Friday 10 July 2015

A Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman



Thanks to Elizabeth Masters and Tinder Press, I received a copy of this in exchange for an honest review.................

Meet Marvellous Ways, an old woman who has entered her 90th year.  It's 1947 and she lives in a caravan by a creek in Cornwall where she still swims everyday.  It tells her story of love and her life and that she is waiting for something to happen. That something is a meeting with Francis Drake by chance, a returning solider from the Second World War who is determined to fulfill a dying man’s wish.  The two form an unlikely friendship and Marvellous recognises Drake’s sadness.  She sets out to try and lift his depression and reignite his passion for life by telling him stories about her three great loves.

To be honest I'm not sure how I feel about this one.  I neither loved it nor hated it, I thought it started off really well and had great potential but sadly I was finding myself going back and re-reading parts of it is not a straightforward story.  I also thought that some of the characters names would've suited a story set in the Deep South more so than Cornwall, like Marvellous Ways, Peace & Francis Drake amongst others.  It took a while for me to get into this book and from one page to the next I was never sure if I was going to keep turning pages or put it down but I continued.  It was very easy to put down and go do something else for a while, that's why it took me so long to finish this, unfortunately that's not what I'm looking for in a book. I want a story I can't bear to put down, I want to lose track of time while in the story and have it finished in a few hours, I didn't get that with this one.  I'm sorry but I really tried to like this but unfortunately it wasn't for me.

This is Sarah Winman's second novel, the first been When God was a Rabbit which I haven't read yet but even though I was disappointed with A Year of Marvellous Ways I will read Sarah's first novel.

A Year of Marvellous Ways is available on Kindle and in all good bookstores.

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