Right then, here we go, new year, new titles!
So, I started 2022 with an easy to read Lisa Jewell, Then She Was Gone, all about a woman who lost her daughter at the age of 15 (the daughter was 15, not the woman) – she was taken from the street on her way to the library. The story follows the mother and jumps back and forth between then and when Ellie was taken. It was ok, a standard thriller. People rave about Lisa Jewell, but I remain unconvinced…
In Ashes Lie is the second in the Onyx Court series, this one set during the reign of Charles 1st, his death and the takeover by Oliver Cromwell, but all told from the underground faerie domain, the Onyx Court which lies beneath London, and the fates of the human monarchs are intertwined with that of the faerie rulers… It’s really very good.
Midnight in Everwood and Lily were two unexpected library books which jumped out at me while getting books with the kids. I have so many TBRs that I don’t bother with library books but these were too good to turn down. To see more about these two books, see my previous post, Borrowed Joy…
I next read The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes. Now, I will be honest and say that I wasn’t convinced by this to begin with. Not because of the book itself, but I’d read the blurb of Me Before You and those books and they are categorically NOT my thing, and also, (judgemental bitch alert!) – the name Jojo for a grown ass woman put me right off. Well, I could not have been more wrong. It took a long time to get going, and at one point I thought I’d been proved right, but I was not. The last half of the book is excellent, what a strong story of womanhood, of friendship, of love and bravery and being true to yourself.
I followed that with a trip down memory lane (a very old memory lane, I haven’t read this since I was about 12!) with the Borrowers Omnibus. What a lovely, lovely set of stories that is. Exciting, and nothing lost from knowing what was going to happen next. I remember putting my little Oh Penny people under the clock at home when I was little… So tempted to go to mum and dad’s and do that again! Reading this again as an adult though gave me a totally different viewpoint of the Borrowers’ plight, and how brave is Homily? The bravest, most courageous character in the whole book. There you go, women winning again…
Then I rounded off the month with In the Dark by Cara Hunter, the second in the DI Adam Fawley series – I do love a detective series, me. Very exciting, and a clever twist! Some of the women don’t come out of this one so well, just to balance things up a bit!
So, ratings are as follows:
Then She Was Gone: 
In Ashes Lie
Midnight in Everwood
Lily
The Giver of Stars
The Borrowers Omnibus
In the Dark
Jackie's jottings 