The Faerie Tree – Jane Cable

Contemporary Fiction
4*s

In Hampshire Izzy is preparing for her first Christmas as a widow, wanting to make it ‘good-enough’ for her teenage daughter Claire but still unsure what form her grief will take next. One day after dealing with the probate office Izzy bumps into a man she knew years ago, from before her marriage and motherhood. The man she saw was one who had disappeared from her life, someone she never dreamt she would see again.

Izzy is curious after all the man she bumped into looks like he has been living on the streets but she manages to track him down to the local hospital where he is recovering from pneumonia and hypothermia. She visits and they begin comparing notes on their lives but their memories dramatically differ on what really happened the last time they’d seen each other.

The title refers to the Faerie tree, a place where children leave their wishes for the fairies and the ever-obliging fairies give their response. This is the place where Robin took Izzy one summer’s day all those years ago. Robin returns there in 1987 after the Great Storm and is amazed and relieved to see it still standing, complete with ribbons, toys and money left for the fairies. Returning to the tree starts a new chapter in Robin’s life, one where we get to see what kind of man he really is.

Although this book hints at folklore, this really is a footnote to the main story which is a ‘second-chance’ romantic novel, one set around two people in their forties for whom the intervening years since their brief relationship were worlds apart. With all that has happened the reader has to wonder if they can ever possibly make a go of it. Intertwined with the romantic aspect the author probes the mystery of memories, is it possible for two people to remember such a significant part of their lives in such a different way? Who has remembered correctly and why has the other equally believable narrative been constructed? This element lifts the story to something more than a simple romance to one that delves into the how our mind can play tricks on us and how hard it is to let go of these memories even when they are proved to be false.

With such a well-paced and engagingly written story populated with believable characters, even the teenage Claire was realistically portrayed, this made for a thoroughly enjoyable read.

I’d like to thank the author for arranging for me to read a copy of this book for review purposes. The Faerie Tree is due to be published on 28 April 2015 by Troubador Publishing Ltd.

This Week In Books (April 22)

Hosted by Lypsyy Lost & Found my Wednesday post gives you a taste of what I am reading this week. A similar meme is run by Taking on a World of Words

I am currently reading Don’t Turn Around by Caroline Mitchell

You can read the blurb and opening paragraph in yesterday’s post.

I have recently finished When We Were Friends by Tina Seskis

Blurb

It had always been the six of us.
Since we met at university twenty-five years ago, we’d faced everything together. Break-ups and marriages, motherhood and death. We were closer than sisters; the edges of our lives bled into each other.
But that was before the night of the reunion. The night of exposed secrets and jagged accusations. The night when everything changed.
And then we were five. NetGalley

My review will follow soon

Next I am going to read The Faerie Tree by Jane Cable

Blurb

How can a memory so vivid be wrong?
I tried to remember the first time I’d been here and to see the tree through Izzie’s eyes. The oak stood on a rise just above the path; not too tall or wide but graceful and straight, its trunk covered in what I can only describe as offerings – pieces of ribbon, daisy chains, a shell necklace, a tiny doll or two and even an old cuckoo clock.
“Why do people do this?” Izzie asked.
I winked at her. “To say thank you to the fairies.”
In the summer of 1986 Robin and Izzie hold hands under The Faerie Tree and wish for a future together. Within hours tragedy rips their dreams apart.
In the winter of 2006, each carrying their own burden of grief, they stumble back into each other’s lives and try to create a second chance. But why are their memories of 1986 so different? And which one of them is right? NetGalley

What are you reading this week? Please share in the comments box below.

See what I’ve been reading in 2015 here

Stacking The Shelves (March 21)

Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you’re adding to your shelves, be it buying or borrowing. From ‘real’ books you’ve purchased, a book you’ve borrowed, a book you’ve been given or an e-book they can all be shared!

This Week I was offered a copy of The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife and The Missing Corpse by Piu Marie Eatwell by the publishers, Head of Zeus, and having read the synopsis simply had to say a big ‘Yes Please!’

Blurb

The extraordinary story of the Druce-Portland affair, one of the most notorious, tangled and bizarre legal cases of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras.
In 1897 an elderly widow, Anna Maria Druce, made a strange request of the London Ecclesiastical Court: it was for the exhumation of the grave of her late father-in-law, T.C. Druce.
Behind her application lay a sensational claim: that Druce had been none other than the eccentric and massively wealthy 5th Duke of Portland, and that the – now dead – Duke had faked the death of his alter ego. When opened, Anna Maria contended, Druce’s coffin would be found to be empty. And her children, therefore, were heirs to the Portland millions.
The extraordinary legal case that followed would last for ten years. Its eventual outcome revealed a dark underbelly of lies lurking beneath the genteel facade of late Victorian England. Goodreads

From NetGalley I have a copy of The Lie by C.L. Taylor which caught my eye on social media because it looks like my kind of read.

Blurb

Jane Hughes has a loving partner, a job in an animal sanctuary and a tiny cottage in rural Wales. She’s happier than she’s ever been but her life is a lie. Jane Hughes does not really exist.
Five years earlier Jane and her then best friends went on holiday but what should have been the trip of a lifetime rapidly descended into a nightmare that claimed the lives of two of the women.
Jane has tried to put the past behind her but someone knows the truth about what happened. Someone who won’t stop until they’ve destroyed Jane and everything she loves . . . NetGalley

The Faerie Tree by one of my twitter buddies Jane Cable

Blurb

I tried to remember the first time I’d been here and to see the tree through Izzie’s eyes. The oak stood on a rise just above the path; not too tall or wide but graceful and straight, its trunk covered in what I can only describe as offerings – pieces of ribbon, daisy chains, a shell necklace, a tiny doll or two and even an old cuckoo clock.
“Why do people do this?” Izzie asked.
I winked at her. “To say thank you to the fairies.”
In the summer of 1986 Robin and Izzie hold hands under The Faerie Tree and wish for a future together. Within hours tragedy rips their dreams apart.
In the winter of 2006, each carrying their own burden of grief, they stumble back into each other’s lives and try to create a second chance. But why are their memories of 1986 so different? And which one of them is right? NetGalley

Lastly I have another book from a crime series; Time of Death featuring Tom Thorne by Mark Billingham which is due to be published in June 2015.

Blurb

The astonishing thirteenth Tom Thorne novel is a story of kidnapping, the tabloid press, and a frightening case of mistaken identity.
Tom Thorne is on holiday with his girlfriend DS Helen Weeks, when two girls are abducted in Helen’s home town. When a body is discovered and a man is arrested, Helen recognizes the suspect’s wife as an old school-friend and returns home for the first time in twenty-five years to lend her support. As his partner faces up to a past she has tried desperately to forget and a media storm engulfs the town, Thorne becomes convinced that, despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt, the police have got the wrong man. There is still an extremely clever and killer on the loose and a missing girl who Thorne believes might still be alive. NetGalley

So my reads are predictably full of secrets and lies and dodgy memories with a few dead bodies thrown in for good measure, what have you found to read this week?