Auntie Knows Best

I would love to tell you all about Black and Blue and The Hanging Garden both by Ian Rankin. However, as I read them both at the beginning of the month I cannot actually remember anything about them. They were both John Rebus detective novels and I definitely enjoyed reading them, but as so often happens the stories have all blended into one. Sorry about that!

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I listened to Hoping for Hope by Lucy Clare on my last and final journey back to Hatfield and back. It was about Liddy who discovers a couple of days before her 50th birthday that she is not in fact going through the menopause but she is six months pregnant. I thought this was going to be a fairly typical mid-life crisis story, but what I got was a rather sweet story about a whole family who have a bit of a crisis. I predictable story but nice characters and I enjoyed it.

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The Secret History by Donna Tartt is about a slightly weird group of college students who are all taught by this equally weird classics teacher. Basically all that happens in this book is that the students do loads of drugs and actually kill someone and the rest of the story is them trying to cover up what happened, and one of the students gets killed as a result. That’s it. No real story to be honest. The reviews on Amazon rave about this book but I thought it was rather rubbish to be honest!

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That’s it… a rather pitiful 4 books this month. I guess moving and lots of stuff going on has meant I have been a bit busy to read!

Songs of the Humpback Whale by Jodi Picoult is one hell of a confusing book. A story of Jane who leaves her oceanographer husband Oliver and takes her 15 year old daughter Rebecca with her. Rebecca nearly died in a plane crash when she was 5 years old and part of this story is about them reliving this experience. The reason this book is so confusing is that it is told through 5 narrators, and to make it even more confusing Rebecca tells the story back to front! I usually really like Picoult’s novels, but it is clear that this is an early example of her writings, but I have to say it isn’t very good and is terribly confusing. Not worth the effort to be honest!

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Shape of Snakes by Minette Walters is a reasonable enough offering. In the 70’s Mrs Ranelagh finds her neighbour “Mad Annie” battered and lying in the gutter. The police pass it off as her dying after being hit by a lorry when she was drunk but Mrs Ranelagh is convinced that she has been murdered, and prior to her death that she was robbed. The book covers twenty years with letters and articles showing how she has reached these conclusions. It was an OK book but reasonably difficult to feel any sympathy for the lead character who shows a great deal of sympathy for Mad Annie, but not very much for her husband who has put up with her all these years.

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They Also Serve by Hilary Green was a rather protracted book, for a couple of reasons. I listened to it on CD, but it took me a long time to get through it because I was driving Up North and then went home for Christmas and didn’t carry on listening until the New Year. Secondly, it is a rather protracted book in terms of the story. Set in the Second World War it features several characters who were previously involved in the theater, whether as dancers, singers or mucisians. When war hits and they are fored to sign up this book follows their separate journeys, and how it affects their relationships with each other. Quite a nice book and easy enough to listen to with long gaps in between.

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Titanic Survivor: Memoirs of Violet Jessop Stewardess is a fascinating book. Violet was born on 2 October 1887 in Argentina to Irish immigrant parents. She survived several childhood illnesses and went on to be a stewardess on some of the most famous ships in the world, including the Titanic. She survived three sinkings and her memoirs offer a fascinating account of life at sea. I really enjoyed this, the Titanic episode is a relatively small part of the book but nonetheless if you are interested in boats and life at sea then this would definitely be of interest.

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The Falls by Ian Rankin is a cracking John Rebus book. A young female student goes missing in Edinburgh, and what initially seems to be a runaway take a somewhat darker tone when some strange miniature coffins are found which seem to be reminiscent of some murders from many years ago. Add to the that the discovery that the missing student was playing an online game with a Quizmaster and you get an excellent novel with a strong plot and even stronger characters.

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Death of a Blue Movie Star by Jeffrey Deaver is about a wannabe filmaker called Rune. When a local porn theatre is bombed she sets out to make a film about a porn artist. Inevitably she ends up dead and Rune spends her time putting herself in danger to try and get to the bottom of the story. Not a bad read, but not one of Deaver’s best.

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Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything by Elizabeth Noble is an audio book I have had in the car.

Journalist Elizabeth Gilbert went through a messay divrce which left her emotionally wrecked. As a result she left her job and set out to travel for one year, spending 4 months in Rome in Italy (Eat), 4 months in India at an Ashram (Pray) and 4 months in Bali in Indonesia (Love). Her hope was that she would find some sort of balance in her life and a means to be happy again. I laughed throughout this book, especially at the stories of Italy. Her love of food was amazing and she made me want to eat pasta and pizza and lots of it!

This book made me laugh and made me think. A lot. One of the nicest things about this storybook is that it is read by the author. The inflections she puts on words and the stories makes it all seem more real, and more… authentic. (Listening to her read this book also really reminded me of my friend Peterson and that made me smile as well!!!) Her take on theology and God fascinated me and Ioved it when she said that when asked what sort of God she believed in she described him as a ‘Magnificent God’. Her pursuit of solitude and reconciliation with her past and her future was both comforting and challenging.

I love this book. Also, I was listening to this when I was driving back after being at our new house for the weekend. Something about the pursuit of a new future really rang true with me and every time I listened to her words I felt a new song starting in me too.

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Breakfast With Tiffany: An Uncle’s memoir by Edwin John Wintle is a lovely memoir. Forty-something gay New Yorker Eddie, or Uncle Eddie as he becomes known is asked to take on Tiffany, his 13-year-old wayward niece who has been creating havoc at home. He agrees readily but the reality of taking on a teenager is much more challenging than he realises.

This is a truly lovely story of a the relationship between Ed and Tiffany. The way he handles her tantrums are at times completely drama-queen and over the top and yet the love he demonstrates for her her is touching and the meaning Tiffany provides to his life is utterly charming. I loved this book. It kind of reminded me of my friend Jessica when she totally went of the rails and moved in with her grandparents, and I also loved it because it seemed really real.

Nice read. It made me happy.

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Le it Bleed by Ian Rankin is a John Rebus novel. Now, usually I love the Rebus novels, but this one was sloooow. Lots about Police and political corruption, all of which made a slightly disappointing read. Oh well…. NEXT!!!

Hidden in Time by Michael Phillips is one of those generally terrible creations… the Christian novel. This books is about an archaeologist called Adam who has already managed to track down the original Garden of Eden and in this sequel novel he manages to excavate both Noah’s Ark and the Ark of the Covenant. Now, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t particularly have a problem with the story, but it does annoy me that in every other chapter there is someone having a miraculous conversion experience. A terribly improbably storyline, but a million times better written than the Left Behind novels (not that that would be difficult though!!!)

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I listened to The Complaints by Ian Rankin on audio CD. It is the most recent offering from the popular author, and an introduction to a new character. I have always really liked the John Rebus novels, so I was curious as to how this one would pan out. Starring Inspector Malcolm Fox, an Edinburgh copper working in the complaints department of the police force. As expected he is a man who doesn’t like corruption of personal favours so when he appears to be being set up he sets out to investigate in his own time. Teaming up with a Detective Jamie Breck, who has also been set up and been accused of paedophilia, the pair of them work out what is going on. A great book and I really hope that this is the start of a new series of novels featuring this character.

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Dreams From my Father by Barack Obama was a surprising book. I wasn’t sure what to expect but it was a beautifully written reflection on race, culture and identity. Growing up Barack Obama didn’t really know who his father who he only met once when he was 10 years old. This biography follows his story back to Kenya to meet his family and I found it very moving to see his growing understanding of how his feelings of ‘fitting in’ and ‘not fitting in’ helped to develop his sense of identity. I think it is unusual to real such a beautifully written account of a life, especially from someone who is such a prominent politician, even though he was not President when this was published. I have to admit that it has given me a great deal more respect for the current President of the USA.

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The Beach House by Jane Green is a rather mediocre book. It is about a 65 year old woman called Nan who lives in Nantucket. In order to make some money from her rambling house she starts renting rooms out and she tries to fix her tenants lives. A surprise reappearance of her husband who has been dead for 25 years adds to the confusion. This was an OK book but there were so many characters it was hard to keep hold of what was going on and it had the most implausible twists and turns which kind of negated the nice bits of the story!!!

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Big Bad Wolf by James Patterson is fairly typical of his novels. A kidnapper is abducting rich white women to order, Alex Cross has to find out who he is and rescue as many of the women as possible. Combine that with a bit of personal drama and you have a James Patterson novel.

I have to admit that I quite like his books… they have short chapters which make them easy to read. They also make them very fast-paced which means I read them far too quickly!!!

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Diary of a Mad-Mother-To-Be by Laura Wolf is a truly awful book. It about a vile creature called Amy who has been happily married to Stephen for a couple of years when she suddenly decides she wants a baby. She is a shallow character, more worried about how she looks that her baby and I found her most annoying. One of the things that irritated me the most about this book though was the unnecessary footnotes. They added nothing to the story and just served to piss me off. Poorly written and not worth wasting a tree on!

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The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder is a truly lovely book. It is composed of 24 chapters and you are meant to read one each day of Advent, but as I forgot to start it at the beginning of the month, and I wanted to find out what happened I didn’t stick to this!

The story is about a little boy called Joachim who buys an advent calender in a shop. The difference is that this calender is home-made and each time he opens a door a piece of paper drops out with an additional part of the story. The sub-story is about a little girl called Elizabet who goes missing 40 years before Joachim buys his advent calender. She goes on a journey back through time and along the way she meets characters in the Christmas story, until she finally reaches the stable where Jesus was born.

An utterly charming book which makes Christmas all the more magical.

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Out of My Depth by Emily Barr was an OK book with a really disappointing ending. Old school friends all meet up when they are in their thirties. Since school they have followed different paths, some got married and had children, some went to Australia after the death of her mother. But they have a dark secret which unites them. Really good up until about the fifth chapter before then end when it all fizzles out and there was no real ending. Disappointing!

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The Tent, The Bucket & Me by Emma Kennedy was the book I bought my Mum for Christmas. Admittedly one of the reasons I bought it for her was that I wanted to read it. So, before she has even started it, I have finished it (my excuse is that I had to read it before I went back to the mainland!). The book had me giggling all the way through. I guess the author is a couple of years older than me, but I so recognised the stories of camping in the 1970’s and 1980’s. When we were kids we often went camping to France, and whilst we weren’t poor poor we also weren’t rich, so much of our food was taken with us and our spending was very sensible. We never had as many disasters as she did on holiday, but the story of her getting incredibly sunburnt did remind me of my sister and her “tanning” habits. A brilliant book, both if you love, or hate camping. Also the author was brought up in Stevenage and Hitchin which is where I work so I recognise some of the places she talks about. Well worth a read!!!

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

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

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The Chameleon’s Shadow by Minette Walter is a great read, or a great listen in this case because I listened to it in the car on audio CD.

Lieutenant Charles Acland is involved in a major incident in Iraq which kills two of his men and he ends up with a sever facial disfigurement. He returns to the UK and after lengthy operations and rehab he returns to London where he lives as a drop out until being roped into an investigation for the murder of three men.

This is a fab story with some really interesting and well-developed character. I particularly liked the police doctor, Jackson, a big dyke of a woman who is a weightlifter in a spare time. She certainly took no shit but some of her comments in the story gave me laugh out loud moments. A fab book.

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Knit Two by Kate Jacobs is the sequel to the book The Friday Night Knitting Club which I reviewed here. I loved the first book but I found this one much harder to get into.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Absent Wife by Karen Gillece is quite a sad book about a woman called Jean Quick who disappeared 18 years ago leaving her husband and two young children. They had little contact with her during this time, but they receive a telephone call from a young woman called Star who tells them that Jean has died, but also that she was Jean’s daughter. The story is told from differing perspectives and flicks back and forth in time periods. I was left feeling a little bit disappointed by this book. It felt quite unfinished and the characters left me cold, and I wanted to empathise with them, but just found them all incredibly selfish and irritating!!

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2nd Chance by James Patterson is a brilliant really fast-moving detective crime novel. It is set in San Franscisco and opens with the shooting of a little black girl outside her church. There follows a series of murders, all of which appear to be racially related, but there is also something else that links the cases. James Patterson is the master of these sorts of stories and I really like the fact he writes in such short chapters as it means I can easily put the book down and pick it up again without losing my place!!

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The Beach House by James patterson & Peter de Jonge is quite a good book but it has the most improbable and rushed ending.

Jack Mullen is training to be a lawyer and things are going quite well until his young brother is washed up on the shore and he is pronounced as having died from drowning. Jack does his own investigations and uncovers a sinister story of pornography, corruption, beating and deaths. Quite a good read, but 2nd Chance is better!!

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The Wedding Officer by Anthony Capella is both a rather sweet romance novel and a historical story. Set in 1944 in Naples Captain James Gould is sent out to become the ‘wedding officer’, dealing with the British servicemen who are marrying the local prostitutes. Rather predictably he ends up meeting and falling in love with his own Italian woman, although in this case she isn’t a prostitute!

Much like Capella’s previous novel The Food of Love there is a huge focus on the local cuisine. Unlike the Food of Love I didn’t absolutely love The Wedding Officer. It was a nice enough book but was extremely slow going at the beginning and therefore I will be sending it off to be Bookcrossed.

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The Vanished Man by Jeffrey Deaver is a masterclass in crime writing. A gifted illusionist becomes a killer who tricks law enforcement agencies into missing clues through magic, misdirection and illusion. It has a cracking pace and there are so many twists and turns it almost become hard to follow, but somehow the story hangs together. The story explains some of the tricks of the trade, but most of all it is a great read. Well worth getting hold of if you like this genre of story.

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A Good War by Patrick Bishop is a really mediocre Second World War Novel. I picked it up in one of the shops in Hay-on-Wye and thought it looked like a good read but it was just disappointing. The characters weren’t well developed enough to be likeable and the story kind of dragged until the last few chapters or so. Not one to bother with really!!!

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The Model Wife by Julia Llewellyn is a really nice chick lit book. Poppy is a 22-year-old model who meets and falls in love with a married man, Luke. She falls pregnant and Luke leaves his wife and moves in and marries Poppy. Luke’s ex-wife starts writing a newspaper column about her divorce and The Bimbo. This book was quite clever because it addressed lots of things from affairs, to being a single-parent and drugs. There were some laugh out loud moments and I really enjoyed it.

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I listened to Things I Want my Daughter to Know by Elizabeth Noble on audio book. It is a lovely, lovely book to listen to when driving around. When Barbara realises that her time on earth is running out due to her cancer she sets about writing to her four, very different daughters. She effectively writes all the things that she will never be able to tell them, all the things she has learnt and the advice that she would like to give them should she be able to stay with them.

I absolutely loved the characters in this book. They were well developed and they felt so different and yet their families ties were beautifully explained. Interestingly the reviews on Amazon of the paper book are very varied but somehow listening to it gave the story more space and time to develop and I loved it.

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I also tried to listen to My Friend Leonard by James Frey but I only made it though half of the first CD before deciding that I couldn’t bear to listen to a minute more, let along another 10 hours of it.

I think I found the voice of the guy reading it very irritating, but more than that I found the narrative unbelievably annoying. Short sentences, often repeating each other, or the phrases in the previous sentence. I just couldn’t do it!!! I think I might be able to read the book but I definitely couldn’t listen to it!!

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Running for the Hills by Horatio Clare is a curious little book. It is a kind of novelised memoir of Horatio’s childhood growing up in a ramshackle farm in Wales. Prior to his birth he charts his parents love affair, both with each other but also with the farm, right through his childhood and his parents separation. A lot of the story is about sheep, feeding them, lambing, death and eating them. It is a charming book, rather rambly in places but that kind of seemed to fit with both the childhood the author had, but also his relationship with his parents. At times they seem rather disjointed, and other times they are a tight unit. A lovely, if rather unusual read.

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I read The Stepmother by Carrie Adams expecting some schmaltzy chick-lit bollocks. What I got instead was a great read with some rather insightful observation into the trials and tribulations of being a stepmother. What I also got was the perspective from the first wife and a rather fascinating comparison between the two. Much to my surprise it was a really good read without it being saccharine sweet and trite. All in all a good chick-lit.

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Chasing the Dime by Michael Connelly is a cracking and fast-paced thriller. Life gets a little weird for computer and science genius Henry Pierce when he moves to a new flat and starts getting lots of phone calls for a prostitute to has disappeared. Unable to stop himself from trying to find out what has happened to her he becomes embroiled in a nasty and dark conspiracy. A great read!

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Tuesday’s Child by Louise Bagshawe is an ok book. Lucy Evans is a computer-game-playing-Metallica-tshirt-wearing-tom-boy who lives with her best friend Ollie, a lawyer. When Ollie gets engaged to his vile and posh girlfriend Victoria Lucy has to move out of the flat. As a result she sets about reinventing herself and dressing in ‘proper’ clothes and wearing tights and high heels. She meets a rich man and life seems to be going swimmingly until she finally makes the realisation that she is actually in love with Ollie. This is a predictable but nice book but not one I will bother re-reading!

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A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle is a delightful little jaunt through the year of the author and his wife. They moved to a little French village and this is a month-by-month account of their struggles to do up their property and hassles they encounter with French bureaucracy and workmen. It’s very sweet and often funny book but I think I preferred The Olive Tree series by Carol Drinkwater. An enjoyable read though.

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Innocent Graves by Peter Robinson starts with the murder of a 16 year old girl. She is found in a graveyard by the vicar’s wife, the vicar himself having been accused of being a homosexual. The story is told in parallel, one by the investigating officer and one side by the man accused of the murder.

This is a perfectly good, if rather pedestrian, murder mystery novel. It killed a few hours nicely but it didn’t have any great twists that I hadn’t seem coming which made it a rather disappointing ending.

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Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen is a really interesting book. I saw the film starring Winona Ryder and Angeline Jolie, but I never realised that the book was the memoir of the author’s stay in a mental institution.

I am still gobsmacked that they managed to get a whole film out of this book. There is very little to it in some ways. The explanations of mental illness are just broad brushstrokes, but somehow they seem reflective for the author’s state of mind and her inability to concentrate on anything. I also thought it was a very sad book. The author’s diagnosis of borderline personality disorder with bipolar affective disorder seemed to be based on very few facts other than she was a difficult, sullen and stroppy teenager. I wonder how many teenagers were hospitalised because they were not understood.

I really enjoyed it. A fascinating read.

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Speaking in Tongues by Jeffrey Deaver is one of his earlier novels, and to my knowledge it predates his Lincoln Rhyme series which I think are fantastic books.

In this book, Aaron Matthews, a psychologist gone bad, kidnaps the daughter of a lawyer and tries to kill her. It’s a fairly typical suspense drama with several twists and turns. All highly improbable, but I really enjoyed it.

I have load of books on my bookshelf that I have read over the years. I have decided that after re-reading them unless I really love them then I will Bookcross them. I need to make space on the shelves. I enjoyed this book, but it is not a keeper!!!

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I listened to The Various Flavors of Coffee by Anthony Capella during my recent travels. It was an absolutely fascinating book.

Set in the late 1800’s the star of the book is Robert Wallis. A poet who as grand ideas about his poetry and his thoughts of earning a living through his art. Due to a fortuitous meeting with a coffee merchant who employs him, he starts working with coffee. The descriptions of the process of grinding, blending and making the coffee as well as the evocative descriptions of the scent made my mouth water.

Initially this book seems like it is going to be a straightforward romance novel, however, with Robert being sent off to Africa to set up a coffee plantation the subjects of power, slavery, deforestation and female objectification raise their heads. On return to London issues around the suffrage movement and fair trade also surface and these issues make this is a fascinating book. So many issues and a good, but quite slow story. I really enjoyed listening to it, and it has really made me want to read more about the suffragettes, in particular the experiences of those who went to prison and went on hunger strike.

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Lazy Ways to Make a Living by Abigal Bosanko is a rather nice chick lit.

Rose Budleigh moves back to Edinburgh with a PhD in Lexicography. After spending a bit of time staying at her sister;s flat and doing dull market research jobs she meet a bloke she used to play chess with years ago. There begins a rather unconventional relationship which doesn’t exactly take a smooth course. There are lots of chess and word references which I really enjoyed. Not a bad book, but it had been on my bookshelf for too long so it is going to be Bookcrossed!

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Without Fail by Lee Child is a fairly predictable but quite good crime drama. Jack Reacher is summoned by the powers that be to find out who is sending threats to one of the candidates for Vice President. There is lots of shooting, running around and drama Not exactly high brow reading but I quite enjoyed it.

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Handbags and Gladrags by Maggie Alderson is a really nice read. Emily Pointer is a fashion stylist with trendy chic magazine. She is married to a dull and rather irritating husband however the excitement of the fashion shows and the attention of a hunky Australian photographer turn her life around. Whilst this is a book about a torrid affair there are also some rather interesting twists and turns about Emily’s background. A nice read, but I am sure I enjoyed it more when I read it years ago!!!

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The Stone Money by Jeffrey Deaver is one of the Lincoln Rhyme crime novels. It is a complicated story about a group of Chinese refugees whose ship gets blown up by the man who is ‘importing’ them. The story focuses on the investigation is trying to find this man, called The Gui before he kills any witnesses to his crime.

This is a really good book, surprisingly not too confusing even though it is very involved. A great read and well written.

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Last Chance Saloon by Marian Keyes is a really mediocre book which I thought was a shame. I usually really like her books. Fintan, Tara and Katherine have all been friends since they were at school, they grew up together, moved to London, shared a flat and discovered boys together. When Fintan is diagnosed with cancer their live start to fall apart, until they all begin to rebuild them into what they should have been to start off with. I think I just found this book a bit slow going. It was adequate I suppose, but I don’t think that’s a compliment!

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My final book of the month is Storm Force by Eric Gaudion. Eric is a very dear friend of mine who has suffered with acute and chronic pancreatitis for 12 years. Very often he is in a great deal of pain which is only controlled through the use of morphine and he has had numerous operations to try and remedy the situation. As yet he remains uncured and unhealed by God.

This book is directed at this people for whom healing has not been forthcoming. He is very clear that often churches preach a false theology of healing, and for those for whom it does not happen the feelings of guilt and shame can be dramatic. Part of this book involves debunking traditional viewpoints of theology and suggesting how church leaders, as well as friends and family members can learn to live with, and support the individual who is suffering.

Eric is an amazing guy and along with his wife Diane they have been incredibly helpful to me over the last couple of years. They took time out with me when I was really struggling with my sister getting remarried and I have so appreciated their kindness and their love. The book is amazing, but so are Eric and Diane and I love them both. If you are interested in Eric’s story he has a blog which can be found here. If you have a spare moment please pray for them both as Eric is currently in hospital following another major procedure.

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One-Hit Wonder by Lisa Jewell is a really nice read. Ex-popstar Bee Bearhorn is found dead in her flat. Only three people turn up at he funeral, and none of her family make an appearance. However, a few weeks after her death her estranged half-sister turns up to collect her belongings and there starts a bit of investigation into Bee’s death. As time goes on family secrets are revealed and a different side to Bee comes to light. I enjoyed this book. It was light-hearted with nice characters, but not too trite.

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When he was 21 years old Bear Grylls had a bad accident when he was parachuting and crushed three vertabrae. Just two years later he decides to climb Mount Everest. Facing Up is his story of this epic, dangerous and awesome journey.

I have to admit that I am a bit of a fan of Bear Grylls, apart from the fact that I think he is utterly lickable, I also think he seems like a really nice bloke. This certainly comes across in this book and he is both clever and compassionate but also an extremely determined man. One of the things that struck me about this book though is his very quiet faith. He often talks about his relationship with God and I found it terribly endearing, especially when he commented on the awesomeness of the mountains and puts his relationship with God into this context. Knowing that God created him as much as he created the mighty mountains.

A lovely book, very inspiring and a cracking read. There are also a number of stories about wee and poo, most of which were revolting but they made me laugh!!

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The Olive Farm by Carol Drinkwater is her memoir of a love affair with a Frenchman, but also her love affair with a rundown olive farm, Apassionata, in Provence. Carol Drinkwater is an actress who has appeared in many TV shows and theatre productions, but I wouldn’t know her if her saw a picture of her. However, I love her style of writing. She is honest about her failings and fears but most of all I loved how reading this book made me feel. Even when it was raining outside I started feeling the warm sun on my face, the taste of olive oil on my lips and the smell of herbs in the air. I loved it.

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Just after I finished the last book I picked up The Olive Harvest by Carol Drinkwater. It is actually the third book in this series, I haven’t managed to acquire the second one which is called The Olive Season.

This book is 12 years on from the first one and Carol and Michel return to their farm Apassionata. They are still tending their olive trees but they also acquire a some beehives. This book was kind of a sad one in some ways. Michel and Carol have got married and they have a car accident which leaves them with minor physical injuries, but for Michel the mental scars remain. He makes the decision to spend some time alone in his flat in Paris, and much of this book is about Carol’s feelings of loss and guilt as it was her driving the car.

I thought this was another great book and can’t wait to find the second one… even though that is a bit back-to-front!!

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The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies is a slightly strange book. It feels like two different stories somehow crammed together in one novel. The first story is about a young welsh girl called Esther who happens to live near a prisoner-of-war camp, and a young German soldier who is incarcerated there. The second story is about a a Jewish refugee who is working for the British government and is sent to interview Rudolph Hess.

Somehow this book didn’t really work for me. I didn’t think the stories themselves were that great and the characters didn’t grow on me as much as I hoped they would. Disappointing really.

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Eden by Tim Smit is the story of the inception and creation of The Eden Project in Cornwall.

This book was fascinating. I am absolutely desperate to visit the Eden Project and The Lost Gardens of Heligan (Smit’s project prior to the Eden) and I am hoping that I might get to go next year. This book was a bit heavy in places, going on and on about the problems they had with funding, building permissions etc. but then I realised that those elements of the story are what makes it such an awesome project. It is not only the size of the place, but the size of the inspiration and the vision that Tim Smit had to have to think of something so nuts!!

It’s a great book. We need more people like Tim Smit. People who are visionaries, slightly mental and who want to make a difference on a grand scale.

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Narrow Dog to Carcasonne by Terry Darlington on CD kept me entertained over a few hundred miles driving.

It is the true life story of a journey from England, over the English Channel and through the waterways of France down to Carcasonne. The story was written by pensioner Terry, who along with his wife Monica and their thieving whippet Jim made this epic journey in a traditional narrow boat!! The book is absolutely hilarious in places and one of the moments that had me cackling with laughter was when the author described his dog Jim wearing his life jacket and looking like a Liquorice Allsort.

Brilliant book to listen to and the guy who was reading it had the most wonderful voice and did the most fabulous accents. Lovely!!

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That Certain Age by Elizabeth Buchan is a story of two women who are stuck in a rut. Siena is a 21st century woman who is married to a lawyer and she has too many options available to her. Should she move to America to continue her career, should she have a child etc. She seems unable to make a decision that benefits both her and her husband.

Barbara lives in 1959 and is married to Ryder who is an airline pilot. Her life is equally constrained by choice, but unlike Siena who has too much choice, she doesn’t have any. She is in a marriage in which she isn’t exactly unhappy, but she doesn’t feel especially fulfilled.

This book was kind of strange. It didn’t really go anywhere. The characters were nice enough but the storylines were poor and it didn’t really rock my boat. I didn’t love it, but neither did I hate it.

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To My Daughter in France by Barbara & Stephanie Keating is a fab and fascinating book.

When Richard Kirwan, an Irish academic dies his children find out about another daughter he has in France. They have no idea who she is and have never heard of her before. The book is set in 1970 and in 1942 and flicks seamlessly between these two time periods. What unfolds is a story of the war, the resistance and true love. It involves two families, secrets that cover generations and true bravery.

I really loved this book. Thought the story during the war was very moving and sad and the horror and confusion when the children find out about each other was well-written. I was also interested to see that this book was written by two sisters. One who lives in France and the other who lives in Dublin. I wonder how they split up the writing. Did one write the 1942 story and the other the 1970 story? If so, it is very hard to see that it is a collaboration by two different people.

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Since I Don’t Have You by Louise Candlish is a book about Rachel and her two best friends Mariel and Jenny. They have three girls between them who are the same age and are copying their mother’s by having a close friendship. The expectation is that they will grow up together and will go through life as friends. However, at the age of six Rachel’s daughter is Emma is killed in a road accident when she is returning from a school trip. Full of grief Rachel takes herself off to her mother’s childhood home of Santorini and there she begins the long process of dealing with her grief.

This is a lovely book dealing with tough subjects and it is beautifully written. It really made me want to visit Santorini and see what it was like, but more than anything this book brought home just how tough it is to lose a child.

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The Pact by Jodi Picoult is about a teenage couple called Emily and Chris. Their families live near each other and they have known each other their whole lives. One day Emily is found dead, shot, apparently by Chris. However, he is adamant that it is is a double suicide pact that never reached completion.

This is a classic Jodi Picoult novel. Court based legal drama with a few twists and turns. It was ok, but not one of her best books.

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The Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith is the fourth book in the Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency series.

Mma Precious Ramotswe is faced with new challenges in this book and the beautifully gentle stories continue. Once again the actual mysteries she solves are secondary to the details of life in Botswana. What I really enjoyed about this book though was that her assistant Mma Makosi’s character was developed and we learnt more about her. In this novel she gets herself a boyfriend and starts a new business in the evening to help her make more money to send to her family.

These are such wonderful books and reading each one is like meeting an old friend again.

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A Kept Woman by Louise Bagshawe is everything a chick-lit novel should be. Beautiful women, cheating husbands and lots and lots of backstabbing… but I really enjoyed it!

Diana is rich and beautiful and marries a very rich man. All goes well until she finds her rather wet husband in bed with a dominatrix and they end up divorcing… although she comes out of it rather badly. Now she has to get a job, work hard and make her own way in the world. For a change it would seem that the beautiful heroine isn’t as useless as most of these books make out.

It was a good read, nice characters and a fun storyline. It was also entirely predictable, which maybe is why I enjoyed it so much!!!

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The Summer of Secrets by Martina Reilly is a brilliant book. Kind of in the vein of Marian Keyes but I think she is a better writer.

Hope Gardner loses yet another job and decides to take an extended holiday. However, the plane flight she takes to this dream is less than expected when it crashes and the majority of passengers die. Hope survives, with some significant but not life-threatening injuries, and to cheer her up her two friend Adam and Julie decide to take her to a cottage in Ireland, near where she grew up, to recuperate. Whilst she is there she undertakes some counselling to help her manage her anxiety, and with the help of this therapist she starts to address some of her unresolved issues about her past.

I think I really enjoyed this book because it takes the issue of trauma seriously, and shows some good examples of desensitization techniques and therapy. But, more than that it was just a really good read and I romped through it in about 2 days!!

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The Return by Victoria Hislop is a good read. It is one of those novels which flits back over the years – tying two stories together through the characters. In this case a woman called Sophie, her love of Spain and the discovery of her mother’s life in Granada during the Spanish Civil War. It’s a good read, nice characters and enough historical detail to make it interesting without making it overwhelming. I have to say though, I didn’t love it quite as much as her other book The Island which I thought was a fantastic read.

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Sparkles by Louise Bagshawe is a slighlty ridiculous tale about a jewellery empire called the Massot family. Bizarrely Pierre Massot disappeared leaving a wife and a young son. Seven years on Mme Massot decides that in order to save the empire she needs to get involved. However, she hadn’t banked on hostile takeover attempts from both s rival company and her son.

This was really quite a silly book. The plot was verging on the ludicrous and it was almost like three stories that had been put together in a poor attempt to pad out the book. Not a terribly good novel in my humble opinion!

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The Kommandant’s Girl by Pam Jenoff was a story that I listened to on CD when I was driving around recently.

It is set in Krakow during the Second World War and overnight nineteen year old Emma Bau’s world is turned upside down. Her husband Jacob is a member of the Resistance and he is forced to flee the city and go underground. She returns to her family home, only to find that her parents have been taken into the ghetto, and after a brief stint with them in the ghetto the Resistance move her to live with Jacob’s aunt. She assumes a Catholic identity and after a chance meeting at a dinner party she is offered the position of assistant to Kommandant Richwalder at Nazi headquarters. From there she is able to work for the Resistance, whilst always hiding her true identity.

This was a really good story, despite it being a little slow in places. I found the tales of the Resistance, the bravery of the people involved and the things that were experienced by the Poles very emotive. I was also surprised that I found some sympathy for the Nazis. An interesting story about a period of history that generally fascinates me.

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Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson is a book narrated by Ruby Lennox, right from her conception through to adulthood. It tells memoirs of her very disfunctional family who live in York and their strange relationships, both with themselves and with each other.

I expected quite a lot of this book. I mean even on the back cover The New York Times Book Review says, “Rermarkable… full of the grimness, grit, and grandeur of Yorkshire life… One of the funniest books to come out of Britain in years.” Quite frankly I certainly found it grim, but I didn’t find it funny in the slightest. there were very irritating full chapter footnotes after each main chapter and I didn’t really think it had a story. Most disappointing.

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Wife in the North by Judith O’Reilly is about Judith, a mother of two children, with another one on the way who moves from London to Northumberland. This isn’t her dream, it is her husband’s and she struggles to get used to living in the middle of nowhere. Whilst there she starts writing a blog about her experiences and these memoirs document her experiences, fears and frustrations of living far away from what she calls home.

This book was fab, there were some real laugh out loud moments, but it was also poignant, sad and very, very honest. She also came up with a fab quote about friendship… “Some friends become another family. Some friends you talk to once a year, A few are there in every crisis and extremity. You hurt when they hurt. There are times when you put down a phone after they have read you the latest chapter of their life and you weep for the Some, occasionally, disappoint. Occasionally, you disappoint back. You try to listen. In sadness and disaster you day: ‘I love you’ and hope they can hear between their shouts of pain. You say: ‘I’m here for you’ and hope they can see you in their darkness. it seems the least that you can do.”

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Birthday Girls by Annabel Giles is about six different women, all celebrating six important birthdays in their lives. Initially they all seem like independent, unrelated individuals but through their stories it is possible to work out that that they are all inter-linked through one way or the other.

This book was ok. Kind of pointless in someways (like most chick lit) but it wasn’t even a very good read.
Back to the charity shop I think!!

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Night by Elie Wiesel is one of those books that has had a profound affect on me. I first read it when I was in my late teens and I found it incredibly moving and thought provoking.

Elie Wiesel is a Jew who was born in Transylvania. Night is his memoir of the Holocaust and his experiences of being in Auchwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. However, the book isn’t a straightforward story of the experiences of the Jews. It is his recollection of the loss of hope and the despair over his loss of faith that really got to me. For me, this is probably one of the most moving quotes in the whole book….

“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.
Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself.
Never.”

I think everyone should read this book. The travesty of the loss of so many Jewish people, along with all the others who died in the concentration camps, is completely overwhelming. I wonder regularly what gifts the world has missed out on because of the early demise of these souls.

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The Editor’s Wife by Clare Chambers was a book that I listened to on CD when I was driving around. The Mister also listened to some of this one too because I was driving and I wanted to know what happened!!!

This book is about an aspiring novelist called Christopher Flinders who makes a pretty spectacular error of judgement and this has a major impact on the rest of his life. I really enjoyed this book and found the peripheral characters somehow more satisfying than the main characters. It certainly passed the time when I was driving anyway!

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A Breath of Fresh Air by Erica James is about a thirty-something woman who is widowed and moves back to her childhood village to live. There are the usual host of interfering villagers and family to content with. This was a dull book with a predictable storyline and the most totally predictable ending. Perfect to read when I could only read a bit at a time, but not one of her best.

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I picked up the audio book version of The Secret Diary of a Demented Housewife by Niamh Greene thinking it would be entertaining to listen to when I was driving. The blurb on the back of the case says that it is about Susie, a stay-at-home mother and this is her private diary of the highs and lows of of her life.

I have to say that this was a truly rubbish book. The main character was unbelievably self-centred and truly irritating. I also decided there were only so many stories I could listen to about poo and snot. Truly grim.

There was 10 CD’s on the set and I switched it off after 2 1/2. I just couldn’t take it anymore!!!

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Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult is about Shay Bourne, a prisoner on death row for the brutal murder of Kurt Nealon and his step-daughter Elizabeth. Kurt’s and his wife June had a daughter, she was pregnant when he was murdered, and this little girl has a heart problem which means she needs a heart transplant. Her father’s murderer is insisting that when he dies his heart goes to her. Remarkably, his heart is a perfect match in all ways.

This book is highly improbable but quite a good read. The ethics surrounding transplantation and the death penalty are dealt with from an interesting perspective. Not one of her best, but not too bad.

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Wedding Season by Katie Fforde is a perfect summer read, light and fluffy and just not too taxing.

Sarah Stratford is a wedding planner, and she is able to organise everyone else’s lives but her own. Along with her dress-designer and hairdresser friend they plan perfect wedding for complete drama queens. Of course everything ends up nicely with them all finding their own men and living happily ever after, as a chick-lit-beach-read should be!

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The Heart of the Dales by Gervase Phinn is SUCH a good read, although there was something rather strange about sailing down The Nile and being able to hear Yorkshire voices in my mind.

Gervase Phinn, Schools Inspector is at it again. Trawling around the Dales, visiting his schools and catching up with some old and new faces. He has a new boss who is rather a task-master and a ‘little job’ to undertake which happens to be organising a major conference. These books are well worth a read. Definitely the James Herriot of education!

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Point of Rescue by Sophie Hannah was a book I found a bit hard-going.

Sally is a woman who is bored with life and finds motherhood a difficult task. The year before this story is set she is meant to go on a work-trip, which was cancelled. However, she decides to go anyway and tells her husband that she is away on business. Whilst staying at a hotel she meets a man called Mark Bretherick and has an affair with him. One day she sees on TV that this man’s daughter and wife have been murdered, the only problem is that the man who is called Mark Bretherick was not the man she spent the week with. This book is a murder-mystery with a twist and is quite a good read, eventually!

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Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married by Marian Keyes is a slightly irritating book. Lucy Sullivan (no surpises there) is a young woman who is told by a psychic that she will be getting married. Other than her traumatic relationships, dealing with depression and her father’s alcoholism I can’t really tell you what the story was about. A bit of a shame really as I usually like Marian Keyes books.

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Second Glance by Jodi Picoult is a bit of a departure from her usual courtroom dramas with themes focussing around legal/moral/ethical dilemmas. This story is essentially a ghost tale about a young man called Ross whose fiancee died and as a result he became a ghost hunter. He goes to visit his sister and his nephew after strange goings on at a Native-American burial site and he got more than he bargained for as his past comes back to haunt him.

The problem I had with this book is that I just didn’t “get it”. The story was convoluted and as it shifts back and forth in time, and sometimes transcends the dimension of time due to the ghost element, I just was confused. I was about 250 pages in before I realised that one of the major characters appears several different times over different periods of times, but he has different names. I just found it confused and didn’t really enjoy it. From my perspective it certainly was not as good as some of her other books.

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For some reason I had two copies of The Pilot’s Wife by Anita Shreve sitting on my shelf but I only decided to read it after reading Mrs C’s review.

The book is about Kathryn, the wife of a pilot whose husband dies after his passenger plane drops out of the sky. Investigations are made after concerns that his behaviour may have contributed to the accident and even suicide as considered as a possibility. Throughout the investigation Kathryn makes discoveries about her husband and his life that horrify her and start her on a journey.

I really enjoyed this book and found the theme of grief well written and sensitively dealt with. The writing style was lovely, and I agree with Mrs C, there is definitely a good twist at the end!

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The Private Lives of Pippa Lee by Rebecca Miller is a curious and intriguing little book.

Pippa is a 50-something woman who is married to Herb, a man in his 80’s. They move to a retirement community where Pippa is very much the youngest woman there. The story takes a swift jump back to her past and over each chapter you find out snippets of her ‘past lives’, the situations that made her the woman she is now. She has a disturbed childhood with a mother who was a speed junkie and for whom she had tremendous contempt and her travels enabled her to meet a strange bohemian bunch of people who taught her many things she probably didn’t need to know so young.

Rather surprisingly I really liked this book. I was fascinated by this back-to-front view of a person’s life and it has a rather good twist at the end. Oh, it also was one of Richard and Judy’s bookclub reads.

Perfect Match by Jodi Picoult features Nina, who is an assistant district attorney. Life is going very well for her until her 5-year old son Nathaniel discloses that he has been sexually abused. Despite spending many years prosecuting child abusers she knows that the likelihood of gaining a conviction is slim, so when her son discloses who the perpetrator was she takes the law into her own hands.

Usually I quite like Jodi Picoult books but this one was much the same as some of her other stories, but it just wasn’t quite as good ! I think I enjoy her novels more when they are set in an unusual situations, like Plain Truth which was set in the Amish community. This one just didn’t quite cut it for me unfortunately.

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I have been listening to Light on Snow by Anita Shreve on CD. Nicky is 12-years old and and lives in the middle of nowhere in New Hampshire along with her father. They moved there following the death of her mother and sister in a car accident and her father doesn’t really want to have too much contact with the outside wall. However, this all changes when they go walking in the snow one day and find a newborn baby in the woods. Things get even stranger when the mother of the baby turns up at their house in the middle of a snow storm.

To be honest I didn’t really like this book much. I think this is partly because I thought the story was slow, and quite dull and I didn’t really like the characters. However, I have to admit that I found that the woman who was reading the book had the most irritating, drawly, whiney American accent, and that put me off. The other thing that irritated me was that the dialogue was incredibly stilted, with lots of “he said”, “she saids” which just wound me up. I am not sure I would have noticed it so much if I had been reading the book, but listening to it made it very obvious.

Not one of my favourites!

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The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or the Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale is one of the first Richard and Judy books that I haven’t enjoyed. It is about the real life murder of a three-year old boy who was brutally murdered by one of the residents of the house. The book was researched using police papers from the National Archive and other information gained from newspapers around the time.

I guess I just found it a bit boring. It was incredibly detailed, but I found the story dragged and I just found the whole research thing a bit tedious.

Seems to me I haven’t enjoyed many books so far this month. Maybe I need to read another No 1 Ladies Detective Agency to cheer me up!

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Conversations with the Fat Girl by Liza Palmer was a good book. It is about a girl called Maggie and her best friend Olivia. When they were younger both girls were overweight, but Olivia paid for surgery and is now a US size 2 – just in time for her wedding. Maggie hasn’t lost the weight, but this book is about her discovery of how her weight doesn’t make her a better or worse person, and it also doesn’t mean her life has to end.

It is unusual for me to find a novel so thought-provoking. I guess having been a ‘fat girl’ my entire life, I found that I related to Maggie and her traumas. Her anxieties and low self-esteem was both heartbreaking and endearing and she very much proved that she was so much nicer than her skinny friend. However, she rather beautifully got her own back at the end!

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Morality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith is the third in the Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series.

So, we meet again with Mma Precious Ramotswe and her now legendary detective work. However, some of he problems are closer to home as her intended husband appears to be suffering with depression. The stories and mysteries to be solved are unusual but not especially interesting, but what I loved the most about this book is the gentle meander through the culture of Botswana. The focus on community and the role of the extended family was beautifully developed and I found in incredibly endearing. I love these stories. The characters are beautifully developed and when I have read loads of crap books, I can rely on the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency to cheer me up.

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A Friend of the Family by Lisa Jewell is about the London family, who are a family in need, even though they don’t know it. Gerry and Bernie are the parents, totally in love with each other and live in a house full of tat. They are also the parents to three boys. Tony is newly divorced and in love with one of his brother’s girlfriends. Sean is a successful novelist, who goes to pieces when he finds out his girlfriend is pregnant, and Ned who has just returned from living in Australia where he left a girlfriend who keeps sending her hair and toenail clippings in the post to show how mental she is. Living with their parents is Gervase, an enigmatic rockabilly who seems to have a psychic gift for understanding the troubles the boys are going through.

I really enjoyed this book – an easy read with likeable characters. Halfway through I thought the story was familiar… it was… I have read this book before!!

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Sunbathing Naked and Other Miracle Cures by Guy Kennaway is a hilarious, and sad memoir about living with psoriasis. It documents the many different types of cures he has tried for this difficult to manage condition and the ways in which it affects his life. There are some real laugh out loud moments… especially when he is describing naked sunbathing, and the ways in which people contort their bodies to get as much sun the the affected parts. Unfortunately I was on the bus when I was reading that part so I was quite embarrassing. I found this book very interesting as my sister had psoriasis when she was younger and had to use the most revolting smelly shampoo. Anyway, great book about a serious subject!

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Comfort Food by Kate Jacobs is about a TV cook called Gus. She hosts a successful cookery show and seriously gets the hump when she is forced into hosting a life TV cookery show with an ex-beauty-queen called Carmen who she loathes with a passion. The book contains some serious spats and some hilarious attempts at team building.

The other thing that this book did was made me think about how important food is to my family, especially on my Mum’s side. Whether it is family party, wedding, funeral or general day-to-day stuff, food is pretty crucial. My Mum makes an amazing roast and prize winning Guernsey biscuits. Auntie Josie’s profiteroles are legendary, as are Auntie Pat’s meringues. As for Auntie Jen…. pretty much everything she cooks is magnificent. Maybe this goes some way to explain why I am not wafer thin!!

Whilst I enjoyed this book I found the beginning really slow, but the ending was wrapped up way too quickly. The author also wrote The Friday Night Knitting Club which I absolutely loved (and reviewed here) I kind of felt that this second book was a bit rushed and didn’t have the same charm as the first but it was still an OK read.

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And now to something distinctly less chick-litty! Onto an audio book called Blood Hunt by Ian Rankin, writing as Jack Harvey.

Gordon Reeve is a survival expert who lives in the Scottish Highlands with his family. His life is ticking along quite nicely, running ‘let’s-play-at-being-soldier’ weekends for men who think they look good with a gun, when his journalist brother is found dead in a car in America. Allegedly it is suicide but Gordon is less than convinced when he finds out that his brother has been investigating a less-than-savoury story. There is plenty of bloodshed and suspense and a great story with lots of twists and turns.

For a start, I really liked the voice of the guy reading this story which definitely helps! I thought that characters were well developed and interesting and it was an excellent read/listen. In general I like Ian Rankin novels and this one was a bit different to his usual Rebus novels.

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Home Truths by Freya North is another great book. The McCable sisters, Fen, Pip and Cat have characterised their whole lives by the fact that when they were small their mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver. As a result they were looked after by their eccentric uncle Django who has an interesting take on cooking and an equally colourful dress sense. However, on his 75th birthday their lives are turned upside down when their mother arrived.

I have always like these books by Freya North. Her characters are beautifully developed, largely due to the fact that each of the girls has a whole booked dedicated to them. This story of about families, both traditional and the more untraditional and how close family bonds enable them to get through almost anything.

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I was very confused by the book More Twisted by Jeffrey Deaver. I found it confusing and difficult to read and I couldn’t work out why each chapter seemed like a different story with different characters and plots. It was only when I got to the end of the book, peeled off the label on the front and read the statement “Bite-sized thrills from the master of suspense” that it actually made sense. The reason that it felt like a book of short stories was because it is a book of story stories. Doh!!!