Tempting Fate by Jane Green

3.5 Stars

Temptation is dangerous and acting on that temptation is downright stupid, especially for Gabby.  Somehow though you can't help but think she knew exactly what she was doing and what the ramifications could be.  So much of the build up is pent giving us the impression of a bored housewife who is longing for another child but her husband has taken this option away from her by unilaterally deciding to get a vasectomy.  It is clear that something is wrong in the marriage, something that neither party is willing to admit - they have slipped in to that comfortable stage where it is all too easy to take the other party for granted.    When Gabby takes the bait and becomes emotionally invested in a much younger man you kind of know where this is going to go and, unfortunately, it does.

The writing is undoubtedly deft and there is a clear emotional understanding of the characters, it just all felt a little predictable and then the ending was, for me, completely fantastical.  The pacing of the story is good with a strong narrative flow that does keep the reader engaged (even when your brain has already more or less figured out the plot and the ultimate outcome with a couple of hundred pages to go).  Ms Green is undoubtedly skillful in engaging the reader and keeping you interested and engaged - even if the storyline leaves you scoffing with incredulity.

Normally this dichotomy would leave me feeling confused but it is something I have come to expect from this author and I am pretty sure that my enjoyment in her novels come from the construction of the story rather than the content.  Her characterisations are always richly layered, even if the characters behave in ways that feel alien to the world that I have, and continue to, experience.  The plotlines are not always realistic either but it is, nevertheless, fun immersing yourself in these familiar and yet alien worlds.

A fun and light read that entertains.

Deadline by Craig McLay

This novel was surprisingly bitty, none of the smoothness that I have come to expect from the author.  This isn't helped by multiple narrators so I never really felt that I got to "know" any of the characters.  The storyline falls, just about, in to a supernatural thriller category but it never really got off the ground for me; probably because his influences were showing.

The best thing I can say about it is that once the setting and the main players have been established it moves along at a cracking pace - if you make it past the first 20% or so of the book it becomes a roller coaster ride of revelations and brutal murders.  Unfortunately by that point I had already realised that I wasn't going to really care about how this worked out so I was just following on for the set pieces.  There are some lavishly gruesome ones but it all felt a little more like a screenplay than an actual novel and I can't pin down why. 

I usually love this author but this one left me wanting more.  In it's own twisted way it was fun to read but I'm not breathlessly waiting to get my hands on the sequel.

The Extra by Megan Walker and Janci Patterson

3.5 Stars

I actually really enjoyed this book, although it did feel like a guilty pleasure at times.  It emulates the very daytime soaps that it is, in many ways, parodying.  With plotlines that stretch credulity and characters that have either so many faces that you wonder if they have a multiple personality disorder or have just one stereotypical one.  Honestly, it is a daytime soap in paged format.

Our lead character is Gabby and she is a mess - physically clumsy, emotionally shuttered and add on a dose of middle child syndrome and there you have Gabby.  Somehow the authors made this work and whether it is her love for all things carb-y and calorific in an image obsessed town or her voice you do find yourself enjoying spending time with this character.  This is happen as well as she is our narrator.  She really does get put through the wringer in this book though - from family disasters (parental and fraternal), dating woes, career set backs it all happens to poor ole Gabby.

The plot is straight from the soaps though and has that overblown pseudo-reality to it, but it works.  It is honestly amusing and told in such a chatty style that you can't help but become engaged and find yourself thoroughly enjoying your time spent with the book.  That said, I never really got invested in the situations that Gabby found herself in as you know all the way through that somehow things will work out for her and those she cares about.

I have noticed that there are several books in this series but as much fun as I found this one I'm not invested enough to read on and I think the breathless skipping from disaster to disaster was fine for one book but could well send me loopy if I read more.

Fun and frothy but ultimately disposable - perfect holiday read.

Midnight Crossroad by Charlaine Harris

Midnight is a town that doesn't even have one horse, and you just know there isn't even a blinking stoplight at that crossroads.  It is just that small.  Unfortunately, considering the denizens of the town you would have thought that they and the story would be larger than life but no, everything is small and contained and sadly quite pedestrian.  My judgement may have been coloured by the TV Series, I caught that on catch up here in the UK and it was truly bingeworthy and led me to buy the books - to be honest I wish I'd just stuck with the TV show.

There's nothing wrong with the book per se, it just all feels so slow and small.  Each character felt so flat and lifeless after their small screen counterparts had been met.  Lemuel and Olivia are perhaps the best exponents of this, their on screen realisation gives them both a brooding air of menace that just isn't apparent in the novel.  At least we get to find out, via Manfred, exactly what shade of different Lemuel is and make no mistake everyone here in Midnight is a little different.  Fiji is loud and proud about her differences right from the beginning so there is no mystery there but by the end of the first book everyone else is just a varying degree of peculiar with no reveal.  The problem is by the time I got to the end of the book I found I didn't really care too much.

I also found that I could not stir up any real interest in the cast and their various predicaments.  Indeed, where it not for having watched the TV Series I would be hard pushed to remember any names at all, ridiculous as some of them are - Bobo, seriously!  The best written character, for me, was The Rev.  His secret is well hidden and he comes across as a tortured soul who is trying his best to make amends for past indiscretions, he really did work well in the book.

The plot wasn't enough to salvage the book from mediocrity either.  The disappearance of Audrey and the ramifications from that are handled well and do manage to drum up some tension - the resolution of it is a mere damp squib though.  Considering what the resolution is this is a surprise but it just doesn't quite work.  The parallel story of Bobo and his family's links to some less than salubrious groups just seems completely outrageous and unlikely.  Add to that the weakest fizzle out of a storyline I have seen in some time and it becomes an exercise in eye rolling.

I should have known that this would be a disappointing read of a wonderful idea.  Why?  Simply put the Harper Connolly series never managed to capture my imagination so that stopped at the first book and the Sookie Stackhouse series got progressively more and more bizarre so that by the time I was 5 or 6 books deep I was reading more for the ridiculous situations than anything else.  Unfortunately Ms Harris seems to be an author that comes up with some fantastic ideas but then manages to dilute them in their execution.

I have given this 3 Stars mainly because I am aware that I have been comparing this to the TV Series all the way through and that I may have allowed that to colour my impressions of the novel.  Honestly I think I gave this book 1 Star just because I felt sorry that it didn't match up to what followed.

Village Books by Craig McLay

For about the first quarter of this book I kept wondering when the sci-fi element or the supernatural element was going to make an appearance.  After all, the previous books I have read by Mr McLay would seem to suggest that these are his milieu.  Then I realised, this is a different sort of book - this is a book about life.  So three books by one author and all in different genres - go on, you can tell us Craig McLay is the pseudonym for a writing group and each of these books has been written by a different member.

This is such a gentle story, told by one man about how he has ended up working in a bookshop when all he really wants is to find his perfect partner and settle down in to family life.  When aspiring actress Leah stumbles in to the eponymous Village Books it seems that fate has conspired to give him what he wants.  After all she is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen and she knows her literature, maybe that's why the first words out of his mouth are a proposal - sadly he is far too late as Leah is already engaged.  Just one more disappointment in a life ocnstructed of such.

What is so compelling about this book is the cast of characters that inhabit Village Books.  to say they are a disfunctional bunch of neurotics is doing them a disservice.  They are just a bunch of normal people thrown together in a work environment that just so happens to bring out the worst in them.  Whether it was the setting of a book store or the narration style I found myself comparing it to Caroline Kepsnes's You and although it is a vastly different storyline there is a symbiotic feel between the two stories; it also reminded me of the movie Empire Records with snatches of You've Got Mail.

I found it to be a joyful tale - even if the favoured drink in the local tavern is a horrible, cheap white cider that is derided here.  Yes, it is unrealistic in that everyone gets, eventually, their own happy ending but you know what, I like that.  I like that when you have such simple wishes for your future - ultimately each character doesn't want something unattainable - they can really come to pass.  There are ups and downs but, at the end of it all, you are left with a smile on your face and a sense of happy closure.

Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley

          It took me a little while to actually get in to the book as, initially, the words overpower the story.  The language and sentence construction I found to be initially offputting and it all smacked a little of a vanity project or as though this was a self-conscious attempt at writing literature.  After 20 or so pages I began to get used to the cadence of the narrator and realised that this wasn't the author intruding on the story, this was just the way that Richard was.  After 40 or so pages I couldn't have cared less, I was hooked deep in to the story.

There is something undeniably unsettling about the setting.  The lonely house on the Peak District moors, the barren field that once hosted a legendary oak tree.  The very remoteness of the setting puts you on edge and then to transplant a folk tale of a hanging bough and the shadowy Jack Grey on to this location just ups the ante even further.  Really The Beacons are just an adjunct to the tale, whilst Juliette sees them as vitally important and Richard dismisses them as charlatans to the reader I found they were neither here nor there.

What interested me was the relating of the changes in Ewan once he started at the village school.  How he moved from a happy, well adjusted child to a creature of fear was superbly handled and the parental confusion at this change in their little boy is well drawn on the page.  It is not so much his actions but his fear, his certainty that something is speaking to him, forcing him in to these behaviours and the way his parents initially dismiss his accounts and then start to fear this cuckoo in their midst that speaks to the reader.

The obsession of The Willoughby family is undoubtedly the oak tree.  It consumed Richard's father and now the search for evidence of it's existence seems to be consuming Richard.  There is something deeply unsettling about his obsessive digging in the barren field, perhaps more so than Juliette's obsession with contacting her dead son and her belief that he is still in the house.  The way in which grief has warped and worn them both is extremely well executed and heavily nuanced.

There is no, nice, neat little ending to the book.  In the tradition of the best ghost storys it leaves you on a knife edge.  Balanced between the nightmare the Willoughby's seem to now be accepting and inhabiting and the out and out shock value of that final sentence.  It leaves you wanting more and yet relieved that you can step out of the claustrophobic nightmare that is their home.

This book will stay with me for some time.  Not just because of how unsettling it all is but because of how cleverly crafted and constructed the story is.  There is no waste here, every word has been crafted to up the sense of unease and paranoia - maybe too well crafted as occassionally the author does peer through to the reader and spoils the tension.

THIS IS AN HONEST REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK PROVIDED BY READERS FIRST.
       

Three Little Truths by Eithne Shortall

          I found myself getting completely sucked in to the fictional world of Pine Road. It's not just the story of our three main protagonists, it's the story of the road itself.  How the neighbours rub along together and the disparate range of personalities that live there.  From the irascible Shay and his obsession with owning everything nine feet from the property to the controlling Bernie, this is a street populated by real characters; it could almost be your street (except your neighbours keep themselves to themselves).

Ostensibly the story is about three women:

Edie - Newly married, desperate for a child and struggling to fit in.  She comes across as exceptionally needy on the page but once you have endured her visit to the in-laws you do find yourself empathising with her rather than writing her off as pathetic.  Her obsession with making friends on the street and "fitting in" does grate but only because you find yourself wanting to shake her and tell her that she is valuable, that she is worthy.

Robin - Living back at home with her "four and three waters" year old son after leaving her disaster of a partner she is struggling to find her feet.  She is doing her best as a mother but after years with Eddy and his dodgy businesses finding a job is proving difficult and living with her mother and father has it's own challenges.  When she gets the chance at a new romance her past comes back to haunt her in ways she never imagined.

Martha - The newest resident of Pine Road and the one who seemingly has everything.  Appearances really do deceive though and she is still suffering from the trauma of the break in at their Limerick home and she is struggling to move on from what happened and move away from blaming her husband.  Couple this with the trials and tribulations of raising teenage daughters and life is somewhat of a powder keg.

The stories of the three women flow around each other and take in the other women of the street.  Make no mistake, this is a book about women.  Regularly interspersed with extracts from one or other of the many Whats App Group message threads that give you a real feeling for the other characters that live in the street.  My favourite has to be the oh-so-superior Bernie.  She really is that one character you love to hate.

So, the characters are strongly written and believable; what about the plot?  The plot is quite sinuous and discretely threaded through so that everything that happens feels organic and realistic.  The only problems I had with it was the use of coincidence and also the tendency the characters had to misconstrue events.  I know this made for a little bit of tension and misdirection but it just felt forced in places - particularly the sections dealing with "the man with soulful eyes".

On the whole, I thoroughly enjoyed the time spent on Pine Road.