wordsofclover's reviews
2085 reviews

In 1836, Prussia, Hanne is living a stifled life with her family, learning how to grow under her mother’s stern expectations, as well as dealing with all the feelings that come with a changing body and the expectations upon her as a woman. Then Hanne befriends Thea, a new neighbor to the Lutheran community. Hanne and Thea form a strong bond, which threatens to break when their community emigrates to Australia and sickness boards the ship with them. But the bond is more than nature can break, and Hanne soon discovers so much more than life beyond what she could have imagined. 

 

I love Hannah Kent’s writing so much - it’s soft and lyrical, while also embodying so much human experience and emotion. I love how she takes moments and people in history, and creates such compelling stories. The pacing of this novel was quite slow and you feel like you are slowly but very pleasantly digesting Hanne’s way of life and her relationships with a number of people and her growing and with Thea. We learn about the strict religious community she lives in, and the piety of her father - and how the jealousy of neighbors could pose a risk to Thea and her family. 

 

The twist in this book halfway through definitely surprised me but I didn’t hate it. I actually liked the supernatural element of it and how the steps Hannah Kent took with Hanne brought in the naturalist element of this book even more. There is a real emphasis on nature in this book from both Hanne’s connection with it but also just the gorgeous descriptions of the woods in Prussia, the stream and fields, the waves and whales seen from the ship and then the golden, harsher environment of Australia but just as beautiful in its own way. I do think at this point in the book the pacing suffered a little bit as Hanne was quite literally stuck in where she could go and what she could do or wanted to do. 

 

I appreciated how Hannah Kent wrote the Indigenous population of Australia - how they treated the immigrants coming and taking their land, literally helping them and showing them how they could survive, and how in turn they were treated less than a decade later - being run off the land with guns by white people. It was so upsetting to read how these people were treated but so important to learn about as well. 

 

I wasn’t really crazy about the ending. As Thea’s life progressed, I feel like we saw an immaturity and selfishness in Hanne - seemingly wanting Thea all to herself which was impossible for so many reasons, and in turn this making it seem like she wanted Thea to be alone. The ending made me sad as while Hanne and Thea seem happy, I couldn’t help but think of all the grieving people left behind including a baby who would grow up without a mother - and that the women in the community who treated Hanne and Thea so badly never seemed to get their comeuppance (other than apparently being a spinster). I would have much rather read a story where we see Hanne more at peace with her situation, and watching Thea grow with her family and eventually reunite after a long and happy life rather than one cut short far too soon. 

Marion is a 50-year old woman who lacks social skills and still lives with her brother in their childhood home. Marion loves John but is also scared of his temper, and so turns a blind eye to what he keeps in the cellar - he is the only person she has after all.

This is a very character-focused novel as we follow Marion through past and present timelines. We learn about her childhood and her relationship with her parents, in particular her cold and controlling mother, and we also learn about her relationship with her brother John and what he was like as a child, and what he's like now as an adult. Marion never had friends, and was bullied in school and so, lacks a lot of social skills other people have and also looks decades older than she is. We see her focus on fantasies she has about a different kind of life with friends and family.

This book reminded me a bit of a Liz Nugent novel as Liz is a master at a morally gray character and unsettling quiet plots. However, I think the blurb of this novel completely throws off reader's expectations - we are told Marion is faced with a decision about the cellar when John has a heart attack but this doesn't happen till over 80% into the book so I was reading it expecting this to happen much sooner and became frustrated when it didn't.

Roman and Iris were separated following the devastating attack on Avalon Bluff. Now Iris is back in Oath with her brother, desperately hoping for news of her Kitt while Roman has woken up not even knowing who he is and under the service of the god Dacre. As words and magic letters once again become key to Iris and Roman’s relationship, war comes closer and closer to Oath and there is still no sign of Enva who is the only divine being who could stand up to the might of Dacre. 

 

Ooh I just loved this. I think if you enjoyed the soft romance between Roman and Iris in Divine Rivals, especially their connection through words, you will still love this one. The tensions and the danger is even higher in this one as Roman is quite literally behind enemy lines and at the start of the novel, he doesn’t even know that Dacre is the one he was originally fighting against and now is fighting for. 

 

There’s something about the connection, the love and the longing between Roman and Iris that just moves something in me when I read about them - there’s a fierceness between them as well as a beautiful vulnerability. They will fight for each other to their last breath but surrender to each other with the softest of sighs. It’s just gorgeous. I’ve read 4 of Rebecca Ross’s books now and I think she excels with this blend of fantasy and romance, giving a wonderful relationship as well as an intriguing fantastical storyline to go along with it. 

 

My only complaints about this book are that 1. I would have liked Roman and Iris to have been a bit older. I think they both read older than they were and given everything they go through in the book, the very adult responsibilities (including a marriage) that they take on, it would make more sense for them to be in their early-mid twenties rather than 18/19 years old. 

 

I also think the conclusion with Dacre was a bit fast and Dacre himself was often naive at times or overlooked Roman a little bit too much. It could be brought down to the fact he was a god and had the arrogance no-one would betray him but still. I loved Attie and Tobias - and I also really loved seeing Eva in this book and how she was there even if people didn’t realize. 

 

This made me hope and fear for my favorites, it broke my heart in a way I didn’t expect and left me feeling happy but also bittersweet for those that were taken too soon. 

In the third installment of Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout, we once again follow Lucy as she embarks on a trip with her ex-husband William and we learn more about William’s life, childhood and some secrets from his mother’s past. 

 

I find the audiobooks for Lucy Barton (or all of Elizabeth Strout’s audiobooks as they are all narrated by Kimberly Farr who is fantastic) really relaxing and there’s something about Lucy and how she sees and responds to people that feels very real and relatable. 

 

This is very much achievable character focused book rather than plot and the timeline meanders back and forth as Lucy focuses on her trip with William to visit his older sister, and also on her past with William and her relationship with his mother. We also see glimpses of Lucy’s girls and the lovely bond she has with her now grown up daughters who are trying for families of their own. 

 

There’s not much I can say about this series except that with each book, it feels like having lunch with a friend. There’s something very warm and open about Lucy even in the ways she closes herself up sometimes and thinks so little about herself. These books are very comforting and I highly recommend them. 

In 1972, the president of Uganda orders the expulsion of all Ugandan-Asians within 90 minutes. As violence from locals and soldiers increase, and business suffers, newlyweds Asha and Pran as well as their family have to make the hard decision to leave even though this means potentially being separated by country.

I have read another book before about the expulsion order in Uganda against Asians, and I find it a fascinating albeit horrific moment in history - and similar to the previous book I read, in Kololo Hill I appreciated learning about a family's forced journey to another country and their bravery and love for one another pulling them through and the fortitude to begin again from nothing.

However, while I liked the history and some of the themes in the book as well as some of the family relationships - I found the pacing of the story suffered a little bit as well as what the author wanted us to really know or take away from the book. I thought the storyline about December was quite poor and pretty much went no-where other than to show Pran as slightly spineless. I think because this was one of the mysteries lying over the family, and a clear secret Pran was keeping I was expecting it to be a bit more dramatic.

Asha and Pran's marriage is also a focus in this novel as Asha changes away from Pran as she and the family move to England and she becomes a working woman, and gets her confidence back that the last months of Uganda erased. I also think that Pran never really came across well in the book - he was quite selfish in thinking his way was the only way for the family and he never really seemed to think much of Asha or Jaya's opinions.

I think vijaty had potgential and I would have liked to have spent more time with him, and see how he got on with his travels and his relationship with Mary which never seemed to be revealed to the family.

Jaya was the character I felt most drawn towards as we see her worry about all her family while mourning the loss of her husband, and for the second time uproot her home to learn a whole new language and culture.

I actually would have liked the whole timeline of this book to be changed, and have the Uganda section smaller so we could focus more on the lives of the family as they adapt to their new life. It felt like a book that would have benefitted to be very much character focused over plot, and one where the reader stays with the family for 50+ years through all the ups and downs to really foster a bond and get to know everyone inside out.

My name is Aoife and I'm going on my hen party next week so naturally I decided to pick up a book about a bride called Aoife who gets killed on her hen party. It's three years later and Aoife's friends/hens Dani, Tiff, Celine and Beth have returned to the location of the hen party/murder to celebrate Aoife's life but also in Dani's case retrace their steps from that faithful weekend and try to figure out what happened to end up in Aoife's death.

I think this was fun but from the start there was always a very prickly atmosphere between the girls. While Aoife is friends with Dani from college, Tiff and Beth from childhood and Celine from work, none of them really know each other and in Tiff's case downright dislikes Dani due to jealousy. This was also definitely the worst hen party I've ever heard about and not because the bride ended up dead, haha. Having only 5 people at a hen party is really odd - it's more a girl holiday than a party and they weren't close enough for that and at different points, all the hens are extremely selfish in their behaviour and I feel like they broke the cardinal rules of girlhood so many times (you never, ever leave your friends alone in a club!!).

It's obvious from the start as well that while they all love Aoife (or mostly Tiff and Dani), she can be a hard person to be friends with at times due to some party-hard behaviour and her attitude towards men. Though all of that was explained a bit throughout the novel as we see how stifled Aoife has been by her controlling relationship with Nathan (who was a slime) and how the hen party is her chance to realise she doesn't want to stay with him after all.

There were moments I couldn't believe the women's attitudes towards each other (mostly Tiff, Beth and Celine Vs Aoife and Dani) and I just know my friends would a. never leave two of us in a club on our own if there were some dodgy people about - it's either everyone goes home or no-one goes home - and also if I 'went off' with a man and the man came back without me, there would be hell raised. The fact that all of the girls dismissed Dani's behaviour when she came back in such a state and visibly injured shocked me.

I actually think there were some revelations - particularly about Nathan - that could have been left to later on in the book. The author did like to throw in some red herrings as Nathan, Matt and John all fly around in suspicions, but some elements of Nathan's true personality could have been leaked a bit better through the book rather than the very start us knowing he's had a hand in the entire (shit) hen party.

I don't think there was anything that really surprised me about some of the turn of the events and revelations at the end. Maybe the whodunnit even felt a bit tame after everything. I think I enjoyed this book more because of the particular time I'm reading it when I'm excited about my own hen party - though hopefully it doesn't end up in murder (just murder on the dancefloor lololol).