Susie Helme

Award-winning novelist and editorial consultant

Tag: book-review

  • Review: The Midnight Sea

    Review: The Midnight Sea

    B. Luciano Barsuglia, The Midnight Sea (Koa Aloha Media 2007)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19459623-the-midnight-sea?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_26

    A megalodon-hunting expedition faces the violence of the sea and the violence of men

    Casey Gilliam is thrown from the ship into the Pacific Ocean. Trouble is, there were no waves. What was it? Something had hit them, as the hull is leaking. ‘It was a monster,’ Charlie tells Captain Whaley. Casey knows as he dies—it was a shark. The men scramble for the dinghy as the Oracle sinks.
    The rescuing ship, the Fisher King, finds a tooth indicating the monster must be over 30 feet long. Media mogul JD Sawyer wants to capture it, believes it’s a megalodon. He says, ‘we need a bigger boat.’
    JD mounts an expensive expedition that includes his estranged son Nick, and Nick brings his friend Kazu. Dr Tyler Freeman is the ‘expert’. Tyler’s associate Susan Watson and Nick have had a thing in the past. Haidrian is JD’s lawyer. Samuel Gruber is the harpoonist. Frank Riley is videoing the hunt for a documentary.
    Big game hunters mixed with scientists, each ‘blinded by their individual goals’? Kazu says, ‘It has potential to be a real bloodbath.’
    At their first dinner together on the ship, they compare scars and shark stories, united as a team.
    But as members succumb to the beast, one by one, tensions between them accelerate. Kazu has an old wound that’s become infected. A helicopter is coming—Susan is leaving—and it must hurry before the storm hits. The great shark has swallowed some EPIRB signalling equipment, bleeping as it approaches, a great device for building suspense.
    While JD and his crew hunt the big one, another crew, the Dupries, are hunting them, and inside the ship a sabotaging, deadly mutiny is brewing.
    The ticking time bomb of the mutiny is great; one disaster after another imperils the crew. There is a twist at the conclusion that you wouldn’t expect.
    The ‘apocalyptic rage’ of the sea is a metaphor for the violence of the men.
    Is this a creature feature or a techno-thriller? Why not both? The ‘science bits’—the biology of sharks, the descriptions of their equipment—is great, but I could have used even more.
    There are more than nods to Jaws; only this expedition has fancier equipment. It even features the line ‘we need a bigger boat’. The author Barsuglia is a film producer; he must be planning a blockbuster.

  • Review: Overcoming Negativity

    Review: Overcoming Negativity

    Erica May, Overcoming Negativity: Developing a Resilient, Focused & Positive Mindset with CBT, Mindfulness, and a Better Work-Life Balance (Kindle 2024)

    The inside story of a 14th century revolution

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216451107-overcoming-negativity?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_25


    Reprogramming your brain to stop the negative thoughts

    I struggle very badly with negative self-thoughts, and because I don’t do anything to erase them from my mind, and I don’t talk to anyone about them, they get stuck. When I finally talk to close friends and family about what I experience, they are amazed at how much I hate myself. They manage to love me; why can’t I?
    This book by a clinical psychologist gives us the scientific explanation of what’s going on, and what to do to change it. The best tool is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
    The first step is acknowledgement. Identify those negative thoughts and realise they are not permanent, and seeking help is not weakness. Our brains have remarkable neuroplasticity, and are highly susceptible to change.
    If the first step is self-awareness, the second step is cultivating self-compassion.
    Some common ‘cognitive distortions’ are: black-and-white thinking, overgeneralisation, personalisation and catastrophising. You are not either one way or another; we are all a mixture of qualities. Just because that one report you wrote wasn’t very good doesn’t mean you ‘can’t write reports’. Just because one thing is bad doesn’t mean the world is coming to an end, and everything bad in the world is not your fault.
    Just like physical healing, psychological healing requires exercise—a daily routine. Use rational thinking to question a negative thought (is there evidence to support the belief that because I made one mistake, I am a complete mess-up?), and replace the negative thought with a positive one (‘hey, everybody makes mistakes. I messed up once, but next time I’ll do it right’). Every time the ‘I’m a complete mess-up’ pops into your brain, challenge it and repeat the contradiction. When you ‘create space between stimulus and response’, it gives you time to interrupt the automatic entrenched negativity.
    Keep a journal to keep track of your reprogramming process, noting negative thoughts, the questioning of the negative thoughts and contradictions/affirmations/gratitude. Pinpoint your ‘triggers’ and reprogram your responses to them. Evaluate your progress and give yourself credit for how much you’ve changed.
    This is not a BIG deal. Baby steps is great. Small, incremental rewirings, practiced regularly, can lead to fundamental changes. Set realistic goals and congratulate yourself when you achieve them. When you don’t achieve them, consider them a learning tool.
    Then, do something active to put your new positive thought into practice. Write a report and notice that ‘hey, this report was good. I have learned how to write good reports’.
    Be Here Now. Practice mindfulness—the judgement-less awareness of the present moment, neither ruminating over the past nor worrying about the future. Meditate, noticing when a negative thought pops up and letting it ‘float away’. ‘Body scan meditation’ and ‘Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR)’ is a recipe for stress reduction. When you eat, focus on the taste of your food; when you exercise, focus on the feel of your muscles. ‘Loving-kindness meditation’ focuses on sending well-wishes to yourself and others.
    Actively seek out moments to be grateful for and notice that you are grateful. Keep a record of accomplishments and celebrate milestones. Focus on what works. Make time for social interactions and for just having fun. Each time you don’t give in to negativity and instead affirm your strength builds ‘emotional resilience’, so quite literally, setbacks or failures do not need to be negative; they are learning tools.
    The Resilient Habit Shift Model involves:
    • identify triggers and negative thoughts
    • implement positive habits
    • practice self-compassion; acknowledge setbacks as learning opportunities
    • engage with curated resources
    In my case, this involves coming up with a list of positive activities I can do instead of watching BS on YouTube and getting depressed.
    • build support groups and supportive friends and contacts
    • set realistic goals
    Sometimes you need to shield yourself from people who bring you down. Establish boundaries and clearly communicate your limits, while still actively listening to others.
    My usual excuse for not doing all of the above is ‘I don’t have the time’, yet think of all the time I spend mentally beating myself up.
    This was mostly stuff I already knew, as I have had CBT sessions with a psychotherapist and I’ve ready numerous books. But going over this material once again is another way to practice the reprogramming.

  • Review: Revolution in Carcassonne

    Review: Revolution in Carcassonne

    Elaine Graham-Leigh, Revolution in Carcassonne: The story of a fourteenth-century rebellion (Whalebone Press 2025)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/237965361-revolution-in-carcassonne?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_38

    The inside story of a 14th century revolution


    August 1303, 80 years after the French Crown had seized control of mediaeval Carcassonne during the Albigensian Crusade, the town rose in revolt.
    Resentment had been building for 20 years, and the townsfolk had first hoped Philip IV would address their concerns. When the king ignored them, houses of town leaders suspected of collaborating with the Inquisition were sacked (the ‘destruction of homes’); mobs freed prisoners in the prison (‘the Wall’); Dominicans, responsible for staffing the Inquisition, were taunted with cries of ‘Cohac, cohac’ (the caw of crows). Town leaders took down the king’s ‘bags’ (in which he collected merchants’ taxes) and offered suzerainty of the town to Ferran, son of the king of Majorca (a ‘Barcelona/ Aragon alternative to Toulouse and France’). Radical Franciscan priest Bernard Délicieux gave fiery sermons in the streets.
    Like her earlier The Southern French Nobility and the Albigensian Crusade, Graham-Leigh brings a complex history to life by focussing on specific individuals. The story of twelve men taking sanctuary in the Franciscan convent, accused by the Inquisition of ‘offend[ing] seriously and greatly’, culminates in the trial of Bernard Délicieux—convicted of treason in 1319. She provides a comprehensive glossary of all the individuals involved, with those who were witnesses at Bernard’s trial asterisked.
    This is a Marxist analysis, and Bernard is placed within the context of the class forces involved at the time.
    Graham-Leigh corrects some modern historians’ misunderstandings.
    Modern interpretations of the Cathars as a competing sect of Christianity need revising. ‘Catharism’ was more ‘a response to Inquisition persecution, rather than a reason for it’—persecution was not a matter of bigotry but rather ‘a ruling class strategy’. ‘Jew’ or ‘heretic’ (the name ‘Cathar’ didn’t yet exist) in the 14th century referred more to lifestyle than to identity. Witnesses at Bernard’s trial did not ‘talk about spirituality or belief’.
    Nor was the Languedoc a ‘lost Elysium’ as the troubadours would have us believe. Stephen of Tournai’s account of bands of foreign mercenaries disrupting an otherwise peaceful land is wrong; ‘feudalism itself was at issue in Languedoc’.
    The Albigensian Crusade ‘hit Languedoc with a few centuries worth of feudalisation in a few turbulent years’. With the crushing of the Carcassonne revolution, they reinforced the screws, to include other minorities and marginals—the Templars in 1307 and lepers and Jews in the 1321 hysteria, which began in Carcassonne, over the supposed ‘lepers’ plot’.
    Graham-Leigh’s superb research, which included examining original documents in Latin, shines through; and her writing style is exciting. Stories like the 1283 plot to steal the Inquisition’s registers are thrilling.
    She has a talent for expressing the gist of politics in easily comprehensible language. She outlines in clear terms the relations of base and superstructure, pointing out that the clerical ruling class underpinned the feudal system as much as the secular powers.
    The class struggle in these early years was more fighting over control of the extortion process than opposition to persecution per se. This explains why the Inquisition went after both rich and poor.

  • Review: Sensory Writing

    Review: Sensory Writing

    Val Andrews, Sensory Writing: How to Write Unforgettable Stories by Including Sensory Detail (Opal Tree Press 2024)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/210910630-sensory-writing?ref=nav_sb_ss_4_15

    Using sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste and ESP to enliven your writing
    I often advise authors to ‘use sensory clues’ as an alternative to info-dumping (a writing crime of which I am especially guilty). Writing from your characters Point Of View—what are they seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, tasting—is a great way to Show not Tell. It places the reader ‘inside the protagonist’s emotional journey’, precisely what we are trying to do with our writing.
    This book outlines everything an author needs to know.
    Sensory detail can:
    • Stimulate sensory memory
    • Activate imagination
    • Foster empathy
    • Evoke emotional resonance
    • Embody cognition and muscle memory
    • Sensory engagement and immersion
    • Increase attention
    • Enhance memory
    • Narrative presence
    • Create flow and vary Pace
    Some tips for using more sensory details:
    • Choose specific, concrete details
    • Enrich with metaphors and similes
    • Use selective focus to guide perception
    • Create dynamic descriptions
    • Symbolic use of colour
    • Weather
    • Visual contrast/harmony
    Sensory details should not be thought of as ‘additions’ but rather as ‘integral components of your story’s emotional and thematic development’.
    Use the six senses in your writing:
    • Sight
    • Hearing
    • Smell
    • Taste
    • Touch
    • The 6th sense
    Sensory writing
    Your character receives messages from their five senses and processes them. How do they respond? This is a big part of character development.
    Aim for specificity and make the experience unique to your character and appropriate for their world.
    Creating one dominant sensory experience and focussing on the emotion it invokes can ‘anchor’ a scene in the reader’s mind. Then you can add extra or contrasting experiences to add complexity. Ending a scene with a strong sensory detail is an effective device for leaving the reader with a lasting emotional impression.
    Changing sensory details can be an effective device for a shift in the Plot, and your character’s sensory experience can change as they develop emotionally. Varying longer passages with much sensory description with shorter passages with little can help to vary your Pace.
    Use sensory description to attune your character’s inner mood with their outer environment. And past events can leave sensory traces in the present—e.g. the lingering scent of gunpowder on a battlefield.
    Sensory tropes can zero in on your genre, but be wary of cliches, and subverting those tropes can provide contrast.
    Mixing the senses, e.g. using sound and colour can make your scenes more vivid or freshen up your metaphors.
    To feel real, your characters must be located somewhere on the personality spectrum. The OCEAN spectrum, Clifton Strengths model, DISC Assessment, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Enneagrams are different tools to use for doing this.

  • Review: Dreams of Revolution

    Review: Dreams of Revolution

    Linda J Collins, Dreams of Revolution (BookBaby 2021)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62634456-dreams-of-revolution?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=ctQU6UAHvi&rank=5

    1777 Hopewell, Pennsylvania
    15-year-old Rachel Palsgrove sneaks around the side of the furnace to peek in the window. Inside her father is molding iron—at night.
    Rachel’s wealthier friend Susanna dreams of living in a mansion. Rachel’s mother is anxious for her to find a beau, but she dreams of becoming a teacher. She goes to Philadelphia in hopes of studying at the university, defying the gentlemen-only rule, but it is closed due to the British occupation of the city.
    While waiting for news from the college, she is brutalised by a British spy and is betrayed by her best friend. She makes a daring midnight ride (actually three days) to warn Patriots in Hopewell of an impending British raid and, while her beau is imprisoned, becomes a spy for General Washington.
    I loved the references to historical American Revolution espionage, rich material for intrigue. The system—coded messages in invisible ink and coloured laundry on the line—is the same as the one historically used by Washington’s spies the Culper Ring. Rachel sweet-talks Captain Crammond the way Peggy Shippen groomed Benedict Arnold. And real historical figures like John André come into the story.
    We meet the characters in the course of their daily lives, giving us an opportunity to learn about early American lifestyles—making soap, making coal, predicting the weather by looking at the colour of the ‘woolies’ (brown bears’) fur, getting letters to relatives in other towns, the wedding customs, etc.
    I think we could have had an earlier indication that war with Britain is looming, some hints at how the characters felt about their colonial masters, perhaps. Rachel finally finds out what the men were making—cannons, defying the Iron Act—but we don’t see any Redcoats until chapter 20. I wish we could have reached the exciting bit, Mr Morris and Jesse’s arrest, earlier in the story.
    I bought this book because my sister lives in modern-day Hopewell, and I love anything having to do with revolution.
    Contains a rape, but it’s not graphic.

  • Review: The Curious Case of the Kitnapped Cat

    Review: The Curious Case of the Kitnapped Cat

    em.thompson, The Curious Case of the Kitnapped Cat (Eccentric Directions 2024)

    Crime fiction at its most comedic

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/213564034-the-curious-case-of-the-kitnapped-cat?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=9HpLkIRzai&rank=1

    Terrence ‘Tiny’ Bottomley, a swot in Heather Prendergast’s class at Merton Police College, answers the teacher’s question on ‘the most important weapons in a modern detective’s armoury’.
    ‘Forensics, CCTV footage, DNA analysis…’ he begins.
    Prendergast begs to disagree. She believes in ‘old fashioned gut instinct’. It may be that even her zany and filthy rich Aunt Elizabeth’s hefty bribes—I mean, donations—won’t be sufficient to get her to graduation so she can achieve her dream of becoming ‘Prendergast of The Yard’.
    Armed with her Girl Guides training and her illustrated Sherlock Holmes almanac, Prendergast’s gut instincts lead her on another madcap case, in the course of which she is ever decked in the highest-end yet most outrageously inappropriate fashion from Paris or Milan. The campus cafeteria skivvy Debb’s gran’s cat Puffball is missing, and aided by Tiny and Debbs, Prendergast goes in pursuit, wreaking hilarious havoc everywhere she goes.
    Em.thompson is a master comedic wordsmith, inventing words and phrases (‘cornerflap of pinafore’, ‘humzinger of a brainwave’, ‘bedraggled straggle of homelessness’, ‘earwigaphobia and occasional bouts of dreadheightedness’) and twisting metaphors into jokes (‘a helping hand from the long arm of the law’, ‘like impetigo on a honeydew melon’).
    Despite the non-stop witticisms, there is a proper plot, and despite Prendergast’s kooky blundering some real detecting happens.
    Move over, P G Wodehouse, Douglas Adams.

  • Review: Bruria

    Review: Bruria

    David Kurz, Bruria (2025)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/236097816-bruria?ref=nav_sb_ss_2_6

    The story of Yohanan ben Zakkai through the eyes of a fictional ‘niece’


    Bruria spots suspicious campfire smoke. The Romans have destroyed Korazim, and refugees are flooding into Gamla.
    Old enough now, she accompanies her father to Tiberias, to sell wine and olive oil to Passover pilgrims. On the trip, they learn how divided is their land—zealots/pacifists, Hillelites/Shammaites, Jews/Gentiles—and they meet the lady Bereniki.
    Gamla is destroyed, and Bruria escapes to Jerusalem, where she becomes an ally to Yohanan ben Zakai. Everyone seems to expect her to ‘submit [her]self to the least obnoxious male around’, and she’s having none of it. She fights; she studies Torah; she tells grown men what to do; she orders her own beer.
    Yohanan ben Zakai was by and large THE individual responsible for the survival of rabbinic (Pharisaic) Judaism after the devastating Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 CE. Positing the protagonist within this movement makes for a fantastic story.
    This novel brings to life such heroes and anti-heroes of Jewish history as Mirta bat Boetus, Abba Sikra, Yehoshua ben Gamla and even Bereniki (the controversial mistress of Titus). The fictional characters like Bruria round out the story.
    The minor characters are numerous, which can be confusing, but that makes it realistic. As a novel, it would have worked better to put it mostly in Bruria’s point of view.
    I loved the invention of the Pathfinders, an organisation of leadership training for young people rather like the Scouts. The teenagers are full of energy, and active agents in the story. The plot is full of life.
    We get to hear up close and personal debates on the pros and cons of opposition to the Romans, as well as the religious ramifications. I loved: ‘every leader thinks he’s the greatest tactician since Judah the Maccabee’, ‘the “Just not Simon” camp’, ‘rebel Maccabees become power-hungry Hasmoneans’, ‘Pharisee Basics’.
    This lively, intimate story is a beautiful testament to some of the heroes of Judaism, a rare example of a fictional treatment of the Great Revolt and a historically accurate one, while accepting Josephus’ ‘it was all the Zealots’ fault’ analysis.
    The excitement of the war is well portrayed. I accepted Bereniki, but Bruria’s friendliness with Titus, the destroyer of Jerusalem, stuck in my craw.
    It is too long—the final chapters in Yavne especially could have been sped up—otherwise, it’s suitable for a YA readership. I would especially recommend it to Jewish young people, but all sorts will love this colourful portrayal of an ancient world and an important development in history.
    Contains killing and a rape, and some lesbian sex (not graphic).

  • Review: Death by Placebo

    Review: Death by Placebo

    Nelson K Foley, Death by Placebo (San San 2025)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/230821260-death-by-placebo?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_16


    The President needs a liver donor, live or dead
    The President (dictator) of (fictional near Eastern country) Balarutan, Viktor Rachmanil, needs a liver transplant. But the patient is a ‘self-destructive denier’ and an ‘entitled demander’. Drs Rybak and Romanchuk steel themselves for dropping the bombshell with a vodka.
    Going abroad for the op might have been an option, but Rachmanil is cautious about the power vacuum he’d leave behind. The only person he listens to is his press secretary Natasha, and his ferret Snowflake, is a constant companion.
    The search is on—for a live donor or a brain-dead donor. The hospital checks out his three children as possible donors, but there is a ‘problem’ with Danica. To find a dead donor, Rachmanil contemplates ‘seeking out a suitable donor in advance’. Marcus Trubila, a member of his security service, knows what he means.
    There is an international conference of liver specialists in Vienna, and the hospital hopes to recruit foreign talent for the surgery. Danica goes along and spends time with Dr Andea Mancini.
    I do like it when plot intricacies are spelled out a bit, but the fact that the President is looking for a liver donor is repeated too, too many times.
    There’s a great twist at the end.

  • Review: Nunc

    Review: Nunc

    Quentin Letts, Nunc! (Constable 2025)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/221179105-nunc

    This is a fictionalised retelling of ‘Nunc Dimittis’, ten verses in Luke’s Gospel about the elderly prophet Simeon who waited for the baby Jesus in the Temple. After declaring ‘mine eyes have seen thy salvation’, he can finally die in peace.
    2000 years ago, in Jerusalem, old Simeon’s wheelchair collides with a rubbish heap, providing entertainment for the occupants of Deuteronomy Square.
    It’s not plot-driven. Instead, we have a series of short stories, incidents in the lives of the inhabitants of the square, as Benjamin’s mule-cart takes us from place to place. The tone is not so much humorous as affectionate. The bits about Jesus are refreshingly devoid of the usual obligatory reverence (the magi following the star are ‘three blundering eejits’; the hiding of Joseph and Mary from Herod’s persecution is almost slapstick).
    I get the impression journalist-turned-novelist Quentin Letts, let off the leash from journalistic style constraints, is now free to use puns, emotive dialogue, juicy adjectives, colourful description, characterisation. The result is a flowering of creative expression. The characters are quirky and delicious. The settings are colourful, illuminated by almond blossoms, pistachio trees and bougainvillea. Artisans sell their aromatic wares, and merchants ply their trade.
    The blend of modern anachronisms and ancient Palestine is cute (‘Thanks, Mum, said Caleb in the voice teenagers have used since Noah’s flood’). We’re tantalised by first century intimacies (the ‘different types of Pharisee’; the problem of cleaning the Holy of Holies—‘when the high priest enters, you don’t want him smothered by cobwebs. The dust might set off his allergy’) and glimpses of people we will meet in the Gospels (that little boy next to Aretas’ verandah will grow up to crucify Jesus).
    Would also suit a YA readership. Non-Christians will love it, too.
    An adorable book, 6 stars, a real pleasure to read.
    This review first appeared in Historical Novels Review.