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 Ivor Willoughby’s father has been a non-existent presence in his life. Apart from a couple of weeks when Ivor was a boy, his father has spent the entirety of his life in Arabia, soldiering and having adventures. The Willoughby family have always been warriors, so when Ivor grows to manhood he realizes that he, too, longs to travel to Arabia. He aims primarily to find his father, but when he arrives in Abha he discovers that the people are not as forthcoming as he would have liked. Instead, he hears stories of a woman called Na’ema, and as he searches further wonders just how this warrior woman is tied to his father.
I very rarely outright dislike books that I choose to read these days, but unfortunately this book just did not sit right with me and I did not enjoy reading it. If I hadn’t received it from LibraryThing Early Reviewers, I can guarantee it would have been a DNF. Unfortunately I did feel obliged to review it, and so I trudged onward and managed to get the whole thing read.
At first glance, the book looks very appealing. Lately, my aim in historical fiction and history has been to experience places and stories that are new to me, that I haven’t read twenty times before. Saudi Arabia is most definitely new to me, and I loved the idea of a mysterious warrior woman. Ivor’s search for his father is clearly meant to be very epic, with lots of adventure, or at least that’s how I interpreted the premise.
Unfortunately, the book fails on these levels. The story itself is, frankly, not interesting. There is a great deal of set-up at the beginning, but when Ivor actually gets to Arabia he does very little but listen to other people tell him stories about his father. The book cover promises whispers of Na’ema’s story, but in reality her story is shouted from the rooftops and all he has to do is find her. She’s not particularly mysterious except in one aspect, which I won’t spoil but which was not actually that exciting. I couldn’t help but think the story would have been far more compelling from Ivor’s father Robert’s point of view. All the action happens around him, so why not just tell it from his perspective? The characters would surely have been more fleshed out if the reader had actually met them.
Moreover, I struggled to get along with the actual history of the book. Newton more or less drops us in it and doesn’t really explain the wider context of the story. I felt I would have liked to know which bits were true, if any, and which weren’t; this would have made it more valuable as historical fiction at least. Instead, I just feel confused, like I’ve wasted the time I spent reading it. To make matters worse, the writing isn’t even particularly good, and at times Ivor’s interjections to the reader are clunky and irritating. There is absolutely no suspense and nothing to keep the reader going through the pages of telling.
I had high hopes for The Mistress of Abha, but I was let down. As a result, I regrettably would not recommend this book.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from LibraryThing Early Reviewers for review.
 Andi is a young girl from an upper class Southern family. Years ago, she would have been a proper Southern belle, but for the moment she’s struggling to get over her brother’s death from drugs and the realization that her father is sleeping with her best friend’s stepmother. With all the awkwardness of an early teenage girl, Andi imagines herself to be in love with a number of boys, struggles through difficult issues she’s too young for, fights against wearing a child’s dress for her big sister’s wedding, and charms everyone in sight with her genuine kindness and good will.
This is such an incredibly sweet coming of age story. Andi visibly matures as the novel goes on. She’s faced with tough dilemma after dilemma – her brother’s death, her father’s infidelity, her mother’s alcoholism, even her best friend heading to boarding school. But she handles it all, even when she thinks she’s not able to, and is an absolutely adorable character. Her voice is so true to teenagerhood that some of her thoughts could easily have come out of my own head at that age, even though not nearly so many atrocious things happened in my early teenage years. She’s a drama queen and overimagines everything, but don’t all teenagers?
The best, and most adorable, example of this is her habit of imagining herself in love with a few boys and men throughout the course of the novel. In one particularly charming situation, she’s convinced herself that she’s in love with a soldier who is off at war. She writes him letter after letter, not really noticing that he’s not writing back – and then his mother comes over with the news. He’s been injured, not fatally, but in his hands. Andi is devastated and blurts out that he and she were going together, only to be told that he’s actually engaged. What a mortifying and devastating moment for a thirteen year old!
Something else I sincerely appreciated about this book was Andi’s faith. It’s never pushed on the reader, it’s simply presented as a component of her personality. It underlines quite a bit of what she does, like volunteering at a soup kitchen and reading to elderly people, and her faith remains a lodestone for her. It seemed refreshingly real to me, without the author preaching to us in any way. It’s another part of Andi’s life, not everything to her. She even complains about being an altar server, just like I did when I had to be one as a child.
All That’s True is a great, engaging read about a teenager coming into her own. As she comes to realize things about her life and develop her personality fully, we can’t help but fall in love with her and eagerly go along for the ride. I would definitely recommend this book to teenagers and adults everywhere.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from the publisher.
 After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Russians struggled with identity and with their ever-changing nation. Susan Richards has been to Russia before and goes back just to see how the people she knows are doing, hoping to see what’s happened in modern day Russia. Over the course of 16 years, she visits a variety of towns and cities around Russia, catching up with friends and investigating cults and other Russian legends.
I really wanted to like this book. Really, really wanted to like it. I’m fascinated by Russia (and Russians) – I spent five years learning Russian, picking up plenty of Russian history through both the language and various classes, and only by a sad quirk of fate haven’t visited yet. It’s still a goal. So, this book seemed like it would be perfect. Unfortunately, it really wasn’t, and largely because it didn’t really tell me all that much about modern day Russia. There were a few interesting segments, such as when Susan visits Orthodox communities hidden deep within the Siberian forest, but for the most part, she spends the entire book doing just one thing: visiting her Russian friends.
At the start of the book, it is her mission to travel to one town, Marx, and throughout the book she keeps on returning. She makes friends with people there and spends quite a bit of the book visiting them and getting updates on their progress (or setbacks). In doing so, she does take a peek into modern Russian society – exposing Russians to be just as uncertain as Westerners, ever-uneasy in a world without regulations. Regulations, when they return, are sometimes embraced and sometimes detested. What’s certain is that the levels of freedom have been restricted and the Russian lifestyle is still very volatile. It’s clear to them that anything could happen with their government and they act accordingly.
The problem for me was that I wasn’t necessarily interested in the lives of the same people, over and over again. It was useful for contrast, but I never came to care about any of the people Susan befriended. I found some of their lives much more interesting than others. By far the best parts were when she ventured out of Marx and saw how things were in other parts of Russia; though we can see the changes in Russia through the eyes of those people in Marx, the country is immense. Different perspectives were, for me, very important and helped to round out the overall picture.
What really made me more or less dislike the book was the way it ended. The author doesn’t really sum up her experiences or her thoughts. It just ends. I can see the point of this – after all, life goes on, and these lives are doing just that – but I can’t help but feel I’d have preferred an actual end of some sort. It’s as though she’s going back to visit tomorrow, but this time, we won’t be along with her, seeing things through her eyes.
I’ve read a few varying opinions on Lost and Found in Russia, but while it left me with some lingering things to think about, I overall felt disappointed. I couldn’t recommend it unless you’re very interested in post-Soviet Russia.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from Netgalley.
 Gypsy Rose Lee is America’s best known burlesque dancer. What’s less known about her is the life of Rose Louise, the reasons she was driven to burlesque, and how she really thought about herself and her life. This is as much due to her own cultivation of her personal myth as anything else; taking her sister’s legacy in vaudeville and making it her own, Gypsy became a legend even in her own time, the master of the strip tease. Karen Abbott has done research into Gypsy’s early life, while she was still Rose Louise, and attempted to work out the true story of the woman behind the myth.
Gypsy Rose Lee was certainly a fascinating woman. I didn’t know much about her before reading this book, just her name and that she was a famous burlesque dancer. The story within this book was, for me, fascinating. I took a class in American musical theatre back in college and it was easily one of the more interesting courses outside of my majors. Of course, it started right at the beginning, with the origins of vaudeville and burlesque – both of which feature largely here.
As a child, Gypsy was in vaudeville, and hugely successful, with her sister June as the lead performer. An awkward child, Gypsy, then known as Rose Louise, could often be mistaken for one of the boys, while her ethereal baby sister stole the show. It was only when June ran off at the age of fifteen that Rose transformed herself into Gypsy Rose Lee, joining burlesque shows out of desperation and eventually becoming a true master of the racy performances. Behind the scenes was a difficult mother and some very difficult family relationships, all of which made for compelling reading. At times it was hard to believe that Gypsy and her family actually lived these lives – they are so outside the norm. I was simultaneously fascinating and drawn to pity Gypsy and June for completely missing out on normal childhoods – they didn’t go to school, they didn’t make friends, and they lived just to make their mother more money.
Despite the incredibly compelling life of Gypsy, I didn’t really feel that the book lived up to its full potential. That’s because it switches around quite drastically in time. This could have been a useful device for contrasting the older Gypsy with the child Rose Louise, but in the end it flipped around too much for my liking. I wouldn’t have minded Gypsy’s biography alternated with interviews and the author’s research (presuming the latter took a secondary role) but switching through multiple time periods was just distracting. I wound up feeling the book would have been better as a straightforward biography, told in chronological order. Gypsy’s story doesn’t need these devices to be captivating.
Bar the flaw of alternating periods of history, American Rose was an incredibly addictive, compelling read. I was drawn to read more and more of Gypsy’s life, reading this non-fiction book as easily as I would read any novel. If you don’t mind the switching around, I’d highly recommend this book.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from Amazon Vine.
 Genevieve, a gently born girl growing up in sixteenth century France, has been raised with the belief that her parents are dead, thanks to the French King Francois, and that her true loyalties lie with the English King Henry VIII. Her mission in life has always been to eradicate him, leaving the way open for Henry to reclaim France as his ancestors tried so many times. But when Genevieve is sent to the French court, she finds that things are not at all what she expected. Court intrigue is rife, true, but she begins to make friends and, worse, to get to know the king who has been turned into a villain by her aunt throughout her life. When the time comes to fulfill her mission, will she follow through?
Quite a few factors contributed to my enjoyment of this novel. To be honest, I was a bit wary of it before beginning; these days, there is far too much fiction centering on this period in history, but I immediately was drawn to the fact that it took place in France, not England, and that the heroine found herself with very torn loyalties. It’s always fascinating for me when a character in a book has cause to question beliefs she’s been indoctrinated with; I firmly believe that we should all question and learn things for ourselves, so I very nearly felt like applauding when she started to realize that things were not as they’d been portrayed.
Plus, I genuinely liked Genevieve as a heroine. She’s an attractive character who draws others in despite herself; she’s thoughtful, intelligent, but still prone to the foibles any teenager would suffer. She’s not all golden-hearted, either, because she can’t stand her ‘rival’ in the court and has some very dark thoughts. Her relationships with others are continually developing as they get to know her in ways that kept me turning the pages – I couldn’t wait to see how she’d react to the latest bit of knowledge. She also gets to know some very influential French figures, including not only the King as aforementioned but his mistress, Anne d’Heuilly, and encounters the prince Henri, his wife Catherine de Medicine, and his respective mistress, Diane de Poitiers. There were also a few heartrending moments in the book – they were towards the end, so I can’t elaborate, but have stayed with me since I finished reading.
Finally, the French court is magnificently depicted in this book. It’s full of descriptions of clothing, food, and behaviour that had me riveted and transported me to the period. Ever since I went to France, I have felt much more interested in fiction and non-fiction set in the country, and To Serve a King satisfied this craving on many fronts. It not only delivered that wonderful atmosphere, but an engaging story with a few twists, lively and sparkling characters, and very solid writing. I highly recommend this to historical fiction lovers everywhere.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the author for review.
 Eleanora Cohen is born on a day of omens. A flock of purple and white hoopoes take over her house in Constanta, two midwives mysteriously appear to assist in her birth, and unfortunately her mother dies, leaving her and her father alone in the world. Eleanora’s father asks his late wife’s sister, Ruxandra, to help raise the child, and so she grows up for a few years, long enough to display a precocious intelligence and to alienate her aunt with that extraordinary cleverness. When Eleanora’s father makes plans to travel to Stamboul, Eleanora decides to stow away on his ship rather than be left behind with her aunt, a decision that has unforeseen consequences.
The Oracle of Stamboul lies in that peculiar area of magical realism. It’s set in a firmly historical basis, but includes just a few touches of fantasy to keep us on our toes. Eleanora’s incredible intelligence for me might as well have been fantasy, and of course the flock of hoopoes as well as the myth surrounding Eleanora’s birth just adds to the book’s overall touch of mysticism. It’s something that I’m not always comfortable with, but which worked very well in this particular book. It’s appropriate to the slightly distant, slightly magical atmosphere that pervades the novel and Eleanora’s perception of the world around her.
Eleanora herself I found immensely appealing. Despite her cleverness, she has a fragility about her that makes it clear she’s just a girl trying to cope in the wider world. One incident earlier in the book displayed this perfectly for me; in a shop with her aunt, Eleanora discovers an error in their bill and says so quite loudly. She thinks she’s saving money, but her aunt hustles her out of the shop, scolds her, and puts a stop to her lessons. She doesn’t understand the world the way adults do, not yet, and it’s this alternating combination of intelligence and vulnerability which make her such an appealing heroine.
The story itself wasn’t quite as strong as I’d expected. While it goes along smoothly, the climax wasn’t what I’d hoped it to be, and to some extent that soured my reaction to the rest of the book. I felt slightly misled by the cover copy, which indicated that Eleanora would have a great impact on the Ottoman Empire – I think I was expecting more of an alternate history than I actually got. I don’t know very much about the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and personally I would have liked more. I didn’t feel as solidly grounded in the period as I would ideally have done. Perhaps the details would have weighed the book down for others, but not for me – I kept wanting to know more, looking up things on Wikipedia to try and connect the dots. The book had the right atmosphere and a good story, but lacked the historical substance and basis for me to really fall in love with it. For someone who knows more about this period and place in history, this particular concern would be irrelevant, but I genuinely was made curious by the story and characters. I wanted more from not only the history, but from the story itself.
Nevertheless, The Oracle of Stamboul was a thoughtful, especially well-written piece of historical fiction, with just the right touch of magic to set it apart from its fellows. Recommended.
 Want to read others’ reviews? Check out a few other stops on this TLC book tour:
Tuesday, February 8th: The Bodacious Pen
Tuesday, February 8th: The Reading Date
Tuesday, February 8th: Katie’s Nesting Spot
Wednesday, February 9th: Bibliophibian
Thursday, February 10th: One Girl Collecting
Thursday, February 10th: Confessions of a Rambling Mind
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from the publisher.
 Venice in the early fifteenth century is a nest of scandal. The titular Duke does not actually rule; instead, his mother, the Duchess Alexa, rules for him with her brother-in-law, the much-despised Alonzo. They’ve conspired to wed their niece, Giulietta, to the King of Cyprus, conveniently ignoring the fact that she’s not interested. Meanwhile, Tycho, a pale man who can’t stand the sun and has supernatural strength, awakens in the hold of a ship, bound with silver chains. When he is released, he runs into the head of the Assassini, an association of assassins. Their numbers have decreased drastically and said leader is aging. He immediately conscripts Tycho into training, not caring what his reasons for avoiding the sun are, merely doing his best to protect Venice in this troubled time.
Despite the appealing nature of this book – full of politics, darkness, and supernatural beings – I had a difficult time getting into it. It’s received positive reviews across the internet, so apparently I am an anomaly, but I found the book too dark, and much too sexual and bloody for my personal liking. This probably fits with the nature of it, but is difficult to take and often felt like an unnecessary add-on. Moreover, the book’s plot moves very quickly. Usually, with a book like this, it’s fine to be tossed right in the mix of things, and get a grip as you move on and finally figure out who people are and what’s going on. The problem with this one was that I never really felt I had a handle on what was happening.
What I did like was the atmosphere in general and the setting. Historical Venice with magic – I could hardly ask for more. Grimwood sets the scene very well and is a master at descriptive language. The magical aspects seem to sit perfectly within the historical context, so this part of the book at least was easy to sink into. The battle scenes were also well done, and were among the few times I actually felt compelled to continue reading.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t get on with the characters either. The plot moves so quickly that we flit between a variety of them, never really caring about any of them. Worse, by the end quite a few of them are dead – but because I was never attached to any of them, this produced none of the emotional impact that it should have done. The book left me with the feel that I should have enjoyed it more, given its positive points and its very appealing plotline. For others who are in the mood for a speedy political read in a fantastic setting, I suspect The Fallen Blade would suit better.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from Netgalley.
 Octavia Frost, a fairly ordinary novelist, has just written her most depressing book to date. Her new book, though, The Nobodies Album, is something completely different – she is rewriting the endings to all of her previous books. It’s perfectly apt for this time in her life, as she wishes many parts of her life could have turned out differently. She can’t begin restitution, however, until she hears shocking news: her rock star son Milo, from whom she has been estranged for years, has been accused of murdering his girlfriend. Octavia immediately flies to his home in California, not knowing what to expect, but ready for a change in her life and to support her son in the most difficult time of his. Interspersed with her story are the endings of all the books she’s written, along with their new chapters, shedding ever-increasing light on the changing state of Octavia’s emotions and outlook on life.
Despite the fact that it’s billed as a literary mystery, I found The Nobodies Album surprisingly satisfying. It’s true that the mystery wasn’t particularly mysterious; there is really only one person who has any motive for murdering Milo’s girlfriend Bettina, so even I, notoriously slow when it comes to solving these things, figured it out before the characters did. But I quite enjoyed the story along the way. Many of the other story elements aren’t revealed until further into the book, so it takes a while to truly understand how they have all gotten to this point. Seeing things from Octavia’s point of view, as an older woman who has made mistakes, tied in with the obvious change of attitude she’s had displayed through the old book endings spread throughout the story, made for a very emotive and moving read.
Though beautifully written, Octavia’s voice is slightly cold to start. I would encourage you to set that aside until the story gets more involved. She has reasons for acting the way that she does, and those reasons lead to the reveal of some fascinating, complex relationships – exactly what I look for in a book like this. The story takes a close look in particular at the relationships between mothers and their children; how even doing the best you can sometimes isn’t quite enough, especially not in the formative years. It’s true that Octavia and Milo have some terrible circumstances to deal with, but she realizes that their personalities – which are very similar – will clash while their lives are still normal. She isn’t the kind of parent Milo needs, but she’s the parent he has left, which leads to problems in their relationship that eventually result in their initial estrangement.
The Nobodies Album is a thoughtful and at times suspenseful literary mystery. Highly recommended to those who enjoy well-written characters and don’t mind the occasional break for another thread of the story.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
 In Lena’s world, love is a disease. Called “deliria amor nervosa”, the disease has a myriad of symptoms and is generally blamed for all the world’s ills. Things are better since a cure was found, or so they say. Lena believes them wholeheartedly and can’t wait for her procedure, scheduled to happen for everyone on their eighteenth birthday. With just months to go, Lena prepares meticulously for her interview and is diligent about staying away from boys, preferring the company of her best friend. But when she and Hana sneak past a fence, she meets a boy, Alex, and though he has the mark of the cured, Lena’s worldview begins to shift in drastic ways.
What a dystopia this was. Can you imagine a world without love? I never could before and I’m not sure I’d like to again – Lena’s world is cold and forbidding. I liked the approach of this story – it reminded me of Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, in that Lena just can’t wait to be like everyone else. Her mother, stricken by love, killed herself when Lena was a girl, and ever since she’s been marked with the same brush of tragedy and illness. Being cured is her only way to escape, and she never considers her mother’s last words until she meets Alex and starts to feel what love actually is.
The world itself was interesting and, I thought, fairly well fleshed out for the first volume of a trilogy. Part of me was wondering about the logistics of it all – how many cities are out there like Lena’s? Why did they still allow people to get married if they might fall in love with their spouse? But I set those concerns aside, thinking that they might be answered in the next book, and instead kept reading because I was totally captivated by the story.
I was completely swept away by Delirium. It’s almost difficult to relate to Lena at first because she is so determined to be ordinary. As she slowly breaks the mold and dares to be extraordinary, she becomes much more interesting and I found myself racing through the rest of the story to see what happens to her and Alex. Because of course they are destined to fall in love, and it’s such a wonderful and sweet romance. I could believe in them and I was crossing my fingers for them throughout the story. It really was beautiful. And the ending was something I saw coming – I am not sure now how I’m going to wait until the next volume of the trilogy is released!
In the meantime, I’ve already purchased Before I Fall and can guarantee I’ll be reading that as soon as it arrives on my doorstep. I highly recommend Delirium to anyone looking for a good, compelling YA dystopia with a passionate love story at the core.
For those of us in the UK, Delirium will be published in just a couple of days. In the meantime, here are the publisher’s website and Amazon links!
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from Netgalley.
 In times of stress, there’s almost nothing better than rereading a cozy favorite book and shutting out the world. And who better to remind us of how to be the heroines of our own lives than the heroines of our favorite books? From Jane Eyre, my own personal favorite, to The Color Purple, Blakemore takes a closer look at our favorite female characters, the books they star in, and the authors who wrote them. She not only isolates a few of the greatest traits of these heroines, but explains how we can take them away and use them in our own lives.
The Heroine’s Bookshelf was everywhere in the book blogosphere last month and with all the praise it garnered, I couldn’t resist getting a copy for myself. So when it popped up on Amazon Vine, I eagerly requested it, just knowing I’d love a book about so many of my favorite female characters. It’s difficult for a book to live up to those high expectations, but this one managed just that. It’s a delightful, heartening little read, that reminds us we’re not alone and certainly made me want to go right back to these literary favorites. Perfectly written for a time when many women’s lives are getting more difficult, when the pennies have to stretch that much further, this is a book that has a place on every woman’s bookshelf.
What I really loved most about this book was that Blakemore didn’t stop at the actual heroines in the novels. No, those are the women we’re all familiar with, that we have already come to love and store within ourselves. She also talks about the fabulous female authors who created these literary heroines and their own foibles. She speculates on their motivations for creating the strong girls who still manage to inspire us today and adds them into the mix of real life – because much as we’d like it, our lives aren’t fiction with a neat conclusion. Our lives are messy, and so were these authors’, but they stood above that and created literature that transcends. Maybe our acts of heroism aren’t writing, but that doesn’t mean they can’t inspire us.
Split into sections for the trait each character epitomizes, Blakemore takes us on a literary journey of sorts, through one heroine’s capacity to love, to another’s classification of magic, to a third’s unrelenting faith. Even without having read all the books (I have never read The Color Purple or Colette’s Claudine works), I still felt I gained from those sections. As an added bonus, I’d now love to read them, and plan to do so in the very near future. The entire book felt like it was written just for me – and it reminded me of how fortunate I am to love reading and to find inspiration in it on a regular basis.
If you are a woman and love to read – if you spent much of your childhood lost in a book like me – The Heroine’s Bookshelf is simply a must read. I’m thrilled to have it on my shelf.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from Amazon Vine.
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