Tag: books

Orphaned at birth, Eliza lives with her beloved Grandparents in a waterlogged Somerset cottage surrounded by willow beds where she ekes out a living making laundry baskets and eel traps. Although poor she is content, until childhood friend Clem, regales her with tales of his adventures along the river and she begins to wonder what life is like beyond the Droves.

When fate brings handsome, wealthy Theo to her workshop she is instantly attracted and a rosy future beyond the Droves beckons. Only things don’t go to plan and naive Eliza finds herself in Lavender House where she is expected to care for gentlemen in a way she never imagined. Forced to flee for her life, she ends up in a woollen mill run by a corrupt foreman, working for crumbs and pennies with only her grandmother’s comb in her pocket.

Now she knows what matters in life – but is it too late? And will she ever be able to return home to those who love her?

My thoughts:

This was a different sort of read for me, I don’t generally go for books with covers like these, but I’m glad I took a punt on this.

My grandmother was born in Devon, and so I feel a connection to the West Country of this novel, a place where people work hard and live in beautiful, but sometimes remote landscapes.

Eliza’s life is not easy, and as the book opens she has just lost her grandmother and must take on the role of running the household as well as weaving the willow baskets her family earn their living from.

In a way I quite understood her reasons for running away; a revelation rips her world apart, she finds herself alone and she feels uncertain about her future.

But her experiences in the larger towns she visits all remind of her of how much she misses her small home and the safety of the Droves.

As a love story, it’s more one of Eliza’s love for her home than of any man. Which was somewhat refreshing, no man rescues Eliza from any of her predicaments, she rescues herself.

The title is a bit long and unwieldy and certainly obscures any hint at the plot – Eliza saves herself in this one!

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

Edinburgh, January 1732: It’s Lady Grange’s funeral. Her death is a shock: still young, she’d shown no signs of ill health.

But Rachel is, in fact, alive. She’s been brutally kidnapped by the man who has falsified her death – her husband of 25 years, a pillar of society with whom she has raised a family.

Her punishment, perhaps, for railing against his infidelity – or for uncovering evidence of his treasonable plottings against the government.

Whether to conceal his Jacobite leanings, or simply to `replace’ a wife with a long-time mistress, Lord Grange banishes Rachel to the remote Hebridean Monach Isles, until she’s removed again to distant St Kilda, far into the Atlantic – to an isolated life of primitive conditions, with no shared language – somewhere she can never be found.

This is the incredible and gripping story of a woman who has until now been remembered mostly by her husband’s unflattering account. Sue Lawrence reconstructs a remarkable tale of how the real Lady Grange may have coped with such a dramatic fate, with courage and grace.

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As well as writing popular historical thrillers, including Down to the Sea, Sue Lawrence is a leading cookery writer. After winning BBC’s MasterChef in 1991, she became a regular contributor to the Sunday Times, Scotland on Sunday and other leading magazines. Raised in Dundee, she now lives in Edinburgh. She has won two Guild of Food Writers Awards.

My thoughts:

This was a really fascinating read. Having read books like The Scandalous Lady W and Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, I knew 18th Century women were treated appalling in their unhappy marriages as they had no rights and not even custody of their own children.

But to have your wife kidnapped, not once, not twice, but three times (the third isn’t covered in the book but is mentioned in the author’s afterword) is a new extreme.

Rachel, Lady Grange, may not have always been easy to live with; her fierce temper and fondness for claret saw to that, but she didn’t deserve the punishment her husband and his Jacobite pal Lord Lovet dreamed up for her.

Fleshing out the limited details available about Lady Grange’s life, Sue Lawrence has created a fascinating, enjoyable and eminently readable piece of historical fiction.

The drinks are flowing. The music’s playing. But the party can’t last.

London, 1950. With the Blitz over and London still rebuilding after the war, jazz musician Lawrie Matthews has answered England’s call for help. Arriving from Jamaica aboard the Empire Windrush, he’s taken a tiny room in south London lodgings, and has fallen in love with the girl next door.

Touring Soho’s music halls by night, pacing the streets as a postman by day, Lawrie has poured his heart into his new home — and it’s alive with possibility. Until one morning, while crossing a misty common, he makes a terrible discovery.

As the local community rallies, fingers of blame are pointed at those who had recently been welcomed with open arms. And before long, London’s newest arrivals become the prime suspects in a tragedy which threatens to tear the city apart. Immersive, poignant, and utterly compelling, Louise Hare’s debut examines the complexities of love and belonging, and teaches us that even in the face of anger and fear, there is always hope.

My thoughts:

With the Windrush generation in the news again, for all the wrong reasons, this is a timely novel about those first arrivals and their new lives in London.

They face racism, both institutional and individual, a struggle to find somewhere to live, work, love.

Lawrie is an empathetic protagonist, you really feel for him as he’s scapegoated and railroaded by a biased copper and a suspicious community.

But it’s Evie’s story that really made me sad, the daughter of a mixed race couple, raised by a single parent, surrounded by white faces and ignorance her whole life.

This is at its heart a love story, not just that of Lawrie and Evie, but of mothers and daughters, of friends, community and music.

Moving and well written, I think Louise Hare is definitely going to be one to watch, this debut novel is powerful and much like Pandora’s box, there’s hope under all the darkness.