I absolutely love books about the elder generation and ones where they plot to escape care homes just call to me.

This was an uplifting and heartwarming read and makes you realise just how independent the older generation can be. And when we take that away from them just how difficult and confusing it can be for them.

For fans of ‘The 100 year old man who jumped out of a window and ran away’

This book brings to life Woodlands Nursing Home and the residents who live within it. It is told as a dual narrative, from the perspective of two of the residents, Hattie and Walter, neither of whom are happy to be within its walls.

Walter intends to get out too. He misses his wife immensely, but that doesn't stop his feelings of wanting to escape and be at home rather than at the home. However, his daughter Marie has other ideas and keeps bringing items, mostly of importance to Walter's wife Sylvia, to fill his room at the home. Walter is glad that Marie brings along his only grandson, James; but he is mainly interested in spending time on his mobile phone.

Walter and Hattie become unlikely friends after meeting at the Night Owls, a group that was set up by Sister Bronwyn, the night shift nurse, who provided an opportunity for the residents who couldn't sleep at night to find activities to make the hours pass quickly. However an incident occurs and she disappears from her shirt, to be replaced by a much stricter nurse.

They miss Sister Bronwyn and want to find a way to get her back. Also there is something fishy going on and Hattie and Walter intend to find out.

This is an absolutely delightful book that I thoroughly enjoyed from start to finish.

A nice gentle read about some old people in a care home, that just shows they may not be very nimble any more, but they cannot be underestimated or overlooked for they still have something to offer. They are not old pieces of furniture to be put into the cupboard and locked away, they have experiences and knowledge and just need the right support to still achieve good things.

The Great Escape From Woodlands Nursing Home is another very enjoyable read from Joanna Nell.
It’s an amusing yet poignant story of elderly residents living in a nursing home who are not ready to give up on life despite their age... good for them!!

The antics of Hattie, Walter and Murray as they make their great escape made me laugh, but there were teary moments too, as the book also deals with the realities of old age. All of the characters are very well written and the plot is steady paced so I didn’t lose interest at all.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC in return for an honest review.

Set in Australia (which I hadn't realised) this was a nice story focused entirely on the older generation to give a refreshingly honest (both fun and poignant) account of aging. There's plenty of scenes which show the vitality, passion, tenacity and mischievousness of the nursing home residents. For example, their great escape (obviously), scooter joy riding, and adding washing up liquid to the ornamental garden fountain. But, the author also sensitively draws attention to some of the inevitable realities such as death, illness, loss of independence and rigid (outdated) routines of life in a nursing home. As said, it was a nice story but sadly rather too long-winded and slow for me.

I really enjoyed this book all the way through. It had a really good plot, great main characters and really keeps you hooked on the plot. I would highly recommend this book.

Another great book penned by Joanna Nell. She has the knack of really bringing her characters to life and you become family.
Woodlands Nursing Home is like most home where the residents are there for varies reasons, often not excepting their time in there.
The small friendship group of Walter, Murray and Hattie brought the story together. Their antics were heart warming and I loved how they adapted to the modern world of technology!
A great easy read.

Hattie Bloom is 89 and lives alone in a depilated cottage. She loves nature, especially birds. She likes them more than people. She loves watching them and letting the world go by. So, when she has a fall and breaks her hip instead of going back home to her cottage. She is sent to the Woodlands Nursing home to recuperate. At first, she is not happy being there. She hates being told what to do and is not used to being around people. All she wants to do is go home and see that owls that are nesting in the tree.
But things change when she meets Walter Clements and an eclectic group of characters and for once in her life, she is enjoying her life. It’s not the sterile boring place that she thought it would be. Especially when she meets Sister Bronwyn and The night owls. But things go wrong, and sister Bronwyn is fired. The residents of the Nursing home do all that they can to get her reinstated.
Jonna Nell has done it again with this lovely heartfelt story of The Great escape from Woodlands Nursing home. I have read her two previous novels and loved them, and this does not disappoint. I love how she brings each character alive and tells us that just because you are old doesn’t mean you are boring or you don’t have a life or feelings of what is around you. 5 stars from me.

I’d like to thank Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read ‘The Great Escape From Woodlands Nursing Home’ by Joanna Nell in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

Hattie Bloom and Walter Clements are in their late 80’s and reside at the Woodlands Nursing Home. A friendship gradually emerges when they meet at ‘The Night Owls’, an unofficial club organised by Sister Bronwyn (and her dog Queenie) when the residents are unable to sleep. Sister Bronwyn is dismissed due to a breach of the regulations and Hattie and Walter join forces to have her replacement ‘Sister Who’ removed and Sister Bronwyn reinstated. Together with their friend Murray, whose life is slowly coming to an end, they plan an escape in the Home’s bus.

‘The Great Escape From Woodlands Nursing Home’ is a well-written and touching novel of living in a nursing home where the residents may be elderly but aren’t ready yet to give up on life. The characters are realistically portrayed, true to life, and their antics are so amusing. The description of ex-driving instructor Walter crashing his ‘Tesla’ into bird-watching spinster Hattie and the friendship that grows between them brings warmth to the story, and Sister Bronwyn giving the residents something ‘special’ to look forward to in the twilight hours is a delight to read. This is a gentle and thoroughly enjoyable novel that had me laughing at times and sad at others. I can recommend it.

The Great Escape from Woodlands Nursing Home by Joanna Nell

Welcome to Woodlands Nursing Home, an ‘aged care’ facility in Australia. I had really high hopes for this book and was anticipating Fredrik Backman-esque sweet tender pathos, or Little Miss Sunshine but with older people. I don’t think it quite reaches those levels (which is a very big ask to be fair), but there are some very sweet moments. Two of the male residents grappling with their emotions and feelings of platonic love towards each other was very good to see. I also was really happy that there was a love story between two octogenarians – as we know, representation is so important and I hope I’m still in love when I’m eighty. If you can’t see it, it’s harder to be it! This is also just a really good stick it to the man story of big and small wins for justice, so it is a very heartening read.

The downside for me was that all of these nice things were delivered through a very white, heterosexist lens. For example, even when I felt that the two men were talking progressively it still felt very clunky and I wasn’t sure they’d quite managed to get the point. For example, the two main male characters are discussing feminism and are trying to get on board with the world’s changing ideologies (obviously a good thing), but then they come to the conclusion that feminism is ‘There’s no such thing as a bad woman, Walt. Only bad men’. Having said that, maybe that is the best that two old white middle class men in their 80s could achieve in thinking about feminism!

In terms of gender stereotyping and male-female relationships the characters definitely develop throughout the book, and I think it is a very positive presentation of people being able to undo some of the negative ideologies that have been taught to them. Which I think is especially hard to do when you have lived with those ideologies for 80 years, so I felt that that was very positive.

It is definitely a sweet, gentle book with some very good messages, albeit slightly clouded by gender stereotyping.

Thanks Netgalley and the Publisher. I absolutely loved this book, it had me in stitches. The storyline was great and loved each and every one of the characters.

The Great Escape from Woodlands Nursing Home - Book Review

This is the third book by Aussie writer and GP Joanna Nell. I absolutely loved her first two books, so I was thrilled when I was granted an advanced copy of this little gem. Joanna writes about a subject that many people may shy away from, ageing and elderly people, thinking that the topic may be lack lustre or even boring. Well nothing could be further than the truth. The characters in her books are all legends of their own walking frames! While confronting all the harsh realities of ageing, Joanna also portrays these characters as people, capable of making choices about their lives and portraying them as individuals.
The Great Escape from Woodlands Nursing Home centres around Hattie and Walter, who are navigating their twilight years as residents of an aged care facility. Having worked in aged care for many years, some of those years spent as a “DON”, I can relate to these characters and the regimented processes that aged care is well known for. Whilst I didn’t enjoy this book quite as much as her first two, it is a feel good story I would recommend to anyone wanting to brighten their day.

Let me introduce you to 89 year old Miss Hattie Bloom, she’s one smart lady, an ornithological expert, solitary, feisty and fiercely independent. Whilst trying to save a tree from being felled so that owls can continue to nest, she unfortunately breaks her hip and is now temporarily residing at Woodlands. In the next room is 90 year old Walter Clements who has a host of cheesy jokes, he’s golf mad, likes a snifter or three, thinks he’s Steve McQueen in ‘Le Mans’ and currently waiting the all clear to drive the ‘Tesla’, an electric wheelchair. Then there’s his lovely pal Murray and Sister Bronwyn who is fabulously subversive, phenomenally kind and so understanding. These are the freedom fighters of Woodlands determined to disrupt for better things and pineapple rings. This is their hugely entertaining story.

This is a delightful, witty, clever, funny, sardonic, joyful, sorrowful and emotional read and I love every word of it! It’s wonderfully written, with fantastically colourful, young at heart characters that would jump off the page if they could and they make such good company. It’s also pertinently observed and deliciously ironic especially if you have visited care homes all these characters or similar ones are there in all their faded glory. The jokers, the kleptomaniacs, the subversives, the happy and sad, lonely ones. I love the backstories of all these residents and it’s easy to forget once memories fade that these people may have had phenomenal careers or done amazing things which the author makes abundantly clear and kudos for that. I think this is an extremely important and powerful message. The ending feels just appropriately right and made me laugh and cry.

Ps. My dad was a care home resident, he didn’t like sing songs and said so but was ‘encouraged’ to join in. He had the last laugh, instead of blue birds flying over Dovers white cliffs, he substituted every naughty blue word he could think of (plenty) and got a red card!!! Go Dad! I guess this is why this story resonates so much and I have no doubt that he and fictional Walter would have been the best of pals.

Overall, an excellent and moving story which I highly recommend.

With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Hodder and Stoughton and Joanna Nell for the much appreciated arc for an honest review.

This was a brilliant and funny book, did not disappoint, as I had read a previous book by the same author,.
Loved the characters and the story line.

This is set in Australia, and is but no different to the nursing homes I am familiar with in the UK and apart from the bird species they watch. It is a story of the power of the human spirit to overcome obstacles with ingenuity and humour. The characters portrayed are not about to go quietly into the great hereafter! An unusual and strangely uplifting read.

A highly entertaining read, brimming with wonderful characters and laugh out loud moments. Such a positive spin on aging and delightful distraction from such strange times we are presently iving in.

Oh what an entertaining read full of joy. It’s so well written, characters aplenty and rather than tales of boring old biddies this story is just marvellous.
Very well thought out and I would not hesitate in buying a dozen copies for friends to enjoy. 10/10

A fantastic sweet, moving book. A first for me by Joanna, will look out for more in the future. Definitely recommend.

Tender and bitter sweet in equal measures. Join Walter, Hattie, Murray and other delightful characters in this fabulous tale of a nursing home, a daring plot to escape and a mystery to solve. Funny, sad and thought -provoking, brilliantly written and thoroughly enjoyable.

Another treat from Joanna Nell. This is similar to a comforting hot drink next to a roaring fire on a cold winters night. The third book I've enjoyed from this excellent author and another really good read.

The residents of Woodlands Nursing Home are varied and interesting characters, all with their own reason for being there and their own life's adventures behind them. Or, are their adventures just beginning? Walter and Hattie are the two main characters, both finding the transition into being cared for a difficult one. The story engages the reader and opens up a world of care, loneliness, heartbreak and laughter.

It's a joy of a book and I thoroughly enjoyed the adventure. The pace is slow, so, for those looking for thrills and a page turner, this isn't it. But, for those prepared to savour the stories and insights into elderly care, it's a heartwarming treat.

Thanks to NetGalley, Hodder and Stoughton and Congratulations to the author.