The Dubrovnik Book Club by Eva Glyn - #bookreview

Prologue

He raises his head from the sink and looks in the mirror. Sunken eyes, stubble. The bruise a livid purple-red on his cheek...

The Blurb

In a tiny bookshop in Dubrovnik’s historic Old Town, a book club begins…

Newly arrived on the sun-drenched shores of Croatia, Claire Thomson’s life is about to change forever when she starts working at a local bookshop. With her cousin Vedran, employee Luna and Karmela, a professor, they form an unlikely book club.

But when their first book club pick – an engrossing cosy crime – inspires them to embark upon an investigation that is close to the group’s heart, they quickly learn the value of keeping their new-found friends close as lives and stories begin to entwine…My Review

Each chapter is the name of the book which the book club is reading each month. At the back of the book the author provides a list along with the author of each of these books in case the reader would like to read them for themselves.

Helpful glossary at the beginning of the book which translates some of the words used throughout the novel.

My Review

As a member of two book clubs myself, I am often drawn to books which have a book club as their setting.

The titular book club is set in Croatia, within the walls of The Welcoming Bookshop. This book uses this setting to introduce the readers to a lovely array of characters. 

The book is told from the perspectives of main characters Claire and Luna. Claire has left England to join her grandparents in Dubrovnik for a year. She has had long Covid and as a result has lost her confidence and fears groups of people. Her grandmother is convinced that working in the book shop will help her regain it. 

Luna works with Claire in the bookshop. She comes from a rural Croatian village where she finds the community small-minded. She is hiding a secret of her own but finds a friend and confidante in Claire.

Setting up the book club allows the author to introduce an array of other characters, who each have an important part to play in the story. Vedran is Claire's cousin. He is a lawyer who has been through a tough time – and then there is Karmella, an academic who retreats to a place of safety behind her books.

These characters all come together within the book shop and find an emotional support circle. The book has much to say about friendship, self-acceptance and facing our fears.

The author depicted the charm and history of Dubrovnik beautifully without shying away from the hardships that the residents faced during and following the war. In fact, having read this made me want to hop on a plane so that I could stroll around its streets and have coffee outside a café, whilst reading a book. 

This was a gem of a book to read.  It had me absorbed by every page. It was a life-affirming book which made for wonderful reading. In fact, I already have the next book in the series, The Santorini Writing Retreat, waiting to be read. 

I highly recommend this book. I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

Book Details

ISBN:  978-0008648114

Publisher:  One More Chapter

Formats:  e-book, audio and paperback (currently available on Kindle Unlimited)

No. of Pages:  384 (paperback)

Series:  Book 1 in the Bookish Escapes series

Purchase Links

Bookshop.org

Amazon UK

Amazon US

About the Author

Over the last couple of years Eva has become adept at writing with two hats on; under her own name Jane Cable it’s romance with a twist, and as Eva Glyn she creates escapist relationship-driven fiction. MHer inspiration comes from the nuggets of history she discovers both at home and abroad, and the beautiful places she finds them.

Eva Glyn’s books are mainly set in Croatia, a country she fell in love with in 2019. Her friendship with tour guide Darko Barisic has proved invaluable to gain an insight into Croatian daily life that few foreign authors can dream of. Her first book set in the country, The Olive Grove, was inspired by Darko’s experiences of the war in the 1990s. Both An Island of Secrets and The Collaborator's Daughter are dual timeline looking back to a little known period of World War 2 history.

 Eva is published by One More Chapter, a division of Harper Collins and has been contracted to write two books about unlikely friendships... and books under the title of Bookish Escapes. The first, The Dubrovnik Book Club, was published in March 2024 with The Santorini Writing Retreat following a year later and The Croatian Island Library in early 2026. 

Although she is Welsh she lives in Cornwall with her husband of more than thirty years. Unless, of course, they're off on their travels!

You can also find Eva at:

Author Website

X

Instagram

Bluesky

(media courtesy of the author's website)

(all opinions are my own)

(Bookshop.org affiliated)

Remember by Patricia Shanae Smith - #blogtour #bookreview

I have one thing to focus on. Put one foot in front of the other. Walk forward, head down. Elizabeth and Rose will take care of the rest...

***

The Blurb

A compelling psychological thriller about a young girl who is forced to confront her past demons after a mysterious new neighbour moves in next door.

Portia Willows was a high school senior in Los Angeles when a devastating car accident took the lives of her mother and sister. After their death, Portia’s social anxiety grows worse. She and her father become heavily dependent on cigarettes and alcohol to cope with their grief.

The book starts five years in the future when she must confront her distorted memory of the past – Portia has committed a crime, and she can’t remember it. As investigators close in, her fractured mind becomes a puzzle she must solve before it’s too late. Then Ethan Torke moves in across the street. At first, he seems like a distraction, but soon, his presence forces Portia to confront a possibility that she would have never expected. The deeper she digs, the more the walls of her safe reality crumble. Sinister pasts are bound to be revealed; the truth always catches up, and fantasies never last.

An unforgettable tale of memory, love, and strength through the darkest of times, Remember announces a brave new voice in psychological suspense.

My Review

 I rarely give books a five star review. Then like buses, along come two in a week. In case you missed it, the other was The One True Thing by Linda Newbury. Do check out my review as the book is well worth reading.

Now back to the reason that I gave this one five shiny stars. The book begins with the trial of the main character, Portia Willows in 2025.  The book then moves back to 2022 when we begin to learn what has brought her to this point.

Portia was a great character. She has suffered with a severe anxiety disorder since childhood. When her mother and sister are killed in a car accident, this situation only worsens. We accompany her through a series of panic attacks. I have been fortunate in life that I have never suffered this myself but the book offered me a revealing insight into how it must feel. The author wrote these scenes with realism.

The narrative moves seamlessly through different parts of Portia's life. We read of the years since the car accident, her arrest and also her trial. I found the scenes surrounding her arrest gripping. Not only did I, as a reader, not understand exactly why she had been arrested but neither does Portia and so we literally shadow her through her discovery. Her crime is gradually revealed to both the reader and protagonist and I thought this was a fantastic way in which to do so.

There are some difficult themes in this book; grief, PTSD, what can happen if mental illness is left untreated and if memories are not properly processed. The author deals with all of this with both compassion and empathy.

As a debut novel this is fabulous. I was gripped from the very first page to the last. It moved along at a swift pace which suited the genre very well. It was an entertaining yet emotive read that was compelling in its sincerity.

I highly recommend this book and hope you enjoy it every bit as much as I did.

Book Details

ISBN: 978 1915523822

Publisher:  Datura Books

Formats:  e-book, audio and paperback

No. of Pages:  400 (paperback)

Purchase Links

Bookshop.org

Datura Books

Amazon UK

Amazon US

About the Author

Patricia Shanae Smith saw her first dead body at six years old, sparking a fascination with life’s darker edges and a lifelong passion for storytelling. Born in Los Angeles, she found escape through writing and later earned a BFA in Motion Pictures with a focus on screenwriting at Belmont University in Nashville. She loves listening to metal and country music, and of course, watching The Big Bang Theory. 

Why not check out some of the other bloggers on this tour?

(ARC and media courtesy of the publisher)

(all opinions are my own)

(Bookshop.org affiliated)

Lethal White by Robert Galbraith (A Strike Novel) - #BookReview

         

"Such is the universal desire for fame that those who achieve it accidentally or unwillingly will wait in vain for pity."

When Billy, a troubled young man, comes to private eye Cormoran Strike's office to ask for his help investigating a crime he thinks he witnessed as a child, Strike is left deeply unsettled. But before Strike can question him further, Billy bolts in a panic. 

Trying to get to the bottom of Billy's story, Strike and Robin Ellacott - one his assistant, now his partner in the agency - set off on a twisting trail that leads them through the backstreets of London, into a secretive inner sanctum within Parliament and to a beautiful but sinister manor house deep in the countryside.

And during this labyrinthine investigation, Strike's own life is far from straightforward; his relationship with Robin is more fraught than it ever has been - she is now invaluable to his business, but their personal relationship is much, much more tricky than that...

Although my edition of this book is just over 770 pages, I was so engrossed by the story and characters that I would have happily have continued reading this book if it was twice the length.

Without doubt, Robert Galbraith, the pseudonym of J.K. Rowling, is an exceptional story teller. She creates worlds and characters that are both likeable and unforgettable as evidenced by a whole generation of children and young people who have grown up alongside Harry Potter.

This is equally evident in this, the fourth book in the Cormoran Strike series. I have read the previous three novels, The Cuckoo's Calling, The Silkworm and Career of Evil.  I am completely entranced by the chemistry in the relationship between Cormoran Strike and his colleague Robin Ellacott. With each one of the books in the series I have felt that the books have grown in strength even though each of them have been fantastic novels in their own right. I think this is largely attributable to the characters who we get to know a little better with each book.

The plot has some wonderful twists and turns, making this book enormously absorbing, entertaining and unputdownable. I am excitedly anticipating the next book in the series, Troubled Blood, which is due to be published in the UK on the 9th September 2020 and on the 29th September 2020 in the US so I am just going to have to be patient until then.

If you have not read any of the books in this series then I strongly encourage you to do so as you have a real treat in store. 

Happy reading.

ISBN: 978 0751572872

Publisher: Little Brown

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah - Book Review

"A woman has to be tough as steel up here. You can't count on anyone to save you and your children. You have to be willing to save yourselves. And you have to learn fast. In Alaska you can make one mistake. One. The second one will kill you."

Alaska, 1974. Untamed. Unpredictable. A story of a family in crisis struggling to survive at the edge of the world. It is also a story of young and enduring love.

Cora Allbright and her husband, Ernt - a recently returned Vietnam veteran scarred by the war - uproot their thirteen-year-old daughter, Leni, to start a new life in Alaska. Utterly unprepared for the weather and the isolation, but welcomed by the close-knit community, they fight to build a home in this harsh, beautiful wilderness.

At once an epic story of human survival and love, and an intimate portrait of a family tested beyond endurance, The Great Alone offers a glimpse into a vanishing way of life in America. With her trademark combination of elegant prose and deeply drawn characters, Kristin Hannah has delivered an enormously powerful story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the remarkable and enduring strength of women. It is the finest example of Hannah's ability to weave together the deeply personal with the universal.

This novel is about the setting as much as plot or character. The cold and hardships of living in Alaska are excellently portrayed in this book. The author has brought the environment completely alive, from the long dark winters to the long days of spring and summer. Despite my reading this during a heatwave here in England (very rare) there were times I reached for my wrap such was her ability to draw the reader into the book. Her research has come from her own experience of her fathers love for adventure and their own residence in the location in which the book is set.

The characters are carefully drawn and easy to become involved with. There are some truly wonderful characters in this book. I found myself rooting for Leni, Cora and Matthew throughout and I would challenge anyone not to love Large Marge. Ms. Hannah is extremely skilled at developing her characters and bringing them vividly to life.

Combined with a plot which is advanced in an easy to read narrative, these three factors all come together to form a totally gripping novel.

My only small criticism was that some of the story was a little too sugary and ultimately predictable for my taste, but that is entirely personal. I continue to love this author's writing and I have read and reviewed The Nightingale (in fact I have read this twice and was one of my top ten favourite books of 2016) and Night Road - you can read my reviews by clicking on the title. One thing that makes me very happy is that the author has a long back list which I am looking forward to reading in the future.

Do you have a favourite book written by Kristin Hannah? I would love to hear about it.

ISBN: 978 1250193773

Publisher: Macmillan USA

About the Author:

Kristin Hannah is a New York Times bestselling author. She is a lawyer-turned-writer and is the mother of one son. She and her husband live in the Pacific Northwest near Seattle and Hawaii. Her first novel published in the UK, Night Road, was one of eight books selected for the 2011 TV Book Club Summer Read and The Nightingale was a New York Times number one bestseller, selling almost three million copies worldwide.