Someone Else’s Shoes by Jojo Moyes

MEET SAM
She’s not got much, but she’s grateful for what she has: a job she’s just about clinging on to and a family who depend on her for everything. She knows she’s one bad day away from losing it all – and just hopes today isn’t it . . .

MEET NISHA
She’s got everything she always dreamed of – and more: a phenomenally rich husband; an international lifestyle; and . . . she’s just been locked out of all of it after her husband initiates divorce proceedings . . .

Sam and Nisha should never have crossed paths. But after a bag mix-up at the gym, their lives become intertwined – even as they spiral out of control.

Each blames the other as they feel increasingly invisible, forgotten, lost – and desperately alone.

But they’re not.

No woman is an island. Look around. Family. Friends. Strangers.
Even the woman you believe just ruined your life might turn out to be your best friend.
Because together you can do anything – like take back what is yours . . .

jane 8, R8,P8,T7,C8,Janet 8 June 7

Rebecca H
Score: 7.7
2023-08-09

The Chef, The Bird and The Blessing by Andrew Sharp

“Not all who ask for the impossible are refused.”
Swahili proverb

Compelling to the last page, The Chef, the Bird and the Blessing is a story about the power of suppressed memory, of friendship, and of our relationship with the natural world. Set within vivid images of a backwater in an unnamed African country, the novel is both poignant and funny.

Mozzy is a cook in a struggling safari business and dreams of escaping the perilous wilderness and his despised employer to become head chef in an upmarket restaurant in London. Spurred on by his wife, a member of a visionary religious sect, his fantasy becomes reality. But will his sanity and marriage survive in this new world? Can a small bird help him find his way?
Mozzy’s path takes him from Africa to London and back, but it is the painful journey of the heart that ultimately fulfils Mozzy’s destiny.

T8, Jane 8, June 7, Janet 6, Sally 8, C 8, E7

Sally M
Score: 7.4
2023-07-12

The Rumour by Lesley Kara

When single mum Joanna hears a rumour at the school gates, she never intends to pass it on. But one casual comment leads to another and now there’s no going back . . .

Rumour has it that a notorious child killer is living under a new identity, in their sleepy little town of Flinstead-on-Sea.

Sally McGowan was just ten years old when she stabbed little Robbie Harris to death forty-eight years ago – no photos of her exist since her release as a young woman.

So who is the supposedly reformed killer who now lives among them? How dangerous can one rumour become? And how far will Joanna go to protect her loved ones from harm, when she realizes what it is she’s unleashed?

E5, Janet 7, June 7, Jane 6, Trude 5, S 6, C6, R6

Trude S
Score: 6.0
2023-06-14

The Keeper of Stories by Sally Page

She can’t recall what started her collection. Maybe it was in a fragment of conversation overheard as she cleaned a sink? Before long (as she dusted a sitting room or defrosted a fridge) she noticed people were telling her their stories. Perhaps they always had done, but now it is different, now the stories are reaching out to her and she gathers them to her…

When Janice starts cleaning for Mrs B – a shrewd and tricksy woman in her nineties – she meets someone who wants to hear her story. But Janice is clear: she is the keeper of stories, she doesn’t have a story to tell. At least, not one she can share. Mrs B is no fool and knows there is more to Janice than meets the eye. What is she hiding? After all, doesn’t everyone have a story to tell?

Jane 8, T7,June 8, C7, Janet 8, S7,P8,R8,E8

Janet J
Score: 7.7
2023-05-10

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

It is 1974 on the island of Cyprus. Two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided land, meet at a tavern in the city they both call home. The tavern is the only place that Kostas, who is Greek and Christian, and Defne, who is Turkish and Muslim, can meet, in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of garlic, chilli peppers and wild herbs. This is where one can find the best food in town, the best music, the best wine. But there is something else to the place: it makes one forget, even if for just a few hours, the world outside and its immoderate sorrows.

In the centre of the tavern, growing through a cavity in the roof, is a fig tree. This tree will witness their hushed, happy meetings, their silent, surreptitious departures; and the tree will be there when the war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to rubble, when the teenagers vanish and break apart.

Decades later in north London, sixteen-year-old Ada Kazantzakis has never visited the island where her parents were born. Desperate for answers, she seeks to untangle years of secrets, separation and silence. The only connection she has to the land of her ancestors is a Ficus Carica growing in the back garden of their home.

The Island of Missing Trees is a rich, magical tale of belonging and identity, love and trauma, nature, and, finally, renewal.

jane 8,Janet 8, T9, S7, R 9, June 8, P 8, C9, E7

Christine P
Score: 8
2023-04-12