I gave The Memories We Bury 4* out of 5* Book Description: An emotionally charged and captivating novel about the complexities of female friendship and motherhood, from the author of Manipulated Lives. Lizzie Thomson has landed her first job as a music teacher, and after a whirlwind romance with Markus, the newlywed couple move into a beautiful new home in the outskirts of Edinburgh. Lizzie quickly befriends their neighbour Morag, an elderly, resourceful yet lonely widow, who’s own children rarely visit her. Everything seems perfect in Lizzie’s life until she finds out she is pregnant and her relationship with both Morag and Markus change beyond her control. Can Lizzie really trust Morag and why is Markus keeping secrets from her? In The Memories We Bury the author explores the dangerous bonds we can create with strangers and how past memories can cast long shadows over the present. My Review: The Memories We Bury is what I call a slow burner; it took me a little...

I gave Wild Spinning Girls 5*out of 5* Book Description: Ida Llewellyn loses her job and her parents in the space of a few weeks and, thrown completely off course, she sets off to Wales to the house her father has left her. But Heather, the young woman still in her teens whose home it was, keeps the house as a shrine to her late mother and is determined to scare Ida away. The two girls battle with suspicion and fear before discovering that the secrets harboured by their thoughtless parents have grown rotten with time, and that any ghosts Ty'r Cwmwl harbours are of their own making. Their broken hearts will only mend once they cast off the house and its history, and let go of the keepsakes that they treasure like childhood dreams My Review: Wild Spinning Girls is told in poetic prose; sentences and clauses to be savoured. To be read again and again. The images they evoke create the mysterious and ephemeral sense of place that the author strives for. It works. Havin...