Tag Archives: book review

Staff Pick – The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty

Posted on by

aaaTITLE – The Husband’s Secret

AUTHOR – Liane Moriarty

SUMMARY

“To be opened in the event of my death” With one swift, vicious movement, she sliced the envelope open, and pulled out a handwritten letter. love you and the girls… so sorry to leave you with this… cannot bear… The Husband’s Secret is a funny, heartbreaking novel of marriage, grief, love and secrets. When her husband announces he’s in love with her best friend, painfully shy Tess picks up her young son and returns to her mother’s house. There she begins an unexpected affair with an old flame. Rachel is a woman in her sixties consumed by grief and anger at the loss of her daughter twenty years earlier. When her son announces he is taking her beloved grandson overseas, Rachel begins a descent into deeper bitterness and pain. Cecilia is the quintessential “I don’t know how she does it” woman. A devoted mother to three daughters, she runs her household like clockwork, is President of the P&C, owns an extremely successful Tupperware business and is happy in her fifteen-year marriage. Until she discovers a letter in their attic labelled: “To my wife Cecilia, to be opened in the event of my death”… Her husband’s secret is a bombshell beyond all imagining with repercussions across the lives of all three women.

COMMENTS

I thought I had already read my favourite book of the year, but I am going to change my mind. The Husbands Secret is the BEST book I have read this year. Continue reading →

2nd Tuesday Book Group

Posted on by

ertTitle – Breathing in Colour

Author – Clare Jay

Book Summary –

‘Your child is missing – presumed dead.’Hours after receiving the phone call that every mother dreads, Alida Salter flies to India to search for her backpacker daughter. The discovery of disturbing collages in Mia’s hotel makes Alida suspect a connection between the disaster that fractured their relationship thirteen years ago, and Mia’s recent, mysterious disappearance.Mia is no ordinary girl. Growing up with the sensory condition synaesthesia – where she sees the world in a kaleidoscope of shapes, colours and smells – she has gone through life with the vivid imagination of an artist, but for years she has shouldered an overwhelming burden of guilt. It has been a difficult relationship, but now comes the toughest test of all…Alida must find the courage to trust her maternal instincts, or lose her daughter forever.

Groups Comments – Continue reading →

Jody’s Pick – Grave Mercy

Posted on by

aaaTitle:Grave Mercy

Author: Robin LaFevers

Book Summary

Why be the sheep, when you can be the wolf? Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old. Here she learns that the god of Death Himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts–and a violent destiny. If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as a handmaiden to Death. To claim her new life, she must destroy the lives of others. Ismae’s most important assignment takes her straight into the high court of Brittany–where she finds herself woefully under prepared–not only for the deadly games of intrigue and treason, but for the impossible choices she must make. For how can she deliver Death’s vengeance upon a target who, against her will, has stolen her heart?

Comments Continue reading →

1st Wednesday Book Group – Wolf Hall

Posted on by

aaaTitle:Wolf Hall

Author:Hilary Mantel

Book Summary:

‘Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning,’ says Thomas More, ‘and when you come back that night he’ll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks’ tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him money.’England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey’s clerk, and later his successor.Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. Ruthless in pursuit of his own interests, he is as ambitious in his wider politics as he is for himself. His reforming agenda is carried out in the grip of a self-interested parliament and a king who fluctuates between romantic passions and murderous rages. From one of our finest living writers, Wolf Hall is that very rare thing: a truly great English novel, one that explores the intersection of individual psychology and wider politics. With a vast array of characters, and richly overflowing with incident, it peels back history to show us Tudor England as a half-made society, moulding itself with great passion and suffering and courage. Continue reading →

Last Thursday Book Group – The Goldenland

Posted on by

aaaTitle:The Golden Land

Author: Di Morrissey

Book Summary

Natalie is a young Gold Coast mother with a loving husband, two small children and a happy lifestyle. While helping her mother move house, she finds a little box containing a Burmese artefact. When Natalie learns its unique history through a letter left by her great-great uncle, it ignites an interest in its country of origin and her uncle’s unfulfilled plans for this curio. Her investigations collide with her own dramatically changing circumstances and create a catalyst for a moral dilemma that challenges the core of her marriage as she finds herself immersed in two very different golden lands.

Group Comments Continue reading →