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: 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 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 MURDERESS

Title: The Murderess

Author: Laurie Notaro

Publisher: Little A

Pages: 367

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

When two stinking trunks make their way to Union station, the porters have no idea what they contain. Only that they are bleeding and that the stench is overpowering. Mrs Ruth Judd claims that the trunks contain books belonging to her husband, Dr Judd. But she doesn’t have the key to the trunks. When the trunks are opened, they are found to contain the bodies of Agnes Anne LeRoi and Hedvig (Sammy) Samuelson. Now Ruth is on the run, declared a fugitive and wanted for the murders of the two women.

But who is Ruth? Married to a much older man, who she addresses as Doctor throughout their marriage, Ruth is swept into an affair with Jack Halloran, the neighbour of the Fords, in whose household she serves as a nanny. At the same time, she befriends Anne and Sammy, and the three women help each other through challenges.

But as the heat rises in Phoenix, Arizona, we see passions get inflamed, until the time comes when confrontation becomes inevitable, leaving the police to probe the question of how Ruth came to be responsible for the murders of two of her closest friends who she loved?

 

The greater part of the book is set around the late 1920s and 1930s. the past tense omniscient narrative is interspersed with newspaper stories and Ruth’s first person past tense account. Ruth’s account takes us back to 1923, when she is a young girl, slowly leading up to the present.

 

I was drawn to the book from the very first paragraph when the trunks are found. Soon we meet Ruth and know that she is responsible for this. The mystery lies in why she killed her two dearest friends. What follows is an intense story of passion and intrigue, as the police attempt to piece together the puzzle. This is the early 1930s, so a lot of the forensic technology and techniques available today are not in place.

The period comes with its own challenges, when tuberculosis could kill you. We learn about the challenges that Ruth faces, her tuberculosis, her husband’s opioid addiction, her loneliness, among other things. We learn also about the circumstances that people faced in that time, with the Depression looming large, the challenges faced by single women, the outlawing of homosexuality. In 1927, Ruth says, “people were still spending money like mad then,” reminding us that the Great Depression is still in the future.

The weather in Phoenix is as powerful as a character, influencing and driving Ruth on. The weather, combined with her loneliness, her struggle between choosing her own happiness with Jack and worrying about her lack of faithfulness to her husband (she is, after all, a pastor’s daughter), her dependence on substances to tackle the challenges she faces and her failing mental health (the illness runs in the family; her mother is eventually institutionalized too), all egg her on to make dubious choices.

 

 

The author pulls off the unimaginable, helping us to see the murderess as a flawed human. Despite the gory nature of the crime, the author treats it in a manner that is neither prurient nor base. I couldn’t help feeling an inexplicable feeling of compassion for Ruth as she slowly loses her mind. Ruth herself describes it as a ‘wire running through her.’

The crime may inspire revulsion, but Ruth’s story demands attention. Through flashbacks, we get to know how Ruth, Anne and Sammy become friends. We see the exact moment at which the situation changes for Ruth, hurtling her and the others to their inevitable fate.

Ultimately, the Murderess is one of us, like us. The book reminds us, as it did the staff at the matrons in the prison, how close we may be to having our own wires stretched too taut. It reminds us that there is a very thin line between mental health and mental illness. 

 

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

Book Review: THE SILENT PATIENT

Title: The Silent Patient

Author: Alex Michaelides

Publisher: Celadon Books

Pages: 336

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐

Alicia Berenson, a famous painter, married to a famous fashion photographer, Gabriel, is living the good life. They have a beautiful home, a happy life together. And yet, one day, Alicia, seemingly without any provocation, shoots her husband at point-blank range, paints a picture, says the single word, Alcestis, and then refuses to speak a single word after that.

Alicia is sentenced to a secure facility called the Grove for treatment. Criminal psychotherapist Theo Faber applies for a job at the Grove. He is anxious to heal Alicia, nay, obsessed; it would be the greatest achievement of his career. Berenson, the eponymous Silent Patient, hasn’t spoken a word six years after shooting her husband to death. Her only conscious act since being caught has been a naked self-portrait with the title, Alcestis.

Theo needs to get at the bottom of Alicia’s motivation, why she committed that dreadful act of violence against a husband she loved so much. Meanwhile, no one knows about Theo’s motivation for wanting to uncover her motive.

 

The book is written in the first person past tense PoV of Theo and the first person past tense events in Alicia’s life, as mentioned in her diary. Theo’s account of his investigation into Alicia’s state of mind and the events in his own life alternate with Alicia’s account. There are a lot of parallels between these two first-person accounts. Theo says he was saved by Katie, just as Alicia writes in her diary that she was saved by Gabriel.

Given the author’s Greek parentage, there are Greek references galore. A character is of Greek ancestry. Alicia names her self-portrait, Alcestis, after a Greek mythical heroine by the same name. Unfortunately, the connection between the painting and the play is not explored well. The book is too busy with Theo’s musings.

 

Reworking the premise of Euripides’ play, Alcestis, was a clever idea. The premise was clever, the execution not so much. There are huge plot holes littering the book. For a long time, we are deliberately misled with Theo investigating people who have some association with Alicia. There was no need to do this.

Alicia’s reasons for keeping silent make no sense at all. Why would she keep silent, then write a diary about what happened, and hide the diary, and succeed in smuggling it into the mental health facility, then succeed in keeping it hidden there for over six years?

How are we supposed to believe this? Alicia kept a diary hidden for six years. The six years she spent in a psychiatric treatment facility, and yet no one seemed to know anything about it. No one did anything about it. No one even read it.

It was amazing that no one checked her stuff in six years. Theo was a doctor and yet his stuff was checked regularly, but the patient’s possessions weren’t checked even once?

Theo came across as insufferable and know-it-all. The other characters in the Grove aren’t any better. All of them seem like stereotypes

It was odd that nobody could remember the name of Alicia’s doctor. Every time characters spoke of the doctor, they said they had forgotten the name. How convenient!

Also, Theo keeps following his wife’s lover, but never catches sight of his face. What is the likelihood of that? At some point, he should have seen the guy’s face, right?

When a certain character injects Alicia with a lethal dose of morphine, instead of seeking help, she sits down to write pages and pages about what actually happened.

Theo isn’t very quick on the uptake. The silent patient hands him her diary and for the greater part of the book he wonders what he should do with it. I wanted to tell you, you nutter, balance it on your head, so you can improve your posture.

Book Review: THE MURDERER'S APE (Sally Jones #2)

 

Title: The Murderer's Ape

Author: Jakob Wegelius

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Pages: 605

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Henry Koskela, Chief to Sally Jones, the gorilla he rescued, is arrested for the murder of Aphonse Morro. He has motive. It was Morro that had sent him on a misadventure that caused him to lose his beloved boat, the Hudson Queen, and their hard-earned savings. But Koskela has no way to prove his innocence.

Only Sally Jones knows that her Chief has done nothing wrong. That he did not seek to kill Morro. That Morro fell by accident. But what can an ape do? Particularly when powerful people are determined to keep him imprisoned forever.

Now Sally Jones is on the run from the powerful men who want to bring anarchy to Portugal. Luckily, she meets Ana Molina, a young woman with an angelic voice who works in a shoe factory. Soon Ana’s friends become the friends of Sally Jones, but danger is never far away from Sally Jones.

 

The story is told in the first person past tense PoV of Sally Jones, not Sally. Always Sally Jones. It is, in fact, being typed out by her on a typewriter, long after the incidents described in the book are over.

This book started well. I didn’t realise who the narrator was until the last line on the first page when she said that her fur is itchy with coal dust. As a character, Sally Jones had great potential. She is literate, she can type, repair stuff, play chess and she serves as first engineer on a ship.

 

As a rule, I don’t read fantasy, but this one was targeted at children and promised to be warm and fuzzy. So I made an exception. The characters were all sweet, but not really unforgettable. Sally Jones herself didn’t live up to her potential. The adversaries weren’t really evil, in keeping with the target audience. This is children’s fiction after all.

The writing was sweet, especially the scenes where Sally Jones meets the Chief after their prolonged separation.

The writer does a good job with the time period. Set in the early 20^th century, there are accordions, motor boats, steamers, typewriters etc. Illustrations of these would have helped young readers to get an understanding of older technologies.

But there was tremendous room for improvement. For the greater part of the book, the Chief was in jail, serving a sentence of 25 years in prison. Considering that the Chief and Sally Jones were the main characters, they both should have a greater role to play in the book. As it is, the story picks up the thread of the plot only with about 100 pages to spare.

With the Chief stuck in jail, Sally Jones is sent off on a grand adventure, heading off to Egypt and spending a long spell in India, beating a king at chess and being his confidante, but not really advancing the plot of the story. Given that the title of the book is The Murderer’s Ape, I thought that Sally Jones should have been shown to be doing more to get the Chief released.

It’s a fantasy after all. If the author could make her literate, able to understand English, why not get her to grunt some words? If she is good at “fixing broken things”, why not make her use that skill to enable the Chief’s release rather than spending time fixing broken accordions with nothing to break the monotony for the Chief. The poor guy spends years in prison.

Also, at 605 pages, it is much too long and the pace far too slow. Young ones are bound to lose interest in such a heavy tome. I do think the author could have done more to bring out the themes of love and friendship, loyalty and innocence. As it is, with Sally Jones travelling around the world, those themes get diluted a fair bit.

The illustrations, the grainy pencil sketches were charming, quaint and inviting. 

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

Book Review: A LIE FOR A LIE

Title: A Lie for a Lie

Author: Jane Buckingham

Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press

Pages: 256

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Sabrina Richards, a high school student, is determined to get into Harvard, in honour of her deceased mother whose dream it was to study there. When her application is deferred, it’s one more blow, given that she is already stressed out about the fact that her father’s girlfriend, Kaye, and the latter’s daughter, Parker, might move into their home. She’s also worked up about the drama of former best friend, Brooke. Brooke, Sabrina and Emily have been best friends since elementary school. But now Brooke is a Cool Girl, one of the high school elite. Only best friend, Emily remains by her side, until Sabrina learns that Emily has been admitted into Harvard, and it wasn’t even her dream.

Meanwhile, there is an anonymous person at Milford High, @Revenge, who is adept at helping the students get revenge. The person reaches out to Sabrina and, in a moment of weakness, Sabrina gives in to the desire to act out against Emily. But now @Revenge is asking her to do something worse. To prank the school’s star basketball player. And Sabrina dare not refuse, not when @Revenge holds the cards. But

The only thing she can do is find out who @Revenge is before more people get hurt. Or before @Revenge outs her own secret.

 

The book is written in the first-person present tense PoV of @Revenge and in the third-person limited present tense PoV of Sabrina. The Prologue in this book was a rare instance of a Prologue done well. It piqued my interest and forced me into the story.

I wish the author had written more chapters from the PoV of @Revenge. They were more interesting than Sabrina’s limited PoV, and made Sabrina look rather bland.

The first part of the book was an overly long introduction. Things kicked up a notch only at the 38 percent mark. I was plodding through for the purpose of this review.

I didn’t like Sabrina or Emily or any of the characters. For that matter, we don’t really get to know any of the characters. The only character I felt drawn towards was Charlie, Emily’s twin.

Sabrina drones on and on about Harvard. The excessive use of tell, with hardly any flashbacks, prevents us from getting into the story. The device of the dead mother’s letter is weak.

There were some questions that didn’t have answers. How did a basketball court full of people not register the bottle in Finn’s hand? How did the police not look for it, nor think of checking it for fingerprints? The bottle wasn’t even mentioned. There were no details about how the crime against Finn, or any of the others, was carried out, not even at the end.

Sabrina asks a teacher, Mrs Esry, if another character, who she suspects of being @Revenge, couldn’t have made another social media account or used another phone, both of which activities are possible, the teacher says, it is impossible. When Sabrina presses her for an answer, she evades the question and answers that he is in the clear, without answering what evidence she has to support that claim. It’s just, Believe me, we’ve checked. How lame!

Sabrina is just as daft. Even when the antagonist admits to being @Revenge, Sabrina doesn’t understand what the admission means.

There were some issues with the incorrect use of tenses, which should have been weeded out.

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

Book Review: SO I LIED

Title: So I Lied

Author: Chelsea Ichaso

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Pages: 300

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Rich Jocelyn Elliott, and middle class Rowan Castillo and Cadence Fletcher have been close friends since high school. Over the years, however, they have moved on, busy in their own lives. Rowan is a single mother, raising her child, now eight, after the death of her boyfriend, Jake Elliott, Jocelyn's twin. 

Now that Jocelyn Elliott is engaged to be married to Landon, her long-time beau, she decides to treat her two besties to an exclusive bachelorette party at the bed and breakfast run by her aunt and uncle in a small village in Wales.

There they meet Magnus from Norway and Valentina from Argentina, two backpackers who draw the three women into their circle. Soon Jocelyn, Rowan and Cadence are convinced that there is something off about their two new friends. They wish they had never come to Wales and encountered them. 

The trip, meant to bind them closer, ends up fraying their friendship. By the end of the trip, will the consequences be much worse? 

The book begins with the death of one of the two women, and the other two friends and the aunt and uncle of Jocelyn seemingly distraught. The novel is told from the 1^st person present tense PoV of the three women, in flashback, describing the events that took place in their lives before they got to this point, before breaking into single chapters on what transpires after the death of one of them.

At first, I could not tell the three accounts apart, but as they revealed more of their secrets, I got a better understanding of who they were. But the voice wasn’t very clear. I had to keep checking back to the first page of the chapter to find out who was talking. After the first set of three 1^st person accounts, the writing got marginally better.

The voices of the characters were still not apparent though. And because no one character stood out, I found it hard to like any of them. The thought of one of them dead was not something I could bring myself to care about.

I felt that the last first-person chapter of the character that is about to die should have been in the 3^rd person. In the first person, it was awkward and clumsy.

What made it interesting at first was that everyone had secrets, not just the women, but all the characters, but over time even that lost its novelty.

The men, Jake Elliott and Landon, are flat as cardboard. For one, neither is present in Wales, and we see them both only in flashbacks. Jake has been dead eight years when the story begins, and the flashbacks don’t portray him well or enough. Landon, very much alive, is boring. It is hard to see why he is considered quite the catch.

There was no buildup to the mystery. The red herrings were unconvincing and the plot twist didn’t seem natural. The reasons why a particular character was suspected and then subsequently considered innocent didn’t seem credible.

DI Collins, the investigating officer, was drab, completely devoid of personality. She was in charge but didn’t appear to have the confidence to figure things out. She kept asking questions but didn’t come to any conclusion at all. The odd thing was that it seemed as if she were conducting the investigation on her own. She didn’t have an assistant, no one with whom she could think aloud.

The friendship between the girls didn’t come across as warm and comforting. At one point, Rowan said that that Jocelyn provided her a sense of safety in high school and college. But safety from what? We never get a sense of what might be threatening Rowan.

The book needed better editing. Character A tells Character B her (B’s) mother’s name, in the vein of “Your mother, X.” Editing should have weeded out such clumsy sentences.

It is unclear why Jocelyn calls her mother’s sister by her first name, instead of calling her Aunt Helen, particularly when Helen’s husband is addressed as Uncle Paul.

 

The book was okay for the most part. But the resolution fell flat. It seemed forced, hurried, with characters coming to realisations about the truth in a way that didn’t feel natural. 

 

 

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

Book Review: THE WEDDING PARTY

Title: The Wedding Party

Author: LR Jones

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Pages: 327

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐

Life is perfect for Carrie, now engaged to Oliver Phoenix, CEO of a billion-dollar firm. With her brilliant career as a nurse in the ER, a role she enjoys and is good at, things couldn’t be better. She’s looking forward to their joint bachelor/bachelorette party at the famous Stanley Hotel, the prelude to their wedding celebrations, and her happily-ever-after.

Andrea ‘Andi’ Castle is an FBI agent, who’s been suspended from work for two weeks because of another colleague who beat up a suspect in her case. Her childhood friend, Lana Melody, who is a nurse and a friend of Carrie, talks Andi into going as her Plus One to Carrie’s bachelor/bachelorette party. Now Andi looks forward to having a good time, away from the pressures of her job. Until a key member of the bridal entourage turns up dead.

 

The book is written in the first person PoV of Carrie and Andi. The narrative is preceded by the first-person account of Elsa Ward, who receives a mysterious package. Later, we read the first-person account of Joe, Elsa’s neighbour, who finds her body. Between these four first-person PoVs, they add up to too many first-person accounts, almost all of them unnecessary. The story would have read much better in the third person.

The chapters are short enough, but at 88 chapters, there are way too many, especially considering the surfeit of unnecessary information, most of it dumped on us unceremoniously. 

Characters tell each other things they know already. For example, Oliver tells Carrie about her parents’ achievements. Also, each time a character is introduced, we are given too much information about that character.

Consequently, the murder, which is central to the plot, comes at the 27 percent mark.

 

None of the characters were likeable. Andi was completely unlike any FBI agent I’ve read in fiction. I found her too full of herself and too awestruck with the legacy of her father, even as she pretended it didn’t matter to her. Her constant reference to her job, a point hammered by nearly every one of the other characters, made me want to scream. 

After all that build-up, she turned out to be quite stupid. She let a character into an active crime scene, mere minutes after the body was found. She should have been suspended for this.

Andi’s father calling her Sugar Bear and Daughter made me cringe. It was just as cheesy to say that he would answer her call on the first ring, even if he was in the middle of sex or a fight.

Carrie was just as much of a pain, projecting herself as perfect. The part where she described her own physical features was annoying. In fact, none of the physical descriptions of the characters were necessary.

 

 

The first-person accounts of Carrie and Andi are too similar, with both often using the exact same words to describe a character. Both women refer to Cade Winston, Oliver’s friend and groomsman, as having a ‘God complex’. In another instance, two unrelated minor characters, completely different and unrelated, use the phrase, panties in a wad.

The book needed better editing. The dialogues were stilted and unnatural. The jokes that characters cracked were sad. The banter between Andi and her dad was cheesy.

When Andi asks Natalie, Oliver’s sister, if Oliver owned a gun, she says, “Yes. And so do I. For protection.” A page later, Andi asks Natalie if she owns a knife, and Natalie replies, “What? No. No knife, and before you ask, no gun.”

Here’s one more example of this lack of attention. In Andi’s PoV, she tells us that Danielle, Carrie’s lawyer, is wearing a pink blouse. Then Carrie refers to it as blood red. In the next chapter, Andi calls it red too.

 

The author is a woman, and yet supposedly strong female characters routinely diss their own sex. Andi actually says, she doesn’t fight like a girl. Elsa, an attractive older woman, is mocked as being a bimbo.

We are told that Elsa’s death was a murder, not suicide, but we aren’t told how she died.

 

There are many loose ends too. We are not told where the knife that was used in the killing was hidden. Similarly, no explanation of why there was no blood on Carrie’s inner thighs.

 

Why did the author need to write such a long chapter about Elsa and the neighbour who found her body when it was totally irrelevant to Carrie’s story?

Introducing a character in the last few pages was a pathetic move. Also, the resolution of the investigation was shoddily wrapped up, with no justification for the conclusion. I was annoyed at the number of unanswered questions and loose ends.

There were several proofing errors which hampered the reading experience further. Dr Norton, the evaluating psychologist, a woman, is referred to as ‘his’ once. Even though, Oliver and Carrie are not yet married, they are frequently referred to as husband and wife.

In the Prologue, we meet Elsa Ward and then later on in the novel, we meet Larry Ward, unrelated. Why repeat names?

This book was disappointing on so many counts.

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

Book Review: THE SNOW ANGEL

Title: The Snow Angel  

Author: Anki Edvinsson

Translator: Paul Norlen

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Pages: 330

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐

Charlotte von Klint, a police officer with the Major Crimes Unit, has moved to Umea, a small town in Sweden, leaving behind the capital city of Stockholm and the rising crime rate there. She wants to keep herself and her daughter, Anna, safe. But now Tony Israelsson, a mafia don she sent to prison, is being released and he’s headed to Umea.

But Umea isn’t the safe haven Charlotte thought it would be. Crime, it turns out, is everywhere. Her very first case is that of the murder of a pharmacist, Unni Olofsson, who lived alone and was found dead in her bathroom.

Shortly afterwards, Anton, a teenage boy, jumps to his death off a high bridge. Packets of drugs are found at the place where he stood just before jumping.

At first there doesn’t seem to be a connection between these isolated incidents. But soon Charlotte realizes that drugs make up the common thread here. When a young girl, whose family is part of witness protection, goes missing, the police are under pressure to find and rescue her before it is too late.

 

The story is written in the 3^rd person limited PoV in the past tense. The book raises issues about mental illness, the fake world of Instagram influencers, drug and opioid addiction, suicides among young people etc.

The way in which the author blends the weather and the description of Umea city into the narrative drew me in. The writing in the first chapter was beautiful. Not so much in subsequent chapters.

Chapters end on cliffhangers, but the thread isn’t always picked up later when we return to the same PoV. The story line goes all over the place, causing us to lose interest. Towards the end, the author resorted to coincidences to explain things.

The title was referenced only once in the story and it didn’t make much sense. It was the least important element of the plot.

I generally enjoy Scandinavian crime thrillers, but this one fell short by a mile. The dialogue was stilted and unnatural. I don’t know if the problem was related to translation.

 

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