The Other Woman by Tania Tay - Review

I had picked this book up at the library a couple of weeks before I went on holiday, and then thought that I should take it with me and get it read. It was the fourth book I read on holiday and I ended up finishing it on the plane home. I didn't like it much which I found a shame because I often like this kind of psychological drama. I felt like it didn't quite reach the levels I would have liked it to. The characters weren't all that brilliantly drawn, and they were cliched in parts. It annoyed me. I am glad I had a long plane ride where I could just sit and read because otherwise I think this would have festered and dragged. 

Anyway, the book is about Jade. She is thirty something, married, with three children. On the surface her life looks perfect; her children are well behaved, her husband Sam is handsome and works hard, they are rich, blah blah blah. Jade's relationship with her mum is strained because Jade is Chinese and she has never really lived up to her parents' expectations. Plus. Sam's work is keeping him busy and he seems to be pulling away from her. She is worried about a young woman who works in his office. The children are also pulling away from her as they need her less. 

So, when Christina gets in touch with Jade on Instagram, Jade is thrilled. She and Christina went to university together years and years ago, but then Christina left without any word, and Jade wasn't sure what had happened. Christina qualified as a doctor and has just moved from Scotland back to London. The two women meet and eventually Christina meets the children and Sam, who all love her, of course. Then it turns out she isn't getting on with her mother so she ends up staying with Jade and co. Jade feels pushed out of her own life.... 

This had so much promise but it just didn't live up to it. Nothing happened for the first third of the book, and a lot of stuff felt crammed into the third third. There was a hint of suspense that I liked towards the end but it just wasn't worth the pay off in the end. I'm giving it three out of five, really a two and a half out of five. 

Double Booked by Lily Lindon - Review

 

I picked this book up earlier in the year somewhere or other, because I was really intrigued by the blurb and thought it sounded great. I took it away on holiday to Greece with me thinking it would be perfect holiday reading. I ended up really not liking it. I made my way through it and then left it on the bookshelf in the hotel because I knew I wouldn't read it again. I saw a woman I had spoken to briefly had picked it up and I wanted to say 'This isn't representative of what I usually read! It isn't very good!' but I didn't. I can't really say why it wasn't my thing. I do think it skews a lot younger than it is. Georgina is 26 but it reads more like Young Adult than fiction for adults. 

Anyway yes the protagonist is Georgina, known as Gina to her friends. She lives with her boyfriend, Doug, who she met at university seven years ago and started a relationship with. They have a boring, uber scheduled life. This is partly due to Gina's past because of some trauma she lived through, which she got through by setting strict routines. But it's also partly because Doug is just really extremely boring. Gina's best friend Soph is a vlogger and influencer who is Black and a lesbian. She drags Gina out to a gay bar one night where Gina meets Kit, who is in a really cool band called Phase. Gina ends up joining the band as their drummer. The others just assume that she is gay like them and she just doesn't .......bother telling them otherwise? It's really annoying because if she just spoke up it would be fine. But I guess part of the problem is that Gina realises she has a crush on Kit. She starts to unpack her bisexuality. I absolutely didn't have a problem with this - it happens to tons of people and I did quite like the way she did this.

But, what I didn't like was the way that George - as the band calls her - starts to change herself to make herself seem queerer and to 'fit in' more. She cuts her hair, she starts to wear flannel shirts and Doc Marten boots and like, I get that, I'm here for people exploring themselves, but it just seemed so trite? It really annoyed me. Plus Gina is lying to her boyfriend which annoyed me, and people should just sit down and talk to each other. 

I also really didn't like how Soph reacted to her friend coming out. They needed a better chat about it at the end of the book but again that didn't happen. I understood why Sophie felt a bit threatened and a bit annoyed but again like - don't we welcome people into the queer community? I would if it was a friend of mine. 

I'm apparently still angry about this book even though it's two months since I read it by the time I'm writing this! I'm giving this two out of five and I definitely wouldn't read anything else by the author. I really hope that the woman who picked this up enjoyed it more than I did! 

Shake Hands Forever by Ruth Rendell - Review

I haven't read much by Ruth Rendell before, but I know my mum really rates her. I haven't read any of the Inspector Wexford novels before but this one had ended up in my posession and I found it when we unpacked the books. It's an original from 1976, it's very battered and worn and I love it. It's only a small book so when Lee and I went to Greece I took it with us as it didn't weigh very much. I ended up really liking it and asked my mum if she had any more for me to borrow, and she found one. Maybe I'll save that for Christmas, love a murder mystery at Christmas! I'll also have to keep an eye out for these in charity shops and so on. 

So, Robert Hathall picks up his cold, disapproving mother from the station and takes her home for the weekend. He is married to his second wife, Angela, who is a little younger than him. When they get to the house though, they find Angela strangled to death in the bedroom. The house has been cleaned meticulously, except for a handprint near the body. There's a distinctive scar on the handprint and they reckon it belonged to a woman (not sure how they knew this but the answer is probably well, it was the 1970s). There are a number of suspects for the murder, including Robert himself, and his ex wife. 

Robert seems a bit unpeturbed by the death of his wife and doesn't cooperate with Wexford as he's investigating. He left his first wife for Angela and owed her a lot of money, which has meant he and Angela have had to downsize. He is estranged from his daughter. Robert has an alibi though and so does his ex. 

Eventually Wexford is warned off the investigation and it is declared closed. But he can't stop thinking about it and knows there was something odd about the case. He annoys his seniors by keeping on thinking about it, and eventually he does get to the bottom of it. I loved the mystery and thought it was really good! I also really liked looking at a crime novel from before forensics were so advanced. It felt like proper old fashioned policing! I'm giving this four out of five. It was perfect to read lying round the pool in Greece! 

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin - Review

 

This was my book club book for October and I have to say that I wasn't thrilled about it when I saw it. It looked really cutesy and romance like, which isn't my jam at all. But I gave it a go, because I'm always willing to give things a go, and I ended up really liking it. I watched the film too which wasn't as good and which didn't really capture the emotional impact of the book. There is a sequel to this book too, which a few people at my book club had read, and which I would like to read soon.

Eilis is a young woman living in rural Ireland in the early 1950s. She lives with her mum and her sister Rose. Rose works in a nearby office. Eilis is struggling to find a job, though, so Rose sets her up with a priest from New York, Father Flood. He talks about all the amazing opportunities Eilis will have over there, and so it's decided, she'll leave Ireland. Her brothers have already left and are working on building sites in Birmingham. Eilis leaves from Liverpool, on a ship and in a part of the book that is genuinely funny. She arrives in New York and stays in a boarding house run by Mrs Kehoe, who is strict and nosey and imposing. She works in a department story by day and starts to do a course on bookkeeping at night. She is desperate to inprove herself and get a good job in an office. 

She is terribly homesick but eventually starts her life in the USA. She meets an Italian American man called Tony, who has grand plans to build houses on Long Island and he wants the two of them to live there together. But then something calls Eilis back to Ireland and she has to leave America and Tony. She promises him she will return, but back in Ireland things are more complicated. She is persuaded to go on dates with a lad called Jim. Eilis feels caught between the two men, and she keeps Tony's letters unread because she's scared of what she might feel. 

I don't want to say anything else because of spoilers. I didn't know anything going into the book and I really loved the way it unfolded in front of me. Parts of it were genuinely shocking and it is just a gorgeous book. I gave it four out of five and I will definitely read something else by the same author 

Aliza in Nazi-Land by Elyse Hoffman - Review and Blog Tour

Hello and welcome to my blog for my stop on the tour for Aliza in Nazi-Land by Elyse Hoffman! It is a pleasure to welcome you here. Please do click around and read some of my other reviews. I previously read something else by Elyse which I reviewed here. I haven't read the first book in this series so didn't fully get the context of Aliza's experiences and life, but there is enough information in this book for it to make sense. So if you haven't either, don't worry about picking this one up. 

The book is set in the USA in the mid 50s. Aliza is sixteen and she is a Holocaust survivor. She was in a concentration camp, where she lost her parents, and she was saved by her adoptive dad, Amos, who is part of a crew called the Black Foxes. She now lives with him and her adoptive sisters - one older and two younger. Aliza is haunted by what happened to her and by the fact that she can't even really remember her family. She hates school and her teacher and is often in trouble. Her elder sister is bullied by a boy called Yonah so Aliza often stands up for her. 

One day Aliza sees something strange in her history textbook. She has been offered a contract to become a God in a zone of Hell, a zone which houses the absolute worst Nazis that existed, including Hitler, Goering, Himmler, and Heydrich. In this zone, she will be allowed to torture them as she sees fit. She can harm them, humilate them, do whatever she wants to them. They have to obey all her Commands. 

Aliza keeps going into her Zone to inflict more pain on those who inflicted so much pain on her and millions of other people. She starts to avoid her real life which is a problem and which has an impact on her family, and she also begins to learn that power is seductive. It's fun - but also, is it? Aliza has a conscience and she begins to wonder exactly what she is doing. 

It's an interesting philosophical discussion. If you could torture Hitler, would you? And especially if you were a survivor of the Holocaust, would you want to get revenge on men who wreaked so much havoc? What does it say about you? What does it say about them? I liked the way Elyse poised this question. It's easy to understand Aliza's anger and her wish to get even. 

I liked Aliza's family and her adoptive uncle, Sam, too. I would have liked a bit more drawing of their setting in the US, and I did also think the rules about Hell were a little bit confusing and would have liked a bit more explanation. But in general I really liked the book and would like to hear others' opinions on it too! 

Rare Singles by Benjamin Myers - Review

I know I've read The Offing by Benjamim Myers and enjoyed it, but I can't remember how or why I picked this one up. I think it must have just caught my eye in the library. I go to craft club every Monday morning in my local library but they are refurbishing it at the moment so they're in the local town hall at the moment. They still have a room we can use which is brilliant. They only have a few books in the much smaller room - but of course, they can order anything in that you might want - so maybe that's helped me to see the wood for the trees or something, because I have picked up a few books that have popped out at me. 

I read this at the beginning of October so the details are a bit hazy - we're in mid November as I'm writing this - so please do bear with me. I did really like the book, though. It's set in Scarborough and I love books that are set in the north of England as it's where I live myself. I know Scarborough quite well after going a thousand times throughout my life, so it was lovely to be able to picture the streets and the harbour and bays perfectly. 

The book is about Northern Soul music. In Scarborough there's Dinah, who lives with her husband and son, who are both useless human beings. Her husband drinks too much and her son, while an adult, sits in his bedroom smoking weed and so on. She works a thankless job (I want to say in like a supermarket or something, can't remember exactly) and she loves Northern Soul. She can lose herself in the music a couple of times a week, and she does. She reaches out to a musician called Bucky Bronco, who had a couple of hits way back in the sixties, and then vanished off the face of the earth. Dinah has managed to find him, and she invites him to Scarborough to sing. 

Bucky Bronco is now an old man, living by himself in Chicago after the death of his beloved wife, Maybelle. He had some kind of injury and now has an opioid addiction. He is basically just getting through life, talking to his late wife and wishing it was his turn to go. He doesn't really think of his musical life. He has a lot of regrets and through the book we learn why his musical career was cut so short. This part was actually fascinating, because yes things happened in his personal life, but there was also a lot of music industry stuff that was so interesting. He hasn't sung since the late sixties but he decides to go to Scarborough anyway. 

Then he manages to leave his pain pills on the aeroplane, so he is in England going cold turkey for the first time in like a decade or something. He stays in the Grand Hotel, which is a real hotel in Scarborough which anyone would recognise. Ben has described it perfectly - I know people who have stayed recently and apparently it's very shabby and run down now and not a patch of its glamorous past. I loved that Bucky - who was himself a bit faded and a call back to a different time - stayed there. 

In all I'm giving this four out of five, it was a really good book about music and nostalgia and stuff. 

The Glass Room by Ann Cleeves - Review

 

I picked this up off my shelves recently. I had forgotten I had this Vera Stanhope but, so was happy to see it when I unpacked my books. I bought my mum the first eight books in the series and she has made her way through them and enjoyed them, and I've been in an out of them. So I picked this up, anyway, at the beginning of October. I'm still way behind in blogging so I'm writing this in the middle of November. I've forgotten some of the ins and outs of it, sorry. I am hoping to get caught up eventually but, man, life keeps happening. 

Anyway, Vera has made friends with her closest neighbours to her isolated farm. They invite her over and feed her and stuff. Joanna is one half of the couple and she goes to this writing retreat on this island off the Northumberland coast (how many islands ARE there off the Northumberland coast??) and one of the writers is found murdered. Joanna is found holding a knife over the body, so it really looks like she is guilty of murder.

Vera knows that really she should hand the case over to someone else, but she just doesn't believe that Joanna is capable of murder. All of the people at the retreat are suspects, but when it seems like one of the writers has written a scene exactly like the murder scene, it gets more and more complicated.

As always, I liked the mystery, but I only gave the book three out of five and now I can't remember exactly why. I guess it just didn't do it for me that much.