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My review of Eliza Waite by Ashley Sweeney This is a very enjoyable work of historical fiction which however reads like 2 separate books! Both of which I hasten to add I enjoyed. Eliza Waite, the eponymous heroine of the tale is a strong and resourceful character. Considered big and clumsy and even unattractive she makes her way in life the best she is able with the few skills she has and the ones she hasn't already got she learns or adapts to. The first part of the book tells of her time living mostly alone on a remote island off Washington in the late 19th century. Recently widowed she is loath to mourn the death of a man she never loved, but when fate saw fit to take her beloved only son as well it's hardly surprising she becomes almost unhinged in her grief and decides to remain on this virtually uninhabited isle and forge a living surviving the best way she can. I think I liked this part of the book best, with its air of pioneering and survivalist minimalism in a natural e...

My Review of Goldsmith Jones by Sam Taylor-Pye Goldsmith Jones - It's like Oliver Twist with sodomy! Set in the wild west, in the gold rush era, the eponymous character is a teenage rent boy and he is a damn' fool! He just never learns from his mistakes and he gets himself into many risky situations he could so easily avoid, yet lands himself in scalding water, again and again. I'm not really sure why I found this book so engaging, but I rolled with it and really rather enjoyed it. It's certainly different and darkly exciting. Goldsmith Jones "My name's not Nancy or Boy" arrives, with his long blond hair tucked beneath a greasy cap, in San Francisco in the mid 19th century to find it a lawless and poverty ridden place. Orphaned and soon on the run from the law, he begins a life of male prostitution to earn himself a roof over his head and a crust and soon falls in with a succession of unsavoury characters, who in the main, treat him badly, apart from the n...