Love After Love – Ingrid Persaud (AUDIOBOOK) – 21.04.22

I listened to this story as an audiobook read by the author. Authors are not always good narrators, but when they are, I think it really brings a book to life being read by its author as they know just where to put the emphasis to convey the meaning they want to put across, plus Ingrid Persaud has such a beautiful lilting Caribbean accent that it was pure joy to listen to.

The story follows three characters: Betty: a single mother, Solo: her son, and Mr Chetan, their lodger who all live in Trinidad. Each character struggles with huge secrets. Betty lived with an abusive husband until his death, the guilt surrounding which haunts her. Solo is shy and depressive and can’t forgive his mother for what happened to his father, and Mr Chetan is gay and has to hide that in a society which is very homophobic.

I very much enjoyed the book and getting to know the characters and I was very moved by their stories.

The Girl With No Soul – Morgan Owen – 21.04.22

This is a young adult dystopian fantasy novel, which can go either way for my, but thankfully I really liked this one. The heroine doesn’t remember her past, so with her we discover her world and why she hid her soul in different objects like a good version of Voldemort and his horcruxes! I even enjoyed the sweet romantic love story which managed to be not annoying at all.

Anxious People – Fredrik Backman – Narrated by: Marin Ireland (AUDIOBOOK) – 12.04.22

Like other books by Fredrik Backman that I have read, the major theme of this story is life after bereavement. Once again Backman uses a deft hand to weave together the tales of ordinary people struggling to cope with the blows life has dealt them coming together and helping each other. There is humour and sadness and twists and turns that keep up the readers interest. I really enjoyed the book, and after reading it, watched the tv series (on Netflix, I think) and enjoyed that too.

They Both Die at the End – Adam Silvera – 11.04.22

My daughter and I have a thing, that when we’re visiting each other, we swap kindles and read books from the other one. At Christmas this was the book on Becca’s kindle that I started to read, but with one thing and another I didn’t get very far, so I eventually got around to buying my own copy and finishing it.

It’s an American YA book, so not always my cup of tea, and I didn’t instantly love it, but it did have its merits. The premise is that in this world, for some reason the day of everyone’s death is known (they never explain how) and at or around midnight of the eve of your death you get a phone call informing you that it is your last day.

The story follows two such ‘last dayers’ (I forget now the actual terminology they use – something snappier than ‘last dayers’!) from quite different backgrounds who find each other on an app and spend their final hours together.

I quite like the book. It certainly raised interesting questions about whether you would rather know your death was coming and how you would spend your final hours if you did, and even if knowing it was coming is actually what causes your death?!

The book grew on my, and I quite liked how it ended (they both died!).

Eye of the Sh*t Storm (The Frost Files Book 3) Jackson Ford – 04.04.22

This third book in the Frost files series see everyone reeling in the aftermath of the big Earthquake. As usual there is action, heartwarming moments and lots of soul searching. Like in the previous book, a new child with superpowers is causing grief, only this time the child is not evil. Teagan has to try to defend the child (thinking back to her own childhood) while realising the danger he poses to the world. There are more hints about Teagan’s backstory and other members of her family and I’m excited to read the next installment.

Bewilderment – Richard Powers – 28.03.22

I really enjoyed this beautiful book (almost 100% – with one reservation…). The story can be read on multiple levels and addresses several issues with sensitivity and poetic strength. A father and his nine year old son are both struggling with grief after the sudden death of their wife/mother. The father studies simulations of possible alien life supporting environments, and the both he and the son have a strong interest in climate change issues. The son is clever and artistic, but suffering from problems with social interactions and impulse control (probable ASD).

They come into contact with a previous friend/college of the dead wife who is working on a ground breaking computer programme. The programme uses neural impulses to play games on the computer screen which effectively trains the user to have much more control over their emotions and impulses. He agrees to let the son be part of the study, with tremendous success .

Spoiler Alert – Don’t read on if you haven’t read the book and you don’t want to know too much about the plot.

The boy discovers that his mother had used the software, and that the computer basically had an imprint of her saved which the boy could communicate with.

The thing that I didn’t like so much about the book was the constant reference to ‘Flowers For Algernon’. The plot of this book very much mirrored the classic sci-fi novella and being quite familiar with the story I felt that it took some of the tension away knowing how everything was going to end up. I also felt that the references to Flowers For Algernon took me out the story and into thinking more about plot structure and technique and less about being engrossed in the characters’ emotional journeys.

Still, I really liked the book overall.

Fuzzy Mud – Louis Sachar (AUDIOBOOK) – 24.03.22

Louis Sacher’s book, Holes is one of my favourite books ever – a masterpiece of structure that doesn’t sacrifice story and character. I’ve tried a few other of his kids books and been underwhelmed, but I liked the sound of this one so I gave it a go.

I didn’t hate it. It’s quite American, which is fine since it’s written by an American and set in America, but for not Americans some things are just a bit culturally different.

It’s a story about bullying and coming of age, and also a sort of sci-fi adventure with a genetically engineered microorganism that escapes from the lab.

One thing that really annoyed me about listing to the audiobook (and this is entirely my problem – it’s not a fault of the writer or the narrator) is that at the beginning of each chapter, to illustrate how quickly microorganisms can reproduce and a small number turns in to a huge number with exponential growth, there are sums: one plus one is two, two plus two is four… and so on, until soon the numbers are in the hundreds of thousands. In the UK we use the word ‘and’ a lot in long numbers: one thousand, three hundred AND ten, or just, one hundred AND one. In American it seems they miss out the AND: one thousand, three hundred, ten or one hundred one. This for some reason annoyed the heck out of me. What does that say about me. I don’t know.

The Broken Cage (Crow Investigations Book 7)

– Sarah Painter – 22.03.22

I was excited for this latest installment in the Crow Investigations series which I had preordered and I really enjoyed it. I know some people on Amazon where complaining about the cliff hanger ending, but I didn’t mind that – it just makes me excited for the next book. I liked the murder mystery locked house puzzle at the start of the book, and the other thing that some reviewers complained about, that Lydia’s relationship with Fleet was getting rocky – hmmm. while I agree that this can be a bit annoying, I guess in a series like this you have to have tension between the love interests otherwise it would get boring, right?

Roll on book eight!

Ninth House – Leigh Bardugo – 17.03.22

This is an interesting Urban Fantasy novel set in America’s Yale University. The main character Galaxy (goes by Alex) is given a scholarship to Yale when leaders of its secret magical societies discover she has the rare ability to see dead people (move over Sixth Sense!). She gets help with her classes in exchange for working for the magical groups, but danger and mystery lurks as she discovers some sinister secrets.

I found it at times a little confusing, and didn’t instantly warm to the writing style, but once I got my head around it, I found it a worthy and satisfying read.

A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians (Audiobook) –

H. G. Parry (Author), Andrew Kingston (Narrator) –16.03.22

I loved The Unlikely Adventures of Uriah Heep so much that I bought this second novel by H. G. Perry as an audiobook and couldn’t wait to start listening.

Well, all I can say is that that is 21 hours of my life I’ll never get back! What a different experience. I found it a real drudge to get through. The book takes real historical figures (Pitt The Younger and Wilberforce among others) in the context of the fight for and against the abolition of slavery as well as the French Revolution, and added in the extra element of magic.

In this world, there are vampires and magicians and ghosts, and magical ability is forbidden among ‘commoners’ and given fairly free rein in the aristocracy, furthering the inequalities highlighted and fought against in that period of history.

This sounds like just my cup of tea, so why didn’t l like it? Hmm, I liked bits of it, but it was just so long and lots of it read like a history textbook.

There was plenty of food for thought, but I think it would have been better at half the length.