Review of 'In the Darkness: That's Where I'll Know You'

I'm a big fan of books that are, to put it lightly, filled with a bit of 'mindfuckery'. What's the point in reading something that won't make you question your existence, or the universe? Smitherd does this to the extreme in In the Darkness, with his creation of a myriad of universes and the mind-boggling ability to hop between them. 

I absolutely loved this book. I believe originally it was published in three separate parts, but since then it has been amalgamated into one long piece, which is what I've been reading. This book was thrilling, terrifying and had a good dose of romance thrown in, which is pretty much exactly the combination I've been loving in 2016.

Synopsis

When Charlie wakes up one morning in someone else's head, he is absolutely petrified and utterly clueless as to what is going on. As if this wasn't bad enough, where he is is completely dark, squishy and ... he's naked. But, he can see out of the eyes of the person's head he is in. This person? Minnie Cooper. Yep, you heard right - she's spent years convincing people that it is her real name, and yes, her parents did think they were funny giving her it.

Soon Charlie has to let Minnie know that he's residing in her head. After the initial shock wears off, he sets out to prove to her that he does exist as an entity outside her head. This leads the pair into a trail of confusion, as Charlie and Minnie meet another Charlie Wilkes who looks like him and talks like him, but isn't him. Realising that something far bigger than they originally thought is going on, Charlie and Minnie bond over their investigation into what exactly is happening to the pair of them.

Have you read it? What did you think?

Steph x

Review of "Before I Go To Sleep" by SJ Watson

Want to know what the scariest book I've ever read is? This one. It even overrides my Goosebumps days as a kid when I would read with one eye half open as nightmarish terrors coursed through my body via the power of words. The basic premise of the story is that the main protagonist, Christine Lucas forgets everything that has happened to her during a day when she goes to sleep. When she wakes up in the morning she usually considers herself to be in her early twenties, but can be younger, even a child. 

I cannot imagine anything more terrifying than waking up thinking I'm the age I am now only to discover that I'm actually 40, half my life has gone by and I have nothing to show for it: no kids, no career, no social life. Every day is filled with the knowledge that tomorrow will consist of the exact same monotony, of not really knowing who she is anymore, or even if she can say she 'is' anything; what is life if it's simply survival?

Christine just wants to get her life back, and that's exactly what Dr Nash offers her. He's been treating her in secret for a few weeks, and has encouraged her to start writing a diary to keep track of her memories, and hopefully to start helping her be able to get them back. But, he's been doing it in secret - Christine's husband Ben has no idea. Whilst Ben is out at work Dr Nash calls Christine to remind her where she has hidden the diary and when/if they have an appointment for that day. 

Christine soon begins to amass memories, and reading the diary every day brings her great sorrow and great joy. The one baffling thing? She's scrawled Don't Trust Ben in the front of it, yet he's the one who stands by her every day and deals with the fact that she simply cannot remember him, where she is or even who she is.

Have you read it? What did you think?

Steph x

Review of 'The Girl on the Train' by Paula Hawkins

I think we're getting to a stage with this book where it's harder to find someone who hasn't read The Girl on the Train than who has. It was heralded as THE thriller to read in 2015, so I had high expectations. Naturally these were so high that I was a little disappointed in the end - I was told to expect to be scared and honestly thought the train would have more of an impact, but ANYWHO, it was a good book!

Rachel still takes the train to work every morning, despite not needing to. As she heads into London one particular street catches her eye, and the signalling problems on the line often mean that she ends up opposite Blenheim road. She loves to imagine Jess and Jason, a perfectly happy couple, staying their in marital bliss as she often sees them out, content on their porch sipping on a glass of wine. 

But suddenly Jess goes missing, and Rachel finds out that the couple are in fact called Megan and Scott Hipwell. Perhaps it's because she got so attached to the couple she saw everyday, perhaps it's because she's searching for meaning in her life, or perhaps it's because her ex-husband and his new Mrs live only 7 doors down, but whatever the reason Rachel feels a need within her to help find Megan. 

However, there's one issue: Megan's an alcoholic. She knows she was on Blenheim road the night that Megan went missing, but what she did there she has no idea. The police won't accept anything she says as being true when her memories start to get triggered and return because of her alcoholism. Megan feels as though she therefore only has one choice: go to Scott directly and tell him what she saw that day on the train and what she thinks happened on the Saturday night his life got turned upside down. What Rachel doesn't anticipate is just how much she gets caught up in this mystery, and how it will impact her entire life.

Have you read it? What did you think?

Steph x

Review of "The Lie" by C. L. Taylor

2015 has been a year of thrillers for me. Not typically a genre I go for, my eyes have been opened to the intensity and mystery they ensconce. This book seemed to have been on a couple of book bloggers' creepy Halloween books to read lists, so I thought it was worth a go. However, i have to say I was largely disappointed. Have you ever read a book where it's felt like the author almost made an amazing book and it's super frustrating because they hadn't quite achieved it?! This was one of those for me: I think it needed about another 100 pages or so to explain some backstory. There were half-explanations of all of the main characters' back stories, but not enough to make them interesting or explain their actions. This is not to say that the book was without merit however, it was dark and downright scary at points. So, if you want something that will make you question every bump in the night or weird coincidence, give this a shot!

Jane, or Emma as she used to be known, just wants a normal life, and to leave her past behind her. Settled down in a new relationship (which bears its own challenges) and working in her dream job at an animal rescue centre, she thinks she's finally nailed it. That is until someone sends something to her addressed to her old name, and a mysterious message stating "Daisy is not dead" appears on the website of the animal rehabilitation centre she works at. 

Five years before, Emma and her three best friends Leanne, Al and Daisy take the trip of a lifetime to Nepal to escape the woes of their mundane post-university lives. However, once they enter a retreat up in the Nepalese mountains things go a bit haywire. Things start getting weird up there: the girls are forced to turn against one another, encouraged to have sex with the men at the retreat no strings attached, and people start to go missing ... What will Emma do when the girl she thought would have her back forever, Daisy starts to change, and leave Emma behind? Is Emma imagining the subtle threat at Ekantra Yata, or is there something a lot more sinister going on than the brochure suggested?

Have you read it? What did you think?

Steph x

Review of "The Letter" by Kathryn Hughes

Domestic abuse is something that we're only just finding the right discourse to talk about. For too often "victim blaming" has been present here, by means of people suggesting that the victim somewhat brings it upon themselves because they stay with the perpetrator. However, in The Letter, Hughes shows the other side of this discussion: what do you do if the person you loved isn't who you thought they were, or want them to be? Tina, the protagonist of the story suffers greatly at the hands of her domineering husband, whose alcoholism sends him into fits of paranoid rage. What the reader begins to realise is that Tina isn't simply foolish for leaving him, but terrified too. When Tina and Rick marry he begins to hit her upon occasion, but convinces her that if she didn't provoke him it wouldn't happen. As well as this, he is so apologetic and seemingly filled with love after he does it that she believes in her hopes: that he's changed, and it won't happen again. I think this is an incredibly important text for anyone to read if they've ever considered why the victim of an abuser would stay in a relationship filled with pain.

Tina just wants Rick to love her like he did before they were married. But since their marriage night he's beaten her so badly that she's ended up in hospital. She wants to escape, but how can she? She needs the man she loves, especially is she's right, and there's a little one along the way. Surely he'll become the loving man he once was now, right?

Desperate to think about something else and needing an escape from everything, Tina is intrigued when she finds a letter in the jacket a man donated to the charity shop she works from. It's from a man named Billy, dedicated to his lover Chrissie, apologising for the mistakes he's made and swearing that he will do right for her. The only problem is it has no postmark: the letter was never sent. Tina feels the need to reunite the letter with its rightful owner. This search takes Tina to places she'd never imagined, and might just have the potential to turn her life upside down ....

Have you read it? What did you think?

Steph x

Review of "How I Lost You"

If you were going to pick up just one thriller in 2015, this is definitely the one I would recommend. I absolutely whizzed through it, and ended up puzzling through my opinions on Susan's guilt whilst I was in the shower, at work, basically any time that I couldn't be scouring the book for new information. I'm not going to lie, I love a good ol' bit of conspiracy theorising. So, when this book combined that with some mystery, speculation and a whole tonne of grief, I was enthralled. Imagine being told that you murdered your 12 week old baby, but not being able to remember anything about that day; never knowing whether you did this or not, never knowing whether you are indeed insane, or not. 

Susan Webster, now Emma Clarke, has been released back into the "normal" world after four years in a mental institution after she killed her only child. Having moving to a new town, and set herself up with a new identity, Emma is horrified to receive post at her new home addressed to her old name. Who knows she's moved here? Is she in danger? Things take a turn for the worse when she opens it up, revealing a photograph of a four year old boy, and on the back is written the name she can't bear to see: Dylan. Is her son alive, or is this all some kind of cruel prank?

Desperate to get to the bottom of things, Emma calls on the aid of her best friend Cassie and journalist Nick Whiteley. But as they search deeper into the past, someone gets more and more determined to terrify them away. Multiple break ins, and evidence of stalking puts Emma entirely on edge, especially when it appears that Dylan wasn't the only person murdered, and her (ex)husband may have the answers ...

Have you read it? What did you think?

Steph x

Review of I Am Pilgrim

I'm not going to lie, I'm a bit of a massive fan of cop dramas, and the odd conspiracy theory or two. So, I ended up loving every second of I Am Pilgrim. Set in the world of super spy-dom, and linked to 9/11, this book had masses of action and mind numbing plot twists to hand out. Have you ever wondered what the survivors of the horrific terror attack on the World Trade Centre saw in that day: was it a tragedy? Or an opportunity?

Whatever you wish to call pilgrim, he's one of America's finest intelligence agents. Despite retiring, when the White House realises that country may be under threat, he's the third person in the entire world to be informed of a potential attack which could destroy the planet as we know it. As you travel through the world of an intelligence agent with Pilgrim you come to realise that nothing is a coincidence, and everything you've been told about international security is probably a lie. 

When Pilgrim gets called in to examine a murder in New York which follows an example in his own book (written under an alias of course), he ends up on a whirlwind of a case which sees him travel all over Europe. 

Is keeping on top of this and trying to uncover who exactly is behind the potential outbreak of industrial grade smallpox (and find the perp!) too much for the world's best intelligence agent to handle?

Have you read it? What did you think?

Steph x

Review of "I Let You Go"

(Image taken from Amazon)

After falling a little in lvoe with Gillian Flynn's writing, I decided that perhaps thrillers are the way forward in terms of my reading bucket list for this summer. I'm usually all about the chick flicks: whilst doing my degree I wanted something easy to flick through whilst studying the likes of Stein, Shakespeare and other tricky reads. This book was really intriguing, and led me through the process of realising that you never know someone as well as you think you do. So, if you want your beliefs challenged and judgement parameters widened, pick up this beauty.

What do you do when your world falls apart? A hit and run on a dark rainy night leaves a mother of a five year old boy childless. Despite DI Stevens' and Kate's best efforts, the killer remains at large, Upset with the lack of progress in the case, the child's mother leaves town in an attempt to move on from the past.

Arriving in Penfach, Wales, Jennifer seeks to move away from her traumatic old life. Packing up her sculptor ways, she begins a love affair with photography. But what happens when your past catches up with you? And what if the new life you have created cannot merge with the old?

Ever forcing your opinions awry, this mystery keeps you guessing, forcing you to realise that things are never as they seem on the surface.

Have you read it? What did you think?

Steph x

Review of "Dark Places"

If you've read my review of Gone Girl (here), you will know tat I've fallen a little bit in love with Gillian Flynn's writing, As soon as I finished Gone Girl I immediately downloaded this to my kindle. Although in the end I didn't like it quite as much as Gone Girl, I found the entire plot utterly alluring. I needed to know what happened that night, and why Libby survived the massacre which saw the end of the rest of her family. This was a book that I managed to whip through in a couple of days, and ended up making my boyfriend a tad irate with me on our holiday because I was simply so engrossed in it that I didn't want to do anything else! Finally, after I read it, I discovered that the film is currently in the process of being made, and so I cannot wait for that to come out!

Libby Day needs money, and fast, Having lived off of her survivor's fund since that night when she was seven, 30-something year-old Libby needs a new income. And when she's contacted by a member of a "Kill Club" who's offering her money in return for information about her family and mementos from them that she's kept, she sees a way out of her troubles.

On the night in question, Libby's mother and two sisters were brutally murdered, and her brother Ben has been in jail ever since for the crime. Libby's declaration of his guilt put him there. But when she meets the Day fanatics at the Kill Club, she realises that not everybody thinks that Ben is guilty, and the very people she's relying upon to secure her income want er to question everything she's ever believed in ...

Have you read it? What did you think?

Steph x

Review of "The Shock of the Fall"

This suspense novella from Nathan Filer ensures that you're kept at arm's length from the protagonist Matthew. At least, Matthew is what the protagonist calls himself. When Matthew's older brother Simon dies in his presence - something that causes a whole host of psychical traumas for young Matthew - Matthew blames himself. At nineteen he commences writing his story for us, something which is at times more confused than others, depending on his mental stability. This was a truly touching story about the implications of mental illness, specifically schizophrenia, on both an individual and the people surrounding him.

Matt just wants to have his brother back: pretty reasonable request, right? But why does everyone try to control his contact with him, and why will no one accept that he killed him? Simon is a happy, loving young boy, and his death leaves a gaping hole in the family life of Matthew and his parents. When Matthew begins to deteriorate, it is his Nanny Noo whom he confides in, and who is the only one he will see. The real question is: how do you move past the death of a sibling? Can you ever? And what if your reality still includes spending time with them?

Have you read it? What did you think?

Steph x

Review of "Gone Girl"

Let's face it, I'm a big fan of any book that keeps me guessing, forcing me to question my initial value judgements of characters. To say that this book did is a massive understatement. I've heard so much hype about it from other book bloggers, and it definitely lived up to the rumours about just how good it is! Just one hint: don't let anyone spoiler this for you because you really don't want to miss out on this thriller. Speaking of which, sorry for the minor spoiler above, but hey I've gotta give something away about it, right?!

Amy and Nick are supposed to be celebrating their 5th wedding anniversary, but when he returns home to spend time with her he finds her gone, and the house in a state of disrepair. Immediately calling the police, he is terrified about what could have happened to her, despite the rocky state of their marriage. 

Every year on their wedding anniversary, Amy leaves a series of clues for a treasure hunt based on inside jokes between her and Nick, Every year however, Nick's inability to listen to her means that he can't complete all of the clues, and never reaches the end of the hunt of his own accord. 

But what if this year's clues hold the answer to Amy's mysterious disappearance? Has she been taken? Or is there something far more sinister going on ...

Have you read it? What did you think?

Steph x

"You Think You Know Me"* Review

It feels like forever (presumably because it has been!) since I've done a review. The last few weeks have been massively hectic - essay writing, seemingly endless amounts of family Christmas dos and illness meant that reading got put on the back burner. But, I'm back, and hopefully with more frequency. I was lucky enough to be sent You Think You Know Me by Choc Lit and I have to say it lived up to expectations! Suspense-filled, with a little bit of Bond-esque drama, you never knew who to trust .... Believe me, the quote above was how I felt for the majority of the novel.

Anna, a freelance journalist, moves to London in the hope of securing more work. Her university contacts triumph and she ends up securing an interview with Zachariah Shakespeare, an artist whose work is being shown at Seb Rice's (an old uni friend) gallery. However, when she attends a gallery showing she is watched by a mysterious man who provides a false name and appears to take a photo of her. She soon has to question everything: who is this man, and why is she so attracted to him? Why is her old friend Seb so interested in becoming close? And, most importantly, who can she really trust?

I really really cannot say very much about this one without providing a whole host of spoilers, and I want all of you lovelies to enjoy the book! But, I will say that if you have trust issues, beware: this novel will make you evaluate and overevaluate every impression of anyone you ever meet. However, it is a fab book; well-written, intense and hey, if good literature doesn't make you evaluate your life in a new light what does it do?

Have you read it? What did you think? 

Steph

P.S. Check out my 100 follower giveaway here

Book-A-Day Catch Up | Days 1-8

(picture taken from google)

As it's December, and I really like getting nostalgic over my books as Christmas comes along, I'm going to be blogging a bit about my book-a-day choices. Obviously I'm a tad behind, but as I;m sure you can tell from my absence, I've been a little busy over the past week (aka I haven't really read anything, so don't have a great deal to tell you guys about!). So, until Christmas I'm going to do my best to keep up with this everyday, as well as posting reviews as often as possible!

Day 1: Iconic First Line

How could I not pick this?! Dickens is definitely up there in my top faves (if you haven't already noticed from my blog in general, you'll probably get to grips with the fact that I'm quite a fan of 19th C fiction in this post!)

Day 2: Last Read

It's my most recent review! Check it out here. This is my second time reading it, and although it's not one of my favourites, it's definitely a valuable read.

Day 3: On my Christmas List

Social media has gone crazy about this and I really feel like I'm missing out not having it .... maybe if I keep my fingers crossed (or get the book lover's dream of a Christmas gift - a Waterstones voucher!)

Day 4: For Chilly Nights

So cliche, I know, but hey - I'm an English Lit student - I'm allowed to love it. I've probably read this four .... maybe five times now and it probably gets into my top ten all time favourites. The setting really makes it perfect for a winter read in my opinion - I definitely feel thankful for central heating when reading it!

Day 5: Quintessentially British

Admittedly, my first thought when I saw this day was "Sherlock Holmes". However, I haven't actually read any, and don't even own any Conan Doyle, so Hardy was my next choice. He's effectively my favourite author - if anyone's interested in male 19th Century feminism I'd suggest going for Hardy. He actually makes an effort to create female characters that have their own personality (something, much to the chagrin of some of my fellow lit students, that I find certain female authors *cough* Austen fail to do *cough* Fanny Price)

Day 6: Something Everyone Should Read

(picture taken from google)

Sadly, I no longer have my copy of this book, BUT that does not mean it is not an incredibly valuable work of fiction. This holds so many questions for a modern audience: should all women have to be mothers? Can someone be born evil? Is a mother responsible for her child's actions? It also has the most surprising twist I've ever found in a book. Check out my post on it here

Day 7: Childhood Favourite

I was a bit manic on Enid Blyton as a kid - still own at least fifty of her works! This was my absolute favourite as a child - it was one of the first books I ever remember reading. and I must've read it dozens of times. It even made me want to own a farm when I was younger (a long forgotten dream). 

Day 8: It's a Mystery!

Despite my love for TV cop dramas like Castle and Hawaii Five-0, I'm really not much of a mystery fan at all. This is probably the only definitive mystery novel I've read in a number of years, if ever. It was short and punchy, and that was effectively why I enjoyed it.

What are some of your responses to the days?

Steph