November books

Date: 30 November 2009 19:43:33

The Dark Room by Minette Walters is a reasonably good read. Jane (Jinx) Kingsley is a successful photographer and she is also heir to a fortune. One day she wakes up in a psychiatric hospital after allegedly trying to kill herself. As the story unravels so does her amnesia and she starts to remember what really happened and who killed her ex-fiancee, her best friend and attempted to kill her. A good book with a rather predictable murderer in the end.

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Still Thinking of You by Adele Parks is a rather mediocre chick lit novel. Tash and Rich are newly engaged and go off skiing with his friends to get married. As their friendships unravel and friendship secrets come out their relationship starts to fall apart. It was an OK book but hard to feel sympathy for such unlikeable characters!!!

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The Chameleon's Shadow by Minette Walter is a great read, or a great listen in this case because I listened to it in the car on audio CD. Lieutenant Charles Acland is involved in a major incident in Iraq which kills two of his men and he ends up with a sever facial disfigurement. He returns to the UK and after lengthy operations and rehab he returns to London where he lives as a drop out until being roped into an investigation for the murder of three men. This is a fab story with some really interesting and well-developed character. I particularly liked the police doctor, Jackson, a big dyke of a woman who is a weightlifter in a spare time. She certainly took no shit but some of her comments in the story gave me laugh out loud moments. A fab book.

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Knit Two by Kate Jacobs is the sequel to the book The Friday Night Knitting Club which I reviewed here. I loved the first book but I found this one much harder to get into. Five years on from the death of the main character of the original book, Georgia Walker, the Friday Night Knitting Club is still going strong. The characters have moved on and life has changed for many of them. Despite it taking some time for me to get into this book, the things that drew me into the first book managed to grab me in this one too. The community and relationships that developed throughout trial and pleasure continue and this book ended up being a lovely read, but not quite as good as the first one.

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Can't find an image for the next one. Who Says I Can't by Catherine DeVrye is the memoir of her journey to finding her family. She was adopted as a baby in Canada and then her adoptive parents died when she was 21 years old. This book is the story of trying to find her birth family and her journey along the way. This book was an ok read. Not exactly earth-shattering and it read a little bit like a self-help book but it wasn't too bad.

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Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNab is a pretty horrifying true life story of the SAS's involvement behind enemy lines in Iraq. Andy McNab and eight members of his regiment were sed ona top-secret mission which went pretty badly wrong and they all ended up either captured or dead. Part of me wonders if this book is all factual. I hope it isn't, but I suspect it is. I don't agree with war to resolve issues but you cannot fail to be impressed with the men and women who go to war on behalf of their country.

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Espresso Tales by Alexander McCall Smith is the second in the 44 Scotland Street series that I reviewed here. I absolutely loved the first book and thought the characters were charming. I did love this book too, especially the character of Bertie, but it took a little longer for me to get into this one than the first book. Possibly it would be better to read them back to back to keep the characters and their development in mind. However, I love the way Alexander McCall Smith writes. His characters are beautiful and keep you guessing as to what is going to happen next. Lovely.

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I listened to Acid Row by Minette Walters in the car recently and it is a rather good story. It is about an estate somewhere-or-other and what happens when the residents find out that a paedophile has been rehoused there. That coupled with a young girl going missing nearby causes the estate to riot and barricade the estate, oh and a GP is held hostage by the paedophile and his mental father. A good story, but almost horrifying enough to be true. The only downside was that most of the CD's had a bit of damage on them so there was a minute or two of the story missing. Always the important bits of course!

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The Broker by John Grisham is a mediocre but OK book. I quite like John Grisham's novel but this didn't have the pace of some of his better ones, well not until the end anyway. The story follows a man who was convicted of defrauding the US government and received a length custodial sentence. He is unexpectedly pardoned by the outgoing President and he is shipped off to Italy where just about every superpower in the world is trying to kill him. It was ok but not one to re-read.

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