September books

Date: 30 September 2009 18:59:39

The Absent Wife by Karen Gillece is quite a sad book about a woman called Jean Quick who disappeared 18 years ago leaving her husband and two young children. They had little contact with her during this time, but they receive a telephone call from a young woman called Star who tells them that Jean has died, but also that she was Jean's daughter. The story is told from differing perspectives and flicks back and forth in time periods. I was left feeling a little bit disappointed by this book. It felt quite unfinished and the characters left me cold, and I wanted to empathise with them, but just found them all incredibly selfish and irritating!!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

2nd Chance by James Patterson is a brilliant really fast-moving detective crime novel. It is set in San Franscisco and opens with the shooting of a little black girl outside her church. There follows a series of murders, all of which appear to be racially related, but there is also something else that links the cases. James Patterson is the master of these sorts of stories and I really like the fact he writes in such short chapters as it means I can easily put the book down and pick it up again without losing my place!!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Beach House by James patterson & Peter de Jonge is quite a good book but it has the most improbable and rushed ending. Jack Mullen is training to be a lawyer and things are going quite well until his young brother is washed up on the shore and he is pronounced as having died from drowning. Jack does his own investigations and uncovers a sinister story of pornography, corruption, beating and deaths. Quite a good read, but 2nd Chance is better!!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Wedding Officer by Anthony Capella is both a rather sweet romance novel and a historical story. Set in 1944 in Naples Captain James Gould is sent out to become the 'wedding officer', dealing with the British servicemen who are marrying the local prostitutes. Rather predictably he ends up meeting and falling in love with his own Italian woman, although in this case she isn't a prostitute! Much like Capella's previous novel The Food of Love there is a huge focus on the local cuisine. Unlike the Food of Love I didn't absolutely love The Wedding Officer. It was a nice enough book but was extremely slow going at the beginning and therefore I will be sending it off to be Bookcrossed.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Vanished Man by Jeffrey Deaver is a masterclass in crime writing. A gifted illusionist becomes a killer who tricks law enforcement agencies into missing clues through magic, misdirection and illusion. It has a cracking pace and there are so many twists and turns it almost become hard to follow, but somehow the story hangs together. The story explains some of the tricks of the trade, but most of all it is a great read. Well worth getting hold of if you like this genre of story.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Good War by Patrick Bishop is a really mediocre Second World War Novel. I picked it up in one of the shops in Hay-on-Wye and thought it looked like a good read but it was just disappointing. The characters weren't well developed enough to be likeable and the story kind of dragged until the last few chapters or so. Not one to bother with really!!!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Model Wife by Julia Llewellyn is a really nice chick lit book. Poppy is a 22-year-old model who meets and falls in love with a married man, Luke. She falls pregnant and Luke leaves his wife and moves in and marries Poppy. Luke's ex-wife starts writing a newspaper column about her divorce and The Bimbo. This book was quite clever because it addressed lots of things from affairs, to being a single-parent and drugs. There were some laugh out loud moments and I really enjoyed it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I listened to Things I Want my Daughter to Know by Elizabeth Noble on audio book. It is a lovely, lovely book to listen to when driving around. When Barbara realises that her time on earth is running out due to her cancer she sets about writing to her four, very different daughters. She effectively writes all the things that she will never be able to tell them, all the things she has learnt and the advice that she would like to give them should she be able to stay with them. I absolutely loved the characters in this book. They were well developed and they felt so different and yet their families ties were beautifully explained. Interestingly the reviews on Amazon of the paper book are very varied but somehow listening to it gave the story more space and time to develop and I loved it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I also tried to listen to My Friend Leonard by James Frey but I only made it though half of the first CD before deciding that I couldn't bear to listen to a minute more, let along another 10 hours of it. I think I found the voice of the guy reading it very irritating, but more than that I found the narrative unbelievably annoying. Short sentences, often repeating each other, or the phrases in the previous sentence. I just couldn't do it!!! I think I might be able to read the book but I definitely couldn't listen to it!!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Running for the Hills by Horatio Clare is a curious little book. It is a kind of novelised memoir of Horatio's childhood growing up in a ramshackle farm in Wales. Prior to his birth he charts his parents love affair, both with each other but also with the farm, right through his childhood and his parents separation. A lot of the story is about sheep, feeding them, lambing, death and eating them. It is a charming book, rather rambly in places but that kind of seemed to fit with both the childhood the author had, but also his relationship with his parents. At times they seem rather disjointed, and other times they are a tight unit. A lovely, if rather unusual read.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I read The Stepmother by Carrie Adams expecting some schmaltzy chick-lit bollocks. What I got instead was a great read with some rather insightful observation into the trials and tribulations of being a stepmother. What I also got was the perspective from the first wife and a rather fascinating comparison between the two. Much to my surprise it was a really good read without it being saccharine sweet and trite. All in all a good chick-lit.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chasing the Dime by Michael Connelly is a cracking and fast-paced thriller. Life gets a little weird for computer and science genius Henry Pierce when he moves to a new flat and starts getting lots of phone calls for a prostitute to has disappeared. Unable to stop himself from trying to find out what has happened to her he becomes embroiled in a nasty and dark conspiracy. A great read!

------------------------------------------------------------------------