Books I've Read

I love books, and reading is one of my favourite pastimes, sadly these days I never seem to get enough time. This page is going to be a record of the books i have read, and what i have thought of them. I will usually read anything which takes my fancy in the charity shop; i rarely buy new books unless they are by one of my favourite authors and are on offer in Tesco, or i will pop them on my "wish list" for Christmas and Birthday.

Before having Baby Boy i would easily get through a book a week, there are too many to remember from 2011, but those that really stick in my mind are;

"The Distant Hours" by Kate Morton;


"It started with a letter...Edie Burchill and her mother have never been close, but when a long-lost letter arrives one Sunday afternoon with the return address of Milderhurst Castle, Kent, printed on its envelope, Edie begins to suspect that her mother's emotional distance masks on old secret. Evacuated from London as a thirteen-year-old girl, Edie's mother was chosen by the mysterious Juniper Blythe and taken to live at Milderhurst Castle with the Blythe family. Fifty years later, Edie, too, is drawn to the castle and teh eccentric Sister Blythe. Old ladies now, the three still live together, the twins nursing Juniper, whose abandonement by her fiance in 1941 plunged her into madness. Inside the decaying castle Edie beings to unravel her mother's past. But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Milderhurst Castle, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected. The truth of what happened in the distant hours has been waiting a long time for someone to find it".

Kate Morton is one of my favourite authors, I loved "The House at Riverton" and "The Forgotten Garden", and "The Distant Hours" did not dissapoint..in fact i think it's my favourite so far! I bought this one the minute it came out in paperback, together with "The Debutante" by Kathleen Tessaro:


Wow what a book! My absolute favourite in a long time!

"A Locked room. A collection of faded mementos, hidden in an old shoebox. And two strangers, reluctantly drawn to one another, cataloguing the contents of an abandoned mansion overlooking the sea. But Endsleigh is no ordinary house. Between the Wars, it was the home of Britain's most dazzling debutantes - the Blythe Sisters. Until one of them went missing...."

I was literally gripped the minute I read the above from the back cover - i finished it in just 2 days, i didn't want it to end. I love how Kathleen Tessaro explains in the Author's note, how a friend presented her with a shoebox from the 1930's containing a pair of silver mesh dancing shoes from the same era, and a selection of unrelated objects such as a Tiffany bracelet, a photograph of a handsome sailor, and an old badge from her girls boarding school and a few other items. The friend told her to use a few or all of the objects in any way she wanted, but that they must add up to the resolution of her mystery. She wasn't even allowed to look in the box until she had written up to the point in the story where the main character finds it! Then it really was a surprise! She then goes on to say that that was how the book really began. I really loved the idea of that shoebox of vintage objects forming the whole story, and being a surprise even to the author...I will definitely read this book again.

"A Gathering Storm" by Rachel Hore;


"A Place of Secrets" by Rachel Hore;


"The Legacy" by Katherine Webb;


"The Crimson Rooms" by Katherine McMahon


"The Unseen" by Katherine Webb;


"The Hothouse Flower" by Lucinda Riley;


"Up with the Larks" Tessa Hainsworth;


A warm-hearted, feel-good, laugh-out-loud story, this is the account of Tessa Hainsworth's escape from the rat-race with her husband and children and her first year as a postwoman in an idyllic Cornish seaside village".


I loved this book! As soon as i read it i had to read the sequel: "Seagulls in the Attic";