Book Review: THE GIRL UNDER THE OLIVE TREE BY LEAH FLEMING

THE GIRL UNDER THE OLIVE TREE

BY

LEAH FLEMING

Published:  Jan 2013 (Hardcover)

May 1941 and the island of Crete is invaded by paratroopers from the air. After a lengthy fight, thousands of British and Commonwealth soldiers are forced to take to the hills or become escaping PoWs, sheltered by the Cretan villagers. 

Sixty years later, Lois West and her young son, Alex, invite feisty Great Aunt Pen to a special eighty-fifth birthday celebration on Crete, knowing she has not been back there since the war. Penelope George - formerly Giorgidiou - is reluctant to go but is persuaded by the fact it is the 60th anniversary of the Battle. It is time for her to return and make the journey she never thought she'd dare to.

The story starts in 2001 as Penelope is undecided about facing her fears and going back to Crete where she endured "the best and worst of times indeed, savage cruelty, suffering, hunger and yet it was also the time of my life, a time filled with the exhilaration of danger and the overwhelming kindness of strangers.  There were many things about that time that I could never tell anyone."

When she finally makes the journey with her family the story travels back and forth in time and we slowly build up a picture of Penelope's extraordinary life during the Second World War on Crete, of how she originally fled there from her home in Scotland to escape her mother's hopes of her marrying a title, when all she wanted was to be an archaeologist.  

When Penelope helped an elderly Jewish man who had been beaten and robbed in the street she met her friend Yolanda and, together, they joined the Red Cross.  She felt more at home in Greece than in England and when war broke out she helped the wounded soldiers.

It is then that her extraordinary story is told, some in flashbacks to her family, and some she keeps to herself.

I also found it interesting to hear another side of the story told from one of the German officers who were there at the same time as Penelope and who also travels to the 60th anniversary.

This story is about how ordinary people coped in difficult and challenging circumstances, how they lived and died, about courage, uncertainty and hope, good times and bad times and how they fell in love during the most appalling conditions they had to endure.

Penelope was a fabulous character, she was warm, brave, loyal, feisty and incredibly likeable.

Not a light and easy book to read as it deals with a sad subject, but I really enjoyed it and, particularly the latter part, I could not put it down.

This is the second book I have read by Leah Fleming, my review of her novel, The Captain's Daughter which is about fictional characters who survived the Titanic, is here.

Available from Amazon.co.uk.

Paperback is out on 6 June 2013.

Special Thanks to the Publishers, Simon & Schuster for sending me this book.

Book Review: A PASSIONATE LOVE AFFAIR WITH A TOTAL STRANGER

Genre:  Fiction
Published:  Jan 2013 by Penguin Books
Source:  RealReaders

About the Book:

Charley Lambert has put considerable effort into achieving a perfect life. She has The Job. The Wardrobe. And The Flat. Her womanising, junk food-loving housemate Sam lowers the tone a bit but that aside, things are peachy.
Then she breaks her leg in three places, watches her unrequited love propose to someone else and - worst of all - is forced to hand over her job to her nasty deputy while she recovers. Workaholic Charley fears that she will soon go mad.
Desperate for something to do, she discovers her talent for helping the lovelorn online. And then William arrives in her inbox. Within hours of his first email, her world starts to change. Helpless, she watches herself fall in love with this man and begins to realise that she's not who she thought she was.
But will she be brave enough to turn her back on her old life - all for a total stranger?


Charley, 32, is obsessed with healthy eating, exercise and work!  She hates having nothing to do and when she breaks her leg and is forced to take it easy she is mortified.  All her plans go awry.  She becomes obsessed with a man on her internet dating website who seems to know her better than she knows herself. 

I exhaled slowly.  This was all getting a bit heavy.  And yet he was hitting home.  Quite hard, in fact.  Was I a perfectionist?  Bloody hell, yes!  I was more of a perfectionist than anyone I knew!  I crippled myself trying to make the perfect risotto, to buy the perfect wine, to be the perfect employee.  I got furious with myself if I lost so much as a tenth of a second from my ideal running time round Holyrood Park.

I found Charley quite hard to like, though she is an interesting character and I enjoyed seeing her change throughout the book.  This wasn't quite a book that I couldn't put down but I did enjoy it, it had some funny moments. 

It was a well-written and light-hearted read.


 

Book Review: THE ELOQUENCE OF DESIRE BY AMANDA SINGTON-WILLIAMS

Genre:  Fiction
Published:  2010 by Sparkling Books
Source:  Author

About the Book:

Set in the 1950s, The Eloquence of Desire explores the conflicts in family relationships caused by obsessive love, the lost innocence of childhood and the terror of the Communist insurgency in Malaya.

Richly descriptive and well-researched, the story told by Amanda Sington-Williams unfolds as George is posted to the tropics in punishment for an affair with the daughter of his boss. His wife, Dorothy, constrained by social norms, begrudgingly accompanies him while their twelve year old daughter Susan is packed off to boarding school.

Desire and fantasy mix with furtive visits, lies and despair to turn the family inside out.

We first meet George, travelling home on the tube, after his meeting with his boss where he learns of his 'promotion' to Malaya.  Both he and his wife know it's anything but a promotion.  

His wife Dorothy feels powerless to do anything but go with him as she feared being frowned upon and shunned by other people if she divorced George.  "The alternative to divorce, thought Dorothy, was to grit her teeth and depart for Malaya."

She hates Malaya and they are both bored, Dorothy starts to fantasise about having an affair and their relationship is tested by other people and the frightening Communist threat to their lives.

Each chapter is written from a different person's perspective and I thought this gave an added dimension to the story.  The chapters also moved the story along so I was made to really think about what must have happened as the author quite often just gave clues and it was left to me to work it out, most of the time this worked okay.

Overall, I did like this style of writing, it flowed very easily.  The descriptions of Malaya and the people seemed real and believable and I could easily picture them.

I enjoyed this story and would happily read another book by Amanda Sington-Williams.

Special thanks to the author for sending me this book to download.

Book Review: A WINTER FLAME BY MILLY JOHNSON

Genre:  Fiction
Published:  Oct 2012 (Simon & Schuster)
Source:  Publisher

About the Book:

'Tis the season to be jolly...But can Eve find happiness through the frost...? 
Eve has never liked Christmas, not since her beloved fiance was killed in action in Afghanistan on Christmas Day. So when her adored elderly aunt dies, the last thing she is expecting is to be left a theme park in her will. A theme park with a Christmas theme...And that's not the only catch. Her aunt's will stipulates that Eve must run the park with a mysterious partner, the exotically named Jacques Glace. Who is this Jacques, and why did Aunt Evelyn name him in her will? 
But Eve isn't going to back down from a challenge. She's determined to make a success of Winterworld, no matter what. 
Can she overcome her dislike of Christmas, and can Jacques melt her frozen heart at last...?


This book is not just for Christmas it is for life!  

I loved the storyline of Eve's aunt leaving her a magical Christmas Theme Park ..... well, a partly finished theme park ...and with super efficient and organised Eve at the helm she knew it would be fabulous.  But the catch is that she had to share the day to day organising with a mysterious stranger called Jacques Glace and Eve does not like sharing her plans.  And, after meeting Mr. Glace, she doesn't like him either and she even starts to believe he could be a con man who has conned her beloved aunt into giving him a share of the theme park.

Eve narrowed her eyes at him.  God, he really was a charmer.  Standing there all blue-eyed and Dr. Doolittle-like, stroking a reindeer.  And weren't animals supposed to be able to suss out what people were really like?  Had he managed to pull the wool over their eyes as well?  She bet he had a trail of broken hearts behind him.

So, we shared their ups and downs, quarrels and dislikes, neither of them giving way, while 'Winterworld' takes shape week by week up till Christmas.

The story reads at just the right pace, it's never boring, with lively characters and an original plotline.

According to Lovereading if you like Milly Johnson you may also like books by Carmen Reid, Maria Beaumont or Freya North.

Thanks to the publishers Simon & Schuster for sending me this book.

Book Review: THE GIRL YOU LEFT BEHIND BY JOJO MOYES

Genre:  Fiction
Published:  Penguin  27 Sept 2012
Source:  RealReaders



About the Book:

In 1916 French artist Edouard Lefevre leaves his wife Sophie to fight at the Front. When her town falls into German hands, his portrait of Sophie stirs the heart of the local Kommandant and causes her to risk everything - her family, reputation and life - in the hope of seeing her true love one last time.

Nearly a century later and Sophie's portrait is given to Liv by her young husband shortly before his sudden death. Its beauty speaks of their short life together, but when the painting's dark and passion-torn history is revealed, Liv discovers that the first spark of love she has felt since she lost him is threatened...




The story starts in a small town in war-torn France when Sophie attempts to outwit the local German Kommandant, a man who will have a large say in her destiny.  She misses her husband who is away fighting and when she and her family are forced to serve the Germans with food every night in her small hotel, her emotions are stretched as the Kommandant becomes obsessed with a painting done by her husband of a young Sophie.

The first part is left on a cliffhanger and we are then moved forward to the present time and find that the same painting is now hanging in the bedroom of Liv, who's deceased husband bought it for her as he thought the girl in the painting looked like her.

Unfortunately, this is where my interest started to wane.  I loved the first part set in WWI and, even though the story goes back and forth, I did not enjoy it as much, somehow I could not warm to Liv and I found myself rushing through the story to read about what happened to Sophie.

Overall, I did like the storyline, I thought some of the characters were memorable, but I just wish that the first part had been longer and the second part had been shorter!

Book Review: TRUST YOUR EYES BY LINWOOD BARCLAY

Genre:  Thriller

Published:  Orion Books 27 Sept 2012
Source:  BookDagger RealReaders


About the Book:

A schizophrenic man spends his days and nights on a website called Whirl360, believing he's employed by the CIA to store the details of every town and city in the world in his head. Then one day, he sees something that shouldn't be there: a woman being murdered behind a window on a New York street. Suddenly Thomas has more to deal with than just his delusions, as he gets drawn into a deadly conspiracy.


Linwood Barclay is one of my favourite thriller authors, I couldn't put down No Time For Goodbye or Too Close To Home - they were both psychological thrillers that kept you guessing whodunnit and what happened until very near the end whereas this book is more of a thriller where you know fairly early what Thomas sees in the window and it is more about the aftermath.

Thomas (35 years old) is an interesting but vulnerable character, he spends his days on the computer travelling the world, he calls it his work.  He has a gift, a talent, and is obsessed with maps and learning directions, and has the ability to remember everything he sees while on Whirl360 (which sounds very much like Google Street View).  But he's not capable of living on his own or looking after himself so, after his father dies in somewhat mysterious circumstances, his brother Ray comes to look after him.

Unfortunately, due to a set of coincidences and bad luck, they become involved in a political cover up which endangers their lives ...... all because Thomas trusts his eyes ....

I thought this was a good all round story, with an original plot, some stereotypical characters, unexpected surprises, quite a few murders, political ambitions, the CIA, unlikely assassins, plus a touch of romance, which all made for a thrilling (but not a page-turning) read.

This book is available from 27 September 2012 from Amazon.co.uk.

Book Review: THE WONDER GIRLS BY CATHERINE JONES

Genre:  Modern Fiction
Published:  June 2012  (Simon & Schuster)
Source:  From the Publishers

About the Book:

'Don't follow the crowd,' she'd be telling schoolgirls at the swimming baths. 'Follow your own star and when you have achieved your goal you will have that with you for the rest of your life...'
In 1928, a plucky young Welsh girl named Ida Gaze swims the Bristol Channel with the help of her best friend Freda and the inspiration of her heroine Amelia Earhart.
In 1937, on the instructions of the matron, a young skivvy at a grand maternity hospital in London smuggles out an orphaned baby on one of the coldest nights of the year.
Now, in a small town in Wales, an old lady named Ceci pieces together these stories and is about to discover the surprising ways in which they link to her own. It begins with two girls in the twenties who left their small Welsh village for the Big Smoke, feeling that the world was changing and everything was possible…


I really wanted to like this book....I loved the cover of the two young women wearing bathing suits from the 1920's and I thought the story would be more about them and their swimming lives....but it wasn't and I was so disappointed about that.

It started well ..... with 14 year old Cecily who was working as a cleaner at a rich private clinic in London in 1937.  One cold evening the Sister asks her to take away from the clinic the baby of a very poorly mother.  But we don't know why and this leaves us with a cliffhanger until near the end.

The story then moves to the present when Cecily, now an old lady, is living on her own after her 'companion' Freda had died.  Whilst looking through Freda's effects she finds an old photo of a young girl in a bathing costume and this sets her on a quest to discover who this girl was and what happened to her.

The book moves back and forth in time from the present to 1928 to a time when a 16 yr old girl called Ida Gaze (the 'Wonder Girl') becomes the first woman to swim the Bristol Channel - 11 miles of treacherous water between Wales and England.  'Nobody thought a woman would cross the Atlantic and Amelia Earhart did - so why shouldn't I cross the water to another country?'

I was really enjoying this part of the story as I found it fascinating but shortly after when Ida and her friend Freda decide to go to London to start a new life my interest waned quite a lot.  I found it a little boring and I struggled to keep going....but I did and it did get slightly better as the secrets are slowly revealed.

The only character I warmed to was Cecily, I didn't like Freda at all and I couldn't understand why so many women fell for her, she was an oddball, selfish and she didn't care who's feelings she hurt with her nasty remarks.

So, it was not really my kind of book overall.

If this sounds like your kind of book head on over to Lindsay at The Little Reader Library where Catherine Jones has written a fascinating piece all about the background to the story.  Lindsay loved this book and you can read her brilliant review here

Thank you to the publishers, Simon & Schuster, for sending me this to review.

Book Review: STAY CLOSE BY HARLAN COBEN

Genre:  Thriller
Published:  29 March 2012  (Orion Books)
Pages:  387  (Hardback)
Source:  BookDagger RealReaders

About the Book:

Megan is a suburban soccer mom who once upon a time walked on the wild side. Now she's got two kids, a perfect husband, a house with a picket fence, and a growing sense of dissatisfaction. Ray used to be a talented documentary photographer, but at the age of forty he finds himself in a dead-end job posing as a paparazzo pandering to celebrity-obsessed rich kids. Broome is a detective who can't let go of a cold case - a local husband and father who disappeared seventeen years ago - and spends the anniversary every year visiting a house frozen in time, the missing man's family still waiting, his slippers left by the recliner as if he might show up any moment to step into them.

Three people living lives they never wanted, hiding secrets that even those closest to them would never suspect, will find that the past never truly fades away. Even as the terrible consequences of long-ago events crash together in the present and threaten to ruin lives, they will come to the startling realisation that they may not want to forget the past at all. And as each confronts the dark side of the American Dream - the boredom of suburban life, the thrill of temptation, the desperation that can lurk behind even the prettiest facades - they will discover the hard truth that the line between one kind of life and another can be as whisper thin as a heartbeat...

Harlan Coben is the 'master of the hook-and-twist' ... as the blurb says and this book does hook you and twist you till you don't know which turn it's going to take....which I love in a book!

The three main characters all seem to be living normal lives, seemingly unrelated to one another, but they all have secrets from their past which will just not stay hidden.  When a man goes missing, their memories are taken back to one night 17 years ago when another man went missing but is there a connection?

The writing is fast and slick, sometimes a little too complicated, and there are some unsavoury characters, including a couple of bible-bashers called Ken and Barbie who are definitely NOT like their namesakes!  

This is the kind of book where you have to keep turning the pages as there are so many cliffhangers and I didn't guess the ending which is all good.

Recommended for anyone who enjoys a good thriller.

Books I Read on Holiday ......

I've just come back from a week's holiday and here are short reviews of the  two books I read and one audiobook I listened to while being very lazy!

My first book was Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts by Lucy Dillon.

The Bad News for Rachel, 39, is that she's just lost her job, her home in London and her boyfriend!
The Good News is that she's just inherited, from her aunt, a lovely house, together with a Dogs Rescue/Boarding Kennels in the countryside!
Rachel is not a dog lover and doesn't know the first thing about dogs and fully intends to sell the business......but finds she has the knack of matching just the right people with the rescue dogs, and there's a hunky vet and a handsome doctor around.....well, maybe she may still a little longer!
It's obvious that Lucy Dillon loves dogs, the descriptions of the cute dogs will just make you go aaawww all the time.  Interesting and lively characters and a great plot make for an entertaining read.


I also listened to The Summer of Secrets by Martina Reilly read by Caroline Lennon.

Hope has just lost her 16th job in London when she decides to leave her friends and her life and move elsewhere, but a tragic plane crash lands her in hospital and her two best friends, Adam and Julie, decide she should recuperate back home in Ireland and so they rent a small cottage in Hope's home town and spend the summer there, not knowing that that is the last place that Hope wanted to go to.
Their lives will never be the same at the end of the summer as secrets and lies come out.
I really enjoyed this - in some parts it was laugh out loud funny and in others I was in tears!  Of all the books this was definitely my favourite.
Fabulous descriptions of the Irish countryside, the rolling hills, waterfalls, the sea, and the people....I want to move to Dunport!
Caroline Lennon's seductive Irish voice just added another dimension to the whole storyline.

My least favourite read was The Salt Road by Jane Johnson.

Set in the present time and the past, the parallel stories are of two different women.  Isabelle is left an amulet by her father and is fascinated by it and the unreadable parchment inside.  She is drawn to Morocco and has the opportunity to go there rock climbing where she meets someone who could help her solve the mystery of the ancient amulet and how it came to be in her father's possession.

The parallel story is of Marieta who obtains the amulet from her lover, we are never sure of the exact year but know it is in the past.

Although there are wonderful descriptions of the Moroccan land and people, I found it quite slow and boring in the middle.  I also didn't warm to the main character of Taib, who was helping Isabelle.  I thought it would be more of a mystery so I was disappointed at the overall storyline.

What are your Summer Reads?

Have you read any of these books and did you enjoy them?

Book Review: ISLAND OF BONES BY IMOGEN ROBERTSON

Genre:  Historical Mystery
Published:  Headline  (Mar 2012)
Pages:  466  (Paperback)
Source:  BookDagger RealReaders




About the Book:


Cumbria, 1783. A broken heritage; a secret history...

The tomb of the first Earl of Greta should have lain undisturbed on its island of bones for three hundred years.When idle curiosity opens the stone lid, however, inside is one body too many. Gabriel Crowther's family bought the Gretas' land long ago, and has suffered its own bloody history. His brother was hanged for murdering their father, the Baron of Keswick, and Crowther has chosen comfortable seclusion and anonymity over estate and title for thirty years. But the call of the mystery brings him home at last.

Travelling with forthright Mrs Harriet Westerman, who is escaping her own tragedy, Crowther finds a little town caught between new horrors and old, where ancient ways challenge modern justice. And against the wild and beautiful backdrop of fells and water, Crowther discovers that his past will not stay buried.




The story starts in 1751 at the Tower of London on the eve of the execution of Gabriel's brother who has been found guilty of the murder of their father.  There seems to be no love lost between the two brothers.


Next the time moves on to 1783 where an old tomb on the Island of Bones is found to contain a body that should not be there - could these two events be connected?


Attempting to solve the mystery are two unlikely friends -- Gabriel Crowther (a straight talking man in his fifties who has become quite renowned at ferreting all sorts of information from a body) and the recently widowed Mrs Harriet Westerman, a strong-minded thirty year old woman who is not a conventional 18th century lady!  What really worked best in this book was their unusual relationship and I do wonder how people of that time looked upon them.  Not that either of them cared much for convention.


I also loved the folklore of the Lake District when people believed in fairies and bogles and witches......plus an assortment of interesting characters like Casper Grace, a cunning man who most of the people trusted more than the doctors of the time to treat their ailments.  


I found the story quite slow moving at first as we meet all the characters while the plot moved at a snail's pace but I soon immersed myself into the complex story and, by the end, I was quickly turning the pages to discover the  secrets and twists in the tale, mainly due to the multiple narratives which really added to the intriguing plot.


This is the third in the Crowther & Westerman series and there are just enough references to the past stories to give you an idea of what has been happening earlier.


This is a compelling story that intrigues me enough to want to read more of this unlikely partnership.


The website of Imogen Robertson can be found here.