Tag Archives: book review

#BookReview ‘I Found You’ by Lisa Jewell @lisajewelluk #thriller

3 Replies

Alice Lake sees a man sitting alone on a beach in the rain and invites him into her home. He has lost his memory. When Lily’s new husband doesn’t come home from work, she goes to the police for help and discovers he has a false name. A family from Croydon take a traditional English holiday by the sea. These are the three storylines in I Found You by Lisa Jewell. The common denominator is location: a northern seaside town called Ridinghouse Bay. Lisa JewellTwo inter-connected themes run throughout I Found You. Memory – the fugue of the man on the beach, and the dementia suffered by Alice’s parents – and identity, disguised, mistaken, forgotten. Jewell is so good at writing believable characters, good at exploring human nature in a simple, accessible way. And though there is evil in this story, there is also good, kindness, humanity, heart.
The menace is subtle, building slowly from the beginning even when the connections are unclear. It’s just a feeling. Gray watches his younger sister being chatted up by Mark, an older teenager, and feels uneasy: ‘There was something just off about him. Something shadowy and cruel. There were too many angles in his face. Too much thought behind each gesture, each word, each action. Even his hair colour was too uniform, Gray felt, as though he could tug at it and mark’s whole face would come off to reveal his true identity, like a Scooby Doo villain.’
Alice is too easy to trust, it has got her into trouble before. But her least-trusting dog likes the man from the beach, who her youngest daughter names ‘Frank’. But even Frank doesn’t know if he is trustworthy. How much do you need to know about someone before you trust them? Is it dangerous to rely on instinct? Or is that the most reliable test?
Two things in the story rang untrue for me – the police today use mobile phone records and CCTV to quickly trace missing people; and the behaviour of some characters in the intervening years seems far-fetched. But that aside, this is a satisfying puzzle to solve.

And here are my review of two other thrillers by Lisa Jewell:-
THE GIRLS
THEN SHE WAS GONE

If you like this, try:-
‘The House on Cold Hill’ by Peter James
‘The Good People’ by Hannah Kent
‘Summer House with Swimming Pool’ by Herman Koch

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview I FOUND YOU by Lisa Jewell @lisajewelluk via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2Lg

#BookReview ‘The Orange Lilies’ by Nathan Dylan Goodwin #familyhistory #crime #genealogy

3 Replies

The Orange Lilies by Nathan Dylan Goodwin is a novella, a short book which I wanted to be longer. Set at Christmas 2014 it revisits Christmas 100 years earlier, the first year of the Great War, and follows the story of one man in the trenches with the Royal Sussex Regiment. Third in the series about forensic genealogist Morton Farrier, it is a little different from its predecessors in that it focusses on Morton’s own story rather than that of a client. Nathan Dylan GoodwinMorton knows he is adopted but has recently discovered a complicated family secret. So in an effort to build bridges and learn more about his ancestors, he and girlfriend Juliette travel to Cornwall to visit his Aunty Margaret and Uncle Jim. Over the festive break, Morton and Margaret trace official documents telling the story of Morton’s great-grandfather Charles Farrier, who fought with the Second Battalion, the Royal Sussex Regiment. However as records are uncovered, more questions appear. At the same time we are told Charles’s story in 1914, with its own mysteries, contradictions and secrets. Unknown to Morton, old and modern mysteries are inter-linked.
I love the formula of the Morton Farrier books, the combination of present and past, secrets and lies, the hunt for truth and puzzles solved. This book is a little different, I think for two reasons. First, I longed in the first half for more dynamic detail of Charles’s story rather than dry factual reporting. At the front of the book, the author explains that two of his own relatives fought with this regiment. At the end of the book, the author explains that the movements of the Second Battalion are recorded as faithfully and accurately as possible. It feels as if the history bound the creative hands of the author. The second difference is that Morton is researching his own family and so the emotional attachment is different. Unlike when he is searching for clients, there is no immediate danger to his life, property or loved ones.
I raced through this book, intrigued by the mystery of Charles and his young wife Nellie. If you are new to the Morton Farrier books, you will appreciate this novella better if you have already read the first two in the series.

Read my reviews of the next books in the Morton Farrier series:-
HIDING THE PAST #1MORTONFARRIER
THE LOST ANCESTOR #2MORTONFARRIER
THE AMERICA GROUND #4MORTONFARRIER

If you like this, try:-
‘Pale as the Dead’ by Fiona Mountain
‘Blood Atonement’ by Dan Waddell
‘The Quarry’ by Iain Banks

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE ORANGE LILIES by Nathan Dylan Goodwin http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2j2 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Deerleap’ by Sarah Walsh #familyhistory #mystery

2 Replies

One day Grace Chalk sees her boyfriend standing at the other side of the street. Except Alex is dead. And so starts Deerleap by Sarah Walsh, a combination of love story [Grace and Alex], detective story [is Alex really alive, if so where is he?] and the nature of blame [marriage breakdown] and grief. Sarah WalshWalsh has written an assured story, handling the emotional complexities with a gentle touch making the twists and turns even more surprising when they arrive.
When the story opens, seven years have passed since the car accident in which Grace’s father and her stepmother Polly were killed, her sister Rita seriously injured, and her boyfriend Alex disappeared. Alex’s body was never found. Rita has never talked about what happened, she is emotionally vulnerable, spiky and prone to hitting her sister. Grace’s mother still resents being deserted by her husband and Grace worries that her anger will turn into depression and suicide. At the centre of the story stands Deerleap, the remote country house where Alex grew up and where Grace visits her father as he sets up his new home with Polly. It all sounds idyllic, except seven years later, Deerleap stands empty awaiting the legal deadline when Alex can be declared legally dead and the house sold. This is the catalyst which sparks this chain of events.
The emotional vulnerability in Grace’s family made me at times question her own reporting of events, we are told the story entirely through her eyes. She is an artist, painting portraits of from her studio in Bristol. She looks into people’s faces and sees the truth. Can she find out the truth of what happened to Alex?
The Somerset countryside sounds marvellous, a stark contrast to the streets of Bristol where Grace’s troubled mother and sister live. The family ties, responsibilities and lies create a web of mystery through which you glimpse the answer. And then there is a twist at the end which I didn’t expect. This is a quiet book which really grew on me. A psychological mystery, rather than a psychological thriller, it explores the nature of grief, depression, guilt and love.

If you like this:-
‘A Sudden Light’ by Garth Stein
‘The Distant Hours’ by Kate Morton
‘Foxlowe’ by Eleanor Wasserberg

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview DEERLEAP by Sarah Walsh via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2cm

#BookReview ‘Only the Brave’ by @writermels #crime

2 Replies

A dead body, a bag of money, and a group of people all lying to the police and each other. Only the Brave by Mel Sherratt is third in the DS Allie Shenton books set in the Midlands city of Stoke-on-Trent. Mel SherrattThe sub-plot is a strong storyline here and it weaves in and out of the murder investigation throughout the book: Allie’s beloved sister Karen is expected to die within days. With a head full of grief, guilt, regrets and love for her sister, Allie confronts the underworld of Stoke to find the killer. Is the city’s crime lord Terry Ryder behind it all, even from his prison cell?
Mel Sherratt’s books are good value easy-read novels which get you hooked from page one and don’t let you go. As Karen lies in hospital, Allie must work out which petty criminal is lying to who and why, who has the most to gain and whose fingers are covertly dictating the action. And all the while she dreads having to question Terry Ryder in prison, the man she found herself attracted to despite all her instincts and her much-loved husband Mark. And to top it all, Allie senses someone is following her. Is her imagination running riot? Is it lack of sleep, or stress? Or is she being trailed by the attacker who put Karen into her coma seventeen years earlier?
If I have one criticism, it is that at times it moves too fast. I felt a little like a rabbit in the headlights and would have liked a few pages to catch my breath, to let the clues sink in and try to work out for myself whodunit.

Read my reviews of more books in the Allie Shenton series:-
TAUNTING THE DEAD #1ALLIE SHENTON
FOLLOW THE LEADER #2ALLIE SHENTON

If you like this, try:-
‘Beginnings’ by Helen J Christmas
‘Found’ by Harlan Coben
‘Lord John and the Private Matter’ by Diana Gabaldon

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview ONLY THE BRAVE by @writermels via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2KW

#BookReview ‘Visions’ by Helen J Christmas @SFDPBeginnings #thriller #romance

4 Replies

Crammed with Eighties references from Margaret Thatcher, Echo & the Bunnymen and Jane Fonda aerobics to Laura Ashley décor, Visions quickly immerses you in the world of Eleanor Chapman. Visions is part two of Eleanor’s story which started in the 1970s in Beginnings and will ultimately end far into the future. Helen J Christmas‘Same Face Different Place’ by Helen J Christmas is an ambitious thriller series focussing on a single gangland incident which has reverberations across the decades. It is a study of how to react to threats and violence, the nature of victimhood, and the power of fighting back.
There are times in Visions when it covers old ground from book one, but nevertheless the story slowly reeled me in. After the events of Beginnings, Eleanor and her son Elijah live in a caravan in a Kent village, safe from the London criminals who threatened them. Their neighbours, James Barton-Wells and his children Avalon and William become close friends. However Westbourne House, the ancestral home of the Barton-Wells family, is crumbling. When the house is declared a ruin and the repairs too expensive for James to pay, a sinister property developer offers to help. All too soon, his nasty son and equally nasty sidekick bring terror to the quiet village as the tentacles of threat from the past find Eleanor’s hiding place.
There are scenes of nasty violence which remind the reader this is not simply a story of petty crime. Eleanor, her family and new friends must face intimidation, assault, sinister stalking and abduction. At the heart of their survival is a defiance born of knowing they are right.

Click the title to read my reviews of the next books in this series:-
BEGINNINGS #1SAMEFACEDIFFERENTPLACE
PLEASURES #3SAMEFACEDIFFERENTPLACE

If you like this, try:-
‘The Truth Will Out’ by Jane Isaac
‘No Other Darkness’ by Sarah Hilary
‘Himself’ by Jess Kidd

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview VISIONS by Helen J Christmas @SFDPBeginnings http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2q6 via @Sandra Danby

#BookReview ‘The Doll Funeral’ by Kate Hamer #mystery #suspense

2 Replies

The Doll Funeral by Kate Hamer is a dark, despairing and at times confusing tale of identity and the creeping links of family and genetics across the generations. It is about the difficult adoptive families, about ‘not fitting in’, and how blood families sometimes don’t work either. Ultimately, family is where you can find it and make it. Kate HamerRuby’s mother Barbara is a cleaning lady who nicks small things she thinks won’t be missed. Father Mick knocks Ruby around, forcing her to miss school until the bruises fade. Then on her thirteenth birthday, they tell her she is adopted. Ruby’s response is to run into the garden and sing for joy. Of course nothing is as simple as it appears.
Ruby, determined to find her birth parents, runs away and makes her way to the creepy home of a strange schoolfriend Tom. I found the thread of Tom, Crispin and Elizabeth rather unrealistic and at times gruesome. It does however act as an alternative take on dysfunctional families, wild children and parental neglect. The budding relationship of Tom and Ruby, two outsiders, is touching.
Ruby’s tale is alternated with that of her mother Anna who falls pregnant as a teenager, first abandoned and then reclaimed by her boyfriend. Although I empathised with Ruby, I found her viewpoint rather mature at times for 13. For me, the story of her search for family was complicated by her ability to see ghosts. She doesn’t know their names or identities, so she gives them names such as Wasp Lady and Shadow. Shadow is the most present, speaking with Ruby and passing her information. At times, Shadow seems threatening, at others like a brother/sister. When the identity of Shadow is finally revealed, it was underwhelming and an aside from the key storyline. Almost as if the author had too many good ideas and didn’t want to drop anything. That said, the cover is beautiful.
The portrayal of the forest, both Ruby and Anna grew up in the Forest of Dean, is vivid, at times both reassuring and threatening. The significance of the title, though, passed me by, and I would have liked more of Nana’s folk magic.
This is not a novel I can honestly say I enjoyed. It considers difficult, slippery topics and so, thankfully, there is no neat ending.

If you like this, try:-
‘Mobile Library’ by David Whitehouse
‘The Last of Us’ by Rob Ewing
‘Beginnings’ by Helen J Christmas

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE DOLL FUNERAL by Kate Hamer via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2q1

#BookReview ‘These Dividing Walls’ by Fran Cooper @FranWhitCoop #historical

Leave a reply

A young man arrives in Paris seeking respite from his grief, surrounding himself in the solitude of an attic flat loaned from a friend. Alongside him, his neighbours are happy and unhappy, they are getting by, they are lying to loved ones, lying to themselves. These Dividing Walls by Fran Cooper is a multi-layered story of microcosm and macrocosm, of an apartment block in Paris and its inhabitants, of city-wide anti-immigrant protests. Fran CooperA wave of racist violence enters the centre of Paris and the unfolding events are told through the lives of the residents at Number 37. Their lives converge and depart from each other, some are socially-minded, others watch from behind curtains. The young mother stretched so thin in the care of her three young children that she fears she will break. The banker who lost his job but is too ashamed to tell his wife. The homeless man who sleeps in a doorway on the street nearby. The silver-haired seller of art books who mourns her dead son. A young couple, new residents at Number 37, lock their door and turn off the television. The lives of all these people are affected by the xenophobic hatred which enters their street.
These Dividing Walls is at once a tender story and a violent one. Cooper writes with a love for Paris, a city she knows well, and this knowledge is in every sentence. A fond familiarity with Paris shines off every page, gently done, without shouting. The best book I have read this year.

If you like this, try:-
‘Quartet’ by Jean Rhys
‘An Officer and a Spy’ by Robert Harris
‘Fair Exchange’ by Michèle Roberts

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THESE DIVIDING WALLS by Fran Cooper @FranWhitCoop http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2KC via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Butterfly on the Storm’ by Walter Lucius #thriller

4 Replies

This crime thriller is the first of a trilogy billed, as many thrillers are, as the new Millennium Trilogy. Butterfly on the Storm by Walter Lucius does feature horrific examples of abuse, it does feature a campaigning journalist, but for me it fell short of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy. Without that expectation, I would probably have enjoyed this thriller while at the same time being irritated that so much was crammed in. Walter LuciusThe action starts from page one and doesn’t stop to breathe. A young girl is the subject of a hit-and-run accident in the Amsterdam woods. In hospital, it becomes clear the girl is a young boy, dressed as a girl dancer and sexually abused by Afghan men now living in Holland. I found the portrayal of immigrant life in Holland fascinating and almost wish the author had examined this in more depth but the story spreads out to South Africa and Russia and its tentacles become confusing.
Accompanying the child to hospital is Dr Danielle Bernson who, following medical experience in Africa, is traumatized when she sees the child suffer. At the hospital, they meet journalist Farah Hafez, originally from Afghanistan, Farah’s identity was changed when she arrived as a child in Holland. She too has a lot of emotional baggage. Farah’s boss teams her with a more experienced journalist, Paul Chapelle, who she knew in Afghanistan. On the police side we have the pair of detectives assigned to the hit-and-run case, Joshua Calvino and Marouan Diba, a sort of young/old, idealistic/world-weary, good cop/bad cop pairing. There is a huge list of characters to accommodate the various storylines which include child trafficking, police corruption, political corruption, Russian violence and international terrorism. There is too much going on.
In the Millennium Trilogy, the first book had a clear distinctive story which allowed the reader to get to know the key characters which would move forward to book two. In Butterfly on the Storm, the first book feels like the episode of a television series where the ending has a hook to make you watch next week. This may work with television, but it left me feeling the novel was incomplete.

If you like this, try:-
‘Summer House with Swimming Pool’ by Herman Koch
‘The Long Drop’ by Denise Mina
‘The Accident’ by Chris Pavone

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview BUTTERFLY ON THE STORM by Walter Lucius via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2Kf

#BookReview ‘New Boy’ by @Tracy_Chevalier #contemporary #Othello

4 Replies

When she arrives at school one day, Dee notices the new boy before anyone else and forsees he will have an impact on the world she lives in. Little does she know. This is Washington DC in the 1970s. A new black boy is starting his first day at an all-white school. New Boy: Othello Retold is not the usual novel you expect from Tracy Chevalier. Tracy ChevalierPart of the Hogarth Shakespeare collection of novels by contemporary writers re-telling Shakespeare’s most famous plays, it is thought-provoking, ambitious, but not totally successful. Modernising such a well-known classic drama is always going to be problematic, with readers who love or hate it. Othello, possibly Shakespeare’s most political of plays, is about love, jealousy, sexual bullying and manipulation. Difficult subjects for a school. Some reviewers think this book should be marketed to adolescents but for me, the novel’s flaw lies in its timeframe. The action takes place over one school day so the arrival of Osei and his relationship with Dee charges from flirting, friendship, commitment to caressing, whispering and hurtful jealousy between the hours of nine in the morning and four-ish in the afternoon. There is simply too much to cram into one day. I had less of a problem with the arc from flirting to jealousy, remembering the intense emotions of being pre-adolescent. However my perception of the world in which the story is set was not helped as, being English, I wasn’t aware that the top year of grade school means Dee, Osei, Ian and Mimi are 11-years old. I thought they were older.
How different it would have been to set it across Osei’s first week at school, allowing space for each character to be explored. The nastiness of bully Ian could be explored in depth, instead of passing references to his brothers whose examples of extortion he imitates, and his father who beats Ian for swearing. ‘His father had taken his belt to him early on to make clear that swearing was his domain, not his son’s.’ There is a deeper tale of manipulation & bullying trying to get out. But New Boy is shorter, at 192 pages, compared with Chevalier’s most recent novels – At the Edge of the Orchard, 305 pages; The Last Runaway, 353 pages – so no wonder the story feels constricted.

Read my reviews of Tracy Chevalier’s other novels:-
A SINGLE THREAD
AT THE EDGE OF THE ORCHARD
THE GLASSMAKER
THE LAST RUNAWAY

If you like this, try:-
‘Vinegar Girl: The Taming of the Shrew Retold’ by Anne Tyler [also part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series]
‘Foxlowe’ by Eleanor Wasserberg
‘The Lightning Tree’ By Emily Woof

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview NEW BOY by @Tracy_Chevalier via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2JC

#BookReview ‘The Ice’ by Laline Paull @LalinePaull #contemporary #thriller

3 Replies

The Ice by Laline Paull is a climate change thriller which takes place partly in the Arctic and partly in a courtroom in Canterbury. Sean and Tom met as students when Tom attended a meeting of the exclusive Lost Explorers’ Society and Sean was a waiter. They became friends because of their shared fascination for the Arctic. Both go on to forge careers revolving around the Arctic; Tom becomes an environmental campaigner, Sean a businessman. Their friendship, agreements and arguments are key to this novel. When, in chapter one, Tom’s body is revealed by an iceberg calving from a glacier it is the catalyst for all that follows. Laline PaullTom was known to be dead, having died in an accident in an ice cave on Svalbard three years earlier, an accident which Sean survived. An inquest is called, Sean’s business partners fly in to give evidence and to support Sean who is seeing visions of Tom around every corner. It becomes clear that Sean, now divorced and living with one of his investors, Martine, is not hands-on with his business in Svalbard. Midgard Lodge is an exclusive retreat where businessmen and politicians can meet to do deals. Sean’s upfront motivation is to encourage the capitalists to see the Arctic surrounding them, the polar bears, whales and glaciers, and convert them to environmentalism. With this in mind, he recruited Tom to the business. His partners however – the odious Joe Kingsmith and irritating Radiance Young – set my alarm bells ringing very early on. What exactly goes on at Midgard Lodge and why doesn’t Sean, supposedly the CEO, find out? And how could Tom not ask more questions before signing his contract?
There are some big topics touched on here: the opening of shipping channels over the North Pole, the political and military ramifications, the melting of the ice, the wealthy tourists who demand to see the polar bear they were promised in the holiday brochure, business executives who take the money and avoid asking difficult questions because that’s the easiest and most convenient thing to do. To reduce it to essentials, this is a novel about greed and love. How greed can destroy everything: not just business, but friendships, families and ultimately the ice.
I enjoyed The Ice but was left feeling vaguely dissatisfied. A day after I finished reading it, I realized why: it feels like it started out as a thoughtful novel about climate change, but at a later draft was turned into a thriller. The environmental message seemed preachy at times, the business sections were factual and dry, both of which took the edge off the suspense. Told from Sean’s viewpoint, the lack of Tom’s voice for me made the novel weaker. Perhaps it would have been more thrilling if various viewpoints had been juggled so the lies, risks, double-crossing and betrayals happen in real time, rather than the past.

Read my review of POD, also by Laline Paull.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Surfacing’ by Cormac James
‘Under a Pole Star’ by Stef Penney
‘Thin Air’ by Michelle Paver

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE ICE by Laline Paull @LalinePaull http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2zZ via @SandraDanby