Get Smitten For Fiction! 😸

Hello fellow book lovers! It’s Amanda, and I’m back with another spoiler free book review. I requested the ARC for The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes because of its publisher – Crooked Lane Books. I LOVED Little Darlings by Melanie Golding, which was also published by CLB, plus the cover for Sally Red Shoes is just FANTASTIC, so I was pumped to be approved for an advance copy. I thought The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes would just be a straight up Women’s Fiction with some great characters, emotion, a great message, but it ended up being so much more than that.

About The Book 📚

Title: The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes
Author: Ruth Hogan
Publication Date: June 11, 2019 (first published May 2018)
Suggested Reader Age: 16+
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Format/Pages: e-ARC 320 pages

Synopsis

“Ruth Hogan, the international bestselling author behind the The Keeper of Lost Things returns with an irresistible novel of unexpected friendships, second chances—and dark secrets…

They say friends make life worth living…

Once a spirited, independent woman with a rebellious streak, Masha’s life was forever changed by a tragic event twelve years ago. Unable to let go of her grief, she finds comfort in her faithful canine companion Haizum, and peace in the quiet lanes of her town’s swimming pool. Almost without her realizing it, her life has shuddered to a halt.

It’s only when Masha begins an unlikely friendship with the mysterious Sally Red Shoes, a bag lady with a prodigious voice and a penchant for saying just what she means, that a new world of possibilities opens up: new friendships, new opportunities, and even a chance for new love. For the first time in years, Masha has the chance to start living again.

But just as Masha dares to imagine the future, her past comes roaring back…

Like her beloved debut, The Keeper of Lost Things, Ruth Hogan’s second novel introduces a cast of wonderful characters, both ordinary and charmingly eccentric, who lead us through a moving exploration of the simple human connections that unite us all.”

My Review

“Life is full of small joys if you know where to look for them,”

Who would have thought a bag-lady who frequents the local cemetery to feed the crows and sing to the birds would end up giving someone the exact advice they needed to stop surviving and start living? The main character of The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes is Masha, who gave this mysterious bag-lady the name “Sally Red Shoes”.

• Masha: finds relief in almost drowning herself regularly to keep “inner demons” away (guilt from her son’s death). Her son, Gabriel, died twelve years ago. She enjoys walking through the cemetery, visiting the graves of strangers. She likes to dive into their lives, find their stories, and shares them with the reader. She wants to find a way to not just survive, but to live.
• Thankfully, Masha has great friends and meets a few new ones who give her what she needs to heal her heart. Her dog, Haizum, plays a pretty big part in the story. Edward was basically like a father to her son Gabriel. “Sally Red Shoes” gets Masha’s brain turning and Kitty Muriel is a new acquaintance who’s there to put those big, new thoughts into action. Kitty seems like a simple, attractive, happy person who you secretly judge, thinking she’s happy because she hasn’t had tragedy in her life, but you come to find you are very, very wrong about her. She actively chooses life even though she’s experienced tremendous loss.

“Because I believe that one day, the joy of being alive would be brighter than the despair that my Joy was dead.”

• Along with Masha’s story, we also learn about Alice, a single mom, with a son named Mattie. She’s also had a lot of loss in her life, which has made her become an overprotective mother to her teen son, and he’s secretly resenting her for it.

 › Likes 😻
• Kitty Muriel stole the show for me. I’d love to read an entire novel about her life before she met Masha.
• Twist at the end that I knew was coming from the beginning but still left me with my jaw hanging. It was so much more than what I thought it was going to be.
• Love the message that we have the power to choose happiness.
• Felt lots of emotion throughout this story. I laughed, I cried.
• There are so many great conversations to have about this book. It would make a great Book Club selection!

“When the music ends for someone you love you don’t stop dancing. You dance for them as well.”

 › Dislikes 😾
• transvestite is referred to as “ladyboy”
• a joke about people being drugged without their consent
• Didn’t find out Masha is a psychotherapist until page 79?
• What are “ethnic earrings”?
• “She looks like a demented rag doll” (woman insulting another woman)
• I didn’t like the way Masha talked about her clients, mocking them, hiding smiles.
• Masha claims to be “in control” when confronting a group of teens and using the F word. How in the world is that “in control”?

 › The Ending blew me away. Wow, wow, wow.

 › Final Thoughts
• The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes is a moving novel about loss, grief, healing, hope, learning how to live life to the fullest, having the wisdom to know when to ask for help and the courage to let people in.

 › Trigger Warnings
• death, missing child, dead child, miscarriage, grief, depression, drowning, abandonment, illness (cancer)

Thank you to Netgalley and publisher for the complimentary copy in exchange for my honest review.

*Quotes taken from an ARC copy and subject to change*

About The Author

“I was born in the house where my parents still live in Bedford. My sister was so pleased to have a sibling that she threw a thrupenny bit at me.

As a child, I loved the Brownies but hated the Guides, was obsessed with ponies and read everything I could lay my hands on.  Luckily, my mum worked in a bookshop.  My favourite reads were The Moomintrolls, A Hundred Million Francs, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, the back of cereal packets, and gravestones.

I passed enough O and A levels to get a place at Goldsmiths College, University of London, to study English and Drama.  It was brilliant and I loved it.

And then I got a proper job.

I worked for ten years in a senior local government position (Human Resources – Recruitment, Diversity and Training). I was a square peg in round hole, but it paid the bills and mortgage.

In my early thirties I had a car accident which left me unable to work full-time and convinced me to start writing seriously.  I got a part-time job as an osteopath’s receptionist and spent all my spare time writing.  It was all going well, but then in 2012 I got Cancer, which was bloody inconvenient but precipitated an exciting hair journey from bald to a peroxide blonde Annie Lennox crop. When chemo kept me up all night I passed the time writing, and the eventual result was THE KEEPER OF LOST THINGS.

I live in a chaotic Victorian house with an assortment of rescue dogs and my long-suffering husband.  I spend all my free time writing or thinking about it and have notebooks in every room so that I can write down any ideas before I forget them.  I am a magpie; always collecting treasures (or ‘junk’ depending on your point of view) and a huge John Betjeman fan.  My favourite word is antimacassar and I still like reading gravestones.”
http://ruthhogan.co.uk/about/

https://twitter.com/ruthmariehogan

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