A Million Suns

Trapped on board the spaceship Godspeed, Amy trusts no one.

 

The ship's ruler is dead and a rebellion threatens.  Amy wants to help Elder as he tries to take charge, but she's torn between her feelings for him and the chaos that's pulling everything apart.  As more harrowing discoveries are made about Godspeed, Amy is caught in a  desperate race to unravel its secrets.  Only one thing is certain.

 

They have to get off this ship.

It's no secret that I found Beth Revis' Across the Universe disappointing; not so much that I didn't want to read the next instalment of the series, but enough to have my doubts that I would continue with the trilogy beyond the second book.  Imagine my surprise when I read A Million Suns in one morning, unable to put the SCI FI YA tale down until I had finally found out all of the secrets that were still hidden within Godspeed.   

The plot of A Million Suns primarily concerns itself with Elder's struggle becoming a leader; not only is he too young for the job, but he is having to deal with a population that is no longer drugged into submission.  Throughout Revis is continually asking tough moral questions, not of her characters but of her readers too, the main one being should Elder resort to using Phydus again in order to gain some type of order and save the population of the ship?

The book is again split, alternating between Elder and Amy's narrative.  For me, I think my new found love of the series came about because I didn't mind reading the Amy sections this time around.  With the events of A Million Suns, Amy had something to focus on other than her parents and her constant whinging for the life she left behind.  Amy's narrative voice has evolved due to her adapting to life on Godspeed. While she hasn't forgotten her parents, her previous life isn't as all consuming as it once was. 

I thought that A Million Suns was a lot stronger than Across the Universe in many ways, and although the 'villain' of this book was really obvious, I still enjoyed going through the rabbit hole with Amy and Elder.  Unlike before, I am now very excited to see how Revis wraps up her trilogy and am going to order a copy from the library as soon as it becomes available.

The Teleportation Accident

History happened while you were hungover.

 

When you haven't had sex in a long time, it feels like the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone.

 

If you're living in Germany in the 1930's, it probably isn't.

 

But that's no consolation to Egon Loeser, whose carnal misfortunes will push him from the experimental theatres of Berlin to the absinthe bars of Paris to the physics laboratories of Los Angeles, trying all the while to solve two mysteries: whether it was really a deal with cosmic evil that claimed the life of his hero, the great seventeenth-century stage designer Adriano Lavicini; and why a handsome, clever, charming, modest guy like him can't, just once in a while, get himself laid.

 

 

I am a sucker for beautiful covers and Ned Beauman's The Teleportation Accident happens to have a cracking cover.  When I finally managed to stop staring and open the book to read the first page, I was worried. Was Beauman's second novel going to be a verbose waffle, trying too hard to be what a Man Booker Prize longlisted book should be?  He certainly had me going for a while...and then it became funny.  Not small laughs either, but proper out loud, I have to repeat what I've just read to everyone I can find, funny.  Beauman had me hooked at 'Tassels on Tassels on Tassels on Tassels' and my worries about not understanding a thing melted away. 

That's not to say that The Teleportation Accident is just a barrel of laughs.  It's frustratingly bonkers and that's down to the lead character.  Loeser is pretty much a loser.  He could have been an Ian McEwan character, for he is totally, unequivocally selfish.  He's completely oblivious to events outside of his own small world, including the impending WWII, and only cares about his ever decreasing sex life.  Loeser only starts to look like a better human being when he is in the company of the other demented characters that populate this weird world. 

There's a haphazard nature to the book, in the way that Loeser keeps falling into trouble, but at the same time Beauman makes sure that everything that happens stays interconnected and relevant to the core story.  I also found that just because the setting and the year changes, it doesn't mean the story or Loeser will, turning The Teleportation Accident into a bizarre version of groundhog day. 

The ending, while wrapping everything up, is still a bit WTF?!? but after I finished I realised how glad I was I kept reading even though I wasn't keen on the first few pages.  It makes me wish that more of this sort of fiction would find a way onto the Man Booker Prize longlist/shortlist each year, proving that intelligent reads don't always have to be uptight and dreary.

Sweet Tooth

Serena Frome, the beautiful daughter of an Anglican bishop, has a brief affair with an older man during her final year at Cambridge, and finds herself being groomed for the intelligence services.  The year is 1972.  Britain, confronting economic disaster, is being torn apart by industrial unrest and terroism and faces its fifth state of emergency.  The Cold War has entered a moribund phase, but the fight goes on, especially the cultural sphere.
Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, is sent on a 'secret mission' which brings her into the literary world of Tom Haley, a promising young writer.  First she loves his stories, then she begins to love the man.  Can she maintain the fiction of her undercover life?  And who is inventing whom?  To answer these questions, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage - trust no one.

  While Sweet Tooth is not my favourite Ian McEwan novel - Atonement holds that title - I still enjoyed reading about Serena Frome and her time at the CIA in the 1970's.  So far, all of the characters that I have encountered in McEwan's books have interesting jobs but are messes as human beings, making them hard to emphasise with, but McEwan has a brilliant way of manipulating the story that you want to follow these selfish and sometimes despicable people further into their story.  Although I found the narration a little 'off', I enjoyed reading about Serena whose faults include, but are not limited to, being too proud and self involved.  She is a product of her time and upbringing, stumbling through, and is always identified through what men think of her.  When reading, I had this feeling that if the book was told from another character's perspective it would be something completely different because of Serena's selfish nature, only seeing what she wants to. 

  As with a story about spies there is a lot of duplicity. Serena's job at MI5 is just a mask for her love of literature, as the M15 elements of the book are are mask for the meta musings on literature.  I especially found the ending fascinating, and really clever, as it gave me a new perspective on the novel as a whole.

The Other Life

3 years, 1 month, 1 week and 6 days since I’d seen daylight. One-fifth of my life. 98,409,602 seconds since the heavy, steel door had fallen shut and sealed us off from the world

Sherry has lived with her family in a sealed bunker since things went wrong up above. But when they run out of food, Sherry and her dad must venture outside. There they find a world of devastation, desolation...and the Weepers: savage, mutant killers.

When Sherry's dad is snatched, she joins forces with gorgeous but troubled Joshua - an Avenger, determined to destroy the Weepers.

But can Sherry keep her family and Joshua safe, when his desire for vengeance threatens them all?

The Other Life is packed full of teen speculative fiction cliches, including my pet hate of a burgeoning romance between the two leads which normally causes me to scream, "why can they never just be friends?" and then throw the book across the room for good measure!  However; against all odds, I found Susanne Winnacker's debut novel to be a great read.

Susanne Winnacker knows how to spin a good yarn, and The Other Life's success lies in it's pacing.  She explains a lot, and yet there's always something going on, propelling Sherry deeper into the rabbit hole, and I found myself literally unable to put this book down.  I think what I loved most were the Weepers; people who had been infected with a strain of rabies that had killed the other half of the population.  They are a clever way of not using your average zombie in this post-outbreak wasteland and I liked that they all looked different apart from their human-like weeping eyes.  Very unsettling!

I also have to mention, as I always do, that the cover work is beautifully creepy (look at that moth a bit closer) and extends to inside the book as well, with the barbed wire trailing across the chapter headers.  The last couple chapters take the story in a different direction, and I hope that will be explored in the second book of the series, due out spring next year.  So, if you can, get you hands on a copy if only to stare at that lovely cover!

Heart Shaped Bruise

I've seen this on a couple of blogs, yet I didn't set out to read it, but it was another a case of it catching my eye in the library and me thinking why not?

They say I'm evil. The police. The newspapers. The girls from school who shake their heads on the six o’clock news and say they always knew there was something not quite right about me. And everyone believes it. Including you. But you don't know. You don't know who I used to be.

Who I could have been.

Awaiting trial at Archway Young Offenders Institution, Emily Koll is going to tell her side of the story for the first time.

Heart-Shaped Bruise is a compulsive and moving novel about infamy, identity and how far a person might go to seek revenge.

Heart-Shaped Bruise is a YA Crime/Thriller, probably a good introduction for budding crime novel devourers.  The only problem I had, and this may be a tad spoilery, was that I found myself waiting for a twist that never came.  There were too many coincidences for me and I was expecting something a little more complex from the ending.  Still I read it in one sitting.  Tanya Byrne's writing style is definitely compelling, and in Emily she has created a brittle and fascinating character, that perhaps deserved a better story to inhabit.  So, while Heart-Shaped Bruise is not a bad read, and I would recommend it, it is just not what I expected.

Hollow Earth

Twins Matt and Emily Calder have imaginations so powerful that they can make art come to life.  Their powers are sought by villains intent on accessing the terrors of Hollow Earth - a place where all the devils, demons and monsters ever imagined lie trapped for eternity.  If Hollow Earth is breached, the world will be plunged into chaos.  If Hollow Earth is breached... ...the twins are as good as dead.

 

I picked this up on a whim.  I'd seen an interview with John and Carole on This Morning promoting Hollow Earth and it sounded interesting enough so I figured if they had it in the library I might as well order it and check it out.

 

At first Hollow Earth reads like a stereotypically badly written novel for pre-teens, but once it gets past the introductions and leaves London behind, the story turns into an interesting and quirky quick read.  The Barrowman's seem to have found a good balance between explaining and showing, as I never felt that the story was being dragged by exposition.  The characters may not be original, but their heritage is, and as the story develops they progress from angst ridden pre-teens into curious and somewhat responsible protagonists that I wouldn't mind following for a couple more books.



The Uninvited Guests

One late spring evening in 1912, in the kitchens at Sterne, preparations begin for an elegant supper party in honor of Emerald Torrington's twentieth birthday. But only a few miles away, a dreadful accident propels a crowd of mysterious and not altogether savory survivors to seek shelter at the ramshackle manor—and the household is thrown into confusion and mischief.

The cook toils over mock turtle soup and a chocolate cake covered with green sugar roses, which the hungry band of visitors is not invited to taste. But nothing, it seems, will go according to plan. As the passengers wearily search for rest, the house undergoes a strange transformation. One of their number (who is most definitely not a gentleman) makes it his business to join the birthday revels.

Evening turns to stormy night, and a most unpleasant parlor game threatens to blow respectability to smithereens: Smudge Torrington, the wayward youngest daughter of the house, decides that this is the perfect moment for her Great Undertaking.

The Uninvited Guests was a good read to pass the time, and also to just stare at that beautiful cover, but Sadie Jones' supernatural tale just didn't fulfil all the possible potential it had to be an exceptional piece of ghostly fiction. 

The best part about The Uninvited Guests was that there was heaps of atmosphere and all the required ingredients for a great spooky chiller: the fractured family; the large stately home in disrepair; the party where important impressions must be made; and finally the mysterious accident that causes the majority of the family's staff to leave in order to aid those injured and leaving the Torrington family exposed to sinister forces.  However, Jones' story is far too polite and restrained to be anything more than a gentle moral story.  By the end, all I could think of was this was a shoddy remake of J. B. Priestly's An Inspector Calls, the action now supplanted to the country. 
 
While I agree that the best spooky tales withold full explantions as to the why and how, I didn't find this approach appropriate for the story.  The Uninvited Guests could have been longer, and the superb enviroment and characters that Jones created could withstand stronger supernatural elements.
  A pleasant read, but I won't be rushing to read it again.

Blackbirds

I took Chuck Wendig's Blackbirds with me on a train journey that started at 5.55am and finished at 11.45am.  Instead of catching up on sleep, like any normal person, I was hooked from the first page and couldn't put this amazing novel down, tiredness be dammed.

Miriam Black is something of a nomad.  An opportunist, she doesn't connect to people, but for a good reason: when she makes touches another persons skin she sees how they die.  Unfortunately most people don't die in their sleep with their family surrounding them, but in violent or unexpected ways.  Having tried to defy fate in the past, but not making any difference, Miriam has given up trying to change what has to happen.  That is until she hitches a ride from truck driver Louis, and after seeing the traumatic events that lead to his death she realises that she is somehow involved and tries to get as far away from him as possible. 


What follows is a fast paced, tumultuous journey leading to the inevitable.  I was astounded at how much I loved Blackbirds.  There was something that felt different about it, and is perhaps the first book I've read where the text matched the impressive cover.  I enjoyed it so much I've been telling everyone I know to read it, and I practically shoved it in my mum's hands as soon as I got home so she could see what a unique book this is.
  The structure of the novel is amazing, I never felt bored, or that the story stalled at any point.  I thought that Wendig was clever by including interludes that revealed more of Miriam's past, and alluded to when her visions began, without having to halt the main plot with tons of exposition.
Miriam herself is an astounding and complicated and a brilliantly mouthy character as are the other strange people that she encounters on the road.  I honestly cannot wait until the sequel, Mockingbird, is released later this year.

Pure

We know you are here, our brothers and sisters . . .

Pressia barely remembers the Detonations or much about life during the Before. In her sleeping cabinet behind the rubble of an old barbershop where she lives with her grandfather, she thinks about what is lost-how the world went from amusement parks, movie theaters, birthday parties, fathers and mothers . . . to ash and dust, scars, permanent burns, and fused, damaged bodies. And now, at an age when everyone is required to turn themselves over to the militia to either be trained as a soldier or, if they are too damaged and weak, to be used as live targets, Pressia can no longer pretend to be small. Pressia is on the run.

 

Burn a Pure and Breathe the Ash . . .

There are those who escaped the apocalypse unmarked. Pures. They are tucked safely inside the Dome that protects their healthy, superior bodies. Yet Partridge, whose father is one of the most influential men in the Dome, feels isolated and lonely. Different. He thinks about loss-maybe just because his family is broken; his father is emotionally distant; his brother killed himself; and his mother never made it inside their shelter. Or maybe it's his claustrophobia: his feeling that this Dome has become a swaddling of intensely rigid order. So when a slipped phrase suggests his mother might still be alive, Partridge risks his life to leave the Dome to find her.

 

When Pressia meets Partridge, their worlds shatter all over again.

Jullianna Baggot has created a speculative young-adult novel that doesn't lack in imaginative content.  While at times dialogue may jar, and aspects of the plot fall into familiar YA territory, there is still plenty of features within the text that redeem Pure and set it apart from other offerings in the sub genre.

What stood out for me was that Baggot doesn't talk down to her YA audience.  She explains about the possibility of a nuclear war, and provides an option of what the aftermath could be like, but the only problem with Pure is that there is too much talking and not enough action. Maybe, as part of a trilogy, the second instalment will be more action led now that the damaged world both inside and out of the Dome has been established.

The Girl You Left Behind

 A poignant tale of love and perseverance in the face of adversity, The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes is a wonderful exploration into the strength of two women separated by nearly a century.

Late 1916, the small French village St Peronne has been occupied by the Germans.  Sisters Sophie and Helene, the owners of the town's hotel Le Coq Rouge, have been asked by the new Kommandant to provide evening meals for the German troupes.  Prone to small acts of defiance, Sophie is initially wary of the Kommandant and his motives, especially when he becomes fascinated with a portrait of her that had been painted by her husband Edouard.  Over time, and after many instances of the Kommandant's unexpected kindness towards Sophie and her family, they forge an unlikely, and dangerous, friendship.  Once news of her husbands imprisonment reaches her, Sophie realises that she must use her strange relationship with the Kommandant to her advantage.

Fast Forward to 2006 and Liv Halston is living alone in London, still grieving for her husband David who died four years ago.  When drowning her sorrows on the anniversary of David's death she meets Paul, unaware of his job as an investigator for a company that successfully reclaims pieces of art that had been stolen during war time.  Unfortunately, Paul has recently been commissioned by the Lefevre Family to track down Sophie's portrait, or as it is now known 'The Girl You Left Behind', which happens to hang on a wall in Liv's bedroom.  Not wanting to give the painting she treasures up, Liv enters a battle that pushes not only her finances to the limit, but forces every aspect of her her life into near destruction.

Even though The Girl You Left Behind sometimes fell into chick-lit by numbers territory, I still think it will appeal to both fans and sceptics of the genre. Moyes concocted intriguing characters and placed them in unenviable situations that were fascinating to read, and learn more, about.  In Sophie and Liv, Moyes has created two strong, stubborn, women.  Both of their unfortunate circumstances force them to rely on men who have questionable motives, and it is their stubborn nature, along with their faith, that keeps them going even when everything looks certain to end in heartbreak.  To that point, even the reader's faith is tested: Will Liv get to keep the painting?  What happened to Sophie all those years ago?

The Girl You Left Behind is certainly not faced paced.  However, it benefits from being slowly read and savoured.  Moyes has a wonderful ability to portray very distinct emotions through her prose.  Even though I didn't really get a sense of place from her descriptions, I knew at every turn exactly what her characters were feeling and this added an extra dimension to the story.  A brilliant read from start to finish, I would certainly be interested in reading more of Moyes work.

The Troupe

I had been expecting a more of Hell Train like romp.  However, after reading I found I was making more comparisons with Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus. 

Young and talented pianist George is tracking down his father.  Where his quest leads him is to a mysterious vaudeville troupe, where audience members only have a vague recollection of their performances.  George soon finds that he is not the only one looking for his father, and after integrating himself within the troupe starts to learn the many secrets of this small group.  

 My opinion of The Troupe is that it was a more intelligent version of The Night Circus.  Less focused on spectacle and romance and more on plot and lies, I found The Troupe to be a captivating read, that was not only enjoyable, but made me think about literary type things.  The characters are all written very well, every aspect of their personality is informed by their back story.  As for the narrative that followed young George's point of view, I found that even when plot twists were obvious to me, they wouldn't have been obvious to George, so the narration always stayed true to his observations as a cocky sixteen-year old-boy.  The scope of the novel was also interesting (tangents that included the creation of the world, and then stepping into the world of the fey) as it wasn't limited to the usual horror fare, and this made me question why The Troupe is placed in the horror/paranormal section while something like The Night Circus is in the 'normal' fiction section of the bookstore.  All these queries aside, The Troupe is a mesmerising page turner that rattles against the boundary of its genre.

Angelmaker

Nick Harkaway's Angelmaker is an astounding piece of literature, that includes but is not limited to:
lesbian spies, mechanical bees, undertakers, a villain that wouldn't look out of place in a Bond movie, rivalries and J. Joe Spork.
  Joe is a humble clock maker, who intends to live his life on the straight and narrow, unlike his criminal father.  This plan goes to pot after he is sent to a strange town to inspect a strange device, and he becomes entangled with a rivalry and plot to destroy human kind that has lasted decades.  With plenty of meanderings throughout what seems like a complex ,and yet once deconstructed totally simple, plot Angelmaker is hilarious, sombre, sad, and baffling all at the same time.  The size of the hardback may be intimidating, and the first few chapters are perhaps not the page turners that the rest of the book turns out to be, but trust me, Angelmaker is bonkers, and that's why it is brilliant.

Breathers

S.G Browne's debut has a uniqueness that set it apart from the over crowded market for zombie tales.  In Breathers, reanimating after death is purely down to chance.  Andy, the narrator, reanimated after he rammed his car into a tree.  The same accident killed his wife, but she didn't come back, and this resulted in their daughter being taken to live with her aunt and uncle, and Andy living in his parents basement turned wine cellar with feelings of guilt and anguish.

 

  Browne is quick to set up the premise that zombies are people, too, the only difference is that they often have the physical ailments that caused their original demise.  For Andy and his friends, formed at a local support group, there's no slow walking, no moaning, no craving of human flesh.  Their problems are due to the fact that they live in a world that was subjected to zombie movies and Breathers, what they call the non-dead, cannot separate Hollywood zombies from the ones that share their world.

 Breathers has all the necessary ingredients for an interesting read, but I found it hard to empathise with Andy.  Throughout, Andy repeats the line 'you wouldn't understand' with different variations applicable to his increasingly strange situation.  Towards the end, I realised that I didn't want to understand, and it made it hard to have a positive response to this book.  I think I liked it, there's plenty of comedy elements in there to stop it from becoming too politically motivated, but I don't think I'll rushing to read it again.

Bag of Bones

Succesful author Mike Noonan is dreaming of Manderlay. After his wife’s sudden death, Noonan has an unsettling recurring dream, and while awake he is coping with the physical manifestation of writers block. Deciding to get away from the city, he returns to Sarah Laughs, a holiday home in rural Maine that he hasn’t visited since before his wife died.  Not long after his arrival does he find himself not only embroiled in a custody battle that concerns the whole town, but also the feeling that he is not alone at Sarah Laughs.

Stephen King can never be accused of minimalism. This can sometimes be of a detriment to his novels, as I found the first third of Bag of Bones to be superfluous. However, once Mike Noonan finally gets to Sara Laughs, the story described by blurb begins and it’s definitely worth the dredge through 200 pages of whinging.  Once I'd passed this point, I couldn't put the book down.
  Creepy and atmospheric in all the right places, this is King at his best.  Bag of Bones has a solid story and complex characters to boot.  King manages to provide an explanation for all the right parts, but others bits, that have no need to be explained, are left to sit in the readers mind.  For me, it can’t compete with ‘Salem’s Lot, but I would still recommend Bag of Bones.

1Q84

I've been having trouble putting a synopsis in my own words, so I'm taking one from the inside jacket for a change:

The year is 1984. Aomame sits in a taxi on the expressway in Tokyo.

Her work is not the kind which can be discussed in public but she is in a hurry to carry out an assignment and, with the traffic at a stand-still, the driver proposes a solution. She agrees, but as a result of her actions starts to feel increasingly detached from the real world. She has been on a top-secret mission, and her next job will lead her to encounter the apparently superhuman founder of a religious cult.

Meanwhile, Tengo is leading a nondescript life but wishes to become a writer. He inadvertently becomes involved in a strange affair surrounding a literary prize to which a mysterious seventeen-year-old girl has submitted her remarkable first novel. It seems to be based on her own experiences and moves readers in unusual ways. Can her story really be true?

Both Aomame and Tengo notice that the world has grown strange; both realise that they are indispensable to each other. While their stories influence one another, at times by accident and at times intentionally, the two come closer and closer to intertwining.

1Q84  reminded me of so many other pieces of work, especially as it is supposed to be Murakami's nod to George Orwell's 1984.  However, I could not help but notice the similarities in the message that Stieg Larsson's highly popular Millennium series conveyed about violence against women.  Aomame's second career and involvement with a woman known only as the Dowager, is tragically thought provoking.

It was for this reason that in Book one I found Aomame's story arc more interesting.  However, in Book Two Tengo's arc became more assured and more is revealed in his chapters that I found myself anticipating his narrative.

Overall, it was fascinating to see how the two stories related to each other.  In the beginning there is no information that links Aomame and Tengo, but by the end of Book Two their narratives have been braided together, often revealing answers to the other but never crossing over.  Murakami's writing is extremely detailed and atmospheric, but crafted in a way that never becomes boring or overwrought. 

It may seem daunting with books one and two amalgamated, but 1Q84 is definitely worth reading.  A lot is asked, but never answered.  If you don't understand when asking, you're not going to understand when answered.  A few attempts were made on trying to figure out what was happening but in the end I had to follow this strange journey.  Book Three is going to have to wait while I've got other books that need to be read, but I look forward, and am intrigued, to see how Tengo and Aomame's stories pan out.

Third Grave Dead Ahead

I wish that I liked this series as so many others seem to be enamored with the adventures of female grim reaper Charley Davidson.  There are pages where I do find myself intrigued and that's why I have persevered to read all three books in the series so far.  However, after finishing Third Grave Dead Ahead, I am certain that Darynda Jones has a writing style that is not to my taste. 

A good series makes sure to inform new readers of what has happened before, while at the same time still rewarding previous readers with new information.  Yet, with almost a third of the book rehashing what went on in the prior two novels, and a nearly identical plot to the Second Grave on the Left, the only redeeming feature of TGDA was the introduction of a biker gang and their dog Artemis. 

The biggest disappointment was the reveal as to why Owen Vaughn tried to run Charely over in high school; it was such a waste of a possible plot line that could have integrated itself into the main mythology of the series. Instead I was left questioning as to why it was included in the books to begin with.. 

Another sticking point, which I may be reading into too much, was what felt like a continual message throughout the series that it's okay for the men in your life to mistreat you.  Both Reyes and Charley's father betray her, enough so that she's gravely injured in both circumstances, but she makes excuses for them. Everything will be okay because she loves them and that notion doesn't sit well with me.  I think it is the main reason why this is the end of the road for me and Charley Davidson.  I can't help but think good riddance.

The Sinner

The third installment in the Rizzoli and Isles series, finally, focuses primarily on medical examiner Maura Isles.  With the arrival of her ex-husband more is revealed about Maura's life before she moved to Boston.  Case-wise, Jane and Maura investigate a brutal attack inside a convent, which leaves one nun dead and another battling for her life.  Also found is a woman with no face, no hand or feet - could the two cases be connected?

The characterization is spot on, and there are plenty of twist and turns within the plot that kept me reading.  Nothing is ever simple, and the real culprit is always hidden away until the last few chapters.  A fantastic read. 

The Apprentice

Detective Jane Rizzoli, having survived her encounter with The Surgeon, is brought into an investigation of a married couple who have been brutally murdered.  The case takes a turn for the worst when Rizzoli can't help but notice similarities between the crime scene and the work of The Surgeon's in the first book.  Maura Isles is finally introduced as the new Boston Medical Examiner.  However, The Apprentice is about Rizzoli's struggles with the emotional scars left from her showdown with Warren Hoyt, as well as the arrival of the mysterious FBI agent Thomas Dean who keeps usurping her authority.

The best thing about Gerritsen novels, aside from a great plot, are that her characters always come across as fully fledged people, warts and all.  They manage to have lives outside of their work and Gerritsen weaves these elements effortlessly within the main case.  The Apprentice is equally as good, if not better than it's counterpart and I look forward to reading The Sinner.

The Book of Summers

Emylia Hall's debut novel The Book of Summers reads as a fairytale without the conventional use of make believe.  Reality is twisted into fiction, creating a beautiful, and most importantly readable, hybrid.

The story begins with (and is all about) Beth, who has been given an unwelcome package from her father.  Upon opening said package The Book of Summers is revealed to her, as well as some sad news.  This causes her to reflect on her childhood and the seven summer vacations she spent in Hungary.

To read this book on a holiday would be like taking a double vacation.  The descriptions of Summer in rural Hungary left me warm, intrigued and slightly jealous.  The passion for the country oozes from Hall's  prose; which in the beginning felt convoluted but eventually provided Beth with a clear voice I felt emotionally engaged with such a simple story.  I was so impressed that I hope The Book of Summers is not a fluke and that Hall's next offering is just as, if not more, magical.

The Reckoning

The Reckoning is the final part of Chloe's arc in the Darkest Powers series and Kelley Armstrong successfully provides an exciting end to the trilogy.  The long set up of the love triangle finally comes to fruition.  Secrets are revealed and alliances formed, some with shady characters.  Not all problems are solved in the end leaving enough to be answered in the new series, set in the same world but in another location that has links with Edison Group, which starts with The Gathering.  I can't reveal too much without spoiling such an interlinked series, so the best advice I can offer is to get your hands on a copy and see what you think, especially if you're a fan of Armstrong's Otherworld series (or just an individual book/short story of hers) as you won't be dissapointed.