Black Sun Rising - Celia Friedman

Black Sun Rising by Celia Friedman (or C.S. Friedman) is book one of her Coldfire trilogy. I thought it would make a good read for early autumn as that's when it begins, and I thought right, as it absolutely did. It 'has' taken me two weeks to read it, I'm not sure why, other than it's 530 pages long and quite densely written. But it was worth taking my time as it was a cracking read. 

The planet of Erna was colonised by humans hundreds of years ago. Already inhabiting this world was a sort of non-sentient species called the Rakh, who were displaced and went to live behind a canopy on a continent of their own. Something has since happened to them though in the way of advancement of the species. But they weren't the only inhabitants. There's a natural force called the Fae which can manipulate and prey on human minds and is deadly unless humans can learn to control it somehow.

Fast forward many centuries and that is what has happened but it's not proper control and living on Erna is a very dangerous business. The priest, Damien Vryce, is one who has learned some control over the Fae. Arriving in the northern city of Jaggonath he meets Adept, Ciani, who is in tune with all things supernatural and Fae. But he hasn't known her more than a couple of days before she is attacked by fiendish creatures and robbed of all of her memories and deep experience in dealing with the Fae.

Damien knows he has to follow the trail of these creatures, back to where they came from, to get Ciani's memories back. Unfortunately, it turns out to be behind the canopy of the Rakhlands. Something there has sent these abominable fiends to pray on humans. Ciani goes with him along with her protege, Senzei... and someone Damien's powers cannot best, Gerald Tarrant. Damien knows he's not like them, but what is he? He's clearly dangerous but dangerous to whom - their enemies or themselves?

So this is a bit of a mixed genre novel. It's clearly science fiction as it involves humans and space travel. That said, it's described as 'Dark Fantasy', and it is that too. There's also  lot of what would come under the heading of horror in this book, but not gory horror, it's very much a fantasy based horror. And it's definitely a 'quest', 'travelling' themed book, my favourite kind of fantasy, so no wonder it suited me so well. 

The two characters that stuck out for me were Damien Vryce and Gerald Tarrant. Vryce is very much the hero and Tarrant a fascinating anti-hero. It's not long before the reader realises what Tarrant is but Vryce seemed a bit slow on the uptake somehow and doesn't understand why he hates the other man so. It's very interesting to watch their interactions. Oddly enough, the whole reason for their journey was Ciani but I didn't get a strong sense of her at all... possibly because she had lost her memory and thus wasn't that interesting. I rather fancy though that the author was more smitten with her two male protagonists and I can understand why.

The world building in the novel is superb. From the magic system with the Fae, to the bleak Rakhlands, the various species of Rakh, 'winter' and how they survive it, fantastic underground cave sequences, all brilliantly done and so beautifully written. Celia Friedman is right up there with my other favourite fantasy writer, Robin Hobb, and I surprise even myself saying that. This was just 'great', I loved it and gave it 5 stars without even having to think on it. I immediately bought book two, When True Night Falls, because I want to know what happens to Vryce and Tarrant on their next adventure which starts tantalisingly right at the end of Black Sun Rising, and looks to involve a sea journey into the unknown. Perfect.

Books read in August

Once again I've been a bit AWOL for a couple of weeks due to visitors and other sundry bits and pieces. But I have been reading and managed seven books in August.

51. The Question Mark - Muriel Jaeger

52. The Girl Beneath the Sea - Andrew Mayne

53. Green for Danger - Christiana Brand

54. Have a Little Faith - Kate Bottley. This autobiography by the TV vicar was quite interesting, written in her chatty style of speaking, it was quite the insight into the ins and outs of becoming a vicar and the sort of thing that happens once you achieve your aim. Also good on how to be good to yourself mentally. 

55. Jane Austen at Home - Lucy Worsley. If you want a good biography of one of the world's most famous classic authors, this one by documentary maker, Lucy Worsley, would fit the bill nicely. (Also recommend Claire Tomalin's book.) It's done by way of all the houses she lived in or were forced upon her, her sister and mother after the father died. An excellent 5 star read.

56. The ABC Murders - Agatha Christie.

This is a Poirot mystery, book number 13 I think, set in the 1930s. Poirot gets a letter, one of those taunting, 'You think you're so clever, but you can't outwit me' types of thing. It indicates that murder is about to take place and that letters of the alphabet are going to be involved. And so it proves to be, a woman with the initials AA killed in Andover, a woman with the initials BB killed in Bexhill and so on. Poirot and Hastings (back from Argentina for a spell) are powerless to do anything about it until the killer kills again and supplies them with more clues. This was Agatha Christie at her best. The idea was definitely to throw the reader off the scent and I fell for it hook, line and sinker. So clever. And beautifully witty as always with lots of verbal sparring between Poirot himself, Hastings and Japp and the addition of another police detective who has no time for Poirot's methods. (I always love the Miss Marples where a detective is dismissive of the old lady in the corner with her knitting.) This got 5 stars from me, no dithering.

57. The Uncanny Gastronomic edited by Zara-Louise Stubbs.  To be reviewed but it's a solid offering of weird stories from the British Library, all of which involve food or eating. Lots of different authors, Shirley Jackson, Christina Rossetti, Saki, Angela Carter, Damon Knight (his sci-fi story, To Serve Man, was my favourite in this collection), Mark Twain and so on. I gave this 3 stars but it was a 3.5 if Goodreads would only do halves. 

So that was my reading for August. Five fiction, two non-fiction. No duds, several stand-outs, The Girl Beneath the Sea, Green for Danger, Jane Austen at Home and The ABC Murders. I call that a pretty good reading month. 

I'm currently reading this:

Black Sun Rising by Celia Friedman is a book I've had on my tbr pile for well over 10 years. It's that rare beast, a mix of science fiction and fantasy and as such is rather interesting. It has a good Goodreads rating so I'm optimistic. Cautiously. 

So, here we are in September, one of my favourite months. As far as I'm concerned it's autumn and thus I shall be indulging in some good creepy fiction as well as lots of crime yarns. I hope you're keeping well and finding lots of good books to read.

Catching up!

It's been a while since I posted, I've had visitors and been busy enjoying the Olympics etc. but still reading, so I thought I'd do a quick catch-up post. 

I read just five books in July, which shows you how busy I was, plus it was Wimbledon fortnight of course. The last book I read for that month and after my last update HERE was Death in the Dark Walk by Deryn Lake. 

It feel like ages since I read this so I'm pinching the synopsis from Goodreads: 

Having just finished his indentures, John Rawlings is celebrating in Vaux Hall Pleasure Gardens when he trips over the body of a young girl. Summoned to the magistrate’s office as prime suspect, Rawlings not only clears his own name but impresses Fielding so much with his power of recollection that he is asked to investigate the crime. From gaming hell to fashionable house, Rawlings follows a trail of lustful liaisons and illicit intrigue which prove beyond a shadow of doubt that the girl has had quite a past … a past with threatening secrets. 

I gave this a 3 stars on Goodreads, there was nothing wrong with it, it was quite enjoyable, but I never did manage to connect with the main character, John Rawlings. This being book 1 in the series, he was very young so perhaps that's why, also he didn't feel like a young man from Georgian times - I think the book was set in the late 18th. century. I did learn quite a lot about Georgian times from it though, so that was fine, good descriptions of Vaux Hall (soon to be Vauxhall) gardens and what went on there. Anyway, I doubt I will read more in the series but you never know.

My first book of August was The Question Mark by Muriel Jaeger. 

This was sent to me (quite a while ago) by the British Library for review. It's a vintage (1926) science-fiction novel of the time-travel variety whereby the main character, Guy Martin, an unhappy office worker, is suddenly yanked forward in time 200 years. It seems like humans now have a Utopian society based on socialism, free from hunger, education and jobs for all, health-care and all that. Martin settles in with a scientist and his family and sets his mind to adjusting to this paradise. But it doesn't take him too long to discover that though everything might look hunkydorey, it isn't. I shall say no more. It was very interesting to read a very early sci-fi novel, written by a woman, long before women were expected to be writing speculative novels. There are some very interesting ideas in this, such as how human society could still be divided in a perfect society, how would people pass the time, what happens to those who are not academic? It's very well written and very readable, and I'm thinking I was a bit mean giving it only a 3 star rating - unfortunately 'again' I just didn't connect with the main protagonist. Very interesting and thought provoking though.

Next, I read The Girl Beneath the Sea by Andrew Mayne.

This is book 1 in the author's Underwater Investigation Unit series. Sloan McPherson works for the Lauderdale Police in Florida as a diving auxiliary officer. She comes, though, from a bit of a crime ridden family, uncle in prison, father a possible smuggler, that kind of thing. So when she finds a dead body while diving in a canal she's an immediate suspect. Push comes to shove and the only police officer willing to help her prove her innocence is the man who put her uncle behind bars. This book had an awful lot of 'thriller' type aspects, focussing as it does on a shady, spy-like dept., of the US government. I found some of it quite chilling and the rest really exciting. I don't dive but found all of the diving scenes fascinating and quite edge of the seat. If you like a fast paced adventure type crime yarn you could do worse than give this a go. I loved it and gave it 5 stars. Will definitely read more in this series.

 

Lastly, we have Green for Danger, a vintage crime novel by Christiana Brand.

This one is set in WW2 in a military hospital in a small village in Kent. Being Kent, it's suffering badly in The Blitz and one night two men are brought in badly injured. One, the village postman, promptly dies on the operating table and it's subsequently discovered that he was somehow murdered by one of the four nurses and three doctors attending the operation. Inspector Cockrill is brought in to look at this very complicated case and has to have a lot of operating theatre procedures explained to him. That's hard enough but why would anyone want to kill the postman? You need to keep your wits about you when reading this and because I was struggling to remember who was who I wrote them all down, something I never do, and found it helped a lot. The blurb on the back of the book describes the plot of this one as 'claustrophobic' and I think that's accurate. The hospital setting and knowing that only these people could've done the deed makes it so and 'these people' you get to know in minute detail. And they're all keeping secrets or not telling all they know. It's a very well crafted crime novel, my first by Christiana Brand but not my last, I grabbed Tour De Force for my Kindle and will look into others.  

So that's my reading up to date. I'm still reading this:

 

It's excellent but, like her Agatha Christie biography, quite densely written, so I'm taking my time over it.

I hope you're all well and finding lots of good books to lose yourselves in. I can feel autumn in the air, my favourite time of year, and am already pondering a few spooky reads for September.

I have been reading...

Not heaps to be honest as it was Wimbledon fortnight for the first two weeks of the month and I watched a lot more of it than I normally would. So good this year, my two favourite players, apart from the Brits who all went out early, were Lulu Sun from New Zealand and Jasmine Paolini from Italy - two bouncy, dynamic players and huge fun to watch. And in a week or so it will the Paris Olympics of course. 

So, books. I started July with Murder Takes a Holiday, an anthology of murder mystery short stories with a holiday theme, edited by Cecily Gayford.

Ten stories in this collection. It started with two stories I'd already read, the first being, The Adventure of the Devil's Foot, a Sherlock Holmes story by ACD of course. It's set in Cornwall on The Lizard Peninsula and I'm always up for a reread of this one as it's 'so' atmospheric. That was followed by a Lord Peter Wimsey which is not one of my favourites but even an average Wimsey is better than a lot of other stuff. After those I had five favourites. The Mystery of Home's Cross by Anthony Berkeley tells the story of a body discovered in the woods but when the man who finds it brings the police the body has gone and no one believes him. Chapter and Verse by Ngaio Marsh is an Inspector Alleyn story about a murder that took place in 1770. I haven't read any Alleyn novels so I must correct that. The Mysterious Visitor by Austin Freeman is about a man who goes on holiday and goes missing. The Fever Tree by Ruth Rendell was set on an African game reserve and was probably the best story in the collection for my money, very atmospheric. A couple go to reinvigorate their marriage after he's had an affair, nice twist at the end. Parking Space by Simon Brett was the last one I liked, another story about a disintegrating marriage and husband who's a social climber and another author I need to read a proper novel by. This anthology has quite a low rating on Goodreads - 3.33 - which really surprises me as I thought it was very solid with no dud stories at all. Oh, well.

Next, I read the third novella in the canal boat series I've been enjoying by Cressida McLaughlin, Cabin Fever. These are light and fluffy and set on a canal with interesting characters and dogs and what's not to love if that's what you're in the mood for?

After that it was Reckless Creed, book 3 in Alex Kava's 'Ryder Creed' series. 

Hard to see what I can say about this as it's a continuation of book 2 and I don't want to spoil it. Basically it's about secret labs in parts of the USA where uncontrolled experiments on human guinea pigs have been taking place. This came to light in book 2 when there was a landslide in South Carolina that engulfed one of these labs and Ryder Creed and his dogs are sent in to find survivors. Someone from the lab got away and book 3 tells what happens next and it is 'scary'. It was written in 2016 I think, and it's odd how many authors there are who predicted pandemics, what would be the cause of them, and how they would spread. Sobering stuff and this was quite edge of the seat reading. I do enjoy this series, good characters, all of them nuanced and interesting, and delightful dogs of course. But I've had enough of pandemics now...

 

 

So that's been my reading so far in July. My two current reads are two non-fictions. First up, Everything is Everything: A Memoir of Love, Hate and Hope by Clive Myrie.

 

Clive is a very well known in the UK as a BBC newsreader, maker of travel documentaries and question-master for Mastermind. I thought this might be an interesting read and it is, covering as it does, some of his childhood as part of a black immigrant family from Bolton near Manchester with origins in Jamaica. It gives a different perspective from the one I know and that's always a good thing. I'm really enjoying this, especially his experiences as a foreign correspondent for the BBC in many countries, which is one of the reasons I wanted to read it. A very readable and fascinating memoir.

Lastly, Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley. 

I love Lucy Worsley's books and TV documentaries and this one lives up to its promise. It charts Austen's life through the various houses she lived in with, first of all, her family in Steventon in Hampshire and then, basically, wherever Jane, Cassandra and their mother could find to house themselves after the father died. The brothers all had careers of course, not so easy for widows and women who couldn't find a husband. I think this is going to take me a while to read as it's very densely written.

I hope you're all having a good July, one that's not 'too' hot, and also finding some good books to read.

Books read in June

Now that it's July, the Wimbledon tennis tournament has my attention, so my reading has dropped off the last few days. But June was not actually a bad reading month for me. I read eight books in all and these are they:

38. The Bordeaux Book Club - Gillian Harvey

39. A Charmed Life - David Essex. Autobiography by the famous British singer, actor, writer. Enjoyed this one a lot.

40. What Would Jane Austen Do? - Linda Corbett

41. The Wild Isles - edited by Patrick Barkham. An anthology of British nature writing, a bit hit and miss but overall not bad.

42. The Canal Boat Cafe - Cressida McLaughlin

43. The Canal Boat Cafe, book 2 - Cressida McLaughlin. A continuation of the story from the first book, great fun. 

44. Death in the Sunshine - Steph Broadribb

This crime yarn is set in a retirement complex in central Florida. Moira is a retired British under-cover police officer, hoping to find a quiet life away from people she knows who might be aware of the secrets she's harbouring. Her mission is to keep herself to herself but this intent is stymied rather when she's the one to discover the dead body of a young woman floating in a swimming pool. Moira is not the only retired police officer living in the complex. There's another British couple, Phillip and Lizzie, he was a DCI and she a crime scene investigator. And then there's retired American cop, Rick. The police are so inept that the four retirees start to investigate themselves and discover that there's still life in the old dogs yet. I rather enjoyed this. The Florida retirement village setting was unusual although it was rather a stretch to imagine 'three' retired Brits in the same place, all previously attached to the British police. I also struggled to believe that the local police would that antagonistic. But I liked the way the four main characters with their various secrets were written and having each chapter written from the point of view of each of them worked for me. It kept me guessing about what had happened in their previous lives and even at the end we realise that not everything has come to light. Interesting. I will definitely read more in this series as I thought this was a decent start.

45. Frederica - Georgette Heyer. This was a reread for the 'Reread an old favourite' category in a Book Bingo  challenge I'm doing with a friend. It was like snuggling into a comfy old blanket as I immersed myself in the story of how Frederica and her young family inveigle themselves into the affections of the Marquis of Alverstoke. No one did Regency Romance like Heyer and I enjoyed this so much I plan to reread a few more favourites, Arabella, Sylvester etc. before too long.

Oh, here's a strange thing that happened while I was reading Frederica. It has a long scene about two thirds of the way in concerning an adventure the youngest brother has with a hot-air balloon. That mode of transport was in its infancy when this book was set. So, I'm sitting there reading this when I hear noises outside and when I looked out there was only a hot-air balloon floating along just above the house! How's that for weird?

So, eight books is not bad for me, I liked them all so that's even better. And I even managed a couple of non-fictions which I failed to do in May. 

My total for July so far is two and I will be back soon to talk abut those. Hope the summer is treating you well and it isn't too hot where you are. It certainly isn't here, it's more like autumn, but that's ok with me, I'm not a hot-house plant. 

 

Time for a catch-up

How on earth can it be mid-June already? I feel like the year is flying by and before you know it we'll be into autumn, especially as it's the longest day tomorrow. Summer's not my favourite time of year, I hate too much heat, and so far this year we've been lucky and Spring into Summer has been really nice with temps. in the high 60s, low 70s. That suits me very nicely.

Apologies for being AWOL for a few weeks. I've not been reading as much as usual, fueled by a strange inability to settle to anything. I'm assuming this is quite normal after a serious loss but I'm getting there, albeit slowly, and actually have some books to talk about today.

So, I started June with The Bordeaux Book Club by Gillian Harvey. 

There's an awful lot of bookclub themed contemporary fiction around these days, this one being slightly different with its setting of Bordeaux in France. As usual, a motley group come together to discuss books. Grace is the instigator of the group, she's an older, single lady with a finger in a lot of pies. She ropes in her friend, Leah, who lives on a small holding with her husband and daughter and is finding out the hard way that The Good Life is not all it's cracked up to be. Add to them Monica, a young mum, husband away a lot and struggling with a new baby, George, a builder, and Alfie, very young and clearly harboring a secret and you have a new bookclub for Brits in Bordeaux. This was a bit formulaic, the usual problems to be solved with everyone coming together to help, or not. I enjoyed it a lot but didn't feel the setting of Bordeaux came very much alive, it could've been anywhere but it was a very decent 'people' sort of read. 

 

I've been reading The Wild Isles: An Anthology of the Best of British and Irish Nature Writing, edited by Patrick Barkham for a couple of months and finished it last week. It was a bit hit and miss for me. There were dozens of authors (it's a huge book) such as Dorothy Wordsworth, Kathleen Jamie, Roger Deakin, Nan Shepherd, Horatio Clare, Kenneth Grahame and so on. Some pieces were excellent but quite a few were just a bit tedious. I see from reviews on Goodreads that I'm not alone in this opinion. 

A Charmed Life by David Essex is pretty much what it says on the tin - an account of the singer and actor's rather charmed life in showbiz. Fascinating, I enjoyed it a lot but it's not a kiss and tell sort of account, he's clearly a really nice chap.

What Would Jane Austen Do? by Linda Corbett was next.

Maddy Shaw has her column in a magazine cancelled and is jobless until she discovers a 'black sheep' uncle has left her a huge house in the Cotswolds (which, as we all know, often happens.) Off she goes to live in it for a year as the will stipulated, but will she then sell up? The locals welcome her to the point where she suddenly finds herself in charge of the village literary festival. She's also met a local crime writer, Cameron Massey, nice dog but very grumpy owner. Can she persuade him to come and give a talk at the event? This was fun. I mean the outcome was never in question but I liked Maddy's Jane Austen obsession and the grumpy author with a bit of a superiority complex was well written. As was the village and the locals who lived there. A fun read.

 

 

I seem to be in mood for fluff because I then moved on to a couple of novellas by Cressida McLaughlin, set on a canal boat, the canal itself being next to a small village and pub etc. All Aboard is book1.

Summer Freeman, an artist specialisng in sign writing, is returning to her mother's canal boat café nine months after she died. A friend has been keeping it going but it's struggling. Summer takes it over but it's hard with so many memories closing in on her and antipathy from the local owner of the pub. Eventually her bacon butties and delicious brownies win people over and a growing friendship with another boat owner, Mason, a wildlife photographer, doesn't do any harm. This had a lovely sense of the British countryside about it, the canal and surrounds feeling very real. Summer's indecisiveness and inability to put her foot down with certain people slightly annoyed me, more than slightly, but I liked the dogs and the birds and it was charming enough for me go straight on to book 2, Casting Off, which I've already finished but can't say anything about as it would involve spoiling the end of Book 1. 

 

So, my current read is this:

Death in the Sunshine by Steph Broadribb is set in Florida in a retirement complex. Moira is an ex-police inspector from the UK who discovers a body in a swimming pool. She gets together with several other retired folk to solve a murder that the police don't seem very interested in. Very good so far. 

Next month is Jane Austen July and I'm planning to try to get a few Austen related titles under my belt. I've never read Sense and Sensibility so would like to get to that and then I have a whole heap of other possibilities as I do enjoy anything related to Jane Austen and her writing.

So that's my June reading so far. I hope you're all keeping well and enjoying some good books.  

I have been reading...

 Again, I meant to post a bit sooner than this but I'm still not quite back in the swing of things and suspect that might continue for some time. The oddness of it all is very hard to shake. I have been reading though and thought I would a do brief rundown of the books I've been reading this month.

I finished this BLCC collection, Guilty Creatures, edited of course by Martin Edwards. The theme in this one is 'animals', each story has a connection to wildlife or pets. So we have a chap with a fear of earthworms, a yarn about nobbling racehorses, there're gorillas, parakeets, slugs, all life is here. Authors include G.K. Chesterton, Christiana Brand, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Josephine Bell, Edgar Wallace and so on. Overall, I thought this was a better than average collection, only a few failed to please and the rest were top notch. I didn't jot down my usual notes so I can't name any favourites, other than remembering that the Father Brown was good and so was the Christiana Brand. And what a glorious cover!

The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White is a novel published in 1936, and subsequently made into a Hitchcock film, The Lady Vanishes. I'd seen that years ago, so the plot was slightly familiar, but I couldn't remember the outcome, so it was fine. Socialite, Iris Carr, is travelling back by train from a holiday somewhere mountainous (they don't say exactly where but I think northern Italy) in Europe. An English governess, Miss Froy, takes her under her wing, but the next day the woman has disappeared and no one in the carriage can remember her being there. Is Iris suffering the results of sunstroke  or is there a conspiracy of silence. Excellent read this one, a little too heavy on the surreal, 'am I going crazy?' aspect but nevertheless, a real pageturner and not a little creepy, to my mind anyway.

 

The Man by the Sea by Jack Benton is book one in his 'Slim Harding' series. Slim is a private detective, ex-army and an alcoholic. He's hired by a woman who thinks her husband is having an affair. Slim duly sets about following the husband only to discover that what he's actually doing is driving to an isolated cove and reading something aloud to the incoming tide. Slim thinks the man might be mad. Delving a bit deeper, the case ends up being connected to a woman who went missing just before her wedding. Is she dead and haunting this part of the wild Lake District coast? And what does she have to do with a man reading to the waves? I liked this a lot despite not being all that enamoured of the detective, Slim Hardy. As is the nature of the beast, his alcoholism rules and that was hard for me to identify with. That said, the story has a huge sense of place and is really atmospheric. I also found the plot intriguing enough to carry me through the book without any wish to abandon it. I will probably, at some stage, continue on with the series.

So, my most recent book, I finished it yesterday, is Illyrian Spring by Ann Bridge. Lady Grace Kilmichael  is leaving her husband and grown-up children behind and going off on a European trip. Only they don't know. She thinks her husband might be having an affair and the children are not really interested in her nowadays. She does leave a letter to her husband however, telling him she's off to Greece to paint as Grace has recently become quite a well-known artist. She doesn't go to Greece. She starts in Paris and then on to Venice where she comes across Nicholas, aged 23, half Grace's age, who wants to be a painter but whose parents won't hear of it, they want him to be an architect. She takes him on to mentor him, and the pair travel together along the Dalmatian (present day Croatia) coast, not just painting but learning a lot about life from each other. So this sounds like a fairly simple plot and indeed it is. If I'm honest the whole thing is more of a travelogue and homage to the Dalmation coast and, in fact, I read that the impact of this book when it was first published in 1935 was to up tourism in the area and even Edward and Mrs. Simpson took a cruise down the coast to see what all the fuss was about. Fascinating. 'And' I have no problem understanding it because that was exactly what the book made me want to do... pack my bags and set off! It has quite an introspective sort of narrative and this might not be everyone's cup of tea. I was reminded of Absent in the Spring by Agatha Christie writing as Mary Westmacott, or Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim, they too have older ladies looking for a break from humdrum life or difficult relatives and trying to find a way to make life work for them now they're older. It's not often I finish a book and find myself wanting to go back to the beginning and start again but I did with this. A five star read and certainly a book that will be in my top ten for this year.

So, that's me, up to date. I hope you're all well and finding lots of good book to read this spring.