The Librain……retired

Hello, fellow reading fans! Welcome to this week’s Reading Roundup. I have enjoyed two books this week and have started a third. Here’s the first one…

I have read a couple of books by Alafair Burke before, so I thought that I would try another. This one was called “The Girl She Was”. First we have the blurb:

“HOPE CAN BE A DANGEROUS THING…

She calls herself Hope Miller, but she has no idea who she really is.

Fourteen years ago, she was found thrown from an overturned vehicle, with no clue to her identity. Hope started a new life, but never recovered her memory.

Now she’s missing. With nowhere else to turn, Hope’s best friend, Lindsay Kelly, calls NYPD detective Ellie Hatcher.

In pursuit of answers, three women search for the truth beneath long-buried secrets. And when their searches converge, what they find will upend everything they’ve ever known.”

The book was entertaining enough and I gave it three stars on Goodreads. This is my response on the site:

The Girl She Was by Alafair Burke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was an interesting mystery/thriller with many positive points. There were plenty of twists and turns, but ultimately I found the plot confusing and muddled in places. For me, the characters weren’t fleshed out enough and one blurred into another. The book did entertain me until the end, however, so deserves three stars. There were some clever surprises which made the book worth reading.

View all my reviews

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I had seen this book title, “Where the Crawdads Sing”, in several places, but had not thought of reading it until I realised that a film is being made of it. That intrigued me, so I decided to see what all of the hype was about…

Here is the blurb:

“For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life – until the unthinkable happens.”

The book was really worth reading and this is my Goodreads’ review:

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I find it really interesting to read the negative reviews of books that I have enjoyed. They give such different perspectives. I can understand those readers who know about the geographical setting and don’t like how this was depicted. Or who know about the local dialect or history of the area and feel that the book didn’t hit the mark. This happens often to me when I read something set in my country or in historical periods that I have studied closely.

However, I live in the UK so I really loved the book, particularly the first half about an abandoned child having to make her way in a hostile place. Hostile in terms of the attitudes of the local people, in terms of poverty and deprivation. It was interesting to read about Kya’s development into adolescence and adulthood and how she related to other people, particularly men. The second half was a more difficult read and the structure of the book at this point became quite an issue for me.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see the film of the book. I hope they can make a good job of it!

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Re-reading some of my reviews sometimes reminds me that my writing, since the stroke three years ago, is not always at its best. Anyway, I hope that you find my responses to the books that I read helpful at the very least!

And now I am going to return to my latest book. What is it? Well, you will find out next week 😁😁😁.

Happy Reading to you all!

Love and best wishes,

Anne

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I have enjoyed one great book during the last week. It was quite long, so I have not had enough time to read another one…

Regular readers may remember that I am a huge fan of Stuart MacBride’s books. I was thrilled when I found A Dark So Deadly on our Library’s ebook service. Here is the blurb:

“DC Callum MacGregor’s career was going pretty well until he covered up for a cock-up to protect his pregnant crime-scene tech girlfriend.

Now Callum’s stuck on a squad with all the other misfits – the officers no one else wants but who can’t be fired, never likely to get within reach of a decent case again. Until they accidentally get handed the biggest murder investigation Oldcastle has ever seen.

When a mummified body is found in the local rubbish dump, the top-brass assume pranksters have stolen it from a museum. But as Callum and his colleagues investigate, it starts to look less like student high-jinks and more like the work of a terrifying serial killer…”

As I wrote above, this was a long read, but I felt sad when I got to the end! Definitely a five star favourite.

This is my short response on the Goodreads website:

A Dark So Deadly by Stuart MacBride
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I absolutely adore MacBride’s books, but even I baulked a bit at the length of this one. By the end, however, I understood why he wrote such a long tale. The darkest of dark humour and the grimmest of grim plots kept my attention from the beginning to the end.

And I will never be able to face a kipper ever again!

View all my reviews

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How on earth will I follow that? I have a long list of “to reads”, so I will go through them to see what could possibly measure up to a great MacBride book.

Happy Reading to you all!

Love and best wishes,

Anne

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