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. 

Kittiwake Stormhaven and the Pirate's Portolano by Victoria Williamson - Blog Tour and Review

 

Hello and welcome to my blog for my stop on the tour for Kittiwake Stormhaven and the Pirate's Portolano by Victoria Williamson! It is a pleasure to welcome you here! Please do click around and read some of my other reviews. I've read a lot of books by Victoria and always love her, so there's a few reviews of her books around. 

I love Victoria's books and think she's a great Middle Grade author who we need more of in the UK, so I was pleased to see a new book by her arrive and signed up immediately. I was lucky enough to receive a physical copy which came in a very cute box with some pirate themed goodies in it too, so thank you very much for those, I really enjoyed them! Such a cute little gift from Tiny Tree Books, thank you. I was provided with a copy of this book for review purposes but all thoughts and opinions are my own. 

The hero of the book is Kittiwake Stormhaven, who is around twelve years old. She lives in a world where there isn't much, if any, land left. There are a few seaports around the world, but most of the population lives on ships and the world is divided into quadrants. Kittiwake lives on the Amazon Princess, living a luxury, pampered life. Her mother Mollyhawk is the captain of this ship. Her sister Petrel went missing and their father Kestrel went off to look for her and is presumed dead. 

Kittiwake has a friend, Scallion, known as Scally, who was caught on a pirate ship so is branded on his forehead with a P. He is a stowaway on the Amazon Princess and is careful to not be found. Kittiwake also has a pet monkey, Caboodle. The three get into mischief and such, which is funny. But then there come rumours that Petrel is the captain of a pirate ship, the Seawitch. Mollyhawk is rightfully shocked and upset about this.

Meanwhile, the material that the ships are fuelled by is running scarce. It comes from a meteor and one is expected to land soon, so all ships are trying to get a piece of it. I liked this environmental aspect of the book. I also liked the setting, it felt old fashioned but with more modern inventions. I think this is a fun swashbuckling adventure book. I recommend it for middle graders! 

Read Between the Li(n)es by Malcolm Duffy - Review

I can't remember where or when I picked this book up but I obviously did at some point, and I picked it up towards the end of September. I'm reviewing this like six weeks later as I've just been so busy and have been on holiday, so some of the details of the book are a bit lost to me now. However, I didn't like it much - I don't think it was as good as Me Mam, Me Dad, Me by Malcolm which I read years ago and liked. 

Anyway, there are two protagonists of this book. Firstly there is Ryan. His parents are divorced and he is living in the south of England with his dad, although he is from the north east. His mam isn't around much. Ryan and his dad are living with his dad's new girlfriend, whose name escapes me right now, and her son, Tommy.

Tommy has been in a young offenders institute for a year and now he's back home. He's got to start school again in Ryan's year, although he's older. Ryan's mam thinks he is a bad lad and doesn't want Ryan living with him, but what can she do? Ryan wants to get on with Tommy but the two clash to begin with. Tommy is well liked at school but he's also prickly and can be difficult. He finds school difficult, because he is dyslexic, and he has never got help for that. 

Ryan is dyslexic too, but he's been well supported in it so he is doing well in school. He has things that help and strategies, so he is a bit nerdy. He wants Tommy to like him as he doesn't have many friends in his new area.

The two get closer and Ryan shares how he learnt to read and all of that stuff. Secrets start to slide out, which as an adult I found a little bit predictable, but a teenager may not find it that way. So maybe I can't really judge on that score. 

I am giving this three out of five. It has positive things - it's UK based, it's a normal family situation, and I liked what Tommy went through as a teen that landed him in trouble. But the negatives just outweighed that a bit for me. 

The Killer Question by Janice Hallett - Review

You know I love a Janice Hallett book so when I knew there was another one I picked it up straight away. It's very similar to her other books - written in a non linear fashion, without prose. This time it's about a pub, a bit off the beaten track, which is being run by Sue and Mal Eastwood. They have a WhatsApp group with several other publicans in the same chain. Each pub runs a quiz - except one, I think - and each of them is really proud of their quiz for bringing in business etc. Mal prides himself on writing his quizzes himself, unlike lots of the other landlords in the group who rely on quiz books. 

There are several teams who always come to Mal's quiz, who are known by their team names and who have friendly rivalries between them. A new team turns up one night and puts the cat among the pigeons by coming first. They make their way round a few of the pubs and keep coming first. Mal becomes certain that they are cheating, and sets out to find out how. 

A body is found near Mal and Sue's pub which brings lots of intrigue and police into their pub. The body belongs to someone who knew a bunch of the quizzers who keep winning, so it all gets really confusing. I was expecting a twist at the end but when it happened I was incredibly shocked as I hadn't seen it coming at all. I liked the book as a whole and thought it read more quickly than some of her others. I can't wait until her next book as I will of course read it.

I'm giving this four out of five. 

The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd - Review

 

If you haven't heard of this book before, I have mentioned it on this blog before. In 2020 I read The Guggenheim Mystery by Robin Stevens, which is kind of a sequel to this book. Siobhan Dowd made notes and a title for her sequel, but then she died before she wrote it, so Robin took the characters and wrote the sequel. I really liked the book so got this one and then forgot about it for five years. When we were unpacking all my books after the move I found this and picked it up, thinking it was about time. And I really enjoyed it, so that's good. I didn't really remember the characters so it was nice to get to know them again, from Siobhan herself. 

The protagonist of the book is Ted, who is about eleven or twelve, I think. He is autistic. He lives with his parents and sister, Kat, who's about fourteen. His special interest is the weather and he doesn't really like things outside of his routine. 

One day in the holidays, Ted's mum's sister Gloria turns up with her son, Salim. They are about to move to New York but stay with Ted's family for a bit. Salim doesn't want to move to New York but wants to do some tourist stuff in London first. Mum, Gloria, and all the kids go into London to go on the London Eye. But the queue is huge so the mums have a sit down and the kids join the queue. Then a man offers the kids one ticket to jump the queue; Ted and Kat decide to give it to Salim as he's never been on the Eye before. He goes up, but when the capsule he is in comes back round half an hour later he doesn't get off it. 

At first Ted and Kat think they've got it wrong, so they wait a bit longer. But no, Salim doesn't turn up. Later the family reports Salim missing to the police. He had a disposable camera so Ted and Kat have the film developed, hoping that they might get some clues about what has happened to him. They can see the man who gave them the ticket, and deduce where he was working. They follow a trail - while their parents are trying to keep them contained and keep Gloria feeling okay while Salim is missing - to try to get to the bottom of what has happened. 

It's a good mystery and I really liked how Ted and Kat's relationship developed through the book. It's a good middle grade book, I'm glad I finally got round to it. I'm giving it four out of five. 

Little Manfred by Michael Morpurgo - Review

Recently we got all my books unpacked in the new house and arranged into their genres on the new shelves in the back bedroom. Well, two of the bookshelves were new but one was in our old house and one of the other shelves we had is now in my craft room, but they are all in new places, that's for sure. This bedroom is not huge but it's got a single bed in it and my work desk, and now it also has over a thousand books. In fact, let me show you the pictures of the shelves:

Here we've got literary fiction on two shelves, a bunch of books about music, and then a bunch of non fiction

Here's all the YA - these books are all double shelved as are the literary fiction ones at the top

These books are all crime at the top then more non fiction in the middle, my cousin helped to rearrange these 

These are all classics and stuff, under my work desk, because I do want to keep them but I don't need to access them often. Some of these belonged to my grandparents! 

And here there's children's lit and middle grade at the top and then two shelves of books that I know are LGBTQ+, no matter what other genre they might fit into. I like to have them all together! I sure do have a lot of them!

Anyway, with all the books unpacked there are more than a thousand, so I officially do have a whole entire library all of my own! Lee owns some of the music books and I haven't pictured all his stupid Viz annuals, but he mostly reads digitally so doesn't own a lot of books. It's been lovely to be reunited with all my books, and I've been trying to pick out things that I really want to read but haven't seen in ages. With that, I picked up Little Manfred by Michael Morpurgo. 

I don't think I've read anything by him before, but of course I have heard of him. I'm really not sure where I picked this book up from, but I feel like I've had it a while. It's a cute little novella and I would recommend it to any chapter book young reader. 

The main characters of the book are Charley, who is 12, and Alex, her brother, who is seven. The book is set in 1966 when England have just won the World Cup. The kids live on a farm and often take off to the beach to walk their dog, Manfred. He is named after a little toy dog that their mum had, called Little Manfred. The kids are walking on the beach and shout the dog, and nearby two men overhear them. It turns out that one of them was on the ship Bismarck when it went down, when two thousand men were left to drown, but he and Manfred were rescued by HMS Dorsetshire but then became prisoners of war and eventually lived on the farm where the children live and where their mother grew up. 

This is a really cute book and I really liked it and even learnt some history in the meantime! I'm giving it four out of five. 

The Three Investigators and The Mystery of the Talking Skull

When I was younger I read a bunch of these Three Investigator books and absolutely loved them. I think I must have got most of them from the library, but I owned this one. It still has my book plate inside so I know it's mine. It was packed and when we unpacked it I pulled it off the shelf immediately because I really wanted to reread one of these books as an adult. I really enjoyed it and would like to read more in the series, so I'll have to keep an eye out for them. 

So, the Three Investigators in question are Jupiter, Pete, and Bob. Jupiter Jones lives with his aunt and uncle, for reasons that I can't remember. Pete and Bob both live with their parents. The books are set in the sixties in California. Alfred Hitchcock has nothing to do with the books but his name was used, which did confuse me when I was a kid but I've read up on it since. Jupiter's aunt and uncle own a scrapyard, which is filled with weird and wonderful things. Jupiter has built a secret hideaway for the boys' detective club within the scrapyard, and there are several exits and entrances to it and the yard itself, which often comes in useful. 

Jupiter is incredibly clever, he is also very charming and good at speaking to adults. Bob is brainy and is often tasked with research for the cases that the boys get involved in. Pete is 'the muscle', I guess, but there's not a lot about him in general. I like the parts that are from Bob's point of view as he's often rolling his eyes at Jupiter. Jupiter is sometimes a know it all but I like him anyway. 

In this book they attend an auction, for no good reason at all, and Jupiter buys a suitcase for a dollar. It turns out to have belonged to a magician known as The Great Gulliver, who disappeared as one of his tricks and is missing. It takes the boys a while to open the suitcase, but inside they discover a talking skull! But a few people want the skull for themselves, adding some danger to the book. 

I would recommend this for younger teen readers, it is a bit old fashioned but in a really endearing way. I'm giving it four out of five. 

Sorry I've been so absent around here! Moving house over the summer really took it out of me and I haven't been writing as much. I have TONS of reviews to do, though, so I'll need to get caught up!