This is the Life by Alex Shearer

This book is basically an ode to a brother. It is the tale of someone dying, Louis, and their brother is the narrator recollecting the last moments of their life plus the odd anecdote of their earlier life. 

Louis is introduced as someone who "looked like a wild man, like one of those rough sleepers you feel part sorry for, part afraid of, and part repelled by." Really he is someone who has had a tumour removed from their brain and is in his dying days. His brother has traveled across from England to be him, Louis having emigrated to Australia. 

Louis was the elder brother. He achieved academic success but never stuck with a decent job, "the bohemianism was in his soul." But then at the end, he had the terminal illness and his brother had to cope with it.

Some bits are funny, but not necessarily "achingly funny" as the blurb says.

There is plenty of contemplation too. "Life just seems like a big party sometimes, at which we all gradually get edged towards the door, and then we are out in the cold."

The last section of the book, "The origins of This is the Life," explains that the book was inspired by the authors own brother as he died from a terminal illness. I think the author's brother would have been pleased and proud of this book.  

Publication date: 27 Feb 2014

Amazon UK link: This is the Life

Cuckoo! by Fiona Roberton

I have read another of Fiona Roberton's books, "Wanted: The Perfect Pet."

This book tells the story of a cuckoo who hatches in another birds nest, because cuckoo's lay their eggs in other birds' nests. Soon he realises he is not like the other birds so he goes off to try and find someone to talk too. He sees all the animals and even tries learning their languages but nothing works. Until the end when he finds a friend.

Now everything about this book is good. The illustrations are simple and neat, there is a call back to the previous book as Henry from that book walks his duck, and my 7-year-old daughter saw that too, which was a lovely moment. But I was hugely disappointed with the ending. Basically this book is about a human and an animal coming together and forming a friendship. This is exactly the same theme as the "Wanted: The Perfect Pet" book. Maybe the author is running out of ideas, if so my contact details are in my profile. But as a stand-alone this book would probably be fine.

Amazon UK link: CUCKOO!

Publication date: 2 Jan 2014

The Last Kings of Sark by Rosa Rankin-Gee

“The Last Kings of Sark” is about love and about the long summers like you experienced when you were young and carefree. “The world was blond, the wind was warm. These were the days that were golden.”

The first part of the book is written from Jude’s point of view and sees her arrive in Sark at the beginning of summer to provide tuition to the only child, Pip, of Eddy and Esme. Things don’t start too well as they thought she would be a boy. (“My name is Jude. And because of Law, Hey and the Obscure, they thought I was a boy.”

Sark is painted as a small island with Jude being shipped in with meat supplies, and there are no cars on the island, and no roads, only golden paths which “were tree-lined, but the trees had grown up and bowed until they met at the top.” Bicycles are the mode of transport here.

Jude is 21, Pip is 16 and the hired help, Sofi, is 19 and, although at the beginning “I could tell straight away that Sofi didn’t like me,” their relationship develops into something special, what with Eddy often away on business and Esme bed-ridden. “It somehow worked, the three of us, tea after tea, tale after tale at the table.” And they also ventured outside to experience all the island.

But summer passes. “Our skin got darker and our hair got lighter, and summer passed like sand through our fingers.” And the love they develop for each other is lost forever although there is the promised reunion under the Eiffel Tower to look forward to. “I can’t wait to go. Baguettes man.”

The second half of the book is written differently with multiple points of views from the three characters from the first half as they all live in France but yet do not really see each other. And when Pip does meet Sofi “it feels forced, almost formal.” The feel is darker too with death and responsibilities rearing their heads.

Then the last chapter is a return to Sark to reminisce about that perfect summer once more “when we were young, when we were kings.”

So a coming of age novel where you can reminisce over the lost summers of youth, and also get into the lives of three characters you’ll come to love and long for them to be reunited once more.

Amazon UK Link: The Last Kings of Sark

Publication Date: 7 Nov 2013

Angela Nicely by Alan Macdonald, illustrated by David Roberts

I read this book with my 7-year-old daughter over three bedtimes.

The book includes three separate Angela Nicely stories, each four short chapters in length.

Angela Nicely is a girl dressed in a pink dress and a massive pink bow upon her head. She has the look of an innocent little girl, like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. But really she is a mischief maker. Sometimes this lands her in trouble, and at other times it works out well for her.

The three stories in the book are:

• Miss Skinner’s Wig!
• Supermodel!
• Healthy Holiday!

The first story sees Angela transfixed by the head teacher Miss Skinner’s new hairstyle. She is sure it is a wig. “Prove it” says her friend Maisie. “Maisie always thought she knew best, but this time Angela would prove her wrong.” And so Angela goes about making mischief, with a little help from a Super Suction Arm.

The second story sees Angela trying to become a model ahead of “goody-goody Tiffany.” Again Angela makes mischief to try and ruin Tiffany’s photoshoot, except things don’t go to plan, although Angela does get her wish at the end.

And the third story sees Angela being honest with her mum (“you’re not fat, just a bit squidgy”), but still getting told off for it. This leads to the two of them going on a healthy holiday (“Are you flabby? Saggy? Baggy as an elephant’s bottom?” reads the promotional material for the health place) where Angela thinks she’ll be able to use the swimming pool all day. Except it isn’t like that, with things not being to Angela’s liking. Again Angela gets her own back at the end.

So you get three self-contained stories, in an easy-to-read format that suits the 7-year-old reading level. There are black-and-white pictures along the way too and the stories all have satisfying conclusions to them. It is worth getting. My daughter said it was good and fun and she liked it how sometimes Angela got it wrong.

Publication Date: 5 Aug 2013

Amazon UK link: Angela Nicely

Why Me? The Very Important Emails of Bob Servant by Neil Forsyth

"Why Me? The Very Important Emails of Bob Servant" sees Bob Godzilla Servant, "a former cheeseburger magnate and semi-retired window cleaner," and a 64-year-old resident of the Dundee suburb Broughty Ferry, conversing with spam emailers turning their requests for money, or their looking for a husband, into surreal and funny conversations.

For example there is a conversation about buying 50,000 barrels for $50,000 and how this could put Dundee on the map with Bob supporting his conversation with newspaper cuttings from the Dundee Chronicle, e.g. "Dundee celebrated today after a local businessman pledged to create an oil industry to rival neighbouring Aberdeen..." The conversation also sees Bob anger the spammer by stealing his job and becoming "Bob Servant, Director, National Oil and Investment, Royal Plaza, Togo." Another conversation sees him sending a phone number one digit at a time because of security reasons.

But as the book goes along the formula felt like it was tiring, although to be fair you are partly reliant on the spammer to make a good conversation and most of them had a one track mind with their emails constantly asking for personal data. But also I felt the jokes were tiring too, for example with multiple jokes along the same lines about Sir Trevor McDonald and Scottish celebrities' houses.

I can't compare this to the original book (Delete This at Your Peril) as I haven't read that, but this as a stand-alone is worth getting.

Amazon UK link: Why Me? The Very Import Emails of Bob Servant

Publication date: 10 November 2011

The Wolf Princess by Cathryn Constable

I read this to my 7-year-old daughter over several bedtimes. I thought it was pretty average to be honest. And for age group it is probably for 10-year-olds-up with long chapters, a girl obsessed by fashion in there, plus some blood and guns towards the end.

The story sees orphan Sophie Smith at a boarding school with her two mates, the clever Marianne, and the fashion-conscious Delphine. Sophie dreams of Russia, “a land of palaces and poetry”, of winter forests and of her late dad.

Lo-and–behold she, and her two friends, get picked to go on a school trip to Russia where they are dispatched onto a train, thrown off at a deserted train station, before they are taken to the dilapidated Volkonsky Winter Palace, “a diamond in the snow, a palace of dreams, so remote it has been forgotten with the noble Volkonskys erased from the history books.”. Here she meets the Princess, who is not all she seems with her “sudden flames of anger, the cold grey eyes that had looked so calculating.”

Things in the novel don’t really take off though until about two thirds in when General Grigor arrives seeking his investment back from the Princess who was meant to find the Volkonsky diamonds.

To get the Russian atmosphere in the book a few Russian words are thrown in (e.g. nyet, babushka), although all the characters, including the Russian children servants, speak English. There are also some wolves and lots of snow, talk of the Russian Revolution and the Tsars.

There is a little bit of magic in there too with vozoks, a “midnight picnic on a frozen lake” and “skating by twilight” but the book was quite predictable and average for me.

Publication date: 4 Oct 2012

Amazon UK link: The Wolf Princess

Do Not Disturb by Tilly Bagshawe

When I ordered this book I didn’t realise that it was over 600-pages in length. I was hoping then that it wouldn’t be rubbish as I was going to be stuck with it for a while. Luckily I needn’t have worried. It just meant that I had longer to spend in the character’s world that was built up right from the beginning.

The book is split into two halves. The first half focuses on the rivalry of two hotels and their managers. “Honor Palmer and Lucas Ruiz are the protagonists at the heart of what is being dubbed the Five-Star Wars, a battle for supremacy between two great Hampton hotels: the world-famous Palmers and the new architecturally acclaimed Tischen, the Herrick.”

Honor is the "spiky tomboy" grown up into the Palmers riches, but determined to keep the family legacy alive, i.e. the once great Palmers that is now just “another dime-a-dozen “luxury” hotel, perhaps even a little shabbier than its rivals”. Lucas is the “handsome, cocky, arrogant” womaniser driven by ambition to be the greatest hotel manager in the world before realising his “fantasy of one day owning his own hotel. His hotel would be an aura not just of luxury but of peace” all under the name “Luxe.”

Lucas is directed from on-high by the owner of the Herrick, Anton Tisch, who wants “Palmers out of business by this time next year. I want her penniless and scrounging at my feet”.

But then Lucas gets too big for his boots, “ever since the boy had started taking sole credit for the Herrick’s success” so Anton Tisch destroys him, along with Palmers at the same time. The second half of the book looks at the aftermath now that Honor and Lucas have a common enemy.

The book is a good read with lots of characters that have distinctive characteristics and motivations. It is a light read and a good world to inhabit through its 600 pages plus. If you like your 600-page bonkbusters then get it.

Publication date: 14th May 2013 (this edition, originally published on 7th Feb 2008) 

Amazon UK link: Do Not Disturb