Book Review: The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson

Wednesday 24 August, 2011 by 13 Comments

Title: The Lantern
Author: Deborah Lawrenson
Publisher: Harper
Publication Date: August 9, 2011
Hardcover: 400 pages
ISBN: 978-0062049698
Genre: Fiction

From the Publisher:

A modern gothic novel of love, secrets, and murder—set against the lush backdrop of Provence

Meeting Dom was the most incredible thing that had ever happened to me. When Eve falls for the secretive, charming Dom in Switzerland, their whirlwind relationship leads them to Les Genévriers, an abandoned house set among the fragrant lavender fields of the South of France. Each enchanting day delivers happy discoveries: hidden chambers, secret vaults, a beautiful wrought-iron lantern. Deeply in love and surrounded by music, books, and the heady summer scents of the French countryside, Eve has never felt more alive.

But with autumn’s arrival the days begin to cool, and so, too, does Dom. Though Eve knows he bears the emotional scars of a failed marriage—one he refuses to talk about—his silence arouses suspicion and uncertainty. The more reticent Dom is to explain, the more Eve becomes obsessed with finding answers—and with unraveling the mystery of his absent, beautiful ex-wife, Rachel.

Like its owner, Les Genévriers is also changing. Bright, warm rooms have turned cold and uninviting; shadows now fall unexpectedly; and Eve senses a presence moving through the garden. Is it a ghost from the past or a manifestation of her current troubles with Dom? Can she trust Dom, or could her life be in danger?

Eve does not know that Les Genévriers has been haunted before. Bénédicte Lincel, the house’s former owner, thrived as a young girl within the rich elements of the landscape: the violets hidden in the woodland, the warm wind through the almond trees. She knew the bitter taste of heartbreak and tragedy—long-buried family secrets and evil deeds that, once unearthed, will hold shocking and unexpected consequences for Eve.

My Review:

The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson is a beautifully written and mysterious tale of Eve and Dom, two lovers who move to an old, vacant home in southern France with a mysterious past of its own.  Lawrenson’s descriptive prose transports readers to Provence as Eve gradually begins to discover the mysteries of her new home and begins to mistrust her lover who appears to be holding secrets of his former wife and her disappearance.  Slow to capture the suspense and mystery surrounding Eve’s new home and lover in the early portion of the novel, Lawrenson sets the reader up for a plot with many twists and surprises that are in store.  This is not a criticism, but rather how an exceptional story should unfold and I found it hard to set this one aside to tend to other responsibilities.  As readers begin to feel the mysteries are unfolding in a clear manner, Lawrenson crafts an unexpected turn that brilliantly brings the two mysteries together into one.  Mystery fans will find The Lantern to be very rewarding and I highly recommend The Lantern to all readers looking for an excellently crafted suspenseful tale.

About the Author:

Deborah Lawrenson grew up in Kuwait, China, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Singapore. She studied English at Cambridge University and has worked as a journalist for various publications in England, including the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday, and Woman’s Journal magazine. She lives in Kent, England, and she and her family spend as much time as possible at a crumbling hamlet in Provence, France, the setting for The Lantern.

To learn more about author Deborah Lawrenson, please visit her website: www.deborah-lawrenson.co.uk/

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received a complimentary ARC of The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.


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Book Review: Remember Me by Cheryl Robinson

Tuesday 23 August, 2011 by 10 Comments

Title: Remember Me
Author: Cheryl Robinson
Publisher: NAL Trade
Publication Date: August 2, 2011
Hardcover: 400 pages
ISBN: 978-0451233387
Genre: Fiction

From the Publisher:

What happens when the loyalty that defines the friendship of two women is tested? For Mia and Danielle, finding the answer takes a lifetime.

Mia Marks was an independent black girl from inner-city Detroit with an eye for the hottest fashions and a penchant for the good life. Danielle King was a soft-spoken suburban white girl with artistic ambitions. When they met at an all-girls Catholic high school, neither expected to form a deep bond that transcended race and background and lasted for years. And neither could have anticipated the one indiscretion that destroyed their friendship.

Twenty years later, Danielle is a successful novelist living in Miami. Mia is a schoolteacher in Detroit. But they’re still on common ground. Both are unhappily married and raising teenage daughters, and both are far to proud to make the first move to reconnect-until tragedy brings them back together in the most unexpected way.

Now they must confront the past, discover its untold truths, and learn to survive the increasing complexities of their lives and of a friendship destined to endure.

My Review:

Remember Me by Cheryl Robinson is a heartrending and inspiring tale of friendship, guilt, tragedy and making amends.  Told in alternating time periods between the late 1970s/early 1980s and present day, Robinson captures her characters, Mia and Danielle, in their purest forms as they meet as teens and then later as they are brought back together as grown, married, and not particularly happy, women.  Readers will delight in the author’s tale of how Mia, brought up in Detroit, befriends Danielle, brought up in the suburbs, when they both enter a private, all-girls high school.  Believing that friendship has no bounds by the beautifully powerful bond that Robinson builds between these two girls, readers will find out the true limits of this bond when a moment of poor judgment destroys what they had mutually constructed.  In present day, a devastatingly heartbreaking accident provides the catalyst that ultimately causes these two women, now living separate, and disconnected lives, to overcome the barrier that had been erected so long in the past.  A truly inspiring story about the strength people draw from friendships, the forces that bring two people, whose bond was broken beyond what seemed possible to repair, back together, and the enduring power of redemption, I recommend Remember Me by Cheryl Robinson to readers looking for an emotionally moving drama.

About the Author:

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Cheryl Robinson has a Bachelor’s of Science from Wayne State University. Her love of writing was sparked while taking a fiction writing course as a college elective. She began her literary career by self-publishing two novels before acquiring a literary agent and then a publishing deal. Remember Me is her sixth novel with New American Library, an imprint of the Penguin Group.

To learn more about author Chery Robinson, please visit her website: cherylrobinson.com

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received a complimentary ARC of Remember Me by Cheryl Robinson from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.


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Book Review: Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller

Monday 22 August, 2011 by 9 Comments

Title: Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness
Author: Alexandra Fuller
Publisher: Penguin Press HC
Publication Date: August 23, 2011
Hardcover: 256 pages
ISBN: 978-1594202995
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir

From the Publisher:

In this sequel to Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller returns to Africa and the story of her unforgettable family.

In Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness Alexandra Fuller braids a multilayered narrative around the perfectly lit, Happy Valley-era Africa of her mother’s childhood; the boiled cabbage grimness of her father’s English childhood; and the darker, civil war- torn Africa of her own childhood. At its heart, this is the story of Fuller’s mother, Nicola. Born on the Scottish Isle of Skye and raised in Kenya, Nicola holds dear the kinds of values most likely to get you hurt or killed in Africa: loyalty to blood, passion for land, and a holy belief in the restorative power of all animals. Fuller interviewed her mother at length and has captured her inimitable voice with remarkable precision. Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is as funny, terrifying, exotic, and unselfconscious as Nicola herself.

We see Nicola and Tim Fuller in their lavender-colored honeymoon period, when east Africa lies before them with all the promise of its liquid equatorial light, even as the British empire in which they both believe wanes. But in short order, an accumulation of mishaps and tragedies bump up against history until the couple finds themselves in a world they hardly recognize. We follow the Fullers as they hopscotch the continent, running from war and unspeakable heartbreak, from Kenya to Rhodesia to Zambia, even returning to England briefly. But just when it seems that Nicola has been broken entirely by Africa, it is the African earth itself that revives her.

A story of survival and madness, love and war, loyalty and forgiveness, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is an intimate exploration of the author’s family. In the end we find Nicola and Tim at a coffee table under their Tree of Forgetfulness on the banana and fish farm where they plan to spend their final days. In local custom, the Tree of Forgetfulness is where villagers meet to resolve disputes and it is here that the Fullers at last find an African kind of peace. Following the ghosts and dreams of memory, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is Alexandra Fuller at her very best.

My Review:

Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller is a moving and descriptive story of the author’s family as it struggled through adversity.  Fuller eloquently captures much of her mother’s (Nicola Fuller) thoughts through extensive interviews and in her expertly crafted writing, brings to life the challenges faced by her parents in eastern Africa.  This is the second of her memoirs and considered a sequel of sorts to her first Don’t Let’s go to the Dogs Tonight, which I think explains why I had a difficult time completely following Fuller’s writing at times, yet there were so many poignant moments that left me awestruck to witness the incredible story of the Fuller’s.  This is a true story about survival, war, commitment, heartbreak and redemption and is told through the eyes of one who witnessed and penned by her daughter in well-crafted prose.  Like taking a personally-guided tour of Africa, Fuller brings to life her mother’s story and chronicles her life from the 1940’s through to the present day.  For readers looking for a story of family strength and triumph amidst adversity, I recommend Alexandra Fuller’s Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness but suggest readers consider first reading Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight.

About the Author:

Alexandra Fuller was born in England in 1969. In 1972, she moved with her family to a farm in southern Africa. She lived in Africa until her midtwenties. In 1994, she moved to Wyoming with her husband. They have three children.

To learn more about Alexandra Fuller, please visit her website: alexandrafuller.org

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received a complimentary ARC of Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.


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It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

Sunday 21 August, 2011 by 54 Comments

It’s Monday What Are you Reading is the perfect way for me to begin my week and allows me to focus on what needs to be read and to see what I have or have not accomplished the previous week. I also enjoy discovering new books by visiting other participants blogs.

I Read and Reviewed (click the title to be taken to the review):

This week I am planning to read/review:

  • Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller
  • Remember Me by Cheryl Robinson
  • The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson
  • The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah
  • Little Black Dress by Susan McBride
  • Picking Bones from Ash by Marie Mutsuki Mockett
  • Flesh and Grass by Libby Cone
  • To the Moon and Back by Jill Mansell
Visit next Monday to see if I managed to accomplish my reading goals.

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Book Review: Two for Sorrow by Nicola Upson

Friday 19 August, 2011 by 8 Comments

Title: Two for Sorrow
Author: Nicola Upson
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Publication Date: August 9, 2011
Paperback: 496 pages
ISBN: 978-0061451584
Genre: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery

From the Publisher:

They were the most horrific crimes of a new century: the murders of newborn innocents for which two British women were hanged at Holloway Prison in 1903. Decades later, mystery writer Josephine Tey has decided to write a novel based on Amelia Sach and Annie Walters, the notorious “Finchley baby farmers,” unaware that her research will entangle her in the desperate hunt for a modern-day killer.

A young seamstress—an ex-convict determined to reform—has been found brutally slain in the studio of Tey’s friends, the Motley sisters, amid preparations for a star-studded charity gala. Despite initial appearances, Inspector Archie Penrose is not convinced this murder is the result of a long-standing domestic feud—and a horrific accident involving a second young woman soon after supports his convictions. Now he and his friend Josephine must unmask a sadistic killer before more blood flows—as the repercussions of unthinkable crimes of the past reach out to destroy those left behind long after justice has been served.

My Review:

Two for Sorrow by Nicola Upson is a compelling, yet disturbing story of two women who are hanged for the murders of newborns in 1903 and a writer who years later is writing a book about it. Call it a “book within a book”, Upson has created a rather intriguing storytelling method for this third novel in her Josephine Tey series. In parallel with Tey’s research into these horrific events, readers are exposed to another shocking homicide in present day, one that is not disconnected from the hangings at Holloway Prison. Upson crafts a tantalizing mystery that leads readers to question why someone is carrying out vengeful acts so many years after the execution of those believed to be involved in the Finchley baby farming. Upson has assembled an interesting premise for her story and presents her characters in masterful fashion, characters with real and flawed characteristics. I have not read her two previous Josephine Tey novels and felt a little uncomfortable with the characters with whom I felt ill at ease in learning for the first time about their interrelationships. I would recommend that readers plan to read Upson’s first two Tey novels before Two for Sorrow. In all, I felt Two for Sorrow still paid off for its intriguing premise, well crafted prose and just the right amount of mystery and I would recommend this book to all mystery fans.

About the Author:

Nicola Upson has written for a variety of publications, including the New Statesman, where she was a crime fiction critic. She also regularly contributes to BBC radio and has worked in the theater for ten years. She divides her time between Cambridge and Cornwall.

For more about the author and her books, please visit her website: nicolaupson.com

For more reviews of the book, please follow the TLC Book Tour.

I received a complimentary ARC of Two for Sorrow by Nicola Upson from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.


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