Louise Douglas

Another great book from Frank Nappi, alleviating my baseball withdrawal symptoms in the long wait until spring training.

In this book, we meet back up with Mickey and Murph, struggling to come to terms with what happened to Mickey at the end of the last book and get back to playing ball. Mickey has decided that he doesn’t want to play anymore, a decision fully supported by his concerned mother, Molly. Molly has moved in with Murph and Mickey and their relationship is blossoming slowly, as she learns to let go of the controlling past with her ex-husband Clarence.

But Murph needs Mickey to play, the team owner has given him an ultimatum and without Mickey his career is over. Some gentle persuasion from Murph is needed to bring Mickey around.

This book moves on from the difficult subject matter of the last book by diving straight into another tough subject, the racial tensions of the time and the Ku Klux Klan monstrosities that were perpetrated. And Murph jumps right into the center of the trouble when he decides to get a young black man called Lester to come and catch for his team. The baseball colour barrier has only just been broken with Jackie Robinson’s debut, and this small town isn’t quite as accepting.

We stick with Murph, Mickey and Lester through the ups and downs on the season, although these tend to be unfortunately mostly downs. The ups include Murph and Molly getting married, although this was skimmed over in less than a page, which was a little disappointing. Like this, there were other parts of the book where I would have liked to spend a little more time, but all in all, the pacing and the focus of the book was great.

Coming up towards the end of the book, I was getting concerned, then downright angry about how it looked like it was going to end. That is, until the last few pages when the author threw in a curveball (pun most definitely intended) and changed the ending in an extremely unexpected way.

I’ll be sad to let Mickey go now, as I don’t think there’s another sequel and since this was published 3 years ago, I won’t hold out much hope that we’ll get one.

Another great book recommended for any baseball fan more interested in the history of the game and the tensions of the time.

I don’t think a book has ever left me crying at my desk within the first 20 pages, but this one did. And it didn’t stop after that.

I probably should have guessed that a book about a woman dying with cancer was going to be emotional, but I didn’t expect it to be quite such a rollercoaster of emotions. It was definitely a mistake reading it at my desk on my lunch break though, trying to hide the tears as they slowly rolled down my face.

The worst (and best) thing about the book is that you immediately feel like you’re part of the Hayes family. The characters are so well written and relateable that you feel like you’re losing someone dear to you, even though you’ve only been with them for a matter of pages.

Rabbit Hayes is such a brave character, and through her flashback dreams to her earlier life, you experience all the love and loss that she’s been through, as well as the pain that she’s currently experiencing. I think the most heart wrenching thing for me though was the fact that you get the book form the perspectives of all her family and friends, including her young nephews, and worst of all, her 12 year old daughter. I lost my granddad to cancer when I was about 14 and that was bad enough, but losing your mum at 12, and having to look after her with such bravery was just astounding.

The book was so brilliantly written, that it felt almost like a memoir, which I think is what made it so much more emotional, at the back of your mind there’s always the idea that this is a real person, even though you know that truly it’s not.

The book wasn’t all sad though, as well as some poignant moments there was plenty of humour, mostly from Rabbit’s mother. She’s a typical Irish character, and there’s lots of swearing, so this book isn’t for the easily offended. But it’s all swearing in the right places, and it brought the occasional smile to my face while reading what was obviously quite a tough read.

While the start of the book may have made me shed a tear, the end left me almost bawling my eyes out. If I hadn’t been in a crowded office, I know exactly what would have happened. Just a beautiful book front to back, just don’t read it if you’re feeling a little low.

It took me a little while to get into this book, but once I did, it was magical. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, I pretty much only bought it because it was the Waterstones book of the year last year, and so I assumed it must be good. It also helped that it was included in the Richard and Judy book club offer at WH Smith so it was cheap too!

There were parts about the book which I would have changed, some places just felt a bit slow, and I found it hard to warm to Nella as a lead character. I would have preferred if Marin was the lead character, she seemed to have a lot more spunk, but I can see why the book had to be this way.

I’m not going to go into details on the story, as I don’t want to give away any spoilers to such a lovely book, but there were many surprises waiting in store for poor Nella, and the author was very good at keeping you guessing about what was going to happen next. And when she decided to shock you, boy did she shock you!

The book was full of beautiful quotes, but my favourite was this one:

Freedom is a glorious thing. Free yourself. The bars on your cage are of your own making.

It’s just such a lovely sentiment, we can do anything we want to in life, we’re just holding ourselves back.

I absolutely can’t believe that this was Burton’s first novel, it was just so mature and well written. I can’t wait to see what she does next!

It’s been so long since I read any baseball fiction, but when I realised that there were many many many baseball books available on Kindle Unlimited, I was overjoyed! Especially since it seems to have been forever since the end of the baseball season, and spring training seems like so far away!

Since baseball isn’t popular in the UK, books of that genre aren’t publicised over here, so I had no idea what was good and what was bad. So I had no idea what I was in for when I picked this book at random from the list.

I came away with mixed feelings. I loved the plot and the excitement of reading my way through game after game. I didn’t think I would find it interesting, but it’s so easy to get caught up in what you are reading and pretty soon you’re playing the game in your head. The games themselves were so well written that I became completely absorbed and it was almost as if I’d watched the actual game. The scene was set so magically that you could smell the grass and hear the crowd cheering and the excitement building as the game progressed.

The main thing that I didn’t like about the book was that towards the start it seemed quite rambling and there were lots of side tangents which I found confusing. I think this is partly because I was listening to the start of the book while I was driving and the story seemed to drift off into another story without any warning. Maybe this would have been clearer if I’d been reading the book and able to see the formatting, and once I gave up on listening to the book and got further into reading it, it certainly didn’t seem to be as much of a problem.

The title character of Mickey Tussler was so beautifully brought to the page that you couldn’t help feel complete empathy with him. When you saw a situation he was in about to go south, you just wished you could stop it from happening because the bad things that happened to poor Mickey don’t deserve to happen to people with such good hearts.

The twisted nature of some of his teammates and the opposing team was just mind boggling to me, that someone could be so cruel and without remorse was just unthinkable.

I particularly loved being inside Murphy’s mind. The mind of a baseball manager is a strange place to be, but it was good to see the story from his perspective and through the ups and downs of this season with his prodigious new talent taking the team by storm.

The book ended on somewhat of a cliffhanger. It was completely unexpected, but when I realised that there’s a sequel, I was much happier with where it ended, knowing I was going to get more of a gripping story and find out what happens to Mickey.

A great book, definitely recommended for any baseball fan, but it does contain some adult themes and language, so it’s definitely not a book for the young or easily offended.