The cover for Maureen Lindley’s second novel is so striking and I’m sure the contents will be the same. I love historical fiction and A Girl Like You covers a period of American history that I know very little about and sounds like a fascinating read featuring a strong lead character. I’m looking forward to reading this soon – it’s published by Bloomsbury on the 6th June 2013 in trade paperback and ebook formats.

Thirteen-year-old Satomi Baker is used to being different. It is 1939, and in rural west-coast California being half-white and half-Japanese gets you noticed. Her parents seem so happy together, and so proud to be American, but she has never felt she exactly fits in – even though her striking looks have caught the eye of the most popular boy at school.

When war is declared, Satomi’s father Aaron is one of the first to sign up, and he is sent to the base at Pearl Harbour. He never returns. News of the Japanese attack transmits through the Bakers’ crackling radio. Satomi’s strong, stoical mother Tamura is flung into a private realm of grief – while all around them the world changes irrevocably. The community that has tolerated its foreign residents for decades suddenly turns on them, and along with thousands of other Japanese-American citizens (and anyone with ‘one drop of Japanese blood’ in them) they are sent to a brutal labour camp in the wilderness which future generations will choose to forget.

At Manzanar Satomi learns what it takes to survive, who she can trust, and what it means to be American. But it will be years before she will discover who she really is under the surface of her skin. A Girl Like You is her story, and the riveting and moving story of a lost generation.

What if Cupid fell out of love with love?

Cupid is exhausted. Modern day matchmaking is tough – people are busy, their hearts are harder to hit and he’s had enough of wall-to-wall romance. And St Valentine has noticed…

Annelise is a Lost Cause. She runs a dating agency but her heart is colder than a penguin’s feet. She thinks love is about compatibility and has no time for passion.

Can Cupid prove to St Valentine that he hasn’t lost his touch by melting Annelise’s heart? Or is it curtains for Cupid?

As I write, Holly Hepburn’s debut e-novella is the number one best selling short story on Amazon. It’s a well deserved achievement; Cupidity is a fab, fun, romantic, quick read and I really enjoyed Holly’s writing.

If I have a complaint at all, it’s that this book was too short. I could easily have read a full length novel about Cupid and his adventures! As he is sent to earth to rediscover the romance Cupid is transformed into human form and what a handsome human he is

Holly Hepburn has created a very likeable male lead for her novel and I found I had a lot of sympathy for him – who hasn’t had days when they’ve had enough of their job?! In his earthly form Cupid turns out to be not only gorgeous but  charming and funny and I couldn’t wait to find out how he’d do on his mission.

Cupid’s mission is to put himself back on track by finding love for Annelise Hart, who despite running a dating agency has sworn off love after being badly hurt by a past relationship. Annelise is on the ‘lost causes’ list and it took a little while for me to warm to her as she’s a bit of an ice maiden at first but I liked her shrewdness and as the story progressed I enjoyed the way her character developed.

Cupid’s deadline is Midsummer’s Day giving him just seven days to sort Annelise’s love life out. Will he do it? Can he right the wrongs of Annelises’s past? I’m not going to tell you (!) but it’s well worth the pennies this ebook costs to read the story for yourself and find out

Set in London and Paris, Cupidity has romance in buckets; it’s a light, funny, sweet story and a perfect quick and satisfying read that left me with a smile on my face. I’m already looking forward to reading more from Holly in future.

5/5

Cupidity is out now in ebook formats!

Find out more about Holly Hepburn and her writing at: http://hollyhepburn.com/

Quite a few years ago, a friend of mine told me about an author called Lisa Jewell. He said I’d love her books and lent me one to read. I raced through it and happily tripped off to the bookshop to buy more! Since then I’ve read everything Lisa has written and in my opinion her books just keep getting better, so you can imagine my excitement when I was offered the chance to send Lisa some questions and to be part of her blog tour for the paperback release of Before I Met You. Please give Lisa a warm welcome to the blog and do check out the other stops on the tour!

I absolutely loved Before I Met You but for readers who haven’t come across it yet, please could you sum it up in a sentence?

Oh I’m terrible at summing things up. Could it be two sentences? Before I Met You is the story of two women living during two very different eras, the 1990′s and the 1920’s. Betty comes to London to track down the beneficiary of her grandmother’s will and in doing so uncovers the secret heartbreak her grandmother never told anyone about.

The book is set in London in the 1920s and 1990s; why did you choose these two particular time periods?

Well, I chose the 90’s because I wanted to write a grimy Soho love story about a small town girl falling in love with a pop star and 1995 seemed for some reason to be quite the perfect setting for that. I didn’t decide to write about Arlette’s history until quite a long way into the book and the fact that she would have been twenty-two in 1919 was quite a wonderful fluke. I’d never before had any kind of yearning to write about the 20′s but the opportunity kind of fell into my lap.

This is the first time you’ve included an element of historical fiction in your writing; how did your writing process differ and is it something you’d like to write more of?

The only difference between writing in a historical setting and a contemporary setting was that I had to keep checking facts as I went along; what kind of buses were there? How were telegrams laid out? Had the Marcel wave been invented in 1920? Who was the most famous film star of the day? But apart from that, no, I wrote Arlette’s chapters the same way I write all my chapters. I wouldn’t set out deliberately to write another historical novel, this one did just kind of happen to me. But equally I wouldn’t rule it out either, if it felt right at the time.

 Your descriptions of 1920s London and the Jazz scene are very evocative; how did you go about your research and what was the most unusual fact you found?

I did all my research on Google. The quirkiest fact I uncovered was that hundreds of double-decker London buses had been requisitioned for troop transportation during the First World War and completely stripped back and rebuilt to look like tanks and battleships. After the war ended a lot of these peculiar bastardised buses were put back to use on London routes! Imagine this one hurtling down Regent Street!

 If you could time travel to any time and place, where and when would you go?

I would love to go back to the early fifties, Middle America. I’d love to have been driven to high school in one of those enormous cars with fins and bench seating and all my friends sitting perched on the back, then off to a burger bar after school to drink malt shakes in a circle skirt and red lipstick.

Betty was my favourite character in Before I Met You because her move to 90s Soho reminded me a lot of when I first moved to London. Who was your favourite character to write and why?

Sometimes when I write multiple perspective narratives I do have favourites, but that wasn’t the case with my previous book, the Making of Us and neither was it the case with this one. I loved writing both girls equally, they were both discovering life after a rather late blossoming and they were both living in my favourite city in the world.

Finally … your next novel, The House we Grew Up In is out in July. Please could you tell us a little about it?

It’s a family saga set in the Cotswolds. It tells the story of the Lorelei Bird and her four children and husband and how their idyllic family life is torn apart by a terrible tragedy one Easter Sunday. The family never really recover from this; they become estranged from each other and Lorelei becomes a compulsive hoarder. The book opens just after Lorelei’s tragic death when Megan, her eldest daughter, returns to the family home after many years to dismantle the hoard and to try and work out what really happened on that Easter Sunday all those years earlier.

Many thanks Lisa – I can’t wait to read the new book!

Before I Met You is out now in paperback and ebook formats.

The House we Grew Up In is released on 18th July.

Find out more about Lisa and her books on her website at: http://www.lisa-jewell.co.uk/

Follow Lisa on Twitter @lisajewelluk

Isn’t the illustrated cover for this book just lovely? I love discovering new authors and Helen Chandler’s debut novel Two For Joy which will be released on 6th June, sounds like a great read!

Julia and Toby have been friends for years, but apart from a couple of drunken snogs in their university days, there’s never been anything more than friendship between them. It’s only when Toby goes through a dramatic break up with his gorgeous ballerina girlfriend Ruby, that he and Julia realise they’re meant to be together.

Then Ruby drops a bombshell – she’s pregnant – and though he feels torn in two, Toby feels he has to give their relationship another chance.

Heartbroken Julia is left to lick her wounds in her little Walthamstow home, thinking she has lost Toby forever. But things soon become much more complicated . . .

Check out Helen’s fab blog to find out more about her and Two For Joy : http://helenlchandler.wordpress.com/

This week, my Mum shares her thoughts on her first saga!

Can you ever escape your past?

Gracie McCabe is building a new life for herself in the Essex seaside town of Southend working alongside best friend Ruby; she’s put her past to rest and is planning her future.

All that is missing is a family of her own, Gracie desperately wants a baby so when boyfriend Sean proposes she accepts without hesitation.

But a chance meeting before the wedding gives her doubts and when old secrets come back to haunt her, it seems that Sean is not the rock of strength she expected him to be.

Will Gracie find her happy ever after or will she be betrayed and abandoned once again?

Gracie is set in Southend and starts in 1946 but is mainly set in the early 1950s. This is a follow up novel to Ruby, Marie Maxwell’s debut novel. Gracie follows Ruby and Gracie as they try to build a new life in Southend.  I haven’t read Ruby and this book stands fine by itself but having reached the end of this book and loved it I read the ‘taster’ for Ruby and am addicted already, so I will be off to source a copy whilst I await Marie Maxwell’s next book!

Gracie is a very emotive read and although I didn’t want to put the book down, there were times that I almost couldn’t bear to read on either because the story has such a hard-hitting impact. Gracie has to deal with emotional decisions in the first few pages and I found myself  ‘living the narrative’.

Gracie is a young girl in her mid twenties who is trying to come to terms with her life having faced a difficult past and been rebuffed by her parents (although Dad is still quietly pleased on the rare occasion that she visits!). Gracie has younger twin sisters, Jennifer and Jeanette. Jennifer is the quiet ‘angel’ and Jeanette the louder, more outgoing sister. The pair feature strongly in the story and I was surprised more than once by the twists the book took.

As Gracie weds Sean Donnely, (a young man whom she has had a comfortable friendship with), not for love but for the desperate need to be normal but unfortunately her life turns out to be anything but! Sean is still tied to his mother’s apron strings and is certainly not the stalwart husband Gracie expected. Throughout the ups and downs, Gracie relies on her ‘sister’ friendship with her soul mate Ruby to keep going and find the will to smile and I enjoyed reading about their friendship. I also admired Gracie’s sense of fairness and her ability to realise there are two sides to every story.

I thought this was a well written novel with a pace that kept me on my toes. There wasn’t a page in the book where I could safely predict what would be – there are so many scenarios to the story.  When I got to the end I actually shouted at the book – ‘ Please write a sequel I need to know what happens next?’

This is a poignant story of love, loss, strength and motherhood and I really hope there will be a sequel to Gracie – I would love to follow her life and am desperate to know what happens next!

5/5

Gracie is out now in paperback and ebook formats and we’d like to thank Avon for sending us a review copy.

Find out more about Marie Maxwell at: http://www.bernardinekennedy.com/

I’m so excited to be part of Lisa Jewell’s blog tour to mark the paperback release of Before I Met You. I loved this book when I read it last year and it was one of my top ten books of 2012 so please do check out my full review!  Full details of the tour and the book (with gorgeous new cover) can be found below (click on the image to enlarge it) and please do stop back here on Tuesday to read my interview with Lisa.

London, 1920. Arlette works in Liberty by day, and by night is caughty up in a glamorous whirl of parties, clubs, cocktails and jazz. But when tragedy strikes she flees the city, never to return.

Over half a century later, in the grungy mid-’90s, her graddaughter Betty arrives in London.

She can’t wait to begin her new life. But before she can do so, she must find the mysterious woman named in her grandmother’s will.

What she doesn’t know is that her search will uncover the heartbreaking secret that changed her grandmother’s life, and might also change hers for ever…

The winner is …

Mia

Congratulations! I have sent you an email. Thanks to everyone who entered. Look out for more giveaways soon!

Today I’m very pleased to introduce the lovely Stella Newman with a guest blog on how food helps her through the writing process My mouth is already watering! Stella’s gorgeous second novel Leftovers was released at the end of last month and is described as ‘A novel about friendship, hope and the power of pasta’. Stella lives in London and is currently writing her third novel. She blogs about restaurants, food and writing at www.stellanewmansblog.blogspot.com and pastafriends.blogspot.co.uk. Welcome Stella!

In my new book, Leftovers, the heroine, Susie, believes that there’s always the perfect dish to suit every occasion: for example, if you’ve just seen a photo of your ex on Facebook with his new girlfriend and it’s made you feel rather unhappy, then you should make yourself bucatini (wide spaghetti with a hole in the middle) with tomato, bacon, peas and a touch of cream: soothing, comforting, cheery and distracting.

Alternatively, if you’ve come in late from work on a cold Tuesday night and are feeling tired and a little bit lonely, then fusilli with chilli, tomato and parmesan is a good perk-me-up dish that can be made in twenty minutes, while you figure out what to watch on TV (The Apprentice always cheers me up on a Tuesday.)

The process of writing is peculiar and varied.  I can spend entire days desperately avoiding the blank page via a series of classic evasion techniques (laundry, the internet, painting my nails).  On other days I can be so immersed in plotting that if Ryan Gosling rang my doorbell and asked if I’d like a coffee I’d probably tell him to come back in a week or two.

But one thing that’s consistent when I’m writing – whether I’m struggling or being productive – is food.  And, like Susie, I too have a repertoire of pasta dishes I like to make at the various stages of writing a book, that help me through.

If I’m at the early, tough, thinking stages, I might make a slow-cooked Bolognese.  It involves lots of chopping and stirring, which is the perfect excuse to step away from my desk.  At the same time, chopping and stirring are excellent processes for helping me to think in a meditative and creative way.

Weeks later, when I’m in full on writing mode, I’ll make something quick but energising – so maybe fusilli with shop-bought pesto.   I’ll often add a little roasted red pepper, or a handful of peas.   I’m sure vitamin C is good for one’s stamina, and if I don’t force myself to eat vegetables at this point in time, I can go for weeks without touching anything remotely healthy.

Finally if I’m in editing mode, which is all about re-reading and snipping, I’ll probably treat myself to something like linguine carbonara, or pasta shells with a creamy bacon sauce.  By this stage of the game, I really feel like I deserve a treat, and I find something about a creamy sauce very calming; perhaps I imagine this, but I think it helps me slow down and focus on the tiny details.

And though I’ve tried to wean myself off it, no writing day is complete without some sort of chocolate based treat – anything from a few Wispa bites if I’ve only managed a paragraph, to an M&S chocolate fondant pudding if it’s been a really successful day.  I’m a huge believer in carrot over stick – especially when that carrot is actually chocolate.

Thanks Stella – I’m with you on the chocolate treats!

Leftovers is out now in paperback and ebook formats.

It is 1845, and Hannah Gardner Price dreams of a world infinitely larger than the small Quaker community where she has lived all 25 years of her life – for, as an amateur astronomer, she secretly hopes to discover a comet and win the King of Denmark’s prize for doing so.

But she can only indulge her passion for astronomy as long as the men in her life – her father, brother and family friends – are prepared to support it, and so she treads a fine line between pursuing her dreams and submitting to the wishes and expectations of those around her. That line is crossed when Hannah meets Isaac Martin, a young black whaler from the Azores.

Isaac, like Hannah herself, has ambitions beyond his station. Drawn to him despite their differences, Hannah agrees to tutor him in the art of navigation. As their shared passion for the stars develops into something deeper, however, Hannah’s standing in the community is called into question, and she has to choose: her dreams or her heart.

Ever since I read the synopsis and saw the wonderful cover for this book, I’ve been looking forward to reading it. Amy Brill’s debut historical novel, The Movement of Stars is a beautiful book inside and out. Amy drew me into a fascinating new world of world of astronomy, navigation and mathematics and my enjoyment surprised me as a reader as I’m not a particularly scientific person!

Through lead character Hannah, Amy Brill has cleverly taken what could have been quite a dry subject and made it part of a much bigger story about ambition, independence, freedom and love. Hannah’s life is loosely based on the life of  Maria Mitchell who was the first professional female astronomer in America and I thought Brill captured the highs and lows of Hanna’s search for a comet and ultimately to secure her independence very well.

Set in the small Quaker community of Nantucket, the historical detail in the story is excellent and Amy Brill has clearly done her research. This is a very atmospheric novel and beautifully described as twenty-five year old Hannah finds herself experiencing a series of changes and events that make her re-evaluate her perspectives and influence the options open to her. It was heartbreaking to see how much Hannah has to rely on the men in her life, namely her brother and father and their close friends to continue her love of astronomy and her development and this book certainly made me value the freedoms I have.

I loved Hannah with her attention to detail and dream of discovering a comet that would take her name. She’s not a perfect character by any means and in the early parts of the novel often judges people without thought but much changes when she meets Isaac Martin a black whaler who is staying in Nantucket while the ship he crews undergoes repairs.

There are many parallels between Hannah and Isaac; they are both ambitious and both face judgement and restrictions based on factors they have no control over (for Hannah her sex and Isaac the colour of his skin). Isaac engages Hannah to tutor him in astronomy and navigation and as their relationship develops he teaches her as much as she teaches him. Despite Hannah’s impressive intellect her sense of herself and her views of the world are fairly narrow and I enjoyed reading as Isaac causes her to hold her beliefs and those of her community up to the light.

The Movement of Stars is a thoughtful and captivating historical novel that transported me to another time and place as I read. I loved reading about Hannah’s life and the book left me full of admiration for trailblazers like Maria Mitchell who fought so hard to demonstrate that women should have equality of freedom and eduction. An impressive debut!

The Movement of Stars is released today in paperback and ebook formats.

I’d like to thank the publisher for sending me a review copy of this novel.

Find out more about Amy Brill and The Movement of Stars at: http://www.amybrill.com/

Publisher Hodder has launched a fab new online reading community called Wish List.

Wish List covers fiction and non-fiction and features news about books and authors, interviews, giveaways, quizzes and all sorts of other bookish fun! It’s a great place to share your thoughts and find lovely reading recommendations.

It’s well worth checking out the Wish List site at: www.hodder.co.uk/wishlist or on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/WishListBooks.

You can also sign up to receive a weekly email newsletter that comes straight to your inbox every Tuesday lunchtime or follow on twitter @WishListBooks

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