Tag Archives: #amreading

The Long Call, by Ann Cleeves

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Creating a character on which to build a potential series of books is no mean feat, and Ann Cleeves has form – once with Vera Stanhope and again with Shetland’s Jimmy Perez. But both of those series are as much about the landscape and location as they are their lead character, so I was interested to see how she would approach her new series and detective, featuring Detective Inspector Matthew Venn, set in North Devon. It’s an area that I have visited on a couple of occasions but don’t know well, and I was able to see it through her eyes, ‘the special light you only find close to the sea’.

One of the things I particularly liked about this first book in the series was the leading role given to people with learning disabilities (and their families), giving a wonderful window into a world that few of us understand.  As someone whose brother faces similar challenges, to have portrayals that go beyond the cliché of learning disability was wonderful. It made such a refreshing change to have proper, complex motives and choices attributed to people who are so often lumped together as ‘different’ and unable to rationalise the decisions they’ve made.

The story itself was absorbing, and it’s easy to see how the series could unfold. It was one of those books you read more slowly at the end than at the beginning, because although you really want to know what happens, you also don’t want it to end.  Can’t wait for the next one.

The Perfect Wife, by JP Delaney

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Can I just say, this book was not at all what I was expecting from the blurb, and it was all the better for it. A truly original premise, it tells the story of Abbie Cullen, wife to tech entrepreneur Tim, who wakes up after an accident to discover she’s an artificial intelligence, constructed from the memories of the ‘real’ Abbie years after her actual death.  So far, so clever, but this is much more than a smart idea. Abbie feels real to the reader, right from the opening sentence – “You’re having that dream again,” and you are immediately plunged into her reality.

At first, you believe the story’s about a man, desperate with grief, who creates an AI replacement for the wife he couldn’t bear to lose, with all the societal challenges this brings, but pretty quickly things take a darker turn. This really was the definition of a page turner for me, the pace and pressure ratcheting up the further into the book you get. This could so easily have become gimmicky and too much about the technology, but it’s the emotional connections and experiences which really drive the plot.

Make sure you put a good layer of suncream on before you open this book, because if you’re not careful you’ll get sunburned lying on your lounger, so distracted by what you’re reading that you forget to turn over.

The American Agent, by Jacqueline Winspear

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This is the latest in the Maisie Dobbs series, which follows the eponymous heroine through some pretty pivotal decades – pre WW1 and now into WW2, a time of enormous upheaval and social change. She’s an interesting character because she defies a lot of the conventions of the time, but is more nuanced than simply being a woman who takes on the role that a man might play in an investigation.  The thing about the Maisie Dobbs books is that they could so easily tip into lazy stereotyping and for me, manage to avoid that through vivid depiction of Maisie’s interior life. They are always meticulously researched and thick with period detail, worn lightly throughout.

In The American Agent, Maisie’s briefed to look into the death of a young American journalist, at the height of the Blitz. It takes in the work of the pioneering burns unit led by Sir Archibald McIndoe, the Spanish Civil War, female friendship and what it really means to be a mother, along with a hint of romance and a thoroughly satisfying ending.  This for me is the ideal Sunday afternoon book, to be read lying on the sofa to the accompaniment of rain sliding down the windowpanes. It absorbs your attention without being overwhelming, and at the end, you’re left with a sense that everything in the world has assumed its right place.

Swallowtail Summer, By Erica James

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This is the perfect book to read while lazing on a sun lounger or sitting quietly in a shady garden with a long, cold drink. It’s the story of a group of friends and their adult children who spend their summers at Liston End, a huge house set right on the water’s edge in the Norfolk Broads. Pretty early on, we learn that Alastair, the owner of the house, back from a lengthy sojourn abroad after the death of his wife, is about to unveil a decision that will affect the entire group. I won’t spoil the story by telling you what it is, suffice to say the course of action he decides to pursue results in all sorts of secrets coming to light.

There were a number of aspects of this story that I particularly liked. First of all, it portrayed complex, interlinked, multi-generational relationships in a way that was very true to life. It made a pleasant change to be following the love-lives of people in their sixties, whilst at the same time seeing similar threads being pulled through the lives and relationships of their children. This makes it all sound very worthy, and probably a bit dull, but it really wasn’t like that at all!

I felt as though I could see Liston End, the descriptions of life by the river and of the house itself brought the place vividly to life. And I loved the characters too, there were lots of sub-plots involving each of them which kept me riveted, wanting to know what happened next to each of them. I read this book over several sittings, swept along with the story and the people and felt extremely satisfied by the ending – something that isn’t always the case with a summer read, if you know what I mean.

If you’re looking for an absorbing, gentle read, with lots of twists and turns, sprinkled with a bit of escapism, then this is definitely one for you.

The Dead Ex, by Jane Corry

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Now, I’ve got to be honest here, I’d never heard of Jane Corry before her name came up on a twitter post announcing that two of her books were reduced to 99p on Kindle.  I was waiting for a couple of books I’d pre-ordered to be published and had been reduced to re-reading the Frieda Klein series by Nicci French (v.good) for about the fifth or sixth time. Did I mention I read all the time?

Anyway, I thought I’d give her a whirl, because you can’t go wrong for 99p, right? 

It was great! Very twisty-turny, and although I was certain there was a twist coming, I couldn’t work it out, and I LOVE that in a thriller. I also particularly liked the fact that one of the protagonists, Vicki, has epilepsy, which affects her memory and means she can’t be certain that she didn’t have something to do with her ex-husband’s disappearance – the man at the centre of the plot.  People in my family have epilepsy and I thought that Vicki’s experience was very well done – not overblown or overdramatised but giving great insight into what it’s like to live with the constant risk of seizures.

The plot was quite complex and for quite a way into the book it’s hard to work out the connections between the different protagonists, despite hints and foreshadowing. I think that’s one of the reasons I liked it, because as a reader I had to concentrate more on what was happening in the present and what ‘might’ have happened in the past, and how everyone was interconnected. I wasn’t entirely sure whether I liked some of the characters, but then again I suppose that makes them true to life, because who does like everyone they meet…

I didn’t realise this until I looked her up, but Jane Corry is in fact a Sunday Times bestselling author of a number of novels, and she has a new one out in about a week’s time, I Looked Away. Don’t you just love it when you find a new author and you have a whole heap of new books to read? Can’t wait.

The Bookshop on the Shore, by Jenny Colgan

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Jenny Colgan is one of my favourite writers for those days when you need to escape. Her books are always full of people you’d like to go out for a drink with, facing the kinds of dilemmas we all face, with heart and humour and courage. She tends to write books in clusters, that is to say, she creates a setting and furnishes it with various people whose stories you follow over the course of two or three novels. And the reason I make the point about setting, is because setting becomes as much of a character as any of the individuals whose lives we’re being welcomed into.

I adored her series of books about Mure, and The Bookshop on The Shore follows on (kind of) from The Little Shop of Happy Ever After, although it’s not essential to have read the first one in order to enjoy this one. Jenny’s love for Scotland’s wild, sweeping geography, along with the way she weaves the weather (I never knew the difference between the ‘gloaming’ and a ‘haar’ before) into the plot and the lead character’s experiences make the landscape part of the story.

Speaking of which, I won’t spoil it for you, but the thrust of the novel is a bit like a Von Trapp update only without Nazis. A young single mother ends up in the depths of the Scottish countryside looking after a troop of traumatized children for the local Laird whilst at the same time attempting to make a success of a travelling bookshop on behalf of the heroine of Little Shop of Happy Ever After, who’s having a baby. Her own young son (Hari) is late to speak, and there are some absolutely (and I use that word advisedly) heartwarming/funny/sad interactions later on in the book between young Hari and Patrick, the youngest child of the Laird. There’s a mystery to be uncovered, lessons about the different shapes and sizes that families now come in, and about the ways that children understand and express love, loss and everything in between. And of course, there’s a love story too.

I pre-ordered this one on Amazon and binge-read it as soon as it arrived, knowing that there will be the pleasure of then re-reading it at leisure, more than once, curled up on the sofa or lying in the bath instead of snatched moments standing waiting for the kettle to boil or crammed onto a busy train. Just perfect.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton

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I kept seeing this book mentioned on Twitter, and then it won the Costa First Novel Prize, and now it’s popping up on all sorts of novel prize lists, including the British Book Awards and the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel Awards. Part of me almost rebelled against buying it and once I had I kept putting off reading it, I’d seen so many rave reviews.

Is it a crime novel? Well, sort of. It’s not as though you don’t know who the victim is right from the beginning, or even who the murderer is supposed to be, so there’s no mystery there. It’s the marmite of fiction, so far as I can see, because you’ll either absolutely adore it or you’ll end up chucking it across the room in frustration, there’s no room in between. I found it quite heavy going to start off with until I got to grips with the pattern and structure of the novel, but it is definitely worth persevering.

There’s a richness to the way it’s written, not just the ingenuity of the premise and plot, which make it a rewarding read. The characters are absorbing and the detailed historical research that the author must have done is worn lightly throughout, just enough scattered imagery and sensory colour to root you clearly in the period. He breaks all the rules you get taught when you’re first starting out trying to write a novel – multiple points of view, a plot that’s upside down and back to front, and a genre that’s hard to pinpoint. Yet it all works incredibly well, and it does have the pace and suspense of a thriller even though you already know whodunnit. Or you think you do. Kind of.

I’ve seen this book described as Quantum Leap meets Agatha Christie, but I think that leaves out the slight feeling of mysticism coming through the narrative. It’s ancient and modern all at the same time, and it made my head hurt to read (but in a good way).

The Road to Grantchester, by James Runcie

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I’ve watched and enjoyed the TV series (although not so much now that James Norton aka Sidney Chambers no longer features, sorry to be so shallow), and long wondered whether it would be worth reading one of the books. It can be challenging going from adaptation to original, which is why I’ve hesitated. The discrepancies between book and screen sometimes stand out too much, or you get frustrated because you already know how the story ends. This was different though, a prequel to the series designed to tell the story of how Chambers finds God and changes his life. Or, you could look at it the other way round, and say it’s about the way his life experiences lead him to God.

What I liked about this book most was its hard edges, the way in which the author was unafraid to show the impact of war and loss, and the nature of the friendship forged between men who go through the worst of times together. It is ultimately about forgiveness and redemption, and although there is a bit of a twist towards the end, to me that wasn’t the point of the story. Religion and religious choices can be difficult to write about because there’s a risk of alienating believers and non-believers alike. What I think James Runcie did so well here was to make his protagonist’s journey entirely credible, showing us how deeply and over what a long time period Sidney had thought about what he wanted to do with his life after what he’d experienced.

Don’t misunderstand me about the hard edges though, this isn’t a difficult or challenging read, but neither is it the soft-focus, warm-bath experience that Sunday evening TV can be (nothing wrong with it, if that’s what you fancy at the time). It’s well-written and satisfying to read. And it’s not all about religion, some of it’s about the dance between Sidney and Amanda – and if you have watched the TV series you’ll understand the significance of that relationship. Reading it enables you to piece together the clues to future behaviours, full of “so that’s why he/she/they did x/y/z” moments, which I really enjoyed.

Good writing is often about not noticing the craft, you’re so taken on the journey with the author, and I’d say that’s the case with this book. It’s made me wonder whether or not it’d be worth starting at the beginning of the Grantchester novels and working my way through them, so that’s got to be a good thing.

The Mystery of Three Quarters, by Sophie Hannah

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Sophie Hannah is a writer I admire. I’ve enjoyed pretty much everything she’s written, starting with Little Face and, most recently, Did You See Melody. But it’s one thing to build your own world in fiction, to create your own characters, and quite another to breathe new life into someone else’s creation.  With Poirot and Agatha Christie, that’s a very tall order indeed.

As a teenager, I devoured all the Agatha Christie books I found in my grandmother’s house, loving the descriptions, the pace and the language.  As an adult, like everyone else, I have been absorbed by different TV adaptations, and believe David Suchet’s performance caught Poirot better than anyone. You know, when you read a book and then see it on screen, and the person on screen is exactly, completely, the person you had in your head.

How much harder and more daunting must it be, then, to be tasked with continuing the story of someone who is so familiar to us all? Now, I don’t know if Sophie Hannah binge-watched back to back Poirot before she sat down to write this latest Poirot adventure, but I tell you what, I could hear his voice in my head as I read it. Wonderfully done, she has captured the rhythm and cadence of Poirot’s speech and thought processes, whilst creating a suitably tangled plotline. Three books in, the relationship between the two key protagonists is rounded and well-realised, and it was a smart move on her part to create a new sidekick in the shape of Edward Catchpool rather than setting herself the additional hurdle of writing Inspector Japp and Captain Hastings into the story.

It’s not a bonkers grippy read, it has the same pace and slightly soothing quality of an original Christie, ideal for a quiet Sunday afternoon (which is when I read it), or a long train journey. More please.

To Kill the President, To Kill the Truth by Sam Bourne

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I binge-read both of these books in a sprint over a couple of days, and I have to make a confession here, I originally read the first one “To Kill the President” quite some time ago. Then, I started reading the new one, “To Kill the Truth”, and fifteen pages in realised I needed to go back and re-read the first one if the second one was to make any sense. That’s both the advantage and disadvantage of being someone who reads very fast. You can read a book over and over again, getting something new every time, but equally you don’t retain that much after each read – otherwise there would be zero room in your head for anything else.

Sam Bourne has definitely got the knack of a gripping first chapter, that’s for sure. As an aspiring writer, I found myself admiring the way he ratchets up the stakes until you are desperate to know what happens next. To be honest, I don’t know how much I want to say about the plot of either of these two books, because I don’t want to spoil it if you haven’t read them. Both of them are extremely timely. In each, he’s managed to build a plot which is highly relevant to what’s going on in the world, touching on key political and social themes. He’s a clever writer, if that makes sense, because in the middle of some racing plotlines, he makes you stop and think about bigger ideas and issues than those which simply live on the page.

The protagonist, Maggie Costello is likeable, fallible and real – there have been a number of excerpts doing the rounds on Twitter from male authors writing female protagonists, where they’ve got it horribly wrong, but that’s not the case here.

If you want a couple of thrillers that’ll glue your eyes to the page, these are highly recommended. Made me want to go and look up Sam Bourne’s back catalogue to see what else I can read.