Blog Tour ~ Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Golden Samovar by Olga Wojtas..

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to be part of the blog tour 

Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Golden Samovar 

Contraband
(An imprint of Saraband Books)
25 January 2018

What's it all about ...

Fifty-something Shona is a proud former pupil of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls, but has a deep loathing for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which she thinks gives her alma mater a bad name.

Impeccably educated and an accomplished martial artist, linguist and musician, Shona is thrilled when selected by Marcia Blaine herself to travel back in time for a one-week mission in 19th-century Moscow: to pair up the beautiful, shy, orphaned heiress Lidia Ivanovna with Sasha, a gorgeous young man of unexplained origins.

But, despite all her accomplishments and good intentions, Shona might well have got the wrong end of the stick about her mission. As the body count rises, will she discover in time just who the real villain is?

My thoughts...

Shona McMonagle is employed as a librarian at the Morningside Library in Edinburgh, where she is proud to consider herself as one of the crème de la crème girls from Marcia Blaine's esteemed establishment. When Shona is approached by none other than the revered, Marcia Blaine herself, she is amazed to find that not only does Marcia Blaine know her name but also that she has an important time travelling mission for her.

I don't quite know where to begin trying to explain Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Golden Samovar as nothing I can say would do justice to this lively romp into the nineteenth century aristocratic world of Counts and Countesses, Prince and Princesses, and of afternoon tea served from a giant eagle embossed Samovar. And yet, however, bizarre this seems, the aptly named, time traveller,Shona Fergusovna, is even more unusual as she completely turns the ordered life of the Russian aristocracy upside down in her quest to discover a deadly secret.

Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Golden Samovar is one of those stories which shouldn’t be taken too seriously. It’s laugh out loud funny in places and so convoluted that I gave up trying to figure out where the story was going and just let the story evolve, which it does at a cracking pace. The characters are beautifully caricatured, especially the moneyed countesses who vie for Shona’s attention, and the beautiful, Lidia Ivanovna’s wonderful Nanny, who spends her time knitting colourful, Fichus to cover her young lady’s décolletage.

Original, funny and with a deliciously quirky edge, Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Golden Samovar is delightful from beginning to end and I can't wait to see where Shona's time travelling adventures take her to next. In the hands of this talented new author, the possibilities are endless.

About the Author

Olga Wojtas was born and brought up in Edinburgh where she attended James Gillespie’s High School – the model for Marcia Blaine School for Girls, which appears in Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She was encouraged to write by an inspirational English teacher there, Iona M. Cameron. Olga won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in 2015 and has had more than 30 short stories published in magazines and anthologies.

Twitter @OlgaWojtas

Amazon UK

The launch of this book is part of the Muriel Spark 100 centenary programme. More information on www.murielspark100.com 

Twitter @murielspark100

Do visit the other Blog Tour stops

Blog Tour ~ Sweet William by Iain Maitland

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to host today's stop on the 

Sweet William Blog Tour

Contraband
October 2017

My thanks to  the publishers and also to Ruth Killick Publicity for my review copy of this book
 and the invitation to be part of this blog tour

What's it about ...

Just One Chance. Now or Never. Run

A father desperate to be with his young son escapes from a secure psychiatric hospital, knowing he has just one chance for the two of them to start a new life together. He plans to snatch the three-year-old – and run away to a new life in France … but first he must find the boy, who has been fostered by his murdered wife’s family, and stay clear of the police, already in pursuit. He will be utterly ruthless in pursuit of this outcome. But William is a diabetic who needs insulin to stay alive…

Cut through with dark humour, Sweet William is a story of mental illness, a foster family under pressure, and an aggrieved father separated from his precious child. As the fugitives are pursued through the back roads of East Anglia the story reaches its terrifying climax. The result is an incisive and deeply affecting literary thriller.

My thoughts about it ...

This is one of those difficult books to review without exposing anything of the story, as to give even the smallest hint of what's happening would be to spoil, what is, a very compelling and, it must said, decidedly dark thriller. 

Being caught up in the life of this desperate father, who wants to spend time with his adored son, should on the surface work out well, however, the father in Sweet William isn't anything like your typical father. To say that he has been confined in a secure psychiatric unit for committing heinous crimes is enough to set your teeth on edge from the very start of the story, the opening of which, makes for compelling reading. 

Sweet William moves along quickly in real time and the way in which this unique forty-eight hour time lapse evolves allows the story to have a scarily realistic edge. There is much to be aware of, both in terms of the capriciousness of a supremely flawed individual, and also, far beyond this unpredictability there are elements of the story which terrified me, not in a 'being afraid of the dark' sort of fearfulness, more in an escalating feeling of apprehension, which made me very uncomfortable, both in terms of the eventual outcome, and ultimately, for the safety of young, William. 

Sweet William is a taut and tense psychological thriller. The author commands the narrative well and keeps the momentum from start to finish. The roller coaster of a journey he takes us on is highlighted by the vividly descriptive way he brings to life the difficulty and emotional impact of a family, and an individual, in absolute turmoil.

About the author

Iain Maitland is the acclaimed author of Dear Michael, Love Dad (Hodder, 2016), a moving book of letters written to his son, who suffered from depression and anorexia. Iain is an ambassador for Stem4, the teenage mental health charity, and has discussed mental health issues on The One Show. He lives in Felixstowe.

Twitter @iainmaitland #SweetWilliam @SarabandBooks

Amazon UK

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