#BookSpotlight: The Spoon Stealer by Lesley Crewe @LesleyCrewe @NimbusPub #TheSpoonStealer #LesleyCrewe #TandemCollective

Good afternoon everyone I was lucky enough to be accepted onto the Tandem Collective read-along for this fantastic sounding book. It sounds right up my street and I’m excited to read it alongside some of my lovely book friends.

Huge thanks to Tandem Collective for the invite and to Karen Kingston for recommending me for this read-along.

Do you like read-alongs or buddy reads?

Book Synopsis:

Born into a basket of clean sheets–ruining a perfectly good load of laundry–Emmeline never quite fit in on her family’s rural Nova Scotian farm. After suffering multiple losses in the First World War, her family became so heavy with grief, toxicity, and mental illness that Emmeline felt their weight smothering her. And so, she fled across the Atlantic and built her life in England. Now she is retired and living in a small coastal town with her best friend, Vera, an excellent conversationalist. Vera is also a small white dog, and so Emmeline is making an effort to talk to more humans. When she joins a memoir-writing course at the library, her classmates don’t know what to make of her. Funny, loud, and with a riveting memoir, she charms the lot. As her past unfolds for her audience, friendships form, a bonus in a rather lonely life. She even shares with them her third-biggest secret: she has liberated hundreds of spoons over her lifetime–from the local library, Cary Grant, Winston Churchill. She is a compulsive spoon stealer.

When Emmeline unexpectedly inherits the farm she grew up on, she knows she needs to leave her new friends and go see the farm and what remains of her family one last time. She arrives like a tornado in their lives, an off-kilter Mary Poppins bossing everyone around and getting quite a lot wrong. But with her generosity and hard-earned wisdom, she gets an awful lot right too. A pinball ricocheting between people, offending and inspiring in equal measure, Emmeline, in her final years, believes that a spoonful–perhaps several spoonfuls–of kindness can set to rights the family so broken by loss and secrecy.

The Spoon Stealer is a classic Crewe book: full of humour, family secrets, women’s friendship, lovable animals, and immense heart.

About The Author:

I love the ordinary moments.
I celebrate everyday things.

They are too often lost in the race for something grand. I hold dear our humdrum routines. These accumulating hours make up our lifetimes and when we remember, it is always the simplest of pleasures that make us happy. These are the memories I create in my books.

Hubby and I were raised in Montreal, but have lived in the same house in rural Cape Breton for forty-five years. It remains a sanctuary for our children and pets, both living and remembered. My writing began as an exercise in trying to understand my world and quickly became something that brought me joy. I dearly love my family, baby blueberry Gia, all creatures great and small, children’s books, and breathing in the wild ocean air. 

Also, raisin tea biscuits.

(Taken from author’s website)

What’s In My Bag Challenge! #Booklover #WhatsInMyBagChallenge

Good morning everyone. I saw this fun challenge on @dems_book_den ‘s Instagram page and knew I had to join in!

My lovely bag was made by my Mother In Law for my birthday. She makes the most amazing bags and I always love receiving a new one from her.

In my bag we have:
⭐My diary
⭐ A note book and pen in case I have any good ideas whilst out. Also useful for entertaining the kids if needed.
⭐ My book with the lovely bookmark my daughter made me
⭐ My kindle just in case I manage to finish my book 😂
⭐ My wallet
⭐ A drink – I normally use my water bottle but couldn’t find it…
⭐ Chocolate
⭐ Birthday book vouchers

There is also a load of random receipts and a few kids toys too.

I’ve tagged a few people who might want to take part on Instagram but if you see this feel free to join in too!

What book would you recommend I buy with my book voucher?

#BookSpotlight: Confidence by Denise Mina @gray_books @vintagebooks #Confidence #DeniseMina #CrimeThriller #NewBook

Good morning everyone I was lucky enough to receive this fabulous package from Graeme Williams and Vintage Books to celebrate the paperback publication for Confidence by Denise Mina.

This book sounds great and I’m very excited to read it soon. You can find out more about the book below.

Out in all formats now!

Book Synopsis:

A MISSING FILMMAKER. A STOLEN ANTIQUE. SOMEONE WILL KILL TO STOP THEM BEING FOUND…

‘Denise Mina is crime-writing royalty’ Val McDermid, author of A Place of Execution

When filmmaker, Lisa Lee goes missing, alongside a priceless Roman silver casket, there is no doubt the two are linked together.

The day after her vanishing, the casket is listed for auction in Paris with a reserve price of fifty million euros.

On a thrilling chase across Europe to discover what happened to Lisa, journalists Anna and Fin are caught up in a world of international art smuggling, billionaire con artists and religious zealotry.

About The Author:

Denise Mina was born in Glasgow in 1966. Because of her father’s job as an engineer, the family followed the north sea oil boom of the seventies around Europe, moving twenty one times in eighteen years from Paris to the Hague, London, Scotland and Bergen. She left school at sixteen and did a number of poorly paid jobs: working in a meat factory, bar maid, kitchen porter and cook. Eventually she settle in auxiliary nursing for geriatric and terminal care patients.

At twenty one she passed exams, got into study Law at Glasgow University and went on to research a PhD thesis at Strathclyde University on the ascription of mental illness to female offenders, teaching criminology and criminal law in the mean time.

Misusing her grant she stayed at home and wrote a novel, ‘Garnethill’ when she was supposed to be studying instead.

‘Garnethill’ won the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasy Dagger for the best first crime novel and was the start of a trilogy completed by ‘Exile’ and ‘Resolution’.

A fourth novel followed, a stand alone, named ‘Sanctum’ in the UK and ‘Deception’ in the US.

In 2005 ‘The Field of Blood’ was published, the first of a series of five books following the career and life of journalist Paddy Meehan from the newsrooms of the early 1980s, through the momentous events of the nineteen nineties. The second in the series was published in 2006, ‘The Dead Hour’ and the third will follow in 2007.

She also writes comics and wrote ‘Hellblazer’, the John Constantine series for Vertigo, for a year, published soon as graphic novels called ‘Empathy is the Enemy’ and ‘The Red Right Hand’. She has also written a one-off graphic novel about spree killing and property prices called ‘A Sickness in the Family’ (DC Comics forthcoming).

In 2006 she wrote her first play, “Ida Tamson” an adaptation of a short story which was serialised in the Evening Times over five nights. The play was part of the Oran Mor ‘A Play, a Pie and a Pint’ series, starred Elaine C. Smith and was, frankly, rather super.

As well as all of this she writes short stories published various collections, stories for BBC Radio 4, contributes to TV and radio as a big red face at the corner of the sofa who interjects occasionally, is writing a film adaptation of Ida Tamson and has a number of other projects on the go.

#BlogTour: The Acapulco by Simone Buchholz @ohneKlippo @FwdTranslations @OrendaBooks @RandomTTours #TheAcapulco #SimoneBuchholz #TeamOrenda #RandomThingsTours

Book Synopsis:

A serial killer is on the loose in Hamburg, targeting dancers from The Acapulco, a club in the city’s red-light district, taking their scalps as gruesome trophies and replacing them with plastic wigs.

Chastity Riley is the state prosecutor responsible for crimes in the district, and she’s working alongside the police as they investigate. Can she get inside the mind of the killer?

Her strength is thinking like a criminal; her weaknesses are pubs, bars and destructive relationships, but as Chastity searches for love and a flamboyant killer – battling her demons and the dark, foggy Hamburg weather – she hits dead end after dead end.

As panic sets in and the death toll rises, it becomes increasingly clear that it may already be too late. For everyone…

My Review:

The Acapulco is a gritty, compelling thriller that I really enjoyed.

Firstly I have been a huge fan of this series from the first book so I found it fascinating to go back to the beginning and see how everything started for Chastity. I’ve always liked how realistic a character she is and how affected she gets by what she sees as it shows that she cares. Her way of coping though was quite heartbreaking to see sometimes and I found myself hoping that someone would help her or give her the love I feel she desperately needs.

It was interesting to learn more about Hamburg and to visit the seedier side of the city, where I would never dare visit in real life. The investigation, with the aspect of ritual killing, was very intriguing to follow as I’ve always found it fascinating to learn more about the reasons behind them. I liked how Chastity tries to get into the characters head so that we can see how they might think or act. Fair warning though some of the detail used is quite gruesome and definitely not for the faint hearted. I was quite glad that I wasn’t Chastity and having to see it all first hand as the descriptions on their own were enough to turn my stomach.

Overall I really enjoyed this book and hope there are more books to come in this fabulous series. The book starts off slow but soon picks up to become very hard to put down. There were some amazing twists that took me by surprise and I liked how everything came together at the end. The only downside to this book was that the title had me singing the song by the same name continuously as I read which drove my family mad.

Huge thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me onto the blog tour and to Orenda for my copy of this book.

About The Author:

Simone Buchholz was born in Hanau in 1972. At university, she studied Philosophy and Literature, worked as a waitress and a columnist, and trained to be a journalist at the prestigious Henri-Nannen-School in Hamburg. In 2016, Simone Buchholz was awarded the Crime Cologne Award as well as runner-up in the German Crime Fiction Prize for Blue Night, which was number one on the KrimiZEIT Best of Crime List for months. The critically acclaimed Beton Rouge, Mexico Street, Hotel Cartagena and River Clyde all followed in the Chastity Riley series, with The Acapulco out in 2023. She lives in Sankt Pauli, in the heart of Hamburg, with her husband and son.

#BlogTour: Maybe Next Time by Cesca Major @CescaMajor @fictionpubteam @HarperCollinsUK #MaybeNextTime #CescaMajor #RandomThingsTours

Book Synopsis:

Even the greatest love stories end. But what if this one didn’t have to?

_________________________________________________________________

Emma is having the worst day of her life. Frustrating. Chaotic. And the only person who could make it better is gone by the
end of the day.

Yet even worse than all of that: Emma keeps waking up to the same day, over and over again.

But what if this is a sign things could be different? Can Emma change the heartbreaking end to this love story?

My Review:

Maybe Next Time is a beautiful, emotional and thought provoking timeslip book that will stay with me.

Firstly I absolutely loved Emma who I felt was a very realistic character that I had a lot of sympathy for. I find it hard enough to juggle kids and a part time job so I can well imagine how hard things were for Emma with all the extra responsibilities she has. The story is told from Emma’s point of view but interspersed with letters that Dan has written to Emma on their anniversary each year. I really liked this as it gave me a better insight into the couple and their history while also seeing how things had changed for the couple in the present.

I found this book incredibly thought provoking as it made me think about my own life and all the people or things that I take for granted. It was very emotional to watch Emma have to relive the worst day of her life and realise the mistakes she’s made in her own life. I really felt for her as she tried desperately to change the outcome and as she realised what was actually important in her life.

This book starts off a bit slowly as we learn more about Emma and her busy life but soon becomes very gripping. I soon found myself very invested in the story and had to keep reading to find out if Emma manages to change things. The ending was very emotional and I found myself fully sobbing by the end. This was actually the first book I’ve read by this author but I’ll definitely be reading more from her in the future.

Huge thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me onto the blog tour and to Harper Collins for my copy of this book via Netgalley, though as you can see, I did purchase my own copy too.

About The Author:

Cesca Major is a novelist and screenwriter. She has written thirteen novels under different names and her books have been published in more than 10 countries. She has been nominated for both the RNA’s Romantic Comedy Award and the CWA Gold Dagger Award. She has an original TV series in development with the BBC. You can find more info about all her books, and lots of writing tips and videos, at http://www.cescamajor.com.

April Hopefuls: Books On My Tbr This Month @freya_north @laurenbravo @katemosse @thewritinghippo @PNovelistGale @LibbyPageWrites @LouiseWriter @Helen_Fields #NewBooks #Tbr #AprilHopefuls

Good morning everyone. It’s my birthday today and, as my husband is at work, I’m hoping for a quiet day with the kids. We’re having a quiet morning where I hoping to fit in some reading and then off to our local National Trust to do their Easter Egg hunt.

This month I’m hoping to catch up with a few books I’ve missed over the last few months. I haven’t got many blog tours this month so I’m really hoping I get to read these fabulous sounding books!

⭐ Preloved by Lauren Bravo

⭐ The Burning Chambers by Kate Mosse

⭐ Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice For Murderers by Jess Sutanto

⭐ Little Wing by Freya North

⭐ Mother’s Boy by Patrick Gale

⭐ The Vintage Shop Of Second Chances by Libby Page

⭐ End Of Story by Louise Swanson

⭐ The Institution by Helen Fields

I’m a huge fan of Kate Mosse but I haven’t had the chance to read her latest series so I’m hoping to read the first two books before the next book in the series comes out. Libby Page and Helen Fields are favourite authors of mine and I’ve loved Louise Swanson’s other books so I’m excited to see what this one’s like. The rest are all recommendations from my lovely fellow book bloggers and book friends.

Any of these on your April tbr?

#SundayShelfie: This weeks bookpost! #NewBooks #BookPost

Good morning everyone and Happy Sunday!

I’ve been lucky enough to receive some great bookpost this week.

⭐ Assassin Eighteen by John Brownlow

⭐ The Bookbinder Of Jericho by Pip Williams

⭐ Queens Of The Underworld by Caitlin Davies

⭐ Hotel 21 by Senta Rich

⭐ Chai Time At Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran

⭐ The Misadventures Of Margaret Finch by Claire McGlasson

⭐ Wartime For The Chocolate Girls by Annie Murray

⭐ No Place To Hide by JS Monroe

⭐ Thirty Days In Paris by Veronica Henry

Most of these are for blog tours apart from Assassin Eighteen and The Bookbinder Of Jericho which were surprise bookpost. They all sound great and I am looking forward to reading them soon. I’m especially interested in Queens Of The Underworld as it sounds fascinating and Wartime For The Chocolate Girls as Birmingham isn’t that far from me so I’m intrigued to learn a bit more local history.

Huge thanks to all the publishers for sending this book post it is really appreciated.

Have you read any of these or are any on you radar?

Day 3: The Wildness Cure by Mo Wilde Read-along @monicawilde @simonschusterUK #TheWildernessCure #MoWilde #Foraging

Good evening everyone it’s Day 3 of the Tandem Collective read-along for The Wilderness Cure by Mo Wilde.

One of the challenges today was to go out and try to find three things. Wild Sorell, Bittercress and Wild Garlic. We found wild garlic and I thought I’d found Sorell but it turned out to be Centella Asiatic when I googled it at home. Annoyingly I left my phone at home so couldn’t look things up and I think there was actually wild Sorell in the woods.

The kids had a great time trying to find things though and I’d love to go back, armed with a little bit more knowledge. We might attempt to make a Bittercress, sorrel and Garlic soup this week so stay tuned for the results!

Have you ever been foraging?

Heavy Metal Book Challenge: Finding Band Names From Book Titles #HeavyMetalBookChallenge #BandNames

Good morning everyone and happy Saturday! If you have children, happy first day of the Easter Holidays.

Today I’m taking part in the Heavy Metal Book Challenge. The idea is to look on your book shelf and find book titles that would make a great name for a heavy metal band. I must admit I didn’t think I’d find anything and then I found too many and had to whittle it down a bit.

🎸 Queens Of The Underworld by Caitlin Davies

🎸The Burning Chambers by Kate Mosse

🎸 Dashboard Elvis Is Dead by David F. Ross

🎸The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston

🎸My Life As A Chameleon by Diana Anyakwo

🎸The Forcing by Paul E Hardisty

🎸Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

🎸Age Of Vice by Deepti Kapoor

🎸 Truly Darkly Deeply by Victoria Selman

I’ve tagged a few book bloggers on Instagram but if you see this and want to give it a go then consider yourself tagged!

Look for to seeing the names you find ☺️

#BookSpotlight: The Wilderness Cure by Mo Wilde @monicawilde @simonschusterUK #TheWildernessCure #MoWilde #Memoir #TandemCollective

Good morning everyone I pleased to be joining the Tandem Collective read-along for this intriguing book. I’ve been thinking for a while how I wished I knew more about the foraging and what you can gather to eat from nature so this book instantly appealed.

I look forward to reading what promises to be a fascinating memoir and to see if it’s possible to love off foraged food for a year. I’m also excited to learn more about the history of foraging and to take part in the fun challenges included in the read-along.

Book Synopsis:

A captivating and lyrical journey into our ancestral past, through what and how we eat.

Mo Wilde made a quiet but radical pledge: to live only off free, foraged food for an entire year. In a world disconnected from its roots, eating wild food is both culinary and healing, social and political. Ultimately, it is an act of love and community. Using her expert knowledge of botany and mycology, Mo follows the seasons to find nutritious food from hundreds of species of plants, fungi and seaweeds, and in the process learns not just how to survive, but how to thrive. Nourishing her body and mind deepens her connection with the earth – a connection that we have become estranged from but which we all, deep down, hunger for.

This hunger is about much more than food. It is about accepting and understanding our place in a natural network that is both staggeringly complex and beautifully simple. THE WILDERNESS CURE is a diary of a wild experiment; a timely and inspiring memoir which explores a deeper relationship between humans and nature, and reminds us of the important lost lessons from our past.

About The Author:

Monica ‘Mo’ Wilde is the author of The Wilderness Cure: Ancient Wisdom in a Modern World. Winner of The John Avery Award for “original and adventurous writing” in the 2022 André Simon Food and Drink Book Awards. Mo is a forager, research herbalist, author and ethnobotanist. She has been teaching foraging since 2005 but has had a lifelong passion for plants.

Mo has a Masters degree in herbal medicine, is a Fellow of the Linnean Society, a member of the Association of Foragers, a member of the British Mycological Society and a member of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS). Monica Wilde lives in Scotland in a self-built eco house, encouraging medicinal and foraging species to thrive in a wild, teaching garden. She also teaches and lectures on wild foods, plants, fungi and algae.