Laura
If you can get a copy of the audiobook, read by the excellent Bill Wallis, your enjoyment will be enhanced very much.
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.
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.
Another admirer of Georgette Heyer. Starts off pretty well, but quickly shows a heavy handed style with thin characters. Not bad though, an easy, quick read in the regency style.
I always include major spoilers (hidden), to help with my memory issues. Read them at your peril!
Entertaining heist/MM romance. Aristocrat and jewel thief with nothing in common. Alec, 2nd son of a duke, wishes for revenge on his father and asks jewel thieves to help him. The story covers the planning and execution of the heist, with them gradually finding common ground, and revealing more of their histories. But complete trust is never quite there, with consequences. Graphic sex scenes.
20 years ago, Alec's father murdered his mother in order to marry his mistress, who in turn murdered her own husband. Both are caricature baddies, with no redeeming features. Alec and his siblings have lived in comparative straitened circumstances after a final breach 10 years ago, when the duke's callous selfishness led to the death of Alec's sister. Alec asks Jerry and his partner to steal a diamond parure before it can be given to the duchess on her wedding anniversary. They get to know each other in order to be convincing best friends, and after some humiliating grovelling to his father by Alec, they are both invited to the fateful house party. Alec eventually tells Jerry about the murders, but doesn't tell him the big twist... it's all been a ploy to get the thieves to the house party in order to break a different safe than they have been planning, and get at proof of the murder of the duchess's first husband. It hits the fan when Alec fetches the private detective working in the house to Jerry's room to tell them what's really going on.
Why isn't this novel published and a best seller? It is my favourite read for a while. Twilight character names, a vaguely Twilight plot, and other minor Twilight details, but as another reviewer has said, if you changed the names you wouldn't know that. Twilight lovers will love this though. It is long, and could have been a bit shorter for perfection, but I loved it, and when you are loving something, a couple of hundred unnecessary pages are a good thing. It is unusual for me to read until 4am on two nights running as I did with this, but I really didn't want to stop. Edward and Bella are messed up by awful events in the past, are terrified to sleep, antisocial, and miserable. They meet, realise that they have things in common, and that they can help each other. The story follows them over a few years as they struggle with their psychological/sexual problems and family relationships. If you don't like bad language and explicit descriptions of sex then you might want to give it a miss, but I would suggest skim-reading the sex scenes instead if you must, as the book is so good. All of the characters are very real, and the ‘Twilight' ones do have a lot in common with the originals. It is funny, sad and really gripping. Give it a go, you won't regret it.
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.
I love Molly Harper for her characters, fast moving plots, and the sharp dialogue (made so much better by Amanda Ronconi's snarky tone of voice). They are my favourite light relief after a heavier book. This one is just not as good as usual. It's like her heart wasn't really in it and she didn't love her characters like she normally does. It made it much more like a standard romance/fantasy rather than a Molly Harper story. I will probably try the next one in the series in a hopeful spirit.
Luckily I bought this book in a second hand shop, because the ingredient quantities in the recipe that I tried were wildly out. I'm wondering if these recipes were ever tested. I tried the recipe as printed although very dubious about it , and I was right: there was far too little liquid, and my bread machine was not even able to mix the ingredients properly. It came out looking like a monstrous growth rather then a loaf. I retried the recipe with my own estimate of what the right amount of liquid would be (double what this book said), and the loaf was fine. So I would say get this book if you are already confident enough with your machine to be able to edit the recipes yourself before trying them. I'm going to use it as an ideas book rather than a set of recipes.
I always include major spoilers (hidden), to help with my memory issues. Read them at your peril!
Heartbreaking, profound, short story about a man of very low intelligence, who agrees to an operation to triple his IQ, and the difficult consequences of that decision. With cleverness, there also comes a painful awareness of others, their true opinions and failings. His previous contentment is gone as he realises that his “friends” were not laughing with him, but at him. Eventually he is comprehensively rejected. He becomes so intelligent that the scientists who are studying him are uncomfortable around him. As was feared all along , he loses his intelligence as fast as he gained it, even as he struggles to cling on long enough to leave something of value behind him. The ending is really sad. I have never been moved to tears by a short story before.
I always include major spoilers (hidden), to help with my memory issues. Read them at your peril!
Ben has been told that he has a very short time left to live . He bolts to London, determined to make the most of every second & meets Vita who was unwillingly made immortal by Leonardo da Vinci They fall in love and together they try to find a way to save him.
Family sagas are often bloated and desperately in need of a savage edit imo, but this one isn't . The characters are well-rounded and believable. They all have a part to play in a plot which gradually draws together seamlessly to a credible conclusion at a family party where the who and why of the central mystery is resolved. Although the nuggets of information along the way do hint at what the truth might be, they add to the enjoyment of the read. The prologue and epilogue bookend the story excellently, leaving a bittersweet feeling at the close. Very good.
Claire works as an end of life nurse because it helps her to keep moving on, and she must keep moving on. George Bellamy hires her to care for him as he tries for a reconciliation with his estranged brother. Ross has been serving in Afghanistan and returns to find his beloved grandfather facing death. I always include major spoilers (hidden), to help with my memory issues. Read them at your peril! Claire has to keep moving because as a teenager, she witnessed her foster father murdering his other 2 foster children who had found out about his crimes. As a trusted police officer he was untouchable, and every time Claire has reached out for help, people have been hurt or killed.
The story was entertaining, nothing out of the ordinary.
I enjoyed this more than the previous three, even though it's sad to lose Rosie. I think S.J.Bennett is just getting better at her job. I thought the atmosphere of the 1950's was convincingly recreated, with genuine historical events skilfully scattered through the plot. If I have a criticism, it is that the solution is a bit too much of a surprise. Thinking back, there were clues there, however, and one really strong hint, which I failed to take heed of. I'm looking forward to the next one very much.
If you find Effie really, really irritating at first, please persevere. Her unrelenting self-hatred and pessimism gets to you for a while, but a lovely Effie is under there somewhere. The characters & story are excellent and It's very funny.
Woman mole shifter, with cute guide dog, escapes her sadistic wolf pack and moves to bear town.
The author has used “spastic” as a term of abuse. Was staggered by this offensive language. So can't give it more than one star, and I won't be reading any more by this author.
Strongly based on Groundhog Day , but different in enough ways to be fresh. Woman working in publishing, with husband and 2 children, is allowing work and other commitments to overshadow the important things. The repeat days are punctuated with yearly anniversary letters from the past, written by her husband. From these you gradually learn about their history, and eventually what else is really happening. The ending was a bit of a cop-out, probably not wanting to alienate the readers who want the standard ending every time. Very clever, believable characters, really enjoyed it.
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.
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 think the story may be a good one, probably a 4 *. But it's difficult to tell as the narration is terrible. Mary Jane Wells reads the MMC as if he's a bluff rotund country squire, rather than a brooding hero. When the writing suggests he should be intense, she reads him as brisk and hearty. The intended atmosphere and mood is completely ruined.
I always include major spoilers (hidden), to help with my memory issues. Read them at your peril!
Penniless seamstress, cast-off daughter of a vicar , appears on a duke's doorstep in a wedding dress asking for payment for her it. He is a bitter and despondent recluse after being cruelly scarred at Waterloo. He wants a marriage of convenience and an heir , and she agrees.
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.
I always include major spoilers (hidden), to help with my memory issues. Read them at your peril!
Based around what is known of the time spent at Godmersham Park, by Anne Sharp, friend of Jane Austen. The author explains in her note that her life before arriving at the house is fiction as nothing is known of it. But the facts of the GP period are correct, based on the diaries of Fanny and the letters of Jane and Cassandra Austen. Very well written, quite sad. Sobering to have the position of women illustrated as clearly as this. It's worth reading the author's note at the end, as it lets you know what happened in her later life.
Young Anne lives with her mother and father in comfortable circumstances, an indulged and beloved only child. The odd thing is that her father is away for most of then time . Her mother is desperate for Anne to marry for her own security, and produces a string of unpreposessing suitors. Anne turns them all down, believing herself secure as a wealthy man's daughter. But after her mother's death, she is cast adrift by her father with only a small annual allowance of £35. As a result Anne is forced to seek work as a governess. Eventually her faithful ex-maid Agnes finds out that Anne's father was never married to her mother and that he has another family, living comfortably and happily in London. . Anne remains at Godmersham for 2 years, during which time, she meets the Austen family, and comes to love both Henry and Jane. Jane Austen wishes for Anne to come and live with her mother, sister, friend and herself. But Anne cannot bear to share her as only a friend so says no . At the end Anne is dismissed from Godmersham for persisting in her Ill health and Henry asks her to be his mistress. She turns him down with some difficulty, and faces up to her future as single, working woman
Very funny, sometimes bittersweet, year in the life of Jo as she copes with an earth shattering change in her life, and two enterprising small boys. I laughed a lot at the antics of Jack and Archie, and their down-to-earth mum. There is an element of romance to the story, but that isn't the main theme. An enjoyable, easy read.
