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.)