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Showing posts from December, 2020

Book review: Appius and Virginia

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About the book... Virginia Hutton resides in a London club for single women, living a tedious life which never changes from year to year. She decides to take on a bizarre experiment and buys a young orangutan and names him Appius. She takes him to a cottage and spends years in isolation trying to raise and educate him as if he were a human child. Virginia tries to teach the ape how to eat, sleep, read and speak like a human, all the time keeping the project and Appius hidden from the world. Over eight years, her stern teaching methods begin to bear fruit, but do Virginia and Appius really have the deep mutual understanding she craves? Appius and Virginia was first published by Martin Secker in 1932 and is now republished by Abandoned Bookshop , the imprint which aims to uncover the best books that have been forgotten or lost sight of. G.E. Trevelyan is the epitome of a ‘forgotten’ author. She was born Gertrude Eileen Trevelyan in 1903 into a family of means. When she was an undergradu

Blog tour: A Tale of Two Shoes

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Welcome to the blog tour for A Tale of Two Shoes by Helen Haraldsen ! About the book… They thought they'd be together forever. They were wrong. Shane and Shelia shoe are a pair. They were made for each other. They never expected to be separated. After all, what use is a shoe without its partner? When Shane and Sheila find themselves all alone in the world, they think they have no purpose or value without each other. Two shoes desperate for hope.  For their lives to change, they'll need a helping hand. A story that shows how new friendships help us to grow and broaden our horizons. Readers agree that this story is a conversation starter for a range of real-life issues. What did I think? Awww, this is such a precious book! It is difficult to share all my thoughts without giving anything away. Let’s just say that, when I started reading, I was expecting a completely different ending. This, however, only served to enrich my experience and it will give children, the intended reader

Blog tour: Unraveled

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Welcome to the blog tour for Unraveled by Claire Olivia Golden . If an LGBTQI and YA fantasy sounds just like your cup of tea… keep reading! Hi Claire Olivia! First of all, I would like to congratulate you on the publication of Unraveled ! Can you please briefly tell us what it is about? A: Thank you so much, and thank you for wanting to do this interview! Unraveled is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty where two girls fall in love while trying to break the curse on a crochet shawl. It’s about faeries, OCD, first love, and figuring out who you are... and it has pigeons and yarn. It has a little piece of my heart. Did you have the plot entirely figured out when you started writing the book or did it take an unexpected turn as the characters grew on the page? A: I had absolutely no idea where the plot was going, except for that it involved a crochet shawl. I also did not plan for Cat and Auri to fall in love, but they had a mind of their own. It was fun figuring out the plot as I went alo

Blog tour: Scavenger Art

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Welcome to the blog tour for Scavenger Art by Lexi Rees ! About the book… Scavenger hunts are fun. Drawing is fun. Put them together for ★  SCAVENGER ART  ★ This unique art-based activity book includes 52 scavenger hunts designed to ✓ encourage curious minds ✓ spark creativity ✓ practise mindfulness ✓ develop drawing skills What did I think? If you are not new here, you already know that I have a bit of an obsession about anything created by Lexi Rees . And if you have landed here for the first time, do search for the author’s name on my blog to find more goodies! Anyway, as a not particularly creative person, I love it when someone can point me in the right direction. Lexi Rees hands creativity on a silver platter but she also makes you do some work! True, I am not in the target audience of children between the ages of 6 and 12. That, however, hasn’t stopped me before and it is not going to stop me now. The book invites the reader to look at the world and everything in it, truly obs

Blog tour: Red/Black

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Welcome to the blog tour for Red/Black by Rachel Atherton-Charvat! Ready to learn more? Keep scrolling… Hi Rachel! First of all, I would like to congratulate you on the publication of Red/Black ! Can you please briefly tell us what it is about? A:   Thank you, Silvia and for inviting me to speak on your blog! My book is about a woman called Sarah and her destructive descent into depression and gambling addiction. It begins with Sarah preparing for the move to a British military camp in Germany. Her husband, Graeme, is a psychiatrist who, having only previously served in the army reserves, has accepted a fulltime posting for two years. Not long after she arrives, she is involved in a car crash where there is a fatality, which takes her back to a previous tragedy of losing her son, in an accident where she had been driving. This is the catalyst for the return of her underlying depression and she begins gambling online. Her struggle with her illness and increasing addiction is exacerbate