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PetaAshleigh

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The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

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PetaAshleigh is Currently Reading

PetaAshleigh is currently reading

Coming Home

by Rosamunde Pilcher

bookshelves: my-reviews, read2025, currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in September 2025

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PetaAshleigh said: " 4.5/5⭐️

This was one of those rare books that, whilst reading it, transported me into the story itself. For the substantial 977 pages of this sweeping historical fiction, I was fully immersed in the story. The characters inhabited my life for a little 4.5/5⭐️

This was one of those rare books that, whilst reading it, transported me into the story itself. For the substantial 977 pages of this sweeping historical fiction, I was fully immersed in the story. The characters inhabited my life for a little while and upon completion, the journey felt more like a memory than something I had read.

I know that sounds silly, but something about these characters was so alive and although the story was slow, meandering and nostalgic, the lengthy exposition was cosy and comforting.

At first glance it seemed to be simply a historical fiction, beautifully British, comforting in its familiarity. But that surface simplicity gave way to something far more sweeping and profound. This was an ode to time and place and the invisible threads that tied people together. It had a nostalgic quality that felt utterly timeless.

What struck me most was how tangible the characters were. I don’t just remember their names, I remember ‘them’. Their voices, their fears, the way they moved through the world. They were flawed and brilliant, strong and vulnerable, completely and utterly human. Pilcher has a remarkable gift for characterisation; every person we met in this book felt like someone we might know or someone we once were.

Often, when stories shift from one point of view to another, the transitions feel jarring. But here, the shifts were seamless, almost imperceptible, woven together with such deftness that you never lost your sense of narrative or direction.

And then of course there was Cornwall, a character in its own right. Pilcher writes place the way poets write emotion. There were moments where I had to pause and consult a map, not because I was confused, but because I wanted to see it. I needed to place myself there, to anchor my imagination in the real-world geography she described so faithfully.

There was something so recognisably and wonderfully British about the world Pilcher creates: the restraint, the stoicism, the subtle emotional undercurrents, the unspoken rules and expectations. It made me reflect on my time living in England with gladness.

But beyond the aesthetic beauty, beyond the characters and the setting and the structure, what I appreciated most was the emotional terrain this book covers. It tiptoed into enormous, sometimes painful questions. What does it mean to belong? Where do we find our home? Is home a place, or is it the people we love? Is it a feeling, a memory, a moment?
Pilcher explored love, war, grief, isolation, morality, longing… all of it with such ease that you don’t realise how deeply it affected you until long after the last page.

I’ve never come away from a book quite like I did with this one. And I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to fully explain why. But then some stories don’t need to be explained, they just need to be felt. ...more "

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Sep 19, 2025 12:23AM · see review

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Bones (Bones, #1)

by K.L. Speer (Goodreads Author)

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East of Eden

by John Steinbeck

bookshelves: tbr-top10, book-club-options, currently-reading

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— Mar 05, 2026 05:50PM

Mar 05, 2026 05:50PM

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PetaAshleigh’s Quotes

“A society cannot make a man a monster, Diago. But it can give him the excuse to become one.”
― James Islington, The Strength of the Few

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“The power to protect is the highest responsibility.”
― James Islington, The Strength of the Few

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“Ranching was life distilled: birth and death, the hard winter giving way to spring, and spring to the heat and fast black storms of summer. There was a violence in it, a violence you tried in all ways to diminish but a violence you nonetheless had to know and hold. In this tilting world, when so many had gotten away from anything resembling the actual, were living what Rene thought of as supermarket lives, ranching at least kept you close to what mattered, to what was real.”
― Joe Wilkins, The Entire Sky

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“I don't like it either but when power is so entrenched, so impossibly distant, blood becomes the only possible currency of change.”
― James Islington, The Strength of the Few

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“If all you’re trying to do is change who’s in control, then you don’t really want to change anything.”
― James Islington, The Will of the Many

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