Wrexham Library Book Reviews

Debbie Salisbury from Wrexham Library has kindly provided Wrexham.com with reviews of some of the popular books currently available from the county’s libraries. For more details visit www.wrexham.gov.uk/libraries

Bold As Brass: My Story by Hilary Devay

Hilary Devey is one of our most remarkable entrepreneurs and was an instant sensation when she appeared on Dragon’s Den. Now, in this powerful memoir, she reveals the full story of her turbulent life. She describes how her father’s bankruptcy sparked a fierce determination in her not to end up the same way. When her father started working in the pub trade, Hilary did too – at the age of seven – and has been grafting hard ever since.

She built her own company, Pall-Ex, which today has an annual turnover of £100 million, never giving up even when she was so broke she couldn’t afford to give her son a Christmas dinner. Admitting to terrible taste in men, Hilary opens up about her marriages and the destructive relationship she thought would break her. She tells how she faced a mother’s worst nightmare, her son’s heroin addiction, and fought back from a stroke that almost killed her.

You don’t have to be a fan of Dragon’s Den to enjoy this candid and brave account.  It’s laced with the warmth and humour that have made Hilary so popular and ultimately, it’s as inspirational as the woman herself.  

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.

What Lou doesn’t know is she’s about to lose her job or that knowing what’s coming is what keeps her sane.

Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he’s going to put a stop to that.

What Will doesn’t know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they’re going to change the other for all time.

This book is not a chick lit read, it’s a story that you have not read before. It will make you feel both comforted and cosy but also on edge and unsure what is going to happen next, and at the end you’ll wish you hadn’t finished it.

WE3 By Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely

This graphic novel tells the story of three lost pets and how they have been experimented on with robotics by the military. They have been trained to replace soldiers in warfare, but they were only prototypes and they now face being decommissioned. The lead scientist takes pity on them and releases them into the wild, with devastating consequences.

While this graphic novel contains some scenes of violence that may make it unsuitable for younger readers, this is a unique and important story. Each chapter begins with a poster depicting one of the lost pets, and it is truly horrific to see how they have been changed almost beyond recognition in the chapter that follows. This is a work of science fiction that takes the idea of animal experiments and exaggerates it, in turn making the reader really think about the morality of experimenting on animals. It offers no answers, but asks really important questions of our relationships with animals.