This was a brilliant read. As soon as I started reading this book I just knew I was going to love it. Highly recommended

Please note that this book is not for me - I have read the book, However I had to DNF and because i do not like to give negative reviews I will not review this book fully - there is no specific reason for not liking this book. I found it a struggle to read and did not enjoy trying to force myself to read this book.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused and thank you for the opportunity to read this book

This is the third book I've read by Ruth Hogan and have enjoyed them all. This one is a little darker than the others, but I couldn't put it down.

This is most definitely the darkest of Ruth Hogan's novels so far.   It is told by one first-person account from Masha and a third person account of Alice's story.

Masha has been grieving for a very long time. Her young child was killed in a freak accident and she has been half a person ever since. This is her story.  She sits on the bottom of a freezing cold winter lido attempting to experience drowning first hand and nearly succeeds.   She is obsessed with death.  So much so that at about the 30% mark I was finding it so depressing that put the book down for a week and very nearly didn't pick it up again.  I am glad I persisted though because that was her rock bottom and the book becomes far more hopefull from then on.

Alice, obsessive mother to her teenage boy for which the term helicopter mum was probably invented.  She smothers him with far more affection than he can tolerate.  Her account is brief in contrast with Masha's but is threaded through the narrative.

As you would expect from a Ruth Hogan novel, there are some wonderfully individual characters littering its pages.  My favourite has to be Sally of the Title, an ex-opera star with Tourette's,  turned bag lady who feeds the birds in the park every afternoon. She does what she wants to when she wants to, dresses however she likes and doesn't give an f**k what the world things, bravo.

Another fabulous woman is Kitty Muriel a femme fatal in her 70's who still has it and is not afraid to flaunt it.

The ending is good.  A lot was left for the reader to fill in the gaps and in a way I like it but in another, if it would have been fully developed, it would have had me in tears.
REVIEW to be Posted on April 4th 2019

There are so many wonderful characters in this book. Masha is a kind, caring woman, with a wry sense of humour and a penchant for the 'word of the day' on a dictionary website. Much loved by her friends, parents and her lolloping wolfhound, Haizum, she can't forgive herself for the tragic death for her young son, Gabriel. This colours her life.

Sally Red Shoes is an eccentric lady who sings and feeds the crows in the local cemetery. Masha first meets her there while walking Haizum. The two damaged women become friends, each doing the other a life-changing good turn. The graveyard itself plays an important part in the story. A large Victorian garden cemetery, it is where Masha goes to calm her soul and care for her favourite graves, making up interesting life stories for the long-dead inhabitants. Masha also loves her local lido, where she swims in the chilly water and eventually meets 'the Olympian'. To find out more about him, you'll need to read the book! Then there's Alice and her son Mattie. At first you wonder how they relate to the main story but don't skip this part, as all becomes clear towards the end.

Haizum the dog is a character in his own right. Named for the Archangel Gabriel's horse (yes, really!), he's a 'long-legged hairy affair of a dog', energetic enjoyer of long walks, greedy for treats and anything else he finds lying around and, most of all, fiercely devoted to Masha. If you have a dog yourself, you'll relate to the scene in the vet's!

If you love quirky characters and dogs you'll love this poignant book. Full of lively, vivid descriptions of people, places and feelings with lots of amusing phrases, it's a story that will stay with you.

Ruth Hogan is the author of The Keeper of Lost Things. Look out for Queenie Malone's Paradise Hotel, another gem from this lyrical and witty writer.

This was ok, I enjoyed it but it could have been better, one thing I can say is I read it quickly and was invested somewhat, but not the best I have read.

It was a standing joke that when my friend Carolyn and I went on holiday, our trip would inevitably include a visit to a cemetery.
Beethoven, Emily Bronte, Brahms, Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, we’ve visited them all, along with many thousands of other less famous names - although often with grander graves - around the world.
I know it’s a bit odd but I like stories and I always feel like cemeteries are packed with them.
Ruth Hogan loved reading gravestones as a child (and still does, according to her bio) and a cemetery plays a prominent role in The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes.
Perhaps that’s part of the reason why I felt instantly at home within its pages? It seemed like someone else not only got it but explained it much more eloquently than I ever could.
That’s only a small part of what I loved about this book, though. It is also so beautifully written that some of the sentences actually made me stop and sigh with pleasure.
I’m late to the Ruth Hogan party but she has definitely gained a fan.
Her second book has some dark themes at its centre (child loss, cancer, death) but it’s strangely uplifting and full of hope.
There’s a certain amount of mystery to the plot that kept me guessing right to the end.
But the characters are what make it. The cast list is wonderfully eccentric; the type that makes you wish they were real so you could befriend them.
Masha is complex, both tough and vulnerable, funny and sad. I felt very connected to her and her story.
I’ve thought long and hard about the ending in the days since I finished the book and while unsure at first, I think Ruth definitely got it right.
Despite its rave reviews (not to mention another beautiful cover), her debut, The Keeper of Lost Things, passed me by but I will definitely be going back to it and can’t wait for her new one, Queenie Malone’s Paradise Hotel.

With many thanks to Two Roads (via NetGalley) for the ARC in return for an honest review.

I really enjoyed Ruth Hogans previous book so was really looking forward to reading this one. It did not disappoint. A great easy read that has going through every emotion. Thoroughly enjoyed.

Thank you Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to review this book.

I really liked this book, I wasn't sure how the author could follow her excellent first book, but this was very good.
A totally different book to the first but it still had the laugh out loud moments as well as reducing me to tears.

Loved this beautiful funny emotional read.Ruth Hogan is becoming one of my favorite authors.Her books take me out of my reading chair chair out of my world into another place another reality,Highly recommend this book & her other novels, #netgallet #johnmurraypress

Did not finish this book. I just did not enjoy it all sadly. Thank you to both NetGalley and John Murray Press for my eARC of this book in exchange for my honest unbiased review

Twelve years ago Masha's life changed irrevocably when her young son disappeared, presumed drowned. Masha left her pos tin the local council and retrained to become a psychotherapist but her demons pursued her. Living alone with only her beloved wolfhound Haizum for company, Masha haunts the local cemetery finding solace among the gravestones and swims at the lido. Slowly though, Masha realises that she needs to move on and with the help of her friends so decides to put the past behind her and open up her life to new experiences and possibly romance. Meanwhile single mother Alice drifts around sanity trying to protect her son Mattie but Alice and Masha are linked and their lives are about to collide.
This is a very slow book to savour and enjoy. The characters are quirky and the twist at the end is somewhat unexpected and all the better for it. There are gaping holes in the narrative but I can forgive these are the writing is incredibly engaging and almost very restrained. There are huge themes touched on here, the loss of a child, cancer, mental illness, family breakdown etc. but they are handled so delicately that it is only after finishing the book that the reader actually realises how profound the story is.

I loved The Keeper of Lost Things, so I had high expectations for this.

Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy this anywhere near as much. The main character seemed to wallow in grief for a good half of the book and I nearly gave up. This is a book about loss, grief and death. A jolly chicklit this ain’t!

I could more or less see the ending coming, the epilogue feeling slightly anticlimactic and “is that it?”

Thank you to the author, John Murray Press and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed Ruth Hogans first book, The Keeper of Lost Things, but I loved The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes. It's definitely one of my favourite books this year. It made me laugh at times but it also gave me a lump in my throat. I wondered where Alice fitted in this story and didn't realise until the end when it became clear. The ending was perfect, just what I hoped for.