud’s hidden personal challenges while celebrating what was timeless about her life and art—the importance of tenacity and the peaceful refuge found in imagination.

LOGAN STEINER is a litigator and briefwriting specialist at a boutique law firm. She graduated summa cum laude from Pomona College and cum laude from Harvard Law School. She lives in Denver with her husband and daughter. After Anne is her first novel.

My thoughts: I was given, and read, all the Anne books as a child by my aunt, but I knew nothing about their author. Like her creation, she grew up on Prince Edward Island, but beyond that, she and Anne with an “E” were very different.

Lucy Maud Montgomery, known by her middle name, comes off as a bit more of a Pollyanna than her red haired orphan girl. She lives with her grandmother, taking care of her, having a long engagement to the handsome minister of the local church, putting him off because her grandmother can’t be left on her own.

Eventually she does marry him, they move away and have two sons. She keeps writing her Anne books, which she saves the money from for her sons education.

Moving between the later years of her life and an imagined birthday weekend at her grandmother’s house, Maud is revising her journals and reminiscing over her life. She actually did revise and edit her diaries, which were later published. It seems strange to be happy to have others read your thoughts but to carefully remove anything that might change how people see you, a controlling and almost manipulative act perhaps.

Her marriage isn’t a happy one, her husband is mentally ill, possibly with depression or bipolar disorder, her sons aren’t all she wanted them to be either – the eldest Chester disappoints her. She seems very lonely following the death of her cousin and closest friend Frede in 1919 of the Spanish Flu. Her journals may well have been the closest she has to a confidante for the rest of her life.

This book, while being fiction, is clearly very well researched and the author has stuck to the facts, while fleshing out the inner life of this unusual and quite sad writer. Anne had such joy and was such a character, completely herself, that it seems a tragedy her creator was not able to be the same and instead slid into the template society created for her, her only outlet her writing.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.