Top Dog by Jens Lapidus

          I am the first to admit that Stockholm Delete was one of my worst reads back in 2017 and I was not really expecting much of Top Dog because of that.  Especially as it picks up Teddy's story and the mysterious cadre of men responsible for child abuse on a large scale.  I was not expecting great things from this book, in fact I wasn't even expecting good things from this book and it sat on my shelf for a good long while before I knuckled down to read it.

Although we pick up where we left off with Teddy and Emelie there is not much back story so having battled through Stockholm Delete paid off - I actually knew who these people where and something of their backstory - without that I fear some sections would have seemed completely random and bizarre.  Especially when Nicko and Chamon come in to the picture.  It is much of the same though so I did find myself almost scan reading a large portion of Teddy and Emelie's story.

The highlights for this reader were the new characters of Roksana and Z.  When they sublet an apartment they find something they hadn't bargained for and their lives change irrevocably because of it.  This was where my interest lay and I could happily have just had a book about these 2 and their entanglements after finding the stash of Ketamine in the apartment.  There was such humour and hope in their story - even after they clash with the criminal underworld and try to fight their way out from under.

I also enjoyed the transcripts of Hugo Pedersen's telephone conversations and text messages with his associates and friends.  They really shed light on his descent from businessman to illegal trader.  The connections with the abuse ring are tenuous to say the least but, probably because of his greed and naivety, actually strangely amusing.  Talk about being in over your head and not understanding that you are.

I'm not sure if the author has slightly changed their style or if the translation in to English was by another person but the word flow was much better in this book.  It was less disjointed and flowed much more easily from the page to the reader's imagination which made it a fairly entertaining read on the whole.  Not a great read by a good read.

I RECEIVED A FREE COPY OF THIS BOOK FROM READERS FIRST IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW.
       

I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella

This is my first Sophie Kinsella book and whilst it wasn't great, it wasn't bad.  Safe to say I will at least try another of hers before making a decision as to whether or not to purchase more.  You see, my issues weren't with the writing or the characterisation within the book but rather with the plot.  I could sincerely not get on board with the whole idea of phone sharing, especially a complete stranger being allowed to keep a company phone that she "found" which was getting emails for what is essentially a company director - no, I could not get past that and it is a major part of the story.

Apart from the ridiculousness of the situation, the rest of the plot is actually pretty good.  I particularly liked Poppy's issues around her prospective in-laws, nicely tense but not over dramatised, even if the whole kimono thing was overblown.  I wasn't too sure about the ending if I'm being honest, you could see where it was going but, ultimately, it left a sour taste behind and you kind of want joy from this genre.

Characterisation was very well done, no endless descriptive passages to get across someone's character just broad strokes on the page that allow the reader to learn about them in the way we formulate opinions about people we meet in real life.  Even side characters like Ruby, who barely get page time, you feel like you have a good idea of who they are as a person.  To be honest I think this is all that kept me reading on as the plot annoyed me and the footnotes were even worse - yes, I get why they were there and I truly understand the decision behind them but when reading in a digital format they are a royal nuisance.

I know this sounds like I hated the book but I really didn't, it just frustrated me.

My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

          This is quite a startling book in many ways, it is less about the actual act of murder but how your relationships, career and life change when you allow a murderer in to your life.  In Korede's case she does not allow a murderer in to her life, Ayoolah is thrust in to her life by nature and nurture makes her in to a harsher copy of their father.  The familial bond is strong and when Ayoolah first commits murder Korede protects her and helps destroy the evidence, perhaps this is because she believes the self defence explanation her sister gives, maybe it goes deeper than that.

I loved the juxtaposition between Korede's career as a nurse in a large hospital - a career where she is sworn to protect and help people and then her home life of second to her beautiful sister and protector of her as well as her inferior.  There is also a wonderful glimpse in to the culture of traditional Lagos - where appearances always seem set to deceive as everyone puts their bast face forward to the world.  This is perhaps best demonstrated by the memorial for their dead father, neither the sisters or their mother really want to be there but they don their matching family dress and go through with it all, for respectability's sake.

From the early chapters you could be forgiven for thinking this was going to be a police procedural with the sister's facing the full might of the law.  This is definitely not what you get, what you get is actually a touching story of family.  A very disfunctional father whose patriarch has skewed the world so far that it has irrevocably altered his daughter's mores.  Narrated by Korede we only ever really see her view of the circumstances surrounding each event but it is a full and unflinching vision.

A great first novel that is pretty compulsive reading. 

THIS IS AN HONEST AND UNBIASED REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK RECEIVED VIA THE PIGEONHOLE.
       

One Minute To Midnight by Amy Silver

At first I thought that I was not going to like this book, which was a bit of a surprise to me as I have loved every Amy Silver book I've picked up so far.  I was rapidly disabused of this notion and soon got completely sucked in to Nicole's story; although it probably helped that I was reading it over the New Year period and, as the title suggests, this book is very firmly set around the New Year - taking us from a teenage Nicole in 1990 to a present day (2011) one via the medium of how she spent each New Year.  The book covers every aspect of modern life beautifully - student days, first crush, first love, enduring (and failing) friendships, birth family and the family you make when you marry with big doses of real life drama - a wedding, a death, grief that distorts your entire being.  Safe to say I REALLY enjoyed this book.

The characterisations are spot on, without falling in to either stereotype or cliche.  Told from Nicole's point of view she does manage to feel real on the page and as though you are having a dialogue with her rather than the story being foisted upon you.  The peripheral characters of Alex, Julian, Aidan and Dom are well described and never fall in to parody - particularly surprising as each seems to be there to portray one particular stereotype (party girl, gay best friend, the one that got away / womaniser and steady, good bloke).

Loss is dealt with so well in this book, both of a friend, of a marriage, of a family and of a parent.  However, this is also where it lost a star as I felt that rather too much was made of Nicole's behaviour surrounding her birth family.  Maybe that is just personal bias but it felt more fictional than the rest of the book - the rest of it mirrors real life quite well.  There is some good humour in the book too, but it isn't in your face, your have to hunt for the in jokes between the characters and I am actually jealous that Nicole only ever has half a stone to lose - you would have thought as her years increased so would the hips but she has been a lucky (or disciplined) girl.

This is a very enjoyable book but I would not recommend reading it on the commute - missing your stop is never fun and this book is almost designed to make you do that.

A Year In Books

Well, it has definitely been a year of reading, 276 books in 2018, admittedly 2 of those I didn't manage to finish but even so I think 274 is quite an achievement (or speaks to my lack of a life!)

Even better Goodreads lets you scroll through all those lovely books to see exactly what you have read and the 4 and 5 star ones usually get special billing.  I will admit to having a slight addiction to scrolling through my 2018 list.

Based on this little lot I have set my 2019 Reading Challenge to 200 books - I think that is eminently achievable, especially as I set 2018 to 150 and blew that out of the water.

Hopefully I will read some great books this year, although I do know there will be some dross thrown in there as well and more than likely some major disappointments.  I know there were in 2018 (hence not managing to finish 2 of them).

Happy reading all! 

North by Frank Owen

          3.5 Stars

There is a strong attempt to make this book accessible to those who have not read the first in the saga, South, but I feel that without having read that one much of this book will make little to no sense (fortunately I have read the first one).  Throughout you need knowledge of the backstory of the main protagonists - Vida, Dyce and Felix - without it I suspect they would seem rather odd people on the page.  It is also hard to get a sense of the privations in the South from this book and how the people were living so their actions in the North make little sense.  In short read these books in order people.

The progression of the story takes up exactly where we left them, this little pocket of survivors, washed up on the banks of the North Platte and trying to get through the wall.  Some make it, some don't but of those that do they all seem inexplicably drawn to Des Moines and the headquarters of the Northern Resistance.  Much of the book is set in the Capitol building and around the rather unsettling Adams, leader of the resistance and quasi-preacher who is very, very good at stirring the populace to his bidding.

There are reveals within the book that are pretty obvious by the time they are spelled out to the reader so there is little in the way of suspense from a plot point of view.  What there is, is tension in abundance and a terrifying sense of claustrophobia within the Capitol Building.  The building of a society within a society is well explored and the final denouement is quite shocking in it's intensity.

I found this to be a good, tense read but not quite up to the standard set by the first in the series.

I RECEIVED A FREE COPY OF THIS BOOK FROM READERS FIRST IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW.
       

The Christmas Sisters by Sarah Morgan

The title really sums the book up - it's about 3 sisters and how they spend one Christmas.  One Christmas coming to terms with a tragic accident 25 years ago and trying to regain their closeness as a family unit.  Unfortunately, the characters of the sisters are, how to put this tactfully, rather stereotypical.  We have Beth who is the stay at home mum to 2 daughters who is desperate to reclaim an adult life for herself outside the home; Hannah who is the career woman and pushes everyone away from her and Posy who is the tomboy following in her parents footsteps who wants to leave home for adventure but is afraid of upsetting the family.

To be perfectly honest I never really felt any connection to the characters on the page at all.  Even Suzannah, the family matriarch, is fairly flat as a person - her whole reason for living seems to be to provide for her girls and little is made of her entrepeneurship.  The story itself is quite good - the tension between the various family members is well described and the mystery of the avalanche is drawn out over most of the book with the reader only finding out the real circumstances behind it roughly 3/4 of the way through.  By that point though I was reading to finish rather than reading to find out what happened.  Even worse Patrick is regularly mentioned and described as the rock of the family but he hardly makes an appearance in the book at all as an actual person - we hear far more from the lodger Luke, Beth's husband and Hannah's boyfriend than we do from him.  I also struggled with how saintly Suzannah and Patrick were portrayed in the book, it really was cloying in places.

The village set scenes were probably the best thing about the book.  The claustrophobia of small communities was apparent throughout and yet it is a strangely welcome claustrophobia where everyone is supportive whilst sticking their noses in.  Not too sure about the Craft Cafe though, it did have more than a touch of my bete noir in novels the strangely overly successful small business in an unlikely location.

I'm not sure why I struggled to connect with this book so much - maybe it is because I am an Only Child so the family dynamics exposed here are beyond my ken.  The writing itself is accomplished and I can understand the attraction for readers in the author's books, it just didn't do "it" for me.  So much so I did wonder if I was reading the same book that others have reviewed so glowingly.