Tag: contemporary fiction

blog tour, books, reviews

Read Along: The Last Charm – Ella Allbright*

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Something a little different, this week I will be taking part in a read along of The Last Charm by Ella Allbright.

The read along will be taking place across social media (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) using the hashtag #OMCReadalong and #OneLastCharm

It’s running from the 21st to the 28th, with fun activities including book club questions, bookish challenges, competitions, live interviews and lots of exclusive content.

The book is published on the 21st, so please do grab a copy and join in at the links above and by following the hashtags.


A moving and heartwarming love story perfect for fans of Me Before You and One Day in December.

Leila’s charm bracelet tells a story of love, a story of loss, a story of hope.

This is the story of her… and the story of Jake.

When Leila Jones loses her precious charm bracelet and a stranger finds it, she has to tell the story of how she got the charms to prove she’s the owner. Each and every one is a precious memory of her life with Jake.

So Leila starts at the beginning, recounting the charms and experiences that have led her to the present. A present she never could have expected when she met Jake nearly twenty years ago…

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

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Blog Tour: Fin & Rye & Fireflies – Harry Cook*

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Fin Whittle is sixteen and he likes guys. A fact which seems to be complicating his life.

One minute Fin’s kissing the godlike Jesse; the next he s been cruelly outed. His family’s response? To up sticks in search of a ‘fresh start’.

A fresh start won’t change the truth of who Fin is. Obviously. But it does introduce him to the best squad in town: kick-ass Poppy, her on-off girlfriend June and the super cute, super irresistible Rye.

Fin soon has a serious crush. And Rye might just feel the same way. But Fin’s parents aren’t happy. If their son won’t change his ‘lifestyle’, they ll force him onto the straight and narrow . . . by way of ‘conversion therapy’. An outrageous plan is needed to face down the haters and to give Fin and Rye (and their fireflies) a chance at the happy-ever-after their story deserves . . .

From moonlit meet-ups to vintage diners, pride parades to a passion for old vinyl, Fin & Rye & Fireflies is a gloriously upbeat tale of being true to yourself no matter what.

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Born in the UK, Harry Cook is an Australian actor and international LGBTQI+ activist. He has starred in major film, TV and theatre productions, including the lead opposite Geena Davis in Accidents Happen. In 2013, at age 22, Harry came out to his fans on YouTube. The video went viral and Harry became front-page news in Australia, the UK and the US. Harry lives in Sydney with his rescued English Bulldog Poppy.

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My thoughts:

This is a sweet, lovely story of first loves, fireflies, being true to yourself, and the importance of friendship.

It’s also got a dark side, and I would be remiss to say it’s not something every reader will feel comfortable with. Conversion therapy is horrible and cruel and harmful.

There is light in the darkness too, from fireflies and knowing that people can change, that parents make mistakes too.

As Mrs Potts sings in Beauty & the Beast “bittersweet and strange, finding you can change, learning you were wrong” – I think Fin’s family would agree.

Find your tribe, the people who will always have your back, like Fin does, and you’ll be OK.

This is powerful, moving story telling and I hope it finds its audience, because we need stories like this to counteract the sadder ones.

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

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Blog Tour: Growing Season – Seni Glaister*

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After a life-saving operation leaves Sam unable to have children, could a rural cottage be the fresh start she needs? Or is she running away from her problems?

For her husband Danny, this was never part of the plan. He likes predictability. The countryside is just a bit, well – wild. But he wants Sam to be happy, even if he isn’t.

If only Danny could tell Sam what is going on in his head. If only he knew what was really going on in hers. If only they knew that they’re equally afraid of what happens next.

Can the couple find a way to face the future together, or have they already grown too far apart?

Growing Season is a poignant and uplifting novel about how love and nature sometimes need a helping hand.

My thoughts:

A mediation on growth, fear, letting go of the past and nature, this novel features two women, Sam and Diana, both wrestling with letting go of who they were and embracing who they are now.

As well as their growth, there is literal growth as Sam turns her neat lawn into a wild flower meadow and Diana, who lives in the woods, records in her notebooks the growth of the woodland plants and her own planting.

Sam has had a difficult time dealing with cancer and the loss of her ability to have children, moving house to leave some things behind her, her husband Danny, who struggles with a number of phobias and fictional allergies, also needs to change and grow.

All three characters find that their proximity to nature alters them and helps them move forward. *I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Boy Queen – George Lester*

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Fall wig first into a world of big hair, high heels and even higher stakes in George Lester’s debut novel Boy Queen.

Life’s a drag until you try . . .

Robin Cooper’s life is falling apart.

While his friends prepare to head off to University, Robin is looking at a pile of rejection letters from drama schools up and down the country, and facing a future without the people he loves the most. Everything seems like it’s ending, and Robin is scrabbling to find his feet.

Unsure about what to do next and whether he has the talent to follow his dreams, he and his best friends go and drown their sorrows at a local drag show, where Robin realizes there might be a different, more sequinned path for him . . .

With a mother who won’t stop talking, a boyfriend who won’t acknowledge him and a best friend who is dying to cover him in glitter make up, there’s only one thing for Robin to do: bring it to the runway.

My thoughts:

Oh my wigs and lashes, this was such a fun read, I loved it. Written by a real life drag queen, aka That Gurrrl, this is such a delight.

Robin is out and surrounded by fantastic friends and a loving mum, a committed Drag Race fan, a birthday night out at a local drag night lights a spark in him and off he goes to discover his inner diva and drag up his life.

As a lifelong theatre kid and glitter aficionado who gets make up tips from drag queens at Pride, this book made my queer little heart sing. It’s so much fun and real and I just loved it.

My inner drag queen had her heels on and was dancing a boogie when Robin finally took the stage and it just ticked so many boxes for me.

Drag has become more and more mainstream over the last few years and the more positive stories about LGBTQ+ lives that get published the better.


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

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: F.O.X.E.S – M.A. Bennett*

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Greer has just recovered from her terrifying experience during the STAGS play. Was she really put on trial by the sinister Dark Order of the Grand Stag? Or was it purely her overheated imagination? The imprint of an ‘M’ for murderer that has appeared on her thumb, though, is puzzling but incomplete evidence . . .

Meanwhile Ty is staying on at Longcross Manor and Greer, Nel and Shafeen are increasingly worried for her safety. When Ty sends a cryptic message directing them to Cumberland Place, the de Warlencourts’ palatial home in London, they decide to risk a visit. There they meet Henry’s grieving parents, Rollo and Caro. Rollo is arrogant, entitled and not overly grieving. Caro, however, while superficially charming, is clearly pushed to the brink of madness by Henry’s death, insisting that Henry is still alive. Which is clearly impossible . . . but Greer has her own troubling doubts about Henry’s death which make it hard to dismiss Caro completely . . .

Can Greer, Shafeen and Nel work out what Rollo de Warlencourt is planning for his deadly Boxing Day Hunt at Longcross in time to save Ty – who has now gone silent? Or will history horribly repeat itself?

A thrilling, richly complex instalment in the STAGS series.

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M. A. BENNETT is a history graduate of Oxford University and the University of Venice, where she specialised in the study of Shakespeare’s plays as a historical source. Her first YA novel, S.T.A.G.S., was published in 2017 and was shortlisted for the YA BOOK PRIZE 2018, winning various awards such as the Warwickshire Secondary Book Award 2019 and the Sussex Coast Schools Amazing Book Award 2019, both voted by students, and won the Great Reads ‘Most Read’ 2018 Senior Award.

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My thoughts:

You really should read S.T.A.G.S and D.O.G.S first to get you up to speed on what Greer, Nel and Shafeen are dealing with in F.O.X.E.S but it isn’t essential.

After almost dying several times at the hands of some of their classmates and the nasty Order of the Stag, you’d think these three would have transferred to somewhere less murderous and called in the police, social services and OFSTED, but no, they’re going to try to bring down the Order with the help of Ty, and a few other new acquaintances along the way.

Honestly, I found myself veering between horror and wondering exactly how dumb Greer actually is. She thinks mostly in terrible films, seems to forget the modern world exists, which I know is the point of the awful school they’re at, and wander around with her head in the clouds.

Thankfully Nel and Shafeen are a bit more with it, Nel is easily my favourite character.

The book left me with more questions than answers, no doubt some will be explained in the next book. I read Ben Jonson at uni, but he didn’t seem nearly as interesting as in these books, so I’m off to research his connections to the Gunpowder Plot…

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

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Blog Tour: The Stray Cats of Homs – Eva Nour*

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Sami’s childhood is much like any other – an innocent blend of family and school, of friends and relations and pets (including stray cats and dogs, and the turtle he keeps on the roof).

But growing up in one of the largest cities in Syria, with his country at war with itself, means that nothing is really normal. And Sami’s hopes for a better future are ripped away when he is conscripted into the military and forced to train as a map maker. Sami may be shielded from the worst horrors of the war, but it will still be impossible to avoid his own nightmare…

Inspired by extraordinary true events, The Stray Cats of Homs is the story of a young man who will do anything to keep the dream of home alive, even in the face of unimaginable devastation. Tender, wild and unbearably raw, it is a novel which will stay with you for ever.

My thoughts:

This book was beautiful, sad, moving and tender. Sami and his friends find ways to live despite the war in the streets and the constant terror of rocket attacks around them.

A gentle person, Sami is conscripted and forced to work for a military he does not believe in, waging war on their own people. He becomes a journalist, trying to share the reality of life under fire.

His escape and journey to the safety of Paris, where he meets the author, had my heart in my mouth at times.

Written under a nom de plume to protect the real “Sami”, the author is now his partner, and there is a sense of that affection throughout. As well as that of Sami’s for animals – he never loses his tender heart.

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

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Dear Emmie Blue – Lia Louis

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In this charming and poignant novel, teenager Emmie Blue releases a balloon with her email address and a big secret into the sky, only to fall head-over-heels for the boy who finds it; now, fourteen years later, the one thing Emmie has been counting on is gone for good, and everything she planned is up in the air.

At sixteen, Emmie Blue stood in the fields of her school and released a red balloon into the sky. Attached was her name, her email address…and a secret she desperately wanted to be free of. Weeks later, on a beach in France, Lucas Moreau discovered the balloon and immediately emailed the attached addressed, sparking an intense friendship between the two teens.

Now, fourteen years later, Emmie is hiding the fact that she’s desperately in love with Lucas. She has pinned all her hopes on him and waits patiently for him to finally admit that she’s the one for him. So dedicated to her love for Lucas, Emmie has all but neglected her life outside of this relationship—she’s given up the search for her absentee father, no longer tries to build bridges with her distant mother, and lives as a lodger to an old lady she barely knows after being laid off from her job. And when Lucas tells Emmie he has a big question to ask her, she’s convinced this is the moment he’ll reveal his feelings for her. But nothing in life ever quite goes as planned, does it?

Emmie Blue is about to learn everything she thinks she knows about life (and love) is just that: what she thinks she knows. Is there such thing as meant to be? Or is it true when they say that life is what happens when you are busy making other plans? A story filled with heart and humor, Dear Emmie Blue is perfect for fans of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and Evvie Drake Starts Over.

My thoughts:

This book made me cry. In a good way. It’s sweet, lovely, funny and charming. I loved Emmie, my heart broke for her, all the shit she’d overcome. I loved Rosie and Fox, they’re hilarious. Lucas was kind of an arse, Eliot was not.

Just a really, really lovely book.

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

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Blog Tour: Note to Boy – Sue Clark*

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Eloise is an erratic, faded fashionista. Bradley is a glum but wily teenager.

In need of help to write her racy 1960s memoirs, the former ‘shock frock’ fashion guru tolerates his common ways. Unable to remember his name, she calls him Boy. Desperate to escape a brutal home life, he puts up with her bossiness and confusing notes.

Both guard secrets. How did she lose her fame and fortune? What is he scheming – beyond getting his hands on her bank card? And just what’s hidden in that mysterious locked room?

Sue Clark has grilled John Humphreys, quipped with Ronnie Corbett, danced with one James Bond and had a one-sided conversation with another, and penned funny lines for the likes of Lenny Henry, June Whitfield, Roy Hudd and David Jason. She’s been a BBC radio and TV comedy scriptwriter on such shows such as Alas Smith and Jones, Weekending, The News Huddlines and The Jason Explanation, a copywriter, a PR, a journalist, a magazine editor, a writer of guidebooks, a secretary and was, briefly, paid to read books all day long for a film producer. And now she’s written a novel.

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My thoughts:

This is a witty, intelligent novel with some laugh out loud, snorting moments as Eloise recounts her life’s misadventures to the rather reluctant ears of Bradley, her assistant/cleaner/life coach.

She’s led a colourful life, the toast of Swinging London, at least according to her!

This was tremendous fun, and had a hugely redemptive and satisfying ending.


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

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Blog Tour: The Silence – Susan Allott*

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It is 1997, and in a basement flat in Hackney Isla Green is awakened by a call in the middle of the night: her father, phoning from Sydney. 30 years ago, in the suffocating heat of summer 1967, the Greens’ next-door neighbour Mandy disappeared.

At the time, it was thought she had gone to start a new life; but now Mandy’s family is trying to reconnect, and there is no trace of her. Isla’s father Joe was allegedly the last person to see her alive, and now he’s under suspicion of murder.

Reluctantly, Isla goes back to Australia for the first time in a decade. The return to Sydney will plunge her deep into the past, to a quiet street by the sea where two couples live side by side.

Isla’s parents, Louisa and Joe, have recently emigrated from England — a move that has left Louisa miserably homesick while Joe embraces this new life. Next door, Steve and Mandy are equally troubled. Mandy doesn’t want a baby, even though Steve — a cop trying to hold it together under the pressures of the job — is desperate to become a father.

The more Isla asks about the past, the more she learns: about both young couples and the secrets each marriage bore. Could her father be capable of doing something terrible? How much does her mother know? And is there another secret in this community, one which goes deeper into Australia’s colonial past, which has held them in a conspiracy of silence?

Susan Allott is from the UK but spent part of her twenties in Australia, desperately homesick but trying to make Sydney her home. In 2016 she completed the Faber Academy course, during which she started writing this novel. She now lives in south London with her two children and her very Australian husband.

My thoughts:

This was really interesting, what seemed to be a crime novel about a missing woman turned into an exploration of a dark chapter in Australia’s (and Britain’s) history – the forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their families.

A moving and fascinating look into the personal and political and how those can entwine. Timely and powerful, this lingers in the mind long after the final page.

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

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Blog Tour: Homecoming – Luan Goldie*

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For years Yvonne has tried to keep her demons buried and focus on moving forward. But her guilt is always with her and weighs heavily on her heart.

Kiama has had to grow up without a mother, and while there is so much he remembers about her, there is still plenty he doesn’t know. And there’s only one person who can fill in the gaps.

Lewis wants nothing more than to keep Kiama, his son, safe, but the thought of Kiama dredging up the past worries Lewis deeply. And Lewis doesn’t know if he’s ready to let the only woman he’s ever loved back into his life.

When Kiama seeks Yvonne out and asks her to come with him to Kenya, the place that holds the answers to his questions, she knows she can’t refuse. And this one act sets in motion an unravelling of the past that no one is ready for.

Moving between London and Kenya, and spanning almost two decades, Homecoming is a profound and moving story of love, family and friendship. It’s about coming to terms with your past, opening yourself up to the exquisite pain and pleasure of love, and of what happens when three lost souls, all bound by one person, come together and finally share their truths.

My thoughts:

This was a fascinating novel about family, the past and dealing with things we’ve locked away.

Kiama has fragmented memories of his childhood in Kenya, before his mother’s death, and he wants to make sense of them. His dad doesn’t want to talk about it, so he seeks out his mother’s best friend Yvonne and asks her to come with him to Kenya to unravel his memories.

Interestingly Yvonne knows the whole story but is uncomfortable with what it says about her. There’s things she doesn’t really want to tell Kiama, they don’t paint her in a good light or his father.

The plot moves back and forth between Yvonne’s past and the present, revealing the secrets she’d rather keep to herself.

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