Review of 'The Hunting Party' by Lucy Foley

Crime thrillers are one of my go-to comfort books. They always have a clear beginning, middle and end (as long as they're written well), and almost all of the time everything is wrapped up neatly at the end. They're always a great way for me to get back into reading if I'm ever having a bit of a slump. I read this book back in December (I promise, I *really* am trying to catch up on reviews), and it was a perfect Wintery read for cold evenings. 

The Hunting Party is a thriller set in the Scottish Highlands around the New Year. A group of old school friends are meeting up to see in midnight together, but everything goes very wrong. The book is written in two timelines: 'now', which is once someone has been murdered, and 'then', which is the days leading up to it.

Told from the perspectives of the different friends, as the book progresses you don't know who has been killed, or who did it. There's the moody ex-con groundskeeper, the sleep-deprived new parents, the rich city boy, the couple that are oh-so in love, and all the other members of the group that suspicion lies upon.

This was one of the best thrillers I read last year. I had no idea who had even been killed until getting an inkling a few pages before, let alone who had done it. This dual mystery is one that I can't remember reading in another book, or at least can't remember it having been done this well. The book was incredibly atmospheric - it really felt like I was up in the freezing cold highlands away from civilisation and I would recommend reading it in winter. I was totally gripped and loved finding out more about each character from the viewpoints of other characters in the book. It felt almost like a modern day book version of Cluedo!

I gave this five stars and would recommend this for fans of Shari Lapena's books.

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Review of 'So Lucky' by Dawn O'Porter

Every so often I come across a book that's truly refreshing, and this is one of them. I've not read The Cows, though I've heard really great things, so I came into this without any awareness of Dawn O'Porter's writing style, or any expectation really. 

So Lucky was a full on breath of fresh air from the perspective of three women. Beth is a new mum whose husband doesn't seem to have any lust for her anymore. Lauren's living the perfect instagram life, but things aren't so happy behind the captions. Ruby's struggling to connect with her daughter because of body image problems, and a history of disconnection with her own mother. The three have lives that on the surface are great: Beth's got a beautiful baby, Lauren's bringing in wads of cash with her instagram feed, and Ruby's got the career of her dreams. However, behind all of these facades, the women aren't as lucky as things appear.

The book really delves into the life of women in the 21st century and covers a whole lot of taboo subjects for us. At the centre of the novel are these women's bodies, and it really reflects that this is true for all of us - we need our bodies, and we've been taught to obsess over them without really being taught to understand or love them. The book talks about female sexual desire, discharge, breastfeeding, masturbation, body hair, post partum life and bodies, and mental health issues. 

It was really a great one for me in reminding you that all women feel these things and have issues that we're made to feel ashamed of, but maybe if we were more honest with one another this wouldn't be so distanced. I thoroughly enjoyed this and gave it 5 stars.

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Review of 'Two Can Keep A Secret' by Karen M. McManus

I am a BIG Karen McManus fan - she's becoming one of my fave YA authors to read as an adult, and I'm so excited to read One of Us in Next and Cousins when it is released. She's really good at writing realistic teens in a modern setting, and I love the murder mystery aspect of both this and One of Us is Lying. She's absolutely someone whose books I want to read as soon as they're released (and absolutely as always never seem to *quite* get around to). 

Set in Echo Ridge, a small town in America, twins Ellery and Ezra are adjusting to life with their grandma. After their mum ended up in rehab, they're determined to make the most of a new life in a new town. However, once they're there they start to find out more about their missing aunt and the girl that now goes missing from their school. With a passion for true crime, Ellery's determined to uncover the secrets this quite town holds.

I really enjoyed this. There were a whole host of small mysteries slotted into a fairly short book (320-ish pages): what was their mum like as a teen? What happened to their missing aunt? Who killed the girl five years ago? And what's happening now? It was really well written, and kept me completely hooked from start to finish. 

McManus writes genuinely good YA crime fiction, and if you're fans of Sarah Dessen's books, or liked a bit of Nancy Drew back in the day, I'd really recommend her.

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Review of 'Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances' by Neil Gaiman

I have a confession to make: I am now someone who watches things and then goes about reading the book. Pretty monstrous, I know. I watched the TV series of Good Omens last year and absolutely adored it (I need a series 2 asap), and then pretty much immediately picked this off my shelf to read. I'm not the biggest fan of short stories so at some point I'm hoping to get my hands on a full length novel of his (what would you recommend??), but I enjoyed this nonetheless.

This is a collection of creepy, supernatural short stories interspersed with equally creepy poems. From retellings of fairy tales made scary to tales exposing our deepest fears, this really was a stellar volume of short stories. The poems were well thought out, and a very welcome break from stories that could become a little tiring - I find with short story books that if each story is written in a similar way it becomes quite a drag.

One of my favourite stories was 'A Calendar of Tales', which had a story for each month of the year based around 12 tweets that Gaiman had been sent. It really was a clever read full of fantasy and really vivid stories. The only thing I can compare it to is it being like a more grown up version of the Goosebumps books I read as a kid.  Which, as a sidenote, were one of the most memorable and terrifying things I read, and I'd love to see if they lived up to my memory of them!

This is the best short story collection I've ever read before, and really makes me want to read his other books. I gave this 4 stars.

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Review of 'The Girl in the Ice' by Robert Bryndza

As hard as I try to stray into more high brow fiction, or push myself out of my comfort zone I always come back over and over again to thrillers. They're quick reads, easy to get through and something that really help to motivate me to read when I'm in a little bit of a rut because I just NEED to know what happens.

Erika Foster is *pinches* this close to being kicked off the force due to her trauma around her partner's death and the way it has affected her work (nice, huh?). Solving the murder of the rich socialite girl who was pushed into a lake in Erika's area could be the key to getting everything back on track. However, when Erika discovers links between the victim and other attacks on prostitutes nearby everything turns nasty. The victim's rich, powerful family are determined to use their influence to keep the media posting positive things about their daughter and to avoid scrutiny against them that they feel ought to be placed elsewhere. 

As Erika gets closer to discovering the killer, the killer is getting closer to making her one of his next victims. 

This was a really intense once you got a good chunk of the way into the book as it had a bit of a slow start. However, once the pace picked up I did really enjoy it. My main gripe was that although I didn't guess exactly who the killer was, it wasn't a hard reach. I would have much rather the story linked up more with her past as the book hinted at throughout. There was a bit of the standard 'female detective underestimated and gaslit by her male colleagues gets more determined than ever to sort out her case' trope running the whole way through, but to be honest it's not my least favourite crime thriller trope to read.

If you enjoyed watching The Capture last year then I think you'd really enjoy this book! I gave this 4 stars.

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Review of 'An American Marriage' by Tayari Jones

I really struggle to want to read books that have been hyped up - the expectation of them being great books is there and so the risk of being disappointed in a book sky rockets. Anyhow, I bit the bullet with An American Marriage and ended up really loving it. I wasn't sure what to expect in terms of plot from the book, but I was totally hooked. Before I get into the review properly I just want to put a big trigger warning out there that the book does discuss rape and a rape trial.

Roy and Celeste are newlyweds living in the south Unites States. Right at the start of married life, Roy is accused of raping a woman at a hotel. Celeste know's he's innocent, but he ends up in prison for it. Pushing their relationship to its limits, over his 12 years in prison they mostly communicate in letters. Roy is struggling being incarcerated and feeling the injustice of a justice system so heavily prejudiced against people of colour like himself. Celeste on the other hand is struggling to navigate a 'normal' life on the outside in which she's a newlywed with no husband.

This really was a heartbreaking story for me, and yet one that was so realistic. By splitting the narrative to cover both Celeste's life and Roy's, you understand the pain they both feel, but also their frustration and even anger at the other person. It's a story about loyalty, and how far that has to be stretched, as well as a story about love and loss and justice. This whole idea that your world can get pulled out from under your feet for something you didn't do is terrifying, and the book is really great at showing how scary life can be as a minority in the US where the justice scales are already opposed to you.

I loved this book. Usually I find that I don't enjoy love stories that don't follow a traditional linear path, however the plot for this was so well written and so realistic that I really enjoyed it. The normal narrative in the book is broken up by the letter writing between the pair which made everything feel a little more poignant for me. I would really recommend this and gave it five stars.

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Review of 'Love and Other Gods' by Michael Nangla

Every so often I feel really glad that I studied Philosophy as part of one of my A-levels because there are so many references to it in different things. I mean, not that I remember all of it, but there's some basic understanding there. Reading Love and Other Gods made me glad for this because, even though I found it a little tricky to get to grips with, I had some understanding of what the novel was about because of this background.

Love and Other Gods is a story about mental illness and growing up through it. Written in a sort of autobiographical style, it starts with the author struggling to get to grips with his mental health whilst a student at university and the shame and pressure he feels from his family as a result of it. He knows how important it is that he finishes university to his parents who came to England from Pakistan looking for a better life for their children. 

The book delves into Michael's psychosis and the breakdown of relationships, jobs and a sense of security in his life as a result of it. A philosophy scholar, he breaks up these sections of truly raw retellings of his psychosis with deep philosophical thought and understanding. 

I really admire the bravery in the author delving into these really dark moments in his life. He exposes some of his most traumatic thoughts and actions, which I'm sure a lot of us even shy away from thinking about, let alone speaking about. However, I found the intense philosophical exploration that was mingled with this really jarring. I think these two key components of the book didn't mesh very well together, and the book might have been better as two novellas, or with the philosophy side less intense. I think I would have found it almost impossible to keep up with if I had no knowledge of key philosophers/theory, and it made the book a much more difficult read than I anticipated.

I've given this three stars because I think it would make for an interesting read if you're interested in understanding more about how philosophy and individual mental health issues can relate to one another.

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Review of 'Austerlitz' by W. G. Sebald

When I was a teen I LOVED learning more about the world wars from a more human perspective. Michael Morpurgo's writing really inspired me to find more stories like Private Peaceful and I think this interest in a human response to something that's so hard to imagine is something that's stuck with me since. 

Austerlitz tells the story of Jacques Austerlitz, a boy who came to England on Kindertransport in 1939. As an adult, he wants to seek out his roots and begins a journey of trying to discover his birth family and where he came from. However, in post-war Europe, there are moments where this seems completely impossible: Jacques does not know the name he was born with, exactly where he came from or the names of any of his family members.

The story is a bleak one. Written in one long narrative with no chapter breaks throughout the book, the author really shows how relentless and exhausting this journey feels for Jacques. With twinges of memories interspersed with masses of sections of the unknown, Jacques really is facing something hard to quantify. 

I found this a really difficult read. A lot of the book was wound up in Jacques travels and discussing the new landscapes that face him. I always find books with no chapter breaks very difficult to get really into and keep on top of exactly what's going on. It is a sad story of the kind of administrative nightmare that exists in a post World War Europe. There were lots of photographs in the text which helped to break it up a little, but these were printed so small in the kindle edition I read that it was hard to work out what exactly was going on in them.

I gave this 2 stars - whilst it did make me think abut the difficulties of growing up abroad during the war, I found it pretty tough going.

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Review of 'Circe' by Madeline Miller

Last year there seemed to be a real trend for feminist retellings of Greek stories. I had to read the Iliad and the Odyssey as part of my English lit degree and really enjoyed delving into these stories that had at least in part made their way into modern pop culture (who hasn't heard of Icarus flying too close to the sun, in some form?). Circe really brought me back to that but from a whole different direction, which I loved.

Circe is the witch who kept Odysseus trapped on her island whilst he was trying to make his way back home from war. However, this story starts way before then, showing us a more human, or at least rational, side to Circe. Although a child of Helios, god of the sun, Circe is a weaker demigod, born of a nymph. After realising she had some powers and using them to punish the people she hated, Circe was banished to live out her existence on an island away from all other gods.

Here she spends her time cultivating her powers, using plants she grows on her island to assist her. As a woman who quite simply won't do what she's told, Circe enrages men, both human and god alike. This book showcases the struggles of a woman who loves several men who don't love her back, who yearns for the affection of a father and who is angry, rightfully so, and punished for the outbursts of anger she expresses.

Although it was a little slow in places, this really was a very thoughtful and interesting read. I loved how Circe's story intertwined with other myths we've read about (the birth of the Minotaur, Scylla, Ariadne and the maze, Odysseus' return home and slaughter of his wife's suitors). It was really great to have these stories re-envisaged through a woman's eyes. And a flawed woman at that. This really was one of the most important parts of the book for me. Circe doesn't fit neatly into one of the characters that you often would have in this kind of fiction: in the Odyssey she plays an evil witch gone mad with power and lust for Odysseus. In this however, she's much more complex. Women are also placed at the forefront of all of the other side stories too, and I think this made for a really interesting way of telling them too.

I've given this 4 out of 5 stars, only because as I mentioned, there were parts that I really think could have been paced a little better, and that I slightly lost interest during.

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Review of 'Crazy Rich Asians' by Kevin Kwan

Do you ever come across a series and end up with a whole new obsession?! Honestly I wish this had been published when I was a teenager (which makes me feel really old) because I would have loved it so much, possibly even more than I do now. I've just finished the second book in the series (China Rich Girlfriend), so I'm on a big Kevin Kwan hype at the moment.  

Rachel Chu and her boyfriend Nick Young live together in New York working as professors at a university. When Nick suggests that the pair spend their summer in Singapore and visit his family, she has no idea what she's about to experience. You see, Rachel has no idea that Nick's family is super rich (crazy rich even), and her expectations of their summer trip are completely turned on their head. With her university friend Peik Lin (an international student who lives in Singapore now) by her side, Rachel tries to navigate a world where everyone is suspicious of her intentions and jealous of her attachment to Nick.

This is one of the most intense, drama-filled, funny books that I've read in a long time. If I had to compare it to anything, it would be a more extreme version of Gossip Girl. The book's told from a few different perspectives, and it made for a very fast-paced book as you got to see the plotting and conniving from a whole variety of angles. I watched the film shortly after reading the book too and I think it's going to be a firm favourite for me - it really did the book justice and I hope they make films for the other books in the series!

Now all I need to do is get my hands on the third installment - Rich People Problems.

I gave this 4/5 stars. It was a little hard to dip in and out of as the text was quite dense, but as I mentioned, it really is a firm favourite!

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