Blog Tour: Take Mum Out by Fiona Gibson
Take Mum Out is a wonderful summer read.
Review by Laura.
Take Mum Out is about a woman called Alice who is fast approaching her fortieth birthday. She is the mother of two teenage boys, Logan and Fergus and she has her own business.
Her three friends decide that it’s time that she got back into the dating game and each decide to set her up with someone they think would be perfect for her. Cue three first blind dates where she meets Giles, Stephen and Charlie.
I am not a mum so I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to relate to this book. Truth was, I couldn’t put it down. It was charming, funny, warm and very nice to read. Alice was a great character and I warmed to her straight away. She was funny and is cooler than she thinks she is. She is a strong woman. I liked this. I liked the fact that Alice didn’t feel as though she desperately wanted to get back into dating but saw it as an adventure.
by 
Gretel in The Dark by Eliza Granville.
The mysterious fairytale based novel set across two different centuries.
Hamish Hamilton, Feb 2014.
Gretel in the Dark focuses on two time zones – 1899 in Vienna with Dr Josef Breuer and then years later in Germany around World War II which is where we are introduced to Krysta.
Dr Breuer has a new patient who brings mystery. Found in the middle of the night and brought to his home, the girl has no name and claims to not even be human and that she is there to kill the monster.
Krysta is a young girl who is sheltered by her father, (he works in the infirmary with the ‘animal people.’) She spends her days listening to the fairy stories made up by Greet, the house servant. Tragedy then strikes and Krysta is forced into a concentration camp.
The idea of this book intrigued me from the moment I read the synopsis and when I started reading, I couldn’t stop or put it down (even when I was meant to be sleeping before a night shift.) Continue reading
by Undreamed by Paul Western-Pittard
Published by Paul Western-Pittard -Sept 2012)
Review by Helen Jackson.
Undreamed is a dark psychological thriller that tells the tale of Alice, a woman trapped between reality and a dream.
Alice is trapped in a nightmare. She leads two lives, both real to her, both flawless in their logic and texture, both filled with people that she loves and hates. One of these is a dream. She has no way of knowing which. A borderline junkie-heiress in Manhattan, or a recovering psych patient in Sydney, when Alice sleeps in one life, she wakes into the other.
Other than her own memory of them, her worlds are separate and seamless. In both her lives she tries to find clues to discover the root of her sickness, but nothing crosses over. She may as well be two completely different people. Caught in this impossible status quo, never able to bring herself to believe that the life she’s leading is true, Alice is trapped. Not believing either, she believes nothing. Then one day, her lives are fractured when something does cross over. First in Sydney then Manhattan, Alice meets a girl dressed in green. She knows this girl for what she is: the key to her escape. But as she unravels the girl’s secret, the realities of not one but both lives are challenged.
The question becomes: who is it that she’s really waking?
by Book Review: Diary of An Unsmug Married by Polly James
Diary of an Unsmug Married by Polly James is published by Avon (February 2014,) and is available in paperback and e-book.
The blurb:
What happens to love when life gets in the way?
Meet Molly Bennett. Married to Max and mother to two warring teenagers, she’s just ‘celebrated’ a significant birthday. Bridget Jones would call Molly a “smug married”. So why doesn’t she feel it? Is it because everyone seems to be having a better time of it than her? Or is it that Max has started showing more interest in ‘business trips’ and less interest in their sex life? Molly begins to despair. And then an old school friend starts flirting with her through Facebook …
I had not read the fictional columns on which this book is based so I had no idea what to expect (however, I am a huge fan of Adrian Mole and Bridget Jones. This book has been compared to both.)
Molly is what Bridget would describe as a smug married. She has a job working for a back bench labour MP called Andrew (who she calls the boss.) He’s a little bit of a liability to her and Greg (a colleague.) She has a mother who has a Continue reading
by Calling Mrs Christmas
Review by Mick Arnold.
‘Calling Mrs Christmas’ is that rare breed of seasonal tale, in that behind the story of someone finding their calling to help them over a personal crisis (unemployment here) there are some serious social issues dealt with here that from a lesser author could have easily taken a lowly second place. Of course, this doesn’t detract from the main storyline as we follow Cassie through a Christmas certainly never to be forgotten, such is the skill of this author.
The story centres around Cassie, at the start deep in the depression caused by unemployment. She’s in a long-term relationship with the stoic Jim, a caring warder at the local Youth Detention Centre. Deciding to put her organisational talents to use, she starts up a business – the title of the book. As the business booms, from wrapping presents and decorating trees, to arranging corporate parties, life starts to look good for her again and the two of them have never been happier. Enter a rich client called Carter, Continue reading
by Book Club
