Zoe Adams

I did enjoy this - but it didn't live up to the hype. There were too many elements to the story and the author didn't quite do any of them justice.

I found this really interesting, but I kept waiting for the ‘real story' to start. And it didn't. And after a while, the constant to-ing and go-ing of characters, without any real development, got to me, and I lost interest.

Okay. So I feel I have given this a real chance now. I've ‘tried' to read it three times. I got half way through this time, and still found it incredibly incredibly dull. I do not get why this is so many people's favourite book. It doesn't have the wit of Austen; the lyricism of the Brontes; the satire of Trollope, or the social critique of Dickens. It is too drawn out and wordy, and not for me.

I've always wondered whether I'd enjoy a Ken Follet book. Now I know - the answer is ‘no'. This seemed fine for the first 250 pages. Not at all well-written, but readable at least, and I enjoyed the story and some of the historical detail. But as soon as war broke out this became absolutely farcical. The historical detail is about as detailed and nuanced as a wikipedia entry. Everything is just so ‘obvious', and so so poorly written. And when the author described child birth as effectively ‘ooh, I'm in labour, you must look ‘down there'.... and then out pops a baby, the mother is well enough to hold the baby and tie the umbilical cord, and it is all over in a flash I couldn't read anymore. At least I know I don't need to bother with the Pillars of the Earth series now.

3.75 stars. I can't give this more than 3.75 stars because it was just too short. Not all books ‘need' more than 250 pages, but there just wasn't enough time to develop the characters and relationships here. And I do love Lily King, her books are beautifully written. But this just petered out too quickly.

3.75 stars. I was pleasantly surprised by this. Trollope has a wonderful writing style - this is surprisingly funny, and the tone really engaging. It's also a good example of a book that can still be enjoyable despite none of the characters being particularly likeable.

What an absolutely lovely send-off. More than a beloved tv-show, this was a story of a long-standing and beautiful friendship.

I didn't like this. It was like all the worst bits of Jane Austen combined with really bad genre fiction. The love story at the heart of this was just really uncomfortable - and unbelievable - and the characters were all bland and dislikable.

I was really disappointed by this. It was set in the early 2010s. But you would have thought it was the 1950s. Abortion was spoken about like this ‘new procedure that was completely alien to the ordinary person. The internet was spoken about like a new invention. And the whole book read like it was written by someone stuck in the 1950s - and who had never experienced life outside the realm of the upper class.

I do really like this series - but I also find they drag a bit. I think there are just slightly too many characters, and there are certainly narratives I want to skip. I think extending beyond the families of Hugh, Edward, and Rupert is just a bit too much.

Well. That was about as subtle as a sledgehammer. The whole book was just one long rant about the British establishment. There was no imagination here - the characters were based on actual politicians, and the scandals were so close to real-life scandals that it was just dull. And the writing itself was even jaded - at one point, Day describes a character EXACTY as she did in her memoir about friendship. This was really poor, self-indulgent writing. I expected more from this author.

2.5 stars. This was all over the place. There were three different books in here, and the author seems to have tried to write all three. And it did not work. There was no clear narrative. The characters were inconsistent - and it really seemed like the book just needed a good editor!

What a lovely novel! It reminded me very much of Nancy Mitford - nothing happens, but the characters are lovely and entirely over the top. I look forward to reading the next in the series.

3.5 stars. I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. But having just read Elizabeth Gilbert's most recent memoir - also about addiction - I couldn't help but compare the two, and there is no doubt that Gilbert's was just so much better written. There is something I really don't like about stories about people who have been through hell, been broken down by a toxic system, but who have come out on top, writing about it like ‘anyone' can do it. Because the reality, most people are completely eaten up by that system.

This is only my 2nd time reading this one (I've read all the others in the series 3+ times), and I appreciated it even more for the re-read. It's not just the historical detail. The characters are just so real, and the writing manages to be both political and light-hearted; moving and funny; heart-wrenching and joyful - all at the same time. My least favourite parts of all the books are the war scenes, but even these are relatively compelling (and leave you with your heart in your mouth!). I'll just have to read “Written in my own heart's blood” again now though...

I absolutely loved If we were Villains, so I had high expectations for this. While I think my perspective was slightly tainted by what must be the WORST narrator I have ever listened to, this was just awful. I'm actually angry that I wasted money on this it was that bad.

Given that this was effectively a story of someone dying, this was surprisingly beautiful. While it got a little bit too religious for me towards the end, overall, I thought this was an extremely moving - and remarkably self-aware - memoir, that I enjoyed far more than Eat Pray Love (which I also loved), partly because the personal growth that Gilbert has gone through was so evident.

This was like ‘racism for dummies'. There was so much the author could have done with a coming of age story set during the race riots - and it was just so incredibly trite. Also, it was laughable that the narrator, even when only 11 years old, was so bloody naive about everything, but then seemed to have a detailed (distinctly adult)understanding of anatomy (the masturbation scene) .The final nail in the coffin was the way the narrator did sound effects every time a character ‘kissed their teeth'. What a disgusting noise to have to hear through your headphones.

I was really misled by the reviews of this. I expected something beautiful, moving and heart-warming - instead, what I got was something that was trite, dull, slow and just plain boring.

I LOVE these books. This is up there with Lethal White and Troubled Blood as my favourite Strike novels. I love that Strike and Robin were together the whole time, and it was a more straight-forward mystery this time - no weird cults or anything. I feel so sad that it's over that I've got to go and re-read another as I feel so lonely now that I've said goodbye to characters...

I know JK Rowling is controversial, but her writing gives me more pleasure than any other author. And actually, so many authors I love have political views I strongly disagree with, they are just less vocal about them. I will never stop admiring her for her work. It doesn't mean I have to endorse her politics.

This did not work for me AT ALL. The characters were flat, and the story was not at all what was promised in the blurb. It was just dull.

I LOVE the Neapolitan quartet, mostly for the political dimension, but the one thing I didn't like was a ‘vile' under-current. The characters were flawed, but in a slightly unrealistic way - flaws that made the characters somehow less real. However, what was a ‘subtle' under-current in that series, is forcefully expressed in The Lying Life of Adults. The characters are flawed in a highly unrealistic and unreliable way. They are just vile, and, this vileness found its way into the language and sentence construction somehow as well. I just didn't ‘like' this.

I tried. I really really tried. And I could see what people see in this book. I did chuckle, and marvel that this was written when it was written. But I just did not enjoy it AT ALL. I found it so over-the-top. This is very much a case of ‘it's not you, it's me'. It just was not my type of book at all.

3.5 stars. This was well-written, and enjoyable. But also, forgettable. There was so much more that could be done with the idea of the ‘significance of the name', and it just felt a bit disappointing and unambitious.

3.5 stars. I read this against my better judgment, on the basis of very strong reviews. I didn't ‘enjoy' this so much as find it thought-provoking. It did make me think about how the mad behaviour you see on reality TV is engineered behind the scenes. It felt very Foucauldian, in the sense that they were all pawns in a game being manipulated by forces they couldn't see, and which were ubiquitous. Having said that, I failed to see any broader point to the story, which, ultimately, fizzled out.