Review: Among the Mad

Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Maisie and Billy are innocent bystanders when a WW1 veteran explodes a bomb in London. Then an anonymous letter is sent to senior cabinet members, mentioning Maisie's name, threatening terrible consequences if the government doesn't announce wide reaching plans to support ex-servicemen. When the government fails to respond by the deadline the terrorist starts escalating matters and it becomes clear that he has the knowledge and skills to create poison gases which could kill half of London.

Maisie is brought in by Special Branch to give her unorthodox assistance to catch this man before he can carry out his threat. Her analysis of the handwriting, writing style, and appearance of the paper leads her to believe that he may have been injured in the war, and perhaps have sought or received psychiatric treatment.

It's a race against time which will lead Maisie to secret government poison gas laboratories and uncovering some nasty secrets about war.

This was good, but all the descriptions of horrible deaths due to poison gas make pretty grim reading.

Also, in light of also having read the next book in this series, I get the feeling that the author was under pressure to give Maisie a love interest as there are several interested gentlemen in this book.

View all my reviews

Review: The Mapping of Love and Death

The Mapping of Love and Death by Jacqueline Winspear
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Maisie Dobbs is asked to investigate when the body of an American cartographer, missing in action in WW1, is found in a German foxhole in suspicious circumstances. Michael Clifton came from a wealthy Boston family, although his father was British and the disowned heir to the Clifton Shoe manufacturing business. He joined the British Army in 1914, shortly after purchasing a large tract of land in California which he believed would yield oil. When his body, and several others, are discovered in France with personal papers which include letters from a young lady his parents travel to London to ask Maisie to find the young lady and to investigate his death.

I did enjoy this, although I felt both that some plot lines were telegraphed very early on and others were a bit convoluted, forced to twist and turn to meet the need for a big reveal.

Also, its 1932 and she is still investigating things arising from a war which ended 14 years earlier - if she's not careful it will be WW2 and she'll still be investigating WW1 stuff!

View all my reviews

Review: Best of Luck: A funny and feel-good romance

Best of Luck: A funny and feel-good romance by Kate Clayborn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The third book in the series and, for me, the weakest.

Greer and her two best friends bought a lottery ticket for a laugh on a girl's night out and won big. Greer used her money to help her family and put herself through college to become a social worker, helping people to get the long-term care or home support they need. Always the quietest of the three, despite coming from a large family, Greer is also very superstitious. Greer is devastated to learn that she may not be able to graduate as planned because of a snafu with her courses (she took two courses which were too similar and didn't meet the graduation requirements), she'll need a letter of recommendation from the photography professor or have to wait another year. Greer's family are very loving, but their constant refrain is that she takes on too much and can't cope, she doesn't want this to be yet another excuse for them to pity her.

Alex is the older brother of Greer's best friend Kit. He single-handedly raised Kit from when he was six years old while their father drank and gambled all his money away. Now a renowned photographer Alex is a rolling stone, despite Kit's best attempts to share her wealth with him and get him to make a home near her. Alex has recently been having problems with his work, shaking hands and lack of focus, all down to him having panic attacks, or worrying about having a panic attack.

When Alex (just) returns home for Kit's wedding, Greer recognises that he is deeply uncomfortable and finds him having a panic attack outside the venue. In return for Greer's assistance with his panic attack, Alex agrees to come along to her interview with the photography professor, hoping that it will impress the professor sufficiently to allow her to join his course a week late. Greer's professor agrees to let her join the class, but extorts Alex to appear at his exhibition the following month.

Despite his itchy feet, Alex finds Greer relaxing and he enjoys helping her with her photography assignments, but with one eye on the exit can there be any future for them?

I liked it but I didn't love it.

View all my reviews

Review: Why Is Nothing Ever Simple?

Why Is Nothing Ever Simple? by Jodi Taylor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow, reading everything out of order just allows the reader to see how much foreshadowing/hints are dropped in these novellas.

Ian Guthrie is retiring due to his injuries so St Mary's grant his wish to watch the battle of Bannockburn. Obviously things go wrong, but it's more interesting to see new characters emerging and hints of things to come.

Loved it.

View all my reviews

Review: Long Story Short

Long Story Short by Jodi Taylor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Some, mainly the free snippets, are three stars. Others, like And Now For Something Completely Different, or When Did You Last See Your Father are solid four stars.

Christmas Past
Max takes Matthew back to early Victorian England to help the two little boys who were chimney sweeps alongside him.

Oh Jodi, you pulled on my heartstrings with this novella. I can't say more without spoiling the story, just let me say that it was a lovely story and reflected what we all hope Christmas will be like.

The Battersea Barricades
For those of us who wondered what happened at the Battersea Barricades, wonder no longer. A novella for St George's Day.

The Steam-Pump Jump
Peterson is a bit down in the dumps after yet another of his girlfriends has died, and the last one was hand-in-glove with his arch-enemy to boot. So Max dreams up a cunning plan to cheer him, but she needs Markham to execute it in his own inimitable fashion.

Cute, sweet and very funny.

And Now For Something Completely Different
Absolutely bonkers holiday trip to witness the first Mars landing in person involving our usual suspects and my favourite Time Police - also a convincing explanation for why the flag fluttered on the first Moon landing.

LOVED IT.

When Did You Last See Your Father?
Told from Leon's POV, we get a potted history of Leon's life before Max, when he met Dr Bairstow, and when he met Max for the first and second times.

Clive Ronan has been meddling again and told Max's wealthy, influential, abusive father that she is living at St Mary's and has a baby. When Max's father arrives unannounced to take Matthew away, claiming that Max is an unfit mother it is up to Leon to save the day. Max's father can't be allowed to see ten year old Matthew when he should only be a toddler, also the years of abuse he suffered in the nineteenth century as a chimneysweep can't be eradicated and would give Child Services cause to remove him from Max's care. Let's not even go with the fact that actually Max is not really his daughter!

Anyway, this short story shows how much everyone at St Mary's loves Max and Matthew as they conspire to ensure that her father no longer has any power to hurt her again.

Immensely satisfying.

Dessicated Water
Very short story, Professor Rapson manages to reduce water to a fine powder for easier transportation on trips ... Reader, he didn't think it through.

Markham And The Anal Probing
Very short (10 pages) story written more to shock Jodie's publishers than anything else. Markham gets lost and Max and Peterson speculate that he's been abducted by aliens.

Little Donkey
My recommendation is don't read this unless you have read The Nothing Girl. This is not an easy entrée into the world of The Nothing Girl free of charge, instead it is choc full of allusions that only make sense if you have read The Nothing Girl.

Given that warning, it is Christmas, the vicar wants Marilyn to be in the nativity play - does he know nothing?

All our favourite characters are here - a lovely Xmas story for existing fans.

View all my reviews

Review: An Incomplete Revenge

An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Maisie Dobbs is engaged to investigate a series of acts of vandalism (mainly fires) and petty crimes around a Kentish brick factory that her client intends to purchase from the aristocratic owner. Travelling to the quaint Kent village, not far from the place where her father lives, Maisie finds that the village has an uneasy feeling.

It is hop-picking season so the village has an influx of Londoners down for a working holiday, plus a contingent of gypsies, also there for the hops. There's a lot of racism on all parts, with each faction blaming the other for the fires which seemingly only occur in September of each year, but the villagers are strangely loath to involve either the police or the fire brigade.

As Maisie digs she finds the truth centres around the local landowner and the tragic death of a local family whose bakery was hit by a Zeppelin during the war.

I live in Kent so reading about villages close to where I live is always interesting. Also my grandparents and great aunts and uncles used to regale me with stories of coming down to Kent from London for hop-picking season so that was another area of interest. I also 'enjoyed' reading about the trauma of WW1 more than a decade after its end. Maisie still suffers, as does her assistant, and her wartime Beau is still in a coma in hospital.

I read the first Maisie Dobbs book years ago, and enjoyed it but didn't love it. The books and eBooks are always so expensive that I have never bothered to read any more. However, recently quite a lot of the books have been limited time offers (starting with this one) so I bought three to give the series another try.

I liked the mystery element, obviously some of the character back-stories have been lost by not reading books two, three and four, but some of the woo-woo moments were a bit irritating. Again, enjoyable but not making me avid to devour the entire series.

View all my reviews

Review: When Did You Last See Your Father?

When Did You Last See Your Father? by Jodi Taylor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Told from Leon's POV, we get a potted history of Leon's life before Max, when he met Dr Bairstow, and when he met Max for the first and second times.

Clive Ronan has been meddling again and told Max's wealthy, influential, abusive father that she is living at St Mary's and has a baby. When Max's father arrives unannounced to take Matthew away, claiming that Max is an unfit mother it is up to Leon to save the day. Max's father can't be allowed to see ten year old Matthew when he should only be a toddler, also the years of abuse he suffered in the nineteenth century as a chimneysweep can't be eradicated and would give Child Services cause to remove him from Max's care. Let's not even go with the fact that actually Max is not really his daughter!

Anyway, this short story shows how much everyone at St Mary's loves Max and Matthew as they conspire to ensure that her father no longer has any power to hurt her again.

Immensely satisfying.

View all my reviews

Review: And Now For Something Completely Different

And Now For Something Completely Different by Jodi Taylor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Absolutely bonkers holiday trip to witness the first Mars landing in person involving our usual suspects and my favourite Time Police - also a convincing explanation for why the flag fluttered on the first Moon landing.

LOVED IT.

View all my reviews

Review: Desiccated Water

Desiccated Water by Jodi Taylor
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Very short story, Professor Rapson manages to reduce water to a fine powder for easier transportation on trips ... Reader, he didn't think it through

View all my reviews

Review: Markham and the Anal Probing

Markham and the Anal Probing by Jodi Taylor
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Very short (10 pages) story written more to shock Jodie's publishers than anything else. Markham gets lost and Max and Peterson speculate that he's been abducted by aliens,

View all my reviews

Review: Book Lovers

Book Lovers by Emily Henry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Four and a half stars.

I love, love, loved the start of this book. Nora is the other woman in every Hallmark movie, she's the high-powered, cut-throat executive in a thousand dollar suit who probably skewers puppies with her four inch stiletto heels. She doesn't want kids, or to leave New York, or a dog, or anything with a white picket fence. She's the villain that the hero dates until he falls in love with someone with a cutesy name like Daisy in a small town. You just know that Daisy is wholesome, never wears make-up and looks so dargone cute you could barf. Nora knows this because she's been dumped three times (and about to be four) by carefully chosen boyfriends who have all left New York and fallen for some small-town girl. Oh, and everyone calls Nora 'The Shark' behind her back and her boss refers to her agent approach as "smiling with knives".

Charlie Lastra is a brilliant editor, Nora's equivalent in his all-black designer outfits, and her nemesis when he refuses to edit Dusty Fielding's (her biggest client) latest book about a small-town called Sunshine Falls in North Carolina. Despite Charlie's distain, the book becomes a bestseller, selling over 500,000 copies.

Nora may put her career first in everything, but there is someone she would willingly die for, her younger sister Libby. Libby is the yin to Nora's yang, soft and gentle, a real homebody who married young and has two small children with a third on the way. So when Libby comes to see Nora, heavily pregnant and desperate to get away on a sister's road trip she doesn't hesitate. Libby has booked flights to North Carolina, she loves Dusty Fielding's book and wants the two of them to spend a month mooching around the town taking in the sights and living the small-town life.

Nora can tell that there is something amiss between her and Libby and she'll do anything to fix it, just like she's always fixed everything for Libby ever since their mother died, so when Libby brings up a ten point To Do list of small-town romance for them to complete Nora barely protests (think buy a plaid shirt, pet a horse). But Libby's attempts to win Nora a small-town romance are thwarted when Nora's nemesis turns out to also be visiting town.

This book doesn't hesitate to bring in every small-town cliché, but against all that are Nora and Charlie, surely the biggest fishes out of water ever. It was funny, sexy, sweet and a great read from cover to cover. One minor gripe. (view spoiler)[Dusty's new book ending felt a bit too much like the ending of the film (I haven't read the book) Breakfast at Tiffany's. (hide spoiler)]

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

View all my reviews