On Chapel Sands – Laura Cummings Review

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“We look back at the past and see the shape of the future.”

Rating: ★★★★★

In 1929, a three year old girl is kidnapped from a beach. She is found five days later, perfectly safe and dressed in all new clothes. Just like so much else of the child’s life, it is wrapped away and kept a secret, even from herself. The child was the author’s mother, and in this book she writes of the mystery of that event, her mother’s family, their secrets, and their relationships.

This book was really beautifully written. Laura Cummings is an art writer, and you can tell by the way that she describes people, places and events. She really paints a scene with words and makes you feel for these people who lives decades ago. I loved that though the author did not know all of the people she writes about, and even though things that they did make them seem somewhat cold and cruel, she manages to humanise them by interpreting details in the things they left behind, photos of them, and things that they wrote.

The story being told is a beautiful and sad mystery. Although, of course, Laura Cummings didn’t come up with the story and she can’t be credited with the surprises and secrets themselves, she had a brilliant way of weaving events together with more analytical passages where she explored a place or person in detail. I loved the passages where she analyses family photographs to get a feeling of the people in the photo as well as the person taking them. She managed to make the story more than a story of scandal and secrets but of real people, complex relationships and deep secrets.

This is definitely a 5 star read and one of my favourite memoirs.

Under the Wig – William Clegg QC Review

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Rating: ★★★

William Clegg QC’s memoirs are a great insight into life at the British criminal law bar. He writes about his most famous cases, including infamous serial killers, defending the wrongfully accused, phone hacking and former soldiers accused of war crimes.

These stories are not told in a gruesome or sensationalist way, but instead give you an insight into how these cases played out in the courts. It is a bit of true crime but without the voyeurism and it doesn’t seek to make light of crime or make it interesting to the reader as a gory tale. This is simply an examination of what it is like as a barrister to represent people accused of murder, those who you think may be innocent, those who are innocent, and those who are clearly guilty. It considers all of those questions people ask about how it is possible to defend a murderer, among others, against the backdrop of real life cases.

I really enjoyed reading this book because the writing is very accessible and each chapter deals with a distinct topic. This makes it a really quick and easy read, and I would recommend it to anyone looking to learn about criminal law in Britain. I would have liked for it to address some issues like diversity at the bar and failings of the criminal justice system and it didn’t have much depth, but it’s good for a laid back read and if you don’t have much knowledge of the British legal system you might find it a good introduction to the topic. I was also really disappointed to see in the acknowledgments that it was written using a ghost writer!

Overall, a fun and quick read which I’m glad I read, but which probably won’t leave a huge impact. I hope to read some more detailed books which look at the legal system in more depth.

This Is Not A Ghost Story – Andrea Portes Review

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Rating: ★★★★

First of all, thank you to Harper360 for this gifted arc! I was so excited to receive this thrilling spooky novel!

This book follows Daffodil as she relocates to a new city to start college. She is pleased to be out of her small town home and in a new place, ready too start a new life. Her only issue is money. Daffodil is broke, and she needs a job that will pay enough to help her fund her way through college. That’s why she jumps at the chance to house sit a college professor’s large house while he leaves town for the summer. It also seems like a sweet deal, spending the summer alone in such a large house with absolute freedom. However, pretty soon, she begins to feel that she isn’t actually alone in the house. She feels like she is being watched, and like maybe, she isn’t actually alone in the house.

This book was really creepy! It isn’t often that a book genuinely creeps me out, but I was hooked on this book and when I found myself reading it in the middle of the night, I figured I might as well keep reading because I definitely wasn’t going to want to turn off the lights! The tone of the writing is really conversational and also very good at making you feel like you are right in the house with the protagonist. It is also really fast paced and gets going right away with the creepiness, constantly amping up the tension throughout the book. On the other hand, I wasn’t a huge fan of the romance in this book, and would have gladly done away with it to have more detail added into the mystery and explaining the history of the house, and bringing the other secondary characters to life a little bit more.

Overall, a really fun spooky read if you are looking for something to give you the heebie-jeebies!

Dark Age (Red Rising #5) – Pierce Brown Review

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Rating: ★★

“I would die for the truth that all men are created equal. But in the kingdom of death, amidst ramparts of bodies and wind all of screams, there is a king, and his name is not Lune. It is Reaper.”

I love the Red Rising series. The books are exciting and fast-paced, broad in scope and deep in detail with characters that jump off the page. However, I think that this latest instalment is a little too broad for my liking, and is becoming a bit unwieldy, which is a HUGE SHAME!

The excellent aspects of this series remain. Pierce Brown’s writing is poetic and beautiful, which is worth the occasional times it feels heavy and dense. The characters that we have gotten to know over the previous four books are developed further and in brilliant ways – I particularly enjoyed the new insights into Lyria, Volga and Victra. There were also a number of plot points which genuinely had me open-mouthed with shock – an experience I have come to expect with these books.

However, the multiple narratives felt too distinct for me, and for most of the book it felt like I couldn’t see their relevance to each other. It would have felt more cohesive if there was a central plot that drove the whole story forward, but it was just five distinct lives mostly going their own way. This might be fine in another book, but when it is 750 pages of intense detail, political schemes and war strategy, it can feel like a lot of heavy lifting for little pay off. The ending also felt a little rushed given how long the book is!

It might be that my reading slump made me feel this way and that I was just desperate to get to the end of this huge book, but something was missing for me here. I know there is just one book left of this series, and I am sure I will read it to see where this story ends, but I’m not sure it will be at the top of my TBR.

The Guest List – Lucy Foley Review

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“There are always secrets around the fringes of a wedding.”

Rating: ★★

The bride, the bridesmaid, the best man, the plus one, the wedding planner, and one victim.

When Jules hosts her wedding at a secluded, wild island off the coast of Ireland, everyone knows it will be an event to remember. Jules is successful and glamorous, and her fiancé Will is an equally attractive and compelling TV personality. However, with guests from both of their pasts colliding and living with each other for the duration of the wedding weekend, it’s only a matter of time until emotions run high.

This was presented as a modern take on Agatha Christie’s “locked room” murder mystery, and that instantly caught my eye. However, it just could not live up to the genre for me, and although I kept reading in the hopes that the plot would impress me, it lacked the big reveal and “A-ha!” moments that make crime novels great.

Unfortunately, the mystery just wasn’t that mysterious to me, the suspense wasn’t there and the plot twists didn’t surprise me. It started off strong with a dramatic prologue but then just petered out until the last few chapters. When the tension did ramp up, it was over far too quickly. There was no ‘whodunnit’ element to this book, just a ‘who will do it’. You know that someone gets hurt, and then when you get to that point, it is literally spelled out for you on the page. You watch it happen and you are told, point blank, what has happened. The book didn’t really give the crime element of the book time to play out, but confined it to a short sharp burst of drama in the last few chapters.

I did enjoy the characters and I would say that was what kept me reading. They each had defined voices and even though I couldn’t really see the relevance to some of them, they were quite interesting as people. I would have liked for their individual secrets to have been revealed more publicly however – it felt like I knew about their secrets as the reader, but it sometimes had no impact on the plot.

Overall, this book was just too disappointing for me. It presents itself as a whodunnit but it didn’t tick the boxes for me.

Little Monsters – Kara Thomas Review

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Rating: ★★★

“Have you ever wanted something so badly, you thought it just might kill you?”

Kacey is new to Broken Falls, after moving in with her dad and seemingly perfect step-family. In fact, her new life is pretty perfect altogether, especially with her two new best friends, Bailey and Jade. But one day, things begin to change. Her friends shut her out, and suddenly, Bailey is missing. When the town begins to suspect Kacey, her perfect new life begins to unravel as Kacey pieces together the mystery of her friend’s disappearance.

This novel has all of the key ingredients of a great crime mystery: a small town setting, crime, a haunting and a wide cast of characters who all have something to hide. Kacey and her family were a great bunch of characters, and I loved that this wasn’t solely focused on Kacey and her friends but brought her whole family into it. I particularly loved her relationship with her step-mother and brother, although I felt like her dad could have done with some more development.

Now, as a disclaimer, I am a true crime aficionado and I think that might be a reason why I didn’t find the mystery that hard to guess. I had guessed who it was quite early on, and whilst there were points in the story that gave me a shadow of a doubt, ultimately the person who I thought had done it at the start was the person who, in the end, did do it. I also didn’t love how the author revealed the truth: I would have preferred a confrontation with the villain at the end, or for Kacey to piece the whole thing together herself, instead a lot of the explanation took place off the page, and the end of the novel was a bit of an infodump.

Overall, I was disappointed by the ending and the fact that I guessed it, but I did enjoy reading this book. It was never boring, it just was never surprising either.

Dangerous Alliance – Jennieke Cohen Review

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Rating: ★★★.5

“For why else would so many books exist if not to impart different truths about life and all its complexities? Indeed, as much as Vicky had always wanted to emulate Elizabeth Bennet, she now realised she was more than content to simply be herself.”

Lady Victoria Aston lives a life of dreams. She is young, wealthy, and her parents don’t bat at eyelid at her spending her days running wild on their country estate, or reading the latest Jane Austen novels and imagining herself to be Lizzie Bennet. However, when her older sister has to flee her husband and shame threatens to engulf their family, Vicky has to find a good match – and soon – or risk losing their family home. At the same time, mysterious men seem intent on hurting her and her family, and her former best friend Tom’s return home is bringing up old feelings from the past.

Dangerous Alliance is Jane Austen with mystery and action. From the very first chapter, the plot grabs you and drags you into the 19th century, and Vicky is a brilliantly intelligent and brave protagonist. The book also shows us different sides of this era to those you’ve probably seen, showing the reality of how domestic violence and divorce was treated in society at the time.

Sometimes however it felt like the book did a bit too much and I would have preferred for the story to have been more focussed. My least favourite part of the novel was how it deviated from Vicky to Tom – I didn’t feel as engaged by his narration as I did Vicky’s, and his personal storylines with his family history and business plans didn’t interest me as much as hers did. I also didn’t feel a huge amount of chemistry between the pair, and felt like their backstory was relied on to explain their romance a bit too much.

Overall, this is a fun novel which is great for anyone looking for a bit of an Austen fix!

Dracula – Bram Stoker Review

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Rating:★★★.5

“Of all the foul things that lurk in this hateful place the Count is the least dreadful to me.”

What a start to #SpookySeason!

I’m sure you know about Dracula so I’ll keep the summary short. He’s a vampire who travels from Transylvania to England to take over. Our heroes are an unlikely gang consisting of two doctors, a solicitor, a Lord, an American and a young lady who plan to stop his evil plan and save their souls in the process.

What I really liked about it was how creepy it is. The opening section, which takes place in Count Dracula’s castle and which was my favourite part is absolutely terrifying and really spooked me. The atmosphere was so tense and really brought to life by the author’s descriptions. It’s also the most that we get to see of Dracula himself throughout the whole novel, as I love a good villain.

The writing and structure of this novel is another thing that I loved. It is told in the form of diary entries, newspaper clippings and letters. This means that the tension is really amped up as the narration is vivid and you experience the story in the moment with the characters and piece things together as they do. This also means that the tension is high right until the end of the novel, as you never know what’s coming next.

However there came a point where the pace slowed down a bit too much – specifically where the sections are coming up with their plan to stop Dracula. It would have also helped for Dracula to be more present in these sections.

One other aspect I liked was the story of a group of characters being brought together to go on a dangerous mission. I haven’t read it often in Victorian literature and it was also interesting to see a female character in that gang, even if she was a somewhat stereotypical Victorian lady – at least she had some brains!.

Grimm Tales for Young and Old – Philip Pullman Review

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Rating: ★★★

We all know of the Brothers Grimm and their fairytales. We have all heard Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Rumpelstilstkin, Hansel and Gretl. The Brothers Grimm didn’t write these stories, they simply wrote down stories that were already being told, recording what had only been shared orally until then. They published their collection in several different editions. In this book, Philip Pullman gives us 50 fairytales retellings. He doesn’t deviate from the originals, but pulls together the best or clearest aspects from the Grimms’ different editions.
My favourite part about Pullman’s book was that at the end of each fairytale he provided an explanation of the history of the story, how the different versions differ and the decisions he made in writing his version. This helps makes the short stories more interesting and engaging. It also helps because me of the stories are frankly really weird, and Pullman explains it where possible but also acknowledges when a story is just a bit ridiculous. I especially loved hearing about the real people who the Grimm brothers interviewed.
As I mentioned, these fairytales are weird. This is essentially a book of fifty incredibly weird short stories. Some of them I really enjoyed and some I just wanted to skip. It was both helpful and annoying that the stories were so short, because it stopped me feeling stuck in the stories but also meant that they began to feel quite repetitive – there were lots of evil stepmothers and neglected children. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t read this in one go as I would a novel, but maybe read a story every day and spread it over a longer period.
What’s your favourite fairytale?

The Glass Woman – Caroline Lea Review

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Rating: ★★★★

“𝐖𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐦 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠, 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐟 𝐮𝐬, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐰𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐬 – 𝐰𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤 𝐮𝐬. 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐚: 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐠𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧.”

This book was so creepy and exciting, I couldn’t put it down and it gripped me totally! I really recommend this for anyone looking for a spooky read that sends chills down your spine.
Rosa barely knows Jon – all she knows is that there are rumours about his first wife’s mysterious death, but Jon is wealthy and only money can keep Rosa’s mother alive through Iceland’s harsh winters. So, Rosa leaves home to marry Jon. There, forbidden from mixing with the locals by her husband, Rosa is lonely and afraid. Meanwhile, a locked room in the house hides something that makes strange noises: is it her predecessor’s ghost that keeps her from sleeping? Or is everything in Rosa’s mind?
This book is SO creepy! The author is really excellent at building tension and making your hair stand on end. The harsh Icelandic landscape also really adds to the chilliness of the tale. I found the insight into Icelandic culture really interesting too, particularly the relationship between Church and Icelandic traditions and mythology.
I had only two issues with this book. The first was that there wasn’t a glossary to explain the Icelandic terms used, and it was sometimes difficult to figure them out myself. The second issue was that at the end the focus shifted from Rosa to Jon, and although Jon’s story was interesting I felt like I was being robbed of the detail from Rosa’s story.
Overall, this book was marvellous! The ending disappointed me personally but was still outstanding and there is so much to explore in this book.