Blog Tour: Review of A Million Dreams by Dani Atkins

Today is my stop on the blog tour for A Million Dreams by Dani Atkins. I loved this books and I have a review to share with you today. If you like the sound of that you can click here to order your copy now. 

About the book

'A true love story, written by a mother's heart' Milly Johnson.

'A captivating story that packs an emotional punch' Heidi Swain.

Beth Brandon always dreamed of owning a florist, but today the bouquets of peonies and bright spring flowers are failing to calm her nerves. Because today, Beth has a life-changing decision to share with her husband.

Izzy Vaughan thought she and her husband would stay together forever, but sometime last year, their love began to fade. They both find such joy in their young son Noah – but is he enough to keep them together?

Eight years ago, something happened to these two women. Something that is about to bring them together in a way no-one thought possible...

Review: Oh I absolutely loved this novel from start to finish. As usual for a Dani Atkins novel, this one really tugged at my heart strings and I couldn't read too much at a time for fear of getting emotionally overwhelmed. Since I have read all of Dani's previous work I was prepared for this but if this is your first of her books then be warned, this can get a little intense. 

I loved the premise for this story. It is almost impossible to talk about the plot as a whole without giving spoilers but this is something that you could totally see making headlines and totally see happening to someone you know. This also goes in directions you never even thought possible and I really wasn't prepared for some of the choices these amazing characters made. 

I loved Beth and Izzy as characters because they were so easy to relate to and easy to find in your own friendship group and yet at times each of them think the other is the villain of the piece. I loved the fact that they had entire back stories of their own as well as true motivations to be the main player in this novel. I really enjoyed getting to know them and spending time with them and I still in awe of just how strong each of them is. 

Although this is an emotional novel it isn't necessarily sad or depressing. I loved the feelings wrapped up in each and every paragraph and I definitely felt very hopeful and even upbeat by the time i finished their story. I loved going through all of this with Beth and Izzy and I am sure you will too. 

About the author

Dani Atkins is an award-winning novelist. Her 2013 debut FRACTURED (published as THEN AND ALWAYS in North America) has been translated into sixteen languages and has sold more than half a million copies since first publication in the UK. Dani is the author of four other bestselling novels, one of which, This Love, won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award in 2018. Dani lives in a small village in Hertfordshire with her husband, one Siamese cat and a very soppy Border Collie.

Follow Dani:

Twitter: @AtkinsDani

Facebook: @DaniAtkinsAuthor

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Website: www.headofzeus.com

Twitter: @HoZ_Books

Facebook: @headofzeus

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Guest Review: The Memories of Us by Vanessa Carnevale

One moment can change your life

When Gracie Ashcroft wakes after a crash with severe amnesia, she must choose whether to live a life through other people’s memories or to start a new life all her own.

Discovering her late mother left her an old flower farm, Gracie leaves her fiancé, best friend and the home full of forgotten memories behind, hoping to learn who she is now.

Torn between wishing she could remember and afraid of losing what she now has, Gracie starts to wonder: if you had your time over, would you live the same life twice?

Review: Vanessa Carnevale is a new author to me. I spotted this book, set in Australia, in the library, and was intrigued by the synopsis; it also has a lovely, colourful cover. I chose to listen to the audio format and was spellbound from start to finish.

The story concerns Gracie, who wakes up in hospital after being involved in a car crash and finds she has total amnesia. She remembers nothing of the crash itself or any of her family friends, even her fiancé who was driving when the accident happened. She makes the courageous decision to leave behind the well-meaning people who want to help her remember her life and ends up returning to her childhood home, a flower farm run by her late mother. There, she makes acquaintances who are willing to help her start up the flower business once again, including neighbour Flynn. The flowers seem to help her remember odd instances, but will she ever remember her life before and rekindle her relationship with fiancé Blake, assuming that she really did love him, a question that has worried her all along.

I thought this a wonderful story, and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it. The author has expertly conveyed the emotions experienced by a person with amnesia, including confusion, frustration, and even anger. On the other side, we also see the emotions in those who wish to help that person regain control of their life, but don’t want to, or are not allowed to, push too far. Flowers play a big part in helping Gracie through her struggle; I learned quite a bit about them while reading this book. There was a lovely twist at the end of the book; I guessed the secret beforehand, but that didn’t spoil the ending for me. I shall definitely be looking out for more from this author.

To order your copy now, just click the link: UK or US

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Holiday Reads 3/12/19

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

There are so many I could list here and this is by no means an exhaustive list. I've tried just to list one from each author where many of these authors have multiple holidays reads that are EXCELLENT!

December 2019 TBR

Well we have reached the final month of the year and so here are some of the books I would like to read before 2019 is up. 

Just a heads up that I am doing vlogmas again this year so if you aren't subscribed to my BookTube channel, there are some videos coming up, including my top tens of the year that you're not going to want to miss!

As always, I will divide these books into a couple of categories...

December Releases

January Releases

Buddy Reads

Other Books I Want to Get To

Blog Tour: Spotlight on Vile by Keith Crawford

Today I am very excited to be part of the blog tour for Vile by Keith Crawford. I have all the information on the book and the author below and if you’re as excited about the book as I am, the buy link is at the bottom of this post! 

Blurb

Elianor Paine is a Magistrate of the Peace in the Kingdom of Trist and a republican secret agent. She has 6 days to subvert her investigation, supplant war-hero Lord Vile, then coerce his adult children to start a revolution, before her masters discover the truth and have her killed. Just how far is she willing to go? And can she change the world without changing herself?

Author Bio

Keith Crawford is a retired Navy Officer, a disabled veteran, a Doctor of Law & Economics, a barrister, a stay-at-home Dad, and a writer. He has written for collections of scholarly works, academic journals, and newspapers including The Economist. He has had more than thirty plays recorded or produced for stage, been listed in a variety of short story competitions (in spite of his hatred of short stories), and runs a radio production company, www.littlewonder.website, which regularly runs competitions promoted by the BBC to help find, develop and encourage new writers.

In 2014 he was lecturing at Sciences Po in Paris and negotiating a contract to write a book on banking regulation, when he and his wife discovered to their delight that they were due to have their first child. Rather than writing more work that would only be read by his poor students, and then misquoted by politicians, he decided he would do his bit to stick his fingers up at the patriarchy and stay home to look after his own kids rather than the grown-up kids of rich people. Two more children swiftly followed. Keith has discovered that if you recite Stick Man backwards you get the lyrics to AD/DC’s Highway to Hell.

This (looking after the kids, not satanic rites with Stick Man) allowed him to support his wife’s career, which appears to be heading for the stratosphere, and also gave him the space to write about swordfights and explosions. And spaceships. All of which are more fun than banking regulation. As an extension to his work in radio production, he set up his own small press, and his first novel, Vile, is due to be published in December 2019. More novels will swiftly follow, like buses in countries that don’t privatise the bus companies.

 Buy Link 

https://amzn.to/2qNDyll

Blog Tour: Review of Fairy Rock by Stephen Watt

Today is my stop on the blog tour for Fairy Rock by Stephen Watt and I have a review to share with you. If you like the sound of that, there's more information about the author and a buy link at the bottom of this post. Don't forget to check out the other stops on the tour for more exclusive content and reviews!

Here's what it's all about...

In 2017 Andrew Smith, then Director, now Chair of the Scottish Writers’ Centre, came up with a dynamic idea to run a Twitter campaign inviting poets to pitch an idea and the winner would have a poetry pamphlet published by the SWC’s publisher partner, Red Squirrel Press. Poet, critic, essayist, editor, designer and typesetter Gerry Cambridge, poet Sheila Templeton, writer, musician and Editor of both Postbox Press (the literary fiction imprint of Red Squirrel Press) and Postbox International Short Story Magazine, Colin Will, and myself took part in a panel at the SWC, ‘How to get published’ in October 2017. Andrew received many entries, a shortlist was drawn up, Stephen Watt subsequently won and persuaded me to publish a full-length collection.

— Sheila Wakefield, Founding Editor, Red Squirrel Press

Glasgow is correctly lauded for its wonderful characters and hospitality but at the turn of the Millennium it was dubbed the ‘Murder Capital of Europe’ with sectarian divisions and organised crime rife in the city. Four of its natives have been raised around the city’s Bridgeton area, cultivated by its ill-omened beliefs, and now have to separately find a way to subsist. But one crime family firmly believes in the tradition of torture and a novel way of disposing of its detractors. Who will emerge smelling of roses—or end up pushing the roses up from the earth below?

Review: It was so interesting to read a crime novel set in verse. I love reading poetry, especially modern poetry and so this was such a refreshing read for me. We get snippets of the characters in this book through individual poems and then move back and forth between the narrative and the characters are the book progresses. 

I am always saying that I want to read more books set in Glasgow and so this was wonderful for me because it was set among streets and buildings I could recognise and I could really place myself there. If you haven't been to Glasgow, not to worry, everything is described so vividly, you will feel like you have by the time you;re done. 

This book does contain a lot of violence and violence in ways you can't even imagine violence being. Because this book is written in verse though it does seem to take the edge off somehow. You get distracted by the poetic language and the figurative sentences and so don't notice the extreme gore and the truly terrible death. 

I loved reading this authors writing, his descriptions were really vivid and even when gory, they were beautiful. If you feel like you can stomach it and you want something just that little bit different then I do recommend this one to you. 

About the Author

Stephen Watt was born in the Vale of Leven in 1979. His awards include first prize in the Poetry Rivals Slam, the StAnza International Digital Poetry Slam, and the Tartan Treasures award. Notable collections which he has curated include the Joe Strummer Foundation collection Ashes To Activists (2018) and the James Watt bicentenary booklet Horsepower (2019). He is Dumbarton Football Club’s Poet-in-Residence and was appointed the Makar for the Federation of Writers (Scotland) in 2019. He lives in Dumbarton with his wife Keriann and pug Beanz.

Buy Link 

https://www.redsquirrelpress.com/product-page/fairy-rock-stephen-watt  

@StephenWattSpit 

 @RedSquirrelPres

@LoveBooksGroup 

Cover Reveal: People Like Us by Louise Fein

I have another exciting cover reveal for you today. People like us comes out on 7th May 2020 and you can click here to pre-order your copy now. Here's what it's all about...

Leipzig, 1930's Germany.

 

Hetty Heinrich is a young girl growing up under Nazi rule. With an SS officer father, a brother in the Luftwaffe and a member of the BDM, Hetty is the epitome of a perfect German child.

But Walter changes everything. Blond haired, blue-eyed, perfect in every way Walter. The boy who saved her life. A Jew.

As she falls more and more in love with a man who is against all she has been taught, Hetty begins to question everything. Will the steady march of dark forces destroy their world, or can love ultimately triumph?

Perfect for fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Book Thief and Kate Furnivall. 

And here's that cover for you...

About the author

Louise Fein holds an MA in Creative Writing from St Mary’s University. Prior to studying for her master’s, she ran a commodity consultancy business following a career in banking and law. She lives in Surrey with her family. People Like Us is inspired by her family history, and by the alarming parallels she sees between the early 30s and today.

Follow Louise:  

Facebook: @LouiseFeinAuthor

Twitter: @FeinLouise

Thanks to Louise for sharing the cover with us today and look out for my review of this book coming Spring next year!