Simon

OMG Completely and utterly balls to the wall bonkers. This was so nearly a 5 just for the sheer entertainment value. The misdirection is superb and the characters are as fleshed out as they need to be in a story like this. But I did work out who the culprit was quite early on, and because of that the ending did fall a little flat so I knocked a star off. I will say that of these kind of books that have a twist you won't see coming, this is one of the best I've read.

Best read with a nice cup of tea and a biscuit.

“If from infancy you treat children as gods they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.”

In this dystopian world no babies are born, and humanity is plodding towards extension. After a period of anarchy society becomes docile, attending lectures on history, baking flans, gardening, pushing cats around in prams, watching porn and generally just wandering around. But there is a dark side. Secret police, forced suicide, medieval prison islands and a bunch of last borns called Omegas who strut around and are generally unpleasant. All of this overseen by The Warden.

And then, a baby is born, and everything becomes a bit of malarkey involving a group called the 5 fishes and some bad pot holes. Yes pot holes not plot holes.

This was pretty good. Supremely written, quite dark, a bit boring in places. The thing with the cats kind of freaked me out. Overall, a good addition to the dystopian shelf.

“Nobody can love the stars and hurt people. They just can't.”

2 young girls, 800 years apart, set off on the same journey but under very different circumstances. For one of them it is a voyage of discovery, of maps and adventure. The other fleeing Syria, a country that is about to tear itself apart. The thing linking the two stories....... HOME.

I really enjoyed this. I would definitely recommend taking a few minutes every time the story switches between timelines, just to savour what you have just read. I think the only negative is that sometimes the grave nature of some of the situations, especially in the present day story, got a little bit lost in the magical prose, however, I guess that this is really seen through the eyes of children and they don't see misery and suffering the same way we do now we are older, more cynical and more miserable.

"God's Death!! Are you telling me he has been walking around with a lady's kerchief stuffed up his arse?"

Simply glorious. I can't get enough of Shardlake. What's not to like? Murder, scandal, betrayal, pottage, and of course the historical swearing.

This is the story of a cult. The leader convinces a young girl that he is the Archangel Gabriel, that she is also an angel and her baby is the Antichrist. They must protect the baby at all costs until the time is right to kill it. 🫨

All this happened in 2003, now 20 years later, a true crime author sets out to find out what really happened.

Wasn't totally bonkers about 500 pages of emails, WhatsApp messages, transcripts of meetings, phone calls, bits of books and tv scripts. But, kudos to the author for skilfully pulling all this together and keeping me guessing right up until the last 20 pages.

Bit weird, bit rambley, but frighteningly accurate, especially when you consider it was written 72 years ago.

I think the most important part of this book is the afterword. It helps you understand how the book came about. Sure, I understand the themes and I get what the book is about. It's about censorship, the dumbing down of society into compliant plebs etc etc. via the removal of ideas and thinking which is mainly books and education. But understanding the genesis of the book help me understand why it was such a strange book to read.

The book came about via a few short stories, a heap load of ideas and a couple of personal incidents, one of which involved the police which were all thrown together over a period of time to form this novella. This kind of explains why some of it is page turningly brilliant and some of it is like being being inside a cheese induced coma.

Very good, but very pleased it wasn't 1oo pages longer.

Audrey flees a scandal in London to take up a job as a folklorist on the Isle of Skye with the mysterious Mrs Buchanan. Her job, to collect stories, songs & legends from the local crofters before they are forgotten and lost forever. What she discovers, however, is something much more sinister, something very very real.

I flew through this in 2 and half days and it's quite possibly my favourite book of the year so far. Wonderfully creepy & atmospheric, the prose is exquisite and ending just about perfect. Warmed my cockles it did, warmed my cockles.

“My tabernacle is spoiled, and all my cords are broken.... There is none to stretch forth my tent anymore and to set up my curtains.”

Creepy, atmospheric, psychological, ripperish thriller about a series of gruesome murders in Victorian London, and an old couple who take in a strange Lodger to help ease their financial woes. This isn’t a whodunnit, it’s pretty obvious who the guilty man is, I mean the title gives it away, and everything is laid out for you at the start of the book. What really is works is the way the author moves the story on towards its conclusion, as Mrs Bunting (one of the landlords) suddenly realises with horror what is happening right under her nose.

There are some issues with this edition. There are some spelling mistakes, and I found some of the dialogue really difficult to follow, but let's just marvel at the fact that this was written in 1911 and was probably way way ahead of its time.

A story about unconventional love, music, drugs and cooking. I really liked the way the story makes you love a character one minute and dislike them the next. Pretty much everyone in this book is broken in some way, and searching for some kind of peace and contentment. I didn't like the ending. Usually I might complain when when a book neatly ties everything up, sometimes not knowing is better, but in this case I was so emotionally involved I wanted to know if Johnathan got sick, what happened to Clare & Rebecca and did they get the dishwasher fixed????

Probably doesn't give same punch as it did when it was first published, but definitely worth your time.

A disillusioned teen, a terminal cancer patient, a pregnant woman on the run from an abusive husband and a telepathic alien octopus called Sandy who has fled to earth after his home world (one of Saturn’s moons) was invaded by a bunch of terrifying crows.

Chased across Scotland by a shadowy organisation and a psycho husband, they end up in Ullapool where they find the rest of Sandy’s octopi friends hiding under Loch Broom. What does it all mean? I have no idea.

This was right up my street, full of wonderment, life affirming moments and of course completely and utterly bonkers. Definitely exciting enough to make me run for book 2.

Students, Henry, Francis, Bunny, Richard, and the aptly named Charles & Camilla. Six of the most unlikable, snobbish, entitled bunch of ****S ever to grace the page. An accidental murder during a trance fuelled rampage sends the group into a downward spiral of lies and paranoia, and when one of the group threatens to go rogue, there is only one course of action the rest of the group can take to keep their secret safe.

So, this was very good. It did drag on in a couple of places (the funeral part was especially squidgy), and I wasn’t sure I needed to know how some of the minor characters’ lives turned out when I got the epilogue at the end. The 2nd part is finitely more readable than the first and I did take a perverse pleasure seeing the lives of these entitled *******S fall apart. This probably means I am also a ***t.

My niece thinks that this is the greatest book ever written. I think it’s just about as good as The Little Friend and I gave that 4 stars so 4 it is.

Neither loved it or hated it. Very well written, but just a bit mid-range depressed pigeon staring at a semi deflated dirty paddling pool. Probably didn't help that my house has been invaded by a hyperactive builder called Andy who's entire medical history and love of heavy metal music is now engrained in my brain for all eternity. Although I will say, he does lay good felt.

There's a few of Stephen King's earlier books that I've never read so I'm going back and filling in some of the gaps. This was released in 1979 and is probably more eye-openingly unsettling now that it was back then.

Johnny can see the a persons future just by touching them, and when he shakes the hand of an up coming politician he sees a horrifying glance into the future. The big dilemma here is what do, and will what you do make a difference.

Probably up there with his best books, even at 460 pages (mass market edition) it felt like a quick read. I didn't give it 5 and that purely down to the fact that I already knew the story and outcome before hand.