Tag: contemporary fiction

Sometimes the right story leads you home . . .

When bestselling author Helen finds herself at the centre of a scandal, she escapes to Rathbrooke Hall on a remote island off the Northumberland coast.

Tasked with cataloguing the books of a reclusive collector she’s relieved to be out of the glare of publicity, even if the locals are less than welcoming. But as she spends more time among the dusty bookshelves and rare first editions, she uncovers clues to a secret collection of books that could save the island – and the community that she’s begun to feel part of.

Can she unravel the mystery of the hidden library and can she trust Thiago, a charming librarian with secrets of his own?

Sharon started her career as an entertainment journalist, writing non-fiction books about film and television. She is also the author of multiple children’s books. Sharon and her husband live in a small village in northern Cumbria where they run a second-hand bookshop, Withnail Books in Penrith. She can be found on Twitter @sharongosling.

My thoughts: I loved this, a huge house, a magnificent library, secrets and a lost Shakespeare manuscript – this could not be more me. It’s the stuff literary nerds dream of. 

On an island off the Northumberland coast, where a reclusive collector has built a library of rare and precious books (the smell must be heavenly, all those old books) Helen has been sent to catalogue and also try to find the late owner’s will.

When a man who looks like a pirate turns up claiming to be a librarian who had been in contact with Cyril, Helen is swept into a quest for a missing Shakespeare manuscript that might just be hidden in the library.

There’s danger, intrigue, possibly ghosts, definitely a grumpy teenage girl, storms, possible romance, giant cats and if this house was real I’d be campaigning to move in as the resident librarian.

It’s an enchanting and very enjoyable read, and if like me you like books about books and bookish people – you’ll love this.

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

Jennifer Jones is in control.

Jen is confident she has complete control over the things that are trying to control her. Until she isn’t. Until she hasn’t. Until she realises she has never been in control at all. She’s been papering over it for years.

It’s the start of the year 2000. A new millennium has arrived. For Jen and her three friends, university life in Manchester is full of possibility and endless fun. Sassiness, spontaneity, marvellous mayhem and youthful optimism reign in the Manchester rain.

But beneath the sometimes brash bravado sometimes even the most resilient, carefree, fun-loving characters who, on the surface look like they are living their best lives, are perilously close to falling
apart. Over the course of one unforgettable year, the young women confront their own realities and
truths. Some make foolish mistakes and others life changing choices.
Sometimes heartwarming and other times heartbreaking, but always brutally honest.

This is a story of friendship, mistakes, self-discovery and acceptance; identity, love and the messy reality of becoming an adult. It’s about the masks we wear, the mistakes and choices we make, and the
courage it takes to stop papering over it and face ourselves when everything feels like it’s falling apart.

It’s real, raw, raunchy, sometimes random and frankly rude at times. Just like Jen and her friends.

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Ruth has worked in Marketing for twenty-seven years and has always loved writing and storytelling.
Understanding people and their behaviour, creating stories that resonate and developing engaging and enduring narratives have all been key to success in her professional background.

From a personal perspective, Ruth is a Manchester born, bred and based menopausal mum of three boys (twelve, fifteen and twenty seven). She spends most of her weekends trying to manage the
family mayhem with her partner Simon and watching their younger boys on the sideline of various sports pitches hunting for a loo (occasionally having to resort to a wild wee), a sausage sandwich and a brew while trying to keep warm in doubled-up big socks (mainly stolen from the males in her house) and multiple layers (having had it drilled into her since childhood that it is the number of layers that count, not the thickness of each layer – the complete opposite of friendships).

A nasty accident on Good (Bad) Friday in 2024 meant she spent several months sat on her arse with one leg having to be perpetually higher than said arse. As an energetic, self-confessed curator of chaos, she needed something to focus on and keep her from going frankly crazy. And keep her family from going crazy too. She found that you can’t do much when you’re in acute pain with one leg in the air (including the jigsaws and ‘paint by numbers’ well-wishers had kindly gifted her). But you can read, reflect, think and you can definitely reminisce and daydream. And you can write. Which is what she did.

Her debut novel, Paper Over It, combines her sometimes over-enthusiastic imagination with insights gained from growing up in the 80s and becoming a young mum in the late 90s, her silent struggle with eating disorders in her earlier years, the power of some relationships and the destructive nature
of others, and the joy of family, friendship, loyalty, hope and laughter.

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My thoughts: I’m a bit younger than the characters in this book, but I do remember the early 2000s, I was a teenager and the music the girls listen to was the soundtrack to my year back then too.

Jen, Em, Lou and Kate are all at Manchester uni, with their final year (except for Kate who’s on a 4 year course) and their futures all ahead of them.

Over the course of a tumultuous year, they’ll fall in love, figure out their next steps, party hard and deal with heartbreak, unexpected surprises and learn how to be adults. 

I really enjoyed the book, I liked the four young women at the heart of the story, their adventures, mistakes, and the bond they share. It was funny, life affirming and enjoyable, a book with real heart. 

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

Unassuming Emma, a blogger turned wannabe social media influencer, moves to an exclusive enclave in SW19 to get her son into the best school in the area. On the first day of school, she bumps into Annabel, a gregarious journalist who is head of the PTA.

An unfortunate misunderstanding leads to a clash, and the school gate mothers taking sides. Emma’s world has been blown apart by motherhood. As she struggles to find her new identity, she has to defend herself against Annabel and her clique. The mean girls with mortgages.

Emma learns a devastating secret about Annabel that could destroy her entire life. Will Emma play dirty to win, and what lengths will Annabel go to protect what she has?

There can only be one winner. But what will be the cost?

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Catherine Yardley is a freelance journalist and author. She writes for The Sunday
Times, Stylist, The Times, Telegraph, Metro, Huffpost and the i paper. She’s the editor-in-chief of Frost Magazine. The Mothers of SW19 is her third novel. Her two other books published are Ember
and Where The Light is Hottest. Both did well and got fantastic reviews. She has been on numerous podcasts, including The Conversation with Nadine Matheson and Confessions of a Debut Novelist with Chloe Timms. She lives in SW19 with her husband and children.

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My thoughts: Emma is hoping to make friends with the other mums at the school gate, but after a brief encounter with Queen Bee Annabel and her Mean Girls with Mortgages (MGwM), she’s left feeling a bit deflated, and when they start a campaign to discredit her and destroy her fledgling social media career, because Annabel says so, she’s totally thrown. It doesn’t help that her son and her nemesis’ son are now best friends, thrusting the two women constantly into each other’s lives.

However, a brief indiscretion on Annabel’s part, caught on Emma’s phone, gives her potential leverage. Will she utilise it as they go head to head for the vacant governor’s position at the school? And when things spiral out of control and lead to tragedy, can either woman come back from that?

What starts as a silly Mean Girls feud rapidly overwhelms both of their lives, threatening to destroy everything. Can they de-escalate and back down in time? Or will SW19 be gossiping about them forever?

Clever, funny and with a truly shocking twist, this is what happens when mean girls get older but don’t really grow up.

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

Danielle MacKinnon’s nearly thirty and still hasn’t got her life sorted. She’s broke, hates her job as PA to the blithely privileged Jeannie, and now a break-up has left her with nowhere to live.

It comes as a surprise when Jeannie suggests that Danielle stay at Westerley, the sprawling Yorkshire estate where she grew up. They need someone to look after the place anyway.

At Westerley, Danielle luxuriates in her idyllic, borrowed life as lady of the manor – but the house is strange, uneasy. that started in London has followed her there.

Then Jeannie arrives unannounced. Working for Jeannie, serving her, living in her house, the razor-thin boundaries between Danielle and her boss begin to dissolve. Soon their relationship slides into one that is older, stranger and harder to name.

Something is happening at Westerley. Things where they shouldn’t be. The shadow of a maid sweeping in the dawn light. But is the house really haunted? Or is Danielle?

Lauren Mooney is a writer from the East Midlands. She works in theatre and audio drama, and has co-run Kandinsky Theatre Company since 2015, making award-winning shows across the UK and Europe. She is a graduate of UEA’s Creative Writing Prose MA, where she held the David Higham Scholarship. She lives in south London with her husband Stewart and their tortoise, Sacher Tort. Service is her first novel.

My thoughts: Danielle is coasting through life, she’s stuck in an assistant’s job at a charity that doesn’t seem to really do anything, working for Jeannie, who treats her like a dogsbody, sending her to do the weekly shop and her errands.

When Danielle’s best friend tells her she can’t sleep on the sofa in her house share anymore (her ex is in their flat), she’s suddenly homeless. When Jeannie suggests she stay at her family’s moldering house Westerley and look after it, she accepts. 

But the night terrors and sleep paralysis that have been plaguing her seem to be worse in Yorkshire than they were in London and she’s even starting to see things in the daytime. Bowls of peaches seem to appear, a maid in the corridor when she’s the only person in the house. 

Then Jeannie and her son pitch up, the roof of their London home having caved in, and suddenly Danielle is cooking and cleaning for them and sleeping in the old servants’ quarters in the attic, and her strange visions are getting even more real. 

I liked Danielle, I’ve been a PA, although thankfully not for anyone as entitled as Jeannie, and I have an ancestor who was a housemaid (my great-grandmother) so I recognised that in her.

She’s clearly struggling with her life, her relationship has ended and she’s stuck in a rut with her job, her strange experience at the house, the visions and the increasingly real haunting seem like warning signals that she needs to change things, to start over and stop letting life happen to her.

A really interesting and enjoyable read.

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

Morecambe Bay, Lancashire: After his father’s death, a son clears out his parents’ house. When he finds a series of haunting photographs of Morecambe Bay, taken by his father towards the end of his life, it sparks a journey through the scattered memories and broken connections of five generations of family history.

Flowing from the vibrant post-war Jewish community of London’s east end, to the quiet suburban streets of Stanmore, and back to the Lancashire coast, the story cascades down through each generation’s shifting perspective. A wife appeases her charismatic yet destructive husband; a son
reimagines the jigsaw of his mother’s life; a granddaughter tries to heal the traumas of the past.

What Fools We Have Been is an exploration of memory, identity, and the trail of damage left in the wake of wartime trauma. It asks: What is it that makes us who we are? Is it possible to repair the
wreckage of the past?

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Hank Williams started his career as a stage director in the mid ’70s. He then worked as a community artist and community development worker before becoming a management development consultant. For the past fifteen years he has worked in the Higher Education sector, mentoring senior
leaders in UK universities as well as leading change programmes in Afghanistan and Bangladesh. He retired in 2026.

Hank wrote a screenplay in the 80s that won a commendation in a Sunday Times/BFI national competition. He has published three books relating to management development. His first novel – WHAT FOOLS WE HAVE BEEN – was published by Chiselbury Press in March 2026, just before his 70th birthday. Hank lives on the edge of Morecambe Bay. He has two step-sons and three granddaughters.

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@chiselbury. Main platforms used are Instagram, X, Threads and Facebook.

My thoughts: I really liked this history of a family, connected through photographs, told backwards, from the East End to North London’s Stanmore and up to Morecombe Bay, rolling back the generations to the end of the Second World War and the deep wounds it left in at least two generations.

The characters are fascinating, I especially liked the women, mostly Ruth, whose life provides the main narrative. Having lost her mother during the war, while she was evacuated out to the countryside, she stays close to her beloved father, Morris, and her uncles in the East End.

Eventually she marries Charlie and they move, as many Jewish families have done, to North West London. I actually live in Stanmore, which is much more lively these days than it was then, with a diverse community. I don’t think Ruth would be as lonely now as she is in the book. And perhaps things would have been different.

It’s her son, David, whose house in Morecombe Bay is where this both begins and ends. He has compiled a book of photos he’s taken, with his daily thoughts jotted below. His son Simon adds pictures of their ancestors – his grandparents, aunt, father, to the book and shares it with his own children.

Inspired, his daughter builds a family tree, and goes looking for the missing story – that of her great-aunt. The only person left who can tell her about the people she comes from. If she is to be the bearer of her family’s stories, she needs to fill in the gaps.

Moving and deftly written, this is a gentle and bittersweet story about family, the messy relationships we have with our nearest and dearest, and the healing that comes in the form of new generations who have none of the weight of those troubled times on their shoulders.

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