I love Darjeeling: it's one of my favourite places on earth. From my favourite hotel room, I can see both the Planters' Club and Keventers so reading I love Darjeeling: it's one of my favourite places on earth. From my favourite hotel room, I can see both the Planters' Club and Keventers so reading 'Darjeeling Inheritance' was like a trip to a familiar place. Yes, it's true that I know it 80+ years after the book is set, but it's easy to recognise the location and the atmosphere.
Charlotte is fresh back from boarding school in the UK, chaperoned on her voyage by Ada, an older woman travelling to India to marry a dull but dependable tea plantation owner. On arrival, Charlotte finds her father has just died, she has inherited his tea plantation, and her mother wants her to marry the son of the neighbouring plantation owner. Can Charlotte take time to discover who she is and what she wants before 'settling' for life as a tea-wife?
There is absolutely nothing in this book that I couldn't have predicted after the first few pages. The plot plays out exactly as I expected, but oddly, I'm not too bothered about that. Great literature it's not, but it's a pleasant jaunt through simpler times when British plantation owners held sway and feared the influx of well-to-do Indian folk spoiling the exclusivity of their bolt-hole, and when men were men and women were supposed to be grateful. Did I entirely believe young Charlotte wanted to learn the tea making process (when she was terrified of snakes and leeches)? Not entirely, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. And I was more than satisfied with the predicted ending.
Merged review:
I love Darjeeling: it's one of my favourite places on earth. From my favourite hotel room, I can see both the Planters' Club and Keventers so reading 'Darjeeling Inheritance' was like a trip to a familiar place. Yes, it's true that I know it 80+ years after the book is set, but it's easy to recognise the location and the atmosphere.
Charlotte is fresh back from boarding school in the UK, chaperoned on her voyage by Ada, an older woman travelling to India to marry a dull but dependable tea plantation owner. On arrival, Charlotte finds her father has just died, she has inherited his tea plantation, and her mother wants her to marry the son of the neighbouring plantation owner. Can Charlotte take time to discover who she is and what she wants before 'settling' for life as a tea-wife?
There is absolutely nothing in this book that I couldn't have predicted after the first few pages. The plot plays out exactly as I expected, but oddly, I'm not too bothered about that. Great literature it's not, but it's a pleasant jaunt through simpler times when British plantation owners held sway and feared the influx of well-to-do Indian folk spoiling the exclusivity of their bolt-hole, and when men were men and women were supposed to be grateful. Did I entirely believe young Charlotte wanted to learn the tea making process (when she was terrified of snakes and leeches)? Not entirely, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. And I was more than satisfied with the predicted ending....more
I dip in and out of Karin Slaughter novels so I tend to recognise some of the characters without really being fully familiar with them.
In this one, poI dip in and out of Karin Slaughter novels so I tend to recognise some of the characters without really being fully familiar with them.
In this one, police investigator Will and his new wife, Sarah, the medical examiner are taking their honeymoon at an isolated off-grid ranch in the countryside. The last thing Will expected was to run into a guy who he knew in his childhood in the care system, a bullying boy who has clearly grown up to be a bullying man.
When a very damaged woman, Mercy, if murdered early in their holiday, Will and Sarah can't stop themselves getting involved in trying to find out who did it - and why.
It soon emerges that just about everybody at the ranch had reasons to kill her - not unlike an old Agatha Christie novel.
Writing this review a good few weeks after I read it, I initially struggled to remember WHO did do it and then it came back to me - it was exactly the person I suspected within a few pages of the actual killing.
So, in terms of mystery, I didn't think it was particularly well hidden, but this book was much more of a journey than a destination. And along the way, multiple layers of lying and double-crossing come into play. It'll keep you reading right to the end.
I have read all bar one of Dawn O'Porter's novels and the one I haven't read is sitting on my desk just waiting for me.
I had, however, forgotten how mI have read all bar one of Dawn O'Porter's novels and the one I haven't read is sitting on my desk just waiting for me.
I had, however, forgotten how much I liked Flo and Renee, the two protagonists of Paper Aeroplanes and Goose, until they popped up in her latest, Honeybee.
Still two very real, very mixed up girls with very different personalities but plenty of personal challenges, I soon was deeply invested in their stories. Both have complex and sometimes tragic family histories with dead or disengaged parents. And the star of all of this series is the island of Guernsey where the two girls - like O'Porter herself - grew up and to which Flo has returned after university and working in London, and Renee after a few years in Spain.
Flo was always the quiet serious one. She's now working as an office manager - showing a cool, calm exterior whist her emotions and hormones rage under the surface. The last thing she needed was Renee getting a job as the company's new receptionist - especially when the two girls are now sharing a flat.
Renee still mourns her mother and jumps in and out of relationships without a lot of thinking. Flo can't stand her mother, and drowns her insecurities - both sexual and professional - in booze.
A book with a 22-year old alcoholic is quite a rare thing - and O'Porter handles the topic sensitively. We wouldn't have expected Flo to go down that route, but when we hear of the black-outs, the unkind words from casual one-night-stands, and learn of her deep insecurities, we can understand how it happened.
The one reflection I offer - and the reason this is a 3- rather than 4-star review from me, was that when I got to the end, I had the sense that in many ways, not a lot had actually happened.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for my copy....more
This is an excellent murder mystery which challenges the readers ideas about who are the good guys and who are the villains.
It's an achievement for a This is an excellent murder mystery which challenges the readers ideas about who are the good guys and who are the villains.
It's an achievement for a writer to make us want to support a killer - the Witness 8 - despite her deplorable behaviour. Similarly, I found myself rather liking a hitman serial killer who I knew I really shouldn't be liking. And even the lawyer good-guy has a shady past.
It's clever. I like the way the author played with our assumptions and our loyalties.
I hadn't read this writer before but I would definitely read him again....more
I've never read a bad Val McDermid. Somehow, despite years of writing about profiler Tony Hill and police officer Carol Jordan, she still comes up witI've never read a bad Val McDermid. Somehow, despite years of writing about profiler Tony Hill and police officer Carol Jordan, she still comes up with new angles and new approaches.
In this, the 11th in the series, Tony is in prison and Carol is on a break from work (after tackling her alcoholism). Carol's team has a new boss, and her team are having to deal with a very different style of policing.
Carol is sucked into doing a favour for Tony's evil mother, Vanessa, and into working with a lawyer who attempts to overturn legal injustices.
At the core of the story is the discovery of dozens of bodies of young girls in the grounds of an old convent and the subsequent uncovering of a second set of bodies, those of young men whose presence can't be explained away by the old nuns.
It's clever. Val McDermid knows no other approach. But it's not twisted in the way many serial crime writers seem to prefer these days. It also relies on solid policing and sleuthing rather than suddenly chucking in a character you never heard of and pinning it on them with DNA evidence or phone records. In this way, the reader has a fair chance of working things out for themselves.
I've been reading Jeffery Deaver forever. I'd got rather bored with some of his protagonists but I rather liked Colter Shaw - a man with a tracking baI've been reading Jeffery Deaver forever. I'd got rather bored with some of his protagonists but I rather liked Colter Shaw - a man with a tracking background and a bit of an obsession with probabilities.
This book revolves around a protagonist who is recreating levels from a computer game. Colter has to try to figure out who's the killer and why they are doing this. Is it really just a gamer having some twisted fun, or is there something deeper going on.
Well paced. Less gory than a lot of Deaver. ...more
I've read all of the Kamil Rahman series. I enjoy them all.
Set in London with a protagonist who is an Indian-born Muslim, we've seen Kamil as a waiterI've read all of the Kamil Rahman series. I enjoy them all.
Set in London with a protagonist who is an Indian-born Muslim, we've seen Kamil as a waiter, a chef, a detective and now a spy, helping to uncover an Islamist plot in the city.
Always dependably good, with interesting back stories and great support characters, I recommend this series highly.
Each book could be read on its own, but there's a bit of extra connection if you've read them all....more
I love a bit of Ruth Ware and I think this is one of her best.
A husband and wife team - Jack and Gabe - have earned a reputation as excellent people tI love a bit of Ruth Ware and I think this is one of her best.
A husband and wife team - Jack and Gabe - have earned a reputation as excellent people to test a company's cyber security. They break into businesses physically and online to test their systems. But one night, Jack comes home to find her husband has been murdered.
Can she work out who really killed him before she's framed for his death?
Well written, fast-paced, with locations that I know and could relate to and plenty of interesting characters.
But put the two together in this novel and it just didn't work for mI love a good near-future dystopian novel.
I don't hate a dual narrative time-line.
But put the two together in this novel and it just didn't work for me. The italicised account of life after everything else had happened just left me wondering (hoping?) if there was a twist in the tail of the tale. I kept thinking there must be more; this parallel narrative must be adding something more than a reassurance that the author must have made it to the end. There wasn't. If I were the editor, I'd have taken a big thick red Sharpie to that whole part of the story.
Canada has given up its independence and become part of an expanded USA. The world has suffered environmental catastrophes, all blamed on the older people. "You will never be forgiven" is a phrase that crops up time and again - without every really being properly explained.
There's a generational conflict at the heart of this story that never really gets explained.
All the oldies (and honestly, they're not THAT old) are rounded up and relocated. Think of the NAZIs and the concentration/work camps and put them in Texas. Work them until they die or step out of line and then bump them off. Teacher - the main protagonist (yep, guess what he used to do) - just happens to have a son in high places who tips him, his wife, and a couple of their cohort of displaced old folk off to escape whilst they can. With the help (sometimes) of a superrich man with a big plan and no morals, four of them set off for a better place - the place we can assume that the parallel narrative is written from.
Lots of unanswered questions. Lots of bizarre coincidences. Lots of people shot and tipped into acid baths. Not a lot of subtlety.
Kate Atkinson is a great writer ofhigh quality literary fiction.
Jackson Brodie is a wonderful sleuth.
But...sadly, this book just didn't work for me aKate Atkinson is a great writer ofhigh quality literary fiction.
Jackson Brodie is a wonderful sleuth.
But...sadly, this book just didn't work for me and I was really disappointed.
I think it was just too much detail and too little plot. I was over half-way through before I'd actually got my head around the unnecessarily complex set of characters, none of whom I really cared about. Too many characters with too little character, if you see what I mean.
And when things finally started to hot up, she throws in some bad weather to force these disparate characters into the same place, and then adds in a man with a shotgun who didn't seem to have actually had much to do with all that went before.
I'm still not sure why 'Nanny' was dead at the bottom of the stairs. But, I don't care enough to try to re-read and work it out.
So, much to my amazement as I didn't think Atkinson was capable of a bad book, this one might just have proved me wrong.
A big thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for my copy....more
I finished this book about a week ago and I am sorry to say that I have already forgotten a lot of it.
It's a well-written but not particularly compellI finished this book about a week ago and I am sorry to say that I have already forgotten a lot of it.
It's a well-written but not particularly compelling memoir of the author's life growing up in a Pakistani-American family with a rather narcissistic mother, a troubled brother and a dad who only seemed to avoid being divorced by being sick.
That said, it's a slow-burn love story about taking things incredibly slowly and gradually wearing down familial disapproval. I couldn't help thinking that it was written a little too politely and not very openly. Quite how the relationship moved from friendship to more to marriage is very vague - perhaps to spare the blushes. But, I appreciate a higher level of openness and honesty in an autobiography.
This is a fascinating tale of past and present, with plenty of mystery to engage the reader. I found the treatment of women in the surrealist art movemThis is a fascinating tale of past and present, with plenty of mystery to engage the reader. I found the treatment of women in the surrealist art movement particularly interesting, and the interweaving of a Paris artist's apartment and a crumbling stately home made for great settings.
If I had a couple of small niggles, they would be that the start was rather slow, the 'voices' of the two students were not sufficiently 'different' (so I had to keep checking who was narrating), and I did spot the key plot twists well before they were revealed.
Despite those points, I did enjoy this and would want to read the author(s) again.
Many thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read....more
I love a book written in the 'now' about an alternative present. It's not strictly speaking a dystopia; perhaps it's more of an alternative reality.
WhI love a book written in the 'now' about an alternative present. It's not strictly speaking a dystopia; perhaps it's more of an alternative reality.
When Rachel decides to move out of the pub where she lives with her family and set up a camp in the pub garden, nobody can imagine the consequences. Tired of a world where nobody is listening to anybody, she stops speaking - and never starts again.
Her daughter narrates the tale of the events before, during and after THE EVENT - the similtaneous suicide of more than twenty-one thousand women around the world. She shows us how a simple message of hope gets distorted into a horrifying movement with disturbing ambitions and how her mother's intentions are corrupted to suit the ambition of others.
I enjoyed this a lot - although there were times when the pace could have been increased and occasionally the plot dragged a little. Highly recommended and weirdly believable. ...more
Oh dear! I wanted to like this but I couldn't. The story is probably a 3 out of 5. The footnotes drag that down to 1 out of 5.
What was the editor thinkinOh dear! I wanted to like this but I couldn't. The story is probably a 3 out of 5. The footnotes drag that down to 1 out of 5.
What was the editor thinking to let this writer do something so awful?
Every Time I Go On Vacation, Someone Dies is an OK mystery that's thoroughly spoiled by the extreme affectation of hundreds of footnotes.
In a paperback format they'd probably be easier to ignore but on Kindle, they are annoying, distracting, and I had to really force myself to keep going.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers but please, don't let her do this again with the footnotes. Sometimes a writer needs to be saved from themself....more
Fredrik Backman is undoubtedly the best thing to come out of Sweden since Abba. He's so dependably amazing that I knew this book would be fantastic, eFredrik Backman is undoubtedly the best thing to come out of Sweden since Abba. He's so dependably amazing that I knew this book would be fantastic, even when I opened the Kindle and was surprised to see quite how LONG it was. I welcomed the length. I knew it was going to be great.
For a Brit, I'm a rare sort. I'm an ex ice-hockey player and a woman. So I absolutely 'get' the hockey obsession that lies behind the Beartown trilogy. It's in my blood.
I also recognise that Backman's writing is so good that you don't need to have any interest in or experience of ice hockey. If you've ever loved ANY sport, you've got a good chance of getting the passion. If you've ever trained at anything so hard that you threw up, you're 'on the team'. Relax.
Don't let your lack of sports knowledge block you from reading this. Nothing is assumed about the game and nothing is really needed - except an acceptance that sporting passion can turn to anger and drive some pretty dysfunctional behaviours.
Backman is a master of time travel. He writes about past, present and future. He alludes to things that have happened but he hasn't yet revealed, and then slowly peels off the layers of secrecy to give us a flash of what happened, how a young girl came to die and why her death will lead inexorably towards a future crisis, something that looms over the whole book. He writes from the position of having perfect clarity himself, and then portioning out what we need to know when we need to know it in such a way that he builds phenomenal suspense. You know something awful is going to happen, somebody will be very badly damaged, but until it happens, you don't know who or what - but you do have an understanding of why.
I finished this on a flight. I sat there with a massive lump in my throat for the last 30 minutes or so. I followed the trail of breadcrumbs that lead to the violent event but nothing prepared me for who it impacted.
And finally, I was deeply moved by the completeness of the final pages, by the way in which every loose end was tied up, every story rounded out, and ever character was given their future - those that still had one, at least. It was very clear that this is the end of the story of the people of Beartown and their neighbours in Hed. There's no book 4. Everything that needs to be said has been said. The courtesy and love with which he gave a final polish to each of his cast of many is exemplary. The lump got bigger. I choked back tears. And I said goodbye to the good - and not so good - people of Backman's imagination.
You can count on Val McDermid to deliver every time. Past Lying is no exception.
This is the seventh of the Karen Pirie series and it's set during the You can count on Val McDermid to deliver every time. Past Lying is no exception.
This is the seventh of the Karen Pirie series and it's set during the first wave of Covid lockdown. Even just a short time after that, it still feels oddly dystopian to be reminded of just how restricted life was because of the virus.
Two crime writers become friends by playing intense games of chess together. One cheats with the other's wife. A 'perfect crime' is plotted and Pirie and her team have to try to work out if the plot is connected to the disappearance of a local girl the year before.
It's clever. It's a fantastic reflection of a unique time in recent history....more
There are times when I look at my list of books to review and think "Did I REALLY ask for that? What was I thinking?"
That's the thought that buzzed thThere are times when I look at my list of books to review and think "Did I REALLY ask for that? What was I thinking?"
That's the thought that buzzed through my mind when I realised this was a book about being a foreign exchange trader in the City.
What did I know about such things? Did I even care? Weren't they all a bunch of arrogant BSDs (to use the Bonfire of the Vanities term, Big Swinging Dicks). I was expecting to be bored.
I was completely wrong.
Gary should have been a broker. That's where the greedy working class Essex boys were supposed to land. Traders were all about pink shirts, monogrammed coughs, braying public school accents and an inflated sense of self importance. How was a boy from Essex who'd been kicked out of grammar school for selling drugs supposed to become one of the youngest and most successful FX traders in the world?
By being smarter, more fearless, and by understanding how to play The Trading Game.
This is a great book. I was quickly sucked into Gary's dysfunctional world, reading about his outsider view of how trading for the big international banks works. His descriptions of colleagues - The Slug, The Frog, Snoopy and others - were all so well drawn that I felt I could be sitting next to him, squawking at the brokers, doing the whole buying and selling and moving the world.
In real rags to riches to "let me out of here", Gary takes us on a tour of one of the most bizarre global systems where hard work and being right when everybody else is wrong can pay massive rewards. But, like a Faustian pact, he finds it's even harder to get out than it was to get into this world.
Loved it. Thanks to Netgalley and Gary's publishers for my copy....more
If you think it's oddly amusing that Rishi Sunak has been sucking up to the likes of Elon Musk and singing the praises of AI, think again. John Marrs'If you think it's oddly amusing that Rishi Sunak has been sucking up to the likes of Elon Musk and singing the praises of AI, think again. John Marrs' 'The Marriage Act' is a near-future dystopia where a right-wing government has gone much too far in trying to both monitor and control the lives of the population.
It's all a bit too real to be entertaining. In a post pandemics (yes, there have been multiple rounds of Covid pandemics in this world), the UK's even more of a mess than today after just the one. The government have taken their 'family values' BS way too far and if you want to pay less tax, get access to what's left of the NHS (NHS+ - that's the version for people who play along), and get the best houses with the smallest mortgage rates, you have to get married.
So far, not too extremely different.
But what if your 'Alexa' wasn't just there to turn your lights on and play your favourite radio station? What if she was spying on you, recording random bits of conversation and feeding them into AI programmes, designed to spot when your relationship isn't going as well as it should?
In the two-tier Britain of Marrs' imagination, all this and more is reality. And, just in case you're thinking "Hey, it doesn't sound too bad", don't get complacent. There are no guarantees that the folks who run the country are playing fair. And some of the ones who are abusing the system the most, are able to get away with it.
It's a cautionary tale, that's for sure.
And for me, living about 8 miles north of Northampton, the hotspot at the heart of The Marriage Act, it's doubly intriguing because Northampton in 2024 is already enough of a parody of a dystopia that Marrs barely needs to stretch the truth.
I've read several of his near-future dystopian novels, all set in this same twisted world. I will undoubtedly read any more that come along, and I urge any of you 'soft Tory' voters who haven't given too much thought to just how 'effed-up' the country is becoming, to please, give it a read. ...more
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