Receive Your Copy The Hungry Tide Originated By Valerie Wood File Format Volume

very good read, with romance, daring deeds, heroes and villains and everything you would expect from a book that won the first Catherine Cookson Fiction Prize.
As a lover of Catherine Cookson's rags to riches romances, this ticked all the boxes for me, The story of love across the class divide, against the backdrop of the fishing industry, Will and his wife Maria have to battle with all sorts of traumas and tragedies in their lives.
Will is left badly injured when he is at sea in a whaling boat, but because of his heroic behaviour in saving the life of John Rayner, nephew of the owner of the whaling fleet, he and his family are given a chance to improve their lives.


His youngest daughter, Sarah, is the main focus of this story and her love for a man of a higher social class, which is doomed to failure from the outset.
This is a cause of heartbreak for her and for her love, There is no knowing how it will end, it certainly draws the reader into this very exciting and gripping narrative, The reader will find themself rooting for the lovers, willing things to work out,

I can recommend this to romance readers, especially romance with a gripping tale to tell, Well . this was her first book, I believe, so some consideration should be given for that, And yes, it's all right, but not mind blowing and honestly, very predictable, And it falls into that category which my other half calls grannie porn, How Kind. Historical family saga/melodrama/cheesey romance, Perhaps I am a little disappointed given where I got the recommendation from I was expecting a lot more from this, I wanted to read it, as said, as it had been recommended and also as it's set in East Yorkshire, I've just been on holiday there so the setting was relevant although the actual places a lot of it takes place at have since washed into the sea! and I'm curious about that corner of the county, as one of my favourite writers set her books there Winifred Holtby.
Let's not get into a competition here, but Holtby is a far superior writer,

Anyhoo. Set in the second half of thes, starting in the slums in Hull, this follows two generations of the Foster family.
There's Maria and Will and their kiddies, He works on the whaling ships but is forced to give it up when an accident at work means he loses a leg.
Back in the days before "where there's blame there's a claim" the family has to figure out another way to earn their crust.
Lucky for Will Foster, he'd been saving the ship owner's nephew at the time, and so the family are offered jobs on the Masterton's new estate out in the countryside on the Holderness Coast.
Will is some kind of farmer/land agent, and Maria works as a housekeeper, Ma Scravyn, one of the most interesting characters in the book, is the head of the housekeepers, and a herbal wise woman of the district.
On arrival Maria gives birth to another daughter, Sarah, and shortly afterwards Masterton's wife Isobel has a daughter, so these two girls grow up together, although the older they get the more the social hierarchy of the times come between them.
Which is a particular problem for Sarah, who is educated alongside Lucy, and ends up finding she doesn't really fit in with either class.


The cheesey romance element doesn't come in till the end of the book, so you've got to be here for the history and the saga.
And honestly, it's a bit lukewarm, there's no real build up or passion, And for me there was something a touch creepy about it, I know there were big age gaps in marriage back in the day and that farm girls married young, but we're talking a young teenage girl and a man in his thirties, and the creepy bit.
. . well, he was there at Sarah's birth so he's almost fawning over her from word go, He feels more like he should be older brother/father figure, and for her to suddenly "love" him, I don't know.

The characters are all the stereotypes you'd expect, with the poor being a mix of cheeky rogues and thieves, and very earnest, honest hard working folk.
The rich are benevelant surprising to read of sympathy for the French Revolution from that class and the women are emotionally immature, materialistic and cold.
. . A lot of the dialogue is written in local dialect which I am always ambivilant about, I get that it shows a class difference between the rich, whose speech is written as plain English, and the uneducated working class who speak in dialect.
But still, personally I am not a fan of it,

It's a domestic drama in a lot of ways with a lot of joy in having babies and keeping house.
Which doesn't make for exciting reading, There's moments of thievery and scoundrals, but they're all neatly dispatched so that you never feel much of a sense of injustice or seeing much bad or unfair happen to anyone.
Not that I want to read about people having a bad life and a miserable life, I suppose I'm saying this hasn't really been my cup of tea, But if you're wanting something nice and bland, a quick read with no nasty shocks hiding, it's fine, I didn't feel as though the way Hull people speak came across very well in the book, We may emphasise a i e extra but the terminlogy/words/accent in the book didn't fit in my opinion,

The plot and the book read quite well and I'd say were well written,
Being totally honest though the accent/speech issue spoilt it somewhat for me,

I would still read other books by this Author though, I was sent this book by the publishers Random House UK,

Val Woods has been one of my forever best authors, my reading life began with her and Catherine Cookson, along with Danielle Steel.

I found I had read this book back in,
Sarahs father was involved in a terrible accident loosing his leg, They were living hand to mouth as it was, now this lead them deeper into poverty,

Based around Hull and around coastlines, whaling ships and fishing boats were families bread and butter, literally,

John comes along and falls in love with Sarah, but he's way out of her class, Wealthy, owner of a whaling fleet, Just what is going to happen Audiblehrsmins, Narrator Anne Dover,

This is the second Val Wood book Ive listened too, Once again outstanding story and narration,

I truly felt I was in Hull, at Gaston Hall, with the sea battering the cliffs, The descriptions of the daily lives, from working on the whaling boats in the freezing artic, the everyday lives working in Hull and the hardships which where described felt so real.
I lived the lives of the characters and cried at the end for a Will, Im glad Sarah and John meet at the end and I can imagine their happy ever after,

I would have loved an epilogue but Im wondering if this author wants us to imagine ourselves what happens after.


Im going to listen to more of her books as Anne Dover does such a good job of reeling you into the story outstanding narration.
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