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LoveReading Ambassador - Editorial Expert

Latest Reviews By LoveReading Ambassador

Shrapnel in the San Fernando Valley started at a sprint and continued at an unrelenting pace until the final pages. If this memoir didn't start with an introduction and disclaimer from the author I'm not sure I would have believed it was non-fiction. I even did a brief internet search of the author to make sure. The stages of Carol’s life covered in this book were certainly event-filled, not always in a good way.  Here’s a brief summary of the events and topics candidly addressed by Carol in Shrapnel in the San Fernando Valley: The ... View Full Review
Ashmole Foxe is a bookseller in 18th century Norwich. He also does a bit of amateur sleuthing as a side hustle, and if he has any spare time left after those two pursuits, he is also something of a womaniser. When Foxe finds himself trying to solve three murders at once, one of them apparently linked to a book he has been asked to source for a client, there is little time for his other interests, and he is led through a tangled web of privilege, poverty, deceit and crime. A very readable and enjoyable book which successfully highlighted the ... View Full Review
This is an unusual take on Christmas but so very good with hints of the future. Children no longer want the traditional toys and it seems video games are all they ask for so Santa and his elves have no work and then Santa finds a way to keep the workshop alive but it definitely isn't for the children. Back in the 'normal' world Dallas Stone a cop who 'did things his own way' has been allocated a partner much to his disdain but Joel is new out of university and is very much a rules guy, saying they would ... View Full Review
Places to Visit on the Way There is a collection of 25 short stories, each with their own prologue to set them in context. In genre, they range from social commentary to science fiction to horror, with many having a religious undertone and some defying categorisation altogether. It would not be possible to write about each story individually, so I have chosen four that I particularly enjoyed reading. 'Paying the Price' is a Faustian tale with a twist and a very hard body blow at the end, which, for all that it is predictable, nevertheless has great impact. This is the ... View Full Review
A very interesting story. The title a play on words of the larger than life focus of the story, Sir Francis Drake. I know bits about the stories of Drake and John Smith (the latter admittedly mainly due to the Disney film) as well as Elizabethan England and the historic figures of the time and this audiobook drags you into the middle of the history of colonialization. The quality of the audiobook is brilliant and it is very well read (though I suppose you wouldn't expect anything else from a Shakespearean actor). I didn't know who was reading, to begin ... View Full Review
The Leaves of Fate follows on immediately from The Dragons of the Storm. Focusing more on John Smith's concentrated effort to get back to America, and news of Jamestown and it's inhabitants sent in letters. I did find that Drake's presence still lingered throughout this book as a spectre and ideal figure for voyaging and exploration despite his stories being completed in the earlier book. Again, as this is an audiobook the audio quality was very good and Nigel Gore's reading is as clear and brilliant as before. The tone and language are the same as The Dragons of the ... View Full Review
Mental health is something that most don’t understand or even feel comfortable speaking about often for fear of getting it wrong. The author has taken us into the minds of what it could be like to suffer with mental health conditions. The story tells a tale about finding a cure to help the world rid of these conditions which on the basis is a well-written story but it can also help you consider how you can help, what it could be like or simply that listening & acknowledging could start to help. I enjoyed the story as a ... View Full Review
Berlin in 1960 is a city that is very much still trying to cope with the after-effects of World War II and the subsequent division between East and West. Among those trying to pick up the pieces are Angelika and Christian, a brother and sister whose childhood was torn apart by Russian soldiers, and Max, Bastian and Ottilie, police officers who are investigating a series of brutal murders. I found this book to be really gripping and moving on many levels. The murder scenes were very gruesome, which is not always to my taste, but as the story unfolds and the ... View Full Review
'Death of a Lie' by Peter Harper is an exciting and thought-provoking story of a young woman's quest to find the truth about her family's history. The story begins during WW2, when a Lend-Lease B-25 crashes in a Romanian field and two young children find a battered folder containing encoded pages in the wreckage. Fast forward 50 years and the children have grown up, married and adopted a Romanian boy, Lucian, and a West African girl, Zinsa, the sole survivor of the ruling Dangbo family after a bloody coup in Seroule. These two also grow up, marry and are expecting twins. ... View Full Review
'Operation Sustainable Human' by Chris Macdonald is a frightening, frank and forceful description of the state of our planet but the author does offer hope if only we would all take action now. The book examines in turn the four main culprits which have caused our present dire predicament, namely our methods of food production, our penchant for travel, our throwaway society and the unholy alliance between politics and big business. It then goes on to recommend four actions we can all take to counteract each of these. We should adopt a much more plant-based diet, avoid fossil fuel powered ... View Full Review
Having read about this period in the war and admiring pilots such as Geoffrey Wellum. I was keen to read this. Well researched and based on six days during the famous Battle of Britain where the airmen's life expectancy was actually something in the region of 4 weeks. At that time Europe was crushed by the Nazi and it could have been our turn next but the Battle of Britain played such a pivotal role in this. But as the novel shows this was not just about the airmen themselves women - working in the ops and maps rooms knowing what ... View Full Review
I was intrigued by the author could not find him in the mainstream of searches, but this is his debut novel. This was a well-written book. The story is set somewhere in the future, the world is experimenting with a new drug. You can go to sleep and have a prescription to have adventures in your sleep how fab is that. The prescribed medication is named "dreamers”. This could already be today - there is climate change, populations dependant on technology, political instability and domestic terrorism. In the mix of this is a love story too. Well written thought-provoking ... View Full Review

LoveReading Top 10

  1. The Hunting Party
    1
  2. The Devil Aspect
    2
  3. Nothing Important Happened Today
    3
  4. Meet Me in Buenos Aires
    4
  5. The Death of Mungo Blackwell
    5
  6. All Good Things
    6
  7. Ness
    7
  8. Come a Little Closer
    8
  9. The Conviction Of Cora Burns
    9
  10. The Beauty of the Wolf
    10

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