Keep Your Friends Close by Paula Daly

review by Maryom

Natty and Sean are a happy, successful couple. After a shaky start to their married life, things have just got better over the years. Now they have everything they could want - a top-notch hotel business, flash cars and two lovely teenage daughters. Then the unthinkable happens - on a trip to France, younger daughter Felicity is rushed to hospital with a life-threatening burst appendix. Fortunately old family friend Eve is visiting so Natty is on the next plane out there, leaving Eve to help out at home.
Two weeks later, Natty returns to discover Sean and Eve are now an item. Sean has discovered 'real' love at last and is off to make a new life. Can this really be love or has he just been totally manipulated by Eve? Is there any way Natty can fight back? When she receives an anonymous note saying Eve has done this before, she thinks maybe she can.

You know how there are some books that once you've picked them up, you don't want to put down till the end? Well, this is one of those. I romped through it, pulled in by twists and turns and the gradually leaked back story, desperate to discover how all would be resolved. The reader soon learns of the secrets that Natty and Sean hide, as Eve twists them to her own advantage, but as Natty uncovers more of Eve's murky past the surprises mount up.
 Eve is that most-evil of villains - one who looks innocent and victimised while twisting people round her little finger to achieve her goal, and leaving a trail of broken lives behind her. She also feels rather scarily real! While Eve remains outwardly cool and collected, Natty is full of anger and frustration and can't help letting these feelings get the better of her; she's trapped in a nightmarish situation and losing everything - husband, children, home - and whatever she does seems to make things worse.

Detective Constable Joanne Aspinall who appeared in Paula Daly's previous thriller Just What Kind of Mother Are You? , is back, looking at events from a different angle and piecing together the history of Eve's manipulations. So too is her aunt 'Mad' Jackie Wagstaff with her outspoken  plain talking ways and no-nonsense attitude - rapidly growing into one of my favourite characters.

A totally gripping book from page one to its deliciously wicked, and extremely satisfying, ending.

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Bantam Press
Genre - adult, psychological thriller

City of Fate by Nicola Pierce

Review by The Mole

23rd August 1942 and it's Yuri's 14th birthday. A beautiful Sunday afternoon that is cut short by the arrival of German bombers heralding the start of the fight for Stalingrad.

Retreating to the coal bunker as a makeshift air raid shelter Yuri, his mother and sister spend a fortnight trying to survive the aerial bombardment. At the end of the bombardment his sister is sick so his mother takes her, leaving Yuri to wait for his father, to get medical attention. And so Yuri finds himself, like thousands of other children, wandering Stalingrad alone.

Meanwhile Leo, Vlad, Anton and Misha are in their last year at school when their teacher is ordered to take them to be registered for the army. With little training and no weapons they are forced attack German forces in Stalingrad to assist in the defeat of the German army.

Two distinct story lines that you expect to intersect and somehow super heroes to emerge from it all. But that's not what this is about - it's about the plight of children during the fight for Stalingrad both as orphans and as young soldiers. But it's also more than that - we also learn about the plight of soldiers, the fear of the NKVD, the violence of the NKVD as well as the humanity behind many individual soldiers despite their being part of an army.

A very well told story that teaches us (yes, adults too) a little of what they all endured. The author's notes at the back explain the origins of the characters and their actions and also some of the staggeringly horrendous statistics. This book is not a history - it is a fiction, but a fiction based on fact that teaches the reader by osmosis.

An extremely well structured story that doesn't preach and doesn't cut corners either. Thoroughly enjoyable yet horrendous and moving.

Publisher - O'Brien Press
Genre - Children's Historical Fiction

Almond Bar: 100 Delicious Syrian Recipes by Sharon Salloum

review by Maryom

Australian chef Sharon Salloum started to cook at an early age, helping her mother and aunts prepare traditional Syrian food for family and friends, and went on to open Almond Bar, a Sydney restaurant specialising in a mix of old favourite dishes and modern adaptations, all drawing on her Syrian heritage....and now here are those recipes for you to try at home.

There are recipes for sauces and dips, finger food, sharing plates, salads, mains and deserts, to cover every occasion from a quick snack to full-on dinner party - through them all run the distinctive flavours of the Middle East - rosewater, pomegranate, tahini and za'atar spice mix. Some may already be familiar like falafel and bulgar wheat salad, but, to me at least, most are new and exciting dishes.

So where would I start? - the kaftas on the front cover, I think. A fairly simple recipe of spiced minced lamb especially if made in their alternate 'meatball' shape rather than experiment with holding on a skewer. It's also inspired me to try making Ashta, Syrian clotted cream, and then of course try it in the tempting desert recipes such as Rose of Damascus and Semolina Fudge. There's even a recipe for making traditional arish cheese but that may be getting a little too ambitious.

Most of the recipes have gorgeous accompanying photographs and the brief introduction to each from the author gives an additional insight into the dish - something that makes it a fascinating book to read, even if you don't test the recipes out. I'm sure you'll want to though.

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Jacqui Small
Genre - cookery, Syria

Where The Rock Splits the Sky by Philip Webb

review by Maryom

Megan can't remember a time when the Sun moved across the sky. Before she was born, the Visitors came, demolished the Moon and stopped the world turning. Now, where she lives in Texas, the Sun sits on the horizon and never sets. Out across the desert lies The Zone - an area of strange happenings where machines and gadgets stop working, with floating towns, rivers of sand and fish falling from the sky - and somewhere out there, Megan is convinced she'll find her missing father. She has a hand-drawn map to follow, her trusty horse Cisco and best friend Luis to help.
Where The Rock Splits The Sky is a compelling adventure story but one that's extremely difficult to pin down. Is it science-fiction? - aliens have stopped the world rotating and have horrific plans for its people - or dystopian?  - society has taken a step backwards to the pre-industrial level - or maybe a good old western? - with a sheriff, outlaws, a stagecoach delivering the mail, poker players at the saloon and a shoot-out at the jail, it could easily be. Well, whichever label you choose doesn't stop it being a great read with almost something for everyone. It's primarily a story of friendship and of not giving up hope, things that we can all relate to. It gripped me on the first page and I didn't want to put it down till the very last.

 Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Chicken House
Genre - 13+, sci fi/dystopian/western 

In The Blood by Lisa Unger

Review by The Mole

Lana was a child with personality disorders before she was further damaged by witnessing her father burying her mother, rolled in her mother's favourite carpet, in a grave in the woods. He then coaches her to lie to the police to cover-up what's happened. She's been medicated for years now, through special schools and is now a normal functioning part of society. Except for one thing... she lies. Constantly... to hide who she is, who her family are and what she has been through. She is now studying, under the mentorship of Dr Langdon, to help children like herself become normal members of society.

She takes a part time job 'babysitting' Luke who turns out to be a child who has the same issues that she has. Luke decides to play a game of Scavenger Hunt with Lana that starts out weird and turns weirder and more dangerous with each clue. How could Luke, eleven year old genius that he is, put together a hunt that seems to reveal so much about Lana's past, on his own. And now Beck, Lana's only true friend, has gone missing and the police want to question Lana as the only suspect.

Stories that involve characters with mental 'disorders' often leave me uncomfortable and I'm sure I'm not alone in this - and Lana seems a completely 'normal' person now she's medicated but as the story progresses we realise just how fragile she is. And Luke...I as a reader could see far more in the child than Lana could - but then that's what we expect from books... it involves us in them. Despite my discomfort I just had to keep reading and found this to be a book I would recommend to almost any adult - definitely not a bedtime read though or one for the kids.

A book with more twists than a Curly-Wurly, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, despite being totally creeped out by some of the goings on and did I readjust to the revelations at the end? I don't think I have or will.

Publisher - Simon & Schuster

Genre - Adult Psychological Thriller

The Road to Reckoning by Robert Lautner

review by Maryom
 
‘I, to this day, hold to only one truth: if a man chooses to carry a gun he will get shot. My father agreed to carry twelve.’

In April 1837, recently widowed John Walker decides to leave his job selling spectacles door-to-door in New York city and head out West, selling a new type of hand-gun recently invented by Samuel Colt. To his twelve year old son Tom this seems a foolish business venture but an exciting change from dull, confined life with his aunt, and so the two of them head off through New Jersey to the wilds of Pennsylvania. At first things go well and despite Tom's doubts there's enough demand for this new-fangled gun to make a financial success of the trip but they've travelled into a wild, lawless place and things soon go horribly wrong. Tom finds himself stranded in the middle of nowhere with no idea of how to get back to the safety of his New York home - his only hope is Henry Stands, a rough-living ex-ranger, used to living on the road and now travelling back East in the hope of picking up some bounty-hunter work. 

The Road To Reckoning is an exciting coming of age story, set in the early 1800s America with a lot of elements of the traditional Western - gunslingers, saloons, lonely two-horse towns in the middle of nowhere - but it isn't set in the distant deserts of Texas, New Mexico or Colorado but among forests of Pennsylvania. Although today it could probably be reached from New York in barely more than a couple of hours, in the 1830s this was frontier-land - an area of scattered settlements among the forests and hills, with no real law enforcement, where, despite the Government's confident words, native Indians still lurk behind the trees to prey on the unwary and where it's every man for himself. Tom and his father, both naive city-dwellers, travelling in a buggy best suited to paved streets, are asking for trouble venturing out into the wilds - it's all far too dangerous for such innocents and calamity of one sort or another seems destined for them.
Told from the perspective of a middle-aged Tom looking back on the adventure of his youth, it allows the reader to see events through both the eyes of a twelve year old and a worldly-wise adult; an adult who is bemoaning the proliferation of guns, when everyone he meets seems to have one to hand - not in the present day, but the 1870s!  The story in itself foreshadows the later 'western' era when Colt's revolver would find frequent use in saloon brawls across the Wild West.

 The Road To Reckoning is a tale full of strange adventures and weird, sometimes nightmarish characters. The basic situation, a youngster insisting on tagging along with an older experienced 'character', reminded me very much of True Grit but that didn't detract from my enjoyment. It's one I'd recommend to both adults and a younger readership looking for something a little different - the style in which it's told is a little strange though, capturing the speech patterns of its time, but recognisable to fans of Westerns.

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Harper Collins (The Borough Press)
Genre - historical fiction, Western, coming of age

The Queen of Dreams by Peter Hamilton

Review by The Mole

Taggie and Jemima see a white squirrel in glasses which starts a fantasy adventure which sees them travelling across realms, across time and into deep labyrinths in a pursuit to save their father who has been kidnapped. But why kidnap him and why now?

When a story starts so early with a squirrel in glasses you know it is going to be a fantasy and a light hearted one at that. With shades of Alice in Wonderland, Narnia, Dr Who and even a  bit of Harry Potter there wouldn't appear to be anything new in this but these elements have been brought together in an original story that is fast paced, not too tense - but tense enough - and has original heroines that will charm it's target readership (9+).

While I found some aspects of the story too young for my taste (I am quite a bit outside it's target audience) I did enjoy it and appreciated the approach to violence adopted by the heroines. All too often bad guys are just left on the battlefield but here the heroines make a valid point of minimising violence so as not to become like the bad guys - a point that I appreciated.

A truly delightful story that anyone can leave their children reading - so long as it's not close to bedtime or you'll never get them to bed! And it's book one of a series with the next one out in August.

Publisher - Random House Children's
Genre - Children's 9+ fantasy