This is a large,long story,but full of surprises. The Toy Emporium,known as Papa Jack's has all sorts of magical toys, but is most famous for its toy soldiers. Papa Jack, is Jacob Goldman, who is an unusual man, who has known a lot of hardship in his life, but he has adopted two orphan boys, Kasper and Emil. Kasper builds very unusual toys, like a wendy house, that is bigger on the inside than the outside., but Emil is obssessed with toy soldiers, and creates battle scene on the shop floor.
Into the mix comes Catherine, who is 15, a runaway, who is 15 and pregnant. She replies to an advert in the paper (passed to her by her sister) for work in the Emporium.irst Emil, then Kasper help her and she delivers a daughter, unbeknown to Jacob.
The story develops around the first world war, whe Kasper goes away with the army, but Emil is rejected because of his health. This makes him very bitter, and even more determined to make more soldiers. When Kasper returns, he is weak, suffering from shel-shock, and also very disturbed. He laters the soldiers, so they surrenders, which makes the customers and Emil very angry.
This novel is a tour de force. It includes family rivalry, the strain of war, magic realism, and the power of toys have on children, and to sooth adults as well. I feel very priveledged to have read this, which leads you on and on, wanting to know what happens next. Many thanks to the publisher, and to Net Galley for allowing me to read it.

I don’t usually read books that are set in the past , but this dark , gripping Magical , story full of intrigue surpassed all expectations !

Wow - just wow!
If you, as an adult, still enjoy reading your childhood favourites, here is a book just for the grown-up you.
Robert Dinsdale has created a magical world that, throughout the years, just keeps on giving and giving, right until the very last, wonderful, page.
I truly feel that I have just read a brand new classic. A decades-spanning saga full of magic, romance (in the old-fashioned sense), war and peace (with peace in war and war in peace). Wonka, Potter and The Nutcracker all rolled into one.
When is the film coming out? (Please!)
I've not written my feature/blog yet - I have just read the last word and needed to have a bit of gush!
How wonderful...

I love a bit of magical realism and The Toymakers didn’t disappoint.....to begin with. It’s 1907 and 16 year old Cathy Wray is pregnant and has nowhere to turn. She finds herself drawn to The Emporium, a toy shop of wonder and renown. Here she finds a home with a family of Toymakers who bring magic to their aisles.
While the novel seems light in context, there is a much more profound side.
The book is extremely well written and is as expected, magical and heart warming but also dark and sinister. I really enjoyed the exploration of sibling rivalry and the apparent theme of light and dark. The first half of the book was excellent, truly magical and loved the how the Emporium came to like. The second half for me dragged a little and had to push through. Whereas the beautiful description of the toys in the first half were engaging, in the second half the passages became a little overly descriptive and a little hard going.
It is a book full of fantasy and magic and explores themes such as life, love and free will and teaches that your imagination can have no limit.
I did enjoy this book and would recommend but probably best to read in small bites. 3.5

This is the ultimate Christmas story. Not just because it is a story in which Christmas plays an essential part. A large part of the story has nothing to do with the 25th of December, but with everything we associate with Christmas: family, friends, presents, food.
In this story, family and toys play the essential part, the really magical part. For the toys in this story seem to become alive. Or their own free will? Or through the hands of Jecob and his sons Emil and Kaspar?
The story spans over 50 years in time, and the Great War plays and essential role. For one of the main characters, one of the sons, returns from this Great War not being himself anymore. Just like his father before him, he was changed by the horrors he saw, the pain he felt.
When Jecob returned to his sons after so many years, he was changed for the better. With the son that returns from the Great War, it is not so.
But not only the son, but the toys that were made by the son have changed. And not for the better too.

The Toymakers is quite an unusal story because it starts out as a story about a toyshop and then gradually turns into a story of hopes and dreams and especially magic. Now I've never liked stories about magical toys but this one is very special. It made me actually want to have one of the toys. Besides the toys there are other beautiful things in the book. A Wendy House that is bigger inside than outside; paper trees that actually grow; a dog made of fabric and buttons that lives on forever and ever; and of course a toy chest that changes everything, including the end of the story.

It is beautifully written, very intriguing and magical..

Thank you NetGalley for this book.

The emporium is full of wonder and it inflame the imagination!

This story starts from the young pregnant girl, Cathy run away from her home to Papa Jack's Emporium in London to find safely refuge for protecting unborn baby. There are unordinary magical toys that people craves to get and also she mets the sons of Papa Jack, Kasper and Emil, both are the toymakers. She gets involved in love, battle of ownership of emporium and even darkness of World War as well.

As you see, many people really loves this book, and I also immersed to the story of half way through. It's such a lovely and heartwarming story in which has full of many sort of love, courage and curious magical toys. I like the description of the attractive toys, they are very fun to imagine them and make me want to get ones. I was gripped by the passion and each distinctive skills of toymakers to create the fantastic toys. I also enjoyed the young characters how they cope with the birth. I could feel the love, agitation and happiness in the corse of the process.

When the story gets to the darkness, I like some part but I found myself not attached any more. The characters fall apart and they become different. I wanted to know more about the feelings of the characters because I felt, in some part, Cathy just follows to what other people do ,even it's very confusing sort of things, without any her opinion and feeling.
It took me long to finish this book, though the ending is beautiful that what I wanted to read. It's such a likable story and I really like the way of the writing.

I gave 3.8 stars to this book

Absolutely magnificent! This delightful story will be a staff and customer favourite for certain, taking pride of place on the shelves beside other magical works of fiction like The Night Circus, and Jonathon Strange and Mister Norrell.

This book came my way via Net Galley, and I’m glad it did.It is a magical, mysterious and complex story centred around a toy shop and its inhabitants.
The story was by turns beautiful and fanciful and then a little dark or sinister.
Even at the end of the book I wasn’t sure which, if any, of the characters I liked as people. I certainly was unsure about the three central characters. But pleasingly, that didn’t distract from my enjoyment of the book or interest in their outcomes!If you’re a fan of magical realism or just an absorbing book, I’d definitely recommend this!

The Toymakers allows readers to discover the secret life of toys. This book it is layered with meaning - from the deeper questioning of the meaning of life, love and loyalty to the superficial whimsical joy of your favourite department store animated Christmas window display. This book is an absolute triumph, and one which will I will read many times

This is a story about a magical toyshop in the heart of Mayfair, just at the beginning of WWI. A young girl, Cathy, is pregnant and not at all happy with her parent's plans to send her to a 'home' where her baby will be sold to adoptive parents and she can try to pick up the threads of her life in shame.

An employment advert comes to her attention and she decides to take control of her destiny and forge another way forward.

From the start it is clear that the toyshop is out of the ordinary. I found myself quickly getting into the childlike sense of wonder that this magical place attracts and enjoyed watching Cathy learn to fit in with the other residents and toy makers.

It isn't all magic and joy though. The real world encroaches on the magical world of the toyshop, especially when the Great War breaks out. By then we've already learned the far too real history of Papa Jack, who started the toy shop with his two sons. The contrast of the magical world within the real world makes for a good story and kept me interested all the way through.

There is everything from sibling rivalry to magical animals that come alive, war time prejudices contrasted with paper trees that grow and develop living paper mache wildlife, war time correspondence and through it all the perspective of a child discovering everything for the first time.

It's not all happy, but the twist at the end makes the journey worthwhile. Well defined characters and a very unpredictable plot along with good writing make this one of the best books I've read this year!

This book is extremely well written and so descriptive but I’m afraid it just wasn’t for me. I really don’t like giving negative reviews based only on my own likes and dislikes so whilst I didn’t particularly enjoy The Toymakers as a read, I can honestly say that it was very well constructed and had good characters and I feel sure that anyone who reads fantasy novels will enjoy it, just not me.

Imagine you are a child again. The only limits to your world are the limits of your imagination. By unlocking that, the Godman's are able to unfurl magic and wonder upon a world blighted by war.
This book is a wonderful, enthralling fairytale. Like all the best ones it has moments of darkness and despaired and touches on the themes like war and what it means to be alive. But at the heart of it is a love story. Not just between Kaspar and Cathy, but between family, between a person and their community, between the self and the passion for an idea or calling, and most of all between children and their toys.
I loved it.

I don't give 5 stars to books very often, a book has to be something very special for that. The author needs to bring a world to life through the pages in exquisite detail, make me live through the story with the characters, make me truly care about what happens to them. I am pleased to say that this book is all that and more.

I wasn't sure at the beginning, it took a while to get going, but once it does the world-building is superb. Your imagination takes flight and the magic of the Emporium practically leaps off the page. It slowly builds a world, the characters grow and change, and the author crafts an engaging and, at times, heartrending story, and the ending has one final perfect twist to the tale. Spellbinding.

It was very hard to comment about this novel. The story begins in the 1907 with Cathy Wray, young and pregnant, escaping home to London to avoid losing her child to strangers. In London she finds work and home in the toy emporium of Papa Jack.

Papa Jack is a grumpy toy maker, able to craft wonderful toys, almost magical, compelling to every child, who see the emporium as a fantastic place to spend winter days.

Up to this point, The Toy Makers seems an innocuous story: Cathy is accepted, loved, we see beautiful games created by Papa Jack and his sons, Kaspar and Emil, both willing to contribute to the emporium activity.

But soon reality slightly creeps into this beautiful atmosphere: there are the memories of the war in Russia and the emigration to England, then the beginning of the first world war and the soldier's trauma, and the familiar disputes due to jealousy and resentment, but how much is needed to break the emporium magic?

I needed some days to decide that I liked The Toy Makers a lot: the book takes unexpected paths; the apparent lightness of the context (the magical toys, like Emil's toy soldiers) has instead more profound implications, partly determined by what happens in the world outside the emporium.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me the copy necessary to write this review.

I absolutely adored this book; from the very first page, to the last,everything was perfect.
The book is full of magic and joy, and perfectly captures the excitement of childhood Christmas's and the flush of first love. The Emporium is the most exquisite toyshop where Papa Jack and his two sons, Kaspar and Emil craft the magical toys that bring all of London to the store on the night of the first frost. Welcomed into the family and the shop is Cathy, and it is through her eyes that we see the rivalry between the two brothers, the effects of the two world wars, and the fate of the Emporium.
What started as a magical fairy tale, perfect for reading as we head into the Christmas season, grows into something much darker and more complex, and utterly heartbreaking.
Epic in scale this book really captured my imagination and has taken up place in my heart. It is a book that I will gladly turn to again and I would like to thank the publishers, the author and netgalley for the advance copy in return for an honest review.

I've always loved magical realism, ordinary worlds elevated by enchantments. My bookshelves are lined with Gabriel Garcia Marquez's books, I've been stunned by the capacity of Jorge Luis Borges, and more recently, I enjoyed The Night Circus (which will draw many comparisons with the Toy Makers). So it's not a huge surprise that Robert Dinsdale's The Toy Makers was right up my street.

The book is set in a toy shop in London, and spans the period from before and after the two world wars. It follows Cathy, pregnant while still a girl, and the life she made with the Godman's, the father and his two sons who run the shop. The toys they make are magical, forged by recreating memories of childhoods lost, and every winter on the first frost of the year, they open their shop doors until the first snowdrop appears.

My only complaint about the book, and a minor one, is that the characters didn't really form. The book covers 50 odd years, but by the end of it, you still don't really know them, or more importantly, root for them. However, the writing was excellent, crisp and clean, the pace solid, and the ending was gorgeous.

A very solid 5/5, a must-read for lovers of the Night Circus.

Book kindly supplied by Netgalley for an honest review.

Young Cathy Wray, 16 years old and pregnant is on route to being hidden away by her family until her baby is born and can be taken away when she is given an old newspaper with an advert for a job in London. The temptation is too strong to pass up, so waiting for everybody to go to bed she packs the few belongings she owns and runs away. She arrives at Papa Jack Emporium on their opening night which is always a magical, spectacular event that is always long awaited for by children and adults alike. This is a toy shop that only opens for a few months.... buts its not just any ordinary shop. The toys are made with love, passion and magic that makes them come alive and make even adults turn back to their childhood. The Emporium is owned by the elusive Papa Jack who rarely leaves the workshop where he weaves his magic into the toys. The shop is managed by his two sons - Kasper and Emil who love nothing more than playing "The Long War" with their toy soldiers in between creating their own inventions for new toys. Both boys fall for Cathy even after they discover her secret pregnancy and when she chooses Kasper, Emil's jealousy starts to grow. When war breaks out Kasper joins the army to fight for King and Country - but when he returns he has changed which brings changes to the Emporium with lasting, devastating results. This book is filled with the magic of toys and the imagination of all who work and visit the Emporium. Thoroughly enjoyed reading this and would definitely recommend

An amazing book that captured my heart from the very beginning. This is essentially a story revolving around Cathy bringing in love, sibling rivalry of the worst kind, the history of WWII with the emotions surrounding it during and after and above all the magic that children have and so easily gets lost in the adult world. The book is peppered with many great philosophical statements bringing a meaning to adult life and more than that explaining the way to go forward with one’s life. The ending brought tears to my eyes but I do not really know if it was sadness in the ending or the fact that the book had ended. I was to say the least enthralled and lived in this book with the many different characters.. the life of Papa Jack, his two sons, the toy emporium and the wonderful magic that is there for all to see if we only let ourselves be a child again. I think that one of the most memorable quotes that I shall always remember from this book was when Martha asked why do people fight real wars when they have toy soldiers to do it for them? Such a profound statement and this book is littered with other equally profound statements. How I wish that I could go and see that emporium with all its majesty and magic, the Wendy house, the paper, wood, patchwork and straw toys and especially the faithful dog Serius. What a fantastic book that warrants becoming a classic.

A wonderfully enchanting tale of love, magic, and growing up. It is the sort of book that seems to develop a mind of its own, much like many of the Emporium's magical toys themselves, lingering in your thoughts. It is at times sad, at times thought-provoking and at times utterly joyful.

The setting; Papa Jack's Toy Emporium, where dreams come true and the impossible is possible, is beautiful with rich, descriptive writing helping it come to life. The plot is unique and spellbinding. I went into this with few expectations and am very glad I did so as it allowed me to experience the twists and turns alongside the characters. The story spans many years which allows you to really get to know the characters and feel for them.

Recommended for fans of magical realism and historical fiction alike.

I have to say this is probably amongst the strangest books I have read. The author tries to take you to an old fashioned toy shop and the description is very very long. I did almost give I up a couple of times but then thought maybe it will get better.
This book said you had to believe to read this book not sure what you are to believe in??
This is not my kind of story am assuming some people would love it but not my cup of book