by Susan Barnes | 28 Apr 2023 | Book Reviews
Tumbleglass is one of many modern books that I have come across in my job as a librarian where it’s difficult to define the target audience. The main character is Rowan who is thirteen years old. Therefore you’d expect the audience to be 11 to 13-year-olds. However,...
by Susan Barnes | 21 Apr 2023 | Book Reviews
Breaking Down the Wall is set in 1989 and is a sequel to The Boy Behind the Wall which was set in 1967. While it’s not necessary to have read the earlier book to follow the plot, the story does tie up some loose ends from the previous book. Breaking Down the Wall is...
by Susan Barnes | 24 Mar 2023 | Book Reviews
The Forgotten Bookshop in Paris by Daisy Wood is an engaging story with a dual timeline connected by a bookshop in Paris. The first time setting is from 1939 to 1945 and covers the war years. Jacques Duval, a bookseller, is setting up his own bookshop called, La Page...
by Susan Barnes | 24 Feb 2023 | Book Reviews
Anthony McGowan’s main focus in Dogs of the Deadlands is to tell the story of two dogs, Zoya and her son Misha and their lives, following the Chernobyl disaster. The human involvement around Natasha Taranova is woven in but comprises a relatively small part of...
by Susan Barnes | 3 Feb 2023 | Book Reviews
I enjoyed reading, My Dream Time, by Ash Barty. The book is a memoir of Ash’s journey in and out of professional tennis. I have followed Ash’s career so I was concerned that I might find it a rehash of what I already knew, however, this wasn’t the case. I appreciated...
by Susan Barnes | 27 Jan 2023 | Book Reviews
Eleven-year-old Rosie grew up living in an Indian palace, but for the last three months, she has been living miserably in the English countryside, which is supposedly safer for her than in India. Rosie finds this hard to understand when Hitler is regularly dropping...
by Susan Barnes | 10 Dec 2022 | Book Reviews
The Boy Behind the Wall is set in Berlin in 1967 during the Cold War. The story begins with Harry witnessing the death of a young boy. He is shot by East German guards as he tries to scale the Wall which separates East and West Berlin. Harry has recently moved with...
by Susan Barnes | 26 Nov 2022 | Book Reviews
Mala’s Cat is an autobiography account of how Mala Kacenberg (nee Szorer) survived World War 2. Mala was born into a large observant Jewish family living in Tarnogrod, Poland. Her story begins three years before the war when wild hailstorms ruined crops in her area...
