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A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Stars Across the Ocean by Kimberley Freeman

1874: Only days before she is to leave the foundling home where she grew up, Agnes Resolute discovers that, as a baby, she had been abandoned with a small token of her mother: a unicorn button.

Agnes always believed her mother had been too poor to keep her, but after working as a laundress in the home she recognises the button as belonging to Genevieve Breckby, the beautiful and headstrong daughter of a local noble family. Agnes had seen Genevieve once, in the local village, and had never forgotten her.

Despite having no money, Agnes will risk everything in a quest that will take her from the bleak moors of northern England to the harsh streets of London, then on to Paris and Ceylon. As Agnes follows her mother’s trail, she makes choices that could cost her dearly. Finally, in Australia, she tracks Genevieve down. But is Genevieve capable of being the mother Agnes hopes she will be?

This historical fiction novel by Kimberley Freeman moves between past and present. The book opens in the present (no specific year mentioned) with a young woman named Victoria travelling from Australia to England to assist her ill mother, who has had an accident at work and is currently in recovery. Victoria helps her mother recover some documents from her workplace and then she finds a letter from the 19th century. It’s a letter from an unknown woman to her child that she gave away. Victoria reads the letter and becomes enthralled in the circumstances surrounding it.

The letter then abruptly cuts off and the novel takes us back to Agnes Resolute’s story in the mid 19th century. She is on a desperate search to find her birth mother and this search takes her to London, Paris, Ceylon and then on to Australia. It’s a novel about loss, love, identity and family.

Even though Harriet adored me, even though she didn’t believe women should be so constrained as we are, she used all the words I expected. ‘Improper’ and ‘unsuitable’: even ‘shocking’ and ‘indecent’.
‘Emile Venson is a carpenter,’ she said to me at the end. ‘You cannot fall in love with a carpenter.’

Kimberley Freeman has crafted an enjoyable historical fiction novel. The transition between past and present is smooth and not confusing at all, and the writing is effortless. The storyline keeps readers on their toes and eager to find out more, and the huge cast of characters are interesting to read and engaging for the reader.

Agnes spends almost the entire novel following Genevieve Breckby, an allusive woman that Agnes believes is her mother. Genevieve is hard to track down. First, Agnes travels to London and works for a time with Genevieve’s sister Marianna and Genevieve’s son Julius. And then she continues to follow the woman’s trail all the way to Australia. Kimberley Freeman constantly flicks between past and present as Victoria finds out more information about the illusive woman who has written this letter. The reader then finds out all the circumstances of the birth because the actual story is being detailed intermittently as well.

Agnes’ heart fell all the way to her toes. This house did not look inhabited, just like the house in Colombo. That meant she was miles and miles from anywhere, without means to return to the village — and, quite honestly, barely any idea which way the village lay — and evening was approaching.

I felt like Agnes wasn’t a hugely likeable protagonist. She came across extremely naive and there were a few parts in the novel where I could sense exactly what was going to happen. When she decides to sleep at the abandoned train station, I knew she was going to wake up to find that her suitcase had been stolen. And when she arrives in London and is accommodated by Madame Beaulieu, I could tell that Beaulieu was a running a brothel and would no doubt be an antagonist in the novel. Everyone seemed to know it but Agnes, and when Madame Beaulieu took her purse and wouldn’t give her back her money, I was not at all surprised.

“After her encounter with Monsieur Valois, she was more certain than ever that she would not sell her body as Madame Beaulieu wanted her to, and no amount of vile menial work would have her change her mind. She could endure it; it wasn’t forever.”

I know that Agnes is supposed to be in her late teens, but Kimberley dropped a lot of hints and things then became a little predictable. Agnes’ nativity became a little exhausting, thus making her an unlikable character. The ending to the novel, which I won’t give away in this review, was also something that I found predictable. I picked the ‘twist’ about 100 pages into the book, feeling like Kimberley made it too easy for the reader and that there were a lot of hints and comments that gave away the ending.

I would recommend this book to lovers of historical fiction — while it has some flaws, it is interesting and enjoyable. Kimberley has illustrated all of the different settings so well; she has captured the feel and atmosphere of each location with great skill. And as far as historical fiction goes, Stars Across the Ocean is intriguing and engaging and you’ll want to read until the end.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Stars Across the Ocean
Kimberley Freeman
May 2017
Hachette Publishers

Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars by Miranda Emmerson

In a tiny two-bed flat above a Turkish café on Neal Street lives Anna Treadway, a young dresser at the Galaxy Theatre.

When the American actress Iolanthe Green disappears after an evening’s performance at the Galaxy, the newspapers are wild with speculation about her fate. But as the news grows old and the case grows colder, it seems Anna is the only person left determined to find out the truth.

Her search for the missing actress will take her into an England she did not know existed: an England of jazz clubs and prison cells, backstreet doctors and seaside ghost towns, where her carefully calibrated existence will be upended by violence but also, perhaps, by love.

Set in London in the 1960s, Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars is mostly a mystery novel, with young dresser Anna Treadway taking it upon herself to search for the missing actress Lolanthe Green. It’s quite a clever novel, because it’s actually not just about the disappearance of Lolanthe, but it also an exploration about minorities in London and their experiences in the town.

“You’re sure she ran away?” Helen asked her.
“I have to believe it.”
“From what, though?”
“From us?” Anna shrugged. “I don’t know. Money trouble.”
“Men,” said Rachel.

Through Anna’s detective work, we meet all kinds of characters, including Brennan, Orla and their daughter Gracie. Anna intersects with Leonard, who is gay and is struggling to live with that because it’s illegal. Ottamar is a Turkish cafe owner who is overworked and overly worried about his daughter Samira. She seems to be disconnecting with the family and spending all of her time away from them, and Ottamar worries about what this could mean for the family. Finally, we meet Aloysius, who is well-spoken and is helpful to Anna in her quest to find Lolanthe, but he’s subjected to appalling racism and police brutality because of the colour of his skin.

“Ottmar’s mind drifted free of the assembled group and took him back to Melanippus’ vast living room in Nicosia with its marble floor and long dark leather seats. In a former life he’d written book reviews for a Greek magazine in his native Cyprus. The only Turk on the staff, he’d spent his evenings smoking cigarettes and talking about art and philosophy and life with all the other twenty-somethings who dreamed of flying away to a life of avant-garde delights in Paris or Berlin.”

Miranda has a talent for weaving lots of different characters together and moulding them in the one scene. The reader doesn’t feel confused or unsure of who is talking or who is the focus of the chapter — all the characters blend well together. Miranda has also taken us on a journey through the good and bad parts of history. We’re led through the streets of backdoor abortion and side street racism, but we’re also witnesses to the beautiful familial bond that some of the characters have, and the support that they have for each other. Some of the characters help Anna when she’s in need, and it’s great to see their friendships and relationships form.


“The police had beaten Aloysius and walked away from it. And somehow the overturning of one institution has cast all the rest into doubt. If the police were not what she supposed them to be, were the lawyers, were the priests, were the politicians?”

Miranda has done a wonderful job of capturing 1960s London, with the evocative description of the setting and the cultural relations between the characters. Set in London, we bear witness to the hopes and dreams of people in the arts. Some of them are past their prime and coming to terms with their ageing looks. Some are aware that their skin colour will probably always be a barrier for them in life and that their dreams may be farther than they thought.

“Look out into the darkness,” Lolanthe had told her. “Look out into the darkness and you’ll see them.”

Despite how lyrical and intriguing this story is, I did find my attention waning. I couldn’t help but feel like the story went on tangents and the origin of the novel and the reason we were drawn into the story (the disappearance of ‘Lanny’ Green) got a little lost along the way. Things became a little convoluted, and I got a little bit confused.

Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars is a novel about fitting in, in a city that’s not very forgiving to outsiders and is not welcoming for newcomers. It’s a tough decade for the characters, and finding Iolanthe Green has plenty of roadblocks. London is filled with casual racism, police brutality, immigration, loneliness and characters dreaming of more.

I received a copy of this book on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars
Miranda Emmerson
January 2017
HarperCollins Publishers

But Then I Came Back by Estelle Laure

Eden has always let her head lead the way. It’s why she excels at ballet, at school, and at life in general. But when she nearly drowns and then wakes from a month-long coma, everything is different. She’s troubled by dreams that seem more real than waking life, and her neat cookie-cutter existence is no longer satisfying.

Unable to stifle her passionate heart anymore, she finds herself drawn to a boy with melting-chocolate eyes, and to a future different to what she ever imagined.

That’s when Eden discovers that when it comes to love, first you fall, then you have to leap.

But Then I Came Back is a young adult novel about a girl who wakes from a coma. She remembers things from when she was unconscious — she remembers another girl and she remembers the light, easy feelings she had. Everything was simpler then, and then she wakes up and she has to learn how to eat and talk again and she’s confused about everything.

Firstly, you should note that But Then I Came Back is a sequel to Estelle’s debut novel This Raging Light. This book takes place after This Raging Light ends, and features the same characters but from a different perspective. You don’t need to read Estelle’s first novel to be able to follow this (I hadn’t read it) but I imagine it would make a lot of things easier. There were moments in the book where I felt like I was missing something, like a certain character wasn’t really introduced but they should’ve been. Finding out that this is almost-but-not-really a sequel was a big ‘AHA!’ moment for me.

This book raises a lot of questions about death and what happens to a person when they’re on the brink of dying but then they come back. What do they see? How do they feel? Are they changed after this moment?

“The girl who is not Lucille who has tattoos of angels on her arms opens her mouth like she’s trying to tell me something. Bubbles drift toward the surface. That’s where I want to be. I kick my legs, but she tugs me back and forces my wrist.”

When Eden wakes up in hospital, she realises that the girl that she saw when she was unconscious is the same girl who is still in a coma in the same hospital ward as her. But that girl looks like she’s not going to make it, and all of sudden Eden is starting to think about death and dying and if anyone else has experienced something similar when they almost died.

I quite enjoyed this book. I think Estelle took a concept that is quite common in young adult fiction (a young girl waking up from a coma) and made it that little bit different. It forces the reader to think beyond the normal, into the paranormal. At one point, Eden consults a woman with supernatural abilities to see if she might be able to contact this unconscious girl, and she befriends a young boy Joe who is the only other person visiting this patient in the hospital.

I loved the strong sense of family in the novel — despite some bickering, Eden and her twin brother Digby are quite close and he’s there for her when she wakes up. Her parents are also supportive and helpful and it’s nice to see their presence in a young adult novel.

“Digby’s doing a lot of talking, which is a good thing, because I’m still not totally used to being outside yet. The hospital was a self-contained concrete block that held all of my necessities. Now my house has become the same. Outside, there’s a storm brewing, with angry clouds, the wind so vicious I can feel it shaking Beast as we rumble down the hill and the whole world trembles.”

The beginning chapter, written from the point of view of Eden’s best friend Lucille, probably isn’t needed and could’ve been deleted from the book. Mostly because it’s written in second person, when the whole rest of the novel is written in first person from Eden’s point of view. Additionally, there’s no real reason why Lucille needs to have a chapter in the book when it’s about Eden and how she copes with waking up from the coma. Perhaps this was done for those readers who’ve read This Raging Light.

Another weakness in the novel was Eden’s friendship with Joe, which was a little underdeveloped and their feelings for each other were a little vague in the book. At times, I felt like his character was a little redundant and was causing the book to go off tangent. He didn’t feel important enough and he didn’t feel like he was aiding Eden as much as the blurb made him out to.

But Then I Came Back is a quick, enjoyable read for those of you who love young adult fiction. You don’t need to read the first book to understand this one, so you should regard this as a standalone.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

But Then I Came Back
Estelle Laure
April 2017
Hachette Publishers

The End of the Day by Claire North

Charlie has a new job. He gets to travel, and he meets interesting people, some of whom are actually pleased to see him.

It’s good to have a friendly face, you see. At the end.

But the end of all things is coming. Charlie’s boss and his three associates are riding out, and it’s Charlie’s job to go before.

Sometimes he is sent as a courtesy, sometimes as a warning. He never knows which.

The End of the Day is an adult fiction novel about The Harbinger of Death, also known as Charlie. He meets everyone — but only once. You might meet him in a hospital, in a warren, or at the scene of a traffic accident. Then again, you might meet him at the North Pole — he gets everywhere, our Charlie. Sometimes he is sent as a courtesy, sometimes as a warning. He never knows which.

You see, Charlie is the person who visits you before Death does. Sometimes it’s because you’re going to die, but sometimes it’s because he needs to gift you something. In one instance, Charlie had to gift someone a helmet. That person then wore the helmet and it was the only thing that kept him alive when he was hit by a car. And so Death passed him on by, no longer needing to collect him.

Charlie learns a lot from his new job as the Harbinger of Death. He sees new places and learns so much about the world — he opens his eyes. He is also sees the horrors of the world. In one part of the book, he is in Africa with a female comedian and a group of men approach them, intending to sexually assault her. They get away, but when Charlie reports it to the police, they pretend it didn’t happen and they make excuses for the man.

“You don’t know much about our country, do you?” breathed the older man, not unkindly. “That’s all right. Not many people do. They talk about this continent — Africa — as if it was one big place, as if your Scotland was the same as Greece. It’s Africa, they say, it’s just how Africa is.”

The End of the Day is quite poetic and lyrical, with shortened sentences and experimentation of punctuation. There are almost 100 chapters in this book, with some chapters only being half a page or less. It allows the reader to go through the book quickly, reading the story in short bursts.

The novel is broken up into nine parts, each separated an even amount. I found this quite useful, because in addition to the chapters, breaking the book up into parts allowed me to easily bookmark where I was up to and come back to it. Each part of the book really focused on a different aspect of Charlie’s life, so if you took some time between reading each part, it wouldn’t matter. You’d still be able to follow what was happening.

“A man lay on the ice.
He lay like one sleeping, a peaceful child, his knees tucked in, his head resting on his hands, his eyes closed. He was, Charlie was absolutely certain, dead.”

Charlie forms his own questions on his journey. What is death? Why is death? What role does he really play in death? A few times in the novel, Charlie is kidnapped and asked those questions. He can’t really answer, because he’s still struggling to understand it himself.

The End of the Day is a novel to be savoured — the writing is beautiful and the characterisation thick with layers. There’s definitely more at play here. The book is making a comment on the world, and the rapid decline of it. The book is making a social commentary about all the different aspects of the world and all the things that impact it negatively, from Death to War to Pestilence to Famine. There’s a Harbinger for all of them, and Charlie crosses paths with them too in the novel.

“Rock far rock far
still far
near now?
near yet far
the ice roars the ice is breaking the ice is breaking beneath your feet walk and
a thundering behind, the world growing short again, the collapse chasing them as they moved”

I really loved this novel, but it is an investment for readers. It’s long and it requires a fair bit extra to unpack it — more than your usual fiction novel. Read this if you love your literary fiction. Read this is if you’re looking for something that’s just a little bit different (in both plot and writing structure).

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The End of the Day
Claire North
April 2017
Hachette Publishers

Spindrift by Tamara McKinley

Set in 1905, Spindrift is a historical fiction novel about three generations of women journeying from Tasmania to the Isle of Skye in Scotland. Sixty-five year old Christy wants to make the trek back to where she was born and lived out her childhood years. Unwilling to let her go by herself, Christy’s daughter Anne and granddaughter Kathryn accompany her.

Tamara has established the setting of the novel and really created picturesque imagery for the reader to enjoy. She’s crafted Tasmania and Scotland beautifully and I really enjoyed both settings in the novel. Spindrift is well-paced, with plenty of historical references and enough mystery and intrigue to keep me reading.

There were a few things about the book that I disliked. Despite the bond these three develop, and despite the epic journey they undertake, I felt like the three characters weren’t very likeable. Christy seemed bland, Anne was so overly flawed that she was unlikeable, and Kathryn seemed unrealistic for a young girl of her age.

“Kathryn felt sorry for her mother’s embarrassment, but she really only had herself to blame. Grandmother had warned them that they should dress appropriately for their journey, which would involve getting on and off boats and ramps, and although she’d heeded the advice, her had, as usual, ignored it.”

“Gregor’s eyes twinkled and Kathryn giggled, but Anne gave a disgusted snort and moved to the far side of the carriage to distance herself from her mother’s shocking behaviour.”

Tamara McKinley has a habit of hinting at a conversation or known fact, but drawing it out to try and keep the reader interested. Instead of including dialogue for a conversation, Tamara will paraphrase the exchange but keep out vital information. Although this is intended to keep the reader interested in whatever ‘secret’ information is left out, it actually feels like a cheap trick and it frustrates the reader.

Harold, Anne’s husband, is presented with some documents that jeopardise some of Christy’s land, except, a lot of information is left out for most of the book and you find yourself confused. The reader doesn’t actually know what the lawsuit is about until right at the end of the novel when Christy talks about it. So, for the entire novel you’re reading about how worried Harold is and how stressed Christy and Anne are, but you really have no idea what they’re talking out. It’s quite confusing for the reader and at times I felt my interest faltering.

“Read through that while I take a bath. Once I’m clean and fed, I’ll be in a better frame of mind to discuss it with you.”
Harold went up to the sweeping staircase and along the wide landing to the suite of rooms in the west wing.”

After the above conversation, there’s a section break while Hamish reads the documents and so then they have a conversation about these papers, but the reader has no idea what’s on them!

Despite these few flaws, there were some great aspects to the book. Tamara sets up suspense and intrigue well – there are parallel stories running throughout the book and therefore there are a lot of secrets being uncovered and a lot of suspicions being raised. The ending to the mysteries are not predictable and quite well thought out – they satisfyingly rap up the storyline and bring an end to the story.

I would really only recommend this book to readers who love historical fiction. Without any romance to carry the story, it can feel like a chore at times.

Thank you to Hachette Publishers for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Spindrift
Tamara McKinley
March 2017
Hachette Publishers

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