Six in September

I read six books in September.

There’s no coming back from this by Ann Garvin

I got a book by this author a few months ago, I thought you said this would work, one of my monthly free e-books courtesy of Amazon Prime. Enjoyed it (love a road trip book). In this one, single-mom Poppy has to earn money fast to make sure her daughter can go to college but when, through an ex-boyfriend, she gets a job in the costume department on a major movie it seems she’s bitten off more than she can chew. Fast-paced fun.

 

Don’t forget to write by Sara Goodman Confino

Another author I’ve acquired after reading a free e-book. This one is set in the 1960s. I loved it.

‘When Marilyn Kleinman is caught making out with the rabbi’s son in front of the whole congregation, her parents ship her off to her great-aunt Ada for the summer. If anyone can save their daughter’s reputation, it’s Philadelphia’s strict premier matchmaker’.

 

Murder among the roses by Liz Fielding

An excellent cosy crime, the first in a series, set in the Cotswold town of Maybridge.

‘Abby is horrified to discover the bones of a baby buried under a rose bush. It’s in the garden of her soon-to-be ex-husband Howard’s family home.’

 

The Easternmost House by Juliet Blaxfield

The author lives in, yes, the easternmost house in England, on the Suffolk coast – but for how long who knows? I’d imagined erosion would happen slowly, an inch a year maybe, but no, sometimes a foot of land disappears overnight.

Beautifully written and a lovely book in itself, a soft paperback with flaps and an illustration and a poem or quote at the beginning of each chapter.

 

The Easternmost House by Juliet Blaxfield

One of the most depressing books I’ve ever read (and I speak as someone who is currently reading Demon Copperhead). It was a shock given that I adore EMD’s Diary of a Provincial Lady books and regularly reread them, enjoying her wry humour.

The exact time for this one is not spelt out but probably early Edwardian.

Cosseted only child Monica is eighteen but has no agency – her mother determines what she will wear, eat, who she can be friends with, even when she should get up in the morning. Monica acquiesces because she is just about to come out as a debutante. Maybe she’ll get a proposal from someone wonderful at her first ball! Or if not, well, as long as she gets engaged and soon to someone – ‘any husband is better than none’.

On reading the Afterword in the Virago edition I think this is meant to be a parody of life for girls in the upper echelons in that era but I found no humour in it. Well, except maybe at the end when, shockingly still a spinster in her mid-twenties (having got herself talked about), our Monica accepts the offer of marriage from an old (old) family friend and on their wedding day she hopes fervently that she will give him a son – I’m pretty sure she has no idea how that will be achieved …

Why depressing? Well, thinking about the stifled lives women lived of course, but also listening to the news more than a hundred years later – are we going to have to go back to having chaperones for girls to keep them safe?

 

Think of me by Frances Liardet

I loved We must be brave, not just the story but Frances Liardet’s writing. And so it was with her new one.

‘James Acton has come to the village of Upton to begin again. As his grief over the death of his wife eases, he hopes to find new purpose as the vicar of this small, Hampshire parish, still emerging from the long shadow of the war.’

I was some way into when it began to dawn on me that some characters from We must be brave are here too which added extra enjoyment.