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.