Tag Archives: #bookreview

This Charming Man by C.K. McDonnell

Posted on by
Reply

This is the second book in The Stranger Times series and the moment I had read this one (courtesy of #netgalley, thank you very much), I had to go and buy the first one, so that’s a rare accolade.

The Stranger Times is a Manchester-based newspaper which reports on paranormal, strange and otherwise peculiar goings on around the world, edited by the intermittently malevolent Vincent Banecroft, a stupendously vile person with few saving graces who reminded me of nobody so much as Jackson Lamb in Mick Herron’s equally brilliant but entirely different Slough House series.

In this book, vampires (which everyone knows don’t exist) start popping up, there are plumbing / kidnap complications and a running gag based on a swear-by-numbers board that I’m severely tempted to adopt just for the fun of it.  It’s clever, funny, unexpected and keeps you turning the pages. And, like I say, I enjoyed it so much I had to read the first book in the series and can’t wait for the next one to appear. Brilliant.

The Woman in the Middle by Milly Johnson

Posted on by
Reply

Isn’t one of the joys of reading that there is always a perfect book for how you’re feeling at any given time? Milly Johnson is an author whose books never fail to cheer when I am feeling low, because she writes about women whose lives aren’t perfect but who find a way to cope with whatever life throws at them.

The Woman in the Middle perfectly reflects what it’s like to be the glue in a family – the woman who looks after elderly parents, worries about their children, and keeps on trying to be the wife she thinks her husband wants. Somewhere underneath all that is the real Shay Bastable (our heroine), soldiering on, until a series of events, triggered by the arrival of a big orange skip on the estate where her mother lives, brings the whole edifice tumbling down around her ears.

Long-hidden secrets emerge, old friendships are renewed while others are re-assessed, and through it all, Shay’s warmth and humanity remain in place while she copes with everything that’s thrown at her. She’s just so real, someone I’d love to be friends with, and that’s the joy of this book – and all of Milly’s books – is that she really understands what makes women tick. Warm, witty and wise, this was a delight to read, thoroughly recommended for a day when you need to be reminded that love, in all its forms, wins. 

Nobody But Us by Laure Van Rensburg

Featured

Posted on by
Reply

Handsome college professor Steven Harding and naïve young student Ellie Masterson drive from New York to a remote cabin for their first holiday together. Expectations are high for a romantic weekend, but what unfolds over those few days will totally blow your mind. Neither of them are who they say they are, and the dark truths underlying their twisted relationship are gradually exposed. 

I literally could not put this book down, and found myself holding my breath at certain moments.  Ellie and Steven were both compelling characters and one of the things I loved most about Nobody But Us was the way in which I got to understand how they had come to this dark place and what motivated their actions. It was such a compelling read.  And the atmosphere and sense of danger was ratcheted up by the setting – an ostensibly beautiful cabin in the remote wilderness, surrounded by trees, in the deepest of snowy winters – it totally heightened the almost-cinematic sense of jeopardy throughout. 

Timely, thought-provoking, deeply atmospheric, full of suspense – this has got to be one of the best psychological thrillers I’ve read for a very long time indeed. 

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

Posted on by
Reply

This novel was published yesterday, and I had high hopes, because I had loved Lucy Foley’s first book, The Hunting Party. If anything, The Guest List is even better. Set on a remote island over the course of a rather upmarket wedding party, The Guest List is a Poirot-like country house mystery where everyone’s a suspect and the real culprit is unexpectedly unmasked right at the very end.

What’s so clever about this is the way the author unravels the backstory for each of the main players so gently throughout the course of the book. You’re kept guessing with every turn of the page, anticipating some twists but definitely not others. I was absolutely riveted the whole way through, and – like The Hunting Party – the setting itself, the wild weather and astonishing scenery, becomes another of the characters alongside the different protagonists.

I could hardly believe it when I reached the end of the book, I wanted to go on reading it and follow the characters on beyond what happened on the Island.It’s dark, twisty, hugely suspenseful and the very definition of a modern murder mystery. Totally loved it and don’t want to say more about the plot because I don’t want to spoil it! Enjoy…

Can’t wait to see what she writes next.

The Lying Room by Nicci French

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve long been a fan of Nicci French’s Frieda Klein series, one I go back to again and again, so I was really excited to read this stand-alone novel. I’m happy to report it absolutely did not disappoint. The heroine, Neve, is fascinatingly flawed and there were times when I wanted to shake her, but that’s a good thing, right? Means you’re totally ‘in’ the book, and that the characters and situation are both compelling and believable.

I won’t spoil the plot, with all its myriad twists and turns, but it begins when Neve, everyone’s best friend, discovers the body of a man she’s been seeing and decides to remove every trace that she’s ever been in his flat. Except that, this being a thriller, she’ll miss something crucial, which will come back and bite her at some inopportune moment. Well, she does, and it does, except that it’s early on and becomes a classic piece of misdirection. This book is like a masterclass on how to write a suspenseful thriller, because by the end of it you’ve changed your mind ten times about who the murderer really is and you’re still surprised how it turns out.

What Nicci French does so well is ratcheting up the tension with each new secret that’s revealed. There’s an incredible feeling of claustrophobia that grows throughout the novel until you can hardly breathe for wondering when the next blow will fall and whether Neve will survive it. I almost missed my stop on the tube at one point. And it makes a fantastic distraction from all the bilge that’s going on in the news at the moment. Definitely worth a read.

The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett

Posted on by
Reply

Oh, how I loved this book, loved it! I’ve never read any Ann Patchett before, but based on this novel, I’m going to work my way through her other novels.  The plot, in summary, is about Danny and his older sister Maeve and their enduring relationship through the loss of their mother, the machinations of their stepmother and the death of their father, all interwoven with imagery and memories related to the house where they grew up. It becomes a totem for everything that they’ve lost, and the wheel turns full circle through this complex, absorbing novel.

I don’t recall reading very many books about sibling relationships and this book reflects the ups and downs of being a sibling with depth and warmth. The push-me, pull-you nature of sibling relationships, the irritations and unspoken connections that come from growing up together through difficult times are very well drawn. Her descriptions are vivid and engaging and I was totally engaged by the twists and turns of the plot, through train journeys and snatched moments on the tube, to the point that I sat reading it one night instead of turning on the telly. It had real heart, The Dutch House, and I would thoroughly recommend it. One for a rainy autumn afternoon in front of the fire.

Now You See Them by Elly Griffith

Posted on by
Reply

Elly Griffith is best known for her Ruth Galloway series, but I have a great fondness for her books about Max Mephisto (a famous magician – and also a movie star by the time this book opens) and Detective Inspector (now Superintendent) Edgar Stephens. Set in Brighton in the 1950s, the series opened with The Zig-Zag Girl, and her latest, Now You See Them, moves forward ten years or so to the time of mods and rockers.

Much has happened in between Now You See Them and the previous novel, to the point where you don’t necessarily have to be familiar with the earlier books in the series. It’s almost, but not quite, a reboot. One of Griffiths’ great strengths is her ability to write an ensemble cast of characters, so that you care about each and every one of them. Indeed, each face personal and life choices as well as becoming involved in the disappearance of three young women. It was great to see modern dilemmas, such as Emma (Edgar Stephens’ wife and a former detective herself) becoming dissatisfied with her role as a housewife, portrayed with sensitivity, whilst the mystery itself was absorbing enough to drive the story along.

The descriptions of Brighton are vivid, and the interweaving of historical details of the period work well. I’ve learned a lot about smugglers tunnels that I never knew, and I felt the story ended with a setup for a future spin-off that would work well. Her books are so cinematic in the way they’re written I find it extraordinary that none appear to have been optioned for broadcast.

Elly Griffith is one of those few authors I would pre-order books by in advance of publication, so it was a real treat to have been able to read an early copy via Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

Swallowtail Summer, By Erica James

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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.