Not perhaps - definitely!

Perhaps .... Perhaps by L.A. Dale

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Reading 'Perhaps .... Perhaps' is like sipping a crisp, dry Chablis on a warm summer's day, and reading the whole book is like downing the whole bottle, which is just fine by me.

So this is how you should read 'Perhaps .... Perhaps', a glass of white wine in one hand and LA Dale (so to speak) in the other - a perfect combination.

The writing is elegant, sharp and bouncy, the characters well defined, the heroine neurotic-squeaky and her reservations a bit olde worlde. Thank God her boss knows how to get on top of his job.

This is a very enjoyable chick-lit which knows the conventions without choosing to follow them slavishly.

I shall certainly be hunting down LA Dale's other book 'Heart of Glass' which apparently bumps along to a soundtrack of classic songs. I fancy another bottle.

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I'd settle for being shopped

How To Meet A Guy At The Supermarket by Jessica L. Degarmo

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

You can shop for anything nowadays and I reckon we are becoming more and more consumerist in everything we do. Statisticians have shown that we choose politicians like soap powder, so why not lovers too - great packaging, not too battered about, hours of fun and pleasure, dispose after use?

Well, the heroine of 'How To Meet A Guy At The Supermarket' thinks so. She's ready for a mate; time to go out and snag one. And, as a journalist, she can devise a syndicated column while she is at it.

What she finds, of course, is that while it is a clever conceit, actually doing it is one hell of a lot tougher. People just aren't looking out for lovers in supermarkets (in my experience and hers). A supermarket is simply the wrong context for those kinds of thoughts.

So her antics have to get a bit wild and intrusive, from which derives the humour in the book, and blokes are simply not guaranteed to give as much satisfaction as all those inanimate objects on the shelves.

However, the real pleasure of this book is that Quinn, the heroine, is human - not some chick lit artefact. You can really believe that author Jessica really did the things in the book and even wrote a column about them.

Einstein once said that he had the choice of studying either advanced physics or women, and that he had chosen to pursue the physics because he had at least some chance of understanding some of it. This book could help you if you are considering taking the other path.

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A book about love to love

Travels Through Love And Time by Christine Hall Volkoff

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first went to the Hyeres as an 8 year old when my parents took me on a day trip to the Ile de Levant which has a famous nudist beach. Appropriately enough, the first novella of this book is set on the Ile de Porquerolles, a neighbouring island.

This is a story of love in three aspects and at three ages. It starts when a teenage girl falls in love with a glamorous Italian actress, and then catches up with its narrator some twenty years on, I would guess, spotting a beautiful woman on the terrace of a cafe bar in Paris. The final novella is a kind of swan song.

It is billed as a lesbian book, which I suppose it is, but it is much more universal than specific, and reminded me at one moment of Francoise Sagan and at another of Truman Capote who wrote the only portrait of Marilyn Munro I have ever fully believed. I don't know if the actress in the first novella is / was a real person but, if so, you get an indelible sense of her private, yet not fully private, self.

A wonderful, lyrical book - the sort of thing you should read every year to remind yourself what being human and vulnerable is all about.

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A must-read YA (and there aren't many of those around)

Hellogon by John Booth

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read the original version of John Booth's 'Shaddowdon' a while back and enjoyed it so much that I read it to one of my sons too.

However, I reckon 'Hellogon' is even better. In fact it is definitely scary, not so much at the time as afterwards, when you come to think about it and realise that it is giving you a very unsettling insight into how real politicians, diplomats and secret services (the Establishment) calculate and strategise.

The tale is classic Harry Potter - a teenager who doesn't realise he is born to greatness suddenly finds that he has an unwelcome and burdensome job to do - in this case to save his race that happens to be a race most of us would have our doubts about saving.

However, the theme of 'Hellogon' is somewhat the reverse to that of Harry Potter and its core message is diametrically opposite.

It is also good to see a YA book that actually has some wholesome, playful sex in it accompanied by many a wry reference.

Good fun, well written, chilling, you know you are in the hands of a master as you read this book.

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A fun read - don't do this to the one you love!

Spoilt: Joanne Ellis by Joanne Ellis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

'Spoilt' is a romantic slasher-thriller where a crazed maniac is abducting, torturing and killing girls all, seemingly, as a warm-up to abduct and carve up Chelsea whose boyfriend walked out on her without explanation a year beforehand. The romance hots up between Lucas and Chelsea, then ....

You don't see many chick-lit crime procedurals around - a bit cross-genre - but this is certainly one, and a fun one at that, with a twisty ending borrowed from a classic romantic plot. I suppose that is the fun of miscegenation - you can plug and play with the conventions of both genres as the moment takes you.

This is not one for the literati, but it swings along with much pleasure, and a little pain, and the lead characters are endearing and well-suited.

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I'm in the women's hygiene section - 'How To Meet A Guy In The Supermarket'

Having been educated in more or less all-male establishments between the ages of 7 and 22 (well, Cambridge University was 24 males to each female at the time), I have to admit to a certain fondness for well-written chick-lit while I still try to understand how women's minds work in relation to love and romance some 30 years later.

The central core of any romance tale has to be that you actually want the girl and the boy to get all hot and sweaty together somewhere around the last chapter, whilst knowing that almost everything will get in their way en route.

As in Jane Austen's 'Sense and Sensibility', the problem here is that Quinn is looking down all the wrong aisles and taking some pretty dubious advice from friends.



The great thing about this book is that psychologically it rings much more true than its more manufactured chick-lit cousins. I don't know if Jessica really writes a column on travel and dating, or whether she has indeed picked up men in supermarkets, but the more I read, the more I came to believe that this was a thinly disguised documentary.

So, not only do I thoroughly recommend this book, but I shall pay much more attention down my local Tesco's or Co-Op from now on. There may even be a 2-for-1 offer at one of the gondola ends.

Brendan Gisby's 'The Island of Whispers' reviewed by Teresa Geering

(Teresa Geering is the author of the excellent time-travel romance 'The Eye of Erasmus' - here).

With great trepidation, I began to read The Island of Whispers.

I hate Rats with a passion, but under the influential, cunning writing of Brendan Gisby, I found myself reading this in one long sitting.

Out of sight of prying eyes deep underground, live a colony of rats with imaginative names, such as Twisted Foot, his mate Grey Eyes and their offspring Soft Mover.

Their world is regimented and overseen by A King Rat, who ensures that only the strongest survive by having the weakest culled. These bodies are then in turn used for the feeding cycle.

As the Cold Cycle begins above ground so the breeding season begins below. All in their world is exactly as it should be....

Then the story takes a different turn. A group of the rats led by Twisted Foot and his mate Grey Eyes, who had been subjected to rape, decide to make a bid for freedom to the greener lands above, along with their offspring.

With unexpected help from the lower rat quarters, a bloody battle ensues and they are finally free but at what cost?

Keeping well hidden from four legs, (a nifty Jack Russell called Nipper) and the two legged variety of rat catcher, they set out to cross the sea to safety. Could they swim? They had no idea but were prepared to take that chance.

I found myself willing these little rats to overcome all of the obstacles put in their way, (and there were many) to obtain safety on the other side.

Twisted foot and his followers are pursued by the remaining rats in the colony that have orders to bring them back at the cost of their own lives.

I breathed a sigh of relief, as these intrepid adventurers finally make it to safety but again at what cost?

Do they set up a new colony and live happily ever after.......

At times, the song ‘Bright Eyes’ from Watership Down popped into my head. Was I getting to like these disgusting little furry creatures?

Would I highly recommend it?

The answer is a resounding yes for all age groups, because The Island of Whispers is extremely well written and thought out, albeit highly gory in places.

('The Island of Whispers' is available from Amazon.com here).