Book review – Beth Moran – “How not to be a Loser” / “A Day that Changed Everything”

Because I’ve already read two of my May NetGalley reads, I’m making the effort to start going through the older ones I’ve had languishing (19 in total, the oldest published in 2019; I’ve been up to date for well over a year now, so there is only one published between July 2021 and May 2023), and I thought I’d pick up this light novel that included running to get me going on that project (I’m now onto a book from 2019 helping Black women and nonbinary people to navigate university). This was called “How Not to be a Loser” when I downloaded it but is now “A Day That Changed Everything”

Beth Moran – “A Day that Changed Everything”

(16 March 2020, NetGalley)

Amy Piper is a recluse, kept in her house by a very bad case of agoraphobia. A previous champion swimmer who crashed out of her own career, Amy is supported by her old coach, Cee-Cee, to keep life going as normally as possible for her 13 year old son Joey. But when Joey starts showing promise in swimming himself and Amy comes to a few realisations, she finds she needs to make a change. It takes the support of a disparate group of women in a running club (and their hunky coach) to help her to help herself.

Unlike some of the other NG reviewers, I found Amy’s path to getting herself out and about believeable – it takes a good while and she has big regressions. The descriptions of panic attacks are realistic but carefully done so they don’t feel triggering.

There’s a good thread of self-development and positivity in the book, and I also like the diversity of the running group – one character mentioned as having an afro and being the only Black woman in her university year, one character with a child living with a disability, just seen as natural parts of the group, which is refreshing. I also liked her job as a bid-writer and editor as it’s nice to see the sort of work I do manipulating words described in a book!

I didn’t much like the fat- and unfit-shaming Amy engages in – although she is called out for it, there’s a narrative where her appearance comes back to how it was as well as her strength, although to be fair she has got the guy before then (not a spoiler in a book like this!).

A competently written and good read with some nice moments of learning for a few characters.

Thank you to Boldwood Books for selecting me to read this book via NetGalley in return for an honest review, and I’m sorry it’s taken so long to produce one! “A Day That Changed Everything” was published on 20 March 2020.

Book review – Ore Agbaje-Williams – “The Three of Us”

I’m doing so well with my NetGalley books that I’m onto ones published in May already! I’ve now started to pick off some earlier ones that I missed at the time, as I don’t like telling you all about good books that you can’t then get hold of immediately!

Ore Agbaje-Williams – “The Three of Us”

(25 October 2022, NetGalley)

He sees what I see, but from the other side. A woman in between two selves, undecided as to which she can remain loyal. Where I see uncomfortable levels of domesticity and submission, he sees impolite outspokenness and levels of negative emotion rarely observed. What he thinks is a new person emerging in short and sometimes alcohol-fuelled bursts, I know is the occasional reappearance of my misguided friend. We are trying to solve the same problem, but our judgements on the solution differ significantly.

So we have a couple – never named – and the wife’s best friend, Temi. They’ve been friends since a changing room accident – or was it – at school, and the husband is a new introduction. Is Temi a wild and independent woman who wants her friend to get back to the way she was in the brief period between being subservient to her parents and being subservient to her husband, or is she jealous and anxious and trying to force her attention back on her. Is the wife happy to not work and just drift around her (very fancy) house, exercising and … drinking wine with her best friend because that’s the calm existence she and her husband wanted. Is her husband storing up things he knows, thank you very much, about his own wife, to get one up on Temi, or is he weird to be remodelling the whole top floor just because of … that?

Set amongst an upper-middle-class London set of Nigerian heritage and self-made money, everyone’s parents have expectations, of good jobs, of children, and some people are trying to make their consumption less conspicuous while failing miserably. Everyone seems to have working-class White service providers – cleaners and maids – which is a nice twist, and I have to say I like these rich Black folk almost exactly the same amount as I liked the rich White folk in “Pineapple Street”, i.e. not very much. Set over an afternoon as tensions rise and everyone gets sick and tired of each other, for all the Peletons and wall-to-ceiling windows, this is compulsive reading.

It almost felt like it was going to turn into one of those suburban thrillers I keep reading other people’s reviews of; but nothing gory or horrendous happens as we watch a trapped man flailing to get rid of a parasite. Or a woman trying to reclaim her friend’s independence. Or a woman trapped between two people she loves who hate each other. At least these millennials – or at least two of them – have grown up a bit and have a semblance of an adult life, and it’s really well-written and extremely hard to put down.

Thank you to Vintage for making this book available to me via NetGalley in return for an honest review. “The Three of Us” is published on 11 May 2023.

Book review – Rachel Barnett – “A Summer on the Riviera”

I was offered this book by the lovely people at Embla Books, an online-first publisher of light novels that’s an imprint of Bonnier books. With its multiple plot lines it’s a well-done, technically adept escapist novel with a lovely lot of detail.

Rachel Barnett – “A Summer on the Riviera”

(4 April 2023, NetGalley)

Bella has packed in her life in the management of a high-class hotel to work as first stewardess on a luxury superyacht. In a twist on the heartbroken girl leaves to find a new life, she goes from the seaside resort to life on the waves, with a steep learning curve and a few not-so-helpful colleagues.

Mel is nursing a grudge against the captain and thus the person he’s appointed above her, and Felicia has a secret that is threatening to upset the luxury cruise she’s arranged to celebrate her husband’s birthday. We see events from all their perspectives, and also pop into the head of Leo, Felicia’s nephew, invited along for a particular reason that will become clear.

There are plot twists and red herrings and I enjoyed all the detail about running a luxury holiday yacht from the downstairs inner workings to the upstairs luxury. The plot was well done and the characters had varying levels of detail; there was a small amount of diversity with a sympathetically portrayed gay character.

A great holiday read especially if you’re near the sea at the time – and a good recommendation for a seasickness cure which I can confirm has worked for me in the past!

Thank you to Embla/Bonnier books for offering me this novel to read via NetGalley in return for an honest review. “A Summer on the Riviera” is published on 2 May 2023.

Book review – Christie Barlow – “A Summer Surprise at the Little Blue Boathouse”

Book 11 in Christie Barlow’s “Love Heart Lane” series and they all manage to be so different, but set in a lovely community, catching up with previous characters in each new book. I actually finished this one at the end of March, then realised it was published in late April, so it’s nearly out by the time you read this review!

Christie Barlow – “A Summer Surprise at the Little Blue Boathouse”

(20 February 2023, NetGalley)

The hierarchy in the supermarket reminded her a little of the House of Commons; those at the top had no real clue how to do the jobs that kept the company going, and those that did were paid the national minimum wage.

I loved how Christie Barlow got political in a couple of quotations in this one! Bea arrives in Heartcross for a holiday from her boring supermarket job and to escape her horrible ex-boyfriend. Suddenly, opportunities open up for her as there’s a job going for the summer and an attractive man, also going for the summer, as Nolan makes it quite plain that he intends to take his grandfather’s houseboat on to new shores after the big festival.

Can sensible Bea manage a summer fling? Just who is the mystery woman Nolan’s grandfather had his own fling with in Heartcross many years ago?

I loved the details of running the boathouse which we find out as Bea learns the ropes, and there’s a super theme about keeping people safe. Not to mention there’s a light aircraft towing a proposal that offers a tantalising glimpse of the next novel to come … Long may Barlow keep producing these delightful novels!

Thank you to One More Chapter for approving me to read this book in return for an honest review. “A Summer Surprise at the Little Blue Boathouse” is published on 30 April 2023.

Book review – Stephen Buoro – “The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa”

This book offers a punch in the guts and is not for the faint-hearted. It’s wonderful and devastating. The ending can be the only ending this book could have, even though you won’t like it. Weaving a critique of colonialism and the kind of mental colonialism that exists when independence claims to have been gained, a small town coming of age story, maths, PanAfrican theories, religion, friendship and love, this is a book I won’t easily forget – and not just for the trauma.

Stephen Buoro – “The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa”

(03 April 2023, NetGalley)

In Eileen’s living room, I watch her pack. I help her load some books into a suitcase, zip it. Outside, illuminated by streetlights, protesters are meandering with torchlights on their heads, placards held high, screaming. We can’t hear them because of the closed windows and the distance. Suddenly, from nowhere, policemen descend on them. they wallop them with clubs, chase them into the darkness. They are especially ferocious because this is where expats live, where Eileen’s people live.

There is so much to unpick in this debut novel and I won’t do it justice, I’m sure. First, that title – the Five Sorrowful Mysteries are to do with the rosary of the Catholic Church and depict Jesus’ suffering at five key stages moving towards his death. Andy Africa is the nickname given to Andrew Aziza by his teacher, Zahrah, so both a home-grown name and what could be a reference to the Western propensity for seeing Africa as a unit, a single country.

Andy lives in Kontagora, Nigeria, with his single mother, unable to ask her who his father is, he’s 15 and he hangs out with his “droogs”, Slim and Morocca, goes to school, has a good friend he can’t appreciate in Fatima, an equally gifted student, and lives for the opportunity to see, see a picture of, fantasise about or even think about a White girl. Then one magically appears! Eileen, the niece of the local missionary/priest, comes to visit and everyone is transfixed.

So far, so YA – but this is embedded in a critique of contemporary Nigeria from someone who has escaped, so among the theorems, Zahrah’s theory of anifuturism (I diligently tried to learn about this and look it up only to find it was invented for this book, a mix of animism and Afro-futurism), Andy’s theory of a great curse over the whole of Africa (so a yin and yang of pan-African theories), critiques of government, descriptions of life in a small town with a Christian minority and a Muslim majority uncontrolled by a corrupt police.

When Eileen is welcomed into the community, a mob bent on revenge approaches, when a wedding tries to happen, the groom is accused of importing Western ideas and fomenting student uprisings. And even though Andy’s life looks like it’s turning round when he meets a long-lost relative who has the trappings of wealth, while the boys receive phone calls from their rather feeble friend who has managed to reach Spain with his uncle and is enjoying pizzas and a job, it soon becomes clear that the boys, plus Morocca’s girlfriend and their young daughter, need to take their chance to escape.

While there are flies and machetes, poverty and gender/religious violence, this by no means lives within the stereotypes we can so often be fed. There are brilliant flashes of humour and live is lived fully; the language fizzes and is full of Nigerian small-town culture laced with the Western culture everyone seems to aspire to (yes, there are look-it-up moments, yes, of course that’s OK). As we follow the Five Sorrowful Mysteries to their conclusion, it is inevitable: Buoro achieves a technically well-done and hugely engaging book that socks it to you in the intellect and the emotions, while leaving us with no conclusion apart from the need to escape at all costs – I can’t decide whether it’s actually bleak or not, as it’s so full and rich as well.

I would like to read thoughts by Nigerian / Nigerian disapora readers about this one.

Thank you to for selecting me to read this book via NetGalley in return for an honest review. “The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa” was published on 13 April 2023).

Book review – Ryan Love – “Arthur and Teddy are Coming Out”

Another NetGalley book and although this looks like a really sweet one and has some adorable characters, it has some hard-hitting themes, too. And that cover is just super, isn’t it!

Ryan Love – “Arthur and Teddy are Coming Out”

(17 February 2023, NetGalley)

Cora’s Cafe fell silent as Arthur entered, only the voice on the radio carrying on. The tea rooms had always been one if his and Madeleine’s favourite places to go in Northbridge. Cora Woods, who was around the same age as Elizabeth, was one of the rare outsiders who had found success there. Normally, the locals would save their custom for the businesses run by someone with connections to the town, or a surname that stirred memories of days gone by.

Arthur is 79, and for a reason we discover during the course of the book, has decided to come out as gay, with the full support of his wife, Madeleine. His daughter Elizabeth does not take this well, and even though he wasn’t always keen when she found new love after her husband passed away, Arthur doesn’t deserve the scorn she pours on him. Little does Elizabeth, a rather pushy columnist for the local paper, realise that her son, Teddy, is also gay, but very much in the closet, scared to come out especially after how she reacts to Arthur. But he does tell Arthur and they support each other.

In alternating chapters, we see Arthur (and Madeleine, who is more in the background but a rock for Arthur) reach out to embrace new chapters in their lives, Arthur meeting Oscar, a might-have-been version of him who embraced his sexuality from an early age and has led an exciting and different life, but gently encourages him rather than being pushy; and Teddy, who starts a new job and falls for a colleague his (gay) best friend Shakeel is not happy about. Lexie, his other best friend and Teddy’s two sisters complete the ensemble cast as Arthur and Teddy negotiate their first few months in this new situation and Arthur shares details of the awful treatment meted out by his father when he was younger, including forcing him into conversion therapy and having his tentative boyfriend beaten up.

Will Elizabeth come round when she sees she hasn’t lost her father and son but has gained more honesty and openness in her family? Some reviewers think she is let off lightly but there are consequences.

The part of the book I struggled with a bit was the setting. Northbridge is repeatedly described as very conservative, hidebound, mostly homophobic, but the setting is modern in terms of social media and technology, and I don’t feel any town is like that now. I believe the author is Irish and I thought for a while Northbridge was supposed to be a very religious Catholic town in Ireland (but still, the whole community? Enough that a young girl is so scared at the thought of being outed she takes a terrible step?) but then a character is described as going to Ireland, so perhaps not. “Up North” is mentioned, but is that just northern England? This was a shame as a lot of the relationships and actions seemed very authentic and rooted, but then the whole town being obsessed with hierarchies and old families gave it a ring of a fable. Maybe the author was reticent about placing it because they don’t want to look like they’re criticising their own home town or something, and people do turn around, but it gave it that edge of unreality which was a shame.

An enjoyable story with lovely characters, and I will look out for more from this author.

Thank you to HQ for approving me to read this book in return for an honest review. “Arthur and Teddy are Coming Out” was published on 13 April 2023.

Book review – Des Linden – “Choosing to Run”

There have been a few books by US women distance runners coming out recently: we’ve had Alison Mariella Désir’s “Running While Black” with its focus on racism and Lauren Fleshman’s “Good for a Girl” with its focus on eating disorders and women in running. Kara Goucher also has one out, “The Longest Race” about her life in running including the traumas of being part of the Nike Oregon Project, which I haven’t got hold of yet, and we have this one, from Des Linden, Boston Marathon winner in 2018 (so I’m posting this on an appropriate date as it’s Boston Marathon 2023 today!) about being an outsider and having different interests, coming back from a serious health issue and her issues with doping in running. This one was a review copy kindly sent to me by a friend – Wendy has reviewed it, too, here, and Cari has reviewed it along with Kara’s book, here.

Des Linden – “Choosing to Run: A Memoir”

(06 April 2023, gift)

As athletes and support crew members continue to file onto the bus, my expression says, Don’t even think about sitting in the empty seat next to me. Ordinarily, that seat would be filled by one of my coaches, but not today. in fact, I’m very confident that my coaches for most of the last thirteen years will be actively rooting against me. (p. 30)

In this book, written with Bonnie D. Ford, who is acknowledged on the cover and does a good job of making it seem Des is telling us her story directly, Des both shares her journey to and after her epic Boston Marathon win and the story of the win itself. It’s really cleverly structured so we have chapters interspersed with the chronological ones taking us to just before the race (which is where the above quotation comes from: we won’t find the solution to the mysterious comments for a while) through the first, middle and last miles, the terrible weather almost another character in the narrative or participant in the race.

I didn’t know much about Des before reading this book, but what I have come to really admire about her is her attention to detail, her deep, deep knowledge of the Boston course, her amazing tenacity (although this is almost her undoing, too, as she tries to train through the beginning of a very serious health condition), and, of course, her unflinching honesty about her feelings about the doping which started to engulf long-distance racing as it has sprinting and other sports.

There’s a lot less about her childhood sports and training than in Lauren Fleshman’s book, but interestingly, there’s a definite “difficult father” theme here, too, although Des has been able to maintain a good and less-competitive relationship with her sister. Des mentions the eating disorders that are rife in the sport but manages to avoid them; she lives a more rounded lifestyle than some others I’ve read about, house-sharing with a non-athlete at university and developing an interest in travel and bourbon as she moves through her running career. She works with an unorthodox training group and gives details of how that and her Brooks sponsorship worked. She’s funny and she swears and is blisteringly honest at times, but honours both the exceptional athletes who have gone before her and the “ordinary” runners in the pack behind her at a marathon who are trying just as hard as she is, and she clearly acts as a role model for younger athletes, who thank her for speaking out on things they’re not able to be as vocal about at their stage in their careers: this all makes her relatable and an engaging person to read about.

Book review – Elvin James Mensah – “Small Joys”

I’ve been doing well with my April NetGalley reads with two more read and not yet reviewed (although I did win on this month which is published this month!) and we’re back to more diverse reading after my 1940 week last week. I was attracted by the blurb that announced it was about a friendship between a Black queer man and a White straight man, but also that it included a birdwatching theme and was set in my home county of Kent. Elvin James Mensah – “Small Joys” (14 Jan 2023, NetGalley)

I knew Noria’s parents very well and was often intrigued at hoe the rules of their African-ness seemed less hostile than my ad’s, even though their religion and church was just as integral to the fabric of their family. Her dad had one asked me if I had a boyfriend and I stiffened in fear, until I eventually said no, and he laughed and said that there was someone out there for me. After that, I did wonder if maybe he was cool with it because i wasn’t actually a part of their family.

Another self-assured debut novel, and again being a Gen Z novel about characters in their early 20s seemed to appeal more than the Millennial ones. Harley has dropped out of his music journalism degree course, overwhelmed by anxiety and depression, and returned to rent a room in his friend Chelsea’s flat. There he finds a new flatmate, Muddy, a rugby-playing birdwatcher who is more sensitive than he first appears, and, for good reasons as it turns out, determined to be a good friend to anyone who needs one.

Harley is initially shy of Muddy, as they first meet when Harley is contemplating some very dark thoughts indeed in the local wood; Muddy identifies someone in need of a friend and is happy to provide support and Harley learns to slowly develop a sense of self-worth as their friendship develops. Muddy’s friend Finlay, who is a bit of a prat and liable to come out with homophobic remarks, is someone who’s so dense the usually mild Harley doesn’t mind pushing back at him, and we wonder if we’ll find out why Muddy is so loyal to him. Finishing the main characters is Noria, a young Black woman Harley has been friends with for years whose family, especially her father, gives Harley an alternative view of African families and fatherhood.

Because this is all played out against the background of his Ghanaian father’s disappointment in and disapproval of what he sees as Harley’s choices. The abuse he faces from his father is horrible but all too believeable, and there are some difficult scenes which both help us to understand and place his mental health battles.

We feel through the narrative, fairly plainly written in the main though sometimes a little flowery and perhaps over-written (then again, we’re in Harley’s head and he’s planning to be a writer …) that things could turn on a moment, that Harley’s happiness out in nature or listening to Oasis in Muddy’s car is all too brittle, that the ‘relationship’ he’s clung to with a conflicted racist will destroy him. Will he manage to battle on? We are certainly rooting for him.

The Kent setting and birdwatching theme are well done, and the birdwatching allows a link with Muddy’s grandparents that gives Harley a chance to support him, too.

It’s rare to find novels about friendship (there is relationship stuff in there too, and Muddy struggles with his own identity within a relationship he’s expected to have), still rarer male friendship, still rarer the need to support and check in on people’s mental and physical health, so I have to commend Mensah for writing so honestly and engagingly on these topics. Set in 2005 to a backdrop of the Olympic Games bid win and the London bombings – which allows Mensah to discuss different reasons for anxiety but might have been an arc too many – it’s a lovely characterful novel that leaves you rooting for the characters and their future chances. I will definitely read whatever he writes next.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster for selecting me to read this book via NetGalley in return for an honest review. “Small Joys” was published on 13 April 2023.

Book review – Margery Sharp – “The Stone of Chastity”

As you’ll know by now, the lovely bloggers Kaggsysbookishramblings and Stuck-in-a-book run “year weeks” two times a year, and this week, 10-16 April we’re reading books published in 1940. I’m working my way through the books Ali and Emma gave me for my birthday (from my very tightly controlled wishlists made up mainly of books published in 1940!) and have so far read and reviewed D. E. Stevenson’s wartime spy/family novel, “The English Air” and Susan Scarlett’s escapist (but realist vision of children) “Ten Way Street”. All three of these have the distinction of being published by the lovely Dean Street Press.

Margery Sharp – “The Stone of Chastity”

(21 January 2023, from Ali)

Everything was propitious. The University term had just ended, the Long Vacation stretched gloriously ahead. The idea of actual field-work, after years spent on texts, was positively intoxicating. The freshness of the evidence (only a hundred and thirty years old) filled him with hope. He did not quite imagine – delightful dream – that the ceremony of the Stone was still alive, that in the year 1938 suspected trollops, stockinged by Woolworth, were set up to prove their virtue on a relic of Norse legend; but he did expect hearsay evidence. If the Blodgett (or Blodger) line still existed, the girl’s great-grandchild might be yet alive … (p. 5)

Professor Pounce, his sister-in-law, her son Nicholas and a seemingly random voluptuous assistant, Miss Carmen Smith, all descend upon the manor house of a muddy and charmless village in 1938, lured there by the promise of an old folk tale about a stone which throws the unchaste into the river when they step on it. Professor Pounce got busy on a weekend house party, poking around in the attics and finding a manuscript of a journal dated 1803 (hence the dating above) which mentioned this stone, and did not hesitate in stealing it for his research and putative monograph.

Culture clashes galore ensue, between the incomers and the villagers, but also splitting the village along a fault line that’s to do – of course it is – with who runs the WI/village, the vicar’s wife, the wife of the main farmer or the wife of the publican. Nicholas falls in love at least three times during the course of the book, but he needs some let up from having to cycle around giving out questionnaires and asking about people’s grandmothers’ morals; he also encounters, allowing Sharp to satirise, a very “Bloomsberry” young woman who’s taken (of course she has) an isolated cottage on the outskirts of the village. Will the Professor’s questionnaires be filled in or will the Scouts round them up? Will anyone turn up to have their chastity tested, and just why IS Miss Smith there?

A charming and hilarious, unputdownable novel which would have been another lovely escapist read in 1940!

Although they’re sadly not now republishing any more new books, all of Dean Street Press’s books are very much available while they still have the copyrights – so you can buy this book here – maybe pick up a copy to read and discuss in Dean Street December, which I will be running again this year. And Scott at Furrowed Middlebrow reviewed the book here in 2020, just before it was republished. This was my third read for #1940Club, which I think is the best I’ve ever done for any of these Weeks!

Book review, Susan Scarlett – “Ten Way Street”

We’re so fortunate that bloggers Kaggsysbookishramblings and Stuck-in-a-book run “year weeks” two times a year, where they pick a year and the challenge is to read books published in that year and review them within that week. This time, the week is 10-16 April and the year 1940. Knowing that a certain favourite publisher of mine was likely to have a few possibilities, I didn’t leave it to chance that I’d have suitable books on my TBR when the week came around, but rather disingenuously stuck them on the birthday lists I gave Ali and Emma, and three duly appeared on the day! Two from my birthday pile have now been read, and hpefully a third will be added!

Susan Scarlett – “Ten Way Street”

(21 January 2023, from Emma)

“I’m a weak-spirited, gutless creature, but oh, dear, I’d love to give in my notice. You can’t think what it’s like, Sarah. Everything in the house revolves around Mrs Cardew. Nothing else seems to matter. And somehow it’s all so soulless, everything frightfully grand, masses of servants and nobody caring twopence about real things. I believe that Mrs Cardew would rather any of them won a beauty competition than showed signs of growing up into nice people.” Sarah set her shoulders and looked severe. “What’s the matter with you, Beverly Shaw? This seems to me the exact job for you. You said to me on the very night when you got the letter telling you to go and see Mrs Cardew, ‘I hope i get a job somewhere where I’m really needed.’ My goodness, where could you be more needed? If nobody else is going to bring the children up, what a chance for you.” (p. 41)

Here we have of course another novel by Noel Streatfeild under the pen-name she used to publish twelve “romances”. I have already loved “Clothes-Pegs” (a career novel masquerading as a romance) and have “Babbacombe’s” (presumably that wonderful thing, a shop novel, masquerading as a romance) on my TBR and this is a governess novel masquerading as a romance. Because it’s so much more than “just” a love story, with another fully realised family and a villain to hiss at.

Beverly Shaw was raised in an orphanage and sent by them to train as a very superior kind of governess. Looking for her first job, she knows she must get a decent one to pay them back, so she takes, with reservations, a position with the horrible Margot Cardew, an actress, to look after her three precocious children, prone to bilious attacks caused by nerves and too much chocolate at cocktail parties. Here the author uses her knowledge of the stage, described to such effect in her “Shoes” novels, to portray a good actor but a bad mother, and children used to scurrying around backstage.

Beverly brings a good dose of the everyday to her charges, aided by the loyal and marvellous Annie, and she catches the eye of Margot’s unwilling beau, Peter, who is much keener on someone with sense and kindness. As Margot becomes more hysterical and demanding and her personal maid Marcelle more conniving, Beverly must gather her support around her – including her college friend Sarah, working for a very different kind of family – and withstand confrontation and untruths billowing all around her, and, did she but know it, the downtrodden secretary, Winkle, revealed to have a past of her own.

What a lovely, engaging novel, with not a whisper of war about it, which must have been such a comforting, escapist read in 1940!

Although they’re sadly not now republishing any more new books, Dean Street Press are keeping their current offering available while they still have the copyrights – so you can buy this book here – maybe pick up a copy to read and discuss in Dean Street December, which I will be running again this year. And Scott at Furrowed Middlebrow reviewed the book here after he announced the exciting republication of this lovely set of novels. This was my second read for #1940Club and I hope to get one more in before the end of the week!