Smashbomb

Search

Search results

All (5000)

Content

Merissa (13822 KP) rated Art and Soul in Books

Sep 14, 2020

Art and Soul

Claire Huston | 2020 | Contemporary, Romance

8.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

Art and Soul is the debut book by Claire Huston and is both genteel and charming.

Claire is returning to work after taking a year off on maternity leave but she is finding it hard to get her clients back. Charlie is a painter sinking into obscurity, through both circumstances and his own behaviour. Together, these two can get Charlie back into the limelight and get him the woman of his dreams... but what about Claire?

For a simple storyline, this book was surprisingly complex and intriguing. Claire was a great character, being straightforward in certain situations and yet completely blind in others. Charlie was the more tentative of the two, easily being led by Claire and Rachel. I would have liked him to have been a little stronger but then I'm not the author!

Two things I loved about this book - 1) the main characters are not in their 20's! and 2) it was set in the UK. It makes a nice change for it not to be the US.

The scene setting was brilliant and both Claire and Charlie are helped along by a wonderful supporting cast. This was a lighthearted read without any major angst that kept my interest and the pages turning. Absolutely recommended by me.

* A copy of this book was provided to me with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book, and the comments here are my honest opinion. *

Merissa
Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!

Kudos

Sarah (7800 KP) rated Corrupt Bodies: Death and Dirty Dealing in a London Morgue in Books

Oct 25, 2020

Very interesting

Have to give a big thanks to @AJaneClark for recommending this book following from Richard Shepherd’s Unnatural Causes. It was a great idea to read this straight after, as the similar themes and topics complement each other but yet still showing completely different sides of the post-mortem.

Everett’s book follows the workings of a mortuary, and focuses a lot more on the criminality involved both at the mortuary itself and of the crime scenes Everett attends. It’s fascinating and I never knew until now what sort of state mortuaries in the UK were in less than a few decades ago. To think black market organ dealing was still happening as late as the 1980s is crazy. What’s also crazy is the similarities between Everett and Shepherd’s personal stories. Whilst Everett doesn’t quite go into as much detail about his private life, it’s concerning to read about how their mental health was affected by working in this sort of profession.

I don’t think I enjoyed this quite as much as Unnatural Causes. I’m not sure why, it may be related to the writing style or the focus on the non-scientific side of post-mortems. But despite this I still really enjoyed reading about such an interesting topic and about all of Everett's cases, and it’s good to hear that his story turned out alright in the end.

Kudos

AJaneClark (3975 KP) Oct 25, 2020

I’m pleased you enjoyed it. And yes the writing styles are very different, but the content is extremely concerning. I do hope things are changing with the emergence of these accounts being published for all sectors

Kudos