Book Review: THE UNDOING OF VIOLET CLAYBOURNE

Title: The Undoing of Violet Claybourne

Author: Emily Critchley

Publisher: Zaffre

Pages: 349

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

 

I love stories about houses, and so when this story came up, I was excited to read and review it.

 

When the story begins, Gillian McCune, an old woman in 1999, looks back on her childhood, particularly on the fateful days she spent as a guest at Thornleigh Hall, and the part she played in the events that took place there.

 

Gillian ‘Gilly’ Larking is in her sixth year at Heathcomb school when the privileged Violet Claybourne is admitted there, and they find themselves roommates. Gilly, with no real family and no good friends, is swept off her feet into Violet’s world. The friendship grows quickly with both girls believing in tandem with their Classics lessons, Nos Contra Mundam (Us against the world).

Invited to the Claybourne home, Thornleigh Hall, for Christmas, Gilly becomes enamoured with their world. There she meets Violet’s older sisters, Emmeline and Laura, and her parents, Giles and Olivia Claybourne. Gilly longs to have Emmeline and Laura see her as one of their own, as an equal. At every step, she tries to set herself apart from Violet, and closer to Emmeline and Laura, who are classist and believe themselves superior even to their sister, Violet.

Before the Christmas break is over, Thornleigh Hall will be beset by tragedy, with one life lost and another destroyed. What part will Gilly play in this travesty of justice?

 

The book is set in 1938, so the shadow of World War I still looms large over the characters. Lord Claybourne and many of the members of the police force have served in the war, but Frank Marks, a gameskeeper who lives on the grounds of Thornleigh Hall, has been a conscientious objector. As the book progresses, the characters find themselves in the middle of World War II.

 

This is a time when a woman is called upon to make a good marriage, then be a good wife and mother. It is against this background that the Claybourne family hopes that 22-year-old Emmeline will be wooed by the nearly forty-year-old Viscount Cadwallander, who might help save Thornleigh Hall from almost certain ruin.

 

The bulk of the story takes place between Christmas and New Year. The construction of the period was done well.

 

The book also makes a mention of post-partum depression and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), both conditions for which the medical science of the time might not have had satisfactory answers. Undoing is how Violet refers to the odd rituals she does “to undo what might happen.” The Undoing is Violet’s OCD. It is also a reference to how her life is undone, and how she seeks to undo that wrong.

 

The chapters end on a note of finality and expectation, inviting us to turn the page. I kept thinking about the events of this book even when I wasn’t reading it, especially about how far the characters deserved the fates that had befallen them.

 

 

The author has done a fine job with the descriptions of Thornleigh Hall, the Randolph Hotel, and Heathcomb school.

 

I can’t remember when I last detested a bunch of fictional people. I despised nearly all the main characters here. In the case of the narrator, Gilly, I must add that this was the first time that I began by liking a protagonist and then went on to change my mind about her. The author does make an effort to redeem her in our eyes, in a later part of the book, but it didn’t work for me.

 

Only the smaller characters like Frank Marks, a groundskeeper who lives on the property, and Robin, the fatherless son of Mary, the maid, and, to an extent, Violet, left a positive impression on me.

 

There are scenes featuring elaborate and intense gaslighting that are well written.

I also loved the resonance in the book, the parallels between Gilly and Robin. The fact that they have each lost a parent.

 

Gilly’s first meal with the Claybournes reveals their habits and characters, the sense of superiority they nurture in themselves. In true upper-class fashion, Laura and Emmeline insist that the foxes enjoy the fox hunt. “You can see it on their faces,” they say, in justification of their own pleasure and lifestyle. I couldn’t help reflecting on the hypocrisy of one of the sisters who hates any show of emotion but thinks nothing of the flutter of disgust that crosses her own face.

 

The colonial mindset is evident when Violet says about school, “We only learn sums, and which bits on the map still belong to us.”

 

Gilly, with her tendency to steal and lie, has her own flaws, making her believable.

 

I felt a sense of sorrow for Violet, for the ‘undoing’ of her at the hands of those she trusted. I hoped the book would not end on a note of wrongdoing and injustice. 

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: PORCELAIN (SHADOWS OF HYSTERIA)

Title: Porcelain (Shadows of Hysteria)

Author: Jesse Sprague

Publisher: Cursed Dragon Ship Publishing

Pages: 344

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

 

 

Gabrielle Cross is under therapy and medication to help her cope with the aftermath of a tragedy in the past. She has also previously been institutionalized. Ten years ago, when she was only nine, her parents were found brutally murdered, and she was found covered in their blood. She believed then that it was her porcelain doll, a family antique, that had killed them in order to protect her.

Now Gabrielle is trying to live a normal life, go to college, date. How long will it be before her past catches up with her?

When her date, Joe, takes her home on the very first date and pressures her for sex, she blacks out. When she wakes up, he is dead with stab wounds and noticeable strangulation marks, causing Gabrielle’s past to be brought to the fore again. She is filled with doubts and fears and the only two people who trust her are her half-brother, Michael, and her friend, Peter.

Meanwhile, Michael has begun a relationship with Cole Montez, a bisexual, divorced cop who is going through a bitter legal battle with ex-wife Joan for the custody of their 4-year-old daughter, Isa, while the banks threaten to foreclose on his house.

Then Cole is assigned the case. Will he be able to ensure justice for everyone?

 

As a child, Gabrielle believed that her doll had committed the murders. Now she is anxious to find answers. Is she really a murderer or could the doll be possessed by an evil spirit?

 

The book shines a spotlight on mental illness and schizophrenia. Peter is schizophrenic but has sought help and is doing well. Issues of mental health are written about in this book from a place of sensitivity and understanding.

 

The story is written in the 3^rd person past tense PoV of Gabrielle and Cole. For the greater part of the novel, the story shifted between the two PoVs in regularly alternating chapters. At the 38^th chapter, we get six consecutive chapters in Gabrielle’s PoV, causing the pace to flag a little bit.

 

The 3^rd person PoV of Gabrielle, with which the story began, drew me into the story. Unfortunately, the second chapter, where we get to know Gabrielle’s half-brother, Michael, through the eyes of his boyfriend, Cole, was completely unnecessary. This chapter appeared to have been put in just to bring us up to speed on the past. Michael tells his new boyfriend (and us) the story of their lives. This chapter nearly put me off reading the rest of the book.

 

Also Cole’s utter infatuation with Michael was something I found annoying. I almost gave up reading because of this thread in the story. Cole kept thinking that Michael was gorgeous which took away from the main story. Thankfully, the pace improved after the second chapter, and Cole kept his infatuation under wraps.

 

I found the two men, Michael and Cole, very boring and annoying. Lucinda ‘Cinder’, Gabrielle’s roommate and friend, was a minor character I liked straightaway for her loyalty and sense of friendship.

 

The author has a good style. The characterization, description, conflict and action are handled well. The description of Peter and Gabrielle standing atop the unfinished building had me feeling queasy. But the horror and supernatural elements were weak.

 

The book needed to be proofed better. Modicum is a noun, not an adverb as is used here.

 

After a few chapters, Gabrielle didn’t stay in ‘character’. She stopped mentioning her meds or repeating her affirmations.

 

Cole’s bisexuality was token, having no bearing on the main plot. Why didn’t the author just make him gay? The romance between Cole and Michael took up too much space.

 

Also, the doll could have been a lot more menacing. Once the investigation started, we didn’t see any evidence of the horror of the doll for ourselves. It was all in Gabrielle’s flashbacks. The doll on the cover of the book was quite creepy but we don’t get to see her inherently evil nature.

 

The doll’s relationship with Gabrielle is downplayed. Instead we get to see more of Cole and Michael, Cole and Joan, Gabrielle and Cinder, and Cole and Isa. Even Yolanda, Cole’s nanny, the most minor of the characters, gets more space here.

 

The dialogue and Gabrielle’s internal monologue get repetitive, with Gabrielle repeatedly wishing herself dead, and wondering if the doll is a part of her or external to her.

 

Despite the accusation of murder that hangs over her, Gabrielle isn’t put under surveillance. Additionally, Gabrielle’s extended conversation with Peter wasn’t as revelatory as she seemed to think it would be.

 

Isa is supposed to be 4, but I couldn’t sense her innocence. She appeared too grown up.

 

The resolution was weak. By the 82 percent mark, I had stopped caring about any of the characters. There were a number of questions that remained unanswered. Why was Joe killed a day after the horrible date? How did his death come about?

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: AND THE MOUNTAINS ECHOED

Title: And The Mountains Echoed

Author: Khaled Hosseini

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Pages: 466

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐½

When extreme poverty causes him to lose his child, Saboor, a hard-working Aghan from Shadbagh village, makes the difficult decision of giving up his daughter, Pari, to Suleiman and Nila Wahdati, the wealthy employers of his brother-in-law, Nabi, the brother of his second wife, Parwana. Four-year-old Pari and 10-year-old Abdullah were the children of his first wife, who died giving birth to Pari.

The decision buys the family respite against the terrible winter, but it leaves Abdullah heartbroken. Abdullah, despite his young age, has been almost a father to Pari, answering her every need and sacrificing everything for her.

It’s hard to describe the plot of this book, as it is more about Afghanistan, than about any specific characters. The book makes a character out of Afghanistan, its weather, the customs and traditions that dictate life in its villages and cities. The author evokes the difficulties emerging from the hard life and the toll it exacts.

The language is earthy and relatable. The story begins in Afghanistan, but it might as well have begun in an Indian village; it felt that familiar. The writing, especially in scenes featuring Abdullah and Pari, evoked innocence and childlike wonder.

Some lines that stood out for me:

Beauty is an enormous unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.

If culture was a house, then language was the key to the front door.

The decline of one’s own body is incremental, as nearly imperceptible as it is insidious.

 

I had been looking forward to this book, especially because I loved The Kite Runner. But while the sensibility is the same, this book didn’t touch me like that one had.

So many questions were left unanswered. Abdullah’s chapter had ended with his resolve to go to Kabul and look for Pari. His days in Shadbagh, he decides at the end of the chapter that explores his story, are numbered. The next we hear of him, he is a hotelier in the US. The author never brings us up to speed on him. Did he end up going to Kabul? If not, why not? What were his growing up years like? How did he reach the US? We are told almost nothing about a little boy we, as readers, have loved and latched on to.

 

After we get attached to Abdullah and Pari, the PoV turns to that of Nabi. We read a long letter, spanning whole chapters, written by him to a plastic surgeon, Markose, telling him about all that transpired in the past and more recently. Markose lives rent-free in his home, the home he inherited from Suleiman.  

From there we read of Parwana’s childhood with her twin sister, Masooma, and the tragedy that she allowed, and the guilt she carries all her life. Then we meet cousins, Idris and Timur, now Americans, whose families were once neighbours of the Wahdatis in Kabul.

Then the story takes us to Paris, where Nila has moved with Pari. We read about Pari’s childhood, adulthood, her subsequent marriage, her kids and her life. This story is followed by that of Markose, from his childhood, his friendship with Thalia, the daughter of his mother’s best friend, his own fraught relationship with his mother.

Then we have the story of Adel, the son of a war criminal, and Gholam, the grandson of Saboor. And finally, we have the story of Abdullah’s daughter, Pari, named for the sister he lost. The story of the younger Pari was the one I related to the least. Not because of any flaw in it, but because by then I was yearning for the siblings to be united.  

It felt exhausting getting into the skin of so many characters and never staying with any of them. From Abdullah and Pari, to Nabi, Suleiman and Nila, then Idris and Timur Bashiri, the stories have a tenuous connection. They are all parts of a whole.

The end of each section, Abdullah’s, Nabi’s, Idris’s and Nila’s, left me with a vague sense of loss and disappointment. Through each story, we went further away from Abdullah and Pari.

The book was beautiful but I longed for Abdullah and Pari to be united. I was disappointed it took so long, and with the manner in which it happened.

 

 

Book Review: THE LAST MRS SINCLAIR

Title: The Last Mrs Sinclair

Author: TJ Emerson

Publisher: Boldwood Books

Pages: 378

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐½

 

Twenty-four-year-old Leah Rose Williams is beautiful and she knows it. Stuck in a boring job, while living in a cramped apartment, she focuses on attracting rich, older men, hoping that a relationship will be her ticket to a better life. She has just dumped Nick, a married man she had been seeing, after he suggested going serious with the relationship.

Leah’s mother has taught her to believe that “All relationships are based on power, not love.” That she must “Step up and claim your power and, once you’ve got it, never ever give it away.” That “You are the prize, Leah. Always remember that.”

In just six weeks, Leah gets into a relationship with Miles Sinclair, 30 years her senior, who whisks her off to his family home in Chateau Clairvallon in France for a short vacation, and then proposes to her there. Soon he fixes up the wedding day in August.

Leah believes that finally she will have the life she was born to. The life she lost after her dad squandered her mom’s inheritance and deserted them.

Leah is thrilled beyond measure.

Though she does not love Miles, she is looking forward to the wealth that will soon be hers. For the sake of the wealth, she puts up with Miles’ age and the fact that he is still grieving the loss of his wife, Riley, who fell down to her death from the roof of Chateau Clairvallon.

At the chateau, Leah meets Miles’ cousin, Vivienne, who is mourning the death of her husband, Dom. Vivienne is now acting as Miles’ housekeeper at the chateau.

Excited about her turn of fortune, Leah prepares for her new life. But she cannot shake away the shadow of what happened to Riley? Was her death an accident or was it murder? And if it was murder, as the rumours in the village say, is she in danger too?

 

The book reminded me of Rebecca with Chateau Clairvallon being Manderley. At first I thought it was a retelling of Rebecca, but while the basic premise is similar, this one is different. The book is written in four parts, in the present tense PoV of Leah and Vivienne. It starts in May of an unnamed year, then continues up to July in two parts. The third and fourth parts pick up the story from August until the end.

 

The ‘last’ Mrs Sinclair has dual connotations, and the narrative does a good job of keeping us hooked on the stories of both Mrs Sinclairs.

The Prologue and the Epilogue were both done very well; the former grabbed my attention and pulled me into the story. While the book began on an exciting note, the middle, an extended section, lost steam, dragging the pace.

The chapters are dated only by month. It would have been better to date them too, so we would have some kind of countdown to the wedding, which is a critical point in the story.

The plot perked up at the 81% mark and then things began to happen in rapid succession. The final third was a huge improvement on the middle. 

I didn’t like Leah, nor any of the characters. But they were real and relatable.  In the end, though, I did feel a sense of pity for one of the characters.

There are themes like love, sex, incest, greed, wealth and power addressed in the book. There are some overly explicit sex scenes in the story, making this book unsuitable for younger readers.

We don’t know the year in which the book is set, only the month. But it seems to be a contemporary time, given that people have mobile phones and Internet, so Leah’s references (twice) to “freshening up between my legs”, instead of showering, sound weird, gross and unnecessary.

There are lots of proofing errors. Vivienne is referred to as Miles’ mother in one sentence.

A good thriller in spite of the issues.

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: THE DINNER PARTY

Title: The Dinner Party

Author: Nina Manning

Publisher: Boldwood Books

Pages: 268

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐

 

Just five years into their marriage, Lily and Stig Leonard find themselves having drifted apart. To mark their fifth anniversary, Lily books them a dinner reservation at a restaurant owned and run by celebrity chef, Hector Bolson-Woods. But the differences between them are too deep to be fixed by a dinner. Stig wants to be a father, but Lily doesn’t want to start a family until he tells her about his family and his past. Plus they are both deeply in debt, living on credit.

The evening ends with Hector cooking a meal especially for the couple. While Lily is pleased, Stig is not. But then Hector donates 20,000 pounds to the charity that Lily works for and invites them to dinner at his home.

Before long, Lily is second guessing herself, completely struck by Hector’s charm and feeling increasingly distanced from Stig. Will Lily ever learn about Stig’s past?

 

The story is written in the first person present tense PoV of Lily and the 3^rd person PoV of Stig.

In the early part of the book, the author kept up a high sense of intrigue. Even though nothing untoward happened, I got a sense of something about to go terribly wrong. The plot held my interest until the 46 percent mark, when it began to veer off course. Thereafter it began to pall.

Suddenly Lily, who wasn’t that likeable a character to begin with, appeared to be small-minded and petty. None of the characters were likeable or memorable.

There is mild swearing, which puts me off.

The back-of-the-book text was misleading. It says, “And then another dinner invitation from Hector arrives. This time with a proposal neither Lily or Stig can refuse.” Aside from the grammatical issue in that sentence, it is also incorrect as Stig declines immediately after hearing of the proposal.

There were a number of proofing and factual errors. Stig swallows a banana “without barely chewing”. Ruby is described as a woman “who just want to party and be liked.” In one chapter we are told “ten minutes passes”.

Thing One and Thing Two are from Dr Seuss’ books, not Dr Zeus, as is mentioned in the book.

Lily’s incessant complaints against Stig’s secrecy were a pain, considering her own secrets which she justified to herself. Her internal monologue droned on and on.

The antagonist turned out to be a damp squib. It never seemed as if Lily faced any real danger.

The resolution was forced and unsatisfactory. There were many unanswered questions. The repeated forewarnings and ominous remarks issued by some characters to Lily don’t get explained. I was left equally confused about why Lily felt an odd sense of comfort in the presence of Jack, Hector’s head of security, when the guy never justifies his presence in the book. 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: SEEMS PERFECT

Title: Seems Perfect

Author: Rebecca Hanover

Publisher: Lake Union Publishing

Pages: 267

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

When a debilitating injury and subsequent surgery leave 32-year-old yoga teacher Emily Hawthorne unable to work or pay her utility bills or her mortgage, she decides to advertise for a paying roommate to share her one-bedroom apartment. Penelope ‘Pip’ Stone answers the ad, and Emily can see that she seems perfect. Pip is affable, friendly and hard-working.

But then Pip moves in too much stuff and a preteen daughter, Sophie, that Emily knows nothing about. With her only living relative, Aunt Viv, living with dementia in an assisted living facility, and having broken up with her fiancé, Seth, out of fear that she might die of cancer as her parents did, Emily is all alone. She is fair game for Pip who quickly begins a devious game of manipulation and gaslighting, taking worse liberties.

Will Emily ever be rid of Pip? Will she get her house back?

The story is written in the first person PoV of Emily, besides occasional 3^rd person PoVs of Pip and Sophie. The 3^rd person PoVs were the author’s way of humanizing Pip and explaining why she is the way she is, but I hated her all the same.

Right away we know that Pip spells bad news, but Emily ignores all the red flags. She comes across as naïve. She has the most basic password on her wi-fi. I dislike stupid Main Characters, and Emily was just that. She kept making allowances for Pip’s wrongdoing, and that made me want to tear out my hair.

But of course, if she wasn’t stupid, we’d have no story. But it would have been better if there had been some other way in which Emily had found herself sharing her home with Pip.

Breaking up with her fiancé because she fears dying of cancer is another weak angle. Today there are tests that can reveal one’s risk profile for cancer.

I strongly wanted to DNF this book. Emily was just so annoying in her naivete. Even when she takes action to reclaim her home and her life, the solutions she comes up with are rather daft. The only reason why I kept reading was because I felt invested in the situation. Emily only pulled up her socks at the 27% mark. Even then, there was no explanation for why she didn’t confide in best friend, Ally, or her ex-fiancé, Seth.

At one point, she tells us that Pip has isolated her from her best friend and fiance, but that is not true. Emily herself takes the decision to resolve the problem by herself. 

The author has a tendency to overwrite a point long after it’s been made. Towards this end, she provides too many details over and over again.

Emily describes herself as a yogi. The right word is yogini. A yogi refers to a male practitioner of yoga. Also, yogic breath is not a thing. Yogic technique of breathing, or even yogic breathing, would be more accurate.

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: THE WRITER'S JOURNEY: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE LITERARY GREATS

Title: The Writer's Journey: In the Footsteps of the Literary Greats

Author: Travis Elborough

Publisher: White Lion Publishing

Pages: 343

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

I loved the premise of this book. The role of the journey and its potential for amassing research about character, description and settings alike as well as its potential for offering a fresh perspective.

Many of the writers included in these pages have uncovered a new story or book, or even a new career as a writer, from their journeys.

Of course, it’s written from a Western lens, so the author tells us about the dangers of dying of dysentery, cholera etc. Also, most of the writers are either American or European.

Incidentally, JK Rowling, the only living author, among deceased writers, most of whom lived in earlier centuries, was out of place. The criteria for choosing authors to feature in the book remains unclear.

The layout of the book is designed like a tabloid, with a long headline, mostly alliterative, and a sketch of the writer’s face in monochrome. Below this masthead are small icons of the mode of transportation employed by the writer, followed by the text in double column. The text is interspersed with maps, aerial photos of the location etc.

The writers are included in alphabetical order, which led to a sense of disconnect between the chapters.

The purpose behind each writer’s journey is varied:

Holiday/Outing: Hans Christian Andersen, Bram Stoker, Virginia Woolf

Son’s education: Maya Angelou

Sent by a publication: WH Auden and Christopher Isherwood, Zora Neale Hurston

Research: Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens

Write a travel book: Graham Greene

Work: Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville, JK Rowling

Recuperation: Jane Austen, Elizabeth Bishop, Gustave Flaubert, Federico Garcia Lorca

Escaping from danger: James Baldwin

To improve his character: Charles Baudelaire

Travel and adventure: Basho aka Matsuo Kinsaku, Jack Kerouac, Katherine Mansfield

 

The reasons I found most interesting were those of:

Lewis Carroll: went to Russia to build bridges with the Eastern Orthodox Church

Arthur Conan Doyle: went to Switzerland to get an idea for killing the character of Sherlock Holmes.

F Scott Fitzgerald: went to Paris because the cost of living was cheaper there than in the US.

Jack London: went to the Yukon to take advantage of the Gold rush.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery: took on the Transcontinental Flying Race.

Sam Selvon: went to London to fulfil his literary ambitions. 

The book doesn’t really spell out how the location led to the writing, just that here’s place A which was written about in book B. I would have liked something more detailed.

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: THE SECRETS OF GOOD PEOPLE

Title: The Secrets of Good People

Author: Boo Walker with Peggy Shainberg

Publisher: Lake Union Publishing

Pages: 380

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

 

Catherine Thomas, a medical illustrator, is swept into an unexpected, if slightly tepid, romance with Dr Frank Overbrook, who is 20 years older. An orphan and friendless, she is overjoyed when he proposes. They move to a quiet Florida village where Frank will take over the small practice of his old college classmate, retiring doctor Dr Sandy Westerling, while using the downtime to write a medical textbook.

The couple are welcomed by their new friends in the village. But on the morning after the celebratory party held in their honour, Frank is found dead. Which of their new friends would have wanted him dead?

Was it Miriam Arnett or her husband, the wheelchair-bound David, or the blind sculptor, Sylvie Nye? Or was it Dr Sandy or his nurse Glenna Greely? Or the heavily pregnant Amber and her husband, Levi, who seem to be hiding out here? Or worse, could the killer be Catherine herself? Detective Quentin Jones has his hands full solving this crime.

 

The book is written in the 3^rd person omniscient point of view.

 

Jones wasn’t impressive in the least. The book is set in February 1970, so much of the investigation is understandably dependent on repeated questioning. But I never got the sense that he owned the interrogation. The manner in which he asks for permission to record conversations could have been handled better.

Also, some of the dialogues were cringe-inducing, causing Jones to come off as a prig. I don’t think that was the intended effect. The entire island showed that they didn’t care two hoots about his authority. He kept making promises to return.

The narrative voice, and even Jones’ boss, make it a point to din it into our heads that Jones is very good at his job because he thinks like a criminal, and that he has an impressive track record of solving cases. But I couldn’t find any evidence of his talents in this case. Thankfully his character improved as the book progressed, and he became slightly less insufferable. Only slightly.

The only two characters I thought were well drawn were Catherine and Miriam. The others were all flat and uninteresting. The characters I liked the least were Sylvie and Quentin. Their interactions took away from the intensity of the book.  

The book started off really well, and the murder happened early on, and I found myself settling down for a gripping read. But then the pace slowed down, thanks to the long backstories that were provided for every character, and precious little happened in the present, until more than half the book was done. The story didn’t advance in any way.

Detective Jones himself was introduced to us by way of a long scene at a bar, and an introduction to three old cops and a woman that Jones used to date. This entire scene could have been eliminated. Neither the woman nor the three cops show up again, but the book included their backstories too.

There was a twist at the end, but one that I’d seen coming. So the conclusion wasn’t as satisfying as I’d hoped it would be.

There were a lot of proofing errors in the Kindle edition. At one point, the author says of a newborn baby: “The baby had a churlish smile.” Babies don’t smile until they are some months of age. Besides the factual inaccuracy, the idea of describing a baby’s smile as churlish makes no sense.

 

I found this line quite interesting:

Every little animal, when set loose for the first time, dashes wildly to be sure it is really free.

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: THE KEEPER OF THE KEY

Title: The Keeper of the Key

Author: Nicole Willson

Publisher: Parliament House Press

Pages: 286

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

 

Heed the Dead or Join Them, said the warning on the cover, and I braced myself for a good read.

When 16-year-old Rachel Morley’s mother, Tara, decides to accept boyfriend Geoff’s invitation to move into his mansion, Morgan House, in St Mary’s, Rachel feels uprooted. When they get to Morgan House, Rachel gets the creeps. She can’t help feeling that someone is watching her. Soon strange things begin to happen.  She feels a strange presence in the house and hears odd noises.

Her mother, eager to build a future with Geoff, hopes Rachel will settle. But that won’t be easy as Geoff has lots of rules, the strangest of which is that Rachel is never to go into the basement.

Luckily what makes her new town bearable is the presence of Nick Alexander, a good-looking guy who takes Rachel to the cemetery on their first date. Suddenly, the town of St Mary doesn’t feel so unbearable. The only trouble is that Morgan House seems more dangerous than ever. Each night she has horrible dreams about something evil in the basement, and a strangely familiar man whose face she can’t see, then wakes up to find herself in the basement, even though she doesn’t remember having gone there.

The book is written in the 1^st person present tense PoV of Rachel. The author creates a sense of dread. The eerie atmosphere weighs us down. The writing evokes the right imagery. The pace is good. Even though I guessed the source of the mystery, I still continued reading.

 

Geoff is a pain from the beginning, at least to Rachel. But he comes across as one-dimensional. Initially, there is nothing to redeem him in Rachel’s eyes.

The mother’s character could have been a little stronger. She doesn’t seem to have any agency of her own. She tells Rachel to give Morgan House a shot, and that if she doesn’t like it, they will leave. But then when Rachel expresses her misgivings, she still won’t move.

Another time, she tells Rachel that if she is not happy with Geoff’s proposal, she will decline. But then, she accepts the proposal. In both instances, Rachel settles down and makes peace with her decision. Which is a letdown, given her fierce desire to leave.

They don’t decide to leave until the very end. They should have at least made an attempt to leave.

Overall, I felt that there should have been more scenes with Rachel and her mother together, without Geoff around. We don’t get to see the mother-daughter dynamic enough. Also, Rachel mentions her father initially, but then halfway through the book, she comes to know something about her dad that she hadn’t known and that detail seemed forced. Having come to know of that fact, Rachel stops stressing over it, and doesn’t mention it again. This is strange, given that relationships play a huge part in this book.  

There were some things that weren’t clear.

Why was Rachel targeted? Just because she lived in the house?

What was the deal about the key in the title? Why does that key show up so late?

Rachel talks about another kind of ghost, when friendships fizzle out. I found this very sad. She knows that best friend, Elena, will soon forget her. On the other hand, Rachel herself forgets about Elena, once she meets Nick. 

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: BEST CLIMATE CHANGE STORIES

Title: Best Climate Change Stories: An Anthology of Original Short Fiction

Editor: Ron Sauder

Publisher: Secant Publishing

Pages: 296

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

The book is the result of a collaboration between Book Bin, an independent bookstore, and Secant Publishing, an independent book publisher. Philip Wilson from Book Bin and Ron Sauder from Secant held a worldwide contest with the idea of creating awareness on the subject of climate change through the power of literary art. The contest elicited entries in a variety of genres, including humour, horror, suspense, satire, science fiction and social realism. 

This collection includes 34 of those stories, with authors from 9 countries and 10 American states. Three stories were selected as Gold, Silver and Bronze winners.

Here are the stories I liked:

1)        Beyond The Timberline by Olaf Lahayne, winner of the BRONZE medal, started with a bang, sounding a note of warning. Two men, a Swiss national and an Italian, ascend the Alps and see a pine tree growing at a height far above its known range. Both are a little too eager to claim the tree for their own nations. This friendly tussle leads to an amazing conclusion. 

Even after their drinking water is over, the first warning sign, they do not learn their lesson. They pull their zippers down and urinate on the tree. All thoughts of something precious, a sacred natural heritage, gone out of their minds.

While we spar, we doom ourselves. Instead of taking pride in our collective achievements, we fight over them. The story pivots on a huge note of hubris.

 

2)        2100, Remnants of a Thriving World by BE Saunders was a story I really liked. The unnamed narrator, a woman in her 60s, is fleeing Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, with her daughter and grandchildren after the city is repeatedly flooded, as a fallout of climate change. The destruction of their home sees them heading to an unknown destination to a fate as migrants. The line, “The time had come to succumb to the waves, one way or another,” reminds us that they have no recourse but to consign their future to the waves. They will either be led to a new home or die trying to get there.

 

3)        Adaptive Solutions by Karly Foland: A couple are raising their six-year-old daughter in a horrible nightmare of a world in which all animals, birds and insects have abandoned humans to recede back into the wilderness. Mankind’s failure to practice stewardship and harmony has led to our undoing. Now there is no animal produce in our food, no animals as pets, no animals or birds to be seen or heard. This story was beautifully written, steeped in guilt, defiance and hope.

 

4)        Desert Fish by KM Watson (SILVER medal winner): Valeria, a young immigrant girl from Guatemala, is befriended by Sofia, an elderly woman, herself once an immigrant from Mexico. Valeria’s family has been displaced by climate change, which made agriculture impossible in their home country. Sofia shows Valeria the desert fish which survive and thrive in the smallest pond of water in the desert, setting the girl an example of hope.

This story reminds us of the social cost of climate change. The descriptions here were so beautiful that I could actually imaging the desert setting.

5)        In Times of Change, Root Down to Rise Up by Jessica Marcy: This story was written from the PoV of an old oak tree. It tells us about the history of the land in which it is rooted. The tree has the voice of an old African tree, immersed in the pride of Black heritage and the sufferings of black people, tied in with the issue of climate change. 

 

6)        Leave No Trace by Lee Clontz: In a world in which the nZika virus is fatal, a father’s attempt to celebrate his vaccine allergic 10-year-old son’s birthday with a camping trip nearly ends badly. I liked this one.

7)        Noah’s Great Rainbow by AA Rubin (GOLD medal winner): The skies have turned grey on account of a stratospheric injection to dim the sun’s heat and deflect it into space, The narrator, a painter, has been tasked with painting the ceiling of the town hall. He paints it in the colours of Noah’s rainbow to symbolize a commitment never to do anything to harm the earth again.

 

8)        Sea Burial by Lee Nash: A beautiful story about a family torn apart and how it sews itself, with one stranger disrupting the family, and another healing it. 

 

9)        The Amuse-Bouche by Dean Engel: The Amuse-bouche sees the only surviving member of a protected oyster species sacrificed for a conservationist’s libido. The amount of detail in this story was amazing.

 

10)   First Can on Mars by VM Sawh: An influencer, hailing from an ultra-rich family, rushes off to Mars, seeking to build her brand even from there.

 

Stories that were good but could have been improved

1)        American Mangroves by Paul Briggs is set in the 2060s, when the world's mangroves have been washed away to sea. The world has woken up to the need to cultivate mangroves as a way to safeguard nature's legacy and the future of mankind. Unfortunately it is already too late, as is evidenced by the evidence of hidden graves found in the dead forest, proof that mankind's future will echo its past, unless something is done. Against this potential disaster is framed the condition of the black community, enslaved by white plantation owners, literally trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea. I thought this story could have been improved. there was no immediate connection apparent between the loss of the mangroves and the protection of the gravesites.

 

2)        Bitter Almonds by Andrea Dejean: As a result of climate change, the growth patterns of plants and the behavioural patterns of animals are both altering. This story, though nice, was too short to make its point.

 

3)        Blood by PH Zietsman: The earth has stopped yielding a harvest of any kind. Hungry and increasingly desperate, the world is grappling with violence and a decline of the social order. The media supports Big Pharma’s drive to profit off this nightmare.

 

4)        Blue Cassandra by Douglas Arvidson: After a spate of storms have battered a portion of the mainland into an island, a few school children and their teachers are surviving on the roof of the school building. When an unmanned boat approaches, it raises their hopes. 

 

5)        Brownian Motion by Cedric Rose: The story started well and the descriptions were beautiful but it seemed to end abruptly, not only with no conclusion, but without even addressing the threatened conflict.

 

6)        Dislocation by Clare D Becker: The encroachment of the sea into the land has downgraded real estate prices and affected families and marriages everywhere. Venice has completely gone underwater. In Boston, Dante Bartolomeo hopes he can win the Boston Canals Gondola Race, and that the prize money will convince his wife, Aida, not to leave. In the end, no amount of prize money can stave off destruction.

I liked this line: Humanity cannot imagine its own extinction.

7) Landslide by Catherine Chaddic: An earth-shattering event in Austria, her birthplace, forces a woman to reconsider her choice of career.

8) Planet Suite by Martin Phillips: The story consisted of vignettes in the lives of three sets of characters whose lives have been upended by climate change. Dominic, a successful baker in Brittany, France, finds his business ruined on account of frequent floods. Patti and Hank Roberts and their friends in Oregon find themselves homeless on account of wildfires. Keida Kater in Northern Mali finds his entire life upended by a severe drought.

9) PLaNT Man by Maura Morgan: Nate, a climatologist, employs unconventional and illegal methods to address the problem of climate change.

10) Raymond and Ruby by Ian Inglis: This story blended the problem of climate change with crime. Raymond, unhappy in his marriage with Ruby, decides to kill her. Both of them have become irritable on account of the increasing heat. This story leaned more on the side of crime rather than climate change.

11) Symbiosis by Brian Brennan: Symbiosis is about a future civilization in which the rich and powerful justify the breeding of the babies of the poor in order to serve their nutritional needs. A good story. But given the amount of world building, this has the potential to become a novella.

12) The Captain of the Fleet by David Poyer: This story blended the climate change element with horror. Unfortunately, neither genre was very strong.

13) When the Water Starts to Rise by Jennifer Gryzenhout: This story was well written, but it ended abruptly.

14) Wildfire by Nicola Billington: An impactful story in just two pages.

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)