Roberta Writes – My reviews of Pip’s Other Adventures, The Bubble Reputation and The Changeling of the Third Reich

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I have fallen horribly behind with writing and sharing reviews. This time of the year is my ‘hamster in a ball’ period when I seem to be running as fast as I can and … not getting very far.

Today is a catch up and I am sharing reviews of three excellent, and very different, books I have read recently.

Pip’s Other Adventures, Short Stories of the 1920s by Teagan Riordain Geneviene

Picture caption: Gorgeous bright pink cover of Pip’s Other Adventures, Short Stories of the 1920s featuring a selection of photographs from the 1920s

What Amazon says

This book is a collection of short stories and vignettes from the “Pip-verse.” They are tales of Paisley Idelle Peabody, aka Pip, and her friends who appear in The Three Things Serial Story, and Murder at the Bijou ― Three Ingredients 1, and A Ghost in the Kitchen ― Three Ingredients 2.
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Most of these tales are written in the author’s “three things method of storytelling,” meaning they are driven by sets of three random things, which were supplied by her readers. These short stories occur at various points in the timeline of those adventures, but they do not include any spoilers.
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If you enjoy Roaring Twenties slang, have a sense of whimsy, and don’t mind having your heart lifted, then jump in the jalopy and hang on tight. There’s no telling where we’ll go, but there’s sure to be fun along the way. You’re the cat’s pajamas!

My review

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of short stories about Pip. The author captures perfectly the conflict of the 1920’s, a time of rapid change and progress to which the attitudes and thought processes of the average person, and the institutions, have not yet adjusted.

Pip is a modern woman, a flapper, who wants to be independent and live her best life. Unfortunately, the world is not yet ready for Pip and she fights a constant battle against society. Thank goodness for her Granny Phanny, a most emancipated elderly lady, but who manages to rein Pip in and get her to tow the social norms of the time while still keeping the champagne bubbles in life.

This book is well researched and the language of the time is a hoot, perfectly suiting the humorous style of the writing and stories, which put an amusing spin on Pip’s struggle as an enlightened flapper against the world.

A one sentence summary of a few of my favourite stories in this collection:

Pip’s Lemon Christmas – A lonely Christmas Eve is looking up when a gorgeous delivery man arrives with a surprise package for Pip. A quote: “What would any self-respecting flapper do in such a situation? Refuse to be a sourpuss, that’s what a flapper would do!”

Pip’s a Chicken – Pip’s cooking lessons under Granny Phanny’s direction are not going well, but Granny has found her own way of coping … and eating. A quote: “Just because your friend chicken turned out as tough as an old rooster doesn’t mean you can quit.”

Pip Sees a Camel – Pip is late again and Granny Phanny decides to teach her a lesson. A quote: “That dewdropper is advertising classes for the Camel Walk dance. And that nasty, spitting beast got away.”

This collection is an entertaining peep into life in the 1920’s with strong female characters. Highly recommend.

Purchase link for Amazon USA: https://www.amazon.com/Other-Adventures-Short-Stories-Things-ebook/dp/B09V3D6NPD

The Bubble Reputation by Alex Craigie

Picture caption: The beautiful dark blue cover of The Bubble Reputation featuring a woman trapped inside a bubble

What Amazon says

If you want to destroy someone’s reputation, social media provides the perfect tool.

Emmie Hobson, children’s author and TV presenter, is riding high on a wave of popularity when an unscrupulous newspaper editor, desperate for a scoop, brings Emmie’s world crashing down.

Social media picks up the baton and a terrifying backlash of hate and abuse is unleashed. Threats are made and there are those, inflamed by the rhetoric, prepared to take the law into their own hands.

My review

The Bubble Reputation is an intriguing and chilling story which focuses on the unscrupulous nature of some reporters who will do anything for a ‘story’, fake news, and the power of social media.

Emmy is an up and coming author of a series of popular children’s books. She has her own television show and is in line to receive an award at the upcoming British Recognition of Achievement Awards Ceremony. In addition, Emmie has great relationships with her parents and partner.

Ursula Bloom is the frustrated editor of In the Picture, a paper with falling circulation figures. Ursula needs a scoop to book her paper’s circulation and she is not concerned about how she gets it or whether it is based on truth. She hatches a plan with a junior reporter to commence a smear campaign about Emmie.

The detail in this book as to how the smear campaign starts and effectively ‘gets its fake teeth’ into Emmy and everyone involved with her is fascinating and believable. Soon Emmie is fighting to hold on to everything, her reputation, her show, and her book contract. Everyone around her is fair game and her parents and partner get hauled into the media mud fight.

This is an excellent novella which will make you extra careful about what you share in the public domain.

Purchase The Bubble Reputation of Amazon USA here: https://www.amazon.com/Bubble-Reputation-Alex-Craigie-ebook/dp/B0BHZL8J9G

The Changeling of the Third Reich by Rachel Carrera

Picture caption: The intriguing cover to The Changeling of the Third Reich in a striking dark red and featuring a picture of a young teenage girl in two worlds during WW2

What Amazon says

The year is 1968, and the Vietnam War is in full swing. Dr. Bridget Castle, a neurosurgeon in Boston, handles the victims of anti-war protests, the casualties of war, and the stress of being a woman in a male-dominated profession with ease. Her husband, her parents, and her patients all love and respect her, but her tight-knit world is in danger of unraveling when someone from her past shows up and threatens to expose her closest-held secret: that she is a Concentration Camp survivor.

For more than twenty-three years, Bridget has walked in the shoes of a girl killed in the Blitz, blurring the line of when her own identity as a German Jew ended and when she assumed the role of changeling. If not for her childhood diary to remind her of all she endured, she would be completely successful in taking on the memories of the girl she replaced. But when the son of a Nazi soldier is placed in her care, she finds herself unable to deny her past any longer.

The last time Bridget had to stare into the face of evil, she learned, despite losing everything, just how strong she was. Now that the ghosts of her past have awakened, will she be strong enough to avenge the life that was stolen from her?

My review

A dual timeline novel, this interesting story moves between an American city during the Vietnam War and war-torn Europe during WW2.

Dr Bridget Castle is a successful woman. A female doctor, she has fought for, and received, recognition, attaining the position of head of neurology at the Catholic hospital where she works. Bridget has a happy and fulfilling marriage to another neurologist; she also has a loving family. Bridget’s adopted father is also a doctor.

Bridget has overcome a terrible past. As a young Jewish girl in Nazi Europe during WW2, she survived internment in three concentration camps and was finally rescued by her adopted father, one of the liberators of the camp. During this period of her life, Bridget, lost both her brothers and both her parents. She has terrible memories of abuse, her own and other peoples, and suffers nightmares.

The story revolves around Bridget’s interactions and experiences with several patients and a few fellow doctors at the hospital. Each interaction triggers memories from Bridget’s traumatic childhood which are presented as diary entries in a journal Bridget managed to hold on to during the war years.

While some suspension of belief is required by the reader to embrace the many coincidences in this story, it is a good read, well researched (I wondered if some of the historical input came from relatives or people who lived through the war in Europe) and with an entertaining and thought provoking story.

Bridget’s character is full of internal conflict as a result of her traumatic past and particularly, the deemed rejection by her mother that took place a few short weeks before Bridget was captured by the Nazi’s and incarcerated. This perceived rejection has coloured Bridget’s entire life and thoughts about her former family.

The book examines some deep themes: racial and other prejudices (in addition to Hitler and his Nazi’s prejudice against Jewish and other people during WW2, the book examines also prejudice against the teenage Vietnam War protested who were abused by the police based on their looks and a dismissal that they were all drug takers); gender inequality at that time in America; family and other relationships and the concept of sacrifices made for love.

I enjoyed this book and the detailed history presented all wrapped up in an entertaining story.

Purchase The Changeling of the Third Reich on Amazon USA here: https://www.amazon.com/Changeling-Third-Reich-Rachel-Carrera-ebook/dp/B0C8879MF9

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Published by robertawrites235681907

I am a writer of young adult fiction and poetry

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130 thoughts on “Roberta Writes – My reviews of Pip’s Other Adventures, The Bubble Reputation and The Changeling of the Third Reich”

  1. I’ve read the bubble reputation, so I know that is a great book. Pip’s Other Adventures, Short Stories of the 1920s seems to be a really fun book and the Changeling of the Third Reich seems to be a really intriguing and poignant book with an important message. Your three reviews are wonderful and inspiring. Thank you for the three recommendations and for the very enjoyable and interesting reading.

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    1. Sarah, your comment gave me a giggle mug. 😀 Robbie has always been a great supporter of Pip. It’s a very short collection of stories, but a fun way to quickly lighten the mood. Almost as good as a bit of giggle water. Thanks for reading and commenting. You’re the cat’s pajamas.

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  4. As is usual with your writing, Robbie, you give us three encapsulating and enthralling reviews. A delightful analysis of three very different stories that command attention.

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  12. Many thanks, Robbie, for another of your well-considered and beautiful reviews. Yu can imagine how happy I am with mine! I’m already a fan of Teagan’s work and now you’ve enticed me to find out more about The Changeling of the Third Reich. Don’t get lost in that hamster ball! 😀 ❤

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      2. Thanks for the lovely comment, Robbie. I’m looking forward to reading about (and seeing pictures) of your next trip into the bush. Have a great time next week! ❤

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  14. Eek. Too much! I did pick up one of Kerry Greenwood’s Miss Fisher books in my last $10 book bag so the Roaring Twenties are on my radar but for the real “flavah” it’s Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hughes, Wolff etc… In fact if you can dig it up one of Faulkner’s earliest, “Mosquitos” is a character study tour de force with good deal of snark for “the art crowd.”

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    2. I love the Miss Fisher TV series, although Faulkner, Fitzgerald, etc. are too serious for me these days. Pip is just light fun. I had to push her into another room after she called you a bluenose and blew a raspberry. Sometimes she forgets her manners when Granny Phanny isn’t around. Although Granny might be worse if she got in a lather.

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      2. Early Faulkner is hilarious. Miss Fisher, in print, minus the Dressing Danger Barbie stuff would be short stories. Very short. The TV people did a great job, considering the entirety of the wardrobe budget was spent on Phryne, much like the word count in the books. Tell the tomao her applesauce was Jake and I have a character who loves to button polish with a suffragette who feathers. Save the rock of ages face stretcher for the turn around🤣 Somewhere I have the hep cat dictionary from Harlem…I forget why, but fo recall it’s fluky.

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  16. Robbie, you are pos-i-lutely the oyster’s earrings! It makes my week to see your review of Pip’s short stories. You’ve always been such a wonderful support of her.
    Thanks for sharing these other reviews too. I quickly became a fan of the things Alex writes. I was looking forward to sitting down with The Bubble Reputation, and now I really have to get started on it. Rachel’s book sounds fascinating too. Wishing everyone huge success. Hugs.

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    1. Hope you like it whenyou get round to it, Teagan – but there’s still the little matter of the sequel to A Peril in Ectoplasm which needs your full attention (please!).

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        1. Sorry for the delay, Teagan. I’ve been out of action for a while! Delighted to hear on my return that you have been suitably frightening your characters. Keep up the good work!

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        1. Hi Kerfe, you have other interests like your art and poetry writing. I like to read every night for an hour (if possible) and I listen to audiobooks when I create art. Hubby bought me an audiobook contract so I get three a month.

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    2. Bernadette, I’m honored any time Robbie reviews one of my books. I too enjoyed seeing these other books with strong female characters — particularly when they are books about women, written by women. Thanks for reading and commenting. You’re the cat’s pajamas.

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  25. Hi, Robbie- It is uncanny how deeply your posts resonate with me. I can totally relate to your ‘hampster in a ball’ phase. I have just been going through that myself. So much so that I have officially declared today to be ‘Don’t Get Out of Your Pajamas Day.’ A decree that I definitely plan to follow – along with much loafing and lounging! 😀

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  26. Hi, Robbie! THANK YOU for reviewing Changeling (both here and on Amazon & Goodreads)! (I’ll be blogging about your review tomorrow.) WOW! BOTH of the other books in this review also sound so interesting! I’m adding them both to my to-read list right now. Pip sounds like a fun gal and so does Granny Phannie, and I love that 1920s era, so I’m positive it will be delightful! Emmie lives in the terrifying modern world when too often things like that really happen, at least on smaller scales, so that sounds chilling and intriguing as well. Again, I can’t thank you enough! ❤️❤️❤️

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  27. Great job on these reviews, Robbie. I’ve enjoyed many of Teagan’s books. At first glance, The Changeling did not look like my kind of book, but after reading your review, it sounds intriguing, especially since I remember the time when my dad served in Vietnam and have written a little about that.

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  28. Wonderful reviews, Robbie. I’ve read The Bubble Reputation, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Teagan is always wonderful at storytelling stories, and Rachel’s book sounds riveting. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and Congrats to the authors.

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          2. Oooh, that sounds like a difficult operation. I wish you both all the best with the surgery. Mike and Greg both having sinal surgery in early Dec. It seems we have a genetic issue! I have posted about Soul Swallowers for my Halloween Book Festival today.

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          3. Oh, Robbie. Spinal surgery? I hope it’s not a complicated procedure and that the problem with be completely resolved. Hugs to you. And thanks for the heads up! I’ll be over. ❤ ❤

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