Little Nothings - Julie Mayhew

This novel totally absorbed me from the first few pages. I could not put it down and finished it within 24 hrs. 

Becky has always felt like an outsider until she meets a couple of women at a baby group and suddenly she is part of a strong, supportive friendship that provides her with everything she has been missing out on. The friendship evolves beyond the children and soon there are coffee mornings, girl’s nights out and shopping trips. The husbands and partners are then folded into the mix and life events are shared as a group. All seems well until a new person joins the group. Ange is deep, thoughtful and the girls truly value her opinion and admire her style. Soon Ange is organising their social events that are now expensive nights out in London’s finest restaurants, advising on home improvements and the best private schools for the children.  Suddenly Becky feels she is being marginalised. But is she just being paranoid, reading too much into things?  

The drama climaxes in a luxury Greek holiday, where tensions overspill and truths unravel.

I predict great things for this book and can see this being a huge hit this summer!

The Book Of Sand - Theo Clare

The book is quite a hefty size, and the story within it’s pages is pretty huge but it doesn’t disappoint. It switches between two seemingly unconnected storylines until they both collide and take you into another realm. 

It opens in a futuristic and dystopian land where remnants of familiar cities haunt the skyline. A group of individuals, both adults and children, are navigating the landscape together as a family on a quest to find the ‘Sarkpont’, a mysterious and somewhat illusive item. But they aren’t the only ones on the quest for this item. As the grey nights draw in the unsettling sense of danger grows as they try and secure their dwellings from the malevolent forces that roam the desert during the dark hours. 

We then jump to Fairfax County, Virginia where McKenzie Strathie is a science geek student who doesn’t quite fit in with the crowd at her school, but also doesn’t seem to quite fit into her family at home either. She has a unnatural ability to read the weather and has an obsession with weather patterns and deserts. She comes across as your standard awkward teenager until a sand-lizard suddenly appears in her bed one night. The way that her parents handle this incident - and the subsequent times it seems to roams her room - start to make her question what is really happening to her and set her off onto her own journey.

Although these stories are at first are alternating, it was never confusing to follow. The way that each story builds just drives you to keep reading on to find out what is connecting them. The characters are a vivid bunch of diverse personalities, each with something to contribute. Their different relationships, lived experiences and sometimes tensions really brought then to life. The book felt very visual and I could easily see this being converted to the big screen. 

I haven’t read any sci-fi for quite some time, or books that are part of a series  - probably not since Hugh Howey’s ‘Wool’ trilogy - so this really has whet my appetite to explore more. And I can’t wait for the next books in the trilogy to be released. It’s really exciting to find such a huge story that you can really immerse yourself in. It leaves you thinking about this quest on so many different levels and wanting to know so much more about this world that the incredible crime writer Mo Hayder has left us with. 

Under The Skin - Michel Faber

Who, or more to the point what, is Isserley? Nimble predator, dilligent employee or vulnerable female?

We meet her cruising the Scottish highways evaluating the potential of each hitchhiker she passes for purposes initally unknown. Once selected they eagerly hop into the passenger seat and are intrigued by this petite, bespectacled youth with slight hands and large breasts wearing kitsch bell bottoms. With the heating turned up to full she appraises their physique as they peel off their layers of outerwear. But what is she assessing them for?

Under The Skin is a compelling novel that stays with you for a long time after you've finished the book. It introduces an alien race that inhabits and harvests our world completely undetected. Their strange objectives and bizarre perspective on human life is at first startling, but as the story develops and as with all great science fiction, a sense a familiarity to our present starts to creep in with each turn of the page.

On one level you could simply take it to be a crusade to convert us literary lovers into ardent vegetarians, but on a much deeper level it is most definitely a thoughtful narrative on the notion that we really are all the same under the skin. 

The Rage – Gene Kerrigan

Gene Kerrigan's 'The Rage' is an incredibly well thought out and addictive novel. We are introduced to the story at a point where a crime is being planned. Told through the eyes of a number of different characters – criminals, reformed criminals, the police, witnesses and informers – each protagonist provides another piece of the puzzle and the story starts to take shape. Gradually each perspective comes together to build a network of connections between individuals that literally culminates in the 'rage' that appears in the title.

Set in Ireland a couple of years ago it very cleverly blurs the lines between right and wrong, law and justice – and in some cases injustice. The hierarchy and chains of command that exist within the criminal world echo those which similarly exist within the police, hampering progress to get to the real truth.

This was a random choice for my April Book Club meeting and one of those little gems that I have come across from time to time over the last few years since we started. Winner of The Crime Novel of the Year in 2012 by the CWA, it really is a gripping thriller and one that I'll be recommending fellow crime fiction enthusiasts. 

A Pleasure and a Calling - Phil Hogan

I've always been intrigued by how easily we hand over our front door keys to estate agents as soon as we decide to sell our property. Up until then we do all we can to keep it secure, foil strangers into thinking we're home by leaving a table lamp on, attaching signage such as 'beware of the dog' when we may not even own one. And then we willingly trust our keys and alarm details to a complete stranger so that they may enter whilst we're out, in the hope that they will bring more strangers to roam freely and peruse our treasured possessions, gaining insights into our personal taste. 

What if you were unfortunate enough to hand them over to an estate agent who had an unnatural interest in how people live their lives?

Enter Mr. Heming in the chilling new novel by Phil Hogan. This really is one of those books that are impossible to put down. In fact I was so fed up with having to dip in and out of it I cleared a Saturday afternoon so I could read the last half all the way through without any interruptions. It is a very carefully thought out plot narrated by a very disturbed (and disturbing) Mr. Heming who will stay in your thoughts long after the book has found its way back to the shelf. He has a remarkable story to tell, interspersed with flashbacks from his past that start off as small chinks of unrelated experiences and gradually slot together to reveal more of his past. 

In a similar way to 'Apple Tree Yard' or 'Before I Go To Sleep' I am already urging people to read this and desperately trying not to tell them too much and spoil the enjoyment. It's a story that stays with you and a character that you cannot forget. I predict this will be a hot book club choice when it comes out in paperback. I'm off now to get my locks changed. And abandon any thougths I might have had about moving......

Dickens – A Life by Claire Tomalin

I thought I already knew who Charles Dickens was: our brilliant bearded writer, creator of characters that form part of our very culture; champion for the poor; roamer of the streets of London at night collecting comments, voices, scenes and situations to incorporate into his novels, short stories and articles; forever marred by his father's spell in the Marshalsea. I carried this stereotypical image around with me last December when I visited the Dicken's Museum in Doughty Street (http://www.dickensmuseum.com) but over Christmas I started to read this biography and learned a whole lot more. 

Not all aspects of his personality were applaudable. Certainly the ill treatment of his wife and their eventual separation was most cruel. But the sheer volume of work, travel and socialising he embarked upon throughout his life was astonishing. His charitable work and empathy for those in need was one of many threads that contribute to the man he was. Tomalin takes you through each stage of his life right from childhood as we see Dicken's talent and determination unfold around London and later across continents. His writing habits and the sheer volume and diligence he applied is remarkable and so too are the wealth of relationships that were forged and lost along the way. The depth of some, and equally the shallowness of others, is quite surprising and at some points I started to identify characteristics within Dickens that should belong to some of his most eccentric characters. 

This month The Invisible Woman hits the cinemas offering a further exploration into one of the most significant relationships he embarked upon with Nelly Ternan, the young stage actress who sealed the end of his marriage. Tomalin peels back the layers of secrets that were employed to keep this out of the public eye to reveal a tale of deceit worthy of one of his very own novels. This new film is based on one of her earlier books so it will be interesting to see what Ralph Fiennes, both starring and directing, makes of it. Given the depth of Tomalin's research it should be an interesting portrayal of this complex man. 

This book is a great read for anyone interested in Dicken's and the society he lived in, along with the  company he kept and the London he inhabited. 

2014 Books

2014 Books page will start to be populated very soon! 

Nearing the end of 'Charles Dickens – A Life' by Claire Tomalin, which is a fascinating read so I'll be writing about that shortly. Next book on the agenda will be 'The Wind Is Not A River' by Brian Payton after reading some fantastic reviews recently and picking up my signed copy from Goldsboro Books last week.

Looking forwards to reading new books due out this year from some of my favourite authors and excited to discover some new ones too!