The Shadow Wing (Crow Investigations Book 6) – Sarah Painter – 25.07.21

I’ve really enjoyed all the books in Sarah Painter’s series about a private detective, Lydia Crow, with magical abilities. It has been interesting seeing Lydia’s journey through the series, from originally wanting little or nothing to do with her magical family inheritance, so coming to terms with her abilities and taking on more responsibility as heir to running the family business. The urban fantasy genre is one I really like (if done well), this series has a good mix of lightness (Lydia’s relationship with her live in 80s nerdy ghost has a lot of humour) as well as deep moral and philosophical questions. The role that has been thrust upon Lydia is almost like a mobster boss, and she finds herself at times having to throw her metaphorical/magical weight around to stop situations escalating which goes against her more gentle peace loving nature. Thrown into the mix is her growing romantic relationship with a police officer who is learning about her magical side and coming to terms with it, while seeming to have mystical secrets of his own (even secret to himself…?). I look forward to the next installment!

Grandmothers – Salley Vickers – 20.07.21

Years ago I read everything I could find by Salley Vickers, but it’s been a while and at the moment I’m mostly reading more magical realism/urban fantasy type books, so this was a nostalgic return for me.

From the very start I loved this book. There is just something about the style of writing that felt like coming home. Centered around three older women, who come together by chance, and their relationships with themselves, each other and their grandchildren the book is beautiful, insightful and life affirming without ever being saccharine or patronising.

As a woman in my fifties, not quite a grandmother yet but thinking about entering this later stage in my life, I found I identified with the women in lots of ways and I enjoyed this vicarious invitation into their circle of friendship.

I was sorry when the book ended, and moved by the women’s stories.

Rooftoppers – Katherine Rundell (AUDIOBOOK) – 16.07.21

I listened to this as an audiobook, and I’m sorry to say that it was hard for me to give the story a fair reaction as my feelings toward it were coloured by my reaction to the narrator. The narrator was a very posh, older English gentleman, and (as I’ve said before) there is something about the very posh English voice that just sets me on edge. I know that it’s a prejudice, and therefore wrong of me, but I just think of colonialism and aristocracy and exploitation and arrogance when I hear a voice like that and it’s hard for me to see past it. Also I thought his tone was a times a little patronising, the way some people are when talking to children. Again, I acknowledge that this could be just me projecting my prejudice.

That aside, I did like the story. Sophie was found as a baby floating in a Cello case after a shipwreck and is taken in by a bumbling but lovely English man. It is Victorian England, but he refuses to enforce female decorum on her which horrifies the establishment. When Sophie is convinced her mother is still alive and she is desperate to find her, and the authorities want to take her away from her kindly guardian they run away together to Paris, following clues about Sophie’s mother. Sophie meets a boy who lives on the rooftops of Paris, and his friends among the other ‘rooftoppers’ and they help her follow the clues to finding her mother.

The Song of the Quarkbeast (The Last Dragonslayer Book 2) Jasper FForde – 15.07.21 and The Eye of Zoltar (The Last Dragonslayer, Book 3) – Jasper Fforde – 18.07.21

I remember reading the first in the Last of The Dragonslayers series a while ago, and not being that impressed – I don’t know what got in to me, because I loved books two and three! I guess Jasper Fforde’s style can be a bit annoying if you’re not in the mood for it – sometimes the humour is a bit base and slapstick, but the writing, plotting and characterisation are by no means infantile. These books are loaded with pathos, wisdom and raw human emotion. I guess I was in the mood this time, because the humour made me chortle and snicker in between wiping away tears and being on the edge of my seat with the tension. Although the setting is a world with magic and magical creatures, the motivations of the characters are all too relatable, from governmental corruption to capitalistic greed through to love, honour and the need for redemption. After reading these two books, I watched The Last of The Dragonslayers film which I also loved!

The Mortal Word (The Invisible Library book 5) Genevieve Cogman – 11.07.21

In this instalment of the Invisible Library series, our intrepid hero, Irene, joins a team investigating a murder at an unprecedented peace summit between the Fae and the Dragons. More magic, mayhem, mystery and romance – I liked it okay.

Low Action (The Vinyl Detective Mysteries, Book 5) (AUDIOBOOK) – Andrew Cartmel 09.07.21

I really like this series – I’m getting to know and love the recurring characters. (I just went to look at Amazon reviews, because I couldn’t remember the name of the ‘title character’ who is the vinyl detective, and I’m a bit gobsmacked by everyone saying ‘the still unnamed’ main character – it had seriously never occurred to me until this point that the main character is never named – saying that, it is quite possible that this had occurred to me in the past and I’ve just completely forgotten – I do have a notoriously bad memory!!). So, the unnamed title character, and his girlfriend, Nevada live in London with their two cats, and one of my favourite things about them is their love of and amusing observations of the cats and their behaviours. Their friends Tinkler and his crush ‘clean head’ join them on their detecting adventures around the world of vintage vinyl. (Who knew old records could cause such skullduggery and murder?). The gang get into more comedic life threatening situations in this tale where members of an 80s girl punk band from a posh English school start to fear for their lives. Lots of fun – bring on the next one. (Also, I usually read these books on kindle, but I must have got a good deal on the audiobook, and it was fun to listen for a change – the narrator sounded like a stoned Bill Nighy, which I thought was just the right note for this story!)

Little Eve – Catriona Ward – 05.07.21

Because I loved The Last House on Needless Street so much, I ordered this other book by Catriona Ward. Little Eve is a very different story, set on a remote Scottish island in the 1920s it follows a mass murder of members of a cult/commune. It feels like a kind of Gothic horror/literary mystery with some magical realism thrown in. It was quite compelling and I liked it well enough – it had one or two twists which I didn’t see coming. Didn’t love it as much as Needless Street though.

The Kingdoms – Natasha Pulley (AUDIOBOOK) – 04.07.21

I have really enjoyed other books by Natasha Pulley – she writes historical fiction with magical realism elements and often sweet but forbidden male homosexual love. This book ticked all those boxes, and I did enjoy it (on the whole) although at times I found it a bit of a slog if I’m honest.

The premise is that there is a wormhole off the coast of Scotland which, when sailed through a certain way makes you jump between around 1800 and 1900. When a ship from ‘the future’ stumbled into the middle of the Napoleonic war, it changed the course of history, causing France to win the war and England to be under French rule.

The main character finds himself in a London at the turn of the twentieth century where everyone speaks French and he has no memory of who he is, but has a sense of unease that things are not right. He follows clues and partial memories to a lighthouse off the coast of Scotland and is drawn into a confusing and alarming situation when he is pulled into the past.

A lot of the book takes place at sea, and there is war and fighting stuff which I found a bit boring. The mystery elements of ‘who knows more than they are letting on’ and ‘how is everybody connected’ are fun as well as the heart wrenching decisions people need to make knowing that everything they do in the past effects lots of stuff in ‘the future’ and saving the country could cost the lives of their loved ones.

By the end of the book, I was very invested and it was moving and satisfying how everything ultimately resolved.

The Last House on Needless Street – Catriona Ward – 29.06.21

Wow – this was a very gripping and engaging book. I read reviews that likened the plot to Russian dolls that open to reveal more twists and turns or ‘pull the rug out from under you’ just when you think you have worked out what is going on and I would agree with these reviews entirely. The book is about a small town in America where over the years several children have gone missing from ‘the lake’ where families go in the summer to swim and hang out. There are several narrators: a woman whose sister disappeared from the lake as a child and who is desperate to find her or at least to find who is responsible for her disappearance, a man with mental health issues who is visited regularly by a young girl who may be his daughter, and a cat. The narrators are unreliable and give us both clues and bum steers that keep you guessing while trying to piece together what actually happened or is happening. I found the book very enjoyable although quite disturbing. It was thought provoking and ultimately quite uplifting. Recommended.

Someone Like Me – M. R. Carey – 26.06.21

I loved the Koli trilogy books so much, that as soon as I finished reading them, I bought another M. R. Carey kindle book from Amazon and started to read it. It is very different to the Koli books, and I have to admit that it took me a while to get into it. It explored issues of trauma and mental health but has elements of magical realism/sci-fi. The main character is a girl, Fran, who was abducted as a child and rescued just in time from a man who was trying to kill her. She has hallucinations and an ‘imaginary friend’ as a result of this trauma, and meets and befriends a boy from her school (Zac) in the waiting room of her therapist as he is there with his mother, who is also experiencing similar weird phenomena. Are they both schizophrenic, or are the voices in their heads real?

The blossoming friendship/relationship between Fran and Zac is really sweet, and their quest to work out what is going on and try to fix it is exciting and gripping – The book is a horror/love story/psychological thriller and once I got into it, I really enjoyed it.