Becky Bookworm Book Review: A spiritually special 'Like Bees to Honey' by Caroline Smailes

Like Bees to Honey by Caroline Smailes

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Caroline Smailes creates a fascinating and fantastic world where the reader is shown the importance of life, love and family through the grieving eyes of Nina, a Maltese woman returning to her home island after many years away in England and rejected from her family. She doesn't travel entirely alone, at least not to the normal human eye. She takes with her, her young and sadly deceased son Christopher.
Upon their arrival in Malta Nina comes to see that there are other lost souls like Christopher, each wanting a pleasant resolution to the life they've left behind and it's as she listens to their stories, their histories that she not only comes to understand the suble beauty created in the loss and pain of death but also the immense joy and pleasures she still has in her mortal life. A life she sadly nearly destroys in her deepest and darkest guilt in her involvement over Christophers young death.

For such an amazing story with some very enchanting characters Caroline has pulled out all the stops in writing this remarkable novel. For once she has actually crafted the words to paint the story in our imaginations palet of colours. She uses sounds skillfully, she uses colour and font to bring to light each characters individual personality. The little titbits of life and history in Malta at the start of each chapter quickly grab and reinforce the readers attention, like breadcrumbs dropped throughout the narrative, leading you as a reader on a wonderful literary adventure.

I myself have used such narrative techniques in one short story during my time at University when I did a course involving Creative Writing and Caroline Smailes has shown she is the Mistress of modern narrative, master wordsmith of a great tale of classic human emotions and problems but cast in a way that will captivate todays modern reader.



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