...(book review) the winter ghosts by kate mosse

 

'Do you believe in ghosts?'

It's 1928. Freddie Watson is still grieving for his brother, lost in the Great War. Driving through the foothills of the French Pyrenees, his car spins off the road in snowstorm. Freddie takes refuge in an isolated village and there meets a beautiful, captivating woman. They spend the night talking of love and loss and war. But by daybreak, Fabrissa has vanished and Freddie realises he holds the key to an ancient mystery that leads him deep into the mountains, to a cave that has concealed an appalling secret for 700 years...

THE WINTER GHOSTS by Kate Mosse

Published: 2009

Genre: Historical Fiction, Supernatural > Ghost Story

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

This was a hauntingly endearing tale, perfectly atmospheric, that needs to be read curled in an armchair on a cold winter's night. 

Naturally, as the title suggests, this is a ghost story, but you'll find no spooks or demons to jump out and scare, only the heavy weight of loss hanging like a low veil of cloud over a village, desperate to be dispelled. 

This book's set in France in the years following the first world war, when loss and grief were so commonplace it was almost seen as indulgent to show how it was affecting you. Everyone is doing their best to carry on and maintain normality, but Freddie feels the void of his brothers death acutely, and like a time bomb, it's only a matter of time before he explodes.

We join him on this quest for closure, and along the way he finds a sympathetic ear and someone with a story more devastating and chilling than his own.

There was something about this book that's resonated with me, and I'm finding it hard to articulate just what exactly it was. Perhaps its a sympathy towards a nation grieving loved ones and years lost to anxiety and uncertainty in the war. I think now more than ever, we as readers could understand that following a pandemic. 

Of course, I would never dare compare the pandemic to the war directly, but the years following it are where I think we can relate. There's a sense of lingering grief, of a community trying to catch its breath, or holding it for fear of letting go; not quite recovered, but trying so hard to re-establish normality.

The isolated French village in the snowy mountain-scape was the perfect setting for this story, bleak and beautiful, eerie and entrancing with its ghostly whispers drifting over the mountain paths.

This book kindled a sadness in me, but also brought a feeling of closure from the characters journey.

I'm glad to have plucked it off my shelf at long last. It was a fast paced, haunting and consuming. I recommend!!

Zuzu 🖋

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...2022, don't challenge me

First and foremost, happy new year booklovers! 

Such mixed emotions surround New Year for me, a sense of loss for the year left behind, nostalgia for the memories made, grief over things I didn't get to do, or guilt over people I didn't see. As a performer, I always work through midnight and I suppose what I lack is the sense of closure that comes with the celebratory lead up and seeing out the new year, whether you go out or stay home to do so.

Having said that, I wouldn't change a single thing about this arrangement because I love to work and I love my job - especially after two years of sparse bookings! It's just an odd feeling of not being quite ready for new beginnings.

But I digress. It's January 2022, the time when we set our sights on new achievements and adventures, and hope restrictions won't get in the way. This is the time I usually log onto Goodreads and set myself an impossible reading challenge that I stress through the year to reach. I start planning out posts and blog topics, wondering when I'm going to have time, but wanting to be able to say I put out a daily post across social media and a weekly blog.

And in the meantime, whilst I'm stressing, I could be writing. Isn't that why I started this blog in the first place?  To talk about my love of books and to document my own writing journey. A journey that's been at a standstill since the start of the pandemic.

For the past two years, I've sat on my finished novel, neglecting to send it to publishers or agents, lacking the motivation or inspiration to put pen to paper. I wasted time, and that's okay under the circumstances. But now's the time to hold up my hands and say "enough, get back to work".

Readers, I'm putting this into words so you can hold me accountable: this is not a year for reading challenges or marathon blog posts, this is a year for prioritising my writing and re-implementing a dream. My only goal is to fall back in love with my own book and characters. 

That's not to say that I'm going to vanish of the face of the earth and delete social media. Only that I'm relieving myself of the obligation and the pressure. 

Basically this is your advanced apology that this blog is about to get hella inconsistent ha!

Zuzu 🖋

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...(book review) lost for words by stephanie butland

 

It's time to turn the pages of her past...

Loveday Cardew prefers books to people. If you look carefully, you might glimpse the first lines of the novels she loves most tattooed on her skin. But there are some things Loveday will never show you.

Into her refuge - the York book emporium where she works - come a poet, a lover, a friend, and three mysterious delivers, each of which stirs unsettling memories. 

Everything is about to change for Loveday. Someone knows about her past and she can't hide any longer. She must decide who around her she can trust. Can she find the courage to right a heartbreaking wrong? And will she ever find the words to tell her own story?

LOST FOR WORDS by Stephanie Butland

Genre: Fiction, Contemporary Romance, Women's Fiction, Books About Books

Published: 2017

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Lost for Words is a moving contemporary fiction about living with trauma. Surviving. Finding yourself under the layers, and letting other people see you too. There's love, there's grief, there's fear and there's laughter - one of the best healers. And of course, there's books!

"Nobody bothers children who read. I read."

This book captured the heart of the introverted booklover inside of me. I could pull a number of quotes and relate them to my life with an unapologetic laugh. But the main character, Loveday, unlike myself, has a deep and dark secret that makes it hard for her to trust and hard for her to break free of the comfort of the bookstore in which she works.

The mystery of her dark past unfolds with tantalising slowness, and even though at times I suspected what would be revealed about her childhood, I wanted it not be true. I could understand what led her to seek comfort from books for so many years, for books are an escape. But books can also hurt you. They provoke memories that lead us down roads we haven't visited in so long. They remind us of what we can never have, or what we were forced to leave behind. They tell us that not all beginnings are tragic, and not all ending are happy. Sometimes it's the other way around.

Where books offer Loveday a refuge and a confusing link to her past, poetry is a gateway to the truth, giving expression to the emotion's and secrets she's been stifling, and giving a window of insight to those around her.

The poems that feature are quirky, and so fitting to represent the characters. The final poem that features is called The Bookshop and it turned my heart to butter. 

"There's the simple love of books, of course: the knowledge that here is an escape, a chance to learn, a place for your heart and mind to romp and play."

Loveday is a fragile heroine at times, with strength cemented at her core. She's endearingly antisocial, passionately defensive of books and secretly poetic. I was drawn into her story from her first word to her last.

This beautifully multi-layered book is one that I recommend to anyone with an interest in humans, or in literature. You will learn something about both by the time you're through reading.

"A bookshop is not magic, but it can steal away your heart."

Zuzu 🖋

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