Just Jennifer

Everything She Forgot by Lisa Ballantyne

After the day she has had as deputy head teacher at Byron Academy in London, the last thing Margaret Holloway needs is a dicey drive home in the ice and snow.  She becomes involved in what comes to be called the worst pileup in London history, feeling only a little bruised until she realized she is trapped in her car that is about to blow up.  Out of the snowy swirl, a man pulls her from the wreck, saving her life, and then disappearing.  Margaret knows she’s lucky to only have minor injuries, but there is something in her subconscious that gives her no peace.  She tracks down the stranger who saved her life, Maxwell Brown, who is in a coma in hospital with no apparent family or friends to visit. After Margaret learns Maxwell’s identity, the story flashes back to 1985 and a little girl called Molly who is kidnapped on her way to school, kidnapped by a notorious gangster, Big George McLaughlin, who she finds isn’t as terrible as his reputation is, at least not to her.  Awhile her mother searches for Molly, reporter Angus Campbell is hot on her trail as well, hoping Molly’s story will be his big break.  These three desperate strands of a story don’t seem to fit together at first, but little by little, things are revealed, fall into place and a complete picture begins to form.  The final scenes in the book tie all the ends together, though in not too surprising ways, but satisfyingly enough.  Redemption isn’t always possible in everyone’s eyes, though to those whose lives we have helped shaped, it is often enough.  A compelling, propelling story that explores families in all their various forms and how our memories and pasts shape our presents and our futures. 

Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier

When readers think of the classic Gothic novel, Rebecca and “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again” often comes immediately to mind, but Mary Yellan is every bit as compelling heroine as the unnamed heroine in Rebecca.  Set on the almost mythic coast of Cornwall, Mary, against warning and foreboding, travels to stay with her Aunt Patience and Uncle Joss Merlyn at Jamaica Inn never imagining what evils await her there.  When Mary realizes that Jamaica Inn and her aunt are shadows of their former selves and that her uncle is possibly at the root of the downfall of both, but she is determined to make the best of the situation as she recreates a new life for herself, hoping in the process she might be able to save her aunt.  Vivid descriptions of the moors and the town provide rich settings and larger-than-life characters make this classic one to be reread and savored from time to time.