The Italic typeface is a cursive font used to denote someone speaking or highlight a foreign word or phrase. It takes its name from the fact that calligraphy inspired typefaces were first designed in Italy and were invented to replace the old Chancery style of writing.  Nowadays we all usually use the default of Calibri or san Serif, when writing an email or composing a word document, as I do with the drafts of these reviews. It may look nice for presentation purposes to intersperse a piece with Italics, but you can have too much of a good thing, as it seems in this months second book review, which is The Home by Sarah Stovell and published by Orenda Books (www.orendabooks.co.uk).

When the body of a teenager is found in a churchyard on Christmas morning, the community is shocked, but are not surprised, as the victim was a resident of a nearby home for troubled kids. As the police investigation gets underway, the lives of three of the children, Hope, Lara and Annie, along with the staff become intertwined. Very soon, shocking and disturbing revelations come to light – pointing to this being a murder perpetrated for revenge.

I’m going to be blunt, this book didn’t get me and I didn’t really get into the book. The main reason for this was that from the outset, whole chapters are printed in Italics. Hey I like Italics as much as the next person, but when the story is interrupted by these long soliloquies of Italicized text, it breaks the flow of the story which already had me jumping about trying follow the different chapters told through eyes of each of three main characters.

This is the second book I’ve read in the past month that’s been set around Christmas time in England, but unlike Shamus Dust by Janet Roger, which is also a murder mystery, the Home had none of the same appeal. It is set somewhere in around the wilds of Yorkshire but where Shamus Dust allowed the reader to almost breathe in their surroundings and feel truly immersed in the tale set in dark seedy world of post war London, Stovell’s book left me grappling to find a character to connect with or even get excited about “who dunnit”.

Sarah Stovell

This English author Sarah Stovell’s (@sarahlovescrime) second book, her first was Exquisite published in 2017. Having spent most of her life in the home counties, she spent a season working in a remote North Yorkshire youth hostel, which made her realise she was a northerner at heart. When not writing she’s a lecturer in creative writing at Lincoln university and lives in Northumberland with her partner and two children.

As I often say, this is just my opinion and if you want to find out what it’s really like, then go out and purchase a copy at your local bookshop, download it, or even order a copy from the Library.  Sarah will hopefully write other books and with the good grace of Karen and the team at Orenda, I’ll get the chance review them and you never know, they may blow my little cotton socks off. but unfortunately this time around, The Home didn’t…

Reviewed by Adrian Murphy

This review is part of a Random Things Blog Tour, to find out what the others thought visit their sites listed below. Then if you get a copy and read it comeback tell us you thought, we’d really appreciate the feedback.