I found this novel deeply disappointing. It started with a Hitchcock 'Pscho' vibe and devolved into a Hallmark Happy Ever After fantasy. The struture I found this novel deeply disappointing. It started with a Hitchcock 'Pscho' vibe and devolved into a Hallmark Happy Ever After fantasy. The struture of novel was clunky and disjointed. There were multiple continuity problems which came to feel like tricks played on the reader by a clumsy magician who assumed the reader had short-term memory issues. The big twists lost impact because they only worked if one of the characters had a complere personality transplant. The ending left reality so far behind that it had me laughing in embarrassment of the "Surely she's not going to... Wow! She actually went there." eye-rolling kind.
So, if it was that bad, why did I spend the best part of eight hours listening to it? Well, firstly. some of it is well written. There are some clever ideas, some creepy situations and some love-to-hate-them characters. Secondly, I downloaded this (for free I'm glad to say) to listen to on two long car journeys. I reached the halfway mark on the first journey and, while I wasn't that engaged, I wasn't disappointed either. It was on the second journey that the novel fell apart. If I'd been at home, I would have skipped the last third of the book.
I'm not going to give away any spoilers as not knowing what's going to happen next is one of the main things that kept me reading but I will share my experience at a top level.
The first half of the book was a little slow but seemed to be setting up an interesting story. Even though the book opened with Quinn washing someone's blood from her hands, the tension in the first scenes felt muted. For me, it was an arms-length experience rather than an edge-of-the-seat read. Some of this was the pace, which seemed to me to drag. Some of it was Quinn's inablity to think things through and me being put off by Quinn's 'poor little me' act.
The motel set up: remote, deserted, decrepit motel, found at night during a snow storm, had a 'Bates Motel' feel that should have pulled me into the story but again the storytelling felt a little slow and it didn't deliver the sense of threat that it might have done.
Then, just before the halfway mark, there was an unexpected rollback in time and a switch from Quinn to her older sister, Claudia.
The switch killed the plot's momentum but did introduce a more interesting character. Claudia, like Quinn, was difficult to like but she brought a faster pace to the storytelling and for a while, things went well.
Then the next rollback happened at the 60% mark and the plot lost all momentum for a second time. This time the story went back by a decade or so while Rosalie told me the story of her life with Nick and how he and she came to run this now dilapidated motel with the boarded up restaurant called 'Rosalie's'. For me, this was one of the strongest parts of the book. Rosalie's story and her relationship with Nick felt real. The nature of that relationship also made me question a lot of what I thought I knew about the plot, which justified the disruption of the flow.
About the 80% mark, there was another clumsy shift in perspective to Rob, Claudia's husband and another plot momentum-killing rollback in time. The real decline of the novel started here. We were working towards the big reveals in the final hour and it quickly became clear that those reveals required one character to have a complete personality transplant and made a number of things the reader had been told seem like deceptions that misinformed rather than just mislead.
The deceptions annoyed me and spoiled the big reveal (which was actually quite clever). If the book had stopped there, I'd have grumbled about thriller writers who cheat to make their plots work but I'd also have acknowledged that there were a few good character portraits in the book and that, despite the clumsy transitions, it was mostly entertaining.
Then I endured half an hour of 'Epilogue'. An epilogue is supposed to bring a reader closure. It's not supposed to have the reader alternating between rolling their eyes and grinding their teeth. It also typically doesn't have a 'So THATS who killed..." in it. The big reveal in the epilogue was ok. Not unexpected but it made sense. The rest felt like a fairygodmother had arrived to make sure that all of the remaining characters got their wishes granted. It was pure sugar and very out of place....more
I'd been waiting for 'Ashes Never Lie' to come out ever since I finished the first Sharpe & Walker book, 'Malibu Burning' in August 2023. I had the boI'd been waiting for 'Ashes Never Lie' to come out ever since I finished the first Sharpe & Walker book, 'Malibu Burning' in August 2023. I had the book on pre-order for its release on 17th September 2024 so when I got the opportunity to read an ARC in advance of the release date, I dived in.
I had great fun with 'Ashes Never Lie'. I'm a Lee Goldberg fan but even so, this book exceeded my expectations. It was fast-paced, action-packed and completely engaging. Perhaps best of all, it has an Eve Ronin crossover that results in Walker and Ronin teaming up in a spectacular takedown that results in another viral Eve Ronin video, this time with her dressed as Wonder Woman.
I love the humour and the larger-than-life characters in Lee Goldberg's books but what I admire most are the clever, surprising but reality-based plots that drive the action. There's a lot going in 'Ashes Never Lie'. More happens in the first half (140 pages) of the book than most writers manage in a 500-page novel and yet it didn't feel rushed or confusing.
Sharpe and Walker investigate two very different arson-related crimes in 'Ashes Never Lie'. One has an epic, "unleash the apocalypse "scope worthy of a Michael Chrichton novel, The other has a domestic focus but has a lot more fireballs and explosions along the way to finding the guilty party. Both cases have scary, off-beat but believable bad guys and both bring Sharpe and Walker and Ronin and Pavone together to solve them.
Both plots benefit from Lee Goldberg's usual attention to the technical details. Both rapidly escalate from well-grounded (and in once case quite gruesome) starting points to something dangerous, explosive and unexpected.
Teaming up Walker and Ronin in these scenarios is like throwing gasoline on the fire. You know you need to stand well back and enjoy the show. Even then, I wasn't prepared for the tense, cinematic finale which kept me on the edge of my seat, grinning with amusement while still caught up in the action.
Will somebody PLEASE, PLEASE. PLEASE make this into a TV series? It would be so good (although I bet the books would still be better).
Anyway, If you're a Lee Goldberg fan, you're in for a treat with 'Ashes Never Lie'. This is Lee Goldberg at his best....more
Tell Her Story' had a strong plot that leveraged the True Crime podcast trend to frame the story. Dakota Fanning did a good job as the main narrator aTell Her Story' had a strong plot that leveraged the True Crime podcast trend to frame the story. Dakota Fanning did a good job as the main narrator and the supporting cast brought the podcast segments alive.
Despite all of that, I never got fully engaged with this novella. To me, it seemed to plod along, spooning out exposition to move the plot along in a fairly mechanical way. The characters all had the potential to be interesting but I didn't really get to know any of them particularly well. The story didn't bore me but it didn't make me care either about the people and what happened to them or about solving the puzzle about who the killer was.
From the other reviews that I've seen, mine is a minority opinion but I found this novella to be bland. It was more like an early storyboard than a completed story. I wanted something to make me care but there was no threat, no risk, just mild curiosity....more
I read half of 'Destination Unknown' before I set it aside in recognition of my waning interest in the plot and the people. In my headSET ASIDE AT 50%
I read half of 'Destination Unknown' before I set it aside in recognition of my waning interest in the plot and the people. In my head, it had become 'Destination Unbelievable', which isn't a title that could carry me to the end of the book.
The start of the book hooked me. I loved Christie's original take on the concept of a suicide mission - finding someone ready to commit suicide and offering them a more useful way to die. The idea of a suicidal heroine must have been seens as quite daring in 1954. Suicide was a criminal offence in England until 1961.
I liked Hilary Craven and, for a while, I thought I was in for a reprise of 'They Came To Bagdhad' which was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, by the time I was a third of the way through, I could see that 'Destination Unknown' lacked the momentum of the earlier book. I enjoyed seeing how air travel worked in 1954 and feeling the impact of Britain's post-war currency restrictions and getting a feel for Morocco and Fez but that didn't make up for the plodding pace of the plot.
When, at the halfway mark (many pages too late it seemed to me), Hilary Craven is finally about to be ushered in to the Chrisitie equivalent of a James Bond Villain's secret base, I should have been excited. I wasn't. The simplistic politics and the mad-scientist, evil fascist and dewey-eyed communist stereotypes where annoying me. The overall global conspiracy idea felt to comic book for me. I neither believed in it or cared about it. Even my curiosity about whether / how Hilary Craven would find her way back to a life worth living wasn't enough to keep me reading, so I set the book aside....more
I had high hopes for 'Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead'. I loved the gothic sound of the title. It spoke to me of irredeemable sin Abandoned at 33%
I had high hopes for 'Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead'. I loved the gothic sound of the title. It spoke to me of irredeemable sin and deep guilt. I liked the idea of the story being told through the eyes of a Brit making her living on the US East Coast because it offered so much scope for cultural dissonance, especially when the English-middle-class-girl-made-good is engaged to a New-York-one-per-center. I also liked that this debut novel drew on the experience of the author, at least in terms of settings, so, in addition to a good plot and a lot of tension, I was hoping for relatable characters, an insider view of both the work and academic environments and a strong sense of place.
I actually got everything that I hoped for. The main character, Charlotte (Charlie) Colbert is riven by guilt. The level of disdain that Charlie's soon-to-be mother-in-law feels for Charlie could freeze the planet and the novel delivers an insider's view and a strong sense of place.
So why did I set this novel aside at 33%?
I was overwhelmed by Charlie's anxiety.
The story is told as a first-person account from Charlie's point of view, albeit with a dual 'Now' and 'Then' timeline. Being inside Charlotte's head was stressful. Her anxiety was constant. I could see that I was supposed to empathise with Charlie and feel sorrow for the way that anxiety was crippling her but that wasn't how I felt.
I didn't like Charlie. She saw her new, 'Now', life as something that she's earned through hard work and she feels aggrieved (although not surprised) that the life she's created is being put at risk by a lie she told a decade earlier. The problem I had was that her 'Now' life seemed to me to be an invention, a comforting pretence designed to distract her from the harm her lies did a decade earlier.
Of course, I don't need to like the main character of a story to enjoy a book but I do need to be able to live in her head if she's the one telling the story. I found that I couldn't do that.
'Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead' was an intense well-told story but it was too unremitting for me and there was nothing to compensate me for putting up with the stress. I didn't like Charlie and, by the time I was a third of the way through the book and still had nothing but vague hints about who did what to whom and why in the notorious 'Scarlet Christmas' that is the source of Charlie's guilt, I found I didn't care enough to hang around and find out. What I wanted more than anyhing else was to get Charlie's anxious, self-deceiving, guilty voice out of my head.
It's possible, perhaps even likely, that the things that led me to abandon this book are exactly the things that will make it irresistible to fans of psychological thrillers. Take a listen to the audiobook except below and make your own mind up.
I recommend that you read 'A Secret Worth Keeping' in a single sitting if you can. It's a book to experience not to ponder over.
What is the ex[image]
I recommend that you read 'A Secret Worth Keeping' in a single sitting if you can. It's a book to experience not to ponder over.
What is the experience? You know those rides at the big theme parks where they strap you in, drop you from a great height at scream-making speed and then throw you around corners? It's that kind of reading experience. To enjoy it to the full, you have to surrender all control and go wherever the plot takes you.
The book opens with a prologue featuring a fatal car crash. I don't know who was involved and I don't find out how it relates to anything else until almost the end of the book but it's important to the plot and it gets the story off to an action-packed, explanation-free start that should have set my expectations.
Except that the next part of the story seemed more conventional, so I dropped my guard. I watched a couple who seemed to be in the first throws of lust, when they knew little about each other except that heading to an isolated cabin in the mountains for a weekend of sex is an irresistible idea. She's still not entirely comfortable with him and is watching his reactions closely. He's willing to put up with anything, including a surprisingly dusty, ill-prepared cabin, as long as they can both get their clothes off as soon as possible. Then the story stopped being conventional and someone ended up dead. The who and how of that death changed everything and I knew that I had no idea of what was really going on.
Then I got a 'x days earlier' set of rollbacks from three different points of view that sort of got me to how the death happened. Except, even then, I knew that I was missing something and that everything would change again.
From there on the pace of the plot kept accelerating. Things kept getting worse for everyone involved, no one was who they seemed to be and everyone had secrets. I could see this wasn't going to end well but I couldn't guess at for whom or how.
There are two women in the story. Both of them come across as dangerous and occasionally as desperate yet both of them were easier to like than the main male character who had the irrepressible self-confidence of a mediocre middle-class white guy who knows he's doing something he shouldn't but expects to get away with it, who knows that he's not a very nice guy but tells himself that he's not a very bad guy either and he's just following his nature.
I loved the inventiveness of the plot and how the action was lubricated by low-key dark humour that seemed to be about veniality but might actually be hiding anger and malice.
There were times, towards the end of the story, when the plot twisted so fast and so far that it might have challenged my ability to suspend disbelief but I was having such a good time by then that I didn't care.
I had a lot of fun with this book and I'll be hitting Drew Strickland's back catalogue to see if I can find another rollicking ride like 'A Secret Worth Keeping'....more
I haven't been able to find out anything about R. B. Croft but, as far as I can tell, 'The River Man' is a debut novel. It's an Audible Original, ablyI haven't been able to find out anything about R. B. Croft but, as far as I can tell, 'The River Man' is a debut novel. It's an Audible Original, ably narrated by Dominic West and is only available as an audiobook.
'The River Man' is an engaging mix of Police Procedural and Creature Feature. It's set in an English village but not the cosy southern villages that Miss Marple or Inspector Barnaby would be comfortable in but in the wilder, more remote North Pennines between Cumbria, Northumberland, and County Durham. The sense of place is important to the story both for the origin of The River Man legend and for shaping Clem, the policeman from whose point of view most of the story is told. He's spent his entire career in the village and his approach to policing is based on a desire to keep the peace and help his neighbours.
Clem, who is at the end of his career and who has accepted a demotion so that he can carry on as a Special Policeman, is a well-crafted, engaging character who I was able to root for. His superiors on the other hand come across as ego-driven attention-seekers who have no respect either for the people in the village or the staff who work for them.
This isn't a cosy mystery. The killings in the story were graphic and bloody and although two of them occurred off-stage, the mutilated remains were left on display.
His bosses don't want Clem to be involved in the case. He's seen as out-dated and his judgement is not respected. So, of course, he's the only one who figures out what's going on. Unable to get anyone to listen to him, he determines to find and stop the Riven Man alone.
I enjoyed the first half of the book, which set up the situation and introduced the characters and the place. I liked that R. B. Croft took the time to make the village and its people feel real.
The pace picked up for the confrontation between Clem and the creature, introducing a real sense of urgency and a high level of threat.
I was less satisfied with the ending of the story. It had a Happy Ever After feel that was too cosy for my taste and which clashed with the tone of the rest of the novel. It also ran a little long as the author felt the need to tie up everything neatly.
Still, it was an entertaining story that was well-suited to the audiobook format....more
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