Sarah
Hmmm. I enjoyed this but I think there's a few chapters that could've gone and if wouldn't be detrimental to the story as a whole.
Loved most of the 80's references but some stuff was a little too detailed and I had to stop myself from scanning portions of it.
Solid 3.5 stars. May give it a re-read in a few months to see if I change my rating.
1 star.
This book, for me, is on my sliding scale of how angry I can possibly get when reading a book. The scale is from 1 ‘waking up and realising you've overslept, it's you're own fault because you knew you had to be up but still refused to go to sleep early and are therefore out of sorts for the rest of the day' to 10 ‘all encompassing, fists clenched, jaw tight, teeth grinding, red mist enveloping über rage'.
Therefore, my anger rating for this book is a good 3-3.5, the .5 only being added because my eye started to twitch.
I changed the rating to 1 as its still making me angry nearly 6 months later!! Damn this book!!
And my eye is still twitching.
Brings back fond memories of my time in the hotel industry, a sense of family, lunacy, drink, fun and laughter.
Voluntarily doing 16 hour shifts just so I could wander about at 3 in the morning doing fire walks, drinking more coffee than should have been allowed, searching through all the fridges and freezers in the kitchen for hidden food gems and dancing around near reception with drunk guests. Those were the days.
Kinda makes me wish I should go back but then I realise I'm not that much of a glutton for punishment.
Really enjoyed the book, laughed out loud and got many a funny look resulting in me saying you wouldn't understand.
Book 2 in the Inspector McLean series and I'm still really enjoying them.
This one is about the Christmas Killer, a man who devastated Tony before he put him away for life, it starts with his funeral and then the death of a woman that is exactly the same MO of the previously mentioned Christmas Killer.
It's just as good as the first book, the characters are being drawn out more, their personalities meshing well with each other, the humour is still there and so is the violence. I still think Duguid is a dick but he's getting worse, nice bit of departmental friction to mix it all up.
I recommend this series, it's a good police procedural and I am currently reading book 3 to see if it stays just as good as the previous 2. I somehow think it will be.
Huge thanks to James Oswald, Penguin UK - Michael Joseph and NetGalley for this copy which I chose to read and all opinions are my own
The illustrations are absolutely gorgeous, I received this through NetGalley and no matter how hard I tried I could not colour in the pages, thankfully I have screen protectors so the pens I used didn't ruin the screens of my devices.
I am now getting prepared for a shopping trip where I plan on picking up as many Lady Mechanika things as I possibly can (along with bookish gifts for my pen pals of course!) so I don't see myself being left with too much money but will have Lady Mechanika to keep me occupied!
My review for the second colouring book will be posted in a few minutes and will not be as long as this one, just gonna tell y'all to buy it, just go out and buy it!
Huge thanks to Joe Benitez, Diamond Book Distributors and NetGalley for this copy which I chose to read and all opinions are my own
Seriously thought I'd already done my review for this one but guess I didn't. Anywho.
Someone is going around chopping the hands off of women, killing them, leaving little men made out of Chestnuts and posting said hands to people, which I guess is one way to spend your days but a little too fiddly for my liking.
Obviously people are not happy with this chain of events and want to know what the actual fuck is going on, Det Naia Thulin of the Major Crimes Division and Mark Hess, a disgraced investigator with Europol, team up to answer that question.
When fingerprints are pulled off the chestnut men and are linked to the missing, presumed dead, daughter of Minister for Social Affairs Rosa Hartung, things start to get weirder.
What will happen? Will they find out who's doing these creepy ass things? Will they discover what happened to Rosa's daughter? Will I stop writing reviews with all these questions in them? Tune in next week to find out.
Picked out 2 people pretty quickly and they both ended up being creepy creepers of Creeperton but that didn't diminish my enjoyment of this book as there were still things that happened that I enjoyed and it went how I hoped it would. Hmmmm cryptic.
I very much want to read more by this author and will be watching The Killing when I get finished writing my backlog of reviews.
Huge thanks to Soren Sveistrup, Penguin UK, Michael Joseph and NetGalley for this copy which I chose to read and all opinions are my own
TL; DR Read this book, read all his books, follow Jonathan Janz on his social media accounts, read this book again, read all his other books again, buy them all, gift them to friends, buy them all again, if he was in Game of Thrones he'd still be alive.
10 authors are invited to the home of esteemed writer Roderick Wells for a writers retreat of sorts, it transpires, when they've all arrived, that it's really a competition, the winner receiving an amazing book deal and oh so much money it brings little dollar signs to their eyes!
It's not your typical type of competition though, this one is more seductive, more treacherous, more twisted than any they've participated in before or even imagined they would be expected to take part in.
They are tasked to write a book, being writers I'd say that's fortuitous and they should be glad they weren't asked about their glass blowing skills and whether or not they'd could throw some shapes in an awesome dance off, as each portion of their book is written they then have to read it out loud to Roderick and the rest of the authors and prepare to receive feedback (for ‘feedback' read ‘to have their stories, characters and themselves degraded, ridiculed and mocked by everyone' the harshest critic being Wells himself). Not everyone is happy with the ‘feedback' they receive which cues lots of infighting from the group which pleases Wells no end!
Rick is our main character, although we do follow the others as they explore the house and grounds and try to write the best story they can, he believes there is something evil about Wells ‘He's a demon, a beast' but the others brush it off as eccentricity and ‘his right as an extremely successful and well known published author'. Shit is about to get very real up in here!
I'm not telling anymore about the plot, I want you to go in knowing some of the details but want you to be swept away in the story like I was.
The end of every chapter has a wonderful hook that keeps you reading, continuing into the madness and mayhem going on all around, the characters are well written, their depth develops as the narrative flows, you connect with them (some more than others) and there's this underlying sense of dread slowly building, told in multiple perspectives and with letters, journal entries and excerpts of the books the characters are writing, the story takes shape, the edges are done and pieces fall into place, starting to see the bigger picture rather than separate pieces of the whole.
Everyone has secrets and as they're revealed our perceptions of the characters, for better or worse, change.
The setting is perfectly described, the huge foreboding house, the dense and creepy forest that surrounds it, the way the darkest fears of the characters manifest as the trees envelop them in their dark, wet and musty arms (I know they're called branches but I think arms sounds better), their embrace claustrophobic.
The ending is exactly how I wanted it to be, it was as if Jonathan Janz read my mind (which is disturbing considering some stuff in this book). This was the first book I've read by him and read 2 more straight after it, I'm low key stalking him on Instagram and Goodreads but shhhh don't tell him!
Huge thanks to Jonathan Janz, Flame Tree Press and NetGalley for this copy which I chose to read and all opinions are my own
You may have read my review for the first colouring book, if you haven't, why not!? Go and have a read, i'll wait right here for you, back now? Read it? Ok then, I shall continue.
You need to buy this and colour in the pages and shame me and my shoddy colouring skills by posting wonderfully coloured pictures on Litsy, you won't win anything but you'll get loads of people loving your colouring skills and make many new and wonderful bookish friends.
Huge thanks to Joe Benitez, Diamond Book Distributors and NetGalley for this copy which I chose to read and all opinions are my own