Jane Cable

This book takes us back to Dubrovnik, the city we first visited in The Collaborator’s Daughter, author Eva Glyn’s previous masterful novel. Dubrovnik is located in Croatia and was historically known as Ragusa. It’s a tourist destination in the Mediterranean, a seaport and a World Heritage Site because of its outstanding medieval architecture and fortified old town. It’s teeming with life and history. Glyn’s vivid descriptions allow us to once again visualize this beautiful, fascinating place and some of the beautiful, fascinating people in it. The Dubrovnik Book Club picks up about a dozen years after The Collaborator’s Daughter ends, with some of the same characters featured, but it’s a standalone novel, not really a sequel or the next in a series. In fact, I have to admit that I was a way in before I even realized I already knew some of these folks because Glyn did such an outstanding job of captivating me from the very beginning of the novel with this time and this group and this set of events.

Everyone is facing something difficult or disturbing or frustrating or tragic. Vedran’s girlfriend disappeared/drowned/came to harm? When foul play was initially suspected he was questioned but then cleared. Cleared by the judicial system, but not by the townsfolk. The popular opinion is that he “got away” with murder; he’s talked about, shunned, and has been asked to work from home until things calm down. He despairs of that ever happening and has a huge fear of a secret about his life with Didi ever being exposed.

Claire is spending a few months in Dubrovnik, away from her home in London, with her grandmother Fran and Fran’s husband Jadran (the main stars of The Collaborator’s Daughter). This isn’t meant to be a vacation; Clair had Long Covid and is now afraid to venture out, to mingle with people, to return to her old life. Fran’s goal is to help her get past those fears, starting with a job at The Welcoming Bookshop.

Luna and her flatmate Ezra left the small town they grew up in and moved to Dubrovnik – Ezra to pursue career dreams, Luna to escape. Escape the disapproval and restriction and rejection. Karmela is a professor on sabbatical, temporarily in Dubrovnik doing Ragusan research, which seems to be the only thing that brings her pleasure. She’s unfriendly, judgmental, an outsider – with a shameful secret. Rafael is a self-proclaimed hero of the Creation War of Independence, full of stories that don’t always have the ring of truth, and also often full of alcohol.

A variety of people with seemingly nothing in common and no reason to interact. But they do, either as members of the book club being led by Claire or through their connection to someone who is a member. In addition to the books and the conversations and the delicious food provided by Fran, they somehow become a unit: an investigative team trying to learn what really happened to Didi and clear Vedran’s name once and for all, and then take it upon themselves to try and find a way for the bookshop to remain open when increased rent or sale of the building threaten closure. The Dubrovnik Book Club is a history lesson, a mystery and a charming story of such very different people finding common ground, common purpose, and deep friendship. It’s exciting, informative, sad, hopeful.

The first thing I did after finishing The Collaborator’s Daughter was to make a note to myself: READ MORE EVA GLYN. Thanks to Harper Collins Publishers UK, One More Chapter for providing an advance copy of The Dubrovnik Book Club via NetGalley and allowing me to do just that. I thoroughly enjoyed it and recommend it without hesitation. I have made another note to myself to KEEP READING EVA GLYN. I voluntarily leave this review; all opinions are my own.… (altro)

The Dubrovnik Book Club is a Harlequin romance-type book that's still an enjoyable read (even more so if you like romance novels). The old buildings and history of Dubrovnik come to vivid life, and I almost felt as though I were walking its streets along with the characters.

The Welcoming Bookshop lives up to its name, truly welcoming all to its door. The books the club members choose to read highlight inclusiveness and show how each of the characters grows.

I found all four main characters interesting. Each one of them feels that they have good reasons to hide away from others. Luna, a young, bubbly lesbian, is nervous about coming out because she's from a very restrictive and traditional family. Claire, an Englishwoman who used to work in London's Foyles Bookshop, has to overcome her fear of a recurrence of Covid. Claire's cousin, Vedran, has been pilloried by social media after his girlfriend disappeared, and it's this disappearance that fuels the mystery that the book club members work to solve. Karmela has felt like an outsider ever since her parents took her out of Sarajevo before the city was torn apart by war. She feels that there is some sort of shame in her escape, especially since it took her away from her dearest friends. Each one of these characters fights his or her demons with the help of the other book club members.

Each character's story is interesting, and I liked the solution to the mystery of the woman's disappearance. But, most of all, I enjoyed spending time in Dubrovnik, and I appreciated the Croatian glossary at the back of the book. If you're in the mood for a light, pleasant read in an exotic location, The Dubrovnik Book Club would be a good choice.

(Review copy courtesy of the publisher and Net Galley)… (altro)

Claire, a UK native staying with family in Dubrovnik, has recovered from long Covid. Her experience with the disease has made her leery of mixing with people in public. She must overcome her fear as she has been hired as the temporary manager of the Welcoming Bookstore. There, she meets co worker Luna who is struggling with coming out in a somewhat non tolerant culture. Their weekly book club at the store includes Karmela, a visiting professor of history doing research. She tends to be a self isolate, an after effect of her experiences when her family fled Sarajevo at the start of the Yugoslav War. Claire also enlists her cousin, Vedran, to help with the club. Vedran is dealing with his own issues, having once been falsely accused of the murder of his girlfriend after she mysteriously disappeared and then the target of vicious social media postings.

Although there is a bit of, as Claire puts it, navel-gazing, the book is beautifully written and an endearing story. Written from the POVs of the four MCs, overlying all the storylines is the beauty that is Dubrovnik along with the pain, tragedy, loss of the War. It is about the bond of friendship and moving forward in life, no matter your adversities.

I have spent time in Dubrovnik; Glyn’s picturesque descriptions of the old city brought it back to life for me. I also appreciated the refresher on some of the background of the city, including its early history as the Republic of Ragusa as well as the Siege of Dubrovnik. It was enough information to be interesting but not weigh down the plot.

Although some of the characters are in an earlier book by Glyn, this is not part of a series.

Thanks to #Netgalley and @harpercollinsUK @onemorechapterHC for the ARC.… (altro)

The Collaborator’s Daughter is an outstanding novel. It makes you look back to the past with sadness and understanding and some regret, and makes you look to the future with hope and just a little bit of trepidation, all the while painting vivid word pictures of Dubrovnik, Croatia both near the end of World War II and in present day: beautiful, dangerous, irresistible.

At age 65, having lived nearly her entire life in England, Fran finds herself at loose ends. Unmarried, with a grown child and young grandchildren, a half-brother she adores and a half-sister who hates her, her mother has been gone for several years and the stepfather she has been nursing through illness has just died. Retired, no one to need her, no necessity of fitting in, Fran thinks if she can find the inner strength and courage that this may be the right time to finally find out more about where she came from, the hero father who died when she was an infant in Dubrovnik and fill in some of the blanks in the stories her mother told her about that time and place. The research she initially does tells her that instead of being the hero she was led to believe her father was executed as a collaborator. She almost turns right around and goes home, but she’s rented an apartment for three months and, with support and encouragement from her son, brother and good friend back home she sets out on what ends up being the adventure and discovery of her lifetime, not only for the past but for the present and the future as well.

The Collaborator’s Daughter is well-written, complex, detailed, intense and tells a fantastically entertaining story. Fran is likeable, insecure and brave at the same time, afraid to stay and learn things she doesn’t want to know but also feeling surprisingly at home in Dubrovnik. The local people are welcoming, particularly a young bartender and his uncle who helps her on her journey of discovery.

This is a delightful, through-provoking, satisfying story. It was refreshing to see in Fran a woman of a certain age who wasn’t a senile, toothless, doddering old lady in a wheelchair but rather an energetic, enervated woman with a little bit of a libido. The surroundings are so authentically described it feels as if you are there. Thanks to Harper Collins UK One More Chapter for providing an advance copy of The Collaborator’s Daughter for my reading pleasure and honest opinion. I thoroughly enjoyed it and recommend it without hesitation; all opinions are my own.… (altro)