Review: The Book of Summers

Title: The Book of Summers

Author: Emylia Hall

Publisher: Headline Review (UK)

When Beth Lowe's father arrives on her doorstep with a package postmarked Hungary, she doesn't want to open it. It's the country where her Hungarian mother abandoned her and her English father when Beth - then known as Erszi - was nine years old. It's the country she returned to summer after summer for seven years, until she was 16. She hasn't been back since, hasn't allowed herself even to think about it.

But when she opens the parcel, and finds The Book of Summers, Beth can't help but remember. Each holiday lovingly documented by her elusive mother, glorious and bittersweet, comes tumbling back - right up until the moment it all ended and the lies came tumbling down.

Review: The Snow Child

Title: The Snow Child

Author: Eowyn Ivey

Publisher: Headline Review (UK)

Alone in their homestead on the Alaskan frontier, Mabel mends shirts and mourns for the child she lost long ago, whilst Jack struggles to carve out a new life for them before the harsh winter snows come. It was supposed to be a fresh start, but out here, alone but for the sounds of the wild, lost dreams loom all the more.

The tale of the Russian snow child is just a story - or is it? When the snowgirl Jack and Mabel have built is destroyed and an elusive child appears in its place, who is to know if she is flesh and blood, or an imagining brought on by grief and loneliness? And if she will be theirs, does it matter?

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