Blog tour The Museum of Lost Love by Gary Barker a #Randomthings #BlogTour

Blog tour The Museum of Lost Love by Gary Barker a #Randomthings #BlogTour

Hello blog readers and book lovers. Today I am joining in the Blog Tour for The Museum of Lost Love by Gary Barker, organised by Randomthingstours.

With its beginnings in Croatia, it brought back memories of a wonderful trip to the former Yugoslavia which I took before the war which split the country apart. It reminded me that the place I explored no longer exists and as well as the country being fractured and broken, it's people are damaged by the atrocities too.

My review – The Museum of lost love – Gary Barker

Today I’m sharing my review of the Museum of Lost love by Gary Barker for the Blog Tour organised by Randomthingstours.

This is a short book, practically a novella so if you’re looking for a quick read this might easily fit the bill. 

Set in Croatia, after the recent war which ripped the country apart, this is mainly about a couple, Katia and Goran and a third character Tyler who is also suffering the aftershock of war, he has fought in Afghanistan and it has left him a broken man. The stories of these characters meander about, intertwining and crossing.

Goran and Katia visit a rather unusual museum in Zagreb, which is apparently based on a real exhibition. The museum of lost love displays all kinds of random memorabilia each item accompanied by a letter from the owner explaining why this object reminds them of a past love and each short chapter is preceded by one such exhibit, which is an unusual and original concept. Clothes and small mementoes line the shelves each accompanied by a letter from the owner telling why their heart is broken.

The museum seemed to me like a rather mawkish and grim idea, but it helped me to grasp that this country is a place so ravaged by war that all which remains for many is a few broken belongings and a handful of memories of better times. 

Some of the short tales about broken relationships are utterly heartbreaking and all the more poignant in that most of them are people who don’t even feature in the book so you know nothing else about their lives except their heartache yet they are opening their hearts to a bunch of strangers. It’s not really about the exhibits, in fact I must confess I felt a little uncomfortable finding that some of the “exhibits” were used sex toys (Eeewwww), but it's about the letters and stories which accompany them.

When Katia and Goran pay a visit to the titular museum one exhibit jumps out at Goran. The accompanying story was written by a young girl of fourteen in a refugee camp and he is convinced he is the lost love she writes so poignantly about. He feels he must find out what happened to her.

As he tries to rekindle his lost youth and track her down, Katia too faces her demons and heads off the favelas of Brazil where her own past lies hidden.

What follows is fractured story of damaged people, uncovering past tragedies and memories of appalling atrocities, broken promises and lost hope which is, in turn, haunting and uplifting. Featuring actual conflict and conflicting emotions generated by the siblings of love and hatred it's not an easy read but very compelling.

The Blurb
In Zagreb is an unusual museum: it displays mementos of broken relationships. Each exhibit describes a unique story of a broken heart, of love gone awry.

When Katia and Goran visit the museum, Goran stumbles upon an exhibit that seems to be addressed to him, from a girl he met in a Sarajevo refugee camp at age fourteen. A reminder of two days spent together while he and his mother and brother waited anxiously for visas to America to escape the war.

Encouraged by Katia, a therapist, to reconnect with his lost past, Goran confronts the youth he lost during the Yugoslav Wars. Similarly Katia, adopted by Americans at one week old after her birth mother was murdered in a gangland killing in Brazil, heads back to Brazil to uncover her own family history. 

Meanwhile Tyler, a military veteran and one of Katia’s patients, attempts to put the Afghan war behind him, and finds love in unexpected circumstances.


Drawing upon his own experiences working in conflict zones, Gary Barker’s powerful novels dive deep into human love and longing. Crossing continents, and set against backdrops of war, deprivation, and violence, The Museum of Lost Love is a soulful testament to the resilience of the human heart.

The Author

GARY BARKER is an author, researcher, and human rights activist. He is founder and director of Promundo, an international organization that works with men and boys in more than 25 countries to achieve gender equality and end violence against women. He has been awarded an Ashoka Fellowship and an Open Society Fellowship for his work in conflict zones. His previous novels include Luisa’s Last Words, Mary of Kivu, and The Afghan Vampires Book Club (co-written with Michael Kaufman). Barker lives in Washington, DC.  

https://garytbarker.com/

Critical acclaim for Gary Barker:


‘Partly a satirical broadside against the insanity of war by two writers who have spent years campaigning against violence, The Afghan Vampires Book Club also works as a conspiracy thriller, speculative fiction, and full-on descent into hell.’  Herald

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Review - The Lido by Libby Page - a feel good book

What an absolute delight this book was to read. It's a real feelgood book about loneliness, friendship and people, it has a real sense of place and community.

Set in Brixton, London it centres on a bunch of random and disparate people who are soehow drawn together by a sense of purpose and that reason is to save a Lido swimming pool from being closed down. We must all have come across something like this over recent years. A local council struggling for funds sells off a public building, maybe a library, a swimming baths or a community centre, we complain, we mutter and we possibly sign a petition to try and help save it, but how many of actually take action?

Rosemary and Kate do just that.

The Lido has been part of Rosemarys life for over 80 years, she swam there as a child, met her husband there and spent all of her married life using it, looking out at it from the window of her flat.

Kate is a junior journalist, she lacks confidence and suffers panic attacks, but when she is asked by her boss to write an article about the imminent closure of the local Lido pool, something makes her want to get involved. As this interest is born it begins to change her life in subtle little ways. She finally has a sense of purpose, she begins to make friends and as she gets more and more involved we feel her grow and change.

The main story is of the saving of a place which is important to many people. The real thread which holds it together is that of an unlikely friendship between an 86 year old woman and the young writer, 60 years her junior.

Even if, like me you're not a keen swimmer you won't fail to want the campaign to save the lido to succeed especially when in a series of flashbacks and lovely reminiscences we discover just how much of a part it has played in Rosemarys past.

The cast are wonderful, the story is completely absorbing and full of joy and warmth and love. It's absolutely, without question, the most perfect summer read imaginable and I hope you adore it as much as I did.

The Blurb

A tender, joyous debut novel about a cub reporter and her eighty-six-year-old subject—and the unlikely and life-changing friendship that develops between them.

Kate is a twenty-six-year-old riddled with anxiety and panic attacks who works for a local paper in Brixton, London, covering forgettably small stories. When she’s assigned to write about the closing of the local lido (an outdoor pool and recreation center), she meets Rosemary, an eighty-six-year-old widow who has swum at the lido daily since it opened its doors when she was a child. It was here Rosemary fell in love with her husband, George; here that she’s found communion during her marriage and since George’s death. The lido has been a cornerstone in nearly every part of Rosemary’s life.

But when a local developer attempts to buy the lido for a posh new apartment complex, Rosemary’s fond memories and sense of community are under threat.

As Kate dives deeper into the lido’s history—with the help of a charming photographer—she pieces together a portrait of the pool, and a portrait of a singular woman, Rosemary. What begins as a simple local interest story for Kate soon blossoms into a beautiful friendship that provides sustenance to both women as they galvanize the community to fight the lido’s closure. Meanwhile, Rosemary slowly, finally, begins to open up to Kate, transforming them both in ways they never knew possible.

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Blog Tour and Review - The Sapphire Widow - Dinah Jefferies

Blog Tour - The Sapphire Widow by Dinah Jefferies

It's great to be  part of the blog tour for another gorgeous historical title by the delightful Dinah Jefferies.

The cover is absolutely gorgeous - but what about the story? Read on for my own thoughts about this luscious new book set in 1930s Ceylon.

My Review

Dinah Jefferies has become my go-to author for sheer indulgent escapism. With all her books you know in advance exactly what you’re going to get:
A stunning location beautifully described so well you can feel the heat and smell the spices and a haunting love story with a realistic and likeable heroine.
Intricately researched details and a gripping historical read with a timeless quality which blends factual knowledge with a rich and vivid imagination to create a luscious book to transport the reader away from everyday humdrum life.

This latest offering is a cornucopia of glittering gems, garnished with pungent spices and wrapped in a silken bow of emotions.

In the Sapphire widow the lush location is 1930’s Colonial Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) resonant with the fragrance of cinnamon and tea. The gentle and compassionate heroine is Louisa, a young British woman who’s new life in Ceylon with her husband who turns out to be not quite the man she was hoping he’d be, is soon to be blown apart. It would be remiss of me not to mention the rugged and enigmatic Leo, as different as chalk is to cheese from her suave husband Elliott.

Dinahs life, which seems so promising at the start, is set to become studded with heartbreak and distress as she suffers miscarriage after miscarriage, begins to have doubts about her husband and is then widowed leaving many mysteries, which to overcome her losses she throws herself into uncovering but what she discovers may throw her whole world into complete disarray.

The historical events, painstakingly researched, include Spice trading and plantation life, the gemstone industry and the book with its themes of marital disharmony, loss and secrets, is filled with hidden pasts, lies, passion and opulent descriptions.

Lavish and descriptive and richly evocative, yet never trashy or light and fluffy, this epic romantic saga by one of my favourite authors swept me away on a spice fragranced, colourful magic carpet to experience life as an ex-pat in a foreign country both alien and familiar, with a story which is both heartbreaking and uplifting.

Dinah Jefferies was born in Malaysia and her love for the Orient shines through her writing.

The Sapphire Widow is a wonderful read. Parts were pretty difficult for me, especially when Louisa suffers repeated, heartbreaking miscarriages, loss is a theme which runs throughout the book and is handled with sensitivity by the author, yet still tugs at the heart.

I can recommend this enchanting book to anyone who has already discovered Dinah Jefferies work, perhaps when the Tea Planters Wife was recommended by Richard and Judy’s book club.

For those readers who haven’t read her work yet (and I have to ask - why not??) It’s a great starting point.

For more about the story I’ll leave you to read it. Newly published it's available from Amazon and all good booksellers.

The Blurb

A sweeping, breath-taking story of love and betrayal from the Number One Sunday Times bestselling author of The Tea Planter's Wife

Ceylon, 1935. Louisa Reeve, the daughter of a successful British gem trader, and her husband Elliot, a charming, thrill-seeking businessman, seem like the couple who have it all. Except what they long for more than anything: a child.

While Louisa struggles with miscarriages, Elliot is increasingly absent, spending much of his time at a nearby cinnamon plantation, overlooking the Indian ocean. After his sudden death, Louisa is left alone to solve the mystery he left behind. Revisiting the plantation at Cinnamon Hills, she finds herself unexpectedly drawn towards the owner Leo, a rugged outdoors man with a chequered past. The plantation casts a spell, but all is not as it seems. And when Elliot's shocking betrayal is revealed, Louisa has only Leo to turn to...

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Review - The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar

My Review

A very atmospheric and enthralling historical novel about a man who seeks to fill the emptiness in his life with wonder and beauty, which almost becomes his downfall.

Jonah Hancock is a middle aged widower, an 18th century merchant and not taken to flights of fancy. He could be said to be staid and unimaginative. But when he is offered a chance to accrue riches beyond his dreams by gambling his fortunes on the ownership of a curiosity, a strange thing found on a fated sea voyage which he is assured is that mythical beast - a mermaid, he acts out of character and sets in motion a series of events which ARE about to change his life, just perhaps not in the way he could have imagined.

Persuaded that the way to recoup any losses invested in this awful and frightening denizen of the deep is to display it in public, eventually brings onto his radar the beautiful and capricious Angelica, a courtesan of some repute, her shallowness and flightiness is the opposite of his dull, ponderous nature yet opposites attract for many reasons and the pair are destined to become a mismatched couple. But the mermaid which brought them together may be the very thing which rips them apart and becomes an obsession which can only lead to heartache for one or both of them.

It is a story of relationships and greed, loneliness and desperation and the lengths people can be pushed to. It is a character driven story and those characters are not wholly likeable, they develop and change so much a complete metamorphosis of their natures takes place which is a little hard to come to grips with, but understandable when you appreciate their circumstances.

This book is not quite what I expected, the characters are quite flawed and entirely disparate, yet the story is a compelling one, although it does drag quite slowly in the middle it meanders and rambles and eventually gets us to where we want to be.

Nevertheless, it is very descriptive and engaging and for anyone who enjoys a historical tale with a difference this is a great read.

The Blurb

One September evening in 1785, the merchant Jonah Hancock hears urgent knocking on his front door. One of his captains is waiting eagerly on the step. He has sold Jonah’s ship for what appears to be a mermaid.

As gossip spreads through the docks, coffee shops, parlours and brothels, everyone wants to see Mr Hancock’s marvel. Its arrival spins him out of his ordinary existence and through the doors of high society. At an opulent party, he makes the acquaintance of Angelica Neal, the most desirable woman he has ever laid eyes on… and a courtesan of great accomplishment. 

This meeting will steer both their lives onto a dangerous new course, on which they will learn that priceless things come at the greatest cost.

Where will their ambitions lead? And will they be able to escape the destructive power mermaids are said to possess?

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