REVIEW - SISTERS OF FORTUNE BY ANNA LEE HUBER

 

Title: Sisters Of Fortune
Author: Anna Lee Huber
Publisher: Kensington Books
Genre: Historical Fiction, Womens Fiction
Release Date: 20th February 2024

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Based on the true story of the Fortune sisters, three young women each at a crossroads when they boarded the RMS Titanic in the spring of 1912 – and how that fateful maiden voyage would change their lives in profound and unexpected ways.

USA Today bestselling author Anna Lee Huber expertly weaves real historical figures and anecdotes into this vivid, emotionally powerful, surprising novel about the longing for independence and love—and the events that can irrevocably change even the best laid plans . . .

April,1912: It’s the perfect finale to a Grand Tour of Europe—sailing home on the largest, most luxurious ocean liner ever built. For the Fortune sisters, the voyage offers a chance to reflect on the treasures of the past they’ve seen—magnificent castles and museums in Italy and France, the ruins of Greece and the Middle East—and contemplate the futures that await them.

For Alice, there’s foreboding mixed with her excitement. A fortune teller in Egypt gave her a dire warning about traveling at sea. And the freedom she has enjoyed on her travels contrasts with her fiancé’s plans for her return—a cossetted existence she’s no longer sure she wants.

Flora is also returning to a fiancé, a well-to-do banker of whom her parents heartily approve, as befits their most dutiful daughter. Yet the closer the wedding looms, the less sure Flora feels. Another man—charming, exasperating, completely unsuitable—occupies her thoughts, daring her to follow her own desires rather than settling for the wishes of others.

Youngest sister Mabel knows her parents arranged this Grand Tour to separate her from a jazz musician. But the secret truth is that Helen has little interest in marrying at all, preferring to explore ideas of suffrage and reform—even if it forces a rift with her family.

Each sister grapples with the choices before her as the grand vessel glides through the Atlantic waters. Until, on an infamous night, fate intervenes, forever altering their lives . . .

Goodreads Link

REVIEW
The cover has the Titanic right at the centre of it which is fitting as that is where the plot is based throughout the book. The cover also features a young woman dressed in the style of the era complete with hat, gloves and jewellery. The cover certainly fits the book well.

The book is set on the Titanic, so obviously there are certain facts that cannot be changed but are mentioned within the book. The book also has to stick to a certain timeline as to how the events occurred. It was a bit odd reading the book but kind of knowing what was coming up in the timeline, but I did really enjoy the book.

The interior of the great unsinkable Titanic is described really well and you definitely get a sense of the opulence and atmosphere those passengers were surrounded by. The author really represents the era well in her descriptions of surrounding, etiquette, expectations of women and even the slang and sayings of the era such as 'To the berries' = all so exciting. I had to look it up!

The book concentrates of three of the Fortune Sisters who have been travelling with their parents. The family consist of 64 year old father Mark Fortune, a very proud self-made millionaire, his 60 year old wife Mary Fortune, they had six children, the eldest of which 34 year old Robert is married and lives in Vancouver. Their eldest daughter Clara is 30 years old and married to Herbert Hutton. Robert and Clara are with their own families so didn’t go on the trip. The Fortune children on the trip which ends up with them travelling home on the Titanic, are 28year old Flora who is the dutiful daughter, who has postponed her wedding to banker Crawford Campbell to go on the trip as a chaperone to her younger siblings. Alice is 24 years old but in a lot of ways is treat younger, as she was an ill child and is still considered delicate and needs to be protected, she is engaged to, and madly in love to an insurance broker called Holden Allen. The youngest sister is 23 year old Mabel, the feisty, sassy one, who wants to do her own thing, in fact she wants to continue her education, she doesn’t want to just be married like her sisters. She says inappropriate things and speaks before she thoroughly thinks things out. The youngest Fortune child is 19yr old Charlie who is super knowledgeable about the Titanic and it’s like a dream come true for him when Titanic ship builder Mr Thomas Andrews takes him on a personal tour of the ship.

Whilst sightseeing and exploring Egypt Alice Fortune is sipping hibiscus tea with Mr Sloper a friend the family have made whilst travelling Europe when she spots a soothsayer. Mr Sloper asks if she has ever had a reading, and would she like one. He waves the soothsayer across to where they are sitting and the man reads her palm and tells her she is in danger every time she travels on the sea. He sees her adrift on the ocean in an open boat. She will lose everything but her own life. That she will be saved but others will not. It certainly upsets Alice and William Sloper quickly tries to laugh it off telling the soothsayer he would be paid more if he gave people good predictions. Mark Fortune hadn’t planned on taking his family on Titanic the Ship of Dreams, but when they decided to travel home a little earlier their reservations were switched to the Titanic.

There is a kind of magic about the Titanic, I guess that’s another reason it was called the ship of dreams. The time on the ship gives each of the Fortune Sisters time to think about their individual futures and if that’s what they really want. Flora is the sister that her parents rely on, she is the sensible, dependable one. She is engaged to be married to a man her parents strongly approve of and think is a good match for her. As the trip goes on the dread she feels about her return, she has received only one letter from her future husband Alice is also engaged, to Holden, who is approved of and considered a good match, she is madly in love with him and they have missed each other whilst the Fortunes have been travelling. They have written many letters to each other, but Alice is also dreading the return home to being tied sown to one place and cossetted. Alice has had a taste of freedom and travel that she doesn’t want to let go of. The other sister on board the Titanic and kind of the reason for the trip is Mabel. Mabel is “involved” with a musician, someone her parents do not approve of, they feel he cannot provide financial stability for their daughter. Mr & Mrs Fortune planned the trip to separate Mabel and her musician, in the hopes she will forget about him, perhaps meet someone else, or change her mind. The irony is Mabel enjoys the fact her parents don’t approve and attempts to use him as leverage, to almost blackmail her father, into accepting her real dream, which is to continue her education. Mabel wants to be a more modern independent woman, not married off and expected to have children. At one point Mr & Mrs Fortune try to suggest a suitable suitor for Mabel who is also on the Titanic, the star tennis player Chess Kinsey. Unbeknownst to them Chess does have his eyes set on one of their daughters but it isn’t Mabel, it’s Flora! I really adored the Flora & Chess dislike to friendship to falling in love. Then the Shock! Horror! Mortification! Embarrassment! when Mrs Fortune catches them kissing! And in public too! Where anyone could see! Chess blames himself for ruining Flora’s reputation in her parent’s eyes and arranges a meeting wither father to put himself forward as a suitable suitor with his own suitable finances & future plans.

So along with the Fortune family drama, there’s the scandal of one young man having his mistress on the Titanic whom he plans to marry but is yet to tell his mother! They finally meet in a lifeboat as the Titanic is sinking. There’s another young man travelling with his mother but setting up poker games, which Alice Fortune ends up being drawn into.

I loved the Fortune family dynamic, they are all always there for each other and even though the three sisters, Flora, Alice and Mabel are sharing a room they each have their secrets they are hiding from the others.

I enjoyed reading how the different characters reacted to the Titanic hitting the iceberg and needing to be prepared to get on a lifeboat. There were those that just blindly believed the Titanic was unsinkable and refused to believe the possibility of it sinking. Then there were those who wanted to retrieve jewellery, pets, luggage and take it in the lifeboats with them!

The saddest stories were of the couples and families being separated because of the women & children only policy although this wasn’t as strictly adhered to by some of the crew. The chaos of losing sight or being separated from family members.

 

 

REVIEW - MATED TO CURVES - THE COMPLETE SERIES BY DV FISCHER

  

Title: Mated To Curves -The Complete Series
Author: DV Fischer
Release Date: 15th January 2024

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It should be impossible to find their mates since packs don’t exist and they’re trying to hide in plain sight amongst the humans. But for this group of shifters, fate has a way of playing in their favor. Or does it? While they may be finding their mates, a nasty reporter is out to prove that they exist. He’s low enough to go above the law to get the proof the world needs. How will this packless group of shifters, of fated mates, find their way together if he looms over them as a serious threat? This is a curvy girl dark wolf shifter romance series.

REVIEW
In this shifter world there are no packs anymore, it’s safer that way. It's a difficult decision made to keep the existence and freedom of shifters. However, there are still humans/people lurking on the outskirts of the shifter world intent on proving they exist and wanting to reveal them to everyone in the world, wanting to put an end to the species altogether, one such man is reporter Gary Spelling, obviously detested by the shifter population.
All this keeping under the radar leaves shifters, particularly Alpha's a need to burn off energy. No longer able to shift and run in packs, or even live in packs they need an alternative.

Cade former Alpha of the Glacier Mountain Pack provides a suitable option, an underground fighting club. Though Cade used to take part in the fights in the early days of the club now he just sits at the bar talking with sometimes bartender Cruz. Cade watches the room and is around to handle the general arguments that take place in a bar as well as any fighting that overspills from the ring.The rules of the ring are, well just one rule no shifting at all, not even partially! The shifters fight in human form until one is literally knocked out or taps out. There's a healer, Aaron on hand to help with injuries as even shifters need help sometimes after a fight in the ring!!

Things begin to change around the club when first club owner Cade’s mate Avani walks in one evening looking for a fight. Having left her previous fighting haunt due to no one wanting to fight against the sure thing winner she had become. Avani and Cade lock eyes and they realise they ate mates. Avani still a little unsure on what happening then brings her friend Joyce to the club, not a place Joyce would normally go but it seems fate when she meets her mate Kye, the very man that Avani chooses to fight!

It seems like the fight club is the place to meet your mate and as the book goes on, others do so too. However, true love and meeting your mate are not straight forward.

I really enjoyed reading the individual couples love story plots, of how they met etc You also learn about the hardships the different shifters have had to endure as well as learning the lengths they go to in order to keep their other selves a secret. as well as the longer plot of the Gary Spelling issue.

Really enjoyed the reading, loved the characters, and setting of the fight club. Would have loved even more from these characters and their world set around the fight club!

Addictive reading, once you start you won’t want to put it down! 

 

REVIEW - MATED TO CURVES BK5 BY DV FISCHER

  

Title: Mated To Curves
Author: DV Fischer
Release Date: 14th January 2024

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Does she love him? Meredith finds herself in the grasp of a kidnapper hell-bent on proving that shifters exist, and he isn’t afraid to do the unthinkable to prove it. As a cop, she thought her mind was unbreakable. It turns out, it’s not. Josiah learns that Meredith is his mate rather quickly. It takes everything he has not to tear apart the world when he realizes his mate is being held captive and what possibly could be happening to her during that time. But there’s one Even if he does rescue her, he can’t have her. Because she has a boyfriend. The question is, does she love the boyfriend? Because he won’t stand in the way of his mate’s happiness. Not after all she’s been through.

Goodreads Link

REVIEW
This book literally picks right up where bk4 left off, with Meredith and her sister Eva in the evil clutches of the local shifter hating journalist who is hell bent on revealing/exposing the fact shifters exist to the world. He is set on torturing the women until one reveals themself as a shifter so he can catch it all on camera.

Eva's mate Cruz along with fight club owner Cade nd Meredith's mate Josiah are in a race to find out where the women are being held and rescue them. Despite not even being introduced to his mate Josiah is as enraged as Cruz is about Meredith & Eva being taken.

I can't really say much more without giving away major details but its a race against time!
I love the way Cade & Avani still deny they and their friends at the fight club are a pack of any sort. It seems the pack has come about all on its own.

I was disappointed we didn't get a bit more Cruz and Eva in this book but I guess the main duo were Meredith & Josiah. I didn't take to Josiah as much as I had the other male shifter characters, he came across overly dominant and not as gentle and caring towards his potential mate, especially as his mate had just left an abusive type relationship with her ex.

Really enjoyed reading the book, didn't want to put it down, in fact I read it in just one go!

Would have loved even more from these characters and their world set around the fight club! 

 

REVIEW - ANNA O BY MATTHEW BLAKE

  

Title: ANNA O
Author: Matthew Blake
Publisher: HarperCollins UK, Harper Fiction, HarperCollins
Release Date: 1st February 2024

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THE WORLD WILL KNOW HER NAME

What if your nightmares weren’t really nightmares at all?

We spend an average of thirty-three years of our lives asleep. But what really happens, and what are we capable of, when we are sleeping?

Anna Ogilvy was a budding twenty-five-year-old writer with a bright future. Then, one night, she stabbed two people to death with no apparent motive—and she hasn’t woken up since. Dubbed “Sleeping Beauty” by the tabloids, Anna suffers from a rare psychosomatic disorder known to neurologists as “resignation syndrome.”

Dr. Benedict Prince is a forensic psychologist and an expert in the field of sleep-related homicides. His methods represent the last possible hope of solving the infamous “Anna O” case by waking Anna up so she can stand trial. But the doctor must be careful treating such a high-profile suspect—he’s got career secrets and a complicated personal life of his own.

As Anna shows the first signs of stirring, Benedict knows he must determine what really happened and whether Anna should be held responsible for her crimes.

Only Anna knows the truth about that night, but only Benedict knows how to discover it. And they’re both in danger from what they will discover. 

Goodreads Link

REVIEW
The cover fits the book really well, it certainly draws your attention and makes you want to pick up the book to learn more about it. I think the byline of “The World Will Know Her Name” adds to your curiosity about the content of the book and it also fits the content really well.

The main characters of the book are Anno Ogilvy and Dr Benedict Prince. To be honest life isn’t going great for either of them separately and becomes even more complicated after their paths cross.

Dr Benedict Prince is divorced from his wife DI Clara Fennel, he found messages on his wife’s phone that suggested she was cheating on him. They have one daughter Kitty or Kit Kat as Benedict regularly calls her though Clara hates him doing so. Clara of course kept the house so there was less disruption for Kitty and Benedict ended up in a rather drab flat in Pimlico. Benedict if a forensic psychologist and also works at The Abbey. A place where the rich and famous come to have sleep issues dealt with. Its very exclusive and does everything possible to protect the identities of these famous patients, even having a separate VIP floor away from other patients. It’s a fairly normal day for Ben when he is called into the office by head of the clinic Professor Virginia Bloom, to discuss a patient being transferred to the Abbey from Rampton Prison. The Ministry of Justice, the government, all want Ben to wake up this patient so they can stand trial for the double murder they have been holding her for.

That patient is Anna Ogilvy, comes from a relatively “well to do” family. At the time of the crime, her mother was Baroness Emily Ogilvy was a Shadow Home Secretary and her father was a Global Fund Manager, her brother Theo a “want to be” Tv Presenter. Anna herself was a journalist on a magazine she had co-founded with her friends Indira Sharma and Douglas Bute who were also her flatmates.

The crime occurred on the 30th August 2019. Anna O was found by her parents in her cabin at 3.10am at The Farm an exclusive retreat, with a 20cm kitchen knife in her hand and fast asleep. The bodies of Indira and Douglas were found in their cabin, stabbed to death. First at the scene of the crime was DI Clara Fennel and she found only Anna’s prints on the knife and that the blood on her clothing matched that of the victims.

Those that believe in Anna’s innocence refer to her as “Anna O” her Instagram handle and are known as “believers”. Those who think that Anna is guilty refer to her as “sleeping beauty”. There has been lots of coverage about what happened that night, but no one really knows the truth except Anna. One blog in particular seems to know a lot and keep the story alive by @Suspect8. This is where the byline fits really well everyone has heard about Anna and of course everyone has their opinion and thoughts about what happened at The Farm that night in August 2019. Ben’s job is to wake her up so that the justice system can put her on trial and determine whether she killed her friends and decide what to do with her.

The plot is quite intricate, and fairly complex, in that the fact Ben’s now ex-wife was first on the scene does sort of complicate things. The book was quite slow paced for my taste, I felt like I was wanting it to speed up at times and get on with it and reveal what actually happened that night. Then when Professor Bloom is murdered and someone puts Ben in the frame things become even more complicated than before.

I found the plot sections surrounding waking up Anna fascinating, and have read about some of the techniques that Ben used in the book elsewhere too. The sounds, her mums voice, the music she loved and then the smells, her favourite perfume, etc all small things that Ben builds on to coax Anna back to the world of the awake and living. I thoroughly enjoyed the Sally Turner story within the book, the way the reader is kept guessing right up to the end of the identity of Sally Turner’s child that was given a new identity.

There are quite a few “real life” references within the book about other murderers such as Dr Harold Shipman, and then laws that were changed regarding anonymity of minors involved in crimes due to the James Bulger case, all of which made the book feel “real” as if it had actually happened.

The book also covers how the crime at The Farm affected so many people in different ways, from Anna’s parents divorcing, her mother walking away from politics and turning to religion, to DI Clara Fennel and how it changed her career. When Ben is working with Anna at the Abbey, he has to consider his families safety as there are people who do not agree with him waking Anna to put her on the stand.

This book has it all mystery, suspense, twists, turns, betrayal, and revenge. There were a few times I thought I had solved the mystery of Sally Turner’s child and knew their identity. I had several theories as to what had happened at The Farm too, these varied and changed as I read more of the book! Matthew Blake really takes you on a journey leading the reader down one track of presenting the identity of Sally Turners child and exactly what happened on that August night, just when you start to believe that track there’s a twist/turn and you have to start pondering the mystery child’s identity and their involvement in the murders at The Farm.

Summing up this Author really keeps you waiting to the very end to confirm the identity of the child and the relevance of what happened at The Farm. I did enjoy the book though there were times it felt a little drawn out and slower paced than I would have preferred it to be for my personal taste. If you want a book that makes you think, makes you really, really, think then this book is a great fit for you.