Tag Archive | Net Galley

The Little Porto Book Club by Rebecca Raisin

Aug18

The Meddling Mothers

The Little Porto Book Club by Rebecca Raisin is a most delightful contemporary novel that entertained me from the start.

The book has a wonderful light-hearted and fun tone as we drop in on an eclectic bunch of characters who are avid readers.

The Little Porto Book Club draws people from different walks of life who are united by their love of reading. As the book progresses, we glimpse the individual’s lives. Each one is battling something that no-one knows anything about.

Along the way there are misunderstandings which means the amateur super sleuths start investigating – always making two plus two equal five!

We meet meddling mothers who try to give romance a helping hand.

Grief is a major theme. “Grief is like a shadow, just behind you, but always there.” Grief is the price we pay for love. “This pain is my love for you, a love that has nowhere to go, it’s directionless, because you’re not there.” Sometimes grief is complicated when you suddenly find secrets coming to life.

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The Lost Husband by Shari J Ryan

Aug9

Love Will Not Die

The Lost Husband by Shari J Ryan is a powerful and heartbreaking historical dual timeline novel that consumed me from the start.

The action is set in Amsterdam at the start of World War II, and then moves to Auschwitz in January 1945. Historians will recognise the latter date as the time when the Nazis emptied Auschwitz of all those who were able to walk, to go on a death march, before the Soviets liberated the camp. The story sees the leading characters marching through Poland. Both time periods alternate as the tale is told through the eyes of the leading lady.

We learn about the indomitable human spirit. Despite witnessing her husband die at the hands of the Nazis, the leading lady kept going for the life within. Darkness and despair could not kill the human spirit.

Ending up in Auschwitz, we see the dehumanisation of the people – their names, clothes and hair were taken from them but their humanity remained. “I still see humans. Suffering.” Little acts of kindness, that said ‘I see you’, meant a great deal.

Suffering from dysentery, a character wonders if she hallucinated seeing her husband in a Nazi uniform. She was left “in limbo between grief and a sliver of hope that my eyes had deceived me.” She needed to know. She clung to the hope that what she had seen all those years ago, simply wasn’t the truth.

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The Secret Dressmaker by Jenny O’Brien

Aug6

Entertaining

The Secret Dressmaker by Jenny O’Brien is a historical novel that entertains from the start. It is the second book in Threads Of Resistance series but can be read as a stand-alone.

The reader is treated to the landscape of occupied France, mainly Paris, as we join characters trying to disrupt the Nazi war effort and learn their secrets.

There are personal secrets to be unravelled too. A young woman has returned to France as part of the resistance, and also to search for her twin daughters who were taken from her eighteen years earlier – and what she discovers, is shocking.

We witness ugly events as a character is consumed by jealousy. There are no lengths to which she will not stoop.

Within families, members are on opposite sides of the war.

The walls of a house that nuns have provided in the past, continues to be a safe haven.

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The Children On The Train by Anna Stuart

Aug4

Brave Hearts

The Children On The Train by Anna Stuart is a powerful novel of World War II that grabbed my attention from the start.

The story surrounds the Jewish children and orphans who escaped Nazi Germany via the Kindertransport before the outbreak of war and closed borders in 1939. We witness the bravery of all those involved. Lives were put on hold; sacrifices made, in order to get the children to safety.

Along the way, good friends were made, and lost.

As the grip of the Nazis tightened on society, a gentile husband and his Jewish wife, make a painful decision, designed to keep the whole family safer – but will it? We see the cruelty inflicted by the Nazis via both physical and mental torture.

Huge hearts put the children first, above all else, including personal safety.

As the storm clouds darken over Europe, there are still pockets of goodness. Hope for a better future still lives in hearts.

All the characters were well drawn and believable. With her marvellous pen, the author has evoked the atmosphere of both love, and also terror, as the Nazis raged across Europe.

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