Small Island by Andrea Levy

It is 1948, and England is recovering from a war. But at 21 Nevern Street, London, the conflict has only just begun. Queenie Bligh’s neighbours do not approve when she agrees to take in Jamaican lodgers, but Queenie doesn’t know when her husband will return, or if he will come back at all. What else can she do?

Gilbert Joseph was one of the several thousand Jamaican men who joined the RAF to fight against Hitler. Returning to England as a civilian he finds himself treated very differently. It’s desperation that makes him remember a wartime friendship with Queenie and knock at her door.

Gilbert’s wife Hortense, too, had longed to leave Jamaica and start a better life in England. But when she joins him she is shocked to find London shabby, decrepit, and far from the golden city of her dreams. Even Gilbert is not the man she thought he was…

Janet 7, June 10, Jane 8, Rebecca 8, Cai 10, Sally 9, Christine 7, Trude 8, Pauline 9, Elaine not read

Jane B
Score: 8.4
2019-03-21

The Woman in the Window by A J Flynn

It isn’t paranoia if it’s really happening . . .

Anna Fox lives alone–a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her days drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times . . . and spying on her neighbors. Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother, their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn’t, her world begins to crumble–and its shocking secrets are laid bare.

What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In this diabolically gripping thriller, no one–and nothing–is what it seems. Twisty and powerful, ingenious and moving, The Woman in the Window is a smart, sophisticated novel of psychological suspense that recalls the best of Hitchcock–an unforgettable thriller that Gillian Flynn calls “amazing.”

  • Christine 7
  • Pauline 9
  • Jane 8
  • Sally 7
  • Rebecca 8
  • June 9
  • Janet 8
  • Elaine 8
  • Trude 7
  • Cai 7
Janet J
Score: 7.8

Himself by Jess Kidd

When Mahony returns to Mulderrig, a speck of a place on Ireland’s west coast, he brings only a photograph of his long-lost mother and a determination to do battle with the lies of his past.

No one – living or dead – will tell Mahony what happened to the teenage mother who abandoned him as a baby, despite his certainty that more than one of the villagers knows the sinister truth.

Between Mulderrig’s sly priest, its pitiless nurse and the caustic elderly actress throwing herself into her final village play, this beautiful and darkly comic debut novel creates an unforgettable world of mystery, bloody violence and buried secrets…

  • Pauline 7
  • Christine 8
  • June 8
  • Sally 8
  • Jane 6
  • Janet 5
  • Rebecca 7
  • Trude 7
  • Cai 8
  • Elaine 7
Cai M
Score: 7.1
2019-01-16

This is going to hurt by Adam Kay

Welcome to the life of a junior doctor: 97-hour weeks, life and death decisions, a constant tsunami of bodily fluids, and the hospital parking meter earns more than you.
Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, this diary is everything you wanted to know – and more than a few things you didn’t – about life on and off the hospital ward.

Elaine 9
June 7
Pauline 7
Trude 7
Christine 7
Sally 8
Cai 9
Rebecca 8
Jane 9
Janet 8

 

June T
Score: 7.9