I am constantly bemused by how well Irish authors manage to convey the human condition so well. this is another in that seam of books that deals with real people, quite boring ordinary people and makes them seem extraordinary. It reminds us all that what happens behind that front door, those closely closed curtains is not necessarily what we would imagine. The bright glow of the TV screen, the subtle hue of a lamp casting it's puddle of light, perfectly normal and yet the events around it may be anything but.
Dealing with four disparate women all struggling with life at different stages, this book brings every day to life and paints it in glowing tones. We first meet Susan, a middle aged woman struggling to get past a tragic event and not dealing with it in the best of ways. Her torment leaps off the page and in to your heart as the true depths of her emotional damage steadily unfold on the page (and this is just in the first chapter). Then there is school girl Melissa, desperately trying to make everyone believe that everything is all okay at home when it is far, far from that. Widowed Jayne looking to reinvigorate her life and not sure how to get out of her rut. Nancy running from her previous life and struggling to find somewhere to settle in a new city, a new country come to that.
The link between these four women is the peaceful Primrose Square in the centre of Dublin City. Slowly it works it's calm magic over them and helps them to reach some sort of resolution to their problems. Not in a completely fantastic, reversal of firtunes way but in a support network way. It is a book that envelops you in a warm hug and gives you hope that no matter how bleak things may seem there is always a brighter day to look forward to.
My only niggles with it where we had to wait an awfully long time to find out why Susan was so adamant that the neighbours son was responsible for her daughter's death. I can understand the need to build tension and it did come out in a relatively believable fashion and only when the character was ready to face up to the events that led to losing her eldest child.
The worst one was waiting to find out why Nancy had felt pushed out of her career and life in London. It is very near to the end of the book when this is revealed and it not something earth shattering in the great scheme of things. Personally shattering and professionally damaging I can see (had this been the real world and not a fictional one) but not as major as she has built it up to be.
The true heart of the book though is the people. They are all beautifully wrought - even relatively minor characters live and breathe within the pages and I did genuinely feel drawn in to the world Ms Carroll has created. It is only my innate nosiness and "need to know" being deferred time and time again that led to me only giving this 4 Stars. It is a joyous read and I would not hesitate to recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading about flawed characters that could so easily be real.
I RECEIVED A FREE COPY OF THIS BOOK FROM READERS FIRST IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW.
Thursday, 19 July 2018
The Spirit Chaser by Kat Mayor
I have to admit it was a hard slog to get to the end of this book but persevere I did - even if I am not particularly sure that it was worth it. It started off so well too - we join the Spirit Chasing Team on their last investigation of the season and it is definitely going to give their ratings a boost. Not only does it give us an introduction to our major character - Austin Cole - but also the lesser background characters on the team (Barrett, Bob, Gary, Thai, Luis and Josie - also confusingly known randomly as JoJo). It also describes the supernatural events they witness and are subjected too in wonderful detail without going for the schlock angle. It keeps the momentum going as we are introduced to Casey and accompany her as she moves out to join the Spirit Chasers team.
Then it basically falls off a cliff as the story vacilates between being a love story and a spooky one. Unfortunately the boy meets girl and they butt heads until they realise that they are meant for each other and then a stupid mis-understanding splits them up and then they reconcile thing really doesn't work within the constraints of the story. It is nice to have downtime in a book like this - after all you don't want wall to wall things that go bump in the night - but the execution of it just didn't work for me.
Things bump along patchily plotwise for the majority of the book before picking up for the final showdown but Austin and the Team and his demonic stalker. The atmosphere generated on the page is wonderfully evocative without straying in to overdone hyperbole or needlessly long descriptive passages. The ending is no real surprise in many ways as the story does prepare you for it but there is something unusual in the author's decision albeit a refreshing unusual.
In short there about 100 pages here that are very, very good (the beginning and the end), the rest of it felt like filler and I found it hard to wade through. Part of the problem lies in the characters themselves - neither Austin or Casey are particularly likeable and we know so little about the other people that they are literally just names on the page with the odd sentence chucked in from them. So much so I am amazed I remembered there names at all - maybe I should have given it an an extra star because at least the character names stayed with me? Nah, that would be generous and that isn't me.
I am vaguely tempted to see how things work out for the team but only very, very vaguely and I can't say I am genuinely tempted to buy the next in the series.
Then it basically falls off a cliff as the story vacilates between being a love story and a spooky one. Unfortunately the boy meets girl and they butt heads until they realise that they are meant for each other and then a stupid mis-understanding splits them up and then they reconcile thing really doesn't work within the constraints of the story. It is nice to have downtime in a book like this - after all you don't want wall to wall things that go bump in the night - but the execution of it just didn't work for me.
Things bump along patchily plotwise for the majority of the book before picking up for the final showdown but Austin and the Team and his demonic stalker. The atmosphere generated on the page is wonderfully evocative without straying in to overdone hyperbole or needlessly long descriptive passages. The ending is no real surprise in many ways as the story does prepare you for it but there is something unusual in the author's decision albeit a refreshing unusual.
In short there about 100 pages here that are very, very good (the beginning and the end), the rest of it felt like filler and I found it hard to wade through. Part of the problem lies in the characters themselves - neither Austin or Casey are particularly likeable and we know so little about the other people that they are literally just names on the page with the odd sentence chucked in from them. So much so I am amazed I remembered there names at all - maybe I should have given it an an extra star because at least the character names stayed with me? Nah, that would be generous and that isn't me.
I am vaguely tempted to see how things work out for the team but only very, very vaguely and I can't say I am genuinely tempted to buy the next in the series.
A Vintage Wedding by Katie Fforde
This is definitely not one of Ms Fforde's better books (and believe me I am a fan). It all feels a little bit rush to meet a deadline with a half formed idea and just slap all the usual tropes together and maybe it will come out okay.
It starts out with trying to save the Village Hall which is in a heinous state of affairs and, to be perfectly honest, it sounds like they'd be better off knocking it down and starting again rather than trying to rescue it. This brings together Lindy (native of the village and a single mum), Beth (young woman who is relying on the charity of friends for a roof over head) and Rachel (newly single and determined to make the most of her show house worthy house in the village). After a chance meeting at the said hall they go to the pub and over one glass of wine decide to go in to business together providing "vintage" weddings. Once this is decided the Village Hall very much takes a back seat and is referred to only fleetingly; to be honest even the wedding business doesn't have a starring role - it is all about these three women and how their lives change courtesy of meeting each other.
Unfortunately this doesn't really work as well on the page as it usually does for this author. The characterisations are all a little flat and Rachel's issues aorund people in her space and the white perfection of her home are cookie cutter cliches that are over-ridden by the character with seemingly no effort and certainly no professional input. Don't get me wrong I read this genre for the uncomplicated simpicity and the sheer escapism from real life but this book just took it all that one step too far in to rose tinted glasses land.
It is, though, a happy read. Not exactly life-affirming but you will get the chance to groan in empathy with Beth and her dire life choices, you will also get to giggle a little and nod sagely in places too. I suppose the real let down is that is uncharacteristically flat in several ways from the sheer unbelievability of the plot, the dullness of the characters on the page, the main issue is that it picks up ideas and then sets them down again only to revisit them several chapters later and try and extricate them from the plot because they have been supplanted as a device.
There are much better books by this author so if this is your first sample of her writing don't be put off.
It starts out with trying to save the Village Hall which is in a heinous state of affairs and, to be perfectly honest, it sounds like they'd be better off knocking it down and starting again rather than trying to rescue it. This brings together Lindy (native of the village and a single mum), Beth (young woman who is relying on the charity of friends for a roof over head) and Rachel (newly single and determined to make the most of her show house worthy house in the village). After a chance meeting at the said hall they go to the pub and over one glass of wine decide to go in to business together providing "vintage" weddings. Once this is decided the Village Hall very much takes a back seat and is referred to only fleetingly; to be honest even the wedding business doesn't have a starring role - it is all about these three women and how their lives change courtesy of meeting each other.
Unfortunately this doesn't really work as well on the page as it usually does for this author. The characterisations are all a little flat and Rachel's issues aorund people in her space and the white perfection of her home are cookie cutter cliches that are over-ridden by the character with seemingly no effort and certainly no professional input. Don't get me wrong I read this genre for the uncomplicated simpicity and the sheer escapism from real life but this book just took it all that one step too far in to rose tinted glasses land.
It is, though, a happy read. Not exactly life-affirming but you will get the chance to groan in empathy with Beth and her dire life choices, you will also get to giggle a little and nod sagely in places too. I suppose the real let down is that is uncharacteristically flat in several ways from the sheer unbelievability of the plot, the dullness of the characters on the page, the main issue is that it picks up ideas and then sets them down again only to revisit them several chapters later and try and extricate them from the plot because they have been supplanted as a device.
There are much better books by this author so if this is your first sample of her writing don't be put off.
No Turning Back by Sam Blake
Set in Dublin, No Turning Back, attempts to give us an insight in to the working of the Garda from the perspective of a very determined young officer - Cat Connolly. Nothing wrong with that except the nicknames they have for each other and the details of interpersonal relationships all feels a little superficial. This may be because this is clearly a few books in to a series (I checked - this is the third book chronicling the events in the life and career of Cat Connolly) and so we are expected to already know the important people in her life. It does work as a stand alone book though, even if the events of previous cases do seep in on a fairly regular basis.
There are a couple of intertwined tales going on here. You have the hit and run murder of a young man with distinguished parents, the discovery of a young girls body on the cliffe which may or may not be misadventure and a nice slice of cyber crime and a devolution on to the Dark Web. Unfortunately this does lead to things becoming very muddy with no real separation of the threads and I did find myself becoming a little confused as to how all the characters linked together and how this was supposed to gel together in to one tale.
Couple this with regular asides in to Cat's private life and her emotional attachment to a superior officer. Then the seemingly pointless introduction of a professor at Trinity College - I am still not entirely sure what point this character served apart from to link the Garda to the CIA to expose the cybercimes being perpetrated under their noses. Quite a lot of page space is devoted to this character as well so I think that their may have been editing decisions made with the overall plot trajectory that now make her feel superfluous to some extent.
There is a decent plot buried amongst some of the faff and flannel in the narrative. Certainly the ultimate denouement was fairly unexpected and the way at which the reveal is made shows that it is the slow plodding of procedure that gets results and not maverick intuition. Tension, however, is hard to come by. Just as it starts to build in one area of the investigation the next chapter will sidle off in to Cat's private life or to one of the other strands of the crimes being explained and it all fizzles out.
Not one of my favourite books of the genre but certainly not one of the worst I have read. It is pretty much middle of the road and does provide a modicum of entertainment; just not enough to make me want to read Cat Connolly's back story or be too invested in where she moves on to next.
There are a couple of intertwined tales going on here. You have the hit and run murder of a young man with distinguished parents, the discovery of a young girls body on the cliffe which may or may not be misadventure and a nice slice of cyber crime and a devolution on to the Dark Web. Unfortunately this does lead to things becoming very muddy with no real separation of the threads and I did find myself becoming a little confused as to how all the characters linked together and how this was supposed to gel together in to one tale.
Couple this with regular asides in to Cat's private life and her emotional attachment to a superior officer. Then the seemingly pointless introduction of a professor at Trinity College - I am still not entirely sure what point this character served apart from to link the Garda to the CIA to expose the cybercimes being perpetrated under their noses. Quite a lot of page space is devoted to this character as well so I think that their may have been editing decisions made with the overall plot trajectory that now make her feel superfluous to some extent.
There is a decent plot buried amongst some of the faff and flannel in the narrative. Certainly the ultimate denouement was fairly unexpected and the way at which the reveal is made shows that it is the slow plodding of procedure that gets results and not maverick intuition. Tension, however, is hard to come by. Just as it starts to build in one area of the investigation the next chapter will sidle off in to Cat's private life or to one of the other strands of the crimes being explained and it all fizzles out.
Not one of my favourite books of the genre but certainly not one of the worst I have read. It is pretty much middle of the road and does provide a modicum of entertainment; just not enough to make me want to read Cat Connolly's back story or be too invested in where she moves on to next.
Thursday, 12 July 2018
The Seven Imperfect Rules of Elvira Carr by Frances Maynard
I was taken aback by how much I genuinely enjoyed this book and how many layers I could see within it. Told from the perspective of the eponymous Elvira Carr it gives a touching and beautifully wrought insight in to life - not just life for someone with a "condition" but life for all of us. To be perfectly honest I think we would all be better for a touch of Ellie's honesty in our lives and by taking things literally and at face value we could avoid so much unnecessary pain and heartache. Although I would miss a good FOS.
We are never told exactly what Ellie's condition is but it is quite clear that she is on the Autistic Spectrum and I leant heavily towards Aspergers as she functions quite highly in social situations. I did like how her condition (as it is constantly referred to) is always though informing her behaviour and her choices and her understanding of situations but it is an accepted part of the character and seems a perfectly normal way for a person to be; it is the reactions of her mother, her neighbours and people outside the safety of her home who's reactions and behaviours seem shocking.
The plot has a bit of the Seinfeld's about it as really, nothing actually happens. The real activity takes place in the changes in Ellie's life with her mother falling ill and how she has to learn to cope with a minimal support network. We get to watch her make her first tentative steps to independence and the rules that she invents to help her get her through. This both touching and frustrating in equal measure and you do feel like you want to scoop Ellie in to your arms and support her as much as possible - especially with all the revelations about her father.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone looking for soemthign a little different to the norm and about people rather than things or events. There are some quite dramatic reveals in this book but they do take second place to Ellie's reaction to them.
We are never told exactly what Ellie's condition is but it is quite clear that she is on the Autistic Spectrum and I leant heavily towards Aspergers as she functions quite highly in social situations. I did like how her condition (as it is constantly referred to) is always though informing her behaviour and her choices and her understanding of situations but it is an accepted part of the character and seems a perfectly normal way for a person to be; it is the reactions of her mother, her neighbours and people outside the safety of her home who's reactions and behaviours seem shocking.
The plot has a bit of the Seinfeld's about it as really, nothing actually happens. The real activity takes place in the changes in Ellie's life with her mother falling ill and how she has to learn to cope with a minimal support network. We get to watch her make her first tentative steps to independence and the rules that she invents to help her get her through. This both touching and frustrating in equal measure and you do feel like you want to scoop Ellie in to your arms and support her as much as possible - especially with all the revelations about her father.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone looking for soemthign a little different to the norm and about people rather than things or events. There are some quite dramatic reveals in this book but they do take second place to Ellie's reaction to them.
Condemn Me Not: Accused Of Witchcraft by Heather B. Moore
Having read quite a bit about the Salem Witch Trials I was a little trepidacious going in to this book as I was not sure which tack the author was going to take. There are several theories that have done the rounds over the years over what really happened and what led to the girls accusing seemingly ordinary women of Witchcraft. There is everything from Religious Fervour, Ergot poisoning, revenge and plain old greed. This book touches on all but the poisoning theory.
Told from the perspective of the elderly Susannah North we are drawn in to her life by a series of flashbacks to her early years, her meeting and marrying her beloved husband at the ripe old age of 25 and then jumps around in an almost scattergun approach between her present in jail and on trial for Witchcraft and snapshots of her life. I did find it difficult to warm to the central character, whilst I felt empathy for the position she was in I never felt that I really knew who she was as a person. There was worryingly little about the trials themselves and what the actual accusations were - yes, there are little pieces from academic research in to the records of the time but little is shown of the trials themselves. Contrast this with the reports of the jail conditions the accused men and women were held in and we have a much clearer picture.
To be perfectly honest it was quite a dry read and as I found myself becoming immersed in one scene we would suddenly jump to another, happier, time and location and the moment would be lost. Much of it also reminded me of several programmes I have seen about the Lancashire Witch Trials (local to me) and it seems that there was little difference between them and Salem so I did find myself mentally switching to Lancaster Gaol and the proceedings there rather than in their intended setting.
Not a bad fictionalisation of real life events overall but a little light on detail and characterisation.
Told from the perspective of the elderly Susannah North we are drawn in to her life by a series of flashbacks to her early years, her meeting and marrying her beloved husband at the ripe old age of 25 and then jumps around in an almost scattergun approach between her present in jail and on trial for Witchcraft and snapshots of her life. I did find it difficult to warm to the central character, whilst I felt empathy for the position she was in I never felt that I really knew who she was as a person. There was worryingly little about the trials themselves and what the actual accusations were - yes, there are little pieces from academic research in to the records of the time but little is shown of the trials themselves. Contrast this with the reports of the jail conditions the accused men and women were held in and we have a much clearer picture.
To be perfectly honest it was quite a dry read and as I found myself becoming immersed in one scene we would suddenly jump to another, happier, time and location and the moment would be lost. Much of it also reminded me of several programmes I have seen about the Lancashire Witch Trials (local to me) and it seems that there was little difference between them and Salem so I did find myself mentally switching to Lancaster Gaol and the proceedings there rather than in their intended setting.
Not a bad fictionalisation of real life events overall but a little light on detail and characterisation.
The Little Bookshop Of Lonely Hearts by Annie Darling
2.5 Stars
This is pretty much standard chick lit fare; unfortunately the ending is so flagged up in the first few chapters it becomes an exercise in how long it will take the characters to realise. As you can imagine I found this somewhat frustrating and I did find it a bit of a chore to get to the end if I'm being honest. This is a shame as the setting is charming and the characters themselves aren't actually too bad, the writing flowed well and gave a good insight in to the characters and the location. What let the book down was the plotting, too much was given away far too soon - whilst we all know how a book of this genre is going to ultimately end it should be fun getting there.
The best thing for me was the setting. It did give a severe case of the guilts though as I am a firm e-reader addict and this mean my support of bookshops has fallen drastically by the wayside. Although I have to admit if Happy After After (shouldn't that have been HappILY After After by the by) really did exist I could see myself frequenting it. Maybe not on a weekly basis but certainly every couple of months or so and NOT for the Regency Romance section thats for sure.
The main character of Posy is a little bit of a puzzling person who definitely seems to lack a backbone and I did wonder what the rather incredible sounding Lavinia saw in her. Turns out Lavinia may have been right and I may have been wrong but I get the feeling I would have itched to slap Posy for her constant belittlement of herself and inability to stand up to Sebastian. She is clearly strong as she has brought up her brother after her parents untimely death but she is such a milksop.
I would struggle to recommend this book to friends though unless I knew that they were big fans of the genre. Even then it would come with caveats. It isn't a bad book but it isn't a great exponent of what should be light breezy and fun to read.
This is pretty much standard chick lit fare; unfortunately the ending is so flagged up in the first few chapters it becomes an exercise in how long it will take the characters to realise. As you can imagine I found this somewhat frustrating and I did find it a bit of a chore to get to the end if I'm being honest. This is a shame as the setting is charming and the characters themselves aren't actually too bad, the writing flowed well and gave a good insight in to the characters and the location. What let the book down was the plotting, too much was given away far too soon - whilst we all know how a book of this genre is going to ultimately end it should be fun getting there.
The best thing for me was the setting. It did give a severe case of the guilts though as I am a firm e-reader addict and this mean my support of bookshops has fallen drastically by the wayside. Although I have to admit if Happy After After (shouldn't that have been HappILY After After by the by) really did exist I could see myself frequenting it. Maybe not on a weekly basis but certainly every couple of months or so and NOT for the Regency Romance section thats for sure.
The main character of Posy is a little bit of a puzzling person who definitely seems to lack a backbone and I did wonder what the rather incredible sounding Lavinia saw in her. Turns out Lavinia may have been right and I may have been wrong but I get the feeling I would have itched to slap Posy for her constant belittlement of herself and inability to stand up to Sebastian. She is clearly strong as she has brought up her brother after her parents untimely death but she is such a milksop.
I would struggle to recommend this book to friends though unless I knew that they were big fans of the genre. Even then it would come with caveats. It isn't a bad book but it isn't a great exponent of what should be light breezy and fun to read.
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Lego Tony Stark's Sakaarian Iron Man 76194
I know nothing about the "What If" TV show but what I do know is that I absolutely LOVE Mechs and Lego always manage to put somet...
