Work in progress. My word count during NaNoWriMo 2019 is not very impressive. But at least I’ve outlined the whole novel, something I have nerver done before😊 Usually, I just start writing and see what happens. this time I'm trying out a new genre: Feelgood. I have to stop myself from adding any murders or other mysteries, other than love-related ones.

In Swedish:

Nytt manus på G😊 Testar en ny genre: Feelgood.

White Highlands by John McGhie. This is a beautifully written and well researched novel set in both the present day and Kenya in the 1950s during the Mau Mau uprising.

Sam, a young barrister, is sent to Kenya as part of a legal mission investigating compensation claims for brutalities committed by the colonialists during ’The Emergency’. At the same time, she hopes to find out more about her mysterious grandfather Johnny Seymour. The parallell narrative is about Johnny and the role he played in the atrocious cruelties  against the Kenyans that took place in the 1950s.

White Highlands is a thriller that describes horrible events during a dark time in British colonial history, but it is also a story about love, compassion and friendship. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

This book was sent to me by Amazon for an independent review.

If you want to know which other books I have recently read and loved, click HERE.

Blurb:

Kenya, 1952, a colony on the edge. Settlers drink sundowners on the veranda but the servants can't be trusted. Beyond manicured lawns, in the dark of the forest, freedom is stirring.

Johnny Seymour has seen too much war and seeks solace photographing East African wildlife. But when isolated white families are slaughtered by Mau Mau gangs, the British respond brutally and Johnny is reluctantly pulled into the horror. After his African driver Macharia disappears, Johnny is forced to confront shocking truths about his own country and ask how far he'll go to help a friend.

Nearly sixty years later, disgraced young barrister Sam Seymour knows nothing about her grandfather. Even his name is taboo. All she understands is that Johnny did something so awful that his only son - her father - had to be rescued from Kenya. With veteran Mau Mau fighters demanding reparations for past sins, she's been offered a chance to unpeel history and discover why.

In a narrative spanning the generations, White Highlands follows Sam and Johnny as they confront the might of the British state. One man stands in both their way - Grogan Littleboy, a ruthless colonial survivor who'll do anything to defeat Mau Mau, past and present.

A startlingly original novel set in both the present day and Kenya in the 1950s during the Mau Mau uprising - one of the least known and darkest episodes in British colonial history.

The Muse by Jessie Burton. This is beautifully written novel set in 1960s London and in the South of Spain during the Spanish Civil War. I enjoyed this story of love, family drama and deception but not as much as The Miniaturist.

If you want to know which other books I have recently read and loved, click HERE.

Blurb:

A picture hides a thousand words . . .

On a hot July day in 1967, Odelle Bastien climbs the stone steps of the Skelton gallery in London, knowing that her life is about to change forever. Having struggled to find her place in the city since she arrived from Trinidad five years ago, she has been offered a job as a typist under the tutelage of the glamorous and enigmatic Marjorie Quick. But though Quick takes Odelle into her confidence, and unlocks a potential she didn't know she had, she remains a mystery – no more so than when a lost masterpiece with a secret history is delivered to the gallery.

The truth about the painting lies in 1936 and a large house in rural Spain, where Olive Schloss, the daughter of a renowned art dealer, is harbouring ambitions of her own. Into this fragile paradise come artist and revolutionary Isaac Robles and his half-sister Teresa, who immediately insinuate themselves into the Schloss family, with explosive and devastating consequences . . .

Seductive, exhilarating and suspenseful, The Muse is an unforgettable novel about aspiration and identity, love and obsession, authenticity and deception – a masterpiece from Jessie Burton, the million-copy bestselling author of The Miniaturist. 

EARLY ONE MORNING by Virginia Baily.

This is a beautifully written and heartbreaking story about a woman who saves a little boy from the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp and the implications this rescue has on her own life. A powerful reading experience!

If you want to know which other books I have recently read and loved, click HERE.

Blurb:

A grey dawn in 1943: on a street in Rome, two young women, complete strangers to each other, lock eyes for a single moment.

One of the women, Chiara Ravello, is about to flee the occupied city for the safety of her grandparents' house in the hills. The other has been herded on to a truck with her husband and their young children, and will shortly be driven off into the darkness.

In that endless-seeming moment, before she has time to think about what she is doing, Chiara makes a decision that changes her life for ever. Loudly claiming the woman's son as her own nephew, she demands his immediate return; only as the trucks depart does she begin to realize what she has done. She is twenty-seven, single, with a sister who needs her constant care, a hazardous journey ahead of her, and now a child in her charge - a child with no papers who refuses to speak and gives every indication that he will bolt at the first opportunity.

Three decades later, Chiara lives alone in Rome, a self-contained, self-possessed woman working as a translator and to all appearances quite content with a life which revolves around work, friends, music and the theatre. But always in the background is the shadow of Daniele, the boy from the truck, whose absence haunts her every moment. Gradually we learn of the havoc wrought on Chiara, her family and her friends by the boy she rescued, and how he eventually broke her heart. And when she receives a phone call from a teenage girl named Maria, claiming to be Daniele's daughter, Chiara knows that it is time for her to face up to the past.

This epic novel is an unforgettably powerful, suspenseful, heartbreaking and inspiring tale of love, loss and war's reverberations down the years.

Book review: Missing Presumed by Susie Steiner.

I read this book quite some time ago, but I still think about it from time to time. It has really stuck with me which is a good sign for any book. The mystery of the missing girl creates an interesting plot and the characters are engaging. I'm really looking forward to reading the other crime novels in the detective Manon Bradshaw series!

If you want to know which other books I have recently read and loved, click HERE.

Blurb:

A MISSING GIRL

Edith Hind is gone, leaving just her coat, a smear of blood and a half-open door.

A DESPERATE FAMILY

Each of her friends and relatives has a version of the truth. But none quite adds up.

A DETECTIVE AT BREAKING POINT

The press grows hungrier by the day. Can DS Manon Bradshaw fend them off, before a missing persons case becomes a murder investigation?