I am delighted to be taking part in the blog tour for The Lost Daughter by Gill Paul today. Along with my review of Gill’s latest book I have a giveaway! Read about the book and my thoughts on it and then find out how to enter to win a paperback copy of The Lost Daughter and a The Lost Daughter postcard signed by Gill!

The Blurb

A Russian princess. An extraordinary sacrifice. A captivating secret…
From the author of The Secret Wife, a gripping journey through decades and across continents, of love, devastating loss and courage against all odds.
1918
With the country they once ruled turned against them, the future of Russia’s imperial family hangs in the balance. When middle daughter Maria Romanova captivates two of the guards, it will lead to a fateful choice between right and wrong.
Fifty-five years later . . .
Val rushes to her father’s side when she hears of his troubling end-of-life confession: ‘I didn’t want to kill her.’ As she unravels the secrets behind her mother’s disappearance when she was twelve years old, she finds herself caught up in one of the world’s greatest mysteries.

My Thoughts

After loving The Secret Wife I was extremely excited to discover that Gill Paul was once again revisiting the Romanov dynasty in her next book, The Lost Daughter. I have been fascinated by Russian history since I did an A level in Modern British and European History many (many!) years ago and so to read a fiction novel that incorporates Russian history is always going to be a book I want to read, especially when it is written by Gill Paul.

The Lost Daughter is told over two timelines. One follows Maria Romanov in Russia from April 1918 onwards and the other follows Val in Sydney, Australia, from October 1973. Both women are going through difficulties but for very different reasons and both stories are incredibly emotional. Paul once again demonstrates her skill as a writer as she manages to seamlessly weave between eras and countries without ever leaving the reader feeling more invested in one storyline over the other. Her writing and characterisation is such that you are equally interested in each.

Val’s story centres on her quest for the truth following the death of her Russian father. On his death bed her father says ‘I didn’t mean to kill her’ and Val is, obviously, keen to discover what he meant given her mother mysteriously left the family when Val was a teenager. A cold man, Val wonders if he actually killed her mother. What she goes on to learn about her father and his history turns out to be beyond anything she could ever have imagined.

Paul has created a depth around Val’s storyline and it never feels like a secondary part to The Lost Daughter. Val escapes from an abusive husband during a time in which domestic abuse was not taken seriously, and the reader can’t help but be drawn in to Val’s struggle and to be moved by the challenges she faces.

My favourite thread has to be the one that follows Maria Romanov, though. Imagine if one of the Grand Duchesses survived the execution that was meted out to the family? What would life have been like for her and how would she survive and go undiscovered? Paul answers these questions in The Lost Daughter and makes it realistic. This realism, however, brings with it heartbreak so be prepared to shed tears.

I really like the way that Paul delicately portrays both sides of the Russian people at that time. While she clearly portrays Maria as innocent – a victim of who she was born to – which she was, she also portrays how the Russian people were suffering under the Romanov’s rule. While the Tsar and his family lived in luxury the Russian people were starving. Maria seems to have been oblivious to this fact and this may well have been the case.

It is clear that The Lost Daughter has been carefully researched as Paul takes us through Russia following the revolution, through Lenin and Stalin’s rule to Brezhnev. She completely captures the fear and paranoia that the Russian people felt during Stalin’s rule to the point that they could not speak openly in front of their own children. The Lost Daughter is utterly heartbreaking at times as Paul brings to life the atrocities faced by the Russian people during this era.

Another wonderful book by Gill Paul, I can’t recommend The Lost Daughter highly enough. It is beautifully written, full of emotion, historically accurate and fascinating. She has managed, once again, to bring to life one of the most interesting albeit brutal periods of history and make it accessible and readable. The Lost Daughter is a must for your bookshelf.

The Lost Daughter is published on 18 October 2018 by Headline Review. You can buy your copy HERE.

About the Author

Gill Paul is an author of historical fiction, specialising in relatively recent history. Her new novel, Another Woman’s Husband, is about links you might not have been aware of between Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, and Diana, Princess of Wales.

Gill’s other novels include The Secret Wife, published in 2016, about the romance between cavalry officer Dmitri Malama and Grand Duchess Tatiana, the second daughter of Russia’s last tsar, who first met in 1914. Women and Children First is about a young steward who works on the Titanic. The Affair was set in Rome in 1961–62 as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton fell in love while making Cleopatra. And No Place for a Lady is about two Victorian sisters who travel out to the Crimean War of 1854–56 and face challenges beyond anything they could have imagined.

Gill also writes historical non-fiction, including A History of Medicine in 50 Objects, and a series of Love Stories, each containing fourteen tales of real-life couples: how they met, why they fell for each other, and what happened in the end. Published around the world, this series includes Royal Love Stories, World War I Love Stories and Titanic Love Stories.

Gill was born in Glasgow and grew up there, apart from an eventful year at school in the US when she was ten. She studied Medicine at Glasgow University, then English Literature and History (she was a student for a long time), before moving to London to work in publishing. She started her own company producing books for publishers, along the way editing such luminaries as Griff Rhys Jones, John Suchet, John Julius Norwich, Ray Mears and Eartha Kitt. She also writes on health, nutrition and relationships.

Gill swims year-round in an open-air pond – “It’s good for you so long as it doesn’t kill you”– and is a devotee of Pilates. She also particularly enjoys travelling on what she calls “research trips” and attempting to match-make for friends.
WEBSITE : www.gillpaul.com

TWITTER : @GillPaulAUTHOR

Giveaway

I am delighted to be able to giveaway a paperback copy of The Lost Daughter and a signed The Lost Daughter  postcard to one lucky reader. Unfortunately, the giveaway is only open to UK residents – sorry! Enter here:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The winner will be announced on Tuesday 23 October 2018. Good luck!

Huge thanks to Gill Paul and Headline Review for the advance copy of The Lost Daughter and to Anne Cater of Random Things Blog Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour.

I am delighted to be joining the blog tour for Dear Mr Pop Star by Derek and Dave Philpott today. This book is completely different to anything else I have read. Here is what it is about followed by my thoughts.

The Blurb

For more than a decade, Derek Philpott and his son, Dave, have been writing to pop stars from the 1960s to the 90s to take issue with the lyrics of some of their best-known songs.
But then, to their great surprise, the pop stars started writing back…
Dear Mr Pop Star contains 100 of Derek and Dave’s greatest hits, including correspondence with Katrina and the Waves, Tears for Fears, Squeeze, The Housemartins, Suzi Quatro, Devo, Deep Purple, Nik Kershaw, T Pau, Human League, Eurythmics, Wang Chung, EMF, Mott the Hoople, Heaven 17, Jesus Jones, Johnny Hates Jazz, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, Chesney Hawkes and many, many more.

My Thoughts

Every now and again we need a total change from the types of books we normally read. Dear Mr Pop Star by Derek and Dave Philpott certainly offered that change. A series of letters by Derek Philpott to various bands and pop stars querying certain aspects of their lyrics is an interesting concept and even more so when those he writes to writes back.

This book is like nothing I have read before and I suspect it is highly unlikely that I will again. Dear Mr Pop Star is set out as the letters Philpott has written to the various stars. The majority are followed by responses from the stars and others are like postcards that have not been responded to. The letters are hilarious and Derek Philpott’s observations are dry, witty and have you shaking your head in agreement while laughing out loud. Being a proofreader, I really appreciated his observations on the grammar of some band names and lyrics. The letter he wrote to Doctor and the Medics is brilliant. I’m not going to go into detail, you will have to read it yourself, and it is worth getting the book for that one alone. Other gems include his observations on Nik Kershaw’s ‘The Riddle’, Bananarama’s ‘Really Saying Something’ and Cutting Crew’s ‘I Just Died in your Arms Tonight’. They are undoubtedly funny but they also demonstrate a real intelligence and quick wit.

What really surprised me was the amount of responses he had received back. They are not brief responses either. The various stars have really taken their time over their responses and I was delighted to see how they took Philpott’s observations in good humour.

Being of a certain age *cough, cough* I really appreciated the letters to the above and other stars of the 80s and 90s such as T’Pau, EMF, Carter USM and others. I have to confess that there were a few bands that I didn’t know and I tended to skip over these letters as I didn’t really get what was being referred to. This did not, however, impact on my enjoyment of Dear Mr Pop Star.

Incredibly quirky, Dear Mr Pop Star is a work of real ingenuity and the letters are very well written. This is a book I will dip into time and time again when I need a good laugh. A completely unique concept that I hope the Philpott’s will continue and bring out more volumes of. Highly recommended.

Published on 20 September 2018 by Unbound, you can get a copy HERE.

A huge thank you to Derek and Dave Philpott for my advance copy of Dear Mr Pop Star and for inviting me to take part in the blog tour.