A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (Audiobook) –Holly Jackson – 12.03.24

I started to listen to this book a while ago, and got really bored by it so paused it and listened to some other things. After A Thousand Ships, I went back to this and actually enjoyed it a bit more (maybe by comparison, because I didn’t really like A Thousand Ships?).

A teenaged schoolgirl under the pretence of writing a school project becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth about the case of a girl who went missing presumed dead from her school a few years previously.

I found it a little difficult to believe that she would go to such lengths as she did, endangering both her physical self and her straight A school track record to track down the truth of a case that only effected her tangentially.

Hmmm, there were twists and turns I guess, and some nice relationship building. I was a bit annoyed by the posh voice of the narrator (ironically, the character she narrates was at one point complaining about the posh voice of her sat nav!).

I didn’t fully foresee the ending and it did kind of make sense when it was revealed (although at that point I was just glad to have got through to the end so I could stop listening). Not for me, although a lot of other people seemed to really like it.

A Thousand Ships (Audiobook) – Natalie Haynes – 09.03.24 

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes - Audiobook - Audible.co.uk

A Couple of the girls in my book group raved about how much they loved this book, so when in was an audible deal of the day I snapped it up.

Hmmm, I wouldn’t rave about it myself. Just because it is really like a series of short stories, following different characters related by being women connected to the Trojan wars (and I’m not a fan of short stories).

It is a familiar tale of women being horribly mistreated by men but having their own unique resilience and strength. I did like the recurring chapters narrated by Penelope as an open letter to her husband Odysseus which were basically a (really quite witty) sarcastic rant about him being away for so long and leaving her to raise their son and live alone dealing with all the day to day stuff he left behind when off on his adventures.

I said to one of my friends at book group that maybe I didn’t like it so much also because the narrator wasn’t very good – not parsing sentences correctly (in my opinion) and often sounding quite bored by it all, not realising at the time that the book is actually narrated by the author!

A similar book, which I enjoyed more is Circe by Madeline Miller.

The Quantum Curators and the Great Deceiver – Eva St. John – 07.03.24

I really liked the first book in this series, where a nice academic historian (Julius) is confronted with crazy shenanigans when he gets mixed up with people from another parallel version of Earth who are hopping about taking artifacts to store in their museum.

The next books in the series see him now living in this parallel world and having adventures, but for me they lacked the ordinary person coming to terms with things not being the way he always believed them to be excitement. This book, the fifth in the series see’s Julius sent back to his own world and being given a mind wipe to forget it all, then getting caught up again, so in many ways it was a refreshing reset of the series and I enjoyed it.

The Bee Sting – (Audiobook) – Paul Murray – 06.03.24

At first I struggled to get into this audiobook – perhaps because I listened to it after Prophet Song and I was still reeling from the edge of your seat tension at the end of that book. Also, the first couple of chapters are told from the perspective of the teenaged daughter of the family at the heart of the novel, and I found her a bit whiny and annoying.

It felt like a book that you needed to invest time and attention to, much like making friendships in the real world (like I know anything about that, being a totally introverted bookworm!) because as the book went on, and as we got insights from the chapters centered around several different family members, I felt more and more invested and sympathetic towards all of them (even the whiny teenaged girl!).

Also the pace picks up as each family member has their own tensions and secrets and bad choices that sees them all at first straying and then hurtling towards disaster. The final quarter of the book is actually very gripping and I was on the edge of my seat as all the strands come together in a potentially catastrophic way and I’m almost covering my ears while at the same time desperate to know how it will all end…

SPOILER ALERT*****

DON’T READ ON UNLESS YOU HAVE ALREADY READ THE BOOK, OR YOU WANT TO HAVE THE ENDING SPOILED FOR YOU!!

Then you are left hanging at the end – did the daddy shoot someone? – who did he shoot? AAARGH!

I had to instantly go online and read other people’s interpretations of the books ending, which seems to be somewhat split between the foreshadowing of disaster leaving the only interpretations being that daddy shot and killed his own two children accidentally, to the more hopeful conclusion that he missed and killed no-one, or that he killed the bad guy who was trying to blackmail him. We will never know.

Remarkably Bright Creatures – Shelby Van Pelt (BOOKGROUP) – 28.02.24

This was my book group read for March 2024. The book has many thousands of positive reviews, but I feel that it is overhyped. I didn’t hate it, in fact it was a nice sweet easy read. An older woman, recently widowed and still grieving the loss of her teenage son many years ago works as a cleaner in the local aquarium and befriends the octopus who lives there. The octopus narrates some of the chapters, and while that is quite fun, and does move the plot along in certain key ways, I found the voice of the octopus to be too human. I am quite fascinated by what little I know about octopuses being very intelligent, the octopus’s voice just sounded like a human who lived in a tank – I wanted it to be more ‘other’ – I’m not sure how, but hmm, that’s what I thought.

There were some nice small town American characters – it could have been an episode of Virgin River!

Prophet Song – (Audiobook) – Paul Lynch – 26.02.24

Wow! I listened to Prophet Song over two days and was completely gripped and now I am reeling with the impact of the story.

The book is set in Ireland in an alternate present where some kind of secret police are set up to work against trade unionists fighting for workers rights. We are told the story from the point of view of Eilish, a scientist, wife and mother of four children ranging in ages from sixteen down to a babe in arms. Eilish’s husband is a teacher and trade union leader and he is taken by the secret police early in the book with no contact from him or information about his whereabouts being made available.

Eilish is shunned by many people in her community and shopkeepers refuse to serve her, she even loses her job. Tensions ramp up as more people are disappeared, and young people are drafted into the security forces. Eilish’s sister in Canada urges her to leave the country, but she is unable to get passports for her infant son or a renewal of passport for her eldest. Also she is caring for her father who is suffering from dementia and she wants to believe that her husband will be released and she wants to be there for him.

I don’t want to give away all the plot, but things go from bad to worse and from initially holding onto the belief that ‘we live in a civilised county and have rights’ to realising that the government has all the power and can get away with all kinds of terrible things Eilish and her family’s experience becomes horrifying.

Apparently the writer took most or all of the things that happened from real people’s experiences in Syria and other war torn nations but by putting it in Ireland, a prosperous western nation it feels closer to home and more real to us as readers. I certainly felt very invested in all the characters and one scene in particular really left me emotionally wrenched (I want to believe that something like that couldn’t really happen, but I fear that it could and maybe somewhere has. If you have read the book then you probably know the scene I’m talking about.).

The narrator was great too!

All Our Shimmering Skies – (Audiobook) – Trent Dalton – 24.02.24

This is my third Trent Dalton novel (the second that he published) and I have to say it’s my least favourite. I absolutely loved both Boy Swallows Universe (loved the Netflix adaptation as well) and Lola in the Mirror, but this one not so much. I don’t know if it is because of the narrator. On the whole, I thought the narrator was good at parsing sentences and conveying emotion and meaning, but the voice she did for the main character, 12 year old Molly Hook was so annoying. Molly lives through terrible abuse and hardship with courage and wisdom beyond her years, and yet the narrator gave her such a whiney obnoxious little girl voice that for me totally ruined the listening experience.

The book is set during WW2 when the Japanese were carrying out air strikes on Darwin and women and children were being evacuated (I never even knew that this happened in Australia during the war – I’ve read books about Australian prisoners of war in Japan, and of course I knew about the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbour, but this is new to me).

If I had read rather than listened to this book I probably would have liked it more – I liked the descriptions of the Australian outback and the surreal quality of the odyssey that Molly takes through it to try and find the man who she believes can lift her family’s curse. The characters are well drawn – Molly’s companions are a wannabe actress who is mourning for the child she was forced to give up, and a Japanese pilot who is grieving from the death of his beloved wife and crashes his plane rather than fulfilling his mission of killing innocent civilians.

If they made a tv adaptation of this one I would definitely watch it.

The Golem and the Djinni – Helene Wecker – 20.02.24

This is a very good book. I have looked at lots of other reviews of it and they are almost all brimming with praise, and I totally agree. It is a very rich, thoughtful, heart wrenching, gripping, satisfying wonderful and beautiful story.

Set in New York at the turn of the twentieth century mostly in two immigrant communities – Polish/German Jews, and Syrian Christians. Chava is a Golem – a created creature of clay designed to be a dutiful, proper but curious and intelligent wife and awoken for the first time by her ‘husband’ on the sea crossing to America because he is near death from a burst appendix. After his death, she is cast adrift, with no master she is drawn to serve the needs of everyone around her, a cacophony of thought voices that nearly drive her mad. She is spotted in the street by a kindly old Rabbi, who realises her nature and takes her in to care for her.

Ahmed is a Djinni (Genie or Jinni) who is unwittingly unleashed from the prison of a metal lamp by a tinsmith who befriends him and takes him on as an apprentice/partner when he sees how skilful he is at working metal.

The book is full of in depth characters and historical detail. Chava and the Rabbi, and later Chava and the Djinni have lots of interesting philosophical questions about free-will verses slavery and if faith is a form of slavery and if it is good or bad to be content to do the bidding of others.

There is also a lot about the experience of being an immigrant, or just different and trying to fit in. (When I was sixteen, my family had a year in California and my best friend turned out to be a girl whose family moved just after us from New Zealand – both of us fish out of water and bonded by being new and different).

Chava and Ahmed eventually meet and form a very strong bond, in spite of their different characters – Chava being humble and servient, Ahmed being initially arrogant and driven by desires. They learn from each other and grow as people and their bond grows too.

There are of course dangers and struggles they must over come – a character who is linked to both of their pasts finds them and could be their undoing, making for an exciting ending.

I’m excited to read the sequel, but will wait until it gets cheaper or I can pick it up in a deal.

Lola in the Mirror – (Audiobook) – Trent Dalton – 14.02.24

After being completely blown away by Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe (my hubby and I are currently watching the Netflix series adaptations and loving that too) I bought his latest novel in audiobook form (I like Australian narrators!).

Like Boy Swallows Universe, Lola in the Mirror is set in Brisbane’s underbelly with characters caught up in homelessness (or as the protagonist would prefer us to say – houselessness), crime, and addiction and yet it is not a bleak book. One reviewer I read criticised the book for romanticising homelessness, and indeed in many ways the main character, sometimes referred to as ‘the artist’ (her lack of an actual name is a major theme of the book) does seem to have a somewhat idyllic existence in a loving and supportive community of rough sleepers. On the other hand, real terrible things happen and while the narrator’s tone is often light or optimistic, the story is dark and perilous.

Again, I really loved the book – it has an nice thread of magical realism, which I always enjoy in a book, more than enough mystery, intrigue and danger to keep the plot moving along and great empathetic characters. Nice sweet romance too.

As an audiobook, I missed out on the great illustrations (which I only discovered in the acknowledgements at the end of the book) but I looked them up online!

I instantly bought the other novel by Trent Dalton, which I am going to listen to next. 🙂

Red Side Story (Audiobook) – Jasper Fforde – 09.02.24

I first read Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey years ago, and loved it. The much anticipated sequel was finally released at the start of February, and so I re-read Shades of Grey to refresh my memory, and I’m glad I did, because this book continues pretty seamlessly from the first and wouldn’t make much sense as a stand-alone.

Set in some future dystopian version of mainland UK where humans are different in several ways to the mysterious ‘previous’ before the ‘something that happened’ and society is constrained by a hierarchy based on how much and which wavelengths of colour people are able to see and by following the strict and sometimes seemingly nonsensical rules from the ‘Book of Munsell’.

Things take a darker turn in this book when our hero, Eddie Russet and his love interest, Jane Grey discover more hidden secrets and how people who ask too many questions succumb to tragic ‘accidental’ deaths.

Jasper Fforde manages (with great skill) to deftly combine daft humour, fascinating character studies, sweet romance and complex and thought provoking dystopian sci-fi in a fabulous novel which more than rises to the challenge of satisfying the eager fans of the first book. Although I found the ending a little rushed and didn’t answer all my questions, I still thought it was outstandingly good. I’m not sure if there is going to be a third book in the series (and I’m not sure that it needs it – yes I’d like to further explore the reveal at the end, but only if it doesn’t take away from the (almost) complete feel of the story as it is).