Book Review: THE DEVIL'S WHISPERS

Title: The Devil’s Whispers

Author: Lucas Hault

Publisher: TCK Publishing

Pages: 224

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐

 

Gerard Woodward, a young lawyer, is invited to Cardiff to the castle of Lord Ferdinand Elvin Mathers who is on his death bed. The old man wants to amend his will. Very soon, he realises that he is a prisoner, locked up in his room and not allowed to leave. Meanwhile, across London there are children being abducted. There’s an ape-like creature on the prowl. Can London be saved or will evil take over the land?

The book reminds us of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. All the details point in that direction. The adversaries acting in darkness, being afraid of sunlight, eating of rats, the bite marks. The only difference here is that the author has created a mythical creature of his own, called Xana, while borrowing heavily from folklore surrounding vampires.

The author has a grip on the action sequences, but my overall impression was that it was all rather unoriginal. The inspiration from Dracula is all too evident, and there is nothing to set this tale apart. It’s fine to create a mythical supernatural adversary, but making them like vampires while calling them Xana is unacceptable.

 

The author creates a sense of mystery that doesn’t always seep out of the pages. I couldn’t feel the sense of intrigue. There are strange things happening in the castle. Gerard has odd dreams of being hunted. There are strange beasts chained to rooms, and strange sounds are heard.

For the most part, it’s hard to tell what the fuss is about. Lord Mathers sometimes appears to be on his deathbed and sometimes in perfect health. Gerard has no clue what’s happening. Nor do we, but with much less patience and with no fear.

 

The book is written as a collection of letters and journal entries by various people. These include Gerard, his fiancée Raelyn Atherton, a doctor, his best friend, Ralph Brewer, her best friend, Jayda, a nun and a priest, Fr Malcolm Isaac Simpson. Unfortunately, there are so many perspectives that they begin to sound alike. There is nothing to distinguish one from another.

The journal and letters as a form of narrative technique can be limiting. Letters work best if there are only two correspondents. The more, the messier. I thought that the use of 3^rd person omniscient narration would have improved the story.

The writing consists of some words, now in disuse, and old-type sentence constructions. There were also some odd usage with regard to tenses. At one point, Raelyn’s eyes are described by Nathan, her cousin, as “savoury.” In Gerard’s journal entry, he refers to Mark Huddleston, as his ‘rival’. Adversary would have been the better word. It's not as if they are competing for the affections of the same woman.

None of the characters are developed. We get no backstory about them so it’s hard for us to care about them, and the sting of the horror falls short. The journal entries appear impersonal, and make it hard for us to relate to the characters.

In particular, Raelyn seemed totally unreal. Her anxiousness to learn the truth about a stranger, Mark Huddleston, is unbelievable. Also, she acts like a modern woman in 1903, which is unbelievable. She even uses curse words, which doesn’t fit her general persona at all. The author gives us the impression that men consulted female doctors back then as a matter of course.

The significance of the title was unclear, as was the reason for the abduction of children and the reason behind the house imprisonment of Gerard. We are not given any explanation about the Xana, their origin story, and why they exist.

All in all, not a book I’d recommend.

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

Book Review: THE LIBRARY: A FRAGILE HISTORY

Title: The Library: A Fragile History

Author: Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen

Publisher: Profile Books
Pages: 528
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

I’ve always been fascinated by libraries. They are my favourite place to be in. So I was more than eager to read this one.

The Library: A Fragile History takes us on a wonderful journey of discovery, from the earliest collections to the most respected libraries that stand today, against the backdrop of the development of paper and printing, the period of the Renaissance and later, the Reformation.

The book was an eye-opener. I had not imagined the richness and variety in the history of the library across nations and cultures. Nor the remarkable developments in the evolution of the book from handwritten manuscripts, boasting of elegant calligraphy, lavish colours and other decorative flourishes.

It was fascinating to read about the development of paper and how it displaced parchment, which had earlier displaced papyrus, how print enabled the democratisation of libraries and about how the gradual evolution in reading tastes, with the novel and female authorship first disapproved of and then accepted.

Initially, libraries were a treasured part of the monastic life, until members of the nobility began to acquire books. The Franciscans and the Jesuits had a lot to contribute to the proliferation of books. In fact, St Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, was the first one to take the appointment of a librarian seriously. Earlier, the role of a librarian was not as defined.

The significance of the library meant that for a long time, people believed that libraries should only edify; reading for entertainment was frowned upon, as was romance as a genre.

Detective fiction was the first genre to gain a huge following. The growth of escapist literature opened up the world of books to the general public.

The author tells us about how libraries have evolved over the years, with the cathedral silence of libraries a thing of the past. Libraries in the Renaissance period were convivial social spaces, in which books jostled for attention alongside paintings, sculptures, coins and curiosities. Finally, the emergence of the public library as we know it today, in great part owing to the munificence of philanthropists, and the subscriptions-based library.

Libraries also developed tremendously on the back of the empire and colonisation with hateful ideologies like Nazism also leaving their own stamp on their development.

The continuous evolution of the library reminds us that the news of the death of the library and of the book are greatly exaggerated.

We read about some libraries that I certainly hadn’t given much thought to. The libraries of Jesus’ apostles, the writings that were later canonised in the New Testament.

I was happy to see that the National Library of India, in Kolkata, formerly known as the Imperial Library, found mention in this book.

How easy it is to destroy a library and how hard it is to build one, is the thought that struck me. In fact, the very ideas of the library has faced persecution, with libraries being vandalised and destroyed. I read with a sense of sorrow about the ethnic biblioclasm, the wilful destruction of the public library in Jaffna in Sri Lanka and that of the Bosnian state library in Sarajevo.

In modern times, the popularity of the library has suffered on account of radio, television¸ cinema and the Internet.

For those fascinated with libraries, this book is a trove of information. The research that must have gone into this book is a labour of love. The author tells us about the quantum and nature of famous book collections down the ages. The book is peppered with a few old photographs and illustrations.

My only grouse was that the book had an excessive focus on the US and Europe, besides Australia, New Zealand and Russia. There was virtually nothing about famous libraries in India or Asia, apart from stray references to the library of Mughal Emperor Akbar and the Chinese invention of paper. Nor was there any information about libraries in India before the East India Company arrived on the scene. Canada found no mention, nor did much of South America.

Aside from these misses, the story of The Library is a story of the growth of libraries that is bound to appeal to lovers of books and libraries everywhere.

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

Book Review: THE SIGN OF DEATH: A VICTORIAN BOOK CLUB MYSTERY

Title: The Sign of Death: A Victorian Book Club Mystery (A Victorian Book Club Mystery #2) 

Author: Callie Hutton

Pages: 322

Publisher: Crooked Lane Books

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

The Sign of Death, set in January 1891 in Bath, England, is the second part in a series.

William Viscount Washington has enough to worry about. His mother, who has made it her business to see him married, is planning to move into his palatial home. To make matters worse, he had been suspecting that James Harding, who handled his financial affairs, was guilty of some irregularities in handling his money. And now he is dead.

Somebody pushed a drunk James into the river. It’s not hard to believe James capable of theft and villainy, but William knows that James was a staunch teetotaller and would never consume a drop of alcohol. Could another of his clients have done him in?

Matters come to a head, when the police, constables Carson and Marsh, suspect William of having murdered James. William needs to find the real killer or face the prospect of being sent to jail or, worse, strung by the neck himself.

William’s best friend, Lady Amy Lovell, is a young society woman who is also secretly a well-known murder mystery author, ED Burton. She is excited at the thought of attempting to solve the mystery and anxious to clear William of blame.

But will the two succeed in proving William’s innocence or will they meet with foul play themselves?

 

What I liked was the fact that the author didn’t feel compelled to endow Amy with external beauty. We are told that Amy fills out her clothes. Nor is William the kind to hold her weight against her.

Since both William and Amy are readers and members of a book club, we are treated to references to AC Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe.

Unlike Sherlock Holmes who enjoys something of a cult status with the police, detectives Carson and Marsh don’t appreciate the meddling on the part of William, particularly as he is a member of the nobility and ranks high on their list of suspects. Both main characters are also great advocates of women’s rights at a time when such views were not the norm. In fact, Mr Colbert, a member of the book club, mentions that women are good only wiping children’s noses and gossiping. It is not an uncommon view, which is why women authors then received greater traction if they wrote under a male pseudonym.

 

All the characters are very likeable, even the ones playing bit roles, such as Amy’s Aunt Margaret, and the members of the book club.

The character of Amy, in particular, was sweet. She has a tendency to put on weight, but has a positive body image. She is feisty and unafraid, an equal partner with William in the murder investigation. Also, at a time when women didn’t have their own careers or business interests, Amy is a successful best-selling author of mystery fiction. A woman holding her own in a man’s world.

There is a charming sub-plot about ED Burton being required to show up as a special guest at a book fair. The dilemma of how to handle this situation plagues Amy, given that anonymity was the only condition when Amy’s father gave his consent to let her publish her books.

 

The banter between William and Amy was sweet and clever; it was good to see a fictional relationship based on friendship and mutual respect.

 

Lady Amy’s full name is given to us the fourth time it is mentioned, not the first. Also, there were times when the transition between paragraphs was too abrupt.

The language isn’t always appropriate to the time. Aunt Margaret describes James Harding as an “arse.” It felt odd to see the word, axe, spelt the American way as ‘ax.’ At another point, Amy asks William’s mother if she would like a tisane, a herb tea. The word itself emerged from the French language in the 1930s.

Other than these errors, I found this work cozy mystery a good read. 

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

Book Review: HIS AND HERS

Title: His and Hers

Author: Alice Feeney

Narrators: Stephanie Racine and Richard Armitage

Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Pages: 288
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

A BBC TV news presenter, Anna Andrews has come up in life. Hailing from a deprived background, her father deserted the family, leaving her mother to clean homes in the village to earn a living. Her job and the success that is hers means a lot to her.

Having spent long years as a correspondent, Anna gets the opportunity to present the afternoon news after Cat Jones, the actual presenter, goes off suddenly on maternity leave. Two years later, when Anna expects her contract to be renewed, she finds herself suddenly relegated to the position of news correspondent when Cat returns.

A day later, she is called back to work because Cat is unreachable. When she shows up to work at the request of the Thin Controller, she finds Cat already there.

It is Cat who suggests that Anna head to the village of Blackdown, her hometown, where there has been a murder. 

Detective Chief Inspector Jack Harper and his assistant Priya Patel are called to the scene of a brutal murder. A local woman, Rachel Hopkins, has been killed in the woods. The principal of the local girl’s school, Helen Wang, is found brutally murdered the following day, and Zoe Harper, another local woman, who also happened to be Jack’s sister, is found brutally murdered the day after. Will Jack be able to solve the case or will the body count rise again?

 

Both Anna and Jack have had a close association with the characters in the case and everything seems to point towards them. Jack stands in danger of becoming a suspect in his own murder investigation, having been the last to see Rachel for a sexual fling.

The story comes to us in three voices, hers (the PoV of Anna Andrews) and his (that of Jack Harper) in alternate chapters and both accounts hold secrets. That they were once married becomes known to us soon enough. They have been estranged since the death of their baby girl, Charlotte, at just three months of age. They have been divorced since then.

Both accounts go heavy on the foreshadowing and so my expectations were quite high. Both characters face thwarted ambitions. Both the leading characters have a lot in common. Both have had casual sex. Both their jobs carry enormous stress, and expose them to ugly things that cannot be unseen. Both had guilty secrets they had to hide, secrets dating back to their pasts.

 

The PoVs of Anna and Jack are broken occasionally by the voice of the unidentified murderer, which was extremely creepy. The artiste has probably used some software to disguise the voice, but the effect was quite horrible. The voice actually grated on my ears.

 

The quotes, generalisations of truth that apply to all of us, are numerous and I enjoyed them. Anna’s back story comes out well.

The murderer tells us, There is a version of me I can only ever be with myself. It’s a point that hits us only after the identity of this person is revealed.

Both Anna and Jack get to mouth some good lines. Sample these:

Anna: We rarely deserve the lives we lead. We pay for them, however we can, be it with money, guilt or regret.

I’m pretty good at being the version of myself people want me to be.

It’s easier to blame the miles for the distance that exists between some parents and their children. When you bend the truth too far, it tends to break.

Like ghosts who don’t know they are dead, we carried on haunting ourselves and each other.

We are a species capable of horrific acts and incapable of learning from the lessons our own history tries to teach.

Memories are shape-shifters, some bend, some twist, some shrivel and die.

Time is something my mother has forgotten how to tell. It moves differently for her now. Often backwards, instead of forwards. Dementia stole time from my mother, and my mother from me. I found this line very poignant. The issue of dementia always makes painful reading for me. In the book, Anna learns that her mother suffers from severe dementia.

We all have secrets. Some we won’t even tell ourselves

Sometimes I think I am the unreliable narrator of my own life.

The author does a great job of distinguishing the writing for Anna and Jack. Right in his first chapter, Jack makes his presence felt by telling us that: Since I left London, my job has been duller than a nun’s underwear drawer.

Youth fools us into thinking there are infinite paths to choose from in life; maturity tricks us into thinking there is only one.

 

The characters were all drawn out well. Although I didn’t like Anna, she came across as too insensitive at the beginning, she did draw me into getting to know her story. Perhaps that was because of her drinking and resultant forgetfulness. In her first chapter, Anna can’t remember having baked the cupcakes that she is taking to work. I’m a little fed up of characters that have a drinking problem and can’t remember crucial events of their day.

The only characters I liked were Jack and, to an extent, Anna’s mother, who did everything she could for her daughter. I found Priya, Jack’s assistant, very interesting, not only because she is a character of Indian origin (Bonus points for showcasing diversity) but also because she is doggedly determined to pursue the case, even though she gives the impression of being small and helpless.

 

This thriller kept me engaged throughout. Each chapter ends on a cliffhanger, keeping us hooked. The author has successfully played out the themes of broken relationships, guilt and love, against the backdrop of murder.

The author does a great job of ratcheting up the pace and tension and creating a real sense of danger.

The description of the sex, while not graphic, is nevertheless disturbing. As are the descriptions of the murders which are brutal.

The only thing I couldn’t quite get a handle on was the murderer. Of course, why the person killed and killed again is explained very well, but how they could kill with so much brutality remains unanswered. I’m not talking just about the rationale, but how they went about it, which seems unbelievable.

 

This was my first experience with an audiobook. In this case, there were serious issues with the audio. I found that if I let one section (chapters were called sections, for some reason) end and the next one begin automatically, it would invariably skip one section in between. The best thing to do was to go through the navigation bar and manually click on each new section at the end of the previous one. This marred the experience slightly, during the first few chapters. It was only when I understood what was happening and figured out the trick, that the listening experience went on smoothly.

I liked Stephanie’s voice from the beginning. The pace, the enunciation, the pauses, they were all done right. Her voice was perfect for Anna’s narration.

Stephanie sounded so different for the parts spoken by the Thin Controller. It’s a subtle change that lets on that a different character is speaking but it makes such a great difference to the listening experience. I was particularly thrilled to hear the voice of recognition that she came up with when Anna’s mother, asleep in her home, wakes up and recognises her daughter.

Richard does a great job of distinguishing between Jack’s voice and Priya’s. Loud, he was Jack; a little muted, he was Priya, for the asides, the intonation changed once again. It was amazing how he switched voices at a moment’s notice.

I would definitely like to recommend this one.

(I read this book through NetGalley.) 

Book Review: WRITE AWAY

Title: Write Away: One Novelist's Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life
Author: Elizabeth George
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 288
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I have read only one novel by Elizabeth George, and that was the 20^th in her famous Inspector Lynley series, The Punishment She Deserves. I came away from it deeply charmed by Inspector Lynley and Barbara Havers. The book had convinced me that the author was British. She does such a fabulous job of invoking the British flavour. It was on reading Write Away that I learned that she is American.

In Write Away, a book she wrote publishing the first 12 Lynley books (talk about expertise proven without a doubt), the author describes her approach to writing. The key to writing, she says, is character, not story.

The book is divided into 5 parts. Part I is An Overview of the Craft, Part II is Basics, Part III is Technique, Part IV is Process, Part V is Examples and Guides.

The book is peppered with extracts from good books. Here I’m listing them all, as a sort of Recommended Books List. The list includes Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich’s The Crown of Columbus, T Jefferson Parker’s Laguna Heat, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees, Martin Cruz Smith’s Rose as well as Havana Bay, Michael Dorris’ A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, Robert Ferrigno’s The Horse Latitudes, PD James’ A Taste for Death, Ken Follett’s The Key to Rebecca, Ernest Hemingway’s Indian Camp, Stephen King’s The Dead Zone, Alice Hoffman’s Second Nature, Susan Isaacs’ Shining Through, Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible, Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River, William Faulkner’s Light in August, EM Forster’s A Passage to India, Jim Harrison’s Revenge, and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

She also references Stephen King’s Misery, The Shining and Cujo, Evan Connell’s Mrs Bridge, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, William Faulkner’s Absalom! Absalom!, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, LM Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables books, Frank Herbert’s Dune, John le Carre’s Singer and Singer, James Clavell’s Shogun and King Rat, Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman, Pat Conroy’s The Lords of Discipline, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, James Frey’s How to Write a Damn Good Novel, Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Peter Benchley’s Jaws, Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, Janette Turner Hospital’s Oyster, Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm, Jay Anson’s The Amityville Horror, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda, even Shakespeare’s Richard III and Macbeth, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Craig Lesley’s The Sky Fisherman, John Irving’s The Cider House Rules, Dorothy L Sayers’ Five Red Herrings, Frederick Forsyth’s The Fourth Protocol, Dean Koontz’s Twilight Eyes, Bryce Courtenay’s The Power of One, William Goldman’s The Princess Bride, and naturally her own novels as well.

Her own books also find rich mention here. She quotes from For the sake of Elena, Well-schooled in murder, A great deliverance, A traitor to memory, Payment in Blood, In the presence of the enemy, Deception on his mind, and references Missing Joseph, Playing for the Ashes, Remember, I’ll always love you, In pursuit of the proper sinner and A suitable vengeance.

There are spoilers with reference to Missing Joseph and For the Sake of Elena.

Each chapter begins with a quote from her Journal of a Novel from 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998 and 2001.

At first, I thought these were published books. A Google search brought up John Steinbeck’s Journal of a Novel, which he wrote while writing East of Eden. It was only in Chapter 5 that I figured out that this was her own Journal of a Novel, a practice she began with the third in her Inspector Lynley series. Since then she has been writing the Journal concurrently with every novel she embarks on. 

The author shares the step outline that she developed for her novel, A Place of Hiding and the running plot outline of In the presence of the enemy.

In an attempt to prove her point that anyone can write, provided they have a tight handle on the art and craft, and can string sentences together for maximum effect, she gives us a run-down on basic grammar as well. This includes a brief lesson on simple, compound and complex sentences, and other variations, complex-compound, deliberately fragmented and deliberately run-on. 

This section was unnecessary and seemed too patronising.

The highlight for me was how she took us through her entire process from the moment she has an idea to the expansion of that idea and then to the writing and editing. She gives us a taste of her writing journey, how she gravitated to books, how she began writing, and how her love for books and writing grew.

She also answers a few of the questions that she is often asked by agents and readers alike. These relate to how she got her first agent, to who her favourite authors are, what her schedule looks like, her opinion about writing critique groups and the big one, why she writes British novels.

This one is a good addition to all the literature on the art and craft of writing.

Book Review: HONEYMOON ALONE

Title: Honeymoon Alone

Author: Nicole Macaulay
Publisher: 4B Pub

Pages: 211

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Lucy Gray, a 26-year-old teacher of 3^rd grade students, is still unattached. Matron of honour at the ‘80s themed wedding of her older sister, Marian, who is obsessive compulsive, Lucy tries hard and fails to overlook the pity of her relatives at still being unhitched. Her ploy to invite colleague Ian to pose as her boyfriend and stave off the nosy questions of her relatives backfires when Ian makes out with her cousin at the wedding.

A psychic at the wedding tells Lucy that she must pay attention to the signs. When Marian forgets to cancel her second option honeymoon arrangements, in London, Lucy sees it as a sign to take a chance and sets out on a vacation to London. Armed with a fake ID, she goes to London, posing as Marian Gray, pausing to inform her mother only moments before the flight takes off.

Predictably, there is confusion and chaos. Mother Dolores, who presides over the writing of an entertaining blog on the happenings in her large family of husband and five children, berates her youngest daughter on the blog with the whole family chiming in. It is Lucy's father who encourages her to strike out by saying, You don’t win the Super Bowl Championship games by sitting on the sidelines.

When Lucy reaches the hotel in London, she finds out that the hotel is strictly meant for honeymooners, and she lies to say that her husband is coming later. The lie comes true when Cary James, an old classmate now taking acting classes in London, shows up at the hotel to take advantage of Lucy’s single status in a honeymooners’ hotel.

Lucy tells us, They say you’re never prepared for the honeymoon to end but Lucy’s might end before it has even begun, when Oliver, concierge at the hotel, gets suspicious. While Cary and Lucy make up a fictional romantic history, Oliver, it seems, is developing some feelings for Lucy.

Meanwhile, police get a tip-off that a couple of thieves have checked in at the hotel. These thieves have been robbing hotels and have recently added murder to their crime resume. When Lucy gets mixed up in the case, her deceptions threaten to unravel her secret. But after days of lying, can Lucy bring herself to tell the truth?

The story is told in the first person present tense PoV of Lucy. I had picked up this book hoping it would be a light read, after the non-fiction book I had just finished reading and I was quite pleased with the choice. This romance book had several LOL moments, as when Lucy checks into the hotel. I also loved the idea of a blog for the family.

It’s hard to tell what book this year is set in, but I liked the lead character’s fondness for the ‘80s. It was such a great decade.

I liked Lucy. She has a pleasant, fun style that makes me think she’d be a hoot to hang out with. London, through her eyes, isn’t bad either. I liked her way with words and her sense of humour, and the fact that she is independent and doesn’t need a man by her side, either in London or in Paris. The vacation helps her discover herself.

Lucy loves the I Love Lucy sitcom character, Lucy Ricardo and ABBA, both pop culture icons that I like too. There is always time for more ABBA in my life.

She teaches 3^rd grade because she feels that it’s a definite turning point in growing up. It’s a pivotal year.

This was a good, fun romance with just the right touch of mystery. I enjoyed this one.

(I read this book through Edelweiss.)

Book Review: THE WIVES

Title: The Wives

Author: Tarryn Fisher
Publisher: HQ

Pages: 352

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐

The book is written in the first person past tense PoV of one of the wives. She introduces herself as Thursday, and the other two wives as Monday and Tuesday, women known by the days on which their husband, Seth, visits them. We don’t realise until much later that Thursday is actually her name.

Her husband visits her on Thursday evening, and by Friday morning, he is gone. Gone either to work or to one of his other wives, the one she knows as Tuesday and the youngest one, who she refers to as Monday.

Her mother taught her that cooking was the only good way to be a wife. And so Thursday became my mother: doting, yielding, spread-eagle emotionally and sexually. But her best attempts cannot hold a husband who has spread himself thin among three women.

At first, Thursday is content to have her husband on Thursdays alone, content to feel no curiosity about the other two women. Then one day, she finds in Seth’s pocket a doctor’s bill in the name of Hannah Ellington with her address on the bill, and all of a sudden Thursday can’t stop herself from wanting to learn more.

The knowledge that Hannah is pregnant, while Thursday, who has had a painful miscarriage and can never hope of conceiving again, is a painful one. Thursday can’t help but feel insecure at being upstaged in Seth’s affections by Hannah who is younger, prettier and most importantly, pregnant.

But the act of finding out more becomes dangerous. When Thursday meets Hannah and finds suspicious bruises on her body, she wonders if she is missing something. When Seth learns that Thursday has been satisfying her curiosity, he isn’t happy at all.

I felt sorry for Thursday. She has no close relationships she can count on. Her parents are alienated from her. Best friend Anna seems happy to psychoanalyse her over the phone. For the most part, Thursday is left to her own devices. She keeps herself busy in her work, as a nurse, but the emotional deprivation is strong.

Thursday is remarkably insightful about the psychology of women. That’s how women are, right? Always wondering about each other – curiosity and spite curdling together in little emotional puddles.

No one tries that hard to keep their husband unless they’ve already lost him.

She knows just as well about the dynamics between the sexes. Experience has taught me that you can drag a man’s eyes if you move the right way.

There was so much about her PoV that makes us warm to her. Her observations, for one. What did people do before emojis? It seems like the only reasonable way to lighten a loaded sentence.

And most importantly, her honesty which shines through her words.

The most telling and ironical quote is this one: That’s what love does. It gives you a sense of well-being – like bad things will evaporate.

I liked this book right up to the end, when it lost me on account of its twist ending. Up to that point, I liked it only because of Thursday, and so the ending came out like a bolt from nowhere. It was totally unexpected and not in a good way.

The thing with a twist is that the reader must feel that the signs were all there, how did I miss them? I didn’t feel like that at all here. The setup sought to prove one point, and then what happened was quite another. The twist left several questions unanswered.

Most of the characters were unlikeable. This includes Seth, the other two wives, Thursday’s parents. The sister we never meet doesn't give us any cause to think of her. The only other character I liked was Lauren, the head nurse at Thursday’s hospital who shows sympathy and true friendship to Thursday.

The most glaring reason for my dislike of this book was the insensitive manner in which it seemed to approach the issue of mental illness. This book dropped from an It-was-okay rating to a Did-not-like, thanks to the end.

Book Review: WHEN I WAS YOU

Title: When I Was You

Author: Minka Kent
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Pages: 282

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thirty-year-old Brienne Dougray has been looking over her shoulder, living in fear and unable to resume her normal lifestyle, ever since she was stabbed, beaten and robbed. Now she is confined to her home, afraid to venture out. She watches the neighbours, speculating about the nature of their lives for want of something to do.

Her only friend is her tenant, Dr Niall Emberlin, who rooms at her vast home. Niall is an oncologist, and is separated/divorced from his wife, Kate. Brienne has no close friends or family. Her grandparents are dead, and her mother abandoned her when she was a little child.

She receives a key to an apartment at the Harcourt, a luxury residential building, and thinks it is a scam. When she calls for information, she is told that she has paid for six months for a one-bedroom unit in the building. Brienne believes that it may be a clue to discovering the identity of her attacker, and thus get closure. She also suspects that he may have sold her identity.

Logging on to FB with a dummy account, she discovers Brienne Dougray, even though she herself has never been on FB. This Brienne Dougray is someone who is eerily like her, but not her. Later, she visits the apartment at the Harcourt, and finds there a woman who looks, dresses and acts like her, and drives the same car. Who is she? And why is she living as Brienne?

The question of the impersonation and stolen identity is not the only one that plagues Brienne. She also suffers jealousy at the thought of Niall reconciling with his estranged wife, Kate. Brienne furtively reads Kate’s diary, which she finds in Niall’s room, to find out more about their marriage.

But there is more to the truth than what’s inside Brienne’s head? Is the other woman stealing Brienne’s life? Or is she the real Brienne, whose life our narrator is obsessed with?

Having suffered trauma, Brienne is the classic example of an unreliable narrator. I rooted for her, even though it was hard to trust her, and I hated the antagonist (no spoilers here).

The story is written in the first person present tense PoV of Brienne in Part I. In Part II, it shifts to the first person PoV of Niall, and in Part III, we get alternate chapters in Brienne’s and Niall’s PoVs.

The first part I found a little slow. The author seemed to take her own sweet time, getting to the point of why Brienne deserved our attention, but by the end of it, our patience was well rewarded. The pace soon became fast and relentless.

I liked how Brienne and Niall fit so well together, in Brienne’s account. At that point, I had no idea which way the story would go. But by the time I got to the end of Brienne’s account, I found that it had jumped several hoops at once. By the time, we got to Niall’s account, the story had shot through the roof.

One grouse, the author should have thought of different names for the few characters. The main character is Brienne, and then there are two Brians in the story, one of them inconsequential, the other minor, but still part of the story. It doesn’t really confuse the reader, but why in a world teeming with names, did the author have to give us variations of Brian?

There were three quotes from the book that stood out for me in the light of how the book turned out.

People get too comfortable living with their own assumptions. I read this line and wondered if Brienne’s tendency to do exactly that would be her undoing.

I realized how many doors would open for you if you simply told people what they wanted to hear. No one’s interested in the truth. Most of us just think we are.

At the end of the day, we just want to believe whatever makes us feel good inside. Whatever makes us feel safe. Whatever lets us sleep at night.

There were very few characters in this story, but they were all sharply drawn. All of them ready to take charge of their own lives. Their motivations were so clear, particularly that of the antagonist, who stood out as real, though flawed.

The best thing about this story was that I got caught up in the pace, and kept furiously turning the pages. I couldn’t wait to see how Brienne would re-claim her life.

(I read this book through NetGalley.)

Book Review: INLAWS AND OUTLAWS

Title: Inlaws and Outlaws

Author: Kate Fulford
Publisher: Thistle Publishing

Pages: 296

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Evelyn “Eve” is still in the early stages of a relationship with her professor boyfriend Gideon Rowe when she meets his parents, Malcolm and Marjorie, only to face the thinly veiled hostility and manipulation of his mother.

Gideon, though not exactly a mamma’s boy, believes that his mother is an amazing woman, all because she donated one of her kidneys to a stranger’s kid. So it’s all the more necessary to be accepted by her.

Marjorie does everything she can to thwart Eve and prevent her from marrying Gideon. The measures she invokes involve high-level melodrama and it seems that everyone, but Gideon, can see through them. Even Joe, the husband of Gideon’s sister, Helen, warns Eve to watch her back in the presence of Marjorie. He tells her that Marjorie thinks she alone knows what is best for her family.

But is Eve as nice as Gideon thinks she is? Not quite. She has her own secrets, which include a prior marriage, one that Gideon has no idea about. She makes it her business to find out more about the family, and stumbles upon Meg, Marjorie’s identical twin, who can’t get along with Marjorie at all and who hints at a deeper secret, one that might help find her way through the problem that is Marjorie.

But the enemy is a formidable one. Will Eve be able to marry Gideon? Or will she be yet another casualty?

The book is written in the past tense PoV of Eve. There is a self-deprecatory tone in her PoV that adds to her appeal.

I liked the author’s style of writing, the turns of phrases, the subtle humour, the observations about people that we read in Eve’s account. I loved this line: I felt very much as rats must when they are put into mazes by people in white coats.

Eve’s humour showed her felicity with the English language, a skill which reminded me of PG Wodehouse, though not quite at the same level. I liked the manner in which she casually used a particular skill, and then in an offhand manner, told us that she had worked there before. The list of places in which she has worked before include work with a detective, a lawyer, a researcher and even a realtor. These are all workplaces that she ended up leaving because she didn’t play by the rules, but the skills come in handy as she tries to find the chink in Marjorie’s armour. It is as if her whole life has been a preparation for her run-in with Marjorie.

The only thing I didn’t like about Eve was that she didn’t have a steady job and that made her seem like a sponge.

The characters are all well drawn.

Eve hasn’t known a happy family life and I could understand her need to want Gideon’s parents to like her. Having lost her parents at the age of six, she was raised by her aunt Audrey, who was emotionally distant from her. Younger brother Dominic was raised by other relatives. Eve hopes that the Rowes will be her own family someday.

There is a subplot related to Dominic and his ex-girlfriend Sophie, and their 9-year-old daughter, Pixie, who Eve is quite fond of, and to save whom she even jumps into the water. The jumping into the water to save a drowning person is a motif that is used to great effect here.

If there was one thing I didn’t understand, it was Eve’s friendship with Claire. Despite being a highly qualified person, Claire didn’t seem to have any great insights for Eve. Maybe her only reason for being a part of this story was so that Eve could use her as a sounding board.

At the beginning, I wasn’t sure what to make of Eve. There was so much she wouldn’t share with us, so many secrets she held. When she did share her secrets, there was no slow build-up to them, but a sudden full-blown revelation, indicating that she clearly enjoys shocking the reader. She also admits that Gideon’s posh house was a factor in the all-out move she made towards him.

She asks us, Why do so many people lie… especially when they are so bad at it. I could sense that Eve wasn’t completely reliable as a narrator, that there was something she was hiding, but what that was I couldn’t tell. Also, Malcolm and Gideon too behave oddly.

But then a few chapters later, I began to warm towards her. Partly because of the insidious manner in which Marjorie plays a game. Believe me, you don’t want a mother-in-law like her.

Since this is a first person past tense PoV of Eve, we can’t look into the workings of Marjorie’s mind, but it isn’t hard to realise the lengths to which this woman might go to destroy Gideon’s romantic relationships. The hard-headed Claire insists they are all coincidences, but we’re smarter than Claire. We can see through Marjorie’s attempts.

There was a twist ending and I particularly liked the resolution.

The title was apt and gave us a foretaste of the fireworks that we could expect from the story.

(I read this book through NetGalley.)

Book Review: THE BOOKSHOP GIRL

Title: The Bookshop Girl

Author: Sylvia Bishop
Illustrator: Poly Bernatene

Publisher: Peachtree Publishing Company

Pages: 144

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I can never resist books about books or bookshops or the writing process. And so, I naturally gravitated towards this one, and it helped that this charming story was a treat and the illustrations were beautiful.

It is the story of a five-year-old girl whose parents forget her in a bookshop, the White Hart, owned by Netty Jones and her 10-year-old son Michael. The Jones treat her kindly and make her part of their family. And because she is somebody’s lost property, she is named Property Jones.

When the story begins, Property is 11 years old, and we come to know of a dreadful secret, one that Netty and Michael have never suspected, and that secret is that Property cannot read.

It is at this time that the family comes to know of the Object of Wonder, a contest run by Albert H Montgomery, the owner of the Great Montgomery Book Emporium, the biggest bookshop in Britain, and probably in the world.

The Joneses go on to win the prize, which includes a very surly kitten, named Gunther, who is as far from a pet as you can imagine. You might think that it would be the beginning of a happily-ever-after for them. But that is not the case. 

There is no story without conflict, and it is the same here. A huge challenge threatens, forcing the Joneses out of their Book Emporium and even out of the White Hart Book shop. It will be up to Property, with a little help from Gunther, to save the day. But how can a little girl who doesn’t even know how to read go about saving the only family she has?

The pace is breathtakingly fast as Property works hard to win back her family home.

The book was originally written in German. The English translation was sweet and quaint and the illustrations a total delight.

The book conjures up amazing visual delights, not unlike the world created by Roald Dahl in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I’ve always imagined Paradise to be crammed with books from floor to ceiling, similar to the library in the Beauty and the Beast, but the Book Emporium has a device that ups the ante, adding ambience to enhance the effect.

Another delightful aspect of this book was the friendly manner in which the narrator addressed the reader, talking to us in the second person.

The book evokes so many of the feelings that are close to a book lover’s heart, the smell of the books, how we love them even when they are old and yellowed, the sound of pages rustling. I also liked the fact that this book makes a strong case for abilities, in the face of inabilities, pointing out that every skill has its significance. The importance of the family is underscored here, as being the people that care about you, no matter what.

We don’t get much backstory about Netty and Michael, nor about Property, and we don’t care. It is this adventure that concerns us. Even so, the few details that we gather are enough to make us care for this family of Joneses.

I liked Michael. He loves dictionaries. I do too. On winning the Great Montgomery Book Emporium, Michael’s face lights up at the thought that they will have every book in the world. What a treasure that must be!

Property has amazing powers of observation; she can tell a lot about books even though she cannot read. She can figure out the genre of a particular book by the cover and the thinness of the paper alone.

My daughter and I both enjoyed this book very much.

(I read this book through Edelweiss.)