The Tenth Gift

This book was very exciting! The plot bounces between 1625 and modern day as the main character unravels the mystery surrounding an old book and wrangles her love life at the same time.One thing supremely irritated me and ruined the book for me. This is not a spoiler just a pet peeve. So the main character goes to the library to do some research. she ask a crusty old librarian with who has a lifelong appreciation of local lore??? NO---she goes on the internet and gets all sorts of information du [...]

I feel somewhat guilty for according only 2 stars for a book like The Tenth Gift. Certainly I've read countless books like it in the past, and rated them higher.Generally, I adore this type of fiction, where the author creates two women from different time periods and weaves an interconnecting tale of their lives and fates (often with subtle supernatural overtones). Writers like Susanna Kearsley and Kate Morton do it well, with their respective books The Winter Sea and The Forgotten Garden.In ad [...]

I am a real sucker for books that are about books, making The Tenth Gift my kind of story. However, within the first few pages of this book, I was predisposed to dislike it because the main character, Julia Lovat, has been involved in an affair with her best friend's husband for seven years. This caused me to start the book feeling decidedly unsympathetic toward Julia. In spite of this, I quickly became captivated by the storyline, which switches back and forth from modern day Julia to the life [...]

OK, first, this doesn't mix genres so much as it is part of a sub-genre: the centuries-apart parallel stories. I quite enjoy this sub-genre; it's why I picked this book. Unfortunately, it wasn't that good. The parallelism between the two stories was pretty tenuous, consisting mainly of the fact of ending up in love in Morocco. It's not like Julia got caught up in modern human trafficking, or had any real love-triangle-breaking choice to make, or even turned out to be a descendant of anyone in pa [...]

Remove the main character, Julia Lovat, and her silly tawdry love affair with her best friend's husband, and perhaps The Tenth Gift could have had a more liberating story. But as it stands, the only time the book was free to soar was through the touching journal entries of one young British, Catherine Treganna, Julia's long deceased ancestor (circa 1625), that chronicle her kidnapping by Barbary pirates and the subsequent life that follows in a Islamic world (Morrocco), far from her British root [...]

If the sub-title of Crossed Bones - 'the all-true adventures and most unlikely romance of a pirate’s slave girl - puts you off a little, don’t worry; there’s not a ripped bodice or heaving bosom anywhere. Well, apart from on the cover, but we'll gloss over thatIt’s the story of a seventeenth-century Cornish girl, Cat, who is a talented needlewoman dreaming dreams of a more exotic future than the one that seems likely – marriage to her cousin, drudgery, babies – when a pirate ship rai [...]

I bought this book on the strength of the fact that it was loosely based on the true story of a pirate raid on Cornwall in the 1620s. Given that Barbary pirates also attacked Baltimore in Ireland around this time (I'm Irish) and that I've been to the Westman Islands off Iceland which were also raided back then, I zoned in on this book like a hawk. I'm delighted to say that I wasn't disappointed. This is an absolutely terrific read.Other reviewers have done a great job in detailing the plot, so I [...]

I loved this book. It featured one of my favorite literary ploys: moving backward and forward in time to tell the story. (Reminded me greatly of The People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks in that sense) In the beginning I didn't have a lot of sympathy for the main character due to her moral flaws, but the author really draws you in and makes you care for her despite those flaws. Johnson makes you think about your own flaws and how sympathetically you want to be viewed despite them. I have never [...]

Julia is the heroine of the modern storyline. The book starts with her married jerk of a lover breaking up with her (in public, so she can’t cause a scene!). She has been having an affair with her "best friend"’s husband for seven years. Clearly a former best friend, considering Julia has been too embarrassed to talk to her for the past seven years. Julia claims she feels bad about the affair but (1) she’s all weepy for herself that Michael broke up with her; (2) she was never, ever going [...]

The Tenth Gift is a wonderful and absorbing story about two complex women: Catherine Anne Tregenna (Cat) in 17th Century Cornwall, and Julia Lovat in 21st Century London. Like Cat, Julia has a talent for embroidery and at the dissolution of her long adulterous relationship with her friend’s husband Michael, she is given a book of embroidery patterns. Michael had meant to give her another similar book but mistakenly gives her the more valuable and unique palimpsest, as written overtop of the em [...]

In ‘The Tenth Gift’ Jane Johnson spins a story around an extraordinary piece of history:In 1625 corsairs from North Africa sailed into Mount’s Bay, they entered a church and they took sixty men, women and children, to be sold as slaves.That church might have been St Mary’s in Penzance, standing at the centre of Mounts Bay, just behind the harbour, clearly visible from the sea. My church, my mother’s church, my grandmother’s church.That drew me to the book, but it made me wary too. Be [...]

Não gosto de livros que despacham todas as pontas soltas no final com demasiada rapidez, após muitos capítulos a empatar. “O Décimo Dom” é um desses casos. Como romance histórico prometia – a história de piratas árabes a assaltar a costa inglesa no século XVII para angariar “escravos infiéis” que depois vendiam em Marrocos. Mas não convenceu…Quando o amante casado de Julia Lovat decide “dar-lhe com os pés”, oferece-lhe um livro antigo sobre a arte de bordar. Mas, nas [...]

I almost quit reading the book after getting 1/3 of the way through it because I wasn't that interested in picking the book back up after putting it down. I thought the characters were all pretty unlikable, the storyline seemed forced, and the conclusion predictable.

This was a very well-written book with a compelling storyline. I’m a sucker for novels that mix past and present, through hints of the supernatural. I found it hard to put the book down! I’ll definitely be looking for more by this author, and passing this one on.

I will begin by stating that this is not my usual type of book; it was lent to me by a friend and then a member of my book club mentioned it, so I decided to read it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t enjoy it because I was so bothered by the unbelievable events and characters.There are two stories. In the present, Julia Lovat is given an early 17th century book of needlework by her lover as a gift to end their seven-year affair. She soon discovers that a lady’s maid used the book as a diary. This y [...]

"Uma rapariga com chamas na cabeça e bondade no coração: é um sinal certo de um destino obscuro."Uma história de duas mulher separadas pelo tempo, que apesar dos séculos de diferença abraçam os mesmos desejos e lutam contra as mesmas dificuldades. Jane Johnson constrói um conto de mistério, que nos leva numa viagem repleta de História e aventura.Tudo começa num restaurante de Londres, com um encontro como tantos outros, entre uma mulher e um homem. Um livro é oferecido. Um livro des [...]

Nicely done, though maybe more like a 3.7. I credit her with a decent historical fiction, even though I've had to rate it as a fantasy, too, because of its supernatural elements.She may have tried too hard. Too much explaining. Parts read like a flora and fauna catalog. Other parts like history lectures. A stranger asks the protagonist what's she's reading and she answers with thirteen lines of background. How contrived. Do all modern thirty-somethings act/think like teens? She hammers many deta [...]

The premise (a woman finds a historical account of an ancestor who was taken by slaves and decides to look into it) is quite good, but the book never really took off for me. There were three main problems: (1) none of the characters were particularly likable. They were either one-dimensional, or they had few (if any) redeeming qualities, or were just too unbelievable in their decisions or actions; (2) the writing was quite stilted and boring - it was often too much to the point and lacked flow; [...]

The thing I liked most about this book is that it's historical fiction, and the story is based on an actual event in 1625. I had no idea that people from Cornwall and Devon were abducted by pirates, and sold as slaves in North Africa. From : "According to Robert Davis, from the 16th to 19th century, pirates captured 1 million to 1.25 million Europeans as slaves. These slaves were captured mainly from seaside villages in Italy, Spain and Portugal, and from farther places like France or England, t [...]

Yay! I've finally interrupted my stint of picking not so great books to read. I enjoyed The Tenth Gift. It's almost like 3 books in one, going back and forth between the present and the very distant past. I found the main character of Julia Lovat to be only mildly annoying. Whenever a character refuses to listen or read something important just because she doesn't want to deal with it I find it frustrating, but overall I could live with her.My real love is historical fiction so I was mostly fasc [...]

I picked this one up because the cover was intruiging, then I read that it involved an antique needlework/embroidery book and I had to give it a shot. What a pleasant surprise. The story involves a modern woman who receives the book as a gift, and finds that inside is a hand-written diarly of a woman kidnapped by Morrocan pirates in 1625.This is a first novel by this author. It is very well-written and I couldn't wait to see what would happen next

A GREAT historical fiction/present day journey, I got a pre-release copy and stayed up late into the night immersed in the story.

Actually rating 3.5 starsThe Tenth Gift is a story in a story a rare way of writhing.The first story is from the POV of Julia Lovat, an English woman that is in a romantic relationship with the husband of his best friend , Anna. The book begins with her lover, Michael telling her that he wants to break up with her and in exchange he gives her an old book. Angry and upset Julia realize that the book is a journey whose author is a girl from XVII century named Cat. Little by little Julia finds hers [...]

What's not to like about a book about a book, pirates, cross cultural clashes, misplaced loves, and a two time line story? As well as learning about the little known history of pirates raiding Cornwall to collect slaves?. Well, first off the heroine is a bit unlikeable until she realizes what a utter swine her boyfriend is, and also that she has been a bit swinish herself. There is a lot of coincidence here, but that's okay, it's fiction.The ending introduces a supernatural element which had bee [...]

I am also credibly informed that there are some thirtie saile of shippes at Sallee now preparing to come for the coasts of England in the begynnyng of the summer, & if there bee not speedy course taken to prevent it, they would do much mischeef.After the above paragraph, I was expecting great things from this book. Sadly, the ye-olde-writing-style snippets prefacing each chapter are about the only thing I enjoyed reading.At first I liked that Cat was vain and ambitious, because an imperfect [...]

I seem to be on a pirates kick, because without prior intent,the last three books I've read all have something to do with pirates vs. corsairs. The Tenth Gift is fiction based on the historical fact of raids by Barbary pirates on the coast of England around Cornwall. I chose this book at the library because it seemed to be about a woman who receives an antique embroidery book as a gift, and only discovered the pirate aspects later -- and I'm grateful because I probably wouldn't have picked it if [...]

Jane Johnston's the 10th Gift is an amazing first person adventure into the life of a young woman, on the verge of falling apart. Her long-standing affair at an end, she is bound to her ex-lover only through the pages of an antique book - her parting gift. What she finds is an invaluable treasure: the story of a young woman from 1625 who is kidnapped from the Cornish coast by Barbary pirates to become a Christian slave.Soon consumed by this story, she finds herself rootless, homeless, and follow [...]

The characters took awhile to grow on me - mostly because they are all really repulsive and annoying at first but once they start on their respective adventures, both women heroines come into their own quite well. I love a well executed book that takes place both in contemporary and historical times. I will admit here the historical storyline is the more interesting and well-executed. You can tell where the author through most of her time to this reader's delight. It was very much like taking a [...]

As an end to an affair with a married man, Julia Lovat receives a book that will change her life. Called "The Needle Woman's Glorie," the book is filled with 17th-century embroidery patterns belonging to a woman named Catherine Ann Tregenna of Cornwall. Julia finds cramped writing in its margins that tell the story of how “Cat” and others were stolen from their Cornish church in 1625 by Muslim pirates and taken on a brutal voyage to Morocco to be auctioned off as slaves. Captivated by this d [...]

Smart, vivid, romantic, epic: I just loved this. I knew nothing about the 17th century or Barbary pirates and feel I've learned a lot from reading this book, but without it being any sort of chore, This is a really rip-roaring adventure novel on one level, but also a historical romance, and there's the touch of a ghost story too - but really subtle, with a clever ending. Half the book takes place now, the other half in 1625, but the transition between the two stories never jars, but rather echoe [...]