April Roundup

A bit late to the party with my April roundup, but that’s what happens when the 1st is in the middle of the week, you work full time and books that might sneak into the month of April to finish!

An odd month, as not as much time off than in previous Aprils and the fact that I have gone from working solely on my own to now having a team of 3 means that I am getting used to new ways of working and responsibilities. Thank goodness for reading to take me away from it all.

It has been so long since I have read an actual physical book that I was pleased to finish Kate Bottley – Have a Little Faith, a real book to dip in and out of and to return to about faith. Not overtly religious and certainly not in a ram it down your throat kind. For me it was the perfect book about how we deal with people and proved most useful. I will go back to it, I am sure.

As spring has spring, so has the weddings and I first of all went off to Italy with Annabel French – A Wedding at the Chateau, even though it should be in France with a chateau, we are definitely in Italy and Sophia has to see her best friend marry the most unsuitable person, surely she should say something about her feelings. No of course not, she should arrange the wedding instead, but will it go ahead?

Weddings during wartime were probably more at risk of not going ahead or not and even more so in Vicki Beeby – A Wedding for the Bomber Girls where the destruction of a wedding dress leads to to some ingenious plans. This is a lovely wartime saga, that focuses on the RAF and manages to capture the work that women did during the ear, the plight of the home front as well as the battles in the sky. I cannot wait for more.

Sticking with historical fiction and the Second World War, I was transported to Jennifer Ryan – The Underground Library which is a wonderful book by this author. She really manages to capture other aspects of war that are perhaps not covered so much. In this case the plight of the library underground, that is in the London Underground. We also have the issue of Jewish Refugees and the thoroughly researched book is a delight to read.

I suppose reading historical fiction is a bit like reliving days gone past, but what happens if you can actually live the same day again and again and learn something about the past. This was the case with Jenni Keer – At the Stroke of Midnight set in the mid 1920s at a big house where a mystery seems to need solving before everyone is killed. But if they can change the outcome, can they all be saved?

What if you wake up and can’t remember how you got to be in hospital, but knew that your husband had done it and you were scared he would find you? What if it happened a second time? Surely that is bad luck, but in Laura Pearson – The Day Shelley Woodhouse Woke Up it seems that Shelley Woodhouse is waking up more than once. This is a really powerful book, and how it deals with memories of our past and how it can impact our present and ultimately our future.

The future was of interest to some well known names in Victorian England, Charles Dickens and Angela Coutts to name the two involved in Stacey Halls -The Household. Taken from the workhouses and prisons, young females are sent to Urania Cottage, a prison under a different guise? Or a home where they can start again, find there feet, learn the skills of a household and better themselves. This philanthropic home was seen as a novelty, but was very important at its time. A fascinating read about an area of history I knew little about, it had me wanting to learn more.

It has been a random month of reading, covering lots of genres that I love. Including Tom Hindle – Murder on Lake Garda his latest crime mystery in the vein of all the greats. In a sort of locked room mystery, but in this case a locked island, set on Lake Garda with a wedding as its vehicle to tell the story of some pretty despicable characters. A book very much of a modern age and one which showed the influence of social media in a rather poor light which added to the despicable behaviour of the characters.

So that was April, still behind on the reviews, still not decided what I am going to do with this blog or where it might go. Thank you to all my visitors and those that comment too.

Let’s see where May’s reading takes me.