Book Review: Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love

Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love by Sarah Butler

The blurb: A uniquely heart-wrenching and life-affirming novel for fathers and daughters everywhere.

Alice has just returned to London from months of travelling abroad. She is late to hear the news that her father is dying, and arrives at the family home only just in time to say goodbye. Daniel hasn’t had a roof over his head for years, but to him the city of London feels like home in a way that no bricks and mortar ever did. He spends every day searching for his daughter; the daughter he has never met. Until now . . .Heart-wrenching and life-affirming, this is a unique story of love lost and found, of rootlessness and homecoming and the power of the ties that bind. It is a story for fathers and daughters everywhere.

My review: This book is definitely a grower! It begins with obliqueness, it doesn’t give up its secrets easily or quickly and some remain a mystery after you’ve finished the book! This is not one to read if you need closure in your books because it was left very open ended. Normally I’d put myself in that category but this had such a charming feel to the ending that I can live with it, just this once!

I loved the Top Ten segments in the book, they felt very real and as a list maker something I would do. Although not perhaps to that depth of emotion. I did find it quite confusing which list belonged to which character member as it’s not immediately clear. This may have been on purpose but I found it frustrating at times. You just get into a story line when it shifts to someone else’s narrative and that’s probably a failing in my patience but it was tested.

This is a dark book, not one to read when you need cheering up despite the beautiful cover but it is a lovely read and you need to devote time to read it and savour it’s nuances. The characters are well developed and stayed with me for some time after I’d finished, especially the homeless man in London. As someone who lives in London it was interesting to see things from his perspective. The complicated family relationships are handled deftly and small, significant moments will be celebrated rather than dramatic all out victories. A lovely little book.

7 out of 10 stars! *******
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Book Review: The House At Riverton

The House at Riverton by Kate Morton

The blurb: Summer 1924: On the night of a glittering Society party, by the lake of a grand English country house, a young poet takes his life. The only witnesses, sisters Hannah and Emmeline Hartford, will never speak to each other again.

Winter 1999: Grace Bradley, 98, onetime housemaid of Riverton Manor, is visited by a young director making a film about the poet’s suicide. Ghosts awaken and memories, long-consigned to the dark reaches of Grace’s mind, begin to sneak back through the cracks. A shocking secret threatens to emerge; something history has forgotten but Grace never could.

Set as the war-shattered Edwardian summer surrenders to the decadent twenties, The House at Riverton is a thrilling mystery and a compelling love story.

My review: It never rains but it pours! Another excellent novel that I couldn’t put down!

I was in exactly the right frame of mind for this book, read on holiday, I had time to take in the entire nature of it, the detailed story-telling, the complex relationships and emotional ties between the characters that made them end up in the position they do on the fateful night of the Riverton party.

If you love Downton Abbey, you’ll love this. Grace is a young housemaid and you follow her story throughout the entire twentieth century history of the Hartford family at Riverton and how she plays a key role, even from before she was born in the telling of it. She’s a very likeable character, well voiced and the narrative rolls smoothly on to its shocking conclusion.

There is so much good in this novel that I don’t know where to start. I loved the pre-war decadence, the feeling that Morton creates of a society on the brink of a catastrophic change that will alter the entire world. The outbreak of WW1 the power shifts, the struggle for money and the utter desperation of losing loved ones in a senseless war. But most of all, I loved Hannah and her spirit, a woman born in the wrong time, needing an independence that can never be under the weight of her traditional families responsibilities.

This is a wonderful and tragic book, more than a saga, more than a mystery, a glimpse into a beautiful and fragile world that you’ll want to revisit again and again. High accolades here for this wonderful book!

10 out of 10 stars! **********

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Book Review: The (Im)perfect Girlfriend

The (Im)perfect Girlfriend by Lucy-Anne Holmes

The blurb: We kissed until it became necessary to stop so that we could breathe, by which time my lips were so swollen it looked like I’d been pleasuring a brillo pad. We grinned at each other again and I felt the urge to utter something brilliantly intellectual.

‘Have I mentioned that I’m hopelessly in love with you?’

Actress Sarah Sargeant has finally landed the perfect boyfriend. But as she leaves London for LA, Sarah finds herself morphing from the perfect girlfriend, baby voicing ‘i love you’s, into a nutty one who throws phones and screams a lot.

Where did it all go wrong? Was it the photo of a semi-naked ex-girlfriend doing a downward dog she found in her boyfriend’s filofax? Or maybe it’s the steamy sex scene she films with the handsomest man in the world, ever.

Laugh-out-loud funny and brutally honest, The (Im)Perfect Girlfriend is the story of one woman’s search for her happy ever after. It is a novel that firmly establishes Lucy Anne Holmes as one of the best writers of romantic comedy today.

My review: I love Sarah Sargeant. She’s brilliant, funny, intelligent and as accident prone as the next girl. I do secretly think she’s probably gorgeous and not as fat as Lucy-Anne Holmes makes her out – there’s just too many compliments and too many men after this woman for her to be chubby! Sarah has a nice level of insecurity about her character, she’s extremely likeable despite some very unladylike characteristics. For one I hate the use of the term ‘semi’ if I could have it banned from this book my review would have added in another star. I don’t think anyone uses that saying so for me it stuck out like a sore thumb!

The (im)perfect girlfriend is a girl friendly book, intelligent enough to keep intelligent women interested but light hearted and humorous enough to make reading it a real pleasure. The characters ARE NOT perfect. This is what makes this book ten times better than some of the other chick-lit I’ve read recently. There will always be parts of these kinds of books that are unrealistic but frankly when it’s done this well – who cares? Not me, I could read it again and probably will! Worth a visit and why not try 50 Ways To Find A Lover – also genius!

7.5 stars out of 10 *******.5!

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Book Review: 50 Ways To Find A Lover

50 Ways To Find A Lover by Lucy-Anne Holmes

50 Ways To Find A Lover by Lucy-Anne Holmes

 The blurb: I feel like a failure. It’s now been 351 days since I had sex. That’s a carnal drought. If Bob Geldof knew about it he’d hold a concert.

Sarah Sargeant has been single for three years and nine months. She has just spent five months plucking up the courage to ask out a balding man with a paunch who works in her local pub. The gentleman in question informed her that he would rather stay in and watch the Narnia movie on DVD. Her pride has not just been bruised, it’s been disembowelled. And she vows it’s the last time she will ever reach out to a member of the opposite sex.

But her family and friends have other ideas. They enter her into a reality TV show against her will, persuade her to go speed dating and even more radically, they encourage her to start a blog. Suddenly Sarah Sargeant is on a mission.

My Review:

This book made my holiday and is the perfect pool-side reading! Lucy-Anne Holmes is a hilarious writer; I found her wit engaging and her characters frankly hysterical.

Sadly there are not 50 ways to find a lover in this book but I don’t think any the less of it because of that. The characters are well-rounded creations bordering ever so slightly on the unrealistic but this doesn’t detract from the plot, they are occasionally predictable if you have read loads of chick-lit but what the hell!

There are some very unpredictable twists in the plot, more than once I was left feeling surprised that my smug idea of where the story was going had been swept away. Well-written, fast-paced and hugely involving, I was really routing for Sarah by the end. Lucy-Anne Holmes is a lady not afraid of bad language, bad dates and bad hair days. If you haven’t picked a book to take on holiday yet I strongly recommend you take this one! All my friends had read it by the time I came back from my holiday and once you get over the annoyance of them sniggering to themselves on their sun loungers you won’t stop recommending it to people!

8.5 stars out of 10!

To buy the book click here or to find out more about other titles by Pan Macmillan visit their website.   

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