Jane:

Sometimes I catch sight of a new book I just have to read as soon as possible. It doesn’t happen often and it’s always a leap of faith; will a favourite author dash my expectation of brilliance – or will they, once again, triumph.

Elizabeth Buchan’s The Museum of Broken Promises is, like her other books, a slow starter. I have learnt to be patient while she creates a tapestry of detail so rich and wonderful, holding my breath until to story tips into second, third and fourth gears and becomes unputdownable.

The book is set in Paris in the present day and in Prague in the 1980s. The end of the Cold War was in touching distance, yet nobody knew it, and this adds an additional poignancy to the narrative. Laure, a young woman coming to terms with the death of her father is an au pair to a businessman and party insider, and while trying to make some sense of life behind the Iron Curtain, meets a dissident musician who steals her heart and soul. Years later in France, she sets up the Museum of Broken Promises, full of artefacts people donate in attempt to avenge or assuage the pain of betrayal – and some of them belong to her own past.

Slowly the book teases out truths from a long ago Czechoslovakian summer. One moment achingly beautiful, the other shocking in its violence, the whole fits together like a handmade glove. It stayed with me, too – and it’s only now I’m writing this review I finally understand the most important promise. And who broke it. A must read. Honestly.

Kitty:

This month I have been racing through the romcoms. I have just finished Lindsey’s Kelk’s One in a Million and absolutely loved it. She writes with such quick-fire wit that every page had me giggling and a little bit in awe. I enjoyed myself so much, I read it over two days, that I have gone and bought lots more of her books and am looking forward to laughing my way through autumn.

I also devoured The Man Who Didn’t Call by Rosie Walsh. I was immediately drawn into this novel. It tells the story of Sarah and Eddie and how they fall deeply and desperately in love over the course of a week, the reader is in no doubt that these two are bound to be together, that anything else would be ridiculous. Then Eddie goes on holiday and Sarah never hears from him again. This provides a thriller-like element to the story, where is he? Why has he not called? What on earth has happened? This is combined with their romance, the angst of the waiting for a phone-call, a connection that you know was special, that simply can’t peter out. I won’t give anything away and reviews show this is a little bit of a marmite book, but I absolutely adored it and suffered that sad book hangover feeling you have when a story you have loved has come to an end. Highly recommended.

I’ve just started Evie Dunmore’s Bringing Down the Duke and as a life-long fan of Julia Quinn I am over the moon to find another writer who can deliver such well-written historical comedy gold, this time set in Victorian Oxford rather than the Regency period. With whip smart dialogue and a fabulous premise, a bluestocking gathering support for The Women’s Suffrage movement, how can I not fall in love?