#Review By Lou of The Mother of all Christmases By Milly Johnson @millyjohnson @BookMinxSJV @#TheMotherofAllChristmases #Christmas #Books

The Mother of all Christmases
By Milly Johnson

Review written by Louise Cannon

This was my first Christmas present that arrived with a lovely card, opened because it was supposed to be before Christmas. It certainly got me in the mood for this special time of year. There’s lots of substance to discover within it, possibly one of her best… Here’s the blurb and my review:

Blurb

Eve Glace – co-owner of the theme park Winterworld – is having a baby and her due date is a perfectly timed 25th December. And she’s decided that she and her husband Jacques should renew their wedding vows with all the pomp that was missing the first time. But growing problems at Winterworld keep distracting them.

Annie Pandoro and her husband Joe own a small Christmas cracker factory, and are well set up and happy together despite life never blessing them with a much-wanted child. But when Annie finds that the changes happening to her body aren’t typical of the menopause but pregnancy, her joy is uncontainable.

Palma Collins has agreed to act as a surrogate, hoping the money will get her out of the gutter in which she finds herself. But when the couple she is helping split up, is she going to be left carrying a baby she never intended to keep?

Annie, Palma and Eve all meet at the ‘Christmas Pudding Club’, a new directive started by a forward-thinking young doctor to help mums-to-be mingle and share their pregnancy journeys. Will this group help each other to find love, contentment and peace as Christmas approaches?

Review

The Mother of All Christmases is moving and heart-warming, without being too saccharine. There’s friendship, pregnancy, relationships, good times, challenging times throughout this festive book, which is separated into trimesters.

The Christmas Pudding Club is set up where there’s plenty of humorous banter and hope within the mothers-to-be. Will the baby arrive on the 25th December as planned? Will Winterworld survive?

It’s great that there are plenty of highs and lows in Mother of All Christmases, from financial worries to new mother anxieties to grief, not forgetting the sheer joys and laughter of Christmas this time of year brings too. This book has it all. There’s something everyone can relate to and come to the end feeling satisfied from a good festive read.

It’s really easy to root for the characters and want the festive spirit to permeate through everyone and everything, such as the Christmas Pudding Club and the festivities of Winterworld.

#Review By Lou of Rick Astley, Swinging Christmas Gig/Concert @theusherhall #RickAstley #Christmas #Music #Gigs #Concerts #Books

Rick Astley
Swinging Christmas Gig

Review written by Louise Cannon

Rick Astley makes Swing music cool again at the Usher Hall, Royal Albert Hall and other venues. If you ever get the opportunity to see him and his big swing band in future years, I highly recommend it. I saw him at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh.

Rick Astley gigs are like a dose of wellbeing to your heart, mind and soul. They’re a terrific, memorable night out!

“Fly Me to the Moon”, I was certainly on cloud 9 at this gig and loved every second of it. It was a relaxed gig in a formal setting, which was perfectly executed.
Rick Astley dazzled the audience with a mix of Christmas songs done swing style and the classic swing songs. Solo and group instrumental parts were a delight as he allowed his band to showcase their talents and what they could do with instruments such as the saxophone, drums and more…

He put together a great repertoire that flowed well. It included songs Christmas songs such as “Winter Wonderland”, “Santa Clause is Coming To Town”, “White Christmas”, romantic songs such as “Strangers in the Night”, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” “As Time Goes By” and many more…

As Rick Astely sang, his voice for all his songs was exquisitely deep, rich, silky smooth and perfect for this style of music. I honestly couldn’t fault any of it as he emulated the original crooners. I was incredibly impressed!

The gig had heart, humour, poignancy and most of all, fun. He mentioned his mum and sang some of the songs she liked, he had a shot on drums himself and danced around. There was a festive, positive energy throughout. There were some audience singalong parts, of course, the major one being his 80’s hit “Never Gonna Give You Up”. He didn’t conclude on this, the last song was “White Christmas” and then you knew the festive season had officially begun. The gig started on a high and finished on a high. Not one bit of it waned. Everything he sang, everything he

Rick Astley has great longevity and deservedly so, especially as he does things how he wants to do them now. I’ve seen his Pop concerts and now this Swing concert and both styles show his enormous talent and a great sense of uplifting fun like he wants to be there and you don’t ever want him to leave.

If you ever get a chance to see any of his gigs, I highly recommend them. You won’t regret it and nor will you be disappointed. They’re a joy to the heart and soul.

Rick Astley also has a memoir – Never – Out Now!

5 Intriguing, Wide Ranging #Autobiographies #Memoirs for #Christmas #BookReviews By Lou @FernBritton @paulybengali @johnsuchet1 @LaPlanteLynda #SuzieFletcher #ReadingCommunity

Christmas is just around the corner and there’s been some cracking Autobiographies/Memoirs published in 2024. Here are my top 5 for Christmas present ideas or for your own personal reading time. They range from the self-development, music, travelogue, tv and more in their topics.

The Older I Get – How I Repowered My Life By Fern Britton

Part Memoir, part almost self-help, Fern Britton, wisely
imparts her lived experience and knowledge with tips everyone can use to start a new year repowering their lives. It’s thought-provoking, inspiring and practical whatever your age and stage of life is.

Check out my full review in the link here: The Older I Get

Once Sinha Lifetime By Paul Sinha

One for The Chase and stand-up comedy fans, Once Sinha Lifetime takes readers into the life of a doctor who changed his life forever by taking up stand-up comedy, showcasing his material at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival and how he became a quizzer.
Check out my full review here: Once Sinha Lifetime
See my review of Paul Sinha at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival: Paul Sinha in Edinburgh

In Search of Beethoven – A Personal Journey By John Suchet

Part memoir, part travelogue, discover John Suchet’s almost lifelong love of Beethoven. It’s a heart warming and informative read. The opportunity to delve into how Beethoven’s and John Suchet’s lives have intertwined, even years apart, with one dead, one alive. Join him from your comfiest chair on his travels to Vienna with his wife Nula as they explore deeper than they have before in this profound relationship.
Check out my review here: In Search of Beethoven

Getting Away With Murder, My Unexpected Life on Page, Stage and Screen
By Lynda La Plante

Lynda La Plante has written critically acclaimed books that have made it onto tv, perhaps the best known one is Prime Suspect starring Helen Mirren, which she has now got a book series charting Jane Tennison’s career in the police force in Tennsion. There’s much more to Lynda La Plante that meets the eye and this emotional, fascinating memoir reveals a lot of them women behind the writing as she charts her career and let’s readers into some of her personal life.
See my review here: Getting Away With Murder

The Sun Over The Mountains, A Story of Hope, Healing and Restoration
By Suzie Fletcher

Suzie Fletcher is famed for The Repair Shop, but life wasn’t always on a tv programme. It’s a deep look into her talent with crafting with leather and how her life changed. Suzie Fletcher has been through incredibly challenging times in her life, including a certain relationship.
Discover my review here: The Sun Over The Mountains

#Review By Lou of Into Thin Air – The First in a new Scandi-Noir series by Orjan Karlsson #OrjanKarlsson @OrendaBooks #ScandiNoir #Thriller

Into Thin Air
By Orjan Karlsson

Feel the chill and darkness in the air as the untamed wilderness of Norway enters your life.

Blurb

Chief Investigator of Nordland Police, Jakob Weber is drawn into a complex case when a teenaged girl goes missing in Northern Norway, and a second woman disappears from a remote island in similar circumstances … FIRST in a compelling, dark new Nordic Noir series.

When nineteen-year-old Iselin Hanssen disappears during a run in a popular hiking area in Bodø, Northern Norway, suspicion quickly falls on her boyfriend. For investigator Jakob Weber, the case seems clear-cut, almost unexceptional, even though there is some suggestion that Iselin lived parts of her life beneath the radar of both family and friends.

But events take a dramatic turn when another woman disappears in similar circumstances – this time on the island of Røst, hundreds of miles off the coast, in the wild ocean.

Rumours that a killer is on the loose begin to spread, terrifying the local population and leading to wild conspiracies. But then Jakob discovers that this isn’t the first time that young women have vanished without a trace in the region, and it becomes clear that someone is hiding something … and another murderous spree may have just begun…

Review

Islean Hanssen goes missing and naturally the boyfriend is looked upon as being rather suspect in this disappearance in Bodo, Northern Norway. Something more sinister and suspicious is going on when another woman goes missing on the island of Rost. These places to exist and they are quite a distance apart, with the island of Rost being some distance away from the coast, making the net of suspicion cast wider. There’s more guesswork and threads to untangle than you may initially think.

Into Thin Air is twisted and as darkly cold as the title and cover suggest. The bodies stack and people are terrified. There are many moments that you involuntarily gasp at. The further you dive in, the more twisted and spine-tingling creepy it becomes.

The writing is great and you truly fear for anyone who is innocent whilst reading from the edge of the seat.

#Review By Lou of Thriller – Geneva By Richard Armitage @RCArmitage @FaberBooks #Geneva #PsychologicalThriller #Thriller

Geneva
By Richard Armitage

Review written by Louise Cannon (Lou)

I bought the psychological thriller, Geneva at the crime book festival at Bloody Scotland in September. I wasn’t totally planning on, but after I heard Richard Armitage talk, I just knew I had to read it. He is better known as an actor, but what a debut! It is far better than expected… He talked about the number of drafts he wrote and has made clear no ghost-writers were used. He likes to write and sees it as a continuing career. You can find out more here about the Bloody Scotland event. It’ll come up in a separate tab so you can navigate easily back to this post. What was talked about at Bloody Scotland here: https://bookmarksandstages.home.blog/2024/09/17/review-by-lou-of-richard-armitage-chaired-by-brian-burnett-rcarmitage-bryanb1965-bloodyscotland-bloodyscotland/
I could see why it was picked by Richard and Judy for their book club read and won awards. Find out in my review below why I think this thriller was better than I thought it was going to be. First onto the blurb…

Blurb

When you have it all
Sarah Collier has been lucky: she’s got a glittering scientific career and a husband who loves her more than anything.
And you start to lose it
But now she’s showing signs of early Alzheimer’s, and the only hope for a cure is in a controversial new technology being unveiled in Switzerland.
You’d go anywhere for help
In Geneva, as events turn dangerous and her memory loss worsens, Sarah has to decide who to trust: the people around her – or, despite her symptoms, herself.

Review

If you read Geneva, remember to breath. It’s all too easy to hold your breath.
It’s a scary thought, to be trapped. To be stuck in ones mind, starting to lose your place. Sarah has been diagnosed with early Alzheimer’s. As a reader, you enter her state of mind. The book draws you into her world. You see how life had been flourishing for her. She had it all, the career and the husband.

From the outset though things are quite sad with her dad’s health that she has to deal with. She ends up with a lot on her plate, including that later on she too has her own health to handle, which you can see deteriorate. This book really pulls on your heartstrings. As she deteriorates and desperately tries to seek out the new technology in Geneva that she’d heard could significantly help her, everything hangs in the balance.

The screw tightens and the emotions heighten. Armitage places readers right in the centre of her world in this page-turner and makes you think about your own life. He gives enough time to allow the story to breath as poignancy increases as the characters naturally develop. In the midst of seeking out treatment, she and nor does the reader, know who can actually be trusted as things become darkly sinister at the facility.

As well as health, Richard Armitage also looks at the rise and rise of fake information being passed around. He cleverly intertwines this important subject into the story, so it avoids the hazard of taking you out of the story.

Geneva is a well-accomplished debut that is hard to put down until it is finished. You can feel everything, all the emotions and visualise it all as the characters and events jump from the page.

Geneva is so good that I can see Richard Armitage writing more books and making a career out of it. I’d certainly be interested in reading a second book.
The Cut is available to pre-order.

#Review of Santa Steals Christmas By Eve Nairn-Magnante Illustrated By Nicholas Child @SantaStealsXms #SantaStealsChristmas #Christmas #InclusiveStories #ChildrensBooks #DyslexiaFriendly #Kidslit

Santa Steals Christmas
By Eve Nairn -Magnante
Illustrated By Nicholas Child

Review written by Louise Cannon (Lou)

Santa Steals Christmas is written by a child for children. It is a book that’s also created for supporting charities. 5% of sales of each book will be donated to Scottish Autism via Work for Good, 5% of sales of each book will be donated to Dyslexia Scotland via Work For Good.
The book has a font and typeface designed by a dyslexic for people who have dyslexia.
Suitable for 3 years plus, it is the world’s 1st children’s picture book to be fully accessible! Available in dyslexia friendly book, ebook, audiobook, audio description, videobook, BSL & braille.

Blurb

This Christmas isn’t like every other Christmas…

This year, Santa can be spotted stealing presents instead of sharing them – but how can this be?!

Can Rudolph and the elves save Christmas before all the girls and boys wake up?

A witty and surprising mystery, inspired and written by a child for children.

Review

Santa Steals Christmas has big bold pictures and distinctive font, with short, snappy sentences. It all begins in Santa’s workshop, where many toys can be seen. Toys are all delivered, but an alarm rings out to alert the real Santa that there is an imposter. The race is on to find the “naughty Santa”. What is discovered is quite a good twist and of course the real Santa saves the day that will leave children with festive cheer.

Santa Steals Christmas has all the entertaining fun with just the right amount of trepidation young children need, with a great ending that makes everything all right in the world again. It’s a fast read and races along at a good pace so that it can capture young children’s concentration levels. The illustrations make it fun and are bright and bold, helping children follow the story.

The accessibility for all children has been carefully considered through the type-face, font, margins, spacing ensuring that even those with dyslexia can have some festive fun with it.

I read it to a couple of groups of children who were delighted by this book. Their parents also approved of this book and all that it brings for every single child.
I also recommend this delightful and inclusive book.