Carol Naylor's REVIEW it...

           The Great Big Spanish Adventure by Janette Davies. "She could feel the heat of his body. She felt his breath on the back of her head. "Your head smells like peaches."He pushed a lock of her blonde hair behind her ear and kissed her neck." What a rollercoaster of a ride through the Paraiso Apartamentos in southern Spain and what a medley of misfits ambling along in a vice-laden den of money laundering and drug-busting. Is this Spain? Carole dominates this tale and sails through on cloud nine after a few bumpy rides with Lyle and Samantha, his squeeze. But that's water under the bridge. It's good to see a strong female role-model coming out on top, so well done Janette Davies. Even the old crocks, in spite of being professional medical people deserve a second chance and it's exhilarating to welcome Sarah-Jane and Mark as newly- weds second time around. So what if their grown up children disapprove? They'll come roun...

           Some Day I'll Find You by Richard Madeley. And then, in a shattering instant, it came: the ferocious eruption of total war. The country woke, stunned to find that the long stalemate had evaporated in a single night, in the smoke and fury of an enemy assault so savage, so overwhelming, that all foolish hopes that catastrophe might yet be averted vanished as though they had never been. Madeley chose a pre-war setting of the Weald in Kent with events leading up to the second world war with some insight into the pity of war immortalised by Owen. The Arnolds are deeply affected by the war as one would expect. In the second part, the story moves into post-war mode and the setting is the south of France. The excitement and tension of the war reaches an anti-climax and we are left with a touch of the thriller genre, plunging into the sordid world of the Mafia. The Arnolds were a wealthy and privileged family and contrast sha...

                    The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott. www.amazon.com The ship, bow first, was slowly sinking into the water. People began tumbling like broken dolls from the decks, flopping, flailing into the sea. There was a huge cracking sound-and then the Titanic disappeared. Kate Alcott, a pseudonym for Patricia O'Brien, used transcripts of the US Senate hearings over the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912. Some of the characters are based on real characters who either survived the sinking such as the Duff Gordons and Margaret Brown as well as Senate William Alden Smith who presided over the hearings, otherwise Alcott admits to this being a work of fiction with the inclusion of factual evidence. I would highly recommend this book. Gripping from start to finish and I mean that! Tess Collins is the kind of heroine I admire and strongly approve of. She comes from modest roots, a...

                       Eloise by Judy Finnigan . The sun gleamed blue in the sunlight and on rainy days, its sullen pewter gloom was thrillingly brightened by crashing white surf that made my heart sing and my head clear of everything except the brilliant beauty of this wondrous place. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder although looks can be deceptive. Finnigan intended to write a ghost story with a thriller touch but it is more of an agonising portrayal of a woman's descent into despair and insanity like Charlotte Perkins Gilman's autobiographical story The Yellow Wallpaper documenting her own decline into madness. A bit depressing. Cornwall. This is Daphne du Maurier country, Menabilly where the famous   Rebecca was conceived, the thriller that we all loved so much. The landscape may well be breathtaking but it can also be bleak and menacing, a god-fo...

When I imagine living the social life of someone like Charmaine, it's all Champagne parties, Michelin restaurants and five-star hotels. The reality is somewhat more pedestrian. Superficial. Talentless. These are the super egos who can manipulate the individual. Like Charmaine they are territorial and highly competitive. They may have an enviable lifestyle but behind all the glitz and glamour we have superficial characters, without real friends or genuine happiness. They trade off their good looks and media image, over-hyped, of course, pandering to the whims of their management teams and their bank balances and floating on the cloud of ambition at any price. Then there's Ryan, every girls' dream of male perfection and desire. He might be play-acting as Prince Charming, physically toned to make every girl squirm and squeal with delight and lust but is he true to his name? Of course not. He uses Lucy, who swoons whenever she sees him as a way to make Cinderella jealou...

  Dark shadows clouded my dreams of the sunny farm bright with geraniums and orange blossom. A valley teeming with murderous snakes guarding the entrance to a place of stones and scorpions.   Most of us can empathise with Chris and Ana for deciding to move to an idyllic but challenging life in the mountains of Andalucia. Isn't it everyone's dream perhaps? Or perhaps that should read nightmare. Chris found his paradise early on in his house-hunting days. La Herradura would have been his first choice but he was discouraged from purchasing it because of complications in multiple owners not wishing to sell. His second choice was El Valero set amongst orange and lemon trees, olives and blossoming almonds. What could be more Spanish or delightful to the eye? A mountain farm, just what he desired. My head was whirling with excitement; wild ideas and dreams pouring in. Once the excitement levelled, he then realised why Pedro Romero was so keen to sell-a dam was goi...

Here you'll find 11 varied but intense stories about emotional struggles of ordinary people trying to get to grips with life. For some unfortunates, the adjustment is too great and tragedy is inevitable, something very characteristic of Hill's writing as many of you will already know. A Bit of Singing and Dancing is less dramatic and not quite so tragic. I can stay out here just as long as I like, I can do anything I choose, anything at all, for now I am answerable only to myself. Esme is still coming to terms with her mother's death and her new-found freedom. She is over 50 years of age and has reluctantly been forced into caring for her forthright and domineering bedridden mother for 11 years prior to her death. She had been half-alive satisfying her mother's needs and repressing her own needs and desires. Her mother's death had given her a new lease of life, an unexpected freedom which also attracted fear and bewilderment to someone who had been so sheltered...

The saddest thing I think I can imagine is passing through life without  some kind of impact, without leaving a legacy in one form of another. We all contribute. We enrich the lives of others in so many ways. We spend our lives trying to make sense of the world, searching for answers in striving to achieve wisdom but the only certainty in life is that one day, sooner or later, we will die. Murning's novel explores the fear and isolation of dying in a sensitive but powerful way. It is extremely moving and based on realism. Tobias Lovelost, the lemon who day after day, week after week, month after month survived on his own even after encountering disappointment after disappointment. Like the song says, you still haven't found what you're looking for. He was destined to be the man who didn't say anything, the man who wouldn't speak up for himself until he met Lorna. She instilled in him the confidence to speak his mind. His personal life, his marriage to Lorna...

He promised to take care of me and yet I feel afraid. I don't feel like Nick's wife. I am something to be loaded and unloaded, like a sofa or a cuckoo clock...tossed into a junkyard, thrown into the river. I don't feel real anymore. I feel I could disappear. Every picture tells a story. Whether pictorially depicted or intimately written such as a diary kept by our female protagonist, there are always (at least) two sides to every story and truths to unravel from the dishonesty and deceit. In a dysfunctional marriage, with mismatched relationships the faults lie with both parties. Nick and Amy's marriage might initially seem blissful with Amy swooning over Nick's socks fat with love on their first wedding anniversary before it turns pear-shaped and oppressive shortly afterwards. Amy was from an affluent background, the "product" of her parents' wealth based on the Amazing Amy series. Her childhood in fact, every part of her growing up had be...

With his bloated belly, matchstick legs and tangled punk-rocker style fur, he looked like a child's drawing come to life and he also looked pregnant. Woodcock overemphasises the message through the plot which has so many twists and turns that you wonder if you are on a rollercoaster which is about to crash: don't be deceived by first impressions. True nature will out. Things aren't always what they seem. Fortunately the bad guys are caught and everything turns out satisfactory after chaos and mayhem dominate the lives of the Bennetts. And this is NOT Pride and Prejudice or the Waltons. As one might say: never a dull moment in the Bennett household. The Bennetts have more than the average number of skeletons in the closet even for a dysfunctional family at constant war with each other and the world at large, with the occasional truce. The story cleverly satirises a working class family at its worst being battered from pillar to post with drug scams, surrogacy, infidelit...