Beautiful Day by Kate Anthony

                                                                           

Rachel's world has been turned upside down as her husband has left her for a younger woman.  Left a single mother with three young children she takes a part time post in a care home to help make ends meet. 

The story takes the reader through the ups and downs of how Rachel copes with the changes in her life.  She finds that life can be quite stressful  while she tries to juggle looking after her children with holding down a demanding job and the live in au pairs do not make adjusting to her new life easy.

I give this book 4/5 it is a light read and ideal as holiday reading.  I would recommend the book to other readers and will look out for more books by Kate Anthony.
Thank you to RealReaders for allowing me to review this book.

Recently read

  9/10  Another excellent read from Jodi Picoult.

 8/10  A wonderful quick read.

Painter of silence ~ Georgina Harding

                                                                                                                        
 It is the early 1950s. A nameless man is found on the steps of the hospital in Iasi, Romania. He is deaf and mute, but a young nurse named Safta recognizes him from the past and brings him paper and pencils so that he might draw. Gradually, memories appear on the page: the man is Augustin, the cook's son at the manor house at Poiana, where Safta was the privileged daughter. Born six months apart, they had a connection that bypassed words, but while Augustin's world stayed the same size, Safta's expanded to embrace languages, society, and a fleeting love one long, hot summer. But then came war, and in its wake a brutal Stalinist regime, and nothing would remain the same.



Not for me.  I found this book very slow and didn't feel as if I connected with the characters at all.  I think this must be one of those books that is described as a 'marmite' book as i have read some reviews where people loved it and others that also found it very slow.

UFO in her eyes ~ Xiaolu Guo

 Silver Hill Village, 2012. On the twentieth day of the seventh moon Kwok Yun is making her way across the rice fields on her Flying Pigeon bicycle. Her world is upturned when she sights a UFThing – a spinning plate in the sky – and helps the Westerner in distress whom she discovers in the shadow of the alien craft.

It’s not long before the village is crawling with men from the National Security and Intelligence Agency armed with pointed questions. And when the Westerner that Kwok Yun saved repays her kindness with a large dollar cheque she becomes a local celebrity, albeit under constant surveillance.

As UFO Hotels spring up, and the local villagers go out of business, Xiaolu Guo’s startling parable of change imagines an uneasy future for rural China and its relations not only with Beijing but the wider world beyond.

                                                                                                                                                                            
It was ok.

The Snow Child ~ Eowyn Ivey

     

 A bewitching tale of heartbreak and hope set in 1920s Alaska. Jack and Mabel have staked everything on making a fresh start for themselves in a homestead 'at the world's edge' in the raw Alaskan wilderness. But as the days grow shorter, Jack is losing his battle to clear the land, and Mabel can no longer contain her grief for the baby she lost many years before. The evening the first snow falls, their mood unaccountably changes. In a moment of tenderness, the pair are surprised to find themselves building a snowman - or rather a snow girl - together. The next morning, all trace of her has disappeared, and Jack can't quite shake the notion that he glimpsed a small figure - a child? - running through the spruce trees in the dawn light. And how to explain the little but very human tracks Mabel finds at the edge of their property? Written with the clarity and vividness of the Russian fairytale from which it takes its inspiration, The Snow Child is an instant classic - the story of a couple who take a child into their hearts, all the while knowing they can never truly call her their own.

My review:-  This is the debut novel from author Eowyn Ivey.  It is a lovely fairytale which offers readers of all ages a wonderful magical story.  I look forward to more from this author.

Dean Koontz ~ What the night knows

   In the late summer of a long ago year, a killer arrived in a small city. His name was Alton Turner Blackwood, and in the space of a few months he brutally murdered four families. His savage spree ended only when he himself was killed by the last survivor of the last family, a fourteen-year-old boy.

Half a continent away and two decades later, someone is murdering families again, recreating in detail Blackwood’s crimes. Homicide detective John Calvino is certain that his own family—his wife and three children—will be targets in the fourth crime, just as his parents and sisters were victims on that distant night when he was fourteen and killed their slayer.

As a detective, John is a man of reason who deals in cold facts. But an extraordinary experience convinces him that sometimes death is not a one-way journey, that sometimes the dead return.

Here is ghost story like no other you have read. In the Calvinos, Dean Koontz brings to life a family that might be your own, in a war for their survival against an adversary more malevolent than any he has yet created, with their own home the battleground. Of all his acclaimed novels, none exceeds What the Night Knows in power, in chilling suspense, and in sheer mesmerizing storytelling.

My review:-  Having read mixed reviews of this book and not having read any Dean Koontz before, I was unsure what to expect.  But wow what a book I couldn't put it down and found it an exciting read.  I think it is the type of story that would have me hiding behind the cushion if i was watching a film but thoroughly enjoyed reading the book.  



 

New additions to ever increasing TBR

Afterwards ~ Rosamund Lupton
Dead like you ~ Peter James
Still Alice ~ Lisa Genova
Quite ugly one morning ~ Christopher Brookmyre 

10/07
Dead mans grip ~ Peter James
The midnight palace ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon