Those Faraday Girls - Monica McInerney

As a child, Maggie Faraday grew up in a lively, unconventional household in Tasmania, with her young mother, four very different aunts and eccentric grandfather. With her mother often away, all four aunts took turns looking after her – until, just weeks before Maggie’s sixth birthday, a shocking event changed everything.

Twenty years on, Maggie is living alone in New York City when a surprise visit from her grandfather brings a revelation and a proposition to reunite the family. As the Faradays gather in Ireland, Maggie begins to realise that the women she thought she knew so intimately all have something to hide…

Those Faraday Girls is a rich and complex story full of warmth, humour and unforgettable women. Spanning several countries and thirty years, it is a deeply moving novel about family secrets and lies – and how the memories that bind us together can also keep us apart.

There is a lot of story to get delightfully lost in here…McInerney does a lovely job of setting up a family as an outsider would see it and she does so in enormous, painstaking detail, so that by the time she starts revealing the true colours of the family’s dynamics, things become very interesting indeed.  And while the family dramas are deeply serious, McInerney always keeps her light and lovely humorous touch throughout this sprawling book, which truly typifies the tag “great holiday read”.

The conclusion is particularly satisfying and somewhat unexpected.  Overall, a great story and a great read: recommended for all women’s fiction collections.

The Courtesan and the Samurai - Lesley Downer

1868. In Japan’s exotic pleasure quarters, sex is for sale and the only forbidden fruit is love ...

Hana is just seventeen when her husband goes to war, leaving her alone and vulnerable. When enemy soldiers attack her house she flees across the shattered city of Tokyo and takes refuge in the Yoshiwara, its famous pleasure-quarters.There she is forced to become a courtesan.

Yozo, brave, loyal and a brilliant swordsman, is pledged to the embattled shogun. He sails to the frozen north to join his rebel comrades for a desperate last stand. Defeated, he makes his way south to the only place where a man is beyond the reach of the law - the Yoshiwara.

There in the Nightless City where three thousand courtesans mingle with geishas and jesters, the battered fugitive meets the beautiful courtesan. But each has a secret so terrible that once revealed it will threaten their very lives ...

This novel is historical romance at its best. Full of fact, fiction, fear and fantasy it had me staying up late in the night as I couldn't stop turning the pages!

I have read a few similar novels set around the Japanese  geisha and this one by Lesley Downer didn't disappoint. It was beautifully written an made me feel like I was transported to Japan.

A good book for any kind of reader!

Drop Dead Beautiful - Jackie Collins

Lucky Santangelo is back with a vengeance--still every bit as strong, sexy, and seductive as ever! But Lucky is older and wiser, and hot to reclaim her power position in Las Vegas. However, a deadly enemy from her past has resurfaced--a person determined to take everything from her, including the family she holds so dear: two sons and an out-of-control teenage daughter who is just as outrageous as Lucky herself. Like mother, like daughter. And if that old saying holds true, it's going to be one wild ride.

Drop Dead Beautiful is the 6^th instalment of the Lucky Santangelo ‘Vengeance’ series and it doesn’t disappoint!

True to Jackie Collins style there are many, many subplots, lots of tangential characters, and loads of steamy sex.

This book really surprised me. I thought I was in for a bland, casual read, but I soon found myself reading it at a rapid pace because it's so trashily addictive. There is something about her books that suck you in and get you hooked.

Another good thing about this book was that you didn’t necessarily have to read the previous 5 books to understand what was going on, although I would strongly recommend it if this latest one is anything to go off!

I will definitely read her next instalment in the future!

The Other Woman - Jane Green

What’s the only thing worse than a mother-in-law who can’t stand you? One who wants to be your best friend.

Ellie and Dan are living proof that opposites attract. She’s impulsive; he follows all the rules. He loves sports; she’s allergic to any form of exercise. Ellie doesn’t have a mother. Dan does — a very involved mother.

At first, Ellie is thrilled to be accepted into the loving Cooper clan and have Dan’s mom, Linda, as her “adopted” mother. But then Ellie starts to wonder, how has the intimate civil ceremony she always dreamed of turned into a black-tie affair? And what can Dan and his mother possibly have to talk about on the phone twice a day?

Ellie’s problems have just begun. When she discovers she’s pregnant, she realizes that Linda has only been rehearsing for the real takeover. Linda seems to want to live her life through Ellie and, in the words of the immortal Princess Diana, there are three of them in the marriage.

When a crisis strains family bonds, Ellie turns to her friends — glamorous Lisa, who always looks like she’s just stepped off a runway, and wonderfully frazzled Trish — and tries to rediscover the independence she once had and the man she still loves. But it seems that having a child and saving a marriage means growing up in ways she’d never imagined.
In The Other Woman, Jane Green delivers a warm, witty, and touching look at mothers-in-law and marriage and what they teach us about ourselves.

The Other Woman is the story of almost every married woman's nightmare: the Mother-In-Law. A tender, engrossing read about love, family, and friendship written with spark and humour. The characters were likeable and the story moved along at a good pace, but there was something lacking that would put it on my ‘must read’ list to recommend to friends. This one would be good to take away on holidays when you want something to read occasionally, not something you really want to get involved with.