Engrossing and beautifully written, this story is multi-layered and asks more questions than it answers. Neve Ayres is struggling in the sleep deprived foreign territory of new parenthood, isolated in her big house on the beach. Meanwhile another mother, Leah, struggling with poverty, loses her four year old daughter on the beach and Neve finds […]
Someone To Watch Over Me by Yrsa Sigurdadottir
A night time fire in a home for the mentally and physically disabled kills five people and Jakob, a young man with Down’s Syndrome, is deemed responsible and locked away. A convicted paeodophile asks lawyer Thora Gudmundsdottir to see if Jakob has been wrongly convicted, and the plot thickens from there. The beauty in Sigurdardottir’s […]
Fierce Kingdom by Gin Phillips
“That is what you do when you have a child, isn’t it, open yourself up to unimaginable pain and then try to pretend away the possibilities.” You said it, lady. Though fortunately most of us don’t find ourselves trapped inside a zoo with our four year old son, hiding from gunmen and trying to shield […]
The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs
How do you deal with the fact that you’re 38 years old and have terminal cancer, and will shortly leave behind a much loved husband and two young sons? If you’re Nina Riggs, you deal with it by comforting yourself with the words of poets and philosophers and trying to love even the crappy and […]
Look at Me by Mareike Krugal
Don’t borrow this book from the library because if you’re anything like me you’ll find yourself compulsively underlining bits of it that speak to you. Look at Me covers a hectic day in the life of German music teacher Katharina, caught in a web of complex relationships with her often absent husband, two live children, sister, friends […]
Let Me Lie by Clare Mackintosh
Yeah this one is not all it’s cracked up to be. Mackintosh provides one good ending with an out-of-left-field baddie I never would have guessed, then provides another surprise ending which has holes in it so big you could try a truck through. Unnecessary. And none of her main characters ever feel more than two-dimensional, though there is […]
Quick Sand by Malin Persson Giolito
A good rule of thumb is that if a publisher bothers to translate a Swedish crime novel into English, it’s usually a winner. That is certainly the case with Quick Sand. It’s so good it makes me salivate. There are six people in the classroom in the opening sequence: eighteen year old Maja Norberg is […]
All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda
Well there’s not that many missing girls – two actually, but that’s sufficient for a lot of hand wringing and midnight phone calls and rushing about. Our protagonist Nicolette returns to her home town ten years after her best friend disappears. Nicolette’s dad is suffering from dementia and she’s hell bent on getting him to […]