Arleen
I enjoyed this book very much. I found the start quite hard to read with all the names of the people who were going into Mrs Petrakis bakery. it was hard to know who was who. I thought the book would be good if only one was a Greek Cypriot. I eventually go into the story and I found I felt part of the community, I could picture walking along the road and turning into the bakery with all the wonderful different smells of the beautiful assorted cakes and bread. The Author took you straight into the heart of the family.
I found I enjoyed the diverse customers going into Maria's shop.

The story goes on to explain how Maria came to England with her family to escape
the war and opened a bakery. She settled in England although found it very cold. Her Daughter-in-law suffered with deep depression after having each of her two babies. So Maria was kept busy between running her bakery and helping her family.
The story was very good, I felt so much a part of it. I will give it 9/10

Eve
I found this book rather confusing.- the time line skipped all over the place, the characters were not straight forward and even at times it was difficult to realise what country you were in. None of the characters were particularly likeable so reading to the end of the book was rather a chore. I felt it only was worth a 4.

Carolyn
I found this book quite hard going although I did finish it.It was difficult to follow as it jumped between times and places and people. I kept forgetting whose husband had been stuffed down the well.It was quite uninteresting a lot of the time. I give it 4.

Kirsty
Unfortunately this was not a book that I found that I could get into. I stopped and started several times and managed to get as far as 170 pages but I really could not go any further. Although the synopsis looked intriguing and I was looking forward to it I just found that the storyline was just too slow paced for my liking. I also struggled with the constant timeline and protagonist changes feeling that there was too much about one character's timeline and not enough of the next one. There were several times I had to go back to check which timeline I was reading about and whose point of view I was reading from. From the amount I managed to read though I will say that the evocative descriptions were brilliant and the author really brings the surroundings of both Cyprus and London to life along with the history of the areas and the characters. I also found that I could smell and see the delicious foods that Maria was baking and that was being brought to life throughout the book. Mary's emotive writing skills also brings the emotions felt by the characters straight to the readers mind ensuring they feel the sorrow, love, hopelessness, anger and everything else the characters feel through the storyline. I struggled with what to actually rate this as i would normally just give a 1 for a book that I did not manage to finish but I think it deserves more than that as what I read was from a great imagination, the storyline was brought to life and the premise was intriguing but it was just too slow and confusing for me unfortunately. Although I feel this way do not allow that to put you off the book as there are many mixed reviews and everybody has their own tastes.

Rating 3/10

Average Score 5 out of 10