EveryRose's 75 book challenge for 2011

[Every Rose]

I hope the film is better. This wasn't bad, the idea being that the wolf in the story is actually a werewolf tormenting a village and Red Riding Hood is actually a girl named Valerie whose sister was the wolf's most recent victim. But it could have been a lot better than it was.

I gave this book: 2 stars

It's not!!

So I hear. Shame, it could have been a lot better as a book.

 

[Every Rose]

A thriller and a reread.

Beth Stephens has a secret which only she and the reader know. When she was 18 she killed a man and got away with murder.

Terrified that someone will discover her crime she changes her life and becomes a near-recluse, pushing away her family, rejecting her friends, giving up on relationships, owning few possessions and focusing on her career.

Her entire life is devoted to keeping her secret and being able to run at a moments notice if it is ever discovered. And now, seventeen years later, it seems as though it has been. She begins to receive letters addressed to 'The murdering bitch', warning her that she is being watched and that someone is about to take their revenge.

I really enjoyed this book the first time I read it and I still enjoyed it the second time around. There are a few points I could nitpick over but the fact that I didn't see the ending coming from a mile away is a massive point in it's favour and the writing is clever. If you like Sophie Hannah (who went wobbly after Little Face and generally has "could do better" written by me in my reviews of her books, you will like Jane Hill because IMO this book is the better that SH ought to be doing. Nicci French fans will also probably like this one and Hill deserves to be as well known as SH and NF after this one.

 

[Every Rose]

This book is very creepy and had me on edge more than once

Julien Creed is an ex soldier currently hosting the most popular paranormal ghosthunter programme in the UK. What the public don't realise is that Creed does not believe in ghosts and his show is all camera trickery and fakes.

Creed doesn't see any reason to change this formula and can't believe his luck when Martin Stride, a retired but still famous and incredibly wealthy rock star arives in his office asking for help to rid his property of the ghostly happenings that centre around a disused railway waiting room located about half a mile away from his remote country house.

But when Creed spends a night in the waiting room while trying to persuade Martin to let him film his show there he is subjected to an experience that changes both his beliefs and his entire life. And as Creed and his team research the waiting room and the long dead people who haunt it, Martin and his family find themselves fleeing for their own sanity and perhaps even their lives.

 

[indy and lara]

This is another author I keep swearing I will never read again but I saw her speaking about this book and it made me interested.

The interview I saw tried to put a big spin on the vaccination debate that runs around Autism and Aspergers but there isn't a great deal of that in the book once you read it.

Jacob Hunt is 18 years old and has Aspergers. His mother, Emma, has fought hard all his life to help him fit in and be accepted and his younger brother Theo has struggled betweel loyalty to his brother and a need to belong in his own right. When Jacob becomes involved in a murder case and swiftly becomes the number one suspect the traits of his Aspergers are suddenly exposed as the same traits as guilt and Emma and Theo struggle to help Jacob as they can't be sure of his innocence.

Mostly this is a typical Picoult book, she has the differing POV's from the various characters, things are hinted at but only slowly revealled, there's the unique selling point/big media issue plot and some of the characters have the "what's in this for me" feelings of guilt (this time when Theo thinks his own life would be easier if his brother went to prison).

What's not here this time is the Picoult twist or a straightforward ending (unless the information kept from the reader was the twist this time or unless it was the thing that was so obvious to me that I'm sure she actually explains it to the reader if not to most of the characters until close to the end).

And I liked the lack of twist. I'd have prefered the information though.

This one gets a passable 3 stars and has me considering that I might have been a tad harsh to say never again after the last one I read (whose name I forget but it had the little girl, Willow, with the brittle bones).

I couldn't make my mind up about this book. In parts is annoyed me and in parts I enjoyed it. I felt the same way about Emma.

 

[Every Rose]

Very, very, very creepy!

When a group of four friends go on a reunion hiking/camping holiday in a remote part of Sweden it should be a time to renew friendships formed years earlier at university.

Instead the friends stuggle to find anything they still have in common and tensions run high amongst the group. Then bad weather and a series of accidents lead the group to make a decision they will all regret. They stray from the planned route into unchartered forest in the hope of a shortcut and instead find a string of horrors, starting with a corpse hanging in a tree, so badly mutilated it is impossible to tell what it once was.

Other horrors follow, a strange house filled with odd relics, terrible nightmares and visions, strange noises in the woods and finally the realisation that something ancient and evil is hunting them through the forests.

I really enjoyed this book. It did remind me of Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon with its forest setting and surreal villian but the writing was different and the story was very, very good.

I gave this book: 4 1/2 stars

 

[Every Rose]

When Anders and Cecilia's daughter Maja goes missing on the ice during a family day out it destroys their marriage and almost destroys Anders sanity. Maja has vanished into thin air and no body is ever found. Two years after her disappearance Anders returns to the place where she vanished and realises that she is not gone. But he faces a battle to bring her back that leads him to discover the secrets long hidden by the people of Domero.

This book was creepy in places and kept me guessing as to what was going on. It is difficult to describe or classify as a genre though. At times it had some horrible moments and some strange ones but it also had a lot of ordinary moments that still managed to be compelling. It was well written, I liked most of the characters and the ending was the right one.

I gave this book: 4 1/2 stars

 

[Sarahkka]

Ooooh!
You seem to be on a Scandinavian thrillers kick right now!
Great reviews! Thanks! I've read the Millenium trilogy and few others, but really thinking that I need to explore this genre further. My husband would really like the first one, by the sounds of it. He's a horror film buff!

 

[Every Rose]

Ooooh!
You seem to be on a Scandinavian thrillers kick right now!
Great reviews! Thanks! I've read the Millenium trilogy and few others, but really thinking that I need to explore this genre further. My husband would really like the first one, by the sounds of it. He's a horror film buff!

I think the Scandinavian writers (and the English ones using their location) are having their moment right now. They've all been really good.

One of my favourites from last year (but not a thriller) was Benny and Shrimp by Katarina Mazetti but for thrillers Jo Nesbo has been very good and you can't beat John Ajvide Lindqvist can you?

 

[Every Rose]

Advice and tips on how to live a thriftier and more appreciative life.

Not all of this is about saving money or being cheap, instead it encourages people to appreciate what they have and to open their eyes to how wasteful we can be without thought. But it's not judgey or preachy about it and the writer still admits to having her wasteful moments too.

There's a lot of good information and a fantastic recipe for vegetable curry (made it last night and it is delicious!) and I would really recommend it to anyone who wants to make a few small changes to their life and their finances.

It is addictive though, it's a bit of a cross between The Good Life and the renewed interest in crafts, customising things and the 'Make Do and Mend' ethic coupled with a guide to surviving the credit crunch etc and I've found that once I started to think about these things, especially the 'upcycling' of old items and recent bargains from ebay or charity shops it's hard to stop. You get the bug and as a result I have a few projects on the go involving an old wooden stool and a great, handmade childs desk (£9.99 in the YMCA shop) that will soon look like very pricy designer items (I will post photo's).

And in the spirit of the book, I bought my copy on ebay for 99p!

 

[Every Rose]

Another 99p bargain (from The Works, saving £16 on the cover price) this time giving tips for projects to make, everything from making aprons and oven gloves from her old dresses to doing up furniture she found at auction.

It's a help with the projects I am doing (although I'm not sure about trying her tip for scraping off old paint with a bit of broken glass, I'm a bit too accident prone for that!)

But the photo's were lovely and the projects are interesting and do-able.

 

[Every Rose]

I loved this book and it scared my DH when I read bits out to him.

At first I wasn't going to buy it because Waterstones had it in the humour section and I was expecting it to be a bit of celebrity fluff.

It wasn't. It was funny and serious and clever and very well written and Caitlin is very, very likable and actually quite wise.

I finished the book very much wishing that Caitlin and her family (all of them, not just the husband and children but her parents and siblings and the stupid new dog as well) would move onto our street and be my friends.

I really hope she writes something else (bookwise) soon.

 

[Sarahkka]

Going to look up the India Knight book for sure - thanks!

 

[Every Rose]

Another Scandinavian crime book, the first I have read by this author, although it is not the first in the series featuring Erica Falck and Patrik Hedstrom, a husband and wife team who are a police detective and a crime writer respectively.

The plot focused on the discovery of some diaries, a child's blood spattered vest and a Nazi war medal in the possessions of Erica's mother after her death.

Erica is supposed to be writing a new novel after a year of maternity leave but cannot let the mystery go. She feels the items are the key to help her finally understand her cold and remote mother.

However when the people she turns to in an attempt to find out more are murdered one by one her husband Patrik and his colleagues are drawn into the mystery too.

I worked out most of the plot and the identity of the killer and there were some loose ends, but I still enjoyed the book. It was a quick read and the characters were likable.

I would read more by the author if I happen across a book.

 

[Every Rose]

Another Scandinavian crime series, this one featuring Hanne Wilhelmsen, and again it's the first one I have read by this author and it's out of series order.

Hanne is on her way to Bergen when the train she is travelling on crashes into concrete at the mouth of a tunnel. Severe weather holds off any rescue attempt but the survivers are lucky, a hotel is nearby and there are several doctors on the train to help with any injuries. Amazingly, only the driver is killed in the crash.

However on their first night at the hotel the passengers discover that they may not be as lucky as they first thought. A murder is committed and is followed by a second. Some of the passengers succome to their injuries and existing health problems. Rumours of a mysteries additional carriage being added to the train, armed guards and the locked top floor of the hotel cause alarm and mistrust amongst the survivers.

And Hanne is reluctantly called upon to help solve the mystery and stop the murderer before he can strike again.

I liked this one very much, I did guess a bit of the plot so one surprise revelation wasn't a surprise, but I liked the characters and the writing style and I will be reading more by the author.

 

[Every Rose]

This one seemed really weird when I started reading it and it took me a while to work out why. The chapters aren't in her usual style of being told in the voice of one character or another.

The story is of Cassie, found in a graveyard by new LAPD recruit Will, who is half American Indian and half white and struggling to fit in with either culture.

Cassie is suffering from amnesia and it takes a report in the press for her husband to come forward. Everybody is stunned when the man who comes to claim her turns out to be Alex Rivers, America's most famous movie star at the time.

Cassie cannot remember her life with Alex but is stunned to find a world of expensive clothes, stunning mansion houses and movie premiers.

But her life with Alex was not quite the way he has described it to her. As her memory slowly returns she realises this dream life may well have been a living nightmare and Will is the only person she can turn to and trust to believe her story.

I didn't like this one. The obligatory What Would You Do tag line seems obvious in this one, there was no big legal drama and even the moral one didn't seem to be at the fore of the story.

Will wasn't really made the most of in the story and neither were his family. And the fact that Cassie, short for Cassandra, spent half the book worrying about not being believed made her name very irritating to me. Yes her name is Cassandra and nobody will believe her, very clever. It got on my nerves, especially when the author didn't trust her readers to spot that themselves and so couldn't resist pointing it out to us.

 

[Every Rose]

Collection of short stories inspired by the Twelve Days of Christmas song.

Meh. There were a couple of good stories but I didn't really enjoy this at all.

 

[Every Rose]

Very, very creepy. Loved every word.

When an old woman dies alone in a remote house, her young solicitor is sent to take stock of her possessions.

However the house is rumoured to be haunted by the woman in black, a woman the young man has seen at his clients funeral, and death comes to those who see her, in one way or another.

 

[Every Rose]

From the recent film. Complete rubbish.

When ER doctor Juliet leaves her novelist husband Jack she struggles to find an affordable new home but then stumbles across the perfect apartment. But her happiness soon turns to fear when mysterious goings on take a sinister and deadly turn.

This should have been good, but it was so boring. All of it was predictable, the characters were dull and one dimensional, I didn't care about any of them and I could have told you the end almost from the very beginning.

This was the "it'll do" book in a 3 for 2 offer when I couldn't find anything more suitable.

 

[Every Rose]

Not as good as it could have been.

I liked the idea. Tamara Goodwin is forced to leave her priviledged life in Dublin and move to the countryside to live with relatives. She befriends the man driving the mobile library and discovers a padlocked book on the shelves. When she is finally able to open it she finds nothing but empty pages, which are mysteriously filled overnight, in her handwritting, describing events that haven't happened to her yet. When she realises the diary can predict a possible version of tomorrow, which she then has the power to change as it happens, her life changes in a way that she never expected.

It could have been so much better than it was. Obviously when you choose a book about a psychic, self-writing diary you have to suspend belief a little bit but as it turned out that wasn't the hardest thing to believe in about the book. A whole weird cycle of events, some taking place now, some having happened in the past, are quite hard to believe in some places.

This book is the best I have read by the author (I had two given as gifts at the same time, PS I Love You was given away unfinished and Where Rainbows End had a big flaw in the construction that still annoys me today) but I wouldn't recommend anybody rushing out to read it.

I gave this book: 1 1/2 stars

 

[Every Rose]

...and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry by Leanne Shapton

Had to interupt some other reading to reread this book, following a discussion about it on another website where I recommended it and someone else said "Oh no, I hated that book!"

Hated it!? Not just didn't like it, or didn't get it, or thought it was alright but a bit over-hyped. They hated it!

I had to reread it and love it all over again just to make up for the injustice of that comment.