Paradise by Julie Cohen

 I loved this story so much.  I was caught up in Katie's drama immediately, and the more I read, the more involved I felt in Katie and Nic's worlds, wondering what would happen, if Katie would get her memory back, and what might happen if she did.  Whilst it's set post-lockdown, as the world is starting to edge towards normal, it isn't a pandemic novel.  It's a story about friendship, and love, and what happen when you are lying to yourself, as well as to everyone else.  

I was another little girl growing up reading Harriet the Spy, and so it felt easy to imagine myself friends with these two girls, feeling envious of their detective investigations!  You get to know both of them very well, and their summer lives are so colourful and engaging.  The lake, and the pond, felt very real, as did the families of both girls, and I was swept up in their stories, reading the last third of the novel all in one go because I couldn't bear to put it down!

Thank you to NetGalley & the publishers for my copy.

The Resistance Knitting Club by Jenny O'Brien

Although it feels a bit mean to give this 2 stars I feel I have to because of how angry I was when I finished it!  I really wanted to read this book because of the title and the description.  I heard a history talk earlier this year, and she mentioned the women who encoded information into knitted items and I found it fascinating, so this book sounded like it would be really interesting.  I enjoy wartime stories, I enjoy knitting and crochet...what could possibly go wrong?

The book starts fairly well - I was interested in Lenny, and her adventure into War Office work.  I was sometimes unsettled by her attitude, but I enjoyed her secret spy training and her idea of putting morse code into the knitting with the different stitches.  So far, so good.  But when she is dropped in France, with a new secret identity, things started to go wrong for me.  Instead of sneaking around and coding things into scarves and socks and jumpers and smuggling them to the British, she manages 1 scarf, and then that doesn't even end up getting to the right people!  The story turns into more of a romance, but then even that became disappointing as, without giving away spoilers, Lenny seems very changeable and I did shout 'what?!' a few times.  I persevered to the end, in the hopes that things might get better, but instead we lurch back into the present day (and I had completely forgotten that we'd started there to be honest) but we never actually see Lenny relate her spy history to her family.  It felt like a rushed ending to me, and I was still feeling grumpy about the lack of knitting and the dodgy romance plot.

If you don't mind a slightly random wartime story then do go ahead because there were parts I really enjoyed reading, and had the book had a different title and blurb I wouldn't have felt half as cheated!  But if, like me, you're hoping for yarn-based subterfuge then I'm afraid I would recommend you look elsewhere...

With thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for my copy in return for an honest review.

A Chapter of Accidents: Twenty-seven Rediscovered Stories L.M. Montgomery Edited by Carolyn Strom Collins

Being a total Anne of Green Gables nerd, I was overjoyed to get to read this volume of short stories by Lucy Maud Montgomery.  LMM's books have been such a huge part of my life, and who I am, for so many years now that it's delightful and surprising to read something 'new' from LMM.  I felt that same buzz of excitement that I had years ago when I discovered that it wasn't just the Anne & Emily novels she had written, but that there was lots more besides!

This is a good collection of stories that haven't been in print since they were published in the various newspapers and periodicals that originally paid for them.  Most were written before Anne was published in 1908, with five of them written shortly after that, and one from 1932.  They are a mixture of those very moralistic tales she penned for younger children, and then other (more interesting, to me) grown-up stories.  I always love LMM best when she is funny, and there were some really good moments in this collection.  You can see flashes of parts or ideas that she used later in her novels, and it's interesting to see her writing develop.  I enjoyed thinking to myself as I read 'oh, well that's the start of idea of the disappointed house' or 'that feels like a very Anne-ish disaster!'  

There were one or two stories that sat a little uncomfortably - with rather young women being 'seduced' by much older men.  But on the whole I was caught up in these little flashes of characters that she brings to life so beautifully.  There isn't quite the same sense of place as you find in the novels - I fell in love with Prince Edward Island long before I actually managed to go there - but there are flashes of description that I could see were the start of how she writes to create a sense of place.

It's a lovely collection, with a good range of stories, and just perfect for all the many LMM fans out there who are always eager to read a little more.  Thank you so much to the publishers and to NetGalley for my review copy.