Tag Archives: romance

Star Gazing by Linda Gillard

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This is the third book I’ve read by Linda Gillard and although I’m not much of a romance fan, I must admit that I do enjoy her romances. The reason I usually steer clear of romance is I find them too predictable but the same can’t be said of her books. She manages to get as many twists and turns into the storyline as you would expect in a crime/mystery novel.

Star Gazing is set in Scotland, mainly in Edinburgh but the action moves to the Isle of Skye for a while. Marianne Fraser is a young widow whose husband Harvey died in the Piper Alpha disaster on the 6th July 1988. If you aren’t of a certain age you might not know that that was the world’s worst offshore disaster, causing the death of 167 men on an oil platform in the North Sea 120 miles north of Aberdeen.

Marianne who has been blind since birth subsequently miscarried her baby which everyone tells her was maybe for the best, and a baby would only have made life complicated. Music has become her passion in life but over time she has developed a coping strategy to protect herself from life and people, but during one of her frequent walks in the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens she meets Keir.

Keir goes out of his way to describe experiences which the sighted population take for granted but Marianne can’t even imagine, like cathedrals and stars. Marianne is thrilled but she still has an urge to protect herself from men and Keir is damaged goods too. It all adds up to an entertaining and cleverly written book. As usual I’m just giving you the bare bones of the story, I don’t like to spoil it for people.

One thing that I did think was a bit strange though – the sense of smell plays quite a big part in Star Gazing, as you would expect from something about a blind person, but the smell of snow was never mentioned. I can see reasonably well but I’ve always been able to smell snow. I know when it has snowed overnight, even before I open my eyes, and I can smell it on the wind when it’s coming, so I would have thought that Marianne would have been able to smell the snow on Skye. What about you, can you smell snow?

Peggy, maybe you could ask your brother Donald if he can smell snow?

Beatrice Goes To Brighton by M.C. Beaton

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I had no idea that M.C. Beaton was a Scot, never mind a fellow Glaswegian until very recently, about five minutes ago actually. I haven’t even seen Hamish McBeth on TV, she wrote those books too. I’ve been meaning to start reading her Agatha Raisin/crime series but I want to start it from the beginning and I haven’t got a hold of the first one yet. So when I saw Beatrice Goes To Brighton in the library I thought I might as well give it a go, even although romance is not my favourite thing.

If you’re looking for holiday/bedtime reading or just something which you don’t have to concentrate on too much then this is the perfect choice. Good light reading and a bit of a laugh now and again. The funniest bits for me were when the characters get all romantic – a la Mills and Boon, it reminded me of when I used to work in a library and to cheer ourselves up in the morning, just before we unlocked the door to let in the public, we used to take turns at opening a Mills and Boon and reading the very last page out loud – in a very plummy voice. Such fun!

In this one Miss Pym, who has had some success as a romantic matchmaker in the past is travelling to Brighton by stage-coach and comes into contact with the 28 year old Lady Beatrice who has recently become a widow, much to her relief. Beatrice had been married off to an older man who was a gambler and boozer, unfortunately it took him 10 years to slowly drink himself to death, by which time he had gone through most of his money.

It wasn’t long before Beatrice’s parents were trying to marry her off again to the ghastly Sir Geoffrey. Can Miss Pym help Beatrice?

Thanks again to Jo at The Book Jotter for pointing me in M.C. Beaton’s direction.

Stormy Petrel by Mary Stewart

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Mary Stewart is another of those authors whom I’m trying to read my way through and ticking them off my list as I go. This book was first published in 1991 but my copy is a Hodder and Stoughton which was published this year.

Rose Fenemore is an English tutor at Cambridge but she’s also a secret but popular writer of science fiction. She’s got a bit of writer’s block so when she spots an advert in The Times- ‘Ivory tower for long or short let. Isolated cottage on small Hebridean island off the coast of Mull. Ideal for writer or artist in search of peace.’ – she decides to write off to the box number in the hope of renting it for a holiday. I know, I know – it’s very similar to Elizabeth von Arnim’s An Enchanted April but on the other hand it is something which lots of us do from time to time. Well we do anyway.

Rose’s brother decides to join her in the cottage as he’s a keen photographer and he wants to photograph the wildlife on the island, particularly the elusive stormy petrel, a small sea-bird. Things don’t go exactly to plan and Rose realises that she can’t find peace to write even on the tiny island of Moila, off the Isle of Mull.

This was a quick read and it’s perfect if you’re looking for some light holiday reading and you particularly enjoy books with a Scottish setting. Or even if you just want something to take you away from all the horrible news which we’re getting on a daily basis, from all corners of the world.

I always look to see who a book has been dedicated to because it can be really interestng. Mary Stewart dedicated this one to Culcicoides Pulicaris Argyllensis with respect.

She obviously has a sense of humour as that is the Latin name for the teeny wee midge which plagues the west coast of Scotland and eats people alive! Luckily they very rarely bother me!

We’ll Meet Again by Rosemary Anne Sisson

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School for Love cover</div

As you would expect from the title this book is set during World War II and it's a romance. Not really my cup of tea but I couldn't stop myself from taking it out of the library when I saw it there. Way back in 1977 I gave my mother-in-law a copy of Rosemary Anne Sisson‘s book Will in Love to read. The ‘Will’ is William Shakespeare and it’s the story of his romance with Anne Hathaway. My mother-in-law loved the book, and she wanted more by the same author. Unfortunately at that time Sisson was writing things for TV such as Upstairs Downstairs and The Duchess of Duke Street, and no more novels were forthcoming for some years. That was of course MY FAULT, m-i-l seemed to think that I was keeping non existent books away from her! Such is life.

The good thing about Sisson is that there is no naughtiness, as my mother-in-law was a daughter of the rectory she couldn’t be doing with racy novels, which is such a shame really because they might have improved her.

She would have adored We’ll Meet Again. It begins in 1944 and Anne and Tom are stationed at an RAF base near London. Inevitably they fall in love but as Anne is a very strait-laced vicar’s daughter and Tom is a married man, it’s all very chaste.

When Tom is moved to another base they know that they won’t be seeing each other again and they decide not to keep in contact. After the war they get on with their lives as best they can but nine years later Tom’s circumstances change and he decides to try to find Anne again.

Apparently the book is based on a true story which was told to Sisson by her sister. I did find this a bit schmaltzy, especially at the beginning but I’m not a big fan of romance. It’s a ‘safe’ book to recommend to those of a delicate disposition. Mind you, people like that are usually as hard as nails – underneath it all!

Thornyhold by Mary Stewart

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This book was first published in 1988 which is why I hadn’t read it before. Most of my Mary Stewart reading took place in the 1970s and really the only ones which I remember clearly are The Hollow Hills, The Crystal Cave and The Last Enchantment, in other words her Arthurian/Merlin trilogy, which I really enjoyed.

Thornyhold is different in that most of it is set just after World War II, so we’re back with rationing again. Geillis has had an unusual childhood as the only child of a vicar and a woman who had white witches in her family background. It was a lonely, poverty stricken time for Geillis but she had occasional visits from her mother’s cousin, another Geillis, the only bright spot in her childhood.

By page 39 both parents are dead and Geillis has inherited a house from her cousin Geillis who had been a bit of a herbalist.

Thornyhold cover

I’m trying to remember if herbalism and witchcraft are staple themes of Mary Stewart’s writing, I think probably they are and that would have been quite appealing to the younger me.

This is another cosy read in a similar vein to Rosy Thornton’s books. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t read much in the way of romance and they always run along these lines. I would call it a comfort read, something you want to consume now and again like Turkish Delight, but you wouldn’t want to live on it.

Friday’s Child by Georgette Heyer

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Friday's Child cover

This is the first Regency romance of Heyer’s that I have read, the only book of hers that I have previously read is the detective book Footsteps in the Dark.

I’m not a great fan of romances, that’s probably something to do with being married for about as long as I can remember. But I was encouraged to start reading one after seeing the reviews on the Classics Circuit.

The main characters in Friday’s Child are Lord Sheringham (Sherry) and Hero Wantage (Kitten) who decide to get married. Sheringham has just proposed to the beautiful Isabella and been ‘knocked back’ and quickly marries the very young Hero, mainly so that he can get his hands on his money which is being held in trust until he is 25 or married.

The book is about the scrapes that Kitten gets herself into because she isn’t ‘up to snuff’ as they say. She is too innocent and naive. Although Sherry had expected to be able to continue with his bachelor life-style unimpeded by his wife, he soon finds that keeping her out of trouble is a full time job.

About a third of the way through this book I suddenly heard a very strange sound, I got quite a fright until I realised that it was just a big sigh from me. I was finding the book a tad tedious and I did wonder about giving in on it, but I thought of my granny who was a big Heyer fan, and ploughed on.

Half-way through, I really started to enjoy it. I think you have to be in a frivolous, frothy frame of mind for this book. It is a very light romp through the Regency period.

Some people have complained that she uses too much period slang. Well she certainly does throw it all in but I didn’t find it to be a problem as it is always obvious from the context what is meant by it.

I’m hoping to read one of her more history heavy books next.

Huntingtower by John Buchan

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Huntingtower was first published in 1922 and is quite different from the other Buchans which I have read (the 39 Steps and Greenmantle.) Unusually, it has a bit of romance in it. This one is set in Scotland in he spring of 1920, starting off in Glasgow and moving on to the south-west of Scotland.

Dickson McCunn has just retired from a very successful business as a grocer in Glasgow. Having sold the business he is very well off, but with his wife having a holiday at the East Neuk Hydropathic (spa), he decides to take himself off on a walking holiday in the south-west. On his wanderings he meets a young Englishman by the name of John Heritage who has been in the First World War and is now a paper maker with hopes of writing poetry. They discover that they both have a love of literature and a friendship ensues.

Meanwhile, the Gorbals Die-Hards – a gang of five young lads from Glasgow who are known to McCunn have been given some money by a well wisher so that they can go on their idea of a Boy Scout camp. They are far too poor to be able to join the real scouts as they mainly have no parents at all or are just completely neglected.

Whilst walking through a remote coastal village McCunn and Heritage discover a mystery involving the factor of the local mansion and they uncover the fact that two women are being held captive there. One of them is Saskia, a Russian princess. (Remember that this book was written not long after the Russian Revolution.) At the time there were rumours that one of the Romanov princesses had managed to escape from Ekaterinburg. There were certainly plenty of ‘white’ Russians who had escaped to other parts of Europe including Britain.

The Gorbal Die-Hards are coincidentally camping nearby and become involved in the adventure. It’s a bit like a fairy-tale for adults really.

I enjoyed this book but I think that it might be annoying for people who find reading a Scottish dialect difficult. The Gorbals Die-Hards speak in particularly broad Scots but they are the best part of the book really. There is a very good glossary at the back of the book plus copious notes.

John Buchan had been a favourite author of the Russian royal family. His previous book Greenmantle was a great hit with them. I just wonder if they managed to take a copy of it to Siberia with them.