Laura
The book is very impressive. Well written, wonderful descriptions, unusual in the way it mixes the scary possible ghost story, possible murder, family dynamics, and mystery. But I found it too stressful. It's a personal problem that I have with some books.
I always include major spoilers (hidden), to help with my memory issues. Read them at your peril!
Imogen, third wife of an eminent professor, has been widowed, and it's not clear how grief stricken she is.There is certainly an ambivalence towards her far from faultless husband sometimes. Her acerbic thoughts, whilst saying all the right widowy things, are funny. Someone phones in the middle of the night to accuse her of murder. Then his family start to descend on her, and seem to be intent on staying put, for no clear reason. Odd things start happening, which make Imogen wonder if the house is haunted.
Producers of audio books, please, please try harder to choose your readers carefully. If a story is set abroad ( in this case Britain), you need a narrator from that country. You may have found an actor who can “do” a foreign accent well enough to amuse their friends for 2 minutes. This does not qualify them to read convincingly in that accent for 14 hours. Tilly Hooper obviously has a pleasant voice - I can hear that in the introduction. Thereafter, it was excruciating to listen to her because she was obviously struggling so hard to force sounds that don't come naturally to her. I hope she was paid well, because it was obviously torture for her, and it would have been torture for me too if I hadn't given up after the first twenty minutes.
If you can't get a native of the country in which the story is set to read it, then just let your reader narrate in their own accent. Maybe it wouldn't be correct, but it wouldn't be as bad as this. I will have to read this instead.
Too tense for me.
I always include major spoilers (hidden), to help with my memory issues. Read them at your peril!
17 yr old Pip investigates the 5 yr old murder of a student at her school, assisted by the brother of the supposed killer. Cleverly constructed. Didn't warm to the characters much. The murderee was A drug dealer, bully, and heartless to her sister, due to miserable upbringing. Sal, presumed to have killed her, and to have committed suicide, was murdered himself
I just couldn't get into it. The first bit, when Locke was a child was promising. But it quickly moved onto adulthood and just dragged. I don't mind books taking their time if something is added to the experience by the extra pages, but this just felt like padding. Maybe things would improve eventually, as suggested by the positive reviews, but I've got to the point where I'm making excuses not to read it.
I always include major spoilers (hidden), to help with my memory issues. Read them at your peril!
Ex dark ops sniper offered release from prison in return for risky assassination job for ultra top secret spooks. Looks like there's going to be a love interest with his spotter . Characters stereotypical, dialogue wooden. Very boring, made worse by robotic narration.
I only marked this down for my own records because I'm terrible with tension. However, if you aren't, this is a very moving, scary, tense story, told from a unique viewpoint.
Grey mask is the first in a long series of Miss Silver stories, and is not a typical example. Miss Silver plays a minor role in this story, but gradually becomes more important in the later novels. All of the stories are charming in their old-fashioned style. Each one has a heroine who ends up in peril; a hero who assists Miss Silver in bringing about a happy ending; a scheming villain; usually an admiring policeman left floundering in Miss Silvers wake, and plenty of excitement along the way. The order of reading doesn't matter greatly. As far as I can recall, the only notable change during the whole series is that her first inside-contact in the police force is swapped for a younger model after a few books. It is easy to confuse one book with another after you have read a lot of them, as they don't vary greatly in style or plot device. But that isn't a bad thing for me; they are my go-to comfort-read, or preferably comfort-listen. If you can get the audio books, brilliantly read by Diana Bishop, you will love them. She really gets the period tone and voices just right. I listen to them all again every now and then, on long car journeys or when I'm under the weather. They are the perfect cozy mystery treat.
Terrible audio book!!! read by Judy Flynn:-
Some narrators can add a star to a review of a book by the way they capture the time, place or characters. But sadly this one removes several stars from an otherwise enjoyable romance. Was she the first one that they dragged in off the street, because they think that chick lit doesn't require a decent standard? Or did they actually tell her that she would be reading to a group of 2-year-olds? She speaks in the over-exaggerated, deafening style that some people use to speak to toddlers or the very elderly. She frequently gets the sense of sentences wrong and mispronounces quite simple words. Every scene is over-acted to a teeth-grinding pitch, regardless of what is actually happening in the story. I gave it half an hour in the hope that she would settle down and just read the story like a grown-up, or that I would get used to her, but in the end I had to give up. Very glad that I borrowed this from the library and didn't waste money on it. Trisha Ashley earned 4 stars, but the audiobook deserves one star at best.
My favourite of his Gervase Fen mysteries. Clever, at times surreal, ahead of its time, a wonderfully ludicrous plot, a bonkers chase across Oxford incorporating most of the characters from the whole story, and a classic death-defying conclusion. Really brilliant.
This was a great idea and very well written. Unfortunately, it was obvious what was behind it all almost from the beginning and I lost interest, having read quite a few books with the same surprise in them recently. If I hadn't known what was happening, I think it would have been a four or five star though.
With a protagonist letting the wrong person back into her life, and allowing disruption to an existing happy relationship, it looked like it was going to be a stressful read rather than an enjoyable one. Plots with characters making predictable and stupid emotional mistakes are triggering for me.
I found the characters boring and the dialogue simplistic. Although it is marketed as YA, I think it is more suited to a younger age group.
It was mildly amusing sometimes, but I just want looking forward to getting back to it at all. I think it was probably better in its original serial form in the newspaper.
The Americanisms scattered through the story are a little jolting to a British audience, but it doesn't spoil the fun.
A few pages in, realised that this was blatant plagiarism Kind Hearts and Coronets. So I know the story already, and if I want to experience it again, I'll take the original, thanks. Really glad that I borrowed this book from the library and didn't pay for it.
It's a personal thing. This was sounding like it was developing into what I call a “bitchy teen” story.
Great book. There's an interview with Emma Gannon about Olive on YouTube. Search for “Emma Gannon on Olive and motherhood in fiction”.