The Lido by Libby Page - Beautiful and Uplifting

The Lido by Libby Page is the most uplifting and beautiful book that I have read for a long time with beautifully described imagery, beautifully drawn characters and tenderly expressed relationships.
We all think that we know Brixton because we've seen it on the news, but Libby Page describes what is really underneath: how people can get together and fight for a worthwhile cause, in this case The Lido.
She really gets under the skin of Kate too. She's a young journalist from Bristol, trying to make a career in London, but crippled by anxiety and panic attacks which are only relieved by being invited to swim in the pool by eighty-six-year-old Rosemary who has swum there all her life since it opened and wants to prevent Paradise Living from buying it and filling it in with cement to turn it into a leisure centre for its residents.
Libby's description of swimming in The Lido is stunning. Closing my eyes, I can see the cold sparkling water in the sunshine and feel the shivers as Kate slips in for the first time and swims.
Romance is at the forefront of this story, focusing on Rosemary's love affair with George, her late husband, in and around the pool, and giving her another reason to do all she can to prevent it closing, and Kate's own blossoming love affair as well.
This is a refreshingly wonderful book to make you think about the good in people and certainly one of the most uplifting books that I've read.
My friend lent me her copy to read, but now I've bought my own because I'm sure that I'll read it again.

Between A Mother and Her Child by Elizabeth Noble - Emotional, but Uplifting

If you are looking for an emotional, but uplifting book to read this Mother's Day weekend, then
Between a Mother and her Child by Elizabeth Noble is for you.

Maggie met Bill when he was over on his gap year in Australia. She was a champion swimmer with a chance for the Olympics, but when she became pregnant, they married and returned to the UK where Jake was born.

Life was beautiful: they had two more children, Aly and Stan, and Bill's building business was going well. Then shockingly, when Jake was on his gap year with two friends in Thailand, he drowned in the Boxing Day tsunami.

The fact that this happens before the novel starts doesn't lessen the heartbreak for Maggie and Bill who deal with it in their different ways; she staying at home to try to come to terms with Jake's death and he going out to Thailand to find his body and give help to the people there in any way he could.

Kate has her own problems. In her sixties, she now lives alone, her life once so full of colour, is now monochrome. And it is Livvy, Maggie's younger sister, over from Sydney for Christmas, who suggests that she finds a 'companion' for Maggie now that Bill has moved in with young widow, Carrie, who he's met at his bereavement group, and who finds Kate through an advertisement.

It was intriguing to find out if Maggie would accept Kate and what impact she would have on Aly, aged seventeen, doing her 'A' Levels, but increasingly withdrawn since her brother's death, and Stan, aged ten, who suffers from dyslexia and dyspraxia and who is a challenge at the best of times.

Elizabeth Noble tenderly explores the relationships between all the characters, drawing a vivid picture of each one, but concentrating on the one between Maggie and Jake which is at the heart of this novel. It is emotional, but it is uplifting, and I was hooked until the touching end.

Still Me by Jojo Moyes - Louisa Clark Gets a Job in New York!

Still Me is Jojo Moyes' third marvellous book about Louisa Clark. You can read my reviews of the others, me before you and after you, here and here.
Louisa wants to prove herself and get over Will Traynor, but will she ever be able to? Nathan, who used to be Will's physio, finds her a chance to work in New York as an assistant to Agnes, Mr Gopnicks's young second wife. Sam, her paramedic boyfriend, encourages her to go  because he doesn't want to curtail her freedom, and anyway, it's only for one year, what could go wrong?
The Gopnicks live in a wonderful Fifth Avenue apartment in the Lavery, but Agnes is not happy. Louisa does her best to help with her demands, including a daily early morning run in Central Park, and waiting outside an artist's studio with Garry, their chauffeur, whilst Agnes learns to paint, but strangely, never brings any paintings home.
At one of the many charity functions that the rich and famous attend in New York, Louisa falls for Josh who is gorgeous and kind, but is it because he reminds her so much of Will?
But then, she is dismissed by Mr Gopnick for something she did in all innocence to help Agnes. Whilst back in England, Sam gets an attractive new partner to work with who seems to be taking Louisa's place in his heart.
How can she stay in New York with no job? Yet, how can she go back to Sam?
This is another wonderful book by Jojo Moyes with a cavalcade of characters like Mrs De Witt and her dog, Dean Martin, who lives on the same floor in the apartment block and who hates Agnes' piano playing; Ashok, the kind and helpful porter at the Lavery; Ilaria, the Gopnicks' cook, and Garry who learns Spanish whilst they wait for Agnes in the car.
Jojo Moyes also describes New York so well, it makes you want to jump on a plane and walk through Manhattan singing Let the Rivers Run, just like Louisa.
And yes, she still wears those tights that are striped like a bee!

Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce - Uplifting Comfort Reading at its Best!

Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce is a truly uplifting book about the courage and fortitude of those living through the Blitz in 1941, told with humour as well as tears.
Emmy, or Emmeline Lake's ambition is to be a War correspondent like those she's read about in the newspapers: brave women who can impartially report on the facts before them without getting involved.
She gets a job at Launceston House, the home of the Evening Chronicle in Fleet Street, thinking this will be her first step to stardom, but the job turns out to be at the foundering Women's Friend magazine upstairs, with the redoubtable acting editress, Henrietta Bird.
Emmy had been so excited at the interview that she didn't listen properly to hear that the job was to sort through the readers' problem letters, and hand them over to Mrs Bird for her to answer, but how was she to become a respected woman journalist doing that?
She is dismayed at all the readers' letters that she has to cut up and bin because of what Mrs Bird calls  'Unpleasantness'. The acting editress will only answer questions about such things as fat arms or chilblains, but nothing at all about any sort of relationship, pre- or post-marital; sex; political or religious activities; or the war, which pretty much covered all the problems that the readers have. So she decides to answer the letters herself in secret which gets her in to all sorts of trouble.
AJ Pearce has drawn some wonderful characters including Bunty, her best friend who works a the War Office, and shares her granny's flat with Emmy; Bunty's fiancé, William, a fireman along with Roy, and Thelma, Joan and Mary who also work on the telephones with Emmy in the evenings at the fire station. But we don't see Edmund, Emmy's fiancé, who is away fighting.
The language, and descriptions of the fashions and wartime London are just right too. My mother was in the AFS (Auxiliary Fire Service) like Emmy, sending out fire engines as the bombs fell. She didn't tell me a lot about it, not many people wanted to talk about the war, so this book was a chance for me to discover what it was really like.
Louisa Young, author of A Heroes' Welcome, advises that we should immediately catch a cold and retire to bed with this book. And, Dear Reader, I did!
I'm also pleased to hear that AJ Pearce is working on a sequel: I shall have to catch another!! Comfort reading at its best!

Have you read Number One Best Seller - Love, Iris by Elizabeth Noble?

I've read and enjoyed many books by Elizabeth Noble in the past, so when I saw Love, Iris, I knew that I had to buy it!
As its title suggests, it's about love and all its different aspects.
Tess discovers she's pregnant, but her boyfriend, Sean, says that it's not the time to have a baby because he has a fantastic job offer in New York, so feeling that he can't love her if he wants her to get rid of the baby, she leaves him, and all through the book, Tess 'writes' letters to her baby, describing her feelings and telling her how much she loves her instead.
Gigi has a husband, Richard, two grown-up sons, Chris and Olly and a daughter, Megan, at uni. But she feels that her marriage is on the rocks because of Richard's lack of attention and understanding, (do they really love each other?), so she decides to leave him as well to see if life is better on her own.
Iris is Tess's grandmother who Tess has spent so much time with growing up in Salisbury as her mother, Donna, couldn't settle down after Harry left her. But now, Iris is in a nursing home because she has Alzheimer's, and it is there that Tess meets Gigi who still visits Richard's father, James.
Tess discovers that Iris has a secret that she's kept from her and Donna, and which helps them both to look at their lives differently.
Meanwhile, Gigi's daughter-in-law, Emily, is wonderfully supportive, but Olly brings home Caitlin who he hopes to marry, and Gigi feels that she will never fit in at all.
However, when Olly meets Tess at the nursing home, things change for them both.
This is a wonderful novel, packed full of emotion which really does keep you glued to the last page and makes you wish there was more!

A Winter Beneath the Stars by Jo Thomas - A Romance set in Snowy Lapland

If you  haven't had enough snow this week, this could be the book for you!
I love snowy places. So far, I've been to Norway, Iceland and Alaska, but not to Sweden, apart from a day in Stockholm.  However, reading A Winter Beneath the Stars by Jo Thomas, has made me want to go there again, though I'm not so sure about herding reindeer!!
Halley has to deliver two hand-made wedding rings to a hotel in Swedish Lapland. Although it's part of her job as a delivery courier, she's doing it as favour for her boss and hoping that, if she can prove herself after two years in her job, then she'll be allowed to take long haul trips.
However, on arriving at the Tallfors Hotel, she finds that her bag must have been switched on the flight, meaning that she's lost all her personal belongings and the precious rings, not to mention her travel notebook in which she's recorded all her trips to tell her husband, Griff.
In the other person's bag, she finds a recipe book which links the case to Daniel Nuhtte, a chef with a restaurant in Stockholm.
Helped by Lars, the hotel receptionist, who thinks that Halley is the answer to all his dreams, she returns to Stockholm to find the restaurant shut and locked up. Outside, Camilla, who used to work there with Daniel, gives her a letter to give to him when she finds him and returns his case. She tells Halley that he has gone back to his home in Tallfors, so she goes back there in the hope of finding him.
Lars knows the farm where Daniel's family live, but says there's no-one there because they've gone to herd their reindeer and bring them back to the homestead, however he can take her to the place where all the Sami people keep their reindeer, perhaps he will be there. This will be on a trip for the wedding party who are spending a week at Tallfors getting to know each other before the wedding, which is quite a challenge for one of the mothers, because there are two brides.
But there is no sign of Daniel or his family, only another grumpy reindeer herder called Bjorn, who says he will take her to Daniel's farm to get her case back, if she helps him take the reindeer home. She has no option but to let Lars go and brave it with Bjorn, despite never having driven a dog sled before, and not particularly liking dogs either.
Jo Thomas paints such a vivid picture of what is feels like to herd the reindeer through the snowy tundra and forest with the snow heavy on the branches and, over the frozen river, counting the reindeer's white bottoms to make sure none have fallen in. She also beautiful describes the growing relationship between Bjorn and Halley in this very romantic setting (if you don't mind the cold!) and Halley's struggle to face up to the personal problem she is running from.
I can thoroughly recommend this novel. A perfect read by the fire on a cold winter's day.

A Wedding at Christmas by Chrissie Manby - Can you wait until next Christmas to read it?

You may not want to wait until next December to read the final book* about the Benson family, A Wedding at Christmas by Chrissie Manby.  Having read all the others, I could not resist finding out all about Chelsea and Adam's wedding.
Chelsea and Adam's romance has featured in all four of the books, starting with A Proper Family Holiday when they meet on the plane to Lanzarote where she's going to join her family, and Adam's daughter, Lily, wants to sit in Chelsea's window seat.
Chelsea has two sisters who are at loggerheads because Ronnie is jealous of Annabel's luxurious upbringing because she was adopted at birth, and feels that she is going to take over Chelsea's wedding plans.
Their mother, Jacqui, tries to keep the peace whilst still trying to build her relationship with Annabel who she hasn't seen for forty-three years, and also get over her own insecurities at meeting, Sarah, the woman who brought Annabel up and whom she calls Mum.
Chelsea also has similar problems getting to know Frances, the mother of Adam's first wife, Claire, who died three years ago. Nothing she can say or do will please her.
The regular members of the Benson family are all here too: Jacqui and Ronnie's long-suffering husbands Dave and Mark, who get to know Frances's husband, Richard; Sophie and Izzy, newly found cousins when Ronnie and Annabel met; seven-year-old Jack and Lily, great rivals in Lanzarote, but now the best of friends, and Granddad Bill.
He's a great character, eighty-seven-years old, suffering from dementia and confined to a wheelchair, but this does not stop him singing songs punctuated with burps and worse, and supporting his beloved Coventry City. However, his dementia is getting more serious causing him to get confused as to whether he's in the present or in the Second World War when his brother, Eddie, was killed, and his panic attacks are getting more frequent and frightening. Jacqui and Dave fear that he may not make it to next September when the wedding is planned, and ask Chelsea and Adam to move it forwards to Christmas which they willingly do, having no idea just how complicated their wedding arrangements will be.
I really enjoyed this book because Chrissie Manby is excellent at exploring these relationships and making them so real that I feel I really know and love this family. I wish that one day she would write some more about them!

If you want to know more about the Bensons, here are some links to my reviews:

A Proper Family Holiday

A Proper Family Adventure

A Proper Family Christmas

* I've just discovered an e-novella about them too! Falling Leaves and Fireworks!