Joanna Cannon is a realiable author for a feel good and emotionally layered story while keeping the plot tightly told and holding the readers curiosity throughout.

This was a brilliant read. As soon as I started reading this book I just knew I was going to love it. Highly recommended

I couldn’t leave this book alone, infact, I couldn’t leave Elsie alone. She’s 84 living in home called Cherry Tree and she had fallen.
I wanted to stay there and hear her thought her mind revolving around a secret in her past.
Little did I know this book wasn’t only going to be quaint, thoughtful and mind provoking but a little whodunnit in between.

It was remarkably written with great insight and deliberation.

Dementia.
I saw my mom go through this. It’s awful, not only for the person going through it but the people around who love them.

I loved Elsie.

Don’t think it’s all doom and gloom though as it’s definitely not.
Sometimes this had me laughing out load.

Well worth your time.

I can’t put it into a genre as it’s a heap of things.

Three Things About Elsie is a beautifully sad book about getting older and about how people treat the elderly differently or lose sight of them all together.

This is the story of Florence. She has had a fall and is waiting to be found. While she waits, she reflects on her life and the people who have made an impact.

The story is told though various narrative threads. These include different time periods and different voices alongside modern times. It is also a mystery/crime story that Florence is trying to solve. Cleverly, author Joanna Cannon relies on societies disregard for the elderly to make out narrator seem unreliable. She has given the character of Florence certain qualities that we tend to attribute to Dementia or Alzheimers so we are never quite sure whether we should believe her or not.

Three Things About Elsie really is a heartbreaking novel about being old. Cannon shows a lot of empathy for her characters and allows us to recognise our own prejudices without preaching.

Three Things About Elsie really is a wonderful book.

Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon is available now.

For more information regarding Joanna Cannon (@JoannaCannon) please visit her Twitter page.

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Firstly I would like to thank the author, publisher and Netgalley for my free ARC.

This is a story to read slowly and absorb the warmth of the characters and to be mindful of the details. Cannon has written a wonderful second book that captures the same vein of insight into the human condition and this book will not disappoint.

Florence is experiencing the trouble with old age – forgetfulness and nostalgia. She’s started to think more on her old friend Elsie. As the past and present are coloured in, a new resident to the care home where Florence resides sends her mind spinning, and readers are twirled into a fascinating tale that may leave you brimming over with different emotions hard to unravel.

I highly recommend this book.

Really enjoyable read. Good characters and a Good story. Well worth a read. Think others will enjoy.

This was just an adorable book to read - absolutely beautiful! The characters and the underlying story was just perfect.

Beautiful and utterly heartbreaking. Struggled to read the last few chapters through big fat tears but I am so glad I made it. Totally absorbing, sensitively written and really cleverly paced. Absolutely ADORED this.

This was a magical book... Never did I think that a story set in an old people’s retirement home could capture my imagination so much! At times candid, funny, whimsical, tender and eccentric, you won’t fail to feel for the main protagonists. A terrific whodunnit and a frank account of old age at the same time.

Oh, this book! Let’s just say that I never expected to become so attached to both the story and the characters. I finished Three Things About Elsie yesterday and I still think my emotions are all over the place. In such a short space of time Florence felt ever so real to me especially as I saw her memories, feelings and thoughts come to life with every page I turned. Florence is such an engaging character she made me smile, giggle and cry. Then add in her friendship with Elsie and this story became even more beautiful and heartfelt. I couldn’t help but became fully immersed in their lives especially as the past collides with the present bringing a mystery into play that I couldn’t wait to see solved. My attention was held throughout as Florence delves into her past although not always successfully as her memories struggle to surface.

Every single character brought something to the story and all of these threads added a richness to the plot. Three Things About Elsie poses questions about life and shows that even the ordinary can be extraordinary. This is also a book about connections the ones we knowingly make with people and the ones that we may not even realise but still have the power to affect peoples lives.

Even though there are themes that are emotional there is also a beautiful uplifting feel to Three Things About Elsie and it is this combination that left me, if I’m totally honest with tears streaming down my face but at the same time feeling hopeful too. Friendships, love and memories all play a part in this book and Joanna Cannon has created a beautiful story that I’m sure will stay with me forever.

I haven’t read Joanna Cannon’s well-known literary mystery The Trouble with Goats and Sheep but I’ve heard amazing things about it. Her new release Three Things About Elsie sounded incredibly interesting and something I had to read, so I was really happy when I was approved for it on NetGalley.

Florence is 84 and she has fallen over in her flat at Cherry Tree Home for the Elderly. While she is waiting to be rescued, she begins reflecting on her life, the terrible secret buried within the past and her worries about it coming to light. She also starts wondering who the mysterious new resident is and why he bears an uncanny resemblance to a man she knows died sixty years before.

There were so many beautiful quotes in this book that I ended up with over 30 photos for this review! Cannon’s writing is just gorgeous and I couldn’t stop finding passages that spoke to and moved me. Florence is an incredibly wise and loveable lady and I really felt like I learnt a lot from her. It’s so easy to warm to her and I just wanted to know more and more about her life.

Without a doubt, one of the stand-out and most beautiful aspects of the novel is Florence and Elsie’s lifelong friendship. They bicker almost constantly but there is forever this underlying unconditional love between them that is lovely to watch. The fact that these women have shared so much together and built almost a joint life really restores one’s faith in humanity and in true everlasting friendship. Florence never married or had children and there are times where she reflects on this and seems somewhat regretful that this never happened for her. I always believed that Elsie was her true soulmate. Elsie was her constant and ultimately the love of her life and I can’t express how beautifully this was written.

For all her wistful and sometimes morose reflections on life and the impending end of hers, Florence remains able to remember the good times and is still able to pass on the things she has learned. Her imagination is still incredibly vivid and sharp. She maintains an air of having sussed the mysteries at Cherry Tree and is determined along with Elsie and her friend Jack, an old soldier, to find out who the familiar-looking newcomer Gabriel Price really is. Several times, I really believed that a lot of what was happening was as a result of Florence’s mind becoming hazy. However, her confidence seemed unwavering and this often led me to think that perhaps there really was something strange going on.

Following this gang of would-be detectives made up of octogenarians was so much fun and the three of them together -Florence, Elsie and Jack- often made me laugh out loud. Each of them had little quirks and their straight-to-the-point, no-nonsense attitudes to life were so heartwarming and funny. Their interactions with their carers and other residents were also charming and amusing to read. I think these bonds of friendship was one of the reasons I couldn’t put the book down.

It’s made clear at several points that Florence has a dark secret in her past and although we get hints of what this might be throughout the book, it’s not until right at the end that we discover its true significance to her current life. One thing I loved was that Florence is still worrying about this secret and the event that it involves in her eighties. There’s often this pre-conceived notion in society -and in fiction- that by the time you reach middle-age that you’ve got it all sorted and you can forget about all of the silly worries you used to have. Florence is convinced that this terrible secret is what defines her and the life that she subsequently went on to lead. She is 84 before she finally realises that she isn’t defined by the worst thing she ever did. This is such an empowering and uplifting message to take away.

The physical edition of this book is 464 pages but I flew through the Kindle version easily in a day. I just didn’t want to tear myself away from Cannon’s honest, lyrical writing or her amazing characters. Due to the kind of books I love to read, it’s actually rare that I close a book with a huge smile on my face. On finishing Three Things About Elsie, I felt nothing but unbridled joy, full of inspiration to live every day to the full and determined to make something with my own little life. How often can you say that about a mystery?

Fun, easy read in the style of Harold Fry or Elizabeth is Missing. However, the final twist was obvious from the first chapter, meaning it had nowhere to develop.

This book had been on my to be read pile for far too long when I finally got round to reading it. I had very high expectations of Three Things About Elsie and I'm thrilled to say that it did not disappoint me in the slightest. I thoroughly enjoyed the book from beginning to end and thought that it was, if anything, even better than Joanna Cannon's first book which was The Trouble with Goats and Sheep. This book contained so many wonderful elements and provoked in me a whole range of different emotions from sadness to happiness and everything in between.

In the book Three Things About Elsie we first meet eighty-four-year-old Florence, the main character of the story, who has had a fall and is lying on the floor of her sheltered accommodation flat. As she lies there waiting to be found she contemplates the events of her life that have led her to be where she is today. Throughout it all she thinks of Elsie her best friend, her voice of reason and the one who has always been there. With the staff where she lives fearing that Florence is losing her memory and threatening to move her to different accommodation, Florence is determined to stay where she is, but she can't deny that strange things have been happening to her of late. First an ornament on her mantlepiece has moved without her touching it, then she finds a cupboard full of Battenberg cake that she definitely didn't buy and why does the new resident, Gabriel Price, look so similar to a man from her past named Ronnie Butler?

Three Things About Elsie is a book that gradually drip feeds us information about the lives of Florence and Elsie who grew up together and also Ronnie Butler and his connection to Gabriel Price. Their stories are told in a way that makes you want to keep turning the pages, I was invested in the story from the very beginning and loved getting to know both Florence and Elsie. As a book that was told from the perspective of not just Florence but staff from the nursing home as well, the reader is privileged to gain an insight into just what it is like to grow old, experience a decline in mental functioning and not always be believed.

Throughout the book, Joanna Cannon's writing style that I loved so much throughout The Trouble with Goats and Sheep really shone through and it was a pleasure to be reunited with her work. She wrote in a way that was compassionate and sensitive but also in a way that made the words on the page truly come alive in my imagination with superb description. Within Three Things About Elsie there were several twists and turns that I could not have predicted and absolutely did not see coming in the slightest.

There is no doubt in my mind that Joanna Cannon has done a superb job with Three Things About Elsie and has written something that is truly beautiful in every possible way imaginable. I am very much looking forward to reading more by Joanna Cannon in the future.

A delightful and warm story about old age, with a strong plot. Characters are fully believable, and the settings familiar to anyone who has encountered the care system for the aged.

A beautifully crafted story with just the right level of ordinary life threaded with the intrigue and mystery that comes with it.

Florence doesn’t remember much but she does remember Ronnie Butler. When he turns up at Cherry Tree, assisted living for the elderly, Florence has to start remembering the parts of her life that she would hoped would remain hidden forever.

Three Things About Elsie is the second book I've read by Joanna Cannon. A wonderful story of regrets with fabulous characters.

This story is about ageing, it’s about how society ‘forgets’ old people, it’s about never losing your sense of adventure and most of all it’s about love. Tugs at the heartstrings and is a moving portrayal of how it feels when your memory starts to go and you are slowing down, especially when you are written off by people around you.

Three things about Elsie was highly praised and I expected great things of it, but I found it a bit disappointing.
There are sections where the writing is good and old memories start to bring the story alive, but an aged brain thwarts this and just leads to frustration.
Part of this is told whilst the narrator has fallen and is awaiting discovery and meanwhile can see things under the sideboard. Unfortunately this evokes memories of Alan Bennet’s A Cracker Under thee Settee, and cannot match the quality of that writing.
I recently gave my sister a precis of the plot and she filled in for herself that the third thing about Elise is …. And revealed the denouement with no effort whilst I had read it, and was quite surprised by this revelation.
To conclude I was not grabbed by this tale but perhaps it was difficult to live up tp the hype

A wonderful book with an intriguing plot. It made me want to laugh and cry and was something a bit different. I loved the characters and enjoyed trying to piece together bits of the story and figure out that secret was from years ago.

An elderly woman in a care home who is losing her memory gasps as she sees the new resident – a man who died many years ago, and hates her. She has to fight to regain her memories with the help of her best friend Elsie – but what else will she discover when she delves into the past?

One of the great things Cannon does is create characters who feel real and with whom you enjoy spending time – I felt a fondness for almost all the ‘cast’ of this drama and a little bereft when it finished. The story is compelling as each piece slots into place, and I found it hard to put down. A reflection on time, memory, guilt and forgiveness, I loved Cannon’s The Trouble with Goats and Sheep and this book is equally moving, emotionally and ethically complex – and is peppered with wry humour.

Highly recommended – this may be my favourite book of the year.