Book Review- Where She Went

Title- Where She Went
Author- B.E. Jones
Published-  March 2017
Genre- Crime, mystery, thriller
Length- 304 pages
Rating- 2.75/5
Synopsis (Goodreads)- TV journalist Melanie Black wakes up one morning next to a man she doesn’t recognise. It’s not the first time – but he ignores her even though she’s in his bed. Yet when his wife walks in with a cup of tea he greets her with a smile and to her horror, Melanie comes to realise that no one can see or her hear her – because she is dead.

But has she woken up next to her murderer? And where is her body? Why is she an invisible and uninvited guest in a house she can’t leave; is she tied to this man forever? Is Melanie being punished in some way, or being given a chance to make amends?

As she begins to piece together the last days of her life and circumstances leading up to her own death it becomes clear she has to make a choice: bring her killer to justice, or wreak her own punishment out to the man who murdered her.

Review- I received an ARC of this from the publisher so thank you to them.

This book has a few problems but the one that really bothered me, and is the main reason for the low rating, is the main character’s personality. She (Mel) is a bitch, an absolute bitch. She is also whiny and immature. The wife in this is clearly being abused and Mel is not only unsympathetic, but she blames her and deliberately causes her problems thus putting her in danger, as she knows her husband is a murderer. Only a psychopath does that, and that isn’t what this book is supposed to be about. I find this issue really concerning, Mel’s response to the abuse is not normal for the western world, and it makes me wonder if these are the views of the author, if she is deliberately trying to be controversial, or if she is just a bad writer? This personality issue nearly made me stop reading the book pretty early on, I have never hated a fictional character the way I hate Mel. The personality is actually also a little inconsistent. It’s pretty heavy going for the first half but then softens a little before worsening again. It’s not even as a result of any of the “events” in the book either, it’s just bad writing. The husband’s personality is a little inconsistent too but that’s less obvious.

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Book Review- The Lie of the Land

Title- The Lie of the Land
Author- Amanda Craig
Published-  June 15th 2017
Genre- Contemporary, mystery
Length- 432 pages
Rating- 2.75/5
Synopsis (Goodreads)- Quentin and Lottie Bredin, like many modern couples, can’t afford to divorce. Having lost their jobs in the recession, they can’t afford to go on living in London; instead, they must downsize and move their three children to a house in a remote part of Devon. Arrogant and adulterous, Quentin can’t understand why Lottie is so angry; devastated and humiliated, Lottie feels herself to have been intolerably wounded.

Mud, mice, and quarrels are one thing – but why is their rent so low? What is the mystery surrounding their unappealing new home? The beauty of the landscape is ravishing, yet it conceals a dark side involving poverty, revenge, abuse and violence which will rise up to threaten them.

Sally Verity, happily married but unhappily childless knows a different side to country life, as both a Health Visitor and a sheep farmer’s wife; and when Lottie’s innocent teenage son Xan gets a zero-hours contract at a local pie factory, he sees yet another. At the end of their year, the lives of all will be changed for ever.

A suspenseful black comedy, this is a rich, compassionate and enthralling novel in its depiction of the English countryside and the potentially lethal interplay between money and marriage.

Review- I received an ARC of this from the publisher so thank you to them.

I expected a lot more mystery/thriller elements to this story and was left disappointed. This book basically has you following a bunch of characters as they go about their pretty mundane lives. If these characters were real, and you stalked them, the information in this book is exactly what you would come away with. 

Book Review- Final Girls

Title- Final Girls
Author- Riley Sager
Published-  July 13th 2017
Genre- Thriller, mystery
Length- 352 pages
Rating- 4.25/5
Synopsis (Goodreads)-  Each girl survived an unthinkable horror. Now someone wants them dead…

They were the victims of separate massacres. Grouped together by the press, and dubbed the Final Girls, they are treated like something fresh out of a slasher movie.

When something terrible happens to Lisa, put-together Quincy and volatile Sam finally meet. Each one influences the other. Each one has dark secrets. And after the bloodstained fingers of the past reach into the present, each one will never be the same.

Review- I received an ARC of this from the publisher so thank you to them.

This is a pretty standard thriller I would say. It has the usual plot twist at the end and in this case I guessed half of it very early on. It is written in a way that makes you guess it, there were a lot of clues. Yes some of those clues tried to misdirect you in terms of the other half of the twist, but I think they gave away too much too soon.

Book Review- All the Good Things

Title- All the Good Things
Author- Clare Fisher
Published-  June 1st 2017
Genre- Contemporary, literary fiction
Length- 240 pages
Rating- 4/5
Synopsis (Goodreads)- Twenty-one year old Beth is in prison. The thing she did is so bad she doesn’t deserve to ever feel good again.

But her counsellor, Erika, won’t give up on her. She asks Beth to make a list of all the good things in her life. So Beth starts to write down her story, from sharing silences with Foster Dad No. 1, to flirting in the Odeon on Orange Wednesdays, to the very first time she sniffed her baby’s head.

But at the end of her story, Beth must confront the bad thing. What is the truth hiding behind her crime? And does anyone-even a 100% bad person-deserve a chance to be good?

Review- I received an ARC of this from the publisher so thank you to them.

This story is told from Beth’s perspective, mostly as if she is talking to her child. The majority of it is told in the past tense but that is interspersed with present day therapy sessions and time in prison. It is well done and easy to follow.

Book Review- The Leavers

Title- The Leavers
Author- Lisa Ko
Published-  May 2nd 2017
Genre- Contemporary, literary fiction
Length- 352 pages
Rating- 3.75/5
Synopsis (Goodreads)- One morning, Deming Guo’s mother, an undocumented Chinese immigrant named Polly, goes to her job at the nail salon and never comes home. No one can find any trace of her.

With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left with no one to care for him. He is eventually adopted by two white college professors who move him from the Bronx to a small town upstate. They rename him Daniel Wilkinson in their efforts to make him over into their version of an “all-American boy.” But far away from all he’s ever known, Daniel struggles to reconcile his new life with his mother’s disappearance and the memories of the family and community he left behind.

Set in New York and China, The Leavers is a vivid and moving examination of borders and belonging. It’s the story of how one boy comes into his own when everything he’s loved has been taken away–and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of her past.

Review- I received an ARC of this from the publisher so thank you to them.

Overall I did enjoy this book but it felt long and the end dragged a bit.

This isn’t an action packed book by any means, instead it focuses on description. It is told from two view points, that of Deming/Daniel, and his mother. It covers both past and present in the US and China. Mostly the switch between characters and times was well done but there was one chapter where for a few (kindle) pages I didn’t know who the narrator was supposed to be. The language however was always easy to understand and there was never too much information given at once, characters were introduced gradually etc so there was never any confusion about who was who.

What do you look for in a book cover?

So, I recently did a post about judging books by their covers, because lets face it, a lot of us do it. What is it though that you are looking for when you do that?

Another recent post was about different editions where I said that I basically pick the edition that is prettiest, but what makes a book “pretty” or not to you, what matters? Big words? An unusual font? Bright colours? Realistic pictures? More cartoon like pictures? Is it more just the general overall look rather than a specific thing you look for?

I think for me it’s more the overall look that makes me like a cover. I guess I wouldn’t be very helpful in a publishing focus group! If I compare the books I have with covers I love they are all actually really different. Most of them are all quite colourful but the colours really vary, as does the general artistry. There is one thing they have in common though….none of them have photos of people on the covers. The only ones that have people in any sense are the Penguin deluxe editions of the classics and some of the Harry Potter books.

Book Review- He said, she said

Title- He said, she said
Author- Erin Kelly
Published-  April 20th 2017
Genre- Thriller, crime, mystery, psychological
Length- 416 pages
Rating- 3.25/5
Synopsis (Goodreads)- In the hushed aftermath of a total eclipse, Laura witnesses a brutal attack.

She and her boyfriend Kit call the police, and in that moment, it is not only the victim’s life that is changed forever.

Fifteen years on, Laura and Kit live in fear.

And while Laura knows she was right to speak out, the events that follow have taught her that you can never see the whole picture: something – and someone – is always in the dark…

Review- I received an ARC of this from the publisher so thank you to them.

Overall this book was a disappointment. I read a lot of thrillers and this was just average, at least for me. This is very much a “slow burn”, some people love that, I don’t, I prefer more action, so that is part of why I didn’t love it the way some people seem to.

Different editions…

So, when you see a book you like how do you decide which edition to buy? Obviously sometimes there isn’t a choice, at least in actual bookstores other than maybe hardcover or paperback, but when there is a choice what makes you pick one edition over another?

Take Harry Potter for example, there are so many editions! I actually don’t have a matching set of all seven books, I have a boxset of the first four and then bought the rest as they came out. I want a matching set of hardcovers and I have just picked the ones I find the prettiest, well the two sets actually and in each set I like all the covers. Two sets I suppose isn’t crazy but what if you like say five or six sets, what do you do? Buy them all? Just buy one set? How do you pick that one set? What if you love some of the covers in one edition, but don’t like others in the same edition? Do you buy some books in one edition and others in another?

Why am I thinking about this? Well, I have started getting a few classics. Classics, like Harry Potter come in a huge number of editions. Some are just boring and I would only buy them if I just wanted a really cheap one to see if I like the story, but there are a lot of really nice editions too.

Do you judge a book by its cover?

Everyone knows the old saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” but do you stick to it?

Surely bookstores rely on people judging books by their covers? When you walk into a bookstore, what else makes you pick up a book if not the cover? With some books you might have heard about them somewhere or recognise the author’s name, but that can’t be the case for most books, for most people. So if not the cover what else is there, at least in terms of picking up a book to find out what it’s about?

Book Review- Feral

Title- Feral
Author- James DeMonaco and B. K. Evenson
Published-  April 4th 2017
Genre- Science fiction, dystopian, post apocalyptic, horror
Length- 320 pages
Rating- 4/5
Synopsis (Goodreads)- Allie Hilts was still in high school when a fire at a top-secret research facility released an air-borne pathogen that quickly spread to every male on the planet, killing most. Allie witnessed every man she ever knew be consumed by fearsome symptoms: scorching fevers and internal bleeding, madness and uncontrollable violence. The world crumbled around her. No man was spared, and the few survivors were irrevocably changed. They became disturbingly strong, aggressive, and ferocious. Feral.
Three years later, Allie has joined a group of hardened survivors in an isolated, walled-in encampment. Outside the guarded walls the ferals roam free, and hunt. Allie has been noticing troubling patterns in the ferals’ movements, and a disturbing number of new faces in the wild. Something catastrophic is brewing on the horizon, and time is running out. The ferals are coming, and there is no stopping them.

Review-  I received an ARC of this from the publisher so thank you to them.

I haven’t been having the best luck with books lately so I was a bit worried about picking this up as it isn’t the type of thing I normally go for. When I read another review of this however, the reviewer mentioned that one of the authors was the writer of The Purge movie which I thought was well done so that gave me hope with this book.

This was a quick and easy read, a couple of other reviews that I’ve read claim that as this book went on it became really slow. I disagree. The pace does slow a little, but early on it is very fast so even slightly slower it is still well paced, you are never bored, there is no “down time” filled with long unnecessary explanations or descriptions, something interesting is always going on. The chapters are also quite short which I think most people agree makes a book quicker to get through.