The Yacht by Sarah Goodwin - Review

After the disaster that was A Little London Scandal, I needed something to really enthrall me and drag me in, so I went for one of these thriller type books that I have a hundred of on my Kindle - usually bought for 99p or so. I had seen this one in the library actually and was intrigued by the premise. I've never heard of Sarah Goodwin but I would now read other stuff by her. 

I was quickly dragged into this, reading it one lunchtime on the sofa with one of my cats. I read about a quarter of it then and the rest very quickly. It is extremely compelling. Is it maybe not that highbrow? Sure. But life is short and I want to read things that capture and keep my interest. And this did. 

Hannah is twenty nine years old and she works in a call centre. She is working the last shift of the year before heading to Italy to spend New Year with some friends. She struggles to make ends meet and she is pretty alone in the world as both of her parents are dead. She can't afford the plane fare so she is driving to Italy - getting the ferry and then driving for hours. She will then catch up with the yacht belonging to her friends Libby and Olly. All of this is really to show the juxtaposition between the ordinary world of Hannah and the rich world of her friends. 

Hannah went to school with Libby and Maggie. They are both very rich and they've married rich too. Olly is some kind of blue blood heir type. Maggie is engaged, sorry, not married, to Leon, who is a public school rugby sort. Hannah doesn't really like either of the men but she puts up with them for her friends. There is also Harry, who the girls met at university. He used to be on a normal income level, same as Hannah, working as an electrician, but then he's doing sculpture and he's starting to make real money with it. He offers Hannah some money for airfare etc but she won't take it. She does however have a massive crush on him. 

Libby usually throws these massive, extravagant New Year parties, but this year it's just the six of them on a yacht in Italy. Everything is extremely over the top, though, from the twenty pound litres of water to the white and gold helicopter on the back of the yacht. Hannah's clothes, shoes, face, etc, don't fit, but she's determined to make the best of it. But she hears Libby and Olly talking about her and realises Libby doesn't really care about her at all. She makes plans to leave first thing on New Year's Day and never see any of these people again.

But when she wakes up, the boat is adrift. They're floating in the sea, with no way of getting back to land, and no way of getting help. Everything starts to unravel. I won't give much more of the plot because so many things happen and I don't want to spoil anything. There's a lot. Some of it is really scary! 

I do have a few criticisms. I could have used a plan of the yacht because it would have helped to see where everything should be. There was one person that I needed more information about at the end, for more of a resolution. I also thought there would be more of a twist, and was expecting it to make me rethink the whole book. There is a bit of a twist but I'm not sure it fully paid off entirely. 

But I did like the book and I liked Hannah a lot. I'm giving this four out of five. 

A Little London Scandal by Miranda Emmerson - Review

 

I picked this book up in The Bookish Type in Leeds and I really liked the sound of it so I bought it. I have been trying to read all new books that come into the house, so I started it. 

And then, good lord, it took me a week to read. Now that was partly because I was away for the weekend with friends so that didn't leave me a lot of time to read, but also because it just entirely bored me. I had such high hopes for it, too, but I would not rush to read anything else by Miranda Emmerson. Apparently this is the second in the series, featuring two of the same characters, but I wouldn't rush to read the other one of these, either. 

I am sorry because I really wanted to like this. I liked the setting in swinging London in the 1960s, before homosexuality was decriminalised. I'm not quite sure that the language for the time was exactly right, but I could give it a pass if I wasn't just so bored. 

Anyway, the plot. Anna Treadway is the dresser at a theatre. I was confused about exactly who worked in the theatre or was in the play, or both or neither, but there is a man called Bertie who is getting fatter and Anna feels bad about suggesting he needs to get his costumes altered. She has a boyfriend called Aloysius who is with his dying mother in the Caribbean so they're writing letters backward and forward. This is entirely not relevant so I'm not sure why it was included OR why some of the letters are included. Anna lives above a Turkish cafe and in there she sometimes meet Nik. 

Nik is from a Greek family and grew up near Blackpool. He was kicked out of the house when he was fifteen and made his way to London. He is now nineteen. He is a rent boy. He is gay. It isn't clear if he was kicked out of his house because he was gay or not, and I would have liked more clarity there. I did enjoy the parts about Nik growing up. 

He is working one Saturday evening and it is all a bit complicated. He goes hither and thither and it is just way too more involved than it needed to be. He is hired by the lead singer of a band and in trying to leave the recording studio he arouses the anger of the whole band and they set upon him, beating him up badly. I really do not know why this happened. Nik heads to close to Picadilly Circus, where there's a police raid on rent boys in the area. He ends up near the garden belonging to a swanky gentlemen's club. Later there, a rent boy called Charlie is found murdered. Nik is arrested for the murder and Anna is certain that he can't have done it, so she starts to do her own investigation. 

She is helped on her way by a police officer called Hayes, who she met in the first book. He used to work on murders but now he's in Vice. He starts asking questions too which puts a lot of people's noses out of joint. 

Additionally - which is ridiculous given that the book is only like 270 pages in total - there is an MP called Richard Wallis. He is married to Merrian and they have two children, but he hires rent boys and he has a bunch of secrets which threaten to come out at any given point. Merrian is a likeable character - if a little clueless - but she spends far too long fannying around over her husband. I thought there was going to be an actual pay off to this, but no. 

In all I'm giving this two out of five. I just can't, and don't recommend it. 

Eerie Exhibitions by Victoria Williamson - Blog Tour and Review

Hello and welcome to my blog for my stop on the tour for Eerie Exhibitions by Victoria Williamson. It is a pleasure to welcome you here. Please do click around to read some of my other reviews. I've read quite a few books by Victoria over the past couple of years and I've really liked them and think she's a great writer. So I was excited to join in with this tour!

I got a physical copy of the book and with it some cute little gifts that matched up to some of the stories in the book. So thank you to Silver Thistle Press for that, too! I appreciate it. 

The book is made up of five short stories which all revolve around the same museum and include some of the same characters. It was inspired by Victoria's trips as a child to Kelvingrove museum in Glasgow. I loved this because I could imagine the museum perfectly. Especially because I recently when to Leeds City museum where there's an actual real mummy, and there is one in this book, too. 

I liked all the stories, but especially the one about the mummy's sarcophogus and the little girl, the one about the painting - which was SO eerie - and the last one, which was about a shell and which was literally terrifying. I really feel like Victoria has nailed creepy and eerie here. I'm giving the book four out of five. 

Thank you for having me along on the tour, I'll be back for Victoria's next book I'm sure! 

Pity by Andrew McMillan - Review

Oh my god, this book! I found it on a trip to The Bookish Type in March. I had vouchers to spend and I bought three books and this was one of them. I bought it because it's set in Barnsley, where I live, and it is queer, and it reflects on the Miners' Strike, which I like to read about. It is only a short book, a novella really, and it is told in little vignettes, which I also really liked. 

There are four main characters to the book. First of all, in the present time, there is Simon. He is a youngish man; he works in a call centre in Barnsley taking bets. He also does drag in the evenings, usually in Sheffield, but he has been asked to do a show in Barnsley in the club that he and his family frequent. He is gay and has started seeing a lad, Ryan, who works as security in the Alhambra shopping centre. Ryan is more straight acting than Simon and at times this causes conflict between them. Simon also does Only Fans, making a bit of money on the side. He lives with his dad, Alex, an ex miner. His mum left when he was younger. Simon is a great character - he's proud of who he is and where he's come from. 

Alex and Brian are the next characters. They are brothers. They lost their dad in a pit accident when they were just teenagers and lived with their mum after that. Brian has got involved with some researchers who are looking at the effects of the Miners' Strike - maybe 40 years after it happened - and who are very much outsiders looking in. Brian is attending some sessions to help them but he's quite taciturn. He was a miner himself through the strike, as a young man, but he remembers so much more. 

Alex was also a miner, in the exact pit that his dad died in. Alex has a complicated life and I don't want to ruin the story so I won't, but I really felt for him and his life. I would have loved more of his story but I utterly understand how it was more effective to not write too much about him. 

The fourth character is Alex and Brian's dad. He isn't exactly a full character - he's a ghost. All his parts are repetitive. He gets up, he goes to work, on the walk to the pit he catches up with his coworkers, he gets in the cage and goes down to the coal face, he works, he works, he works. These bits are almost poetic and they're so amazing, I loved them. It was such an effective way of telling his story. 

I also liked the shout out to Maurice Dobson and his partner Fred, who lived in Barnsley and ran a shop, at a time when homosexuality was illegal. We have so much to be proud of in this little town. 

I'm giving this five out of five and I now want everyone I know to read this book! I love it. 

Beautiful Animals by Lawrence Osborne - Review

This was the book club choice for April and when I saw it I was intrigued because I had never heard of Lawrence Osborne. This was billed as a thriller and while it's not exactly, I really get it. It was an interesting choice for our book club and not really like something we've read before. I'm really intrigued to see what everyone thinks of it and I want to know what everyone thinks of the characters' motivations. 

It's set in high summer on the island of Hydra in Greece, so it had that beautiful ethereal feel of summer gothic. Everything is threatening and everyone's hot and bothered and not really thinking fully. Hydra also is apparently an island where nothing with wheels is allowed - no cars, no motorbikes, not even bikes. So that adds an extra dimension to the threat. 

The main characters are Naomi and Samantha. Sam is around twenty and she's on holiday for the summer with her family. They're American. Her younger brother Chris and her parents are also there. She's quite naive and I didn't feel like we really got to know her that well. Events happen to her and she doesn't really stand up for herself. She's almost in love with Naomi, even when she tries to extract herself at the end.

Naomi is 24 ish and belongs to a very rich family who have a house on Hydra and spend each summer there. They are part of the elite there. Naomi's dad Jimmie is a patriarchal type, he wants everything his own way. He is married to Phaine, who is Greek, and who is Naomi's stepmother. Her mother died when she was much younger. There isn't a lot of love lost between her and Phaine. Naomi is English, as is Jimmie, but she's got some Greek heritage and speaks the language. Their maid Carissa is not much older than Naomi I don't think, and she is a big character in the book too. 

Naomi has been working as a lawyer in London but has lost her job. I wasn't entirely clear on what had happened here but I feel like this motivated her quite a lot. She is spending the summer swimming, sunbathing, eating in nice restaurants, etc, which is a point of contention between her and her dad and stepmother. She meets Sam and quickly takes her under her wing. They go on boats around the island, buy a lot of weed, and swim in the gorgeous sea. 

One day on one of their trips on the less developed side of the island, they come across a migrant, who has swum from a boat that has come from Turkey. At first they ignore him, but then a day or so later Naomi has an attack of morals or something, and says they should go back and help him. They go back and here's a really interesting bit because I think this time they find a totally different migrant. Sam seems to think it's a different person, anyway. His name is Faoud. He is Syrian. Naomi organises for him to sleep in a shepherd's hut on a nearby hillside. But then she decides to help more, and that's where everything goes wrong. 

I liked how everything unravelled. I liked how we saw the points of view of so many people which really helped to understand the characters and what exactly had happened. This isn't a straight thriller but it is really good. I loved the feel of it so much. I'm giving it five out of five. 

How to Seal Your Own Fate by Kristen Perrin - Review

 

I was invited to read the second in this series because I read and reviewed How To Solve Your Own Murder previously. So thank you very much to Quercus Books for the chance to read and review this one. 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. 

We're back in Castle Knoll for this book, a few months after the events of the first book. Annie is getting used to living in the huge manor by herself, but she hasn't really put her stamp on the place yet. She's living a nice enough life, Archie is living in his family's farmhouse on her land and is doing a good trade in restoring old bangers. Her friend Jenny is coming to stay, and she's still in touch with Detective Crane from the police station. 

She's out for a walk one morning when she bumps into Peony Lane. She is the woman who gave Great Aunt Frances her fortune all those years ago, telling her that she would be murdered. She tells Annie that she has a fortune for her, but Annie refuses it. Annie carries on to visit Archie, where she finds a dagger stuck in the waterwheel near his house. It has something to do with the crash that took the lives of Olivia, Edmund and Harry, three of the toffs that lived in the manor house. Frances was married to Edmund's brother Ford, who brought up his nephew after the deaths. 

Annie takes it back to the house. Jenny has arrived so they go to eat lunch in the solarium and then they find Peony's body. She has been stabbed and the dagger that Annie found is stuck in her back. They obviously have to phone the police. Crane turns up and so does his new boss, Tobias Marks. It looks like Annie is a suspect, but of course, there's more to it. 

There's also the dual narrative of Frances' diary from the late 60s, about the aftermath of the crash and about what happened then. Annie has to piece everything together and solve the murder, but in that she uncovers a lot of stuff about the past and the crash. 

I generally liked the book and was happy to be back with Annie and the inhabitants of Castle Knoll. I felt like there should be some of this stuff which had come out in the first one, but I'll allow the artistic licence. I also thought it was again just a bit complicated with a couple too many characters. I am looking forward to another instalment in this series. I like Annie and I think there'll be more to do with her family and past. 

I'm giving this four out of five. 

Promising Young Women by Caroline O'Donoghue - Review

I bought this on Kindle at some point last year when it was 99p, because I've previously enjoyed her Young Adult books and I've heard good things about her adult novels. I liked this a lot; I think she's a decent writer and will read other things by her. 

The protagonist of the book is Jane. She is twenty six years old and she lives in London and works for an advertising agency. She has been living with her boyfriend Max, but they have recently broken up. She's moved into a shared flat with a woman called Shiraz. Max is seeing someone new - Kim, who has a much more successful career and seems much more put together than Jane. Jane is obviously jealous. 

At work she has two friends - Darla, who is her 'best friend' and who has recently moved to a different department and is doing better than Jane. And Becky, who is very anxious about everything and who Jane really looks down upon for most of the book, but who is a very loyal friend and keeps a look out for Jane. 

She gets the opportunity to work on an ad campaign and when technology goes wrong she saves it for the team. This puts her in the good books of the owner, Howard Mitchell, and she is promoted. She has a bit of a crush on a colleague, David, and he seems quite into her, too. But then Clem happens. 

He is older than Jane by like twenty years, and he is married. He gives her the usual clap trap about his wife and marriage. They start an affair. And it's exciting for Jane! She likes the secrecy and she likes being Clem's little project. She's barely speaking to her mum and she's drinking way too much and so on... 

I liked the incremental way Jane's life fell apart. I liked the outcome, but I think it could have ended a bit differently. I liked a lot of the commentary on being a young woman in her early career and how men really do take advantage of that. I am giving this four out of five. 

Telling Tales by Ann Cleeves - Review

As I have said previously, I bought the first eight Vera Stanhope books for my mum for Christmas because I thought she would like them. She has read the first two and lent them to me. This is the second one and I got round to it towards the end of March. 

I generally love Ann Cleeves but I felt this one meandered and lost its way a bit. I didn't guess who did it and I thought the murderer just didn't make much sense in the context of the book. 

So the book. Firstly, a woman called Jeanie Long has taken her own life in prison. She was serving a long stretch for the murder ten years ago of her boyfriend Keith's fifteen year old daughter, Abigail. She has always maintained her innocence so she wasn't eligible for parole and now she has died by suicide. Her daed, Michael, had previously spoken to the parole board and said he wouldn't support her if she was out on parole. He is a bit of a traumatised person and I felt for him. 

Because of Jeanie's suicide Vera is sent in to look at the case again, to see if the original investigating team, including a woman called Caroline Fletcher and a man called Dan Greenwood, made mistakes or indeed just put all their suspicions on Jeanie and made a case out of it. The original case took place in East Yorkshire, around Hull somewhere, in a place on the coast, a flat boring type of place. Ten years ago, Emma was Abigail's best friend. And she found her body. 

Emma's family had moved fairly recently from York. Her dad is a parole officer who found god and moved the family to Elvet. She met Abigail and the two girls were close, but there was some animosity betweeen them. Emma found Abigail strangled to death in a ditch. She is now married to James and they have a small baby, Matthew. James is a boat pilot in Hull and works irregular hours. Emma has feelings for Dan, who is now a potter whose pottery is over the road from Emma's house. 

Emma's life is a little bit dull and regimented. On Sundays she dutifully goes to church with James and her parents. She looks after the baby. She tries not to think about Abigail. But Vera is asking questions because of Jeanie's death. Then a second death occurs which is too close to the original investigation. Vera obviously sticks her oar in there, as she does. Emma is in danger but from whom exactly? 

I liked probably the first two thirds of the book and felt like they ran well, but I felt it lost its way and I just really didn't believe the ending. It's a shame because I wanted it to be better. In all I'm giving this three out of five. 

Two Lace Books

One thing you might not know about me over on this blog is that I do a lot of crafting. I go to a craft club in Penistone every Monday morning and I love it, it really helps set up my week. And during the week I try to craft most days. I can crochet, and have made several huge blankets over the years. I can cross stitch, and recently finished a huge watercolour piece on evenweave fabric. I have done embroidery, I sometimes do scrapbooking and that kind of thing, I like jewellery making and a bunch of different crafts. I'm willing to give most things a go! 

And when I was little, I made bobbin lace. I learnt when I was around nine years old and made a bunch of different bookmarks and mats and so on. I learnt at a Saturday morning class near my house and I went for about five years; I stopped when I got a Saturday job and didn't like doing both things on Saturdays. My lace making things sat untouched for years and years.

Then over a decade ago, when I was in my late twenties, I got into it again. I bought some threads and I went back to some things, and I bought these books. They were just off eBay for a few quid, not loads of money. I must have moved on again, though. Recently I was packing some things up and I packed up my lace threads, which is annoying, because now I can't find them! 

But then, a friend of mine at craft club lost her mother in law, and in going through all her posessions, she came across her mother in law's lace bobbins and some other tools. Catherine is a very good crafter - especially a crocheter - and she wanted to learn how to make lace. She bought a pillow and I took all my stuff to craft club to teach her. In my stuff I found these two books. 

I do remember the basics, and confidently taught Catherine how to make cloth stitch and half stitch in Torchon lace. But I kind of want to go further than that this time around. So I pulled out these books and dipped in and out of them over a few days. They have a bunch of diagrams and prickings which I will use. I want to practise the basics again and get really confident with different threads and so on, as well as with estimating how much thread I will need on each bobbin! I am determined to make notes so that I learn as I go along! 

Both of these books are full of helpful hints, so they're definitely scoring high! 

Nanny Wanted by Lizzy Barber - Review

I bought this on Amazon for like a pound a few months ago and when I was scrolling through my Kindle app I came across it and thought I would give it a go. However, I thought it just wasn't very good and it lost its way quite a bit. It felt like it was trying to join a zeitgeist of books like The Housemaid, but just didn't quite manage it for me. 

 So, Lily needs to escape her life in London. She has been living with a man called Nick and he was abusive towards her. She left, was holed up in a hotel room, and started looking online for jobs. The Rowes needed a nanny. They have a huge gothic manor in Cornwall and they want a live in nanny for their children, Betsy and William. Lily is perfect and she quickly accepts the job and makes her way down there. 

The mother is Laurie. She is American and in her early forties. She is a painter. She seems to flip between liking Lily and resenting her. She somewhat takes Lily under her wing and wants her to wear her clothes and borrow her things etc. She often seems a lot younger and less mature than she ought to be. At night she goes for walks in the grounds, but why?

The dad is Charlie. He is fifty odd so a lot older than Laurie. The house has been in his family for generations, etc etc. He is a bit of a stuffed shirt. I did have some sympathy for him when some of his backstory came out, but I didn't really like him at all.

The children may as well not be there. They are precocious and terrible and Lily is a terrible nanny. No one is allowed to talk about the previous nanny, Nina. But there is also a hot gardener - of course there's a hot gardener - and he starts to tell Lily about the past. 

The book is trying to be Rebecca but failing miserably. The 'gothic' part of it just didn't work well for me. The setting is good but I just didn't like the story. I'm giving it two and a half out of five. 

The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya - Review

 

My friend Sam bought me gift vouchers for The Bookish Type for Christmas. It's the LGBTQ+ bookshop in Leeds and I've been before, but I hadn't been since it moved to its new premises. So when Sam and Jac and I were meeting in Leeds for an afternoon out, I suggested we went. I took my vouchers and I got three books. I'm determined to get to them soon because they all sounded so interesting! So I picked this up and took it away with me for a weekend by the seaside. It was good company. 

Neela is an indie musician. She's not exactly that well known, but she's around. The book is set in Toronto, which I liked. Neela has paid her dues, worked hard, all of that. But she isn't very well known. Then an internet star called RUK-MINI covers one of her songs and it goes viral. Neela gets more well known which she does like, but she doesn't really like Rukmini's cover. Rukmini messages her and the two meet up in a coffee shop and start a friendship. 

Neela isn't sure about Rukmini, though. I feel like she felt like Rukmini wasn't a 'real' musician because she made music with a computer and stuff. She seems to think she's better than Rukmini, so she's very jealous when Rukmini is offered a world tour as support act for another female musician. This is exacerbated when she finds out that her keyboardist is joining Rukmini on tour. While Rukmini's on tour they try to speak often, but Neela does feel left behind.

For her part, Rukmini is a great character too. It turns out that she records an album with a friend in college and it gets leaked and goes viral too. It sounds really interesting in how it's described. 

Someone writes a subtweet and the friendship implodes. I actually wish there had been a confrontation between the two women, but I think it was more realistic that there wasn't. 

It's a good book and I would definitely read something else by the same author. I'm giving this four out of five. 

Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell - Review

I love Rainbow Rowell and I've read a lot of her Young Adult stuff, so when I saw this on Netgalley I was intrigued as it's an adult novel. I wanted to read it, and was pleased to get it approved. Thank you so much to Penguin Random House for granting me access to this book. I was provided with an electronic copy of the book for review purposes, but was not otherwise compensated for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

The book is about Shiloh and Cary. At the beginning of the book they are both in Omaha, their home town, for a friend's wedding. They are about thirty three at this point. Their mutual friend Mikey is getting married to someone he knew in high school, Janine. Shiloh and Cary were best friends with Mikey at high school; the three of them ran together and were pretty attached at the hip. Shiloh got out and went to university elsewhere. Cary joined the navy, where he still is. Mikey is an artist and was in like New York or something but he's now back at home too. Shiloh never really felt like she fitted in at high school, I think, but she met Ryan at college and was lucky to find a job in theater in Omaha, so ended up living there. She and Ryan had two children, Juniper and Gus, who in the book are six and three. She and Ryan got divorced and she is now living in her childhood home with her mother, Gloria. She and Ryan supposedly have 50/50 custody but he isn't that reliable. He is also seeing someone new, which Shiloh isn't happy about. 

She and Cary had this kind of mutual attraction in high school but never really acted on it. There are flashbacks to high school in the book, which really reminded me of Rainbow's YA novels, and I do think this is where her strength lies. I love how painful it is to be seventeen and eighteen in her books; I think those bits work really well. Especially as all three main characters desperately want to get out of Omaha and be someone. Shiloh's mom was not the most reliable of parents (although she seems a better grandmother) and Cary's family is complicated. The woman he calls Mom, Lois, is actually his grandma. His real mum is his 'sister' Jackie. This is never spoken about, though, but it is painful for Cary. 

When they meet up they dance and they leave together, but they don't end up having sex. Cary is leaving again for his deployment on a ship, but there is obviously chemistry between them. Then Lois falls and Cary asks Shiloh for help. When he comes back they meet up. He meets her kids. They almost get together - and then don't. It's an absolutely delicious dance, I really enjoyed it. Shiloh and Cary are both great people and I liked the depth of their feelings and self awareness. Shiloh almost seems asexual, which she seems pretty okay with, and I liked how this was dealt with. Her kids are a little precocious, which is a criticism, but I sort of forgave them. 

I liked the kind of romancing part, when Cary is away and they're emailing each other. The latter part of the book, when Mikey gets married, is set in 2006, so the internet does exist but smartphones don't. I think this was a deliberate choice because Rainbow is the same age; she would have been the same age as them in high school in 1991. Shiloh is coming into herself in her thirties which I think is something a lot of women do. I would love to see this book set today and then high school in the mid noughties, but I liked it this way too. 

I liked how much of their lives just happened. They want to be together but LIFE keeps happening and happy endings are rarely straightforward. I really liked the book and am glad I read it. I'm giving it four out of five. 

The Garden Party by B P Walter - Review

 

A few years ago I read The Dinner Party by B P Walter and I wasn't too impressed with it, but than I saw a synopsis for this and thought I would give him another go. However I didn't like this either so that's it, he's getting no more grace from me and I'm never reading any of his books again. 

As you can see I requested this from the library and I'm glad I didn't spend any money on it. Like The Dinner Party it's full of rich posh people who it's hard to have any sympathy for. The main protagonist I guess is Harris. At the beginning of the book he is around twenty years old. His parents are dead, having been killed in a car crash, and Harris has been adopted by the Moncrieff family. He's been there about five years now but he hates them all and they basically hate him, too.

There's Raphael, the son, who is only a little bit older than Harris. At the beginning of the book he is in his final year at uni but he has to get married. He has had a fling with a woman called Lauren, who was his tutor, and who is 8 years older than him, and she is pregnant. It has been decided that they have to get married, and quickly. The family is throwing a big engagement party at their fancy mansion hall thing, before it is obvious that she's pregnant. Then they'll get married privately and quickly, and then Isabelle and Patrick don't have to deal with the scandal of Raphael having a baby out of wedlock. Raphael really doesn't want to get married and wonders how his life has spiralled so much, but he's kind of stuck. 

He and Harris have never got on and when Harris first moved in Raphael was outright hostile towards him. Harris bears grudges hard. I did have some sympathy for him because he had just lost his parents, but, you know. It's shown at the beginning of the book that Harris and someone called Rhys have done something to Patrick, Isabelle, and Raphael and then the book shows each of the Moncrieffs' "crimes". 

Isabelle has also never liked Harris and has resented his presence in her house. She works in films and her "crime" has to do with her job and Harris. It is honestly very disgusting. She is a terrible human and deserves no sympathy. She had choices that mostly no one else in the book has, and she still stayed. It's stupid. 

Then there's Patrick. I think he is trying to do the right thing when Harris' parents die, but he is still a terrible human. I also thought the twists around his story were obvious and cliched and I didn't like them. He is trying with Harris but he just gets it wrong. 

But Harris is ALSO a terrible person and needs to just like.... not. I thought the story was just hackneyed. THEN I have to talk about the typos. There were SO many. My grammar is very good so I know I pick up stuff others wouldn't necessarily, but I read a few reviews on Goodreads that mentioned them. At one point Isabelle is called Eleanor, for absolutely no reason. Then there's just so many mistakes like Moncrieff's house. The house belongs to just one Moncrieff? Does it? The apostrophe is wrong. It annoyed me SO much. 

So really I am only giving this two and a half out of five. And I will NOT read anything by him again. Be gone, B P Walter! 

Notes on Infinity by Austion Taylor - Review

I saw this book while I was browsing Netgalley and I was intrigued by the premise. It's billed as Normal People meets The Dropout meets Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. So yeah that got me! I loved Normal People when I read that six years ago, and I know the story of The Dropout after I read Bad Blood a couple of years ago. I haven't read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow yet but I have so many friends who have raved about it and it's a book club choice for this year so I will get to it then. So this book definitely IS kind of those three things all mixed together, and I am very grateful to Penguin Random House for granting me access to it. The book will be published on the 10th of July, so it's a few months away yet, but not that far. I think the hype around this book is going to be a LOT!

I was provided with an electronic copy of the book for review purposes but was not otherwise compensated for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

The main protagonist of the book is Zoe. She is at university at Harvard when she meets Jack in a Chemistry class. She's instantly intrigued by him, especially when she learns he is the undergrad who is famously working in the lab belonging to an eminent professor, David Li. No other undergrad has the honour. He is almost as smart as Zoe and the two of them face off against each other. Then he drops out, just disappears. He has been working insanely much, and the two make friends and start working on lab stuff together. Zoe has a theory about anti aging and epigenomes (I didn't fully understand the science) and Jack gets the two of them into this lab belonging to a guy called Brenna, and he unlocks something to do with yeast, and basically the two of them think they can extend people's lives by up to fifteen or twenty years. 

Both Jack and Zoe start working around the clock and neglecting their classes. They bring other people on board - Jack's roommate Carter, who Zoe goes out with for a long time, and Zoe's brother Alex - and they start looking for investors. They have a start up and venture capitalists are really interested in them, but really they don't have a product. They both drop out of Harvard and then they're living this like very rich life where they can buy whatever they want, and they're working insanely, and the business is like a billion dollar business, but there's no actual thing. It completely reminded me of Elizabeth Holmes and her debacle. 

I did feel like the middle dragged a bit but then it picked up a lot. I liked Zoe and her family - her dad is a respected professor and whatever she does it never lives up to him or what her brother has done, which she finds frustrating. She and Jack do have an on again off again thing. Jack is mostly a bit of a dickhead which is completely allowed because he's the science genius etc, but Zoe really does feel in the final third that she also has the science knowledge it's just she's now busy being CEO and can't actually do the lab work. 

I did wonder how it was all going to fall apart and I'm glad to say I was pleased with what happened. It is an interesting book and I am intrigued as to what the writer writes next. I'm giving it four out of five. 

All The Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harman - Review

I had seen someone reading this and I was really intrigued, so I went looking for it but discovered it's not out until the 10th of April. So I went looking for it on Netgalley and lo and behold, there it was! So thank you very much to Fourth Estate for granting me access to this. 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. 

So, Florence is thirty one years old and lives in London with her ten year old son, Dylan. She is American, though; she grew up in quite a white trash kind of family in Florida, but the family moved over when she was a teenager. Florence was then in a girl pop band called Girls Night. Will, Dylan's dad, was their manager, but he's now married to her ex bandmate Rose, and doesn't have much to do with Dylan. Florence is a chaotic person and honestly, she's just not that nice. She leaves Dylan alone overnight to go on dates (he's TEN) and they're rarely at school on time, stuff like that. And all the other mothers do hate her. 

Dylan goes to a private school with a ton of posh boys so the mums are a cut above, and I honestly did like how they were portrayed. They think Florence just basically isn't good enough for them, and some past information does come to light about why this is exactly. Dylan has also had some problems with a kid called Alfie. When these problems are explained it's obvious what has happened, but still, there are problems. Alfie's parents are super rich and super well connected, too.

Which is why all hell breaks loose when Alfie goes missing on a school trip. The parents go to pick the kids up and discover that he is missing and didn't return on the bus. Florence quickly takes Dylan home as she suspects that Dylan might have had something to do with the disappearance. Her suspicions deepen and she doesn't know what to do except protect her son. She meets a new mum, who is also American. She and Jenny team up to try to find where Alfie is. 

I did like this story. I wanted to know what had happened to Alfie, and I mostly liked Florence and I liked Jenny. So from a story point of view it would be a four out of five, and I would be recommending this to everyone I know. 

However, I found there were just a few bits that I couldn't get to grips with. I didn't feel like we were shown enough about what went wrong with the girl band - if it was relevant. And if it wasn't, then why spend so much time on it? That was annoying. I expected some information about Rose that never came. Similarly, I thought there needed to be more about Jenny and her background because otherwise she just felt like a device to have someone who didn't hate Florence, someone she could bounce off. They also do really stupid things and make really stupid decisions. 

And the end of the mystery just didn't quite ring true to me. I didn't quite get it, it just wasn't satisfactory enough. I'm not sure I understand it now. So all these criticisms would make me give it a three out of five. 

So basically I guess that's a three and a half out of five. I would read something else by the author, for sure, so I didn't hate it, but... it had problems. 

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell - Review

I love Maggie O'Farrell, as you probably know, as I've read and reviewed a few of her books over the course of this blog, and I recommend The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox a lot because I really like it. I follow Maggie's Facebook page so I had heard of this book, but I hadn't ever picked it up. But then it was a book club choice for this year, so when I saw it in a sale in WH Smith I picked it up for a fiver. I was apprehensive because I wasn't sure if it would be a bit too high brow for me. But I picked it up.

And I ended up loving it and I now want everyone I know to read it! I lent it to someone at book club but then I will lend it to my mum because I think she will like it. 

So, if you don't know, Hamnet was the only son of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway. I knew that, and I knew he died as a child, of the plague. I also knew that he had a twin, Judith, and an older sister, Susanna. But I didn't know much else about his life. And I had a vague impression that the play Hamlet was called that after him. 

Which, indeed, it was. The book starts by saying that the names Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable at the time. Then Hamnet himself is watching Judith as she becomes unwell with what is the bubonic plague. He goes downstairs in the house looking for his mother, his sister, or his grandmother, but can't find any of them. Susanna and his grandmother, Mary, are running errands. His mother is out at Hewlands, her familial home. Hamnet fears his sister will die. 

Lee and I visited Shakespeare's house in Stratford on Avon back in 2020 so it was great that I could envisage the house perfectly. We also went to Anne Hathaway's house but couldn't go in because it was closed due to Covid. But it meant I knew what it looked like. 

So in the book Shakespeare himself is away in London, working and acting and earning his living. The book goes back in time, though, to when he and Anne met. In the book she is called Agnes, because apparently her father's will named her as so. Maggie has really done her research! 

Agnes' mother is portrayed as having been a bit of a witch, a healer, that kind of thing. She died and Agnes' father married Joan, and they had several more children. Agnes and her brother Bartholemew are close in the novel, but she and Joan don't get on. John Shakespeare - William's dad, who he's portrayed as having a volatile relationship with, and who was a glove maker by trade - owed Agnes' dad some money or something and as payment John arranged for William - aged just eighteen - to go tutor some of the younger boys. There he met Agnes, who was older than him and a bit of a wild girl, and who was desperate to leave her stepmother's house. They clearly got married and had Susanna and then the twins. 

The books flips backwards and forwards in time to William and Agnes' relationship and Agnes in particular and how she dealt with her husband and how unhappy he was in Stratford. I don't know how much of this is true but I don't care. It was a good narrative. I also learnt that Hamnet's cause of death is not actually recorded, but it's assumed he did die of the plague. I loved Agnes as a character and I think the book really showed just how difficult life was back then. She didn't have it easy and neither did the rest of the family. 

I think my book club will as a whole have really enjoyed the book but I'm interested for the discussion! I'm giving it five out of five because I loved it. 

Show Me Where It Hurts by Claire Gleeson - Review

I saw someone on my Instagram reading this book and was really intrigued by the premise. It isn't out yet so I went looking on Netgalley and found it! So I requested it and got it soon after! So thank you very much to Hodder & Stoughton for granting me access to this book. I absolutely raced through it, it's very compelling and I couldn't stop reading. 

I was provided with an electronic copy of this book for review purposes. I was not otherwise compensated for this post and all thoughts and opinions are my own. 

The protagonist of the book is Rachel. She is Irish and is a nurse. She is driving home from visiting her in laws one March day. Her husband Tom is driving; he has been suffering from depression for a while. Their two children, a boy and a girl, are in the back of the car. They are four and almost three. Tom drives the car off the road, intending to kill all four of them. 

The narrative goes backwards and forwards in time, showing Rachel very soon after the 'incident' and then further on in her life when she has managed to put herself back together and forge a new life for herself, even though it looks really different from the life she had planned out. Then it also goes back in time to when Rachel and Tom first met, and their relationship and marriage, having their children, and Tom's illness and how that came about. 

It isn't clear to begin with whether Tom has survived or not, so I don't really want to spoil that. The narrative is told in little vignettes, so it isn't straightfoward prose at all. There were a few times when I really wanted to know more - for instance, there's a part where Rachel gives an interview to someone, and I would really have liked to see the aftermath of that, but no, we then go backwards in time to see what's happening in the past. But for me that's really the sign of a good novel, that I really want to know more. 

I really think this book is going to go viral once it's out. It is going to get everyone talking - what would YOU do? How would you survive? It's the type of book to definitely be picked for a Richard and Judy book club type of thing, and for good reason. It is beautiful about grief and doesn't flinch away from it. It's brutal about living with someone with a severe mental illness (something I have a lot of personal experience with). But it is also so beautiful. Rachel does manage to make a new life for herself but she also has to make new relationships with her family; her parents, who love her but are removed from her, and her sister Rebecca, who has been wayward in the past but who has two children only slightly older than Rachel's. There's stuff in the past about her relationships with her in laws and with Tom, of course. 

The children aren't named in the book which I actually really liked - they're known more by their attributes then than anything else. I thought this was a really effective way of writing a book. I've read that Claire Gleeson is a short story writer primarily and I think that really shows, but I really do hope she writes another novel in the future as I would really like to read something else by her. I'm giving this four out of five. 

The Cottage by Lisa Stone - Review

For my birthday my friend Leanne sent me this book in a very cute gift box. The book was wrapped, so it was like a 'blind date' book, and in the box was hot chocolate and some self care things, so it was a very cute gift. This was the book inside and I was really intrigued by the premise, so I picked it up in mid February. However, I didn't think it lived up to the premise at all and just got annoyed with it by the end. 

Jan is around thirty years old and she is staying in this isolated cottage. It belongs to Camile, but she's off doing something so she advertised for a lodger and someone to look after her dog, Tinder. Jan lost her boyfriend and her job in the same week so she's decided to take this job to have a bit of a breather and to maybe write. Camile's friend Chris lives close by and keeps dropping in to help Jan. The cottage is on the end of a dense woods and nearish to a village. A village where everyone knows each other. The local shop owner is Chris' sister in law or something. 

Anyway, Jan and Tinder keep getting disturbed every night by someone or something coming into the garden. Jan keeps trying to open the door to see what it is but can't catch proper sight of it. Tinder keeps chasing whatever it is and gets through the hedge and disappears for a couple of hours. Jan is really disturbed, a few nights in a row, but instead of doing the sensible thing and going to stay with a friend, she decides she can't go because Tinder doesn't travel in a car well. I mean fine but I would rather deal with a dog sick in the car that a spooky thing in the garden night after night!

I couldn't decide if this book was going to be supernatural or more basic crime thriller, so that did keep me guessing. But Jan just kept making the most stupid decisions. There's a motion sensor light which Jan turns back on but then Chris and Camile both discourage her from doing it. I guess this is supposed to make you doubt Chris, but it just didn't work for me much. 

And the writing in places is just so stupid. Lisa Stone also writes under the name Cathy Glass, and she's written loads of books, but if they're all as badly written as this I can't understand why she's sold so many. There's so many parts where something is implied... and then it's completely explained as to what the author means. And it's like... let the reader understand your meaning. You don't have to explain it all to me! 

There's a secondary plotline concerning Ian and his wife Emma. Emma is pregnant and gives birth at home in the presence of a midwife called Anne. Baby David is born stillborn, so Anne takes the body away. But a neighbour becomes concerned about the baby and phones the police. The police are mildly involved which I thought would go further... but no. The two plotlines do intersect but in such a ridiculous way. Plus I felt the middle was just too long. The tensions keeps ramping up and so on and so on, but then it just went on and on and I needed there to be a resolution. 

I can't give this any more than two out of five. It's just not good. 

My Heart is Hurting by S E Reed - Blog Tour and Review

Hello and welcome to my turn on the blog tour for My Heart Is Hurting by S E Reed. It is a pleasure to welcome you here. Please do have a click around and read some of my other reviews. I read a lot of Young Adult so when I saw this book I signed up for the tour. 

This book was one of the entries for BBNYA which is a competition where indie authors can get their novels read and judged. I was a reader a few years ago but didn't have time to sign up for the full thing, but I was happy to get to read this one. 

Here's the blurb and author bio:

Blurb

Jinny Buffett is lonely…

She’s never had the comfort of a white picket fence with a loving family. Her subsidized apartment in Hollywood Florida echoes with the void of her dead Daddy, and the nights drag long into twilight while her Mama works the block outside the Margaritaville resort.

It’s idealistic Ms. Fleming, who’s brave enough to come knocking first. She wants to see Jinny rise up and use her ace scores to escape the wheel of poverty, convincing Jinny to start a school book club, where she finds the friends and boyfriend she never knew she needed.

But when her Mama spirals out of control and threatens her entire existence, it’s Jinny’s Everglade ancestors who arrive in a mist of magic, bringing the swamp and hope with them.

Author Bio

S.E. Reed lives in the south and writes strange, haunting, real stories of people and places along old highways.

Winner of the 2024 Florida Book Awards and the 2024 Paterson Prize for Books for Young People.

Additionally, she's been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won honorable mention twice in L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future Contest.

You can find her on X @writingwithreed or visit her website www.writingwithreed.com .

I really liked Jinny and loved her story. She's incredibly lonely. Her mother is neglectful and disappears for weeks at a time. Jinny doesn't trust people easily, so she doesn't trust Ms Fleming. There's a new boy at school, though. Tom. He's just moved and he and Jinny become close. Plus two friends from a while ago reappear and Jinny eventually lets them in. She realises everyone has problems. 

There is some magic with regards to Jinny's dad's family, but I wish it had been a bit more overt and that there was more of it. I also want to say that using the word 'said' is absolutely fine. There were so many synonyms that it was really jarring. That's my critcism really. But generally I liked Jinny and wanted her to succeed. 

Think Again by Jacqueline Wilson - Review

My friend Helen sent me this book, which was really nice of her, thinking I would like it. Well, wanting me to read it, at least. Like many others my age I read some Jacqueline Wilson when I was young, but I hadn't ever read the Girls series, on which this is based. So I didn't have the frame of reference for this, and maybe it would have helped if I had? I ended up just not really liking this and finding it really weird. I said as much to Helen and she agreed that it was odd, so I'm glad it wasn't just me!

So, the protagonist of the book is Ellie. She is turning forty at the beginning of the book. She wants to spend the day with her beloved daughter, Lottie, who has just started university, but Lottie cancels on her at the last minute. So Ellie goes swimming and she meets Alice. Ellie is the artist of a comic strip that appears in the Guardian - a mouse called Myrtle - which it turns out to have been cancelled by the paper just before Ellie's birthday and Alice knows of it. She ends up dragging Ellie to get the mouse tattooed. Now I am a person with a lot of tattoos and I thought the description of Ellie getting the tattoo was spot on, but I thought the depiction of the aftercare was absolutely terrible! Ellie first of all has a bandage on it, and then she goes swimming about a week later! It's not hard to do your research!

Anyway, Ellie ends up being thrown a surprise party. There's her dad, her stepmum Anna, her brother Ben, her brother in law Simon, Lottie, and her two best friends Nadine and Magda. Then there's a bunch of other people from her life including an old PE teacher Mrs Henderson, a woman who once encouraged her drawing career, and I dunno, a bunch of others. It got confusing. She gets back in touch with her old art teacher, Gary because of this party. 

Ellie, having lost the comic gig, decides to write a graphic novel about elephants. Alice can help her with this, because she has researched elephants a lot. But her girlfriend Wendy doesn't like Ellie at all, which isn't really investigated properly. Ellie then starts a relationship with her old teacher, Gary, which is very weird and creepy and not at all fine! They have really good sex but otherwise he's a bit boorish and annoying. He lectures her. He doesn't like the flat she lives in. She says she 'can't' break up with him but it's like -- why not? You don't owe him anything! Just break it off! She spends literally half the book fannying about with this. 

Then there's Magda and Nadine. Nadine is her 'old self', still falling in and out of bed with loads of men. Magda is pregnant but the baby's dad is Chris, who Ellie and Nadine don't like. They don't like his kids either. But there's no reason given why they dislike him so much. It's very surface.

In fact the whole thing is surface. And as a woman who turned forty in the same year that this was published I did have to think that no, we're not all as vacuous and self involved as Ellie. She had had some genuine trauma in her life but that too was skated over. 

In all I'm giving this two out of five and not a scrap more. 

While We're Young by K L Walther - Review and Blog Tour

Hello and welcome to my blog for my turn on the tour for While We're Young by K L Walther! I am so happy to welcome you here. Please do click around and have a read of some of my other reviews! 

When I read the premise of this book I was really intrigued by it so signed up for the tour. I was lucky enough to receive a paper copy of the book which I've really enjoyed reading and which I will probably keep. This is a really good book and deserves to go viral and have some buzz around it when it's published because it's the cutest type of Young Adult novel. The premise also promised that it's kind of a modern update to the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off which is one of my favourite films, so I was really intrigued to read this! As I type, I am about 80% of the way through so I don't know how the book will end, but I am enjoying it so far and am excited to see what happens at the end. 

There are four protagonists in the book so it is quite complex as they all have a lot going on. They are all seniors in high school. Grace is class president and she's pretty preppy and a good girl .That's why when she fakes illness to skip school one day in her last May of high school, neither of her parents really bats an eyelid. They both have important meetings so they're busy anyway, so they're happy to leave Grace at home. Grace then persuades her best friend Isa to skip school too. She wants to go on a road trip with her. They get Isa out of school and then they turn their attention to Everett. They basically kidnap him from school and the three of them set off to Philadelphia. 

Isa is very popular and very clever and she's headed to Brown University. However her parents really want her to go to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, so they're actually a bit disappointed. Everett is the eldest of three siblings and his dad has died recently, so the whole family is struggling to learn to deal with his loss. Isa and Everett used to go out, but when they broke up they stopped being friends too, putting Grace in the middle. Part of her plan for the day is to get Isa and Everett back to being friends, basically because she misses that but also because she and Everett kind of have feelings for each other and she doesn't want to go behind Isa's back. 

Then there's James. James and Grace are siblings and are in the same year at school as there's only about ten months between them. In the past they were very close, but a few things have got between them and now they just wind each other up. James and Isa have kind of started a relationship but they know this won't go down well with Grace so they've cooled off a bit until Grace knows. James is a bit of a troublemaker at school and starts his day with a meeting with the principal. She is less than impressed with him but James does start his day. But then he realises that Grace, Isa, and Everett are all missing from school, so he skips out and goes home, and obviously finds Grace isn't there. 

Because she's in Philadelphia, trying to have a fun day like they all used to go on with Everett's dad. But of course there are so many obstacles in the way... 

I loved all four teens and the very real and many problems that they are dealing with. I won't give spoilers for these but there's lots, but they all felt very realistic. I liked all four of their personalities too, but I especially liked Grace. I had sympathy for all of them. I also loved all the nods to Ferris Bueller's Day Off - like Grace and Isa take one of Isa's parents' cars, and there's a bit where someone appears on the TV, and the local news reporters are called Ferris and Cameron. The school goes wild over the idea that Grace is ill and there's a hashtag very quickly - #SavingGrace. I would recommend seeing the film if you haven't because there were so many little nods which felt like the author paying tribute to a film.

As I said, I haven't quite finished the book but I've really enjoyed it so far and am giving it four out of five. I would definitely read something else by the same author, too! 

The Crow Trap by Ann Cleeves - Review

My mum said to me last year that she had never read any of Ann Cleeves' books and I thought she would like the Vera series so for Christmas I bought her the first eight books I think, in a lovely set in a cardboard holder. I think it was around £25 off eBay, brand new, which makes it excellent value per book. She read the first book and lent it to me. I've read a few of the Vera books but out of order, so it was weird to go back to the beginning. Especially as the book was printed in 1999 so it's weird how much technology there wasn't around. 

My mum's criticism is that Vera didn't appear until way late on in the book, which she didn't like. She has also never seen the TV show so in one way that helped, because she had no pre conceived notions about Vera here, whereas I definitely always see her as Brenda Blethyn! I'm sad the TV show has finished actually because I've watched it religiously, but I did enjoy the documentary about it and would recommend it for fans. 

Anyway, this book. Three women are arriving at Baikie's Cottage to carry out an environmental study on the area. This is because a local company wants to build a quarry nearby (do you build a quarry??) and these three geologists need to make sure that there's nothing special that would be destroyed. Baikie's Cottage is near to Black Law Farm, where Bella and Douglas live. Douglas has had a stroke and needs a lot of care; Bella is his second wife and dedicated to him. However, at the beginning of the book, when one of the women, Rachael, arrives, she finds Bella dead in the barn.

She and Bella have been close and she is shocked by the apparent suicide. She doesn't believe it, but everyone else seems to. Rachael is reeling from the betrayal of her boss and ex lover, Peter, so she wants to lie low for a bit. She has an eccentric mother, Edie, and she wants to know about her dad, who Edie refuses to tell her about. 

The second woman, Anne, is local to the area but choosing to sleep at the cottage. She is pretty unhappily married to a man called Jeremy, but is also having an affair with a man who has something to do with the new quarry. I don't know, I lost the plot entirely because there were far too many characters and it was hard to keep them straight in my head. I liked her best of the three women I think. 

The third woman is Grace. She's a lot younger than the others and somewhat of a loner. She shares the same surname as the local toffs of the manor up at the big house, but it's not clear at first how she's related, if she is at all. I found her story just quite sad to be honest. 

As I said, there's a ton of characters and then there's another dead body, and it's just very confusing and unclear about who is who and what they've got to do with anything. For that reason I can only give it three out of five. I did like meeting Vera so I will definitely read the rest when my mum passes them on, but I just found this overly long and confusing. There were bits of plot that just went nowhere, and too many coincidences for my liking. I think Ann has got better at these books along the way! 

Our Holiday by Louise Candlish - Review

This is one of those books where nearly everyone in it is a terrible person. I actually don't mind that, because it means that the reader doesn't care enough about anyone, so anyone can be the suspect. But that made it hard to be sympathetic towards anyone, too. 

It's a couple of weeks since I read this book as I'm writing this and I think I've forgotten who everyone is, annoyingly, so let's see what I can dredge up... 

The book is set near Poole, in a village which has a lot of second home owners. Two of them are Charlotte and Perry and their son Benedict, who are from London and who have a shit ton of money. They tend to go to Pine Ridge for the entirety of August. This year Benedict is off at uni, leaving the nest a little bit empty. But he is coming for the summer in Dorset and bringing his girlfriend Tabitha. Charlotte is nervous to meet her, but looking forward to it too. 

Charlotte and Perry's friends, Amy and Lucas, have also bought a second home on the same street. It is much smaller and less grand than Charlotte and Perry's house, and it needs a lot of work, which Amy is going to oversee. Their children are Beattie, who is seventeen, and Huck, who is about fifteen I think? His French exchange partner Julien is also coming for part of the summer. 

Then there are the locals. They aren't happy that so many people from outside of the town have bought second homes there which means that the locals can't afford to rent there anymore and are stuck living in caravans and on people's sofas. They have formed a pressure group, headed by the charismatic Robbie, who is often on the local news talking about the issue. He has a girlfriend and his best friend is Tate, who works at a bar on the beach. They all live in caravans on the local holiday park. Tate's girlfriend Ellie works at the local spa hotel. They need the tourists around even though they have problems with them. 

Right at the beginning of the book Robbie is at the festival that is held at the end of the summer when he notices something happening on the cliff top. Something is sliding... into the sea. The book then goes back in time to show the build up to festival day and everything that happens before the building slides off the cliff. 

Charlotte's house has a summer house that is her pride and joy, so she's a bit piqued when Amy gets one for her house too. Beattie starts to sleep in theirs. Beattie starts a fling with Tate, and she also has a lot of secrets that she is trying to uncover. I didn't think this subplot was dealt with properly, actually. Charlotte and Amy are both yummy mummies who need to get lives and better things to worry about, I think. Benedict and Tabitha are portrayed as clueless Gen Zs who are so 'woke' and who are constantly trying to rile up their boomer/Gen X parents. Perry has a very big secret which is why he keeps on disappearing back to London. He's also an alcoholic. He is thoroughly unlikeable. 

I did have a lot of sympathy for the locals who just want safe, secure housing, and I think this is very realistic and I liked the way it was portrayed. I didn't care about who lived and died, though, which I find annoying. I'm giving this three out of five.