The Tattooist of Auschwitz - Heather Morris

I tattooed a number on her arm. She tattooed her name on my heart.

In 1942, Lale Sokolov arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was given the job of tattooing the prisoners marked for survival - scratching numbers into his fellow victims' arms in indelible ink to create what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust. 

Waiting in line to be tattooed, terrified and shaking, was a young girl. For Lale - a dandy, a jack-the-lad, a bit of a chancer - it was love at first sight. And he was determined not only to survive himself, but to ensure this woman, Gita, did, too.

So begins one of the most life-affirming, courageous, unforgettable and human stories of the Holocaust: the love story of the tattooist of Auschwitz.

What did I think?

When I won a competition to pick 3 books from Wordery, the first book on my list was The Tattooist of Auschwitz; the book that everyone seemed to be talking about.  We all know the story of Auschwitz and just thinking about it is enough to give me goosebumps, which is why I was surprised to feel so emotionally detached when reading this book.

Don't get me wrong, it is a powerful story of love conquers all and Lale's eternal love for Gita is very evident throughout the story.  I just didn't feel any of the horror and sadness that you would normally associate with a story set in Auschwitz.  Maybe that's a good thing though, and a conscious decision by Heather Morris to concentrate on the positives, as it was quite a refreshing change to see that something good came out of Auschwitz and Birkenau.

Lale's survival in Auschwitz is down to him being a bit of a wheeler dealer and he reminded me a bit of Del Boy; ducking and diving and getting people things that they asked for.  In that situation, everyone does what they need to do to survive and Lale kind of fell into becoming the Tätowierer.  What an awful job and one that I'm sure nobody would volunteer for, but if he hadn't been tattooing numbers on new entrants to the camp then he may have never met Gita.

I think you could tell that the story was originally written as a screenplay as the characters felt very one dimensional and flat, something that I'm sure would be rectified when shown on the screen.  Due to this, I didn't really connect or empathise with any of the characters.  I suppose the one that does spring to mind is Cilka, another prisoner who does what she has to do to stay alive and to protect her friends.  I'm not surprised to see that Cilka's story is the follow up to this book and I'm quite looking forward to reading it.

So even though I'm not raving about it, I still think it was a worthwhile read.  It's a quick, easy read and I think if I hadn't believed the hype about it being a weepy, emotional story I would probably have enjoyed the story of Lale and Gita's love against the odds a whole lot more.

I think everyone should read The Tattooist of Auschwitz and make up their own mind, however, I have no doubt that it will be a resounding success when it makes it to our screens.

My rating:

Buy it from Amazon

The Last Hours - Minette Walters

June, 1348: the Black Death enters England through the port of Melcombe in the county of Dorsetshire. Unprepared for the virulence of the disease, and the speed with which it spreads, the people of the county start to die in their thousands.

In the estate of Develish, Lady Anne takes control of her people's future - including the lives of two hundred bonded serfs. Strong, compassionate and resourceful, Lady Anne chooses a bastard slave, Thaddeus Thurkell, to act as her steward. Together, they decide to quarantine Develish by bringing the serfs inside the walls. With this sudden overturning of the accepted social order, where serfs exist only to serve their lords, conflicts soon arise. Ignorant of what is happening in the world outside, they wrestle with themselves, with God and with the terrible uncertainty of their futures.

Lady Anne's people fear starvation but they fear the pestilence more. Who amongst them has the courage to leave the security of the walls?

And how safe is anyone in Develish when a dreadful event threatens the uneasy status quo..?

What did I think?

I consider historical fiction one of my favourite genres so when the mood came over me to transport myself back in time to a period of history, I picked up The Last Hours by Minette Walters.  Minette Walters is known for her thrillers, although I have never read one (yet), so I expected The Last Hours to be a bit of an historical thriller.  Oh I couldn't have been more wrong.  I can't remember the last time I struggled to finish a book but I almost gave up on The Last Hours at 33% but not one to be beaten...I forged ahead.

One thing that really stands out for me is the main character of Thaddeus Thurkell.  He's a bit of a black sheep in his family but Lady Anne sees his potential and makes him steward of the demesne when the pestilence claims the lord of the manor.  Thaddeus is such a genuine and honest character and I loved the way he interacts with everyone from the highest to the low.

To inject a bit of thriller into the novel, Minette Walters does throw in a murder and although there are a few suspects it was pretty easy to guess who the murderer was.  I still enjoyed this aspect of the book though, as the pace had been quite slow up until that point.  To be honest, if there hadn't been a murder I would have had very little to discuss about the book.

I'm sure lovers of 14th Century history will enjoy this novel, but reading it felt more like the lost hours for me.  I found the pacing slow and the storyline pretty uneventful and I was actually very surprised to find that the story was 'to be continued' in book 2: The Turn of Midnight.  Although this book wasn't for me, I'm happy to say that it definitely hasn't put me off wanting to read Minette Walters' critically acclaimed thrillers.

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:

Buy it from Amazon

The Hermitage (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 9) - LJ Ross

He thought he was invincible, but he was wrong…

When an old man is found dead inside the ancient hermitage at Warkworth Castle, Northumbria CID are called in to investigate. With no apparent motive, it’s their job to unravel why he was murdered – and this time they’re forced to do it without their star detective…

DCI Ryan is thousands of miles away. He’s tracked a killer across Europe and has sworn not to return until he has his man in custody. Nathan Armstrong is a dangerous psychopath but there’s just one problem – he’s also an international celebrity; a world-famous thriller writer with money and connections. 

Ryan is a stranger in a foreign land, but he knows one thing – he’ll never give up. 

Murder and mystery are peppered with romance and humour in this fast-paced crime whodunnit set amidst the spectacular landscapes of Northumberland and Tuscany. 

What did I think?

I admit to feeling a little nervous that my favourite Northumbrian literary detectives were heading abroad to Florence in the latest DCI Ryan book, The Hermitage.  To be honest, I wasn't just nervous, I was gutted...how could LJ Ross take these characters out of the beautiful (but seemingly deadly) North East?  Well, I needn't have worried as it turns out that you can take the detectives out of the North East but you can't take the North East out of the detectives - Frank Phillips, I'm talking about you here, my stottie loving friend.  

The Hermitage picks up the thread left dangling at the end of Dark Skies, book 7, when Nathan Armstrong, a famous author, literally gets away with murder.  As we know, Ryan is like a dog with a bone when he gets a killer in his sights and when Armstrong heads to Italy, so do Ryan and Anna.  Ryan turns into a bit of a stalker himself, turning up wherever Nathan Armstrong is, and although his actions border on harassment his charm and his team's belief in him always seem to get him out of the scrapes he inevitably finds himself in.

I may have mentioned it once or twice, but I adore my native North East and the way that LJ Ross brings our beautiful region to life in her novels, however, I was completely won over by the beautiful scenery depicted in The Hermitage; I almost felt like I was having a little holiday there myself.  I also loved finding out a bit more about Ryan's family and his childhood in his breathtaking family villa.

Of course, this isn't a travel guide so there's murder both and home and abroad for the team to solve.  With more shocks and surprises than ever, will Ryan get his man this time?  

So my fellow North Easterners, fear not that Ryan and his team are venturing to foreign climes, as there really is no place like home and they'll be back on home soil soon.  It does make me smile thinking about them abroad as you do always seem to run into a Geordie whenever you travel anywhere.  It's also testament to the multi-dimensional characters that LJ Ross has created over her previous 8 books, that the characters themselves can carry the story wherever the location.

No surprises that this is another well deserved 5 stars from me.  It's maybe not my favourite DCI Ryan book but the twists and turns are outstanding and the very satisfying ending brought a little tear to my eye.

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:

Buy it from Amazon

Live Happy - Bridget Grenville-Cleave and Ilona Boniwell

Part self-help book, part psychology primer, Live Happy features 100 pieces of advice on leading a life of contentment. 

A distillation of the latest research into happiness, this is a guide to the tools and strategies most likely to make you happy. Informative, factual, accessible, and scientifically rigorous, Live Happy gives the best available advice across a range of situations and activities that are relevant to our happiness. 

Advice featured ranges from simple lifestyle changes, such as taking up a new hobby and spending time in the garden, to more abstract long-term goals, such as improving your luck and putting value in experiences. Presenting recent psychological and scientific studies as practical steps for the reader to take, Live Happy offers the perfect mix of practical and aspirational.

What did I think?

A lot of work has gone into the presentation of Live Happy and it certainly pays off; you can't help but smile and feel relaxed just from the beautiful sky blue sunny cover.  Each page is either coloured or illustrated with clipart style drawings of what the section is about and I really think the presentation helps to inspire and get the message across.  Although I read this book from cover to cover, it is definitely one that you will benefit from dipping in and out of when you want some inspiration.

Live Happy sets out 100 ways to fill your life with joy.  Well, I don't know about you but I'd be quite happy with just a handful of joyous activities, so with 100 to choose from I really think there will be something for everyone in this book.  A lot of the ideas to find happiness are common sense but some of them are reminders of the simple things we may have forgotten.  We are all so busy with lives running at 100 mph these days that we rarely stop to smell the roses.  Funnily enough, that is one of the tips in the book: 'connect with nature' - spend more time in the countryside or your garden as natural environments help to reduce blood pressure and stress.

For me, the sections that resonated with me and became tips that I will take away with me are: improve your luck, think highly of yourself, relieve stress, forgive yourself, worry less,  learn to like yourself, learn how to say no and my personal favourite: enjoy a glass of wine.  What I love about books like this is that somebody else will read it and pick out a different set of tips to help and inspire them.

Live Happy has something for everyone, whether you need a quick pick-me-up or a reminder to appreciate what you have in your life.  I think that everyone who reads Live Happy will end up smiling at some point whilst reading it, so the book does indeed do what it says on the cover. 😊

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:

Buy it from Amazon

Close Enough to Touch - Colleen Oakley

One time a boy kissed me and I almost died...

And so begins the story of Jubilee Jenkins, a 28-year-old woman with a unique and debilitating medical condition - she's allergic to other humans. After a humiliating, near-death experience in high school, Jubilee has become reclusive in her adulthood, living the past nine years in the confines of the Victorian house her unaffectionate mother deeded to her when she ran off with a wealthy businessman. But now, her mother is dead, and without her financial support, Jubilee is forced to leave home and face the world - and the people in it - she's been hiding from.

One of those people is Eric Keegan, a man who just moved into town for work. With a daughter from his failed marriage no longer speaking to him, and a brilliant, if psychologically troubled, adopted son who believes he has untapped telekinetic powers, Eric's struggling to figure out how his life got so off course, and how to be the dad - and man - he wants so desperately to be. Then, one day, he meets a mysterious woman named Jubilee...

What did I think?

With a main character named Jubilee Jenkins, this book is definitely as quirky as it sounds, whilst also being seriously thought-provoking.  Imagine having an allergy to other people's skin and going through life without being touched, hugged or kissed?  Welcome to Jubilee's lonely world.

Trapped in her own house for fear of anaphylactic shock through contact with human skin cells, Jubilee exists but doesn't live.  The death of Jubilee's mother sets of a chain of events that will change her life, just when she least expects it.  Just stepping out of the house and into her car is a big thing for Jubilee and I loved how she expected the car to start after so many years sitting idle.  It is a visit to the gas station that sets Jubilee off onto a different path when she runs into an old schoolfriend; with kids being as cruel as they are, 'friend' is perhaps not the right term for Madison but I have to give her some respect as she certainly makes up for the actions of her youth.

Jubilee manages to get a job at the local library where she meets Eric through his equally quirky adopted son, Aja.  It is no surprise that Jubilee and Aja hit it off, which is good news for Eric as he seems completely lost where Aja is concerned.  Eric's relationship with his daughter, Ellie, has all but broken down and as much as I felt for him, I really just wanted him to get a grip and make things happen.  I wanted to shake him and tell him that he's never going to make it up with Ellie when he has moved miles away and taken Aja with him; he needs to talk to her face to face and show her what she means to him.

With an allergy as severe as Jubilee's, she is of great interest to the medical world.  I loved how Colleen Oakley 'makes it real' by including excerpts from articles about Jubilee in The New York Times.  I loved watching Jubilee's story unfold as she learns not only to live with her condition but simply to live.

Close Enough to Touch is an absolutely fascinating and heartfelt story.  It has a powerful message to never give up and to always look for solutions to the seemingly impossible.

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:

Buy it from Amazon

All the Good Things - Clare Fisher

What if you did a very bad thing... but that wasn't the end of the story?

Twenty-one year old Beth is in prison. The thing she did is so bad she doesn't deserve ever to feel good again.

But her counsellor, Erika, won't give up on her. She asks Beth to make a list of all the good things in her life. So Beth starts to write down her story, from sharing silences with Foster Dad No. 1, to flirting in the Odeon on Orange Wednesdays, to the very first time she sniffed her baby's head.

But at the end of her story, Beth must confront the bad thing.

What is the truth hiding behind her crime? And does anyone - even a 100% bad person - deserve a chance to be good?

What did I think?

I've had All the Good Things on my TBR for far too long and I only picked it up by chance when I was looking for a book thin enough to fit in my bag for a long train journey.  I expected to read a handful of chapters then gaze out of the train window at the scenery whizzing by, but as soon as I picked up this book I was lost.  It's just as well the train terminated at my destination or I would have ended up somewhere completely unexpected as I turned the final page of this book.

The whole premise is breathtakingly simple as Beth, an inmate in a prison, lists all of the good things that have happened to her in her life.  Now, this might seem like an easy task to you or me, but to someone like Beth with her tragic life she has to dig a bit deeper to list her good things.  Always hovering in the background, as we read Beth's story, is the bad thing she has done.  It's not difficult to guess what it is, but as I got to know Beth, I hoped with all my heart that I was wrong.

Clare Fisher is a magnificent storyteller, creating a terribly flawed but completely believable character in Beth who I very easily began to care about.  I felt so emotionally involved in the ups and downs of Beth's story that I dreaded getting to the part that landed her in prison.  As if she could read my mind, Clare Fisher sprinkled a glimmer of hope and forgiveness into the story to help me cope with this awful but inevitable revelation.

I am completely flabbergasted that this is a debut novel; the writing is so polished and accomplished and Clare Fisher manages to make you feel everything that the main character of Beth is feeling.  It surprised me how emotional I found this book, although I didn't cry I felt as if I was experiencing all of Beth's emotions with her.  The characterisation is so multidimensional that Beth jumps from the page and she stayed with me long after I turned the final page.  All the Good Things is a completely stunning and entirely flawless debut.

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:

Buy it from Amazon

Past Life - Dominic Nolan

THE ONLY THING DETECTIVE ABIGAIL BOONE REMEMBERS...IS THE WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO HER.

Waking up beside the dead girl, she couldn't remember anything.

Who she was. Who had taken her. How to escape.

Detective Abigail Boone has been missing for four days when she is finally found, confused and broken. Suffering retrograde amnesia, she is a stranger to her despairing husband and bewildered son.

Hopelessly lost in her own life, with no leads on her abduction, Boone's only instinct is to revisit the case she was investigating when she vanished: the baffling disappearance of a young woman, Sarah Still.

Defying her family and the police, Boone obsessively follows a deadly trail to the darkest edges of human cruelty. But even if she finds Sarah, will Boone ever be the same again?

What did I think?

This book starts off racing at 100mph and doesn't let up for a second, so you'd better buckle up for this high-octane thrill ride.  Walk away now if you're squeamish, as the level of detail is often chilling and skin crawling but it just adds to the gritty atmosphere of the whole book.

I struggled with whether I liked Abigail Boone or not at first but she definitely grew on me.  When she wakes up with amnesia, surrounded by a family she doesn't know, she seems very indifferent to them and doesn't even care to get to know them.  I get that they are strangers to her but I couldn't understand how she doesn't even try.  Reading on, Abigail's character evolved at such a pace that I could clearly see her one track mind and dogged determination to solve the case of missing person, Sarah Still.  For Abigail, past and present, this is the one that got away and she won't rest until she finds out what happened to Sarah.

There are some very colourful characters in Past Life; I loved Boone's well named prickly colleague Barb, her friend Tess, who she knows from arresting her father and, last but definitely not least, her fellow captive Roo.  Such an array of strong female characters, who each made a lasting impression on me in their own right, just shows what a multi-layered story Dominic Nolan has written.

The whole Sarah Still investigation really intrigued me and I loved how this thread linked Boone's past and present lives.  Boone reminded me a bit of Jack Bauer in her single-mindedness and lack of fear for her own safety.  I had every confidence that she would get to the bottom of Sarah Still's disappearance, even if it killed her.  It certainly made my heart race and my palms sweat as I hitched a ride on Boone's highly dangerous rollercoaster of a journey.

Past Life is gripping and completely intense; once it grabs a hold of you, it refuses to let go.  I suspect (and hope) that this isn't the last we've heard of Abigail Boone.

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:

Buy it from Amazon