Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch

This is quite possibly the best of the Rivers Of London series.  There, I said it.  Unfortunately I have already given all the previous four novels five stars so have nowhere to go with this one.

Initially I was unsure how this one was going to work, Peter Grant away from London, away from the Folly.  After all they both loom large in the books and are almost characters in their own right.  Oddly, it works all too well and seeing the countryside through his townie eye (as well as his magical one) makes for a real page turner.  At first the disappearence of two young girls doesn't seem to have much of the Falcon about it but as one of the few survivors of Etterburg lives locally it seems best to check, plus Peter is really persona non grata in London at the moment after being there at the Skygarden's destruction (and likely instrumental in it).

Peter Grant is his snarky, bewildered self and maybe this is the real joy of the books; as a narrator he is so refreshingly bumbling at times you can't help but feel drawn to him.  Despite the local law enforcement's reluctance to accept him when things take a turn for the possibly mystical (invisible friend that just happens to be a unicorn) they absorb him in to the investigation.  Unfortunately for them this is definitely a case for Falcon and with Peter without the guiding hand of Nightingale things could go South very quickly.  Fortunately Bev is on hand to help steer him, even if she has her own machiavellian plots going on - never trust a River Goddess (even one that drive a steam engine!).

Thunderingly good plot that makes the fantastical seem rational and logical.  Strong characters that don't suddenly behave in unusual ways (often an issue with long running serials) and with the injection of some new blood that is just as deftly created it really sucks you in.  Even better we get introduced to another realm - after River Goddesses and the Quiet People we now have another race breathing in Peter's rarefied world.  A race that throws illumination on to Molly's true character (I admit it now, my gut feeling about her true nature was way off the mark).

Despite there being only the odd cameo by Nightingale and no Molly or Toby at all I thoroughly enjoyed this rural romp.  I'm not sure that I am looking forward to Peter returning to London and The Folly but return he sadly must.

Honestly, if you enjoy Urban Fantasy novels then I urge you to pick up the Rivers Of London series.  With a well thought through supernatural world bubbling alongside one we recognise, a narrator that is charmingly bewildered and strong plotting you will not be disappointed.

The Bus On Thursday by Shirley Barrett

This book is what I can only describe as strange.  It seems to settle uneasily across a couple of genres and not really fit within either.  First off you have the tale of how Eleanor deals with her diagnosis of Breast Cancer and subsequent tenuous remission.  Then you have her tale of mental decline in the aftermath of her treatment, increasing isolation from friends and family and ultimate decision to take a teaching job in a remote township.  The locale she moves to is peculiar to say the least with it's mad-monk priest and bizarre inhabitants.  Finally there is an almost horror story aspect to the ending.  All mashed up together it makes for peculiar reading.

The story itself is told in blog posts so we only get one perspective on everything that happens.  Unfortunately for Eleanor, as a narrator, she transcends unreliable and moves in to the realms of truly deluded very rapidly.  It is clear to the reader that she has suffered major psychological trauma along with physical trauma and that the help provided her she seems willing to brush off.  The real problem, for me, was trying to figure out what was really happening in her life and what were delusions.

I enjoyed the format of the story as it allowed the author to pare the story back to just one view point, one experience related by the sufferer (and suffer Eleanor does).  Unfortunately there is something inherently distasteful about Eleanor, something selfish and self-serving that maybe she is entitled to after such a traumatising diagnosis so young but that still sits uneasily with me.  It doesn't help that rather than make decisions she just acts and this leads her to engage in behaviour that is rash and damaging (throwing away her tamoxifen, stopping her anti-depressants, getting involved with a handsome local).  It also doesn't help that she is so judgmental about the local townsfolk.  Yes, they are a weird bunch when seen through her eyes but as she clearly cannot be trusted to tell the truth maybe they aren't that bad.

Ultimately I'm not sure how much I enjoyed this book.  It did make me squirm but it gave me the chills that a good horror story gives you so that's a point in it's favour.  To be honest I think this one will take a couple of read throughs to get the nuances and to even begin to understand the author's plot trajectory.  I'm also not a huge fan of a cliffhanger ending and this sort of has that feel to it but it does leave you hanging in the middle of a sentence which annoyed me; I understand the "literary" device but it seems out of place here.

THIS IS AN HONEST REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK SUPPLIED VIA THE PUBLISHER.

Dark Inspiration by Russell James

This is as much about the prejudices of a small town as it is about the Ghost Story.  Yes, the bulk of the story is about Galaxy Farm but it was the little bits tossed in there about the locals reactions to out-of-towners moving in to the Old Hutchinson place that really stuck with me.  In particular when Laura starts working as a long term substitute teacher at the Local Elementary School, the staff reaction to her is downright chilling.  Yes, this is a tiny bit of the story and related in an almost throw away style but I found it probably more disturbing than the actual ghost story.

I was relieved this wasn't about the house itself being evil - I will admit to having a few reservations that this was going to be a "take" on Shirley Jackson's Hill House.  There are similarities but only because you have to explain where the hauntings come from, at least there is no flashback device used here - we find out the history of the house along with Doug when he sets out to investigate the history of the house after Laura starts having very specific dreams about twin girls and even hears something like child's laughter.

The tension builds slowly up to the climax and I found it sucked me right in and I kept having that "just one more chapter" feeling.  The author does a great job of almost normalising Doug's breakdown after he finds the hidden attic and starts to unlock it's secrets - of course an attic cannot be hidden, there is always going to be that roof space but someone did a good job of trying to hide the access to it.  Some bits did remind me of The Shining, especially Laura's reveal at the end of the book about what she found when she investigated Doug's Great American Novel.

This was so much better than I expected it to be, I think it took me a little bit by surprise.  The tale is narrated by both Laura and Doug and you get a great sense of each protagonist on the page and there is a matter-of-factness to the events at Galaxy Farm.  The ghost story itself is wound quite deftly in to their tale and although there are scenes that shock, they are not shocking (if that makes sense) and I was never left feeling that something was there just for effect (sadly something that proliferates in the genre).

Well plotted and full of suspense.  This book really gave me hope that the horror genre still has a lot to give.

Demonic Indemnity by Craig McLay

The blurb for this one grabbed me immediately.  I love a bit of Urban Fantasy and could you imagine the claims you'd get to investigate if you worked for an Insurance Company in a world where all those horror story creatures live alongside humanity.  To be honest, I fully expected to be disappointed in this book as my imagination was already well away with demons and vampires and werewolves...Oh My!  What I didn't expect was to be swept up into such a vividly realised fictional world that completely sucked me in.

Our lead character, Tim, is a bit of a bumbling buffoon but quite charmingly so.  His frustrations with his brother sharing his small apartment and the mess he leaves behind (honestly, scabs crumbs down the couch, drained blood bags on the counter tops who wouldn't be mad?) are relatable to anyone who has shared living space with anyone ever (even if the issue of blood bags hopefully has never arisen).  His Imposters Complex at work, especially since his promotion, are realistic too - it just happens that as the token human in the SIU he is probably right as it does all smack of positive discrimination and his co-workers make sure he knows that.

There are issues with editing in the book but it such an enjoyable novel I actually managed to overlook plot holes, grammatical foul ups and even mid-sentence personnel changes.  Who cares if Tim suddenly changes his name for a sentence, I found that I didn't.  I did wonder how he kept getting himself in to such diabolical (in the most literal meaning of the word) scrapes and why a mere Insurance Investigator would go to such lengths to investigate what happened at the back street psychic parlour and then I remembered - insurance companies never want to pay out so he was, after all, just doing his job.

I am looking forward to reading more books by this author as the overall novel is fun, fast paced and put a huge great smile on my face.

Summer Secrets by Jane Green

At first I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy this book.  Having an alcoholic as your central character is a risky decision and I was expecting this to descend in to a parody of the condition as most books usually do.  Fortunately, there is no parody here and Cat's story of how she comes to rely on alcohol to get her through the day and the descriptions of how tightly it grips her are unsentimentally described.  Her refusal to see her predicament, her reluctant attempt at sobriety to keep the man she has fallen in love with, her spectacular fall off the wagon she was desperately clinging to and then her genuine attempt to put alcohol in her past are dealt with sensitively and yet have the brutal edge of reality.

I actually really liked Cat, despite her many flaws.  She felt entirely real on the page and the contrast between her apparently glamorous media job and the disaster that was her home life felt entirely believable.  I also loved her wit, even in her darkest hours she seemed to find a turn of phrase that would elicit a wry smile.  There is also a good attempt to explore the nature of alcohol addiction and how much of it we are predisposed to - the nature vs nuture debate - and in Cat's case there are strong indicators that it is a genuine mix of both (unstable early life with a depressive mother and a controlling father figure who leaves her feeling than she is worthless, a father who she didn't know about who has his own problems with alcohol and writes them off as being his heritage).  I even enjoyed her AA sessions, yes the whole "higher power" thing they eschew makes me VERY uncomfortable but there is no doubt that it can and does help an awful lot of people and this novel illustrates how it works.

However, the book is about so much more than Cat's alcoholism.  It is about the struggles that life throws at us and how you just have to knuckle down and get on with it.  If you are lucky you have a support network to get you through and hopefully that is your family.  This book deals with Cat's struggles to find that family and about how friends can become your family.  It is beautifully written and I got really sucked in to the author's fictional world.  The only downside for me were the Nantucket sections, I have only read two Jane Green books and they both heavily feature Nantucket so it had a vague air of Deja Vu about it in places.

The ending does leave the reader feeling a little cheated with its will-they-won't-they.  However, I kind of liked that as it leaves the reader to make up their own mind about how events unfold for Cat, Jason and Annie after that fateful summer.

Home Truths by Susan Lewis

          For me this book tried too hard to look at the darker strata of society.  The small town of Ketsley has everything - County Lines Drug Gangs, forced prostitution and people trafficing, a suspected paedophile ring, a thriving homeless population and for a small town a lot of dead young people.  Honestly it is worse than any inner city.  I'm not saying that I want the real world to be pushed out of my reading and that these things do not have a place in a novel BUT it just feels over blown and over done here. 

The bulk of the book deals with Angie Watts and the aftermath of her husband's brutal murder on a local sink estate.  Couple this with the onset of Universal Credit and her and her children end up in a spiral of debt that leads them in to the darker strata of society.  Of course, being a novel, there is a Guardian Angel just waiting to rescue them - so if the darkness gets too much just bear that in mind.

The issues that I had with this are that whilst it makes mention of the Widows Allowance for the first 12 months what it doesn't mention is the Victim Compensation scheme.  In a case such as Angie's they would not have been in such a precarious precidament as their situation (a small child (7 year old Zak) and a teenager (13 year old Grace) along with a young widow) would have meant they got a hefty payout.  Yes, this would not have brought Steve back but it would have meant they weren't in danger of the terrible things that happen to the family after the event.  For all the undoubted research the author has done for this to be missed irritated me and everytime money woes were mentioned it leapt in to my mind.

Angie herself also infuriated me.  From sticking her head in the sand about their situation - okay, that I do get; debt is very, very scary and having bailiffs ringing you up and knocking on your door is not a great position to be in but you have to bite the bullet for the sake of the children.  Her work at Bridging The Gap is definitely worthwhile but to stick to that even whilst spiralling deeper and deeper when it's not paying more than minimum wage is rash and she is simply unable to see this.  Then ultimately she does not claw herself out of the mire she relies on someone else to do this for her and the final reveal about Shakil just made me shake my head in disbelief.

The writing itself is well paced and the characters are drawn well.  The problem with the characters is that they don't have more than a couple of traits.  Angie is downtrodden and, not to put too fine a point on it, pathetic.  Martin is just revoltingly perfect.  Grace is incredibly naive and read more like a ten year old than the thirteen she is supposed to be - especially for the location she lives in.  The only character that really felt like she had any real depth was Emma.

I can see what the author was trying to do and it does open sections of society that we would prefer not to think about.  However, it tries much too hard and by trying to add hope to the story it almost becomes a parody.  If it had stuck with the spiral of debt and the true horrors that brings about then it could have been a stronger, more compelling book.  Instead it spreads itself way too thin and dissipates the "message".

Although I have given this 3 Stars I cannot really recommend it unless you like misery-lit.  The hope supposedly in the tale is far too removed from reality and belongs in a fairytale.  The situations written about for the Watts family are unrealistic based on the situation described.  In fact as I write this I am wondering if 2 Stars wouldn't have been a truer rating but I will stick with my initial notation from when I completed the book.

THIS IS AN HONEST REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK RECEIVED FROM READERS FIRST.
       

Dorothy And The Glass Key by Christopher J Finn

Starting in a privately operated Mental Health Facility, the book initially introduces us to the administrator, Ellen, who is dismayed to have her peaceful Monday shattered by the wealthy Ragesh Dutta and his ward, Dorothy.  Taking over a suite of rooms Ellen is shocked to find all the furnishings and decor removed from the room and, even more shocked to find out that Ragesh seems to insist that Dorothy and he were 14 year olds together when it is quite clear that there is a huge age gap between them.  Still, this is a wealthy man who is willing to pay for their facilities so Ellen feels like she has no option but to sit and listen to Dorothy's story, as best as Ragesh can tell it.

I felt this was a strong opening to the book and it really sucked me in to the world that the author was creating.  However, once Ragesh begins his tale to Ellen Dorothy's voice takes over and the bulk of the story is about how Dorothy ended up in a persistent vegetative state.  There is a lot of woe-is-me teenage angst, stubborness and complete inability to see past her own needs and wants - in short, Mr Finn perfectly captures the average 14 year old.  The problem for me was that whilst I could empathise with her situation (alcoholic father and dead mother) I never felt that I could actually like her and as the bulk of the book is told by, and about, her this is a bit of a problem.

The idea of a key that can unlock another world is a good one and provided a good parallel to how a fantasy life (be it experienced through books, film, video games, or just good old imagination) can be of benefit.  Initially the key world provides Dorothy with the solace she doesn't get in her daily existence and as she meets Charlie and Ragesh they become the Three Key Children and provide each other with the support they need to get through the horrors (real and imagined) of their daily lives.  In fact, compared to Charlie and Ragesh Dorothy really has it easy.  Exploring the world by combining their keys in different configurations was a great idea and although a lot of these worlds are visited only briefly the reader is given a decent enough overview of the children's experiences.

The problems really only came for me in the second half of the book with the introduction of The Spintwister.  Whether it was just me I'm not sure but it all seems to get very confused and the narrative begins to jump all over the place for much of the second portion of the book.  As an ogre like figure I understand the point of The Spintwister but rather than add to the narrative he just interrupted it.  The author does manage to pull it back together by the end of the book and the reveal has a nice twist to it that I didn't see coming.

To be honest, now I have read it once I have a suspicion that a second read through would be far more enjoyable.  As a debut novel this is a fresh story that does entertain it just gets itself muddled part way through.

THIS IS AN HONEST REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK SUPPLIED VIA THE AUTHOR.