Mailbox Monday: May 20th

Mailbox Monday is a meme started by Marcia of To Be Continued. Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It now has a permanent home at the Mailbox Monday blog. Head over and check out other books received during the last week. 

Happy Monday! 

Not much has happened over the last week although I always seem to be busy.
I had lunch with friends on Friday (sorry no photos) and it was nice to catch up with one friend I hadn't seen for over six months.
My daughter and I made a tasty caramel slice and I took a quick photo  before it was devoured.

Not the most glamorous photo but it was delicious.

 

Books  received during the past week.

 

I received one book which was a Netgalley invitation from St Martin's Press

 

 Renia's Diary by Renia Spiegel

The long-hidden diary of a young Polish woman's last days during the Holocaust, translated for the first time into English, with a foreword from American Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt.

Renia Spiegel was a young girl from an upper-middle class Jewish family living on an estate in Stawki, Poland, near what was at that time the border with Romania. In the summer of 1939, Renia and her sister Elizabeth (née Ariana) were visiting their grandparents in Przemysl, right before the Germans invaded Poland.

Like Anne Frank, Renia recorded her days in her beloved diary. She also filled it with beautiful original poetry. Her diary records how she grew up, fell in love, and was rounded up by the invading Nazis and forced to move to the ghetto in Przemsyl with all the other Jews. By luck, Renia's boyfriend Zygmund was able to find a tenement for Renia to hide in with his parents and took her out of the ghetto. This is all described in the Diary, as well as the tragedies that befell her family and her ultimate fate in 1942, as written in by Zygmund on the Diary's final page.

 

 

What Books did your postman deliver this week?

Post a link to your Mailbox Monday or simply list your books in the comments below.

 

 

 

 

Book Review: The Glovemaker by Ann Weisgarber

The Glovemaker

by

Ann Weisgarber

Publisher: Pan Macmillan 
Imprint: Mantle
Publication date: 26th February 2019
Pages: 304
RRP: $29.99AUD
Format read: Paperback
Source: Courtesy of the publisher

In the inhospitable lands of the Utah Territory, during the winter of 1888, thirty-seven-year-old Deborah Tyler waits for her husband, Samuel, to return home from his travels as a wheelwright. It is now the depths of winter, Samuel is weeks overdue, and Deborah is getting worried.

Deborah lives in Junction, a tiny town of seven Mormon families scattered along the floor of a canyon, and she earns her living by tending orchards and making work gloves. Isolated by the red-rock cliffs that surround the town, she and her neighbors live apart from the outside world, even regarded with suspicion by the Mormon faithful who question the depth of their belief.

When a desperate stranger who is pursued by a Federal Marshal shows up on her doorstep seeking refuge, it sets in motion a chain of events that will turn her life upside down. The man, a devout Mormon, is on the run from the US government, which has ruled the practice of polygamy to be a felony. Although Deborah is not devout and doesn’t subscribe to polygamy, she is distrustful of non-Mormons with their long tradition of persecuting believers of her wider faith.

The Glovemaker is an atmospheric tale set in the small Mormon community of Junction in Southern Utah. A small group of Mormon families have moved away from the core group to create some distance but not all together give up their faith. It was a place for those that wanted to escape religious persecution and those that needed some space within their religion.

Deborah and Samuel do not practice the faith’s practice of polygamy but are willing to help their ‘brothers’ who are hunted and persecuted for having plural wives. The men come to their door and Samuel moves them on to a hidden refuge.

The story is narrated in the 1^st person by Deborah and her brother-in-law, Nels, as all through the troubles they await the return of their husband and brother Samuel to arrive home through the snow. He is late returning but there are many circumstances that could have delayed him.

When a man comes to Deborah’s door seeking help she is cautious and wants nothing to do with him but neither can she turn him away and as a life hangs in the balance this decision has a rolling effect on the whole community.

A sense of foreboding hung heavily in the air right from the onset. Set in the rugged canyon country of Southern Utah during the winter of 1888 the bitter cold was invasive as Deborah trudged through snow and ice to perform her daily routine.

Weisgarber’s writing is taut, tense and crisp. I was hooked on the mystery of Samuel’s whereabouts and waited eagerly with Deborah for his return. The Latter-day Saints religion was well explained and even though I don’t agree with their beliefs I did gain an appreciation for the religious persecution they endured.

The story is fraught with impending danger. The characters live a life of secrets and lies, always looking over their shoulder and never trusting anyone.

Although The Glovemaker is a work of fiction, the Latter-day Saints settlement at Junction (renamed Fruita) is real. The area is now Capital Reef national Park and the orchards that the early settlers planted still thrive there.

If you read Historical Fiction I cannot recommend this novel highly enough. A must read!

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

  My rating  5/5

This review is letter 'G' in the 2019 A-Z challenge 

Photo credit: Goodreads

Ann Weisgarber was born and raised in Kettering, Ohio. She has lived in Boston, Massachusetts, and Des Moines, Iowa, but now splits her time between Sugar land, Texas and Galveston, Texas. Her first novel The Personal History of Rachel Dupree was longlisted fore the Orange Prize and shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers. Her follow-up book, The Promise, was a finalist in the Western Writers of America Best Historical Fiction Awards. The Glovemaker is her third novel.

 

Book Review: Sixty Seconds by Jesse Blackadder

Sixty Seconds

by 

Jesse Blackadder

Publisher: Harper Collins 
Publication date: 18th September 2017 
Pages: 384
Format Read: eBook
Source: Courtesy of the publisher via Netgalley

Inspired by the author's own family experience. The Brennans - parents Finn and Bridget, and their sons, Jarrah and Toby - have made a sea change, shifting from chilly Hobart to a sprawling purple weatherboard in subtropical Murwillumbah. Feeling like foreigners in this land of sun and surf, they are only just starting to settle when, one morning, tragedy strikes - changing their lives forever.

Determined to protect his wife, Finn finds himself under the police and media spotlight. Guilty and enraged, Bridget spends her nights hunting answers in the last place imaginable. Jarrah - his innocence lost - is propelled suddenly from his teens into frightening adulthood. As all three are pushed to the limit, questions fly: Who is to blame? And what does it take to forgive?

A haunting and ultimately redemptive story about what it takes to forgive.  

Sixty Seconds is a poignant story that explores the aftermath of a sudden and tragic death and the different ways people react and reconcile with the loss.

Bridget wants to find blame and to direct her heartache into hate, both strong emotions that can feed off each other. Finn tries to find solace in their shared grief but is pushed away by Bridget. Their teenage son Jarrah is not only suffering loss, he is trying to fit into a new school and struggling with identity. It is heartbreaking watching him dealing with his conflicting emotions alone.

This story is so confronting I found it hard to read and had to put it down on occasions. There are support workers that have their own agenda to push and empathisers that want to unburden their own demons. And when you think this family has suffered the worst imaginable, life just keeps throwing more tragedy their way.

The narration is unique as it is told in multiple POV and multiple narrative styles. Finn is in 3rd person, Jarrah is 1^st person (which worked well for the teen perspective) and Bridget is 2^nd person (I didn’t particularly like this because I find the use of ‘you’ did this and ‘you’ did that sounds quite accusing and confronting). The characters are well developed and their actions wholly believable.

Author Jesse Blackadder drew inspiration from her own tragic experience to write this heartbreaking and compulsive story of loss.

Sixty Seconds is a story that explores loss, forgiveness, hope and the rebuilding of a family that has been shattered.

This book has been re-released in March 2019 as In the Blink of an Eye.

Content: Child death

                Swearing

                Sexual references

                             🌟🌟🌟🌟

 My rating  4/5  

*this review is part of the Book Lover Book Review Aussie author challenge

and book #17 in the Australian Women Writers challenge

Jesse Blackadder is an award-winning novelist, freelance journalist and budding screenwriter. Her novel The Raven's Heart won the Benjamin Franklin Award for historical fiction (USA), and her novel Chasing Light earned her an Antarctic Arts Fellowship. 

She is also the author of three children's books, Dexter the Courageous Koala, Paruku the Desert Brumby and Stay the Last Dog in Antarctica. This is her fourth adult novel. 

 

 

Giveaway: Win 1 of 3 ARC copies of Whisper Network

With thanks to Hachette Australia I have three Advanced Reader Copies of Whisper Network to give away.
Please enter via the Giveaway form below. Giveaway closes on 3rd June 2019.

Publication date: 25th June 2019

Blurb:


If only you'd listened to us, none of this would have happened.
 
Sloane, Ardie, Grace, and Rosalita have worked at Truviv, Inc. for years. The sudden death of Truviv's CEO means their boss, Ames, will likely take over the entire company. Each of the women has a different relationship with Ames, who has always been surrounded by whispers about how he treats women. Those whispers have been ignored, swept under the rug, hidden away by those in charge.

But the world has changed, and the women are watching this promotion differently. This time, when they find out Ames is making an inappropriate move on a colleague, they aren't willing to let it go. This time, they've decided enough is enough.
Sloane and her colleagues' decision to take a stand sets in motion a catastrophic shift in the office. Lies will be uncovered. Secrets will be exposed. And not everyone will survive.

Touted as the next Big, Little Lies this is one novel not to be missed.

This giveaway is now closed and the winners were - Mel, Kathryn & Bec.

Mailbox Monday - May 13th

Mailbox Monday is a meme started by Marcia of To Be Continued. Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It now has a permanent home at the Mailbox Monday blog. Head over and check out other books received during the last week. 

Happy Monday! 
And a Happy Mother's Day to all my readers who celebrated Mother's day yesterday.

It turned out to be a gorgeous Autumn day where I am and we had a family BBQ lunch at home with my children, their partners and my grandchildren. We then travelled to see my mother and had an amazing afternoon tea set up by my daughter.  

 

The books I received during the past week.

From the publisher for review:

Allegra in Three parts by Suzanne Daniel
Publication date: 29th May 2019

Eleven-year-old Allegra shuttles between her grandmothers who live next door to one another but couldn't be more different. Matilde works all hours and instils discipline, duty and restraint. She insists that Allegra focus on her studies to become a doctor. Meanwhile free-spirited Joy is full of colour, possibility and emotion, storing all her tears in little glass bottles. She is riding the second wave of the women's movement in the company of her penny tortoise, Simone de Beauvoir, encouraging Ally to explore broad horizons and live her 'true essence'. Rick lives in a flat out the back and finds distraction in gambling and solace in surfing. He's trying to be a good parent to Al Pal, while grieving the woman linking them all but whose absence tears them apart.

Allegra is left to orbit these three adult worlds wishing they loved her a little less and liked each other a lot more. Until one day the unspoken tragedy that's created this division explodes within the person they all cherish most.

The Bells of Old Tokyo by Anna Sherman
Publication date: 14th may 2019 

From 1632 until 1854, Japan's rulers restricted contact with foreign countries, a near isolation that fostered a remarkable and unique culture that endures to this day. In hypnotic prose and sensual detail, Anna Sherman describes searching for the great bells by which the inhabitants of Edo, later called Tokyo, kept the hours in the shoguns' city.

An exploration of Tokyo becomes a meditation not just on time, but on history, memory, and impermanence. Through Sherman's journeys around the city and her friendship with the owner of a small, exquisite cafe, who elevates the making and drinking of coffee to an art-form, The Bells of Old Tokyo follows haunting voices through the labyrinth that is the Japanese capital: an old woman remembers escaping from the American firebombs of World War II. A scientist builds the most accurate clock in the world, a clock that will not lose a second in five billion years. The head of the Tokugawa shogunal house reflects on the destruction of his grandfathers' city: "A lost thing is lost. To chase it leads to darkness." 

Crossings by Alex Landragin
Publication date: 28th May 2019

I didn't write this book. I stole it...

A Parisian bookbinder stumbles across a manuscript containing three stories, each as unlikely as the other.

The first, 'The Education of a Monster', is a letter penned by the poet Charles Baudelaire to an illiterate girl. The second, 'City of Ghosts', is a noir romance set in Paris in 1940 as the Germans are invading. The third, 'Tales of the Albatross', is the strangest of the three: the autobiography of a deathless enchantress. Together, they tell the tale of two lost souls peregrinating through time.

An unforgettable tour de force, Crossings is a novel in three parts, designed to be read in two different directions, spanning a hundred and fifty years and seven lifetimes. 

What am I looking forward to reading? 

I am so excited about Allegra in Three Parts  firstly because this is a debut novel and Allegra already sounds like a character everyone will fall in love with and secondly I will be part of the blog tour for this book and will be posting an interview with author Suzanne Daniel.

What Books did your postman deliver this week?

Post a link to your Mailbox Monday or simply list your books in the comments below.