I always love a good story about women, and by a woman! :-)4 different women, but each strong in their own way. Each fiercely protective of their families. Sigrid in her well polished exterior, but with emotions bubbling under the surface, Petra, who seems docile and in dire need of protection, w...
This is the third book I have read and am still enjoying Joanna's novels. A has been singer musician dies and leaves not just one but two dis-functional families. First family was a traditional one wife and son who are from his home town. The second much younger woman who has three daughters w...
The story of a married woman who falls in love with another woman, this novel is, in many ways, like a lot of Trollope's work: fiction about women in villages in England who have to deal with a problem of some kind. With the exception of the lesbianism part. I think the thing I found most jarri...
I bought this book ages ago because the plot seemed intriguing. Two friends Gina and Laurence and their respective families and how they cope with the breaking down of marriage and a love that blossoms from it. Well that's kind of how it was described on the jacket sleeve.Only when I started it i...
I've read Joanna Trollope's novels for years and generally think I liked the earlier ones more than the later books. When I was adding all my reading & book records to Goodreads & LibraryThing recently I was surprised to find this book popping up as unread as I thought I had read all of the earli...
The novel was thoroughly readable but for me somehow never quite escaped an aura of soap opera about it and certainly a fair dollop of sentimentality and old lace. I also felt that it was written rather too obviously in the shadow of the author's grandfather and the Barchester Chronicles; but arg...
I have recently found my biological brother after a very long search covering years and I looked very hard to find a book that would help me sort out some of my feelings. I found that not only were there hardly any books on adoptions period, but that the library collection of them was even worse...
Has Next of Kin ever been on Oprah's book list? If not, it should have been. Almost a perfect choice for Oprah, although perhaps not quite grim enough.Until about 2/3rds of the way through I thought - I don't dislike this book but I don't quite like it either. I began to like it better as I re...
There is quite a problematic question analysed in this book: what is eventually needed that a woman would be happy? This book presents the two most common scenarios: a traditional family with a caring husband, children, a comfortable home on one hand, and a life of a single, career-oriented lady,...
January 28, 2012Well. That was definitely not the ending of a fun little romp. Definitely not the chick-lit I was hoping for. Never the less it was a good book. The way she tells the story from the different points of views of all involved may make things seem a little disjointed, unlike if w...
"Other People's Children" by Joanna Trollope was a really good read, and probably one of the most honest books I've read in a while. During this novel, Ms. Trollope tackles and wrestles with an issue that seems to permeate throughout society, no matter where you are residing. She takes the issu...
The jamming had clearly been hasty because the flip-top lid was wedged ajar by a corner of the box. When he opened the lid fully and peered in, he saw the flattened plastic pouches of a sugary children’s fruit drink that the nanny had been expressly forbidden to give Maisie and Fred, and a couple...
He was obviously services, being in khaki trousers and an epauletted ribbed sweater, but he was sitting under a tree on the ground and he didn’t seem to have a coat, and it was, after all, late November, and although it was quite a nice day, it wasn’t the right kind of day or weather for sitting ...
‘I don’t care for that kind of joke’. Russell sat on the edge of her desk. He said, ‘Haven’t you noticed anything different lately?’ ‘In what way—’ ‘About me’. She shot him a glance. ‘About you—’ ‘Yes’. ‘Well,’ Maeve said, taking her hands off the keyboard, ‘you’re in a little earlier’. ‘Exactly’...
He stopped the car at once, dead, and the rush-hour queue in Beaumont Street leant angrily on its collective horn, and blasted him. He sprang out of the car, and hurried round the bonnet. ‘I’m so sorry,’ James said, stooping over her. ‘I’m so desper...