Hoser's Blook

Fiction

Gerald Candless, renown author, dies of a heart attack leaving behind his wife and two grown daughters. The girls, Sarah and Hope, were very close to their dad as he fostered a special relationship with them at the expense of his wife Ursula. As the family comes to term with the loss, we learn how spoiled the two girls are and how miserable Ursula was with her husband.

When Sarah is approached to write a biography of her dad, she accepts. The first thing she does is start looking in to his past only to find that there's nothing to look in to. Gerald Candless does not exist before a certain date and the Gerald Candless of the town her father claimed as his died as a child. Their father assumed this identity. Why? What was he running from?

This book was difficult to get through for two reasons. First, all the characters are either miserable people or pathetic. The girls are complete snobs and never get what's coming to them. The mom could have helped herself but did nothing. The second reason is because there's a whole bunch of unnecessary filler content. Why do we need to know about Hope and her boyfriend or Sara and her boyfriend? There is no substance there and it doesn't really drive the plot forward.

When we finally find out the reason Gerald left his original life, it's a bit of a let down. We are told throughout the book a few times that this reason is not true only to find out it is. The way it was revealed was sort of interesting, but none of the characters ever really find out which was a let down.

First Line: "Not a word to my girls, he had said on the way home from the hospital."

Rating:
(3/5)

Fiction

Growing up in an abusive family, Ruby decides that she will leave for LA as soon as she is legal. She finds a job as a nanny with a doctor who suspected the abuse, and we learn about Ruby's past and the magical touch she has. Ruby knows about her destiny and she sees who she is supposed to fall in love with. This just happens to be a superstar actor who has disappeared from the scene. Ruby sets off to England to find him.

We slowly learn about what Ruby had to endure during her childhood and it's pretty heartbreaking. I enjoyed the part up to Ruby setting off to England the most because of this. We were learning about her, she had a touch of magical that still felt like it could be real. Once she goes to England though, it becomes a full fairy tale and much less believable. Of course he love is a top tier actor. Of course he's sick and she's the only one that can cure him.

This was a super easy read and I breeze through it. I was engaged for the most part, if a little frustrated at how cliche the romance was and how the book ended a bit abruptly.

First Line: "On the day of his father's funeral, the boy walked into the parlor and saw his mother smiling."

Rating:
(4/5)

Teen

Joe is a boy of 11 who has lived in a hospital room since he was 2 months old because he has no immune system to stop himself from getting sick. Joe only has a few things to keep him entertained: tv and video games, his laptop where he in touch with another boy in the States with the same disease, his sister, and his nurses. His sister, Beth, struggles with the decision to move away for school because their parents died a few years ago. That's right. This poor kid is stuck in a bubble and his parents have both died in a car crash. His favourite nurse is Greg and he gets a new on Amir who is a bit of an odd character. He always looks out the window, supposedly looking for UFOs. But maybe Amir can help Joe experience a little more of life?

This book is a very easy read and a fairly emotional one at that. However something was a bit off about it, that keeps me from giving it a higher mark. I think it was a couple of things. First, I didn't fully understand Joe's illness. It makes sense that he has no immune system and needs purified air. But why does that make him consistently tired? The other oddity was Amir's obsession with aliens. Was there any point to it other than for conversation? He seemed a pretty smart guy but then had this weird obsession with aliens. Why?

I'm sure kids would enjoy this book. It wasn't bad, just not fantastic.

First Line: "'I've got a tattoo.'"

Rating:
(3.5/5)

Mystery

Notting Hill's private gardens are a sanctuary for those that live surrounding them, until one night the body of a local young woman is found dead in them. The girl is identified as Reagan Keating, nanny to a male young upcoming dancer. Detective Gemma Jones is included on the case as she is a friend of a friend of the victim's employer and knows some of the parties involved. Her and DI Kerry Boatman start to investigate.

Gemma is super busy at work but has problems at home too. Her husband Kincaid (also a cop) gets a call that his father is in the hospital so he races out of town to make sure he is ok. His father ends up being fine, but on his way home he stops to investigate the suicide of a friend and undercover cop whom he cannot believe actually killed himself.

This is book 17 in the well-established Kincaid/Jones series. Since I had never read any of the previous novels, I feel like I missed a lot of who the characters were and all the previous cases and issues they had been through. Very little was mentioned to help a new reader pick this series up at this book and make sense of it. For example, Kincaid is investigating the undercover cop's death, there has obviously been history between those two from previous books and a reason for Kincaid to believe he hadn't killed himself. Having no awareness of that history, I couldn't connect to this story line as I knew nothing about the undercover cop or why Kincaid would think this way.

The other confusing part for a new-to-series reader is the number of characters in this book. It took me 50 pages to realize that Kincaid and Duncan were the same people. The author mentions everyone by their first name with the exception of Kincaid who is mentioned by his last name. I'm not sure why there is this discrepancy but it was confusing for me.

For the mystery that was self-contained within this novel, I enjoyed it. The murderer wasn't too obvious and the story of snobby neighbours was believable.

Definitely start from the first book in this series. If you're already invested, you should enjoy this book!

You can purchase this book at Harper Collins. Thank you to TLC Book Tours for letting me be a part of this tour.

First Line: "She stood at the bus stop, shuffling her feet."

Rating:
(3.5/5)

About the Author Crombie lives in McKinney, Texas with her husband, two German Shepherd Dogs, and two cats. She travels to Britain frequently to research her books. Find her on Twitter, Facebook and at her website.

Chick Lit

Bridget Jones wants to start her year off right. Lose weight, drink less, smoke less. She starts at a new years party where her parents are trying to set her up with Mark Darcy. Bridget isn't having any of that though. She has her eyes on another man from work.

Bridget writes in her diary for us every few days, telling us of the humorous and horrendous predicaments she gets herself in to. Typical to these types of novels written as diaries, the novel is written from the characters perspective while things happen on that day, not like the character is writing a diary. I always found that odd with diary books. A person doesn't sit there and write in between everything incorrectly happening. Why do people write books this way?

I read this book because it was on the BBC top 100 (#75). I personally don't think it's worth of that list, though it was a fun read.

First Line: "I will not drink more than fourteen alcohol units a week."

Rating:
(3/5)

Mystery

Kate is a war reporter who has just returned to her home town after her mother has passed away. She has a bad relationship with her sister, who is an alcoholic, so instead asks for her brother in law to pick her up. Taken to her home, Kate reminisces about her childhood in this house with loving mother, abusive alcoholic father, and younger sister who always sided with her father. She also can't put the images from the war in Syria out of her mind. In the middle of the night, Kate thinks she sees a young boy in the garden, but the neighbour next door says she has no children. Is Kate going crazy?

She ends up in custody with the police, as they run a psychiatric evaluation and we learn all about Kate's past. Anything horrible someone can endure, it seems that Kate has had to endure it. This is pieced together for us, interspersed with the events leading up to this evaluation.

We get the story from both Kate's side, and her younger sister Sally's side. There are lots of mysteries to solve in this one: what happened to Kate in Syria, what happened to Sally and Kate when they were children, and is there really a boy next door. This results in an absolutely thrilling read. I stayed up pretty late to finish this off so I could find out the answers to all of this mystery.

This book had a bit of everything: family drama, mystery, the consequences of war and living with post traumatic stress disorder, and telling the story in different states of time and from different points of view. I'll definitely be recommending this to friends.

Thank you to TLC Book Tours for letting me be a part of this tour. If you want to purchase this book, you can do so here.

First Line: "'Would you like me to repeat the question?'"

Rating:
(4.5/5)

About the Author Nuala Ellwood is the daughter of an award-winning journalist. Inspired by her father’s and other journalists’ experiences with post-traumatic stress disorder, she gained Arts Council Funding for her research into the topic and ultimately made it the main theme of My Sister’s Bones, her debut psychological thriller. Learn more at her website or on twitter.

History

Dunkirk was a massively successful failure in WWII. I had never learned about this story in history class so knew absolutely nothing coming in, other than this took place in the early parts of WWII. The British and French troops kept getting pushed back and back by the Germans until they wound up on the beaches of Dunkirk, France having to be evacuated across the channel. Ships came from everywhere, both civilian and navy, to evacuate these troops. Many died, but many many more were rescued. This book tells the story of what lead up to Dunkirk and how this rescue took place.

This book is also about the new movie Christopher Nolan is making on the events at Dunkirk. There's both an interview with Nolan at the start and a chapter at the end of the book about the making of the movie. Having no knowledge about Dunkirk, I found the Nolan interview at the start of the book oddly placed. I was worried it was going to spoil something further in the book and couldn't appreciate their interest in the story because I knew nothing about it yet. However, the notes at the end of the book on the film making were quite interesting. The fact that they filmed on the Dunkirk beach should make this even more authentic.

In the telling of what happened at Dunkirk, there were many eye witness accounts stitching together Levine's story. These likely come from his other book Forgotten Voices of Dunkirk (I can't help but wonder if the book is exactly the same, but with chapters added on the movie). These accounts were very interesting, but overall they were all quite short, which lead to some major pacing issues in this book. The history of Dunkirk isn't started until about page 60. Then the book is on a roller coaster from engaging and interesting to boring. At times I wondered if I should give up, but I stuck through to the end. It does get better once the troops are on the beach and the rescue attempt is underway.

I'm not a huge history buff (but do enjoy well tell stories of historical events) and feel that most parts of this book are geared towards someone of a more historical buff nature. If you can get past the first 100 pages or so, you'll learn a lot about this event and the movie that will represent it.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for letting me be a part of this tour. Interested in trying this book for yourself? You can find where to buy it here.

Rating:
(3/5)

About the Author Joshua Levine has written six bestselling histories including titles in the hugely popular ‘Forgotten Voices’ series. ‘Beauty and Atrocity’, his account of the Irish Troubles, was nominated for the Writers’ Guild Book of the Year award. ‘On a Wing and a Prayer’, his history of the pilots of the First World War, has been turned into a major British television documentary. He has written and presented a number of programmes for BBC Radio 4. In a previous life, he was a criminal barrister. He lives in London. Find him on Twitter or his website.

Fiction

It's seventeenth century England and the tensions are rising as religions clash and politicians try to overthrow each other. John Brigge is the town coroner and one of its governors. His wife is about to give birth as he is called to examine a baby that has been suffocated. The finger is quickly pointed at a woman found with the child who looks like she may have recently given birth, but there isn't much evidence beyond that to support her guilt. The other governors are quick to want to hang her but John wants more evidence first. Aware of the fact that his wife needs him, he heads home. However the political powers are churning and it doesn't look like Brigge will benefit from what's happening in town.

The book does a good job of portraying life during this time. It's obvious that quite a bit of research was done and the atmosphere of the book was well set. That said, at times I found the author would write out paragraph long descriptions of things that made no difference. The room where the suffocated child was found has such a description, yet the character only stayed there for about a page, meaning the description was about 33% of the time spent talking about that room. What is the point?

The book is set up as a mystery about who killed the child, but mid-way through the book it seems much less relevant to have this question answered. When that mystery is solved, it doesn't matter much to the reader but instead on how all the warring factions will work with each other and where Brigge ends up.

In the end, this book was rather disappointing.

First Line: "When the women found milk in her breasts, and other secret feminine tokens, Scaife, the constable's man, an archdolt, was dispatched across the windswept moors and icy mountains to fetch Mr John Brigge, coroner of the wapentakes of Agbrigg and Morley."

Rating:
(3/5)

Thriller

A group of students (college or high school? It's never quite clear) decide to pull a prank and rather than go out on a trip with the school, go to a never used part of the school that has a few rooms inaccessible by anything other than a ladder. The group plans on staying for three days before a friend will let them out.

The premise of this book makes no sense. How is it a "practical joke" that instead of going on a trip, you're spending it in a hole? It made no sense to me what they wanted to accomplish by this experiment.

Then there was the narrative. It switched between the kids in the hole and one of them outside of the hole, after they made it out. But when you first start reading it, there's no indication that this is the case and you're left wondering what the heck is going on.

This book isn't all bad though. The twist at the end is quite good. Unfortunately at that point I didn't care because everything else about the book was so awful. I don't recommend this one at all.

First Line: "In the last Easter term, before the Hole, life was bright and good at Our Glorious School."

Rating:
(2.5/5)

Historical Fiction

Queen Victoria ascended to the throne of England at the young age of 18. Despite having powerful female rulers in the past, it seemed that England still wasn't used to one and wanted Victoria to marry as soon as possible to have a husband help her with policy-making. Victoria doesn't seem all that interested in marriage and having a man to rule over her until she meets her cousin Albert. He's incredibly handsome and Victoria falls in love with him right away. The two set to marry.

Victoria is very happy. She has Albert by her side and she is very friendly with the English Prime Minister. However Albert doesn't enjoy his new lifestyle all that much. Albert doesn't love Victoria but realizes its his duty to be a good husband. He feels worthless with the very little that Victoria allows him to do. This is the story of their marriage from when they meet until when one of them passes away.

I haven't read much on Queen Victoria in the past so I don't know much about her. This book portrayed her as rather rigid but also completely tunnel visioned about her friends. There is no grey with Victoria. It's all either white or black. She loves someone or she hates them. It's tough to see how someone could rule a nation with that kind of mentality.

This is an interesting look in to Victoria's early reign and her relationship with Albert, though it was a bit slow at times.

First Line: "A footman has opened the shutters on two of the long windows in the Green Drawing Room at Kensington Palace, and a pale predawn light spread through the room."

Rating:
(3.5/5)

Fiction

This is the story of brother and sister Joe and Elly. As kids, Elly is abused by a neighbor and only her brother knows. Joe realizes he's gay and for a while only Elly knows. The two understand each other inside out and know each other's darkest, deepest secrets. As they grow old, this helps them maintain a special bond. A few peripheral characters add some interesting story telling to the mix, including an eccentric friend who disappears as a kid and then returns as an adult in jail for killing her abusive husband. There's also a couple of regulars from Joe and Elly's bread and breakfast. And of course there's God, the rabbit.

This book started well and I really liked Elly as a character and her development. But there were just a lot of unanswered questions for me. Winman takes the approach that she doesn't need to blatantly state anything that happens in this book but it leaves for a really murky story. Furthermore, the characters don't seem to be overly bothered by things that happened to them, which makes you wonder whether what you suspect happened actually happened.

There were also a lot of things that happened in the book that served no other purpose than Winman being able to continue to tell her story. For example, the family becomes rich and there's really no reason for it other than to allow them to move to a B&B.

I was surprised when 9/11 was included in this book and then even more surprised when the outcome was completely glossed over and didn't really make sense.

It's unfortunate there were these weird plot problems because the story of Elly and Joe could have been great.

First Line: "I decided to enter this world just as my mother got off the bus after an unproductive shopping trip to Ilford."

Rating:
(3.5/5)