I love this series by Sarah Painter. It is gentler than the Crow Investigations books (although I love them too!) and is set in the same ‘universe’ with occasional overlap of characters.
The tidal island acts as a kind of gateway between the supernatural world and the mundane world, and although visitors can come for day trips, or even overnight stays, no one can stay on the island for more than two nights unless they are specifically selected to fulfil a role in the island community.
Luke Taylor (who runs the Island’s bookshop, and is the love interest of Esme the ward witch) has been looking for his missing twin brother for years. When he finally shows up, he should be elated, and he is, but all is not what it seems and the biggest danger yet faces the island, its inhabitants, and even the whole world.
The unholy island stories are full of myth and legend and wisdom and lovely characters. This is becoming one of my favourite series to read.
For me it’s a bit hit and miss whether I’ll like this kind of murder mystery thriller novel, and this one was very much a hit (no wonder it won all kinds of awards!).
The two main protagonists, the policeman, Chief Walker, or ‘Walk’, who has lived in the same small town all his life and is very invested in all the players in the mystery, and the daughter of the murder victim, Duchess Day Radley, are both brilliantly written with such depth and interesting fleshed out characters. Duchess is feisty and bold, but also noble and optimistic, whereas Walk, though also noble and well meaning, is clouded with guilt and regret from his past.
The mystery was complex enough to keep me guessing and I saw some but not all of the twists (I’ve said before that I think that’s the ideal outcome – I can feel clever that I worked some of it out, but not annoyed that nothing surprised me) and I felt genuinely invested in the characters and moved by what happened to them.
I liked the narrator as well (even though some of the reviewers on audible didn’t) I thought he brought the words to life in a believable way and had a nice voice.
I very much enjoyed reading this novel about a girl (Violet Everly) raised shrouded in mystery by her two uncles (one of whom often disappears for days or weeks at a time) after her mother vanished when she was young. She finally discovers that she has ancestry amongst Astral people (god like entities who come from the stars) and that a deadly curse follows her family, and that her mother has gone seeking a way to break the curse. Things come to a crunch and Violet is given a single year to either find her mother or break the curse herself before a beautiful but evil woman claims her life. She travel the world (and other worlds)and finds both love and terrible danger in her quest for her and her families deliverance in this beautiful and exciting story. Very good.
This book has been on my kindle for a while, and I started reading it without paying much attention to the author name and a little way in I though I might give up on it because I didn’t like it that much – I googled the title to see what other people thought of it, and only then realised that this book is written by one of my favourite authors!!
I have loved every novel by Grady Hendrix that I’ve read – brilliant character led humorous horror. But this book is very different. The premise is that a group of awful opinionated, entitled rich American men in their gentlemen’s club in the 1920s (I think) get together to tell each other tales about their paranormal adventures among the weaker savage nations.
So the two strikes against it in my mind where – one, it is not really a novel but a series of short stories, which some people might like, but I don’t; two, the characters were hateful. I’m sure this was supposed to be a send up of how terrible they were as human beings, but I just didn’t want to read about such horrible individuals. I did however finish the book, because, Grady Hendrix.
This is the first book in a new cosy mystery series by the very talented Richard Osman and I thought it was a really fun read.
Amy is a very skilled and able private security guard who is being framed for multiple murders. With the help of the eccentric billionaire who she is currently guarding, and her very down to earth retired father in law (I think he’s a retired police officer, but I can’t really remember – but he has a cat called trouble!) she sets out to clear her name and solve the mystery. There are private jets and chases around the world and lots of humour. I love how Richard Osman pokes gentle fun at the characters funny little ways, many of which I can totally identify with.
I enjoyed it very much and I can’t wait for the next instalment.
I have loved all the books by Gavrielle Zevin that I have read, especially Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and my son-in-law said this one was even better than that so I was excited when it came up as a kindle 99p deal. Well, I did very much enjoy reading this book, but I don’t necessarily agree with son-in-law that it was better than Tomorrow…
The story is based around a scandal where a young intern has an affair with an older married senator. Most of the story is narrated looking back from years later at the impact this event had on the women involved (the senator himself seemed to get off pretty much scot free) and is told in different voices – the mother of the intern, the wife of the senator, the daughter of the intern, the intern herself looking back, and with one thread telling the events as they happened to the young woman in the past.
It’s about people judging without having all the facts, and blaming (slut-shaming). I really liked all the female characters – they were fleshed out with sensitivity and empathy and I loved the humour of the writing as well. I was sorry when it ended and would have liked to know more about these women’s lives moving forward.
You may have noticed from the title that I gave up on this book at 35%. It’s not that I thought it was terrible, I’m sure it’s very well written if you like that sort of thing, and obviously many people do from all the good reviews, but I just found I wasn’t looking forward to getting back to it, and when I was reading it was a bit of a drag. I think that made up world types of sci-fi/fantasy just aren’t my bag – I love books based in the ‘real world’ but with sci-fi or magical realism type things going on.
In this world people are genetically modified to have certain strengths to enable them to fulfil a role in society (or if they’re rich, just to look better). Our hero is modified to have a ‘photographic’ or perfect memory, which helps him in his role as a sort of detective. He is investigating a murder which turns out to be one of a series where people die by having been fed seeds of a plant that grows out of them very quickly (!). There’s lots of world building and politics etc so if you like that you should give it a go. Not for me though.
I read a lot of magical realism/urban fantasy/modern fairy tale type books, so when flicking through my kindle unread books, and seeing this title (having forgotten buying it) I assumed it was something like that. It is not. This book is very much set in the ‘real world’ albeit in the slightly unusual reality of someone living with manic depression/bipolar disorder. It’s not the kind of book I usually read, and yet I was pretty gripped.
The main character, Abby (we meet Melody Black quite late in the book) is a freelance journalist and we follow her through her spiralling plunge into a manic episode and hard fought plough through the low that followed. As is often the case when I read on my kindle, I forget the name of the author, and was surprised and impressed to realise that the book was written by a man because I thought the female main character was very believable (apparently the author has experience with mental illness/manic episodes, so that explains why that aspect of the narrative was also very believable).
Now I want to read more by this author (since I belatedly realised it was the guy who wrote The Universe Versus Alex Woods, which I also really liked).
I love Matt Haig’s books so I was super excited for this to come out – I find with new books like this it’s actually cheaper to use my audible credit and get it as an audiobook than to buy a new kindle book, but in this case I loved the audible narrations so that’s no problem. Joanna Lumley really brought to life the main character, a widowed retired teacher in her early seventies who was existing rather than living until she inherited a house in Spain and went on an adventure. I often complain about ‘posh’ narrators, and Joanna Lumley is as posh as they come, but so good that I not only overlooked the ‘poshness’ but felt it was entirely apt in this case.
Like most Matt Haig books, this one is ultimately uplifting, but doesn’t shy away from real deep emotional issues, and personally, while I was listening to this book I was going through a sad time with my beloved pet dog – in the space of less than a month he went from healthy to blind, to cancer diagnosis, to dementia and then his death. I was heartbroken, I know he was just a dog, but I loved that wee mutt. So listening to a very emotional book that deals with love and loss among other things left me wailing out loud several times.
I loved that the main character, Grace Winters, was an older woman – I’m only 55 but I have poor hearing and quite bad inflammatory arthritis so I often feel that I’m over the hill and in-valid (my ‘jokey’ way of pronouncing invalid to show that I sometimes feel that my disabilities make me worthless – don’t worry, I’m not properly depressed, just a bit sorry for myself!), and that she had purpose and found joy when she had thought that those things were behind her.
There is magical realism – in the form of an under the sea organism of extra-terrestrial origin that can gift certain powers to people who swim/dive near it and whom it deems worthy or important. Grace is given an array of gifts including a deep kind of telepathy that not only hears the thoughts of other people, but knows them at a deep level and this leads to lots of philosophical talk of empathy and complexity of people and their motivations and basically being kinder and more understanding.
There is a ‘baddie’ and there is peril and excitement, which was okay, but for me I kind of liked the emotional relationship stuff better. Really good book over all though.
I’ve read a few quite heavy books recently, and this lovely novella by Ben Aaronovitch was just what I needed to re-orientate myself to a happier reading place. Abigale is a teenaged black girl in London who is learning about magic from Nightingale and The Folly, but strikes out on her own to solve a mystery of missing children and is helped by an army of talking foxes. I loved how she uses spatterings of young people (possibly specifically young black Londoners, I’m not sure) words and phrases and that Ben Aaronovitch gives humorous definitions of them in footnotes – I felt I was learning a new language. It’s a very enjoyable urban fantasy story.
Sarah Wray Writer 