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Pretty Little Thing by Kit Duffield - Review

Sunday, October 27, 2024



I've read one of Chris Russell's Young Adult novels and I quite liked it so I signed up to his newsletter forever ago, and I was intrigued when he wrote that Kit Duffield is his new pen name and that this was the first novel under that name. I liked the premise of the book so I bought it and picked it up soon after it arrived. However, I don't think it really lived up to the premise which is a shame. I can't really pinpoint why, but I wouldn't rush to read something else under this name, unfortunately. 

Beckett Ryan is a writer who has been estranged from her parents for years and years. She grew up in a small seaside town where her dad was the headteacher at the local school. The house she grew up in was vast, but she suffered from night terrors and was not a happy child. Her parents seemed the very upstanding moral people that the town wanted them to be, but behind closed doors Beckett's dad was abusive towards her. 

Now both of her parents are dead, having died just a week apart from each other. Her dad was suffering from dementia and the surroundings of her mother's death are a bit cloudy. Beckett has to return to bury them and sort out the house. The house is worth somewhat of a fortune but there's a lot of stipulations in the will. Local gentry lady (I forget her name, because I'm reviewing this book a couple of weeks after I read it) wants to buy the house and turn it into a children's home in memory of Beckett's dad. Beckett clearly doesn't want this to happen but she's not exactly sure how to stop it.

Then there's Leanne. She turns up all bright eyed and stuff, telling Beckett that they used to be best friends and used to run around Beckett's house together. Beckett was sent off to boarding school aged nine, though, and she doesn't remember Leanne from before that at all. But it's obvious that Beckett has significant trauma from her childhood and her memories can't really be relied upon. 

The setting is really creepy and I liked the weird town and the town too, but I felt that the story overall was a bit confused. The ending came all in a rush and got a bit stupid for me. I'm giving this three out of five. 

The List by Yomi Adegoke - Review

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

 


I bought this book on a whim off Vinted alongside some other ones - I think I got five books for about £13, which was good. I love Vinted for books! They're so cheap! 

I am glad I took a chance on this and I am glad it exists as a book, but I'm not really sure it worked for me. That's fine, not all books are for all people. But I found it a bit of a slog and I would have liked it to end a little bit earlier than it did. 

So Ola is the heroine of the book. At the very beginning, she is less than a month from marrying her fiance, Michael. They are both somewhat famous, and are totally #couplegoals and Black aspiration. Ola is a journalist at a feminist magazine. Michael has just been hired by CuRated but up until now he's been a successful podcaster. He's been hired by CuRated because they've been called out for being so white and he's their diversity hire to prove that they're not racist. Similarly, Ola is "the Black one" in the magazine office, and her friend Kiran is "the Asian one" and Sophie is "the gay one". Ola seems to think that this is just the way life has to be for her to get ahead.

Anyway, on the morning of Michael's first day at CuRated, Ola wakes up to her best friends Ruth and Celie messaging her about a thing called The List. This is an open document which has named abusers and rapists in UK media, like a Me Too kind of thing. And Michael is on the list. It says that he is guilty of harassment (so not like the worst offences on the list, but even so) and that he has a restraining order against him. This is news to Ola and she obviously doesn't know what to do. 

She wants to believe Michael when he says he's innocent, but she is also a feminist and wants to believe women. Her editor Frankie asks her to write about The List for the magazine, but Ola clearly doesn't want to do that and is desperate to get the focus off herself at work. 

Now I think it's just really stupid that she just doesn't postpone the wedding until they decide what to do, but Ola keeps giving excuse after excuse. She wants Michael to prove that he didn't harass anyone but how do you prove a negative? She sets a private investigator on to him. 

Meanwhile, Michael is certain that he knows who is behind the accusations, and he is sure they aren't exactly true. He is really misogynistic though and as I read in someone else's review on Goodreads, I wish that he had undone his views just a little bit. For instance, near the end of the book there's a bit where he admits to himself that the number of people that Ola has slept with is too high for him, even though it's below his own 'colossal' number. Two of his friends are proper dicks, too, and he is complicit in their sexism a lot of the time and never calls them out. The fourth friend realllly needed better friends. I won't say that I disliked Michael's parts of the book, but he did annoy me. 

Ola, too, kept seeming to make stupid decisions and not for reasons that I could understand. There didn't seem to be enough good things about Michael to keep her coming back, and they had had their issues at the beginning of the relationship. I liked her relationships with her friends. 

I don't want to give spoilers so I won't say much more, but I did think the end was just a bit stupid. In all I'm giving this three and a half out of five. 

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman - Review

Sunday, October 20, 2024


So here we are again on a book by Richard Osman, but a new series this time. This is the first book in the series and for a few reasons I don't think it works as well as the Thursday Murder Club. I swear I only read these books so that I can talk to my mum about them, and it turned out we were reading this at the same time. We went swimming in early October and she was about 70% of the way through it. I was about 74% through so we were close, and I actually finished it when we got home from swimming. Surprisingly, my mum wasn't enjoying it as much as she thought she might do! I can't wait to see what she says when she's finished it, because I think it did redeem itself a little bit at the end. 

The heroes of the book are Amy and Steve. Let's start with Amy. She's married to Steve's son, Adam, but the two of them lead very different lives currently. He is some kind of investment banker or something and he's in Singapore. She is a professional bodyguard/hitwoman, and currently she is working on a private island off South Carolina, looking after a very famous author called Rosie D'Antonio. A Russian baddie has put out a hit on Rosie so Amy is there to protect her. 

Steve is a widow living in the New Forest. His wife Debbie (who I don't think is Adam's mum) died fairly recently and he spends a lot of time talking to her and walking the streets late at night. He is an ex cop and he now has a small little life that he is kidding himself he is happy with. He goes to the pub quiz, he investigates lost cats and such as the like, he eats the same thing in the same pub every week, and he has his quiz team members as friends. That's it. 

Meanwhile, three influencers have been killed while on trips, and money left near their bodies. A man called Francois Loubet is behind it, but no one knows who he is or why he wanted them dead. But all were killed pretty near to where Amy was at any given time. Someone is trying to frame her, but why? 

Then there's Felicity, who runs a talent agency that is now being used as a front for money laundering and other nefarious business. She 'represented' the influencers that are now dead, but she completely doesn't understand what it is that her business is doing. To be honest, this felt a lot like Richard not understanding what influencers do and being disparaging towards them, but whatever. Fine. I did quite like this part of the story.

I also did like Amy and Steve. I didn't like Amy's relationship with Adam, but I suppose it was an easy way to get him out of the way. At the end of the book Amy and Steve decide to set up an agency together, which will of course lead to more books in the series. 

There are way too many characters and the book is needlessly complicated. I wish a good editor would just tell Richard to cut at least two threads and just leave it be. It's just too much. My mum's criticisms were that it wasn't always obvious who was speaking, which I do agree with - just put more 'he says' in, for goodness sake! - and that she didn't believe that Richard actually knows a lot about the world of organised crime and stuff like that. She thought he should write what he knows more! 

I will also say that it is just so TWEE. I get that Richard's entire thing is cosy crime, and that works when it's the Thursday Murder Club and they live in a retirement village and find themselves mixed up in things that they don't fully understand, but when it's Amy - a professional bodyguard who knows what's up - it just doesn't work properly. It's annoying. 

Anyway, I read it, as my mum wanted me to. I'm giving it three out of five. 

The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean - Review

Friday, October 18, 2024


I can't remember where I heard of this book, but I did, and I bought it secondhand in May. Maybe I heard about it at the writing conference I went to in early May. I bought it from eBay for a few quid and I picked it up in September just after my holiday. 

It is a really grim and gruesome book and I'm left not really sure how I feel about it. I can see why it's really compelling and I just had to keep reading, but I'm sort of uncomfortable. It feels a lot like torture porn, and I'm not sure that this author was the right person to write this. The comparisons to Room and Misery are really apt... but I sort of feel like the world has moved on a bit since both those books. Even Room is fourteen years old now. 

The protagonist is Jane. Her name is not Jane, though. Her name is Thanh Dao and she is a Vietnamese national who was trafficked to England with promises of a good life and money to send back to her family. She was with her sister, Kim-Ly. Thanh ended up being imprisoned by Leonard on his desolate fenland farm in Norfolk or Linncolnshire, something like that. At the very beginning of the book she tries to escape by walking miles and miles to a road. However, he catches her, and as punishment he burns one of her final posessions. When she arrived, she had seventeen. She is now just down to four. One of them is the sheaf of letters from her sister. Kim-Ly is working in Manchester in a nail salon and Thanh knows that she isn't far off paying off her debt to the men who trafficked her; all that Thanh has to do is keep with Lenn for a couple more years and then Kim-Ly will be free, and then Thanh doesn't really care what happens to her then. She has already been a prisoner here for seven years. 

She has a disabled foot. After a previous escape attempt, Lenn broke her ankle with a pair of bolt cutters and it has healed badly. Thanh can't run and can only walk by dragging her foot behind her. She lives in constant pain and Lenn keeps her drugged with horse tranquilisers. He is a complete monster; I don't think that can be emphasised enough. Everything she does is observed, everything she does wrong is punished. He rapes her repeatedly. Near the beginning of the book she realises she is pregnant. Thanh has tried to escape and tried everything she can think of to escape, but hasn't ever been able to. 

A woman called Cynthia arrives one day, asking if she can rent one of Lenn's fields for her horse. Thanh is terrified, but is this the catalyst that she needs to escape? 

I liked the setting of the book - I could imagine the flat countryside with very little traffic and with nowhere for Thanh to run to. I liked Thanh and wanted her to succeed. I understood why she had come to England and felt sorry for her. I won't give any more details of the book because I think they would be spoilers, but a lot happens. 

However, as I said, I do think parts of the book were just sordid and gruesome for the sake of it. Room does this better, maybe because it is from the point of view of a child. I felt like the author was labouring the point a bit, and the end of the book too, even though the book is barely 250 pages so not long at all. I'm also not sure that a white man like Will Dean was the right person to write the story of a trafficked Vietnamese woman. It makes me feel uncomfortable. For those reasons, I can only give this three out of five. 

Fat Girl Best Friend by Sarah Grant - Review

Wednesday, October 16, 2024



I got this book in a swap recently. It had been on my wish list so I was excited to read it, but it didn't really meet up with my expectations. 

To be clear, I have been involved in the fat acceptance movement for well over a decade, and I love the non fiction writing that has cropped up over the last however many years so I was keen to read this too. But for me, it was just a bit old news. I have been here so long that I've heard all these critiques before. I mentioned this to two friends who are also fat and who are also in the movement, and they agreed that for us it's just not new, but that it may be for some people. And I agree, so if some people do need to read this book and would get a lot out of it, I can't really diss it too much. 

Basically, it looks at the 'fat girl best friend' in TV shows and films and explores the tropes that the fat side character endures. She's never the main character, she never gets to have her own wishes and wants, she is often either over sexualised or isn't allowed to be sexual at all, she is just the friend of the Thin Main Character. There are lots of examples given but the ones people are often more familiar with are Fat Monica in Friends and Fat Amy in Pitch Perfect. (And it's actually really problematic that both these women are nicknamed 'Fat', for god's sake). But as I say, there was a lot of new information for me. 

Things I did like were: the fact that some of the women who are depicted as 'fat' in Hollywood are actually just 'entertainment thin', and what that means, and I also really liked the look at Paula in Crazy Ex Girlfriend because generally that show does so well at representation and I liked Paula when I watched the show. 

I did find there were parts of it that weren't proofread properly which I found annoying, and there were some parts of it that were just plain wrong. For instance, it said that the film Frozen was released in 2019. No, it was not. I don't even like the film and I know that. This made me feel like not enough care was taken over the book, and that disappointed me. 

In all I'm giving this three out of five. I will donate it somewhere I think, and will hope that someone else will get more out of it that I did. 

The Four by Ellie Keel - Review

Sunday, October 13, 2024


So I hated this book. I wanted to finish it because I was already invested, but it was four hundred and forty pages of my life that I will never get back, and I am cross about it. 

I can't remember where I came across it, but I must have, somewhere, because I added it to my hold list at the library. However, this was a while ago so I had totally forgotten why I ordered it. It's touted as 'dark academia' which it really isn't, it fails at that completely in my opinion. It is also supposedly adult fiction but honestly it reads more like Young Adult and should have been marketed as such. 

I know a couple of people who really liked this book but I just really couldn't. It just kept going and it just didn't stop. I have barely any redeeming thoughts about it but let me tell you about it anyway.

The book is set at High Realms, an exclusive fee paying school in Devon. Four students from poorer backgrounds have been given scholarships, back in 1999. They are Rose, Marta, Lloyd, and Sami. Rose is the protagonist of the book and it's all from her point of view. She has left her dad in London. He drives a cab. Her mum died three years ago. She and Marta share a room in the top of the school, Room 1A. Marta's dad is a professor and she has been homeschooled until now. Lloyd was brought up in care and Sami is from Leeds, although his parents are both in the medical field I am pretty sure. 

Right from the beginning the rest of the school hates the four 'millennium scholars'. They are ostracised by their peers and by the teachers, except for the school counsellor, Dr Reza. They are picked on and bullied, especially by the "Senior Patrol" who are prefects, including Genevieve and Sylvia. Gin's boyfriend, Max, does somewhat take to the four of them and Rose has a huge crush on him. However, everyone else hates them. So for a start, do you really want me to buy that an entire sixth form is picking on four kids they don't know, without stopping, for weeks and weeks on end, and that not only do all the teachers know, that they are actually endorsing it? Come on. Private schools are bad but it's just so heavy handed. 

Something happens which means Marta needs to rely on the three others - her only friends - for her survival. And then terrible things keep happening and keep happening, and it just goes on and on and on. I was hoping there would be some kind of twist or redemption which would make the whole rest of it worth it, but unfortunately not. 

There is a sapphic love story which again comes out of nowhere and which also includes one of the bullies, which again makes no sense because why is Rose so forgiving? For a few kisses and some sex? Come on. 

None of the main four characters are sympathetic, or really fleshed out enough for the reader to care. The school is needlessly complicated, not only in terms of geography but in terms of everything else, too. The ending was not at all worth it. I'm giving this one star.  

Keedie by Elle McNicoll - Review

Friday, October 11, 2024


I've never read anything by Elle McNicoll before, but I know of her books and I know that she writes a lot of autistic characters, which is interesting for me as I'm autistic myself. I started to watch the TV show of A Kind of Spark and really need to start it again and finish it, actually. So I know who Keedie is - she's the elder sister of Addie who stars in A Kind of Spark. I liked her in the TV show a lot; she reminded me of myself. So I added this book to my wishlist and I got sent it recently and picked it up soon afterwards. I loved it so much that I've now bought A Kind of Spark and want to read it soon, and you can count me in the fan club. 

So yes this book is about Keedie. She's thirteen and she's got a twin, Nina. The two used to be close but since they turned thirteen Keedie feels like Nina has gone to a different planet. All she cares about is boys and make up and stuff. Keedie feels a chasm growing between them. Nina is neurotypical and Keedie is autistic and that does explain some of the gap between them, but not all. 

Keedie also has a huge sense of justice - common in autistic people - and she metes out some justice of her own against a bully. Someone asks her to do the same for their bully, and Keedie realises she can make money out of bullying the bullies. I loved this about her and felt for her a lot. 

Addie is only six in this book and she hasn't been diagnosed as autistic yet, but she totally is. Keedie buys her a book about sharks which goes down really well with Addie. I loved the relationship between the two of them and how it blossomed throughout the book. 

I really liked this, obviously, and I'm giving it four out of five. I'll get to the next book soon! 

Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter? by Nicci French - Review

Tuesday, October 8, 2024


On the last day of my holiday we couldn't do a lot except sit around, and then we had a long transfer via coach back to the airport, so I had a lot of time to read. I picked this up and probably wouldn't have if I'd known it was over 500 pages long. But then I had so much time to read that I ended up getting really into it and I read it in just a couple of days. So thank you to the long book for keeping me company while I travelled! 

I had this book recommended by my friend Janet, who often posts recommendations of books that are just a pound or two on Kindle. I often end up buying a couple! I read something by Nicci French absolutely forever ago, and didn't really like it, but that was honestly like about twenty years ago so I was probably overdue to give them a try again (Nicci French is the pen name of a husband and wife team, if you didn't know). I have seen that this is the first book in a series about the detective who appears at the end, Maud, and I would definitely read another book with her in because I really liked her. 

The first part of the book is set in the early 90s, I think. Alec Salter is turning fifty and is throwing a party. The family lives in Suffolk. His wife is Charlotte. Everyone loves her. They have four children - Niall, Paul, Ollie, and Etty. She is only fifteen when the party happens. Charlotte never turns up, though. Alec isn't concerned but Etty is. The party happens. Etty and Ollie (it might be spelt Olly, sorry) walk around looking for Charlotte, but don't find her. 

In the coming days the family does take it more seriously. The police come and suspicion falls on Alec. It's true that he and Charlotte didn't always have the greatest relationship. Her coat is found in the river which makes Etty realise she must be dead. 

The family is friends with another family in the village - dad Duncan, agoraphobic and chronically depressed wife Francesca, and sons Greg and Morgan. Greg and Etty go out on Christmas Day, a couple of weeks after Charlotte's disappearance, and discover Duncan's body. There were rumours that he and Charlotte were having an affair and the police quickly agree. They think Duncan killed her and then himself, and they declare the case closed.

Etty, though, never accepts this version of events. As soon as she can she leaves the family and is rarely back. But then it's twenty five years later and Alec is suffering from dementia and the Salter children have gathered at his house ready to sell it and all of his stuff and move him into a home. He often thinks that Etty is Charlotte and Etty thinks he will confess to her murder. Morgan, meanwhile, is a film maker now and he starts a podcast about the events that happened with his dad and Charlotte. Lots of things come to light and it is obvious that the police in the original investigation basically bumbled the whole thing. 

Hence why Maud is invited down! She lives and works in London but she comes to Suffolk to work on the case. I really liked her. I liked the setting, too. I could imagine it really well. The one thing I didn't quite get fully was Charlotte herself - but it's easy to see why because Etty kind of idolises her and obviously because she's young she doesn't know her mother as an adult. 

I felt for so many of the people in this book. I found it really intriguing and just really wanted to know what happened. I'm giving it five out of five because it kept me so engrossed! 

The Fells by Cath Staincliffe - Review

Sunday, October 6, 2024


Thank you so much to Joffe Books for giving me access to this book via Netgalley! I cam across it while browsing and was intrigued, so I was pleased to be able to read it. I was provided with an electronic copy of this book for review purposes but was not otherwise compensated for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

I love detective fiction but I hadn't come across Cath Staincliffe before. This is her first book in the series with these detectives, but she has other books with other officers and I would be interested in picking one of those up. I would also definitely read more in this series, I hope to see one soon! 

The detectives are Leo, who is fifty something, happily married, and good at his job. His son, though, is causing a bit of worry because he's quite right wing and racist and stuff like that. Leo and his wife don't know what to do with him. 

Shan is new to the department I think, she's definitely new to Leo. She's married to a woman and she's pregnant with their first child. She tells Leo this straight away but is keen to get stuck into her new job.

And the job is this: a potholer has found a skeleton in a cave and Leo thinks it must be the bones of a young woman called Vicky who went missing in the late 90s. She was in the area with friends, at a festival, when she went missing, and was never found. It was commonly thought that she was another victim of a serial killer in the area, although he always denied it. She left a note saying she was going to watch the sunrise, but was never seen again. Two of her friends have stayed in touch with her mother, who desperately wants to know what happened to Vicky and to bury her properly. 

Leo and Shan - who has Chinese heritage, although she's adopted - get to work going over the cold case. 

I was worried in case this book was a bit too close to something by J R Ellis - there's even one of his about a body found in a cave in the Yorkshire Dales - but I shouldn't have worried. This story felt fresh and new and I liked how the mystery was solved. I liked the parts set in the 90s, too, and I liked Leo and Shan and want to know what's in store for them in the future. As you can see from the photo I was reading this while on holiday and it was perfect holiday reading for me! I'm giving it four out of five. 

The Housemaid by Freida McFadden - Review

Friday, October 4, 2024


I have seen a few people reading this book and I was intrigued, so I looked it up on Amazon and found all three books on Kindle for only a few quid so I bought them. I'll read the next two soon I think because I liked this and found it really compelling. In the most I like books that keep me engaged and that I want to finish reading, and this definitely fulfilled that brief. I don't think any of the characters are particularly likeable. I knew there was a twist in this book and it really didn't disappoint - I didn't expect it at all. That's the mark of a good book for me - I've read a lot of books and can often predict what is coming, but I didn't predict this at all. 

The hero of the book is Millie. She has recently been parolled from prison and is desperate to get her life back on track. She applies for a job as a housemaid with the Winchesters. She will be a live in cook and cleaner and will help to take care of their daughter, Cecelia. She somehow doubts that she will pass the background check but to her surprise, she is offered the job. The Winchesters live in a huge house and clearly have a lot of money. Millie's room is in the attic, and to her shock, her room only locks from the outside. 

Straight away she comes up against Nina, the woman of the house. Nina is exacting, wanting things doing to her exact specifications and finding fault with Millie at every turn. Her daughter, too, refuses to eat what Millie has prepared and then says she is allergic to peanuts - so then why is there a huge jar of peanut butter in the pantry? Nina says she told Millie, but Millie is certain she didn't. This is just one example of the weirdness within the house.

But Millie has nowhere else to go. She was sleeping in her car before this and she needs a job. She also likes Nina's husband, Andy. He's dashing and very charming and she wonders what he sees in a woman like Nina. 

There are murmurings about how ill Nina was when Cecelia was born, and how she's 'nuts' now, and how no one thinks Millie will hack the job. There's also the hot gardener, Enzo, who speaks little English but who seems to be trying to warn Millie away from the job and the family. 

As I said I thought the twist was excellent and I can see what might happen in the next books. I'll have to get to them soon. I'm giving this four out of five. 

The Light Between Us by Elaine Chiew - Review and Blog Tour

Wednesday, October 2, 2024


Hello! Welcome back to my blog for my belated stop on the tour for The Light Between Us by Elaine Chiew. As I explained previously, I didn't get chance to read and review this book before I went away on holiday. I was reading it when I left so it accompanied me on my aeroplane ride and the first couple of days of my holiday, and it was perfect reading for that! I haven't ever read a book like this before so I'm so glad I joined in the tour!

So, in the present day, Charlene, known as Charlie, is living in Singapore. She grew up there but studied in the US. She works as an archivist. Her family is complicated - her dad had three wives before he died. Her mother, his first wife, is also dead. Charlie and her mother lived in London for a while. Her first stepmother is still around and controlling the family fortune as well as the family in general. She has two sons. She also owns the family compound; Charlie lives in a lodge also on the property. Her dad's third wife, Peony, had a son, Sebastian, who Charlie met at university and is now best friends with. They are the outcasts in the family and there's clearly a lot of trauma around their family and their stepmother. 

In 1920, Tian Wei is a photographer in Singapore, although he's from the mainland. He is concerned about his friend, Aiko, who has gone missing. Through some kind of slip in time, his letter appears in a digital folder of Charlie's, and she replies to him. 

They strike up a friendship and then a romance through time. The time isn't linear, though - what is only a couple of days to Charlie is weeks and then months for Tian Wei. I knew the book couldn't end happily but I thought what happened was perfect, it was just such a lovely romance. I liked Charlie a lot and really felt for her - she's an orphan trying to just live her life but her stepmother and her half brothers were just terrible people who seemed to like to make her miserable and to manipulate her. I thought the depiction of modern Singapore was brilliant, showing the difficulties between tradition and modernity. 

Likewise, I like Tian Wei and his world too. Singapore in the 1920s is not something I knew anything about so I liked learning about the place and about the differences between the mainland Chinese people and Singapore nationals. Plus by the end of Tian Wei's story, the Japanese occupation is about to happen which casts a long shadow over his story too. 

The romance is really lovely and believable. I'm so glad I read this and I would definitely read something else by the same author. I'm giving this four out of five. Thank you for having me along! 
 

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