Jo's Book Challenge 2011

[Jo]

I'm going to set this low at 20 but will be lucky if I meet that

 

[Jo]

I really enjoyed this book and if you have school age children even better

the blurb is
Meet Caroline Gray: divorcee and newly-single mother. Firmly closing the door on her acrimonious divorce, Caroline and son Ben have moved to the trendy town of Frencham where they join Caroline’s long-time best friends, Heather and Eva. Settling into their new life is easy, but nothing has prepared Caroline for the demands of motherhood at The Sycamore, the school the trio's beloved offspring attend. Forget classroom bullies, forget trips to the head's office, this is full-scale adult playground politics. This is battle with the mothers who won't take no for an answer -- the Playground Mafia.

Amidst the four-wheel drives, Ben's complicated afterschool play-date schedule and her friends' perilous extra-marital affairs, Caroline tries to keep a low and very single profile. But it's not long before she too finds herself under the mafia's scandal-radar, and her life takes an unexpected turn ...

 

[Jo]

I found this book funny although quite explicit at some points, doesn't bother me but could some people.

I would say if you enjoy Chris Manby books you will like this, it is an easy read.

BLURB
Kit Kincade, American, with diamond-studded ears and friends in low places, believes women are little more than a life support system to an ovary. Shelly Green, pinstripe-underpanted, cultured, classical guitarist, thinks optimism is an eye disease and hates all men. The perfect pair? Yes, according to a 'Desperate and Dateless' reality TV competition. A computer has matched them - physically and emotionally - with huge financial rewards if they can survive their five-star honeymoon on a paradise island. Kit and Shelly meet the day they are to be married...and it's hate at first sight Love may be blind, but marriage is a real eye opener

 

[Every Rose]

I found this book funny although quite explicit at some points, doesn't bother me but could some people.

I would say if you enjoy Chris Manby books you will like this, it is an easy read.

BLURB
Kit Kincade, American, with diamond-studded ears and friends in low places, believes women are little more than a life support system to an ovary. Shelly Green, pinstripe-underpanted, cultured, classical guitarist, thinks optimism is an eye disease and hates all men. The perfect pair? Yes, according to a 'Desperate and Dateless' reality TV competition. A computer has matched them - physically and emotionally - with huge financial rewards if they can survive their five-star honeymoon on a paradise island. Kit and Shelly meet the day they are to be married...and it's hate at first sight Love may be blind, but marriage is a real eye opener

This one sounds like it might be really funny.

 

[Jo]

This is very much in the same Vein as Martina Cole, even the front cover is a look-a-like
https://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRJaZ-EqJ45PNcv0XcX7v-SC9EhQUJw4R5INB-QZciEC1RbG6aVUEKMIRU

This is the first of a trilogy and I really enjoyed it, it was one of them where you think "oh I'll just read to the next chapter" then you want to read the next

Blurb from JK website

Adultery, murder and dangerous love collide in Jessie Keane's gritty debut thriller set in the London's East End. Perfect for fans of Martina Cole and Lynda La Plante. For longer than she cares to remember Annie Bailey has lived in the shadow of her older sister Ruthie. Now Ruthie has her hands on Max Carter, the much feared head of the Carter family and a top class villain. Seducing Max wasn't a problem, but the guilt, shame and anger of rejection afterwards was. Thrown onto the streets Annie finds herself living with Celia, a wayward aunt with a shocking secret. As the months pass Annie's resourceful nature sees her mature and carve out a life for herself, albeit not legal. But if you play with fire, you can expect to get burned and her lavish new lifestyle and connections may be about to come crashing down around her. Annie has unwittingly placed herself between two rival gangs and upset too many people, and these kind of people don't forget. But as everyone knows, Annie Bailey is no ordinary woman

 

[Jo]

https://cache0.bookdepository.co.uk/assets/images/book/medium/9780/0073/9780007335732.jpg
This is the 2nd in the trilogy about Annie Bailey.

She is living happily ever after with Max when her world is turned upside down. There are a couple of twists in this book, which is fine by me
I enjoyed this book as much as the first.

Official Blurb
In Dirty Game, Annie Bailey was an East End Madam. In Black Widow she's queen of the gangs and trying to save her daughter's life! Annie Bailey had done it all; Madam, mistress and Gangster's moll. Now she's Annie Carter, and she taking over the East End. Annie knew that it wouldn't last. Everything was going so well; she was living in Majorca, had Max Carter - the head of the Carter firm by her side, and had given him a beautiful daughter, Layla. But if there was one thing life had taught her, it was that everything could change in the blink of an eye. One minute she's lying by the pool, the next she's out cold. When she comes round Max and Layla are gone. It's not long before she gets the demands. They want money or she'll be getting her little girl back in pieces! There's only one thing Annie can do, she heads back to the East End of London and gathers the Carter firm together. Someone has snatched her husband and child. Now there's a score to settle, and it's being settled Annie Carter style!
https://www.babyandbump.com/Downloads/Black_Widow_preview.pdf

 

[Jo]

https://cache0.bookdepository.co.uk/assets/images/book/medium/9780/0072/9780007274000.jpg

Last in the trilogy, I'm a creature of habit aren't i??
Again I enjoyed this and again there are some twists you don't expect.

I think they way I read them one after the other is the best way as you remember characters fromm earlier books.

Although saying that she manages to fit in quick recaps with out too much trouble.

Blurb
She was a madam in a brothel, then a gangster's moll. Now Annie Carter owns the East End of London, and God help anybody that crosses her.! It's 1970 and there's a killer on the loose in London. When gang boss Annie Carter gets a call, suddenly it's personal. A close friend of hers is the latest victim, and another is in the frame for the murder. With the hated Delaney gang still causing trouble, and NY mob boss Don Constantine Barolli's family making no secret of the fact that they hate her, she senses a feud blowing up in all their faces. To save her old friend, Annie has to find out who's been targeting the girls. Before long she's diving head-first into the seedy underbelly of the streets. How long before the killer strikes again? And who will the next victim be?

 

[Jo]

Ok I know this is a trilogy but I have just found out that Annie Baily is back on 21st July
I can't wait to read it.

I am currently reading another of her books, surprise surprise

 

[Jo]

This quote is what Every Rose wrote in her book challenge and I have to say I agree with every word, I was chilled in parts by this book, in fact at one point early on I actually wondered if it was a true life book.
I spent a couple of late nights reading this, taking myself to bed at 9

This book will not be for everyone, it has abuse of many sorts, the terrible death of a child through neglect and also features a cot death, stillbirth and miscarriages.

This book has me almost speechless with shock but was so gripping that I read it in one sitting. Just when you think it cannot possibly get any more shocking or distressing it somehow does.

Brendan and Sherilyn have everything but all they want is each other. By the time they meet at work they have already abandoned their unsatisfactory families and carved out high-flying careers but their meeting starts an obsessive love. All they want and need is each other, to the point that when they have their daughter Samantha they resent her intrusion into their lives and a spiral of abuse and neglect ends in the telling of this shocking, distressing story by those who played their part in it. From a concerned neighbour to a harrassed social worker, a police officer driven to breaking point and the disbelieving families of Sherilyn and Brendon we get every point of view, including theirs.

Everyone but Samantha has a say in this story, perhaps because she had no voice herself throughout her life.

It's rare to find this sort of abominable coldness in a character and yet here it is in two. With no perception of what they have done, no acceptance that they have abused and killed their own child and at one point this terrible proud happiness when the policeman's discovery of her body is described in court (their reaction is noted with shock by the court usher) they truly are two of the most cold, unfeeling and quietly psychopathic people ever to appear in a book I have read. They are frightening, and yet at the end of the book Brendan has this one moment of humanity that makes you wonder why he can empathise with a strangers child but not his own.

This book is not for the faint-hearted and it is not just the death of Samantha that some readers might find distressing. Sherilyn's mother is mentally fragile following the loss of four other children and those losses and her feelings about them are described.

I don't think anyone can read this book and not end it feeling shaken and upset but I would still recommend it as being the first book by an author with amazing insight and talent. It's well written and well thought out, designed to make everyone think that this could happen behind the closed doors in their street and makes the reader wonder how much responsibility they might bear if it did. This book took hold of me from the minute I started it and did not let me go even after I finished it. It's going to be on my mind for a long time and although I can't say I 'enjoyed' it with it being such a terrible subject, enjoyment isn't the only criteria for great book and that's what this was. A great book that shook me out of my comfortable reading habits and kept me gripped right until the end.

 

[Jo]

BLURB
Life is good for Gracie Doyle – running her Manchester casino keeps her busy. Until the police turn up at her door one day and her world is turned upside down. She is given news that her two estranged brothers have been viciously attacked. George is in hospital on a ventilator and, worryingly, Harry is missing.
Gracie has no option but to leave the good life and dip her toe into the murky waters of her East End past. She leaves for London in an attempt to avenge her brothers – and in doing so she uncovers some unsavoury secrets about the lifestyle they’ve been leading. Their little games have got them into big trouble with the wrong people…and Gracie must keep her wits about her and try and find Harry, or it could prove fatal…


I wasn't as impressed with this book as I was the trilogy, it was well written and descriptive but to me it just felt there was something missing, it was an easy read though

 

[Every Rose]

You read it!

My friend bought it after I read it and recommended it the first time and she said she had been ignoring it because she thought it was a true life book too.

But she said afterwards that it was fantastically written even though it could never be described as enjoyable. She says every so often she just gets a picture of Samantha in her head and winces, but she still recommends it a lot.

I'm glad you 'liked' it, I always worry when I recommend something and people read it that they will wonder what I was going on about because they hated it.

 

[Jo]

I really did "like" it, I don't know the right word to use, I was just like wow, this can and does happen, it was easy to get in to as in you are right there and as your friend said I winced in parts too.

The dads part, I knew what was coming but it still got to me IYKWIM.

Yeah it's a funny one, not haha you know what I mean and I do think it will stick with me for a while.

Thank you for recommending it, i'll get it back ASAP x