I was drawn into this book from the first page and couldn’t put it down. What I particularly loved about it was the way the author took three strong characters and intertwined their lives. All of them were “other” in some way, people who felt they didn’t fit in, and I loved this as you don’t often get characters like that as protagonists.
Hazel, one of the main characters, is anxious, probably on the spectrum, and very uncomfortable with life. Virginia has rebuilt her life after trauma but is reeling from a terrible accusation that threatens her future. Harry, a teenage boy living in an abusive and dangerous situation, is expertly drawn. The three of them shouldn’t be friends, but they are.
Brilliantly written, authentic situations, and wonderful characterization. I couldn’t put it down.
Hazel has never felt normal. Struggling with OCD and anxiety, she isolates herself from others and sticks to rigid routines in order to cope with everyday life. But when she forms an unlikely friendship with Virginia, a church minister, Hazel begins to venture outside her comfort zone.
Having rebuilt her own life after a traumatic loss, Virginia has become the backbone of her community, caring for those in need and mentoring disadvantaged young people. Yet a shock accusation threatens to unravel everything she has worked for.
Told with warmth, compassion and gentle humour, 'Braver' is an uplifting story about the…
Oh, my goodness me, what a book! The title drew me in, and the first page had me gasping with laughter.
The author took me straight back to my own 1970s English childhood. It was so funny I could hardly breathe in parts. It was so desperately sad that if I were a crier, I would have been sobbing. It is honestly one of my favourite books in the world, ever.
A crazy, up-and-down, dysfunctional childhood which leads to a pretty exciting adulthood with lots of premature deaths thrown in along the way. The author has survived an awful lot of trauma, and that she can still laugh and see the good in her family is reason enough to buy this book, immediately.
This book blew my mind. I thought I knew all about Jane Austen’s novels. I read them constantly and all the scholarly works around them, but this opened my eyes to so much more.
Brilliantly written, the author took me straight into Austen’s world and told me things I never knew. I will never see the novels in the same light again but in a good way. Fascinating details, great writing, and for an Austen nut, the perfect read. It made me look at Jane Austen again through a different lens, and it added to my enjoyment of her novels.
The book is packed with knowledge but never heavy or hard to read. I come back to it again and again, and it has a very special place in my heart.
A brilliant, illuminating reassessment of the life and work of Jane Austen that makes clear how Austen has been misread for the past two centuries and that shows us how she intended her books to be read, revealing, as well, how subversive and daring--how truly radical--a writer she was.
In this fascinating, revelatory work, Helena Kelly--dazzling Jane Austen authority--looks past the grand houses, the pretty young women, past the demure drawing room dramas and witty commentary on the narrow social worlds of her time that became the hallmark of Austen's work to bring to light the serious, ambitious, deeply subversive…
We all know Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Darcy, Mr. Collins, and the other main characters in Pride and Prejudice. But what about the people in the background who don’t get any dialogue? Don’t they deserve to have their stories told?
From Mrs. Forster, the teenage bride, Sally the put-upon maid, Mrs. Annesley the genteel companion to Georgiana Darcy, and Nicholls the angry, bitter, blackmailing cook, this book shines a light on the minor characters in the novel who step forward and tell their own stories in their own words.
Written using correct eighteenth-century spelling and vocabulary, with helpful footnotes and never straying from the plot of the novel, the reader is given an exclusive peep into the secret worlds of Rosings, Hunsford, Longbourn, and Pemberley. You’ll never read the book in the same way again.
