Where to start? There are so many layers to this story. Fairy tales and fables. Magic and the mundane. Light and shadows. Sibling rivalry (to its extreme!). Birth and death. PTSD and mental health. Charity and kindness. And at the heart of it, Papa Jack and his Emporium.

The Toymakers will take you back to your childhood, to the sights and sounds and smells, evoking memories and comfort and safety. To a time of innocence and wonder. Papa Jack's experiences taught him the truth which we get to see when he 'shows' Cathy Wray (I felt it keenly at the time but it's fading now which makes me feel sad) and his sons, Kaspar and Emil need to understand this truth before they can become the magicians they have the power to be. In the darkest and most brutal time is when you find the brightest light ...

Much of the story is set in The Emporium and I would love to see this on a movie screen! It opens at first frost each year and then closes when the first snowdrop flowers. It is magical with its moving aisles and fantastical toys both on the shelves, on the floor and in the air. The workshops are awesome with their mundane materials and a thrumming of energy. Aisles and counters throng with parents and their children, that is until WWI comes and changes much more than a loss of customers to The Emporium.

There is so much I want to talk about but no spoilers. It's really hard not to tell you about one of the key parts of the story. It's a fascinating concept and felt real. And at the end when we find out ... mind blowing!

The Emporium is a time out of time, with worlds within worlds and The Toymakers is an experience I won't be forgetting for a very long time. Outstanding.

This is the first book I've read by Robert Dinsdale but won't be the last!

a Magical and whimsical book, I was enchanted from the very first page and I didn't want it to end.

Cathy is in a predicament. She’s unmarried and pregnant. To run from the shame that awaits her she runs away to Papa Jack’s Emporium to make a new start for herself. The Emporium holds many secrets within its walls, will surely keep Cathy’s too?

Cathy soon learns of the wonder and magic that Papa Jack and his sons Kaspar and Emil weave into their toys. From the toy soldiers that fight the Long War to the patchwork animals that you fall in love with.

This story is incredibly rich and full of imagination that will take you into another world. I became immersed in Cathy’s story and quickly grew to love Kaspar and Papa Jack.

Dinsdale has written in such an eloquent way that you actually become invested in the wonder and magic that his toys become real characters. I adored Sirius the dog and really felt for the Kapitan and his heartbreaking ‘life’. It’s skilled writing that invokes such emotions.

There is some sadness in this story that I wasn’t expecting. Papa Jack’s history was tragic, which made you rejoice in the passion that he had for making the Christmases of so many children filled with surprise and wonder.

With the imagination of a child, and the wisdom of an adult, Dinsdale is an author to watch out for!
I would like to thank Netgalley for an ARC of this book in return for a review.

The Emporium is a toy shop in London, on a mews off Regents Street. It opens each year with the first frost and closes when the snowdrops bloom. If that makes it sound like a place of poetry and magic, of mystery and joy then, yes, it is. It is run by Jekabs Godman, known as Papa Jack, an émigré from Eastern Europe and his sons Kaspar and Emil and creates the kind of toys which every child would dream of having. Things that glitter and fly, that grow and love you back: toys which are as full of magic and imagination as a child's mind. Into this world comes Cathy Wray, just 16 years old and pregnant, who takes a job for the season in her efforts to escape her family's plans to brush the shame of an illegitimate child in Edwardian Leigh-on-Sea*

The story sees Cathy become a part of the Godman family, as does her child Martha who was born in a sort of enchanted wendy house in the store. She is beloved by Papa Jack, who shares with her the harrowing story of his early life as a political prisoner, and by both brothers but she falls for the older sibling, Kaspar. The real world does impinge on the Emporium - Kaspar suffers horribly in the trenches of the Great War and Emil is shamed by the fact that he is unable to serve - and life is not always happy or easy. But the power of toys and a child's imagination is always there to help people to survive. The book is probably best described as a sort of magical realism but the sort of magic, and reality, which lives in the heart of the very young.


*I grew up only a few miles from Leigh-on-Sea. As soon as saw this I knew I'd love this book...

This was a delightful book. I felt like a child again remembering the magic of childhood. Very clever concept that spans several generations. Some great characters that it was very easy to identify with. I felt bereft when it was finished but enjoyed the journey.

Absolutely incredible!!

2 years ago I read The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and was absolutely blown away. I’d never read a book like it and thought I never would again. Until I was granted a review copy of The Toymakers by Robert Dinsdale.

This book is simply stunning! I finished it at 1am this morning and I’m ready to read it again already! A magical fairytale of children’s toys, love, family, war, rivalry and imagination. The tag line promises something intriguing and magical but I had no idea just how much I would fall in love with this book.

The characters are brilliant. I loved them all (well, most of them) and felt like I knew them. I could imagine being there with them and watching them interact with each other.

The story is so well written and structured to allow you to follow through their lives at all the key moments. I felt that my imagination could not do this book justice (which is exactly how I felt reading The Night Circus too!) but even what I was capable of imagining was stunning and had me mesmerised!

I smiled, I laughed, my heart broke and I cried and I smiled again. I wasn’t expecting The Toymakers to take me through these emotions but the fact that it did just shows what an incredible book this is.

Robert Dinsdale is a fantastic writer and I’ve already added his other books to my reading list. I don’t know how you would even go about starting to imagine something like this... it is just beautiful.

I can’t do this book justice ...! All I will say now is that this book is stunningly beautiful and I can’t recommend it enough! In fact, I’ve already pre-ordered a hardback copy to give to a friend of mine... this is a story that needs to be shared!

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a beautifully told story. Pregnant Cathy runs away and finds the Emporium. It is a magical shop where toys come alive. I completely lost myself in Dinsdale's world and didn't want the story to end. Now off to get myself a patchwork dog!

I was a bit wary about another book with magic in it, but persevered and found that it was not overly intrusive and that the book was well written and dealt with some difficult ideas well.

However I think it went downhill from about 1917 and became very unbelievable and depressing as the "magic" went too far. Difficult to say more without spoilers.

It was briefly revived towards the end, but I just thought that it could have been handled differently and better and earned more stars.

Cathy runs away from home after finding out she is pregnant. She goes to London to hide away until her child is born. She finds Papa Jack's emporium in an advert and goes there to find a place to stay and a job to make money.
Papa Jack gives her a job and she soon settles into a new way of life finding comfort talking to her unborn baby. She notices Papa Jack's two sons, Emil and his older brother Kaspar. They are also toy makers in the shop.
Kaspar and Cathy start to grow closer together after they are caught up in the magic of the emporium. Once it comes to the time when no more toys needs to be made Cathy worries about where she will have her baby. She is saved by Kaspar and she moves into the magic Wendy house. Over time each of the brothers visit her and she gets closer to both of them. Kaspar is the one at the birth of her daughter, Martha.
Kaspar and Cathy get married and they continue to make toys for the emporium. Kaspar and Emil have always had a rivalry when it comes to making toys and when they play with their magical toy soldiers. The first world war starts and Emil tries to sign up but they wont take him. Kaspar goes and is sent away to war. Emil is bitter with resentment.
When Kaspar returns their lives don't return to normal. They continue to run the shop and try to make it even more successful. Life gets harder for them all but the magic of the toys and how they all come to life helps to keep the dream going.
This was such a magical book where all types of toys came to life and childhood imagination is real. Mary Poppins style bags and wind up dogs and soldiers bring the enchanting story to life.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest and independent review.

I absolutely loved this book! The language was so descriptive, imaginative and magical that I felt the moment the doors of the Emporium opened, at the first frost, I was really there walking up the aisles. So many times throughout the book, I wished the Emporium was real so I could pay a visit.

As well as being heartwarming, I found parts of the story heartbreaking and emotional. The journey covers the war years and a lead character, Kasper, goes to war which affects him, and in turn his family, for years after.

I would describe this book as a bit like 'Toy Story' for grown-ups! I highly recommend it and I'm looking forward to checking out more of his books!

This book was well written and descriptive. The storyline was unique and it is something I wouldn't normally read.

The Toymakers by Robert Dinsdale (review copy from Del Rey) tries to deliver a magical and whimsical tale along the lines of Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, but fails to deliver any of the depth of emotion or insight.

The Toymakers is the story of a magical toy shop in Edwardian Mayfair, run by Papa Jack, his two sons Kasper and Emil, and their community of shop workers. Papa Jack's toys are legendary for their inventiveness and magic, and the shop's pre-Christmas opening each year is a famed spectacle. A young woman called Cathy Wray finds refuge there after she runs away from her family, pregnant by a local boy and desperate not to find herself in a home for the mothers of illegitimate children. Cathy is our window into Papa Jack's Emporium, as it struggles to survive the challenges of the Great War, and a toxic rivalry between Kasper and Emil.

The premise is a great one, and there is definitely a lot of magic in Papa Jack's Emporium and the family's creations. Where the book is strongest is in its exploration of the traumatising effects of war in a period where understanding and empathy about mental health problems was very immature and gendered expectations of men made it very difficult to explore those issues. One of the underlying messages of the book is that the experience of trauma can sometimes be necessary to enable one to tap the deepest wells of creativity. The magic of childhood and its toys is made all the more precious when contrasted against the darknesses of war, poverty and trauma.

But I was left fundamentally unsatisfied and disappointed. At its heart this is the story of the rivalry between two Great Men. Cathy, despite being the viewpoint character, is relegated to the role of helpmeet and observer. Loving and loyal, her role is to endure, and she lacks any agency of her own. It is strongly implied that she is the victim of rape, having been pressured into sex by her childhood playmate, but she shows little sign of any lasting trauma and the crisis pregnancy seems little more than a narrative device to force Cathy to move to the Emporium and stay once the winter season is complete. The other female characters are equally thinly drawn. Without greater depth this book will never reach the subtle and delicate heights of something like The Night Circus.

Not only am I tired of reading books about Great Men, but there is a missed opportunity to tell a really interesting story. I want to know more about Cathy and the other women working to hold the Emporium together while her husband and the other men go to war, and dealing with a psychologically damaged husband returning home afterwards. The Cathy dealing with a crisis pregnancy and coming to terms with sexual assault and the rejection of her family. A Cathy who feels trapped by her circumstances. We do Cathy and women like her a disservice by relegating them to passive victims and bystanders in men's stories.

Goodreads rating: 2*

This is a great read. It is hard to define but contains the magic of Christmas with the reality of relationships and war. If that wasn't enough there is an element of horror.
It would be a good book for bookclubs. So much to discuss from both male and female perspectives.

A magical tale of a toymaker and his two sons. Little by little their background is revealed as each boy struggles with the need to invent the ultimate toy. The story is intertwined within the incredible Emporium where things are not always as they seem! Ragdogs that behave like the real, soldiers and trees that act and grow magically! In a strange world anything seems believable!! The emotions and struggles of the two brothers cover several years, including those of the First World War, and inject reality into this fairytale. How are these toys so real? Now that would be telling,

The Emporium: a toyshop where fantasy becomes reality. A safe haven where adults set aside the horrors of the the world outside and play happily alongside their children.

At the centre of the story we have an unlikely love triangle between two brothers and Cathy, the pregnant young girl who has run away from home and finds a new life at The Emporium.

The story neatly contrasts the fantastical and insular world of The Emporium against the horrors of a world deeply entrenched in WW1. There are a number of themes running through the book such as the loss of childhood and the futility of war and we are left asking, must all good things come to an end?

Whilst I enjoyed the start of the story I felt it dragged in the middle. The final section, whilst providing some kind of closure to the story, seemed tagged on. As the magic faded and the story became slightly depressing in places I found my interest in the characters fading.

The story feels very cinematic in places but flat in others. The story would probably make a great film adaptation with some of the detail taken out. An interesting read but not as magical as I’d hoped.

A case of book-reader mismatch. I don't particularly enjoy intensely descriptive stories so I ended up deciding on giving up on this one.

(Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy!)

"Do you remember when you believed in magic?"

Set inside a magical toy shop, in the heart of 1940's London, where paper trees grow in front of your eyes, patchwork dogs act like breathing ones, and doll houses are bigger than most city compartments live Kaspar and Emil. Two brothers who travelled, with their estranged father Papa Jack, to this foreign city to make their home and perfect their craft. The toy shop has grown and every year, at first frost, the lost, the afraid, and the still-believers flock to the entrance to make this their home and their place of work, for the winter. But when the first flower of Spring thrusts its small head through the ice-hardened soil they must return to the normality that still reigns, outside of the toy emporium's doors.

This was a seamless blend of the realistic and the magical. This was very much a portrait of pre-war London, but there was also the utter enchantment that comes with the suspension of belief that occurs when whimsical wonders are placed alongside the every day. This truly does revert the reader back to their childhood self, where any dream is possible and questions are allayed in favour of the blind belief in magic.

However, this initial charming whimsy was soon overtaken by an undercurrent of fear. The beginning of WWII chronicles a change in this novel, that leads to both a severe return to the reality of the emporium's situation, as well as making this a startling bleak political insight. Prejudice is rife and the discourse returns countless times to the ideology of both cultural identity and gender stereotypes.

My utter captivation with this novel stemmed from its juxtaposition of ability to charm my imagination whilst also providing many sources of discourse for my mind to ponder over. It was the amalgamation of stark reality and the childhood suspension of belief that makes this such an enjoyable read but, ultimately, it was my delighted rapture with the emporium that ensures I will never forget my experience of reading it.

The Toymakers is a rare and magical piece of literature, one which I feel blessed for having discovered and read. Though I had been approved to review the title on Netgalley, I decided I ought to purchase the beautiful hardcover edition as no doubt this will be a novel read several times, particularly in the run up to Christmas, during which time much of the story is set.

The Emporium opens with the first frost of winter. It is the same every year. Across the city, when children wake to see ferns of white stretched across their windows, or walk to school to hear ice crackling underfoot, the whispers begin: the Emporium is open!
The novel begins with Kathy's story: she is a 16 year old girl, who - having fallen pregnant - is faced with the decision to give up her child or run away to start a new life in London. She discovers a newspaper ad asking "Are you lost? Are you afraid...?" It promises the opportunity to board and work in London's most talked about toy store, propriety of Papa John: a former Russian who has brought his talents to entertain and seduce a plethora of eager children and their families.

The toy store quickly becomes Kathy's safe haven, a place of wonder and security among friends who become more like family.

From the mysterious Wendy house, whose external appearance belies the true internal size, to the "castle in the sky", around which fluffy white clouds gather, and the toyboxes which contain worlds, the magic of this book is wrapped in realism, spinning a tale of historical events which precedes the first World War and continues for many years following. Throughout, toy soldiers provide both metaphor and expression of war-ravaged soldiers in battle. It is both haunting and heart-breaking, well-suited to older and adult readers who retain the awe of a child's discovery and wonder.

I heartily recommend The Toymakers, particularly the exquisite hardback edition (a beautifully designed cover which would make a wonderful gift), and encourage everyone to read it who would enjoy a magical, literary escape.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.

"The Emporium opens with the first frost of winter. It is the same every year. Across the city, when children wake to see ferns of white stretched across their windows, or walk to school to hear ice crackling underfoot, the whispers begin: the Emporium is open!"

Imagine a world where everything has a mind of its own, where toys can walk, talk, grow and even fight, a place where magic is a matter of perspective and belief. Welcome to The Emporium, a toy store in London that opens every year only during winters. A store loved by all and a place with its own share of secrets and wonders.

The story revolves around Papa Jack, Emil, and Kasper- the family who own The Emporium. In this beautiful, magical place enters Cathy. Cathy has run away from her family because her family wasn’t ready to accept her child. As Cathy starts working, she managed to draw a lot of attention, especially from the brothers- Emil and Kasper. As the story progresses, we see a silent war between the brothers. A war that is both for the inheritance of the Emporium and the attention of Cathy. As the story continues, we are given a glimpse of the real world, the wars being fought and how it affects the body and the soul. The story spans between 1907 and 1953- the times when two great world wars have been fought, countless lives lost, families destroyed. The plot darkens further and talks about how The Emporium and it’s occupants are affected, how scared they are and the consequences they had to face as a result of the war.
The book is touching in a multitude of ways. There’s innocent love that Kasper and Emil have for Cathy, the love for one’s child, and the love for one’s legacy. This story is all about that fact that the great war hasn’t left anyone untouched.

The writing is highly imaginative. The world that has been created is enchanting and its so easy to forget the world and drift into the other world the author has created. The characters are vulnerable, hence making them extremely relatable. The situations, no matter how dark, was written flawlessly. The book requires a bit of patience because there are places where I felt lost.

It’s a mixture of Magical Realism and Historical Fiction and the only way to get through this book is to let the story flow through and let it cast its magic. This book is everything life is- full of possibilities yet in jeopardy.

Thanks to NetGalley and EburyPublishing for the ebook ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Toymakers is about Cathy. Cathy is a pregnant 15 year old and her mum wants her to go to a home for young mother's and babies and give her baby away. Cathy finds a leaflet for Papa Jack's Emporium, looking for employees who are lost and need to find their way. Unfortunately Papa Jack's Emporium is only open from winter's first frost until spring's first snowdrop blossoms. 
Papa Jack, Kaspar and Emil build magical toys that will take adults back to their childhood - from growing paper trees to a real life patchwork dog called Sirius, from toy soldiers to toy boxes that hold much more than you would imagine.

Using goodreads rating system, I've gone for 4 stars because I really enjoyed this book but didn't love it. It was magical.. but maybe not magical enough. The ending made me very happy though.