#Review by Lou of Christmas at Hollybush Farm by Jo Thomas @jo_thomas01 @PenguinUKBooks @RandomTTours #Christmas #ChristmasAtHollybushFarm #BlogTour

Christmas at Hollybush Farm
By Jo Thomas

written by Louise Cannon

Jo Thomas welcomes readers to feel all festive and explore Hollybush Farm.
Today, I am delighted to be he closing the Random T. Tours blog tour, reviewing a book fit for cosying up for some Christmas reading, thanks also to Penguin Books for supplying the book. Check out the blurb and review below.
(all opinions are my own).

Blurb

Jemima Jones is driving home to her family’s magical hill-top farm for Christmas…

And on arrival, she soon learns that her dad has been keeping a secret – all is not as it seems, and Hollybush Farm is struggling to make ends meet! Worried about losing the childhood home she loves, Jemima must pull on her winter wellies and get stuck in.

Amid the chaos of chasing after escaping sheep and organising the Christmas tractor run, Jemima begins documenting her slice of farming life on social media. As she builds a supportive online following, she also forms an offline connection in the shape of charming, retired rugby player Llew, her very own Santa’s helper.

With a sprinkle of festive cheer and a dash of goodwill, might the community pull together to help save the farm in time for Christmas?

Review

Farms aren’t having an easy time of it at the moment and in some respects part of this is illustrated at Hollybush Farm. It shows the secrets kept in quite a human way as her dad wants to protect his family from the truth of the struggles the farm is going through. This in itself is heart-breaking, more so because it shows real family issues that are happening off the page, in real life. Farms may look idyllic, but their importance is often not noted nor taken into consideration, nor the strain put upon many families, which is illustrated rather well in this book.

Demonstrated, rather well is also the resilience and creativity that farming families have been developing over the years to continue producing the food we eat and a spacious habitat for nature to thrive.

Jemima Jones is the daughter of the family who work the land at Hollybush Farm, who has arrived for Christmas. She has determination to get stuck in to try to get the farm back up on its feet so it can be kept in the family, once the sad secret is out. She also gets creative with social media to create a presence for the farm online and get people caring about its existence. She also creates a life and connections outside the social media world too, just in time for Christmas.

In many ways, from the characters to their actions, Christmas at Hollybush Farm is both heartwarming and thought-provoking about how we view farms and their communities.

Hollybush Farm is a great Christmas read to cosy up with on a wintry day or would make a lovely Christmas present.

#Review by Lou of The Cat And The Christmas Kidnapper by L T Shearer @LTShearerOfficial @panmacmillan @RandomTTours #Cats #Christmas #Mystery #CosyCrime #CrimeFiction

The Cat and The Christmas Kidnapper
By L T Shearer

Review written by Louise Cannon

Looking for a great Christmas present for cosy crime lovers and/or cat lovers? This book is just a fabulous combination, hitting the spot perfectly.
The Cat and The Christmas Kidnapper carries intrigue and mystery. Join Conrad the cat detective and retired police detective Lulu Lewis this Christmas for another case to solve. Check out the blurb and my review below for Random T. Tours.

Blurb

Join Lulu Lewis, a retired detective with a knack for uncovering secrets, and
Conrad, her extraordinary talking cat, as they take on their latest case.
Hoping for a relaxing break, Lulu sets off with Conrad on her canal boat, The Lark, to the picturesque city of Bath to visit friends. But Christmas cheer soon gives way to festive fear when the pair learn of a ruthless kidnapping plot that is plaguing parents in the area.
As the kidnappers fuel panic with further demands, the pair must unravel clues faster than Conrad can charm with his witty banter if they are to stand any chance of bringing the criminals to justice in time to save the holidays . . .

Review

Cat owners already know their cats communicate well with their owners, but Conrad is something different. He truly speaks, which reminded me of a novel I read a lot of years ago with a cat community who could speak English and read and do all sorts of things, so The Cat and the Christmas Kidnapper is all rather pleasing. It also fits well with that festive cosy crime vibe.

Bath looks festive at Christmas and the holiday vibe is on, or is it?
Retired Lulu Lewis and her rather smart cat are heading down the canal to Bath to visit friends to find themselves with a case on their hands as there is so much crime in the city, with the focus being on kidnappers. Both cat and human are intriguing within themselves, added to that, a crime to be solved and this book has a bit of depth. It is all rather intriguing and entertaining.
The manner of which the book is written makes it a book for curling up with your cat and/or festive treats on a cold, wintry night.

#Review by Lou of A Ticket To Ride by Sue Wickstead @JayJayBus #ChildrensBook #ATicketToRide #Stories #Rhymes @rararesources

A Ticket To Ride
By Sue Wickstead

All aboard!!! Got your ticket to ride this fantastically entertaining children’s book. This is a fun children’s book with rhymes and short stories that are great for on the bus or playing around with the idea of the bus in an imaginative manner. Today, I am part of the blog tour for this next instalment in this lovely collection by Sue Wickstead. Check out the blurb and my review below of A Ticket To Ride for 2 years to 12 years, thanks to Rachel’s Random Resources blog tour spot.

This collection of light-hearted poems and stories is perfect for a cosy afternoon reading with your little ones. Perfect for sharing.

Around the corner and up the hill, jumping off when the bus stops still.

Animals and friends hop on and off the bus as it travels through lands near and far, on special days and everyday afternoons. On this journey, you can meet everything from cats and elephants to one very celebratory bee, telling jokes and adding their opinions.

A Ticket to Ride is a fun collection of cheerful poems with a few short stories sprinkled in. I love the silliness as well as the thoughtful moments, and who doesn’t need a few extra knock-knock jokes to brighten their day? This book is a great read-along, with poems for anytime you want to celebrate.

Review

What will your stop be? The book is your ticket to ride to wherever your imagination or heart takes you on a bus. It encourages fun around buses, language and the silly fun that kids just love to be entertained by. They’re also fun if you’re an adult reading to children. This is part of a gorgeously fun collection of complete within themselves books, which I choose to use in some Bookbug sessions (a Scottish Booktrust group for 0-5 year olds) and kids and adults alike have fun with them. Please note, this isn’t part of their collection, but we do have freedom to choose our books outwith too. The book itself is suitable for children of 2 years to 12 years. There are poems galore, some that are acrostic and all manner of other styles, which is what makes it suitable for such a broad age range.

Packed with jokes, animals and more, it’s the journey you and your children don’t want to miss. Meet animals in entertaining places like a Lion In A Bath, a Gutter Beetle, a Mouse Maze, some strange Electric Elephant Rain and more…
The illustrations are colourful, bold and entertaining for all children to enjoy.

The stops and imaginative, interactive aspects remind me a bit of Playbus in the 80’s. It has that level of fun (for adults, that title also makes me think of Ticket to Ride by The Beatles).

I highly recommend this book which encourages fun, imagination, language through rhyme, which is great to read aloud with children or for older children to also share and perhaps read aloud to their siblings or adults in their lives.

#Review by Lou of My Daughter’s Baby by Kate Hewitt @bookouture #MyDaughtersBaby #KateHewitt

My Daughter’s Baby
By Kate Hewitt

My Daughter’s Baby is a highly compelling family based book, published by Bookouture, whom I thank for a spot on the blog tour and for supplying an e-book. All comments/views are my own.

Blurb

As I hold my daughter’s newborn baby to my chest, my heart breaks knowing she didn’t live to meet her son. Someone will need to raise this child, but who will fight the hardest?

When I get the call my estranged daughter Sophie is in labor and that there are complications, I can barely breathe. It’s been months since I spoke to her—I had no idea she was even pregnant. I rush to the hospital, tears streaming down my face. But as I run through the hospital doors and see the nurses’ faces, I realize I am already too late.

I look down at the precious baby she left behind, swaddled in a blanket with perfect rosy cheeks. My husband and I could give him a stable, loving home. It would be a second chance for us. Because we didn’t get it right with Sophie—no matter how hard we tried, I know we failed her. This is our chance to finally make things right.

But then I meet the tear-filled gaze of my son-in-law, Tom, and realize it isn’t going to be that simple. He is the reason we didn’t have a relationship with our daughter. My husband is sure his troubled past will mean we get custody. But now Sophie is gone, is it time to give Tom a second chance? Or is it foolish to trust someone we don’t even know?

My chest aches as I realize I have no idea what Sophie would have wanted, or even what I truly want. Because I have secrets of my own… secrets that Tom doesn’t know and never should. Should I fight to raise my daughter’s baby myself, even if it costs me everything?

An unforgettable, gripping and suspenseful novel that shines a light on what it truly means to be a family. Perfect for readers who enjoy emotional fiction, and for fans of Jodi Picoult, Liane Moriarty and Diane Chamberlain.

Review

My Daughter’s Baby is emotionally charged with suspenseful page-turning chapters. It really examines family life when things are not going to plan. There are ulterior motives, secrets and lives at stake in so many ways.

The well-drawn characters and situation are incredibly moving and the power in the written words leads you into feeling for them all. There’s grief, job loss, family fears, all culminating in rather complex situations and emotive driving forces.

A book for those who like complex family dramas and unexpected twists and turns with suspense that creates a need to read on…

#Review by Lou of Rainforest by Michelle Paver @michelle.paver @orionbooks @RandomTTours #Rainforest #Psychological #Horror

Rainforest
By Michelle Paver

Delve deep into the Rainforest. Start in Mexico City before starting on your journey, but what will you discover? Do you dare to go deep into the pages?
Michelle Paver has previously written for young adults/children but this one is suitable only for adults. It is a great original, atmospheric read for autumn/Halloween and beyond. Check out the blurb and my review as part of the Random T. Tours below. Thanks to Orion for supplying the book for review.

Blurb

The jungle watches. The dead remember.

The virgin rainforest seems a paradise to Englishman Simon Corbett. A last chance to salvage his career. A final refuge from a terrible secret.

But the jungle is no Eden. It hides secrets of its own. It does not forgive.

As Simon is drawn deeper into its haunted shadows, he learns to his horror that the past will not stay buried. For there are places in the forest where the line between the living and the dead is thinner than the skin of water.

Review

Rainforest begins with a poetic yet powerful opening chapter, beginning to set the tone and the scene of nature, used in a metaphorical sense and the psyche. It sweeps you into the book in a flash to find out what’s really going on, what the thoughts keeping our main character awake.
What has a dead woman got to do with it?

There’s also a sense of foreboding and sinister amongst the dangers of the rainforest. The writing is of very good quality, writing about such a place that has a quietness at times and also noise from the insects and animals that fill it amongst the colour of the trees and flowers. What becomes more mysterious is the muktan and its drug like effects.

Between a strange orchid, an underlying dark, haunting atmosphere, a bit of paranormal and the psychological, the Rainforest is a book that has you enter its secrets and grips, fast and hard. Its compelling nature means there’s no escape from the sinister pages until the end…
You’ll have to find courage and dare to read the book to see what happens to the characters in the end…

#Review by Lou of The Colour of Memory By Christopher Bowden #TheColourOfMemory @RandomTTours #ChristopherBowden

The Colour of Memory
By Christopher Bowden

The Colour of Memory has mystery and life matters interconnecting and weaving through a thought-provoking plot that gives readers something rather different. It would also be good for a book club. Christopher Bowden, whose work I haven’t read before, is praised widely by Andrew Marr, Julian Fellowes and others…
Find out more in the blurb and my review below as part of the Random T. Tours blog tour, who supplied the book.

Lucy Potter is a successful artist but she has done no new work in months. She fears she has lost the creative spark that sustained her and enabled her to express her view of the world. Will she ever regain it?

The chance discovery of an old notebook while on a walk in the woods provides a welcome distraction, raising questions she cannot answer. Who wrote it, why is it in code, what secrets does it hide? And why does it include the address of a house that does not exist?

Partial decoding of the notebook, surely written many years ago, reveals troubling incidents in the life of an unnamed girl. Deeply affected by the girl’s plight, Lucy feels impelled to find out who she is or was and what happened to her. Could she still be alive?

Lucy’s search for answers has an outcome she could never have anticipated. But will the re-appearance in Lucy’s life of fellow artist Rex Monday help or hinder her attempts to re-establish her position in the art world – and provide the stability she needs in her personal life?

As the story unfolds, we are drawn into the world as seen through Lucy’s eyes. A world of colour and light, of shape and pattern and texture, inviting us to see it that way too.

Review

The Colour of Memory is a slow-burn but that, in this case works to its advantage and is equally advantageous to the reader. It gives the reader time to breath, time to absorb its intricacies of the connections the characters make and how they interact with the world. It makes you think a bit about how we react to situations and where does artistic inspiration come from and what people do when artistic blocks occur, even when there’s been success in the past. It also examines, to a certain extent what we need and what others may or may not bring to it. In Lucy’s case, she needs some stability and some inspiration. Rex is an interesting character and it’s fascinating to see how Rex and Lucy connect and interact with each other as they re-enter each others lives.

There’s a mystery that weaves through, adding to the intrigue, with a notebook, codes. Most of all, who does it belong to and what happened to the person whose life has had many incidents occur within it?

The Colour of Memory is a rather inviting book into life’s complexities and into the art world and all that it can throw up, as well as being sent on an unexpected path to solve a mystery of an unusual kind.

For a rather different sort of read, I recommend The Colour of Memory.

About Christopher Bowden

Christopher Bowden lives in south London. He is the author of six novels, each with a colour theme. The Amber Maze, published in September 2018, is the latest. His previous books have been praised variously by Andrew Marr, Julian Fellowes, Sir Derek Jacobi, and Shena Mackay. Of his third novel, The Red House, Sir Derek said, “Very entertaining, cleverly constructed and expertly paced. I thoroughly enjoyed it.”