The Secret of Skeleton Island and The Mystery of The Moaning Cave - Review

 

When I was little I read a bunch of these books, and last year I reread The Mystery of the Talking Skull and really liked it. I got a few of the books on Kindle and when I was away at the beginning of July (nearly two months ago, which is how far behind I am with my reviews...) I ended up reading two of them. The first night, I couldn't sleep. I wonder if I was given caffeinated coffee actually because I couldn't sleep for the life in me. I finally fell asleep at like 6am when I had read an entire book and watched the sun come up. Which was actually really pretty to see. But even so!

So these books have Alfred Hitchcock's name attached to them and he always makes an appearance when the Three Investigators have finished a mystery and they tell him about it, but he didn't write them or anything. I did think that most of them were written by Robert Arthur, but The Mystery of The Moaning Cave was written by someone called William Arden. I have read both before, I'm pretty sure, way back over thirty years ago when I used my little local library every week. 

The Three Investigators are Jupiter, Bob, and Pete. The books are set in California in the 1960s and although a little outdated they do stand up to modern reading. I would actually LOVE a modern rewrite of this series with new technology and stuff like that. Jupiter lives with his aunt and uncle although I don't remember why and it wasn't explained in either of these books. Bob and Pete live with their respective parents. 

In The Secret of Skeleton Island Pete's dad is working in Hollywood and filming a movie on the east coast or something, and the three boys are invited to go and watch and do some diving. I vividly remember this book because Bob and Pete get stuck while diving and that makes me feel sick, it's one of my worst phobias. I have never reread The Beach because of the bit when the Swedes get stuck in the diving tunnel through the island - it was just TOO realistic and I remember feeling the same about Bob and Pete! The boys are picked up when they arrive but are dropped off on the wrong island and have to rescue themselves. The waters around the island are full of fish, but surely the rumours about them being full of buried treasure aren't real?! 

I still loved this book as much as I did when I was a kid. I'm giving it four out of five. 

I don't know if I've read The Mystery of The Moaning Cave before. It didn't ring as many bells for me. The three boys are on holiday in Southern California on a huge ranch. There are rumours that an outlaw called El Diablo went missing on a cave on the ranch and now there are moaning noises coming from that cave. But surely the long dead outlaw cannot actually be there? There are a bunch of people in this book, all of whom have a different opinion about the moaning noises. The boys obviously go to investigate. 

I enjoyed this book as well, another four out of five. I will have to read some more of this series soon!

Dead Teenager Movie by Cethan Leahy - Review and Blog Tour

Hello and welcome to my blog for my stop on the blog tour for Dead Teenager Movie by Cethan Leahy. It is a pleasure you welcome you here. Please do have a click around and read some of my other reviews!

I was immediately intrigued by the premise of this book so wasted no time in signing up for the tour. I read the book in mid August and really enjoyed it. It's a fun YA novel, drawing on a lot of horror movie tropes. I would definitely read something else by Cethan Leahy and look forward to what he writes next!

The book is set near Cork in Ireland. I love Irish based Young Adult lit so I was really glad to read this, there really needs to be more of it. There are five teenagers. Four of them already know each other - Carl, his sister Scarlett, their friends Erika and John. Carl and Scarlett are wealthy, Carl has his own car, stuff like that. He has just started seeing April so they pick her up on their way to an isolated house for the weekend. Carl says it's his dad's second home or something. 

But strange things start happening and the group realise they are being stalked. A series of murders have happened in Cork including a janitor being murdered and someone heading to a party with no one there, so the teens start to wonder if this is the same person. They lose any way of leaving the house and are desperately trying to stay alive. 

Meanwhile, two teens are watching a livestream of what is happening to April and co and they are so intrigued - it's like a horror movie but it's really happening. They decide to try to get to the house where April and the others are, but soon things don't look too good for them either. 

There's a bunch of horror film tropes that happen while April, Carl, Scarlett, Erika and John are trying to stay alive. Things like - don't believe the bad guy is really dead. Don't trust anyone. Nowhere is safe. 

It's a really fun book and I enjoyed it. I am giving it four out of five and am hoping everyone else enjoyed it just as much! 

The Woman In Suite 11 by Ruth Ware - Review

I read The Woman in Cabin 10 in late 2018, absolutely years ago now! Then at Stockport Noir in January she was talking about this, a sequel to that book, so I ordered it. I didn't love it, and having read my review for the first book, I can see why! I think maybe Ruth Ware just isn't for me, and that's okay. She was absolutely lovely when I met her, which is the important thing!

So, Laura is living her best life in New York, married to her dishy husband Judah and bringing up their two children. She's still a journalist but not a travel writer. It is a decade on from what happened in the first book. But then she gets an invitation to the opening of a luxury hotel in Switzerland and wants to go to try and revive her career. The hotel is owned by the Leidmann Group, whose head is Marcus Leidmann. It is widely believed that he will give up the position to his son, Pieter. 

Lo arrives in Switzerland and is reunited with three people from the cruise ship ten years earlier, which seems weird but they're all still working so maybe it's not that weird? Then Lo gets an invitation to Suite 11. She goes, and finds Carrie, who was the woman in Cabin 10 all those years ago and who has been on the run ever since due to her involvement in that case.

She tells Lo that she is Marcus' mistress and that she is trapped. He is abusive towards her and knows that she isn't who she says she is and is blackmailing her to stay. She wants Lo's help - Laura has two passports and Carrie wants to borrow one to get them both to England. Lo is really unsure but eventually agrees to help, feeling guilty about what happened ten years ago. 

It's a risky plan but they do both make it through and end up deep in the Sussex countryside in a fancy hotel. They have plans to leave - Laura is going to see her mum - but these plans are derailed when Marcus and Pieter turn up at the hotel. Lo and Carrie think that they are tracking Lo to see if Carrie turns up, so they try to hide her. But it all goes a bit wrong when Marcus is found drowned in his bath. 

I thought the story was compelling but the book lost its way a bit and it was just too long. It needed some editing I think. I can only give it three out of five. 

The Silence In Between by Josie Ferguson - Review

This was the July choice for my book club and I read it on Kindle. I did mostly enjoy it but had a few caveats that took my star rating down a bit. 

The book has a dual narrative. In the first one, Lisette is around thirty years old and has two children. Ellie is fifteen and Axel is only a few weeks old. Axel is unwell and Lisette takes him to the hospital in West Berlin. She is urged to go home and sleep and come back in the morning with clothes for him and her. But in the morning, the people of East Berlin find that the Wall has gone up overnight and they are no longer permitted to travel there freely. Axel is stuck in the hospital and no one can do anything. But Ellie is determined to smuggle herself in to West Berlin to rescue her baby brother. 

In the second narrative, it is Berlin during World War Two. Lisette lives with her mother who I think was called Rita. Her father is off fighting and Rita waits for him to come home forever more, years after the war has ended. Lisette is in love with a neighbour, Julius, who has been drafted to fight and must leave. The women are friends with a neighbour, Frau Weber, who is a Nazi, althought from Lisette's point of view she and her mother definitely aren't. THEY definitely don't think Jewish people are subhuman or whatever like those NASTY Nazis do! I really didn't like this part of the book because I felt like it exonerated Lisette and her family too much. The book moves on to what happened after the Soviets moved in and how terrible they were to the Germans. The book is pretty harrowing in terms of sexual assault and rape. Others in my book club felt like Lisette was right in what she did, but I'm not sure I agree. 

It was interesting to read about what happened in Berlin during the war, especially from the point of view of women, who are often left behind in war. However, it was often hard to tell the difference between Lisette's and Ellie's points of view, so when the timeline shifted it was hard to tell who it was. Especially when Lisette was a young woman; then the book read more like Young Adult fiction and it just didn't quite ring true for me. I also didn't like how, I felt, no one took responsibility for Nazi actions. 

In all I am giving it three and a half out of five. My caveats mean it got rounded down from four stars. 

Hey Man by Andrew Meehan - Review

I went into the main library in Barnsley town centre when I was there with Lee, and picked up a couple of books. It's a new building, woven into the new piazza that the council made a few years ago, so it's really easy to get to and accessible. I love the displays they have in there and often like to have a look if I'm in the area. I picked up this book and a middle grade children's book that I haven't read yet so I've renewed it a couple of times. 

This is a really understated novella and I really liked it. It reminded me of Claire Keegan and similar authors - there's as much in what's not said as there is in what is said. 

Ian is seventeen and living in Ireland when he goes to live with his dad's cousin in London. Tommy is thirty and a jobbing actor, and dashing and charismatic. It is 1989 and Ian is sheltered and shy. But he and Tommy stay up all night and gad about London and really Ian falls in love. 

They meet again in Dublin fifteen years later, briefly, when Ian is a Benedictine monk known as Brother Eugene, and Tommy is still a jobbing actor, still treating women badly, still dashing and charismatic.

They meet finally when Tommy is sixty and celebrating his birthday, but he's also dying. 

It's a lovely book, very undersold and written in such a longing fashion that it made me ache. I'm giving it four out of five and would definitely read something else by Andrew Meehan in the future. 

 

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke - Review

I had heard so much hype about this book and a couple of people told me it was exactly my thing so I thought I had better read it sooner rather than later. I need to discuss it in person with people who have also read it, because it boggled me a bit. 

One thing you might not know about me is that I have a special interest in Christian fundamentalists. I did Theology and Religious Studies at university which I think is a big part of it. I have kept an eye on families like the Duggars, the Collins, Ballerina Farm and so on ever since. I belong to forums where we discuss these families and how gross they are for what they believe in. 

There has been a rise in Christian fascism over the past decade and a half, and it has meant that we ended up with Trump in the White House. Twice. The fact they love him is absolutely boggling because he is everything they are supposedly against - but he isn't a mixed race woman so they voted for him over Kamala Harris because they really hate women and they really hate people who aren't white, so she's a double whammy. They are behind the rise of Zionism in the US and increasingly in the UK too. It's scary. It's easy to look at their cute kids, perfect kitchens, and modest dress, and think that they aren't that dangerous. But they have LOT of power, money, and influence, and they are scary. I loathe them, of course. They are antithesis to everything I believe in. 

Enter Caro Claire Burke and her novel, which is about a tradwife called Natalie. She is from a somewhat fundamentalist home and was brought up by her mother with her sister. Her dad left the family but everyone pretended he was dead and the family moved, so that the mother could keep respectability. Natalie wears somewhat modest clothing when she's at college and judges her roommate dreadfully because she has sex and is just a normal eighteen year old but like whatever, Natalie is incredibly judgemental. 

Natalie meets Caleb, whose dad is a senator or something. The family is incredibly wealthy and Caleb is the fifith of five sons and is, honestly, just incredibly thick. I feel like his dad has spent a lot of time bailing him out of trouble. But Natalie knows she can mould Caleb into the alpha male she wants him to be. She sells him on the idea of a ranch, where he will be the boss, and she will stay at home with the children and drink raw milk (they are all obsessed with raw milk). She sells him on this and ends up leaving college before the end of her second year so they can get married and she can have her first baby. 

Fifteen years later she is living the dream. Allegedly. She has a handful of children, another one on the way, and she has Help. She has two nannies, a bunch of ranch hands to do the actual work since Caleb can't, and a social media manager. She shares recipes on her blog and films A LOT with her children. We've seen how this can go with the likes of Ruby Franke. She is small minded and judgemental; she meets up with a girl she went to school with in the supermarket and is certain that this woman is incredibly jealous of her. 

One of my problems with Natalie is that I think Caro Claire Burke gave her much more credit than many of these women are due. She is clever - she gets into Harvard for goodness sake - and very self aware. A lot of these women in these cults just aren't that clever. They have fully bought in to the ideologies of the cult - they genuinely believe that women are inferior to men, that they need to have as many children as possible, that their men are heads of the households, that women shouldn't preach in church, that they need to cover their elbows, knees, heads, lest they lead men astray etc. I don't think that Natalie really DID believe those things; she was just using them to get what she wanted out of life. 

Anyway, one day she wakes up, and it's 1855. She is stuck in the mid 19th century with children she doesn't recognise and a man that is surely not Caleb although he looks kind of similar. You'd think she'd love this - she gets to go back to all the things that she wants! But of course, she doesn't. It's incredibly inconvenient to live a life where there is no indoor plumbing, where all food has to be made from scratch, and where medicine is limited and there's a very real chance that one of your children might die. 

She tries to escape and can't. The book switches between times periods - Natalie is stuck in 1855 but then she recounts what has happened for the last twenty years back in modern times. It's obvious that the two strands will come together but I wasn't sure how exactly. And I don't think the pay off was worth it. It sort of felt like Caro Claire Burke had had this great idea to write a book about a woman like Ruby Franke or Ballerina Farm or whatever, but hadn't quite worked out what she wanted to say. I didn't hate the ending buuuut it was a bit odd. 

I also think that Caro Claire Burke does herself have some really anti feminist views and these peeped through fairly often. Obviously Natalie is anti feminist and obviously she's also an unreliable narrator but there were bits that weren't her point of view that were just really anti women. So I didn't like that. In all I'm giving this three out of five. It was interesting and I'm glad to have read it, and I would like more discussions about it, but I didn't love it. 

Seven All Alone by Kirsty McKay - Review

I can't remember where I picked this up but I think it wasn't that long ago. It was one of those American type floppy paperbacks, weirdly, so I think that made me think it was set in the US until I started reading it. But it is set in Scotland which I was really glad to read. I like UK YA that is set in places other than London, or sometimes Brighton. It's one of my bug bears, actually, but that's a rant for another day. 

The main character in the book is Maggie. She's around sixteen years old. She, alongside six other kids in her class, was kidnapped ten years ago by their bus driver. He kept the seven kids in a cave and the other six managed to escape but Maggie didn't. He had her tied up and then he planned to kill the both of them. Instead, she had to watch his suicide over a cliff. She obviously had a lot of trauma and has been homeschooled for the past ten years.

But then she goes along on an Outward Bound type of trip alongside five of the kids who were kidnapped with her - Ben, Stephanie, Lawrence and Seb, Ant - and another girl whose name I've forgotten. Lawrence and Seb are twins. Ant is non binary and has ADHD and I thought this was written brilliantly even though it's only a side bit of plot. Maggie and Ben had been going out but have split up, and he is now going out with Stephanie. Maggie is determined to just ignore them and just get on with the trip. Her dad is a teacher and he is leading them, so even though she's back in the same area as where she was kidnapped before, she's trying to just have a good time. 

But immediately strange things happen. Maggie's dad and Ant are carried off in one of the rafts alongside quite a few of the supplies. Maggie wants to follow them downstream but it becomes clear she can't. The rest of the group decide to head to the cabin where the group was to be staying. Maggie has no choice but to follow. But then Stephanie gets injured when a rock falls on her and the others have to stay in the cabin and nurse her. There's a storm rolling in too. 

I liked the mystery but didn't love the outcome. I would have given it five starts but I thought the ending was just a bit meh. I didn't buy the motive. I did like the setting though, and all the teens involved. It is told in really believable ways and I could just imagine where everyone was and the wilderness. In all I'm giving this four out of five and would pick something else up by Kirsty in the future!