...(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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...(book review) mistress of my fate by hallie rubenhold

 

England, 1789. Under a cloud of scandal, Henrietta Lightfoot flees her home at Melmouth Park. She has little money and no worthwhile talents, for what use is a neat stitch and a pretty voice outside the drawing room? Without family support, her only hope lies with the dashing but elusive Lord Allenham...

In a desperate quest to find him, Henrietta embarks on a journey through London's debauched and glittering underworld. With the aid of new-found skills at the card table and on the stage, will Henriette be able to turn her life around to become mistress of her fate?

MISTRESS OF MY FATE by Hallie Rubenhold

Published: 2011

Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance, Coming-of-age Novel

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Mistress of My Fate: The Confessions of Henrietta Lightfoot. Ahhh, what a revealing confession it was. This book was ruthlessly honest in revealing of the horrors women encountered in the 1700s when cast out in the world to fend for themselves. No dark corner was left unillumined, no woman un-debauched. Had anyone in the 1700s actually got hold of this book to read, I swear they would have been shocked into a swoon, before burning it upon the fire where their daughters would never discover it. This was not your typical regency romance, and I was glad of the refreshing approach. Rather than a romance, I read a sequence of tragic events, grippingly told and unputdownable.

'If I may say, madam, it is for men to do what they ought and women to do what they must. We have not the choices they have. If we desire something, we do what we must to have it, or else...we have nothing, madam."

Henrietta Lightfoot is, by her own admission, a naïve young woman when we discover her at the beginning of her tale. Under the care of her uncle, with no parents to speak of, even Henrietta acknowledges that she has very few prospects. She's resigned to a life in her cousin's shadow, expecting fate to take her where her cousin goes, to be her companion when she marries. The hand she hadn't expected fate to deal, was that the man her cousin Catherine would fall for, would capture Henrietta's heart and return her affections. It's a match that appears destined for disaster, until fate takes another turn and Henrietta is forced to choose an entirely different path for herself and her love. Romance is found and quickly replaced with the grime of the periods realities, when she flees her home to his arms.

This was a remarkable Historical Fiction, that leads from the respectable drawing rooms of London, to the bedrooms of men who 'protect' women who find themselves with no other options. It's coloured with fictional characters, but also features many very real people who would genuinely have been encountered amongst London's seedy ranks. The historical references to people, shops and products from the period give more clout to this novel, for example, descriptions of the effects of elixirs purchased by women to 'remove obstructions from the womb'. 

As historical fictions go, this is one I'm glad to have discovered. I believe it was the author's debut novel of this genre, and I'm eager to read more of her work, particularly The Scandalous Lady W.

If you've had the delight of reading this book or any of Hallie Rubenhold's others, please let me know which you would most recommend in the comments below. 

Happy reading,

Zuzu 

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...(book review) the betrayals by bridget collins

 If everything in your life was based on a lie, would you risk it all to tell the truth?

At Montverre, an exclusive academy tucked away in the mountains, the best and brightest are trained for excellence in the grand jeu: an arcane and mysterious contest. Léo Martin was once a student there, but lost his passion for the grand jeu following a violent tragedy. Now, he returns in disgrace, exiled to his old place of learning with his political career in tatters.

Montverre has chanced since he studied there, even allowing a woman, Claire Dryden, to serve in the grand jeu's highest office of Magister Ludi. When Léo first sees Claire he senses an odd connection with her, though he's sure they've never met before. 

The bond between them is strengthened; but both Léo and Claire have built their lives on lies. And as the legendary Midsummer Game draws closer, secrets are whispering in the walls...

THE BETRAYALS by Bridget Collins

Published: 2020

Genre: Historical Fiction, Fantasy Ficional, Magical Realism

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Where to begin? This is the second of Bridget Collins' books I've read, and like the first, its reputation proceeded it; Bridget Collins did not disappoint.

I began this book fearing I'd missed something important about the game of the grand jeu that's such an important component, since it seemed so specific and yet at the same time so elusive in its descriptions. Having reached the end of the book however, I now understand the story to have been partly inspired by Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game - (a book I've not read, but now very much wish to). What Bridget Collins calls the grand jeu has much in common with the glass bead game's components of math, music and ideas in an atmosphere of meditation. I must say that it sounds so intriguing and the only thing missing to complete the reading experience was a demonstration of the game in full. I'm longing to understand it. Though, of course, if demonstrated the grand jeu would lose its mystique, and so we are left to our imaginings. You're given the sense that something magical happens when the game is played, and I can only imagine the immersive experience.

The narrator rotates for each chapter and we're taken through two time lines, seeing Léo's perspective of Montverre then and now, as well as Claire's as she struggles to settle into her role as Magister Ludi at the academy - a position previously occupied by a man. It is uncommon for a woman to play the grand jeu, let alone to understand it and earn a place amongst its academy's ranking faculty. There is an outdated sexist feel to the academy and the game; a superiority of men assuming without cause that women cannot measure up. It's an opinion that I believe Léo shares at times, which was what made it interesting when his story and Claire's began to align. 

Léo's character is poked full of human flaws, making you groan and despair of his errors and ill-conceived interventions. Claire's character is full of anger and secrets, and the tense interactions between her and Léo kept me on the edge of my seat, wondering just what was being kept hidden and what would be revealed. 

*hint hint* It wasn't what I expected, and my jaw dropped!

Though Claire and Léo are well conceived, it must be said, that the story-stealing character that kept me turning pages was in fact The Rat. I just loved reading her chapters, the slow reveal of her part in the story and how she came to be hiding at such a sexist institution that did not allow girls to attend. Her sections appeared less frequently in the book and each time I reached one of her chapters my heart gave a little "yes" of delight. She felt so well formed; her inhuman behaviour and qualities somehow making her the most human or them all, for what could be more human than following our base and primal needs, food, sleep and safety...and later curiosity. She and one other hide in the many deserted rooms and corridors of Montverre, evading discovery. Over the years her presence has amounted to no more than whispers of a crying girl in the walls, or ghostly half-sightings that suggests the building is haunted.

I applaud Bridget Collins writing style and the easy tone of her books. They are purely character and story driven, and though it vexes me a little, I think it's clever that the storylines are often left open ended. As the reader I felt encouraged to imagine more, or forced to accept that I'll never know. That is her brilliance. 

The Betrayals (aptly titled by the way) is another book I'd thoroughly recommend. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Happy reading!

Zuzu

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