Wardrobe Wisdom From A Royal Lady’s Maid – Alicia Healy

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This is a gorgeously illustrated ‘how to’ for dressing and taking care of your clothes written by Alicia Healy who trained at Buckingham Palace, before travelling the world, taking care of her wealthy clients’ wardrobes –  in summary I couldn’t have been more excited about this book when I saw it on the shelves in Waterstones.  The part where it has been published by The National Trust also greatly excited me as I spent a summer volunteering with The National Trust in their historical fashion collection and loved every minute of it.Read More »

All Souls – Shadow Of Night by Deborah Harkness

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So after my long and very rambling review of A Discovery of Witches, I hope to make more sense with this one – but no promises.

Shadow of Night is the second instalment in Deborah Harkness’ All Souls Trilogy and picks up right where ‘A Discovery of Witches’ left off, as Matthew and Diana journey to the past in order to unravel the mysteries of Ashmole 782 and to find a witch to help Diana embrace her magic. It sounds quite simple when I say it like that, but of course for a book that stretches over 630 pages it is not going to be as simple as that.

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All Souls – A Discovery Of Witches by Deborah Harkness

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Now this is a funny review to write as even though I have left it a week since finishing the book – I am still not entirely sure how I feel about this book. I even have notes on this book and I did some research into the author and events mentioned in the book as I wanted to get my facts right before I wrote this review.

So, let me start with saying that this book (and the second in the series) has sat on the bookcase in the spare room since 2014! And if it hadn’t been for the advert showing the TV adaptation, the books would have probably stayed on the shelf until I eventually caved and read them or donated them to charity.

But once I properly started it, I was racing through it and was hooked.Read More »

The Craftsman – Sharon Bolton

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The Craftsman by Sharon Bolton is fantastic! I thoroughly enjoyed this book. At first glance, this doesn’t look like my kind of thing – with witches and dark magic in the blurb. However, the way this is written makes this more believable than anything I’ve read of this genre for a little while.

No one was getting out of a Larry Glassbrook casket once they were shut inside. In fairness, very few people tried.

Florence ‘Flossie’ Lovelady is a fresh-out-of-the-academy police officer, new to the area of Sabden, and new to the male-orientated Sadben police force. It’s 1969, and someone is murdering teenagers and burying them in caskets in cemetaries. Larry Glassbrook subsequently confesses and is sent to prison until his death 30 years later.Read More »

Kate’s Nine Challenges For January 2019

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Okay so here we go 2019! Happy New Year and all that – now let’s get down to business, the entire internet is going to be full of January Resolutions at the moment so I am going with something a little different for me and calling them January Challenges!

The idea of these is that while they are very similar to resolutions they are things that I am going to aim to do – and when I fail at 8.30am on the 2nd January ( the moment I lose all goodwill and go to Costa on my way to work), I am not going to beat myself up about it, instead I will call myself a muppet and try again. Also, unlike vague resolutions of ‘I am going to lose a stone’, these are actual plans that hopefully I have thought through. So here goes these are mine and at the end of the month we will see how I have done;

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