Category: Book Review

Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog2 Comments

Blog Tour – Mango Bay by Serena Fairfax

Welcome to my stop on the Mango Bay blog tour! Thank you so much Random Things Tours for letting me participate in this tour! I was provided with a copy of the novel as part of this tour in exchange for an honest review. 

Publisher: Ironberry Books
Publication Date: 26/09/2020
Length: 299 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction | Romance

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

Jazz clubs, yacht clubs, aunty bars and a Bollywood beauty shadowed by her pet panther.

This is glamorous Bombay in the late 1950s.Love has blossomed in London between vivacious Scottish Presbyterian, Audrey, and clever Indian lawyer, Nat Zachariah.

When the happy newlyweds move to Nat’s exotic homeland and the striking family villa, Audrey must deftly navigate the rituals, secrets, intrigues and desires of his Bene Israel Jewish community, and adjust to perplexing new relatives.

In time, the past unlocks, old family ties unravel, lies are exposed and passions run high as different generations fall out. Then something shocking happens that undoes everything. Will this marriage that has crossed boundaries survive?

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Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog3 Comments

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Publisher: Bloomsbury
Publication Date: 15/09/2020
Length: 245 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction | Mystery

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

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Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog1 Comment

Letters From the Dead by Sam Hurcom

Firstly, huge thank you to Orion and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Publisher: Orion
Publication Date: 26/10/2020
Length: 384 pages
Genre: Horror | Historical Fiction | Gothic

CW: sexual assault

Blackwells.co.uk

1905. A year after ‘the affair’ in Dinas Powys, Thomas Bexley has become a drunkard and recluse, haunted by terrible visions of the dead. But when news of a spate of extraordinary kidnappings reaches him, Thomas is shocked to learn that his dear friend and former mentor, Professor Elijah Hawthorn, is the lead suspect.

Discovering a plea for help from Hawthorn claiming to have unearthed a gruesome conspiracy at the heart of the Metropolitan Police, Thomas embarks on a journey to prove Hawthorn’s innocence.

But wherever Thomas goes, he is followed by the dead, and as the mystery of Hawthorn’s disappearance deepens, so too does Thomas’s apparent insanity…

How can Thomas be certain of the truth when he can’t trust anybody around him, not even himself…?

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Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog4 Comments

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Publication Date: 06/02/2020
Length: 352 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction | Gothic

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Magnusdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Arctic town of Vardø must fend for themselves.

Three years later, a sinister figure arrives. Absalom Cornet comes from Scotland, where he burned witches in the northern isles. He brings with him his young Norwegian wife, Ursa, who is both heady with her husband’s authority and terrified by it. In Vardø, and in Maren, Ursa sees something she has never seen before: independent women. But Absalom sees only a place untouched by God, and flooded with a mighty evil.

As Maren and Ursa are drawn to one another in ways that surprise them both, the island begins to close in on them, with Absalom’s iron rule threatening Vardø’s very existence.

Inspired by the real events of the Vardø storm and the 1621 witch trials, The Mercies is a story of love, evil, and obsession, set at the edge of civilization.

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Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog3 Comments

The Winter Duke by Claire Eliza Bartlett

Firstly, huge thank you to Titan Books and NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

Publisher: Titan Books
Publication Date: 13/10/2020
Length: 400 pages
Genre: Fantasy | Young Adult

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

SHE SURVIVED THE CURSE. NOW SHE MUST SURVIVE THE THRONE.

All Ekata wants is to stay alive—and the chance to prove herself as a scholar. Once Ekata’s brother is finally named heir to the dukedom of Kylma Above, there will be nothing to keep her at home with her murderous family. Not her books or her experiments, not her family’s icy castle atop a frozen lake, not even the tantalizingly close Kylma Below, a mesmerizing underwater kingdom that provides her family with magic. But just as escape is within reach, her parents and twelve siblings fall under a strange sleeping sickness, and no one can find a cure.

In the space of a single night, Ekata inherits the title of duke, her brother’s captivating warrior bride, and ever-encroaching challengers from without—and within—her ministry. Nothing has prepared Ekata for diplomacy, for war, for love. . .or for a crown she has never wanted. If Kylma Above is to survive, Ekata must seize her family’s magic and power. And if Ekata is to survive, she must quickly decide how she will wield them both.

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Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog1 Comment

The Wolf and the Water by Josie Jaffrey

Firstly, huge thank you to Josie for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Publisher: Silver Sun Books
Publication Date: 08/10/2020
Length: 268 pages
Genre: Fantasy | Young Adult

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

Some secrets are worth killing for…

The ancient city of Kepos sits in an isolated valley, cut off from the outside world by a towering wall. Behind it, the souls of the dead clamour for release. Or so the priesthood says.

Kala has never had any reason to doubt their word – until her father dies in suspicious circumstances that implicate the city’s high priest. She’s determined to investigate, but she has a more immediate problem: the laws of the city require her mother to remarry straight away.Kala’s new stepfather is a monster, but his son Leon is something altogether more dangerous: kind.

With her family fractured and the investigation putting her life in danger, the last thing Kala needs is romance. She would rather ignore Leon entirely, however difficult he makes it. But when she learns the truth of what really clamours behind the wall at the end of the valley, she faces a choice: share what she knows and jeopardise her escape, or abandon him to his fate along with the rest of the city.

If she doesn’t move fast, then no one will make it out of the valley alive. 

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