The last few weeks have posed a reading challenge, and part of that has been caused by meeting the right book at the wrong time. As you may already know, I live in the lovely coastal town of Santa Cruz, California. About three weeks ago now, we experienced the most spectacular electrical storm. It was […]
If you know me at all, you will understand that I am not one of life’s happy campers. I can appreciate the beauty of the great outdoors without experiencing any desire at all to sleep in it. My back is designed to carry a simple day pack, not a tent or a stove. I value […]
If you enjoyed the ‘feel’ of All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda then The Perfect Stranger will most likely appeal. I read these books roughly a year apart and enjoyed both, perhaps preferring the former, but only marginally so. To me, Miranda has such a clear style that they read very similarly, perhaps a […]
Years and years and years ago, a book was published called Ralph’s Party. It was chick lit and I just loved it. The writer was Lisa Jewell and in very quick succession I demolished whatever she wrote. I remember my old boss and friend, Mrs N, who always seemed to be invited to the best […]
Would you go to a hen night/bachelorette party of a woman that you hadn’t seen since school? Nora does. Would you go even if you knew that you weren’t being invited to the wedding? Nora does. Yes it sounds implausible, but in the masterful hands of Ruth Ware, this horrendous social scenario becomes utterly plausible […]
When I was young I lived in London. All over London. Moving, as young renters do, approximately every twelve or eighteen months. What initially seemed like a fun way to live soon became a drag as flatmates moved in with boyfriends or went travelling. As I read JP Delaney’s novel, The Girl Before, I was […]
There are times when we have all toyed with being terrible parents, tempted to do the wrong thing. For most of us however, the angel on our shoulder kicks in, reminding us of our parental obligation and ensuring beyond a shadow of a doubt that our child or children are taken good care of. Not […]
It’s very seldom that I bother to finish a book that I don’t think is any good. I’ve never been a believer in persevering with things you don’t enjoy and I’m not clear why people take an attitude towards books that they wouldn’t take towards a meal or a movie. For example I’ve never known […]
OK, I admit it. This is yet another crime novel set in Bristol. I believe that now makes three for this blog. If you have little knowledge of the UK, you must be envisaging that Bristol, the city I went to school in, is some kind of latter day Gotham City. A hotbed of crime […]
In the past I have been critical of novels written in reverse chronology. Last summer I devoted a chunk of time to reading The Rocks by Peter Nichols and when I sat down to write a review of the book, I simply couldn’t. The story was great, engaging in fact, but the chronology was all […]
Nutshell Book Reviews 