The Distance Between Us by Maggie O’Farrell ★★★ 📚
I enjoyed the telling very much, clever switching between characters, time & location. The whole story didn’t really move or gel with me much though.
Tag: ★★★
Burial of Ghosts by Ann Cleeves ★★★ 📚
Convoluted telling of a convoluted mystery. I enjoyed the twists and turns without any idea of the solution. An unstable narrator who recalls fragments of her past at different times.
Read: The Lying Room by Nicki French ★★★☆☆
As readably as usual, but I didn’t really get engaged with the characters at all.
Read Midnight & Blue by Ian Rankin ★★★★☆ 📚
Given the unlikely idea of old Rebus in jail. I was surprised that this recent one kept me interested & engaged.
Read A Red Death Walter Mosley ★★★☆☆📚
Solid Easy Rawlings, lots of details around the time & place.
Read The Last Days of Kira Mullan by Nicci French ★★★☆☆ 📚
Tricksy whodunit, lots going on. A long story even though I raced through it. Side trip to asylum, with very unpleasant staff. Plenty of detail & red herrings. Gaslighting, mental health& murder turn out to be a good holiday read.
Read: Smoke and Whispers by Mick Herron ★★★☆☆
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller★★★☆☆ 📚
Increasingly crazy survivalist father takes his 8 year old daughter to live in the German woods. Tells her it is the end of the world. Told from the girls POV with compulsive foreboding leading to a guessable horror on the last page.
Read The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood ★★★☆☆ 📚
My theory is that hope is a form of madness. A benevolent one, sure, but madness all the same. Like an irrational superstition—broken mirrors and so forth—hope’s not based on any kind of logic, it’s just unfettered optimism, grounded in nothing but faith in things beyond our control.’
Sometimes uncomfortably gripping. A touch of The Secret History.
Read Why we Die by Mick Herron