Self-HelpLESS by Rebecca Davis

Rebecca Davis lives in Cape Town - land of drought and money and 'undisputed epicentre of "alternative" paths to peace and enlightenment in South Africa'. She has recently given up booze, and is on a search for life's true meaning. She's not at all sure she'll find it, but reckons either way, it'll  make for a good story.

And it does.

Rebecca is clever, witty and has a way with words. A search for the meaning of life would have been entertaining with just these qualities. However, she is also brave (she dives right into things that'll make your hair stand on end or your toes curl, depending on your preferences) and she's also been through a lot. 

The honesty with which she talks about her alcohol addiction, her relationships, and her interactions with the world of sweat lodges, excessive exercise, psychedelic drugs, hallucinations and what life really means is what makes this book. It's alive with experience and Rebecca pokes fun at most things and people, including herself. It takes a special talent to see the funny side of life, and she has it. 

You'll read it over a few cups of tea in a day or so, and feel better for having done so.

4 stars

ISBN:9781770106024

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

American Wife is loosely based on the life of Laura Bush, wife of George W. It isn't meant to be even remotely biographical. Alice Lindgren grows up in Wisconsin and never expected to be in the White House. A shy introvert, who loves her job as a librarian, she is passionate about getting young children interested in reading. She is involved in a serious car accident at age 17 and this defines parts of her, but it is when she meets Charlie Blackwell, the charismatic young man who everyone wants to be their new best friend, that the trajectory of who she is changes forever. 

All of the above is true of Laura Bush too (except she was born in Midland, Texas). Yet, Curtis Sittenfeld takes these interesting facts and imagines the heck out of them. She builds worlds of thoughts and dreams around each one, and a beautiful picture emerges of a wife, inevitably disappointed by life, but determined to forge a path that still works for her.

I'm not American, but a lot of what I read and watch originates there. This was different and refreshing - not because of some of the imagined (sexual) content that critics cannot condone in a President's wife - but because in our polarised, yes/no, black/white, in/out world, it is strangely beautiful to read many shades of grey. I loved understanding what it must have been like for a wife to hold different political views from a husband - even when he is the President, and the exploration of the many differences between these two individuals (extrovert/introvert, as well as their views on most things) and the working out of their relationship despite this.

A little lengthy - I found the beginning far easier to read than the end, which I rushed a bit.

4 stars.

ISBN:9781400064755

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Liar, Liar by Lisa Jackson

Didi Storm is going to jump from that San Francisco building, or is she? And would you know it, her daughter Remmi is walking past the actual scene as she's about to.

Coincidence? Well not if they lived in the same house, or even the same city. But they don't, they're 20 years estranged, since ex-beauty queen/club dancer Didi left Remmi in the care of a babysitter, and drove off into the sunset, following a bizarre incident when Remmi witnessed Didi meeting a man in the Nevada desert, and handing over one of her twins for cash.

Detective Dani Settler also finds things a bit too coincidental, a tell-all book on Didi's life has just been published, and nothing will help sales like a body slammed into concrete. Well, whaddaya know, Didi didn't leap - it was someone dressed like Didi, down to the signature fingernail. 

Has anyone noticed the pattern with the names yet? 

Except it's only the girl's names. Boys, we get Noah, Brett, Oliver and so on. And there are other girls who fare better.

So far, it's an unlikely plot - too many weird coincidences, flat dully-named characters - apart from the investigators and one or two others, we don't find out what many of them do with their lives, and a fair degree of cheesiness when it comes to names and catchy songs that are hummed. But this isn't even the most annoying part. It's the writing. A phrase just repeats, every paragraph or so, and then the scene changes, and a new loop of phrase is born. It's not like I can quote a paragraph, you wouldn't get it -  it's just the phrase repeats, sometimes slightly different, but the words and meaning is identical. And the effect is cumulative, so the repeating phrase lodges somewhere in your brain, and the last time the phrase repeats, you want to throw something (the book perhaps). And definitely this review. Because maybe there are some people who need reminders from authors, and perhaps repetition can serve a purpose in writing, but too much of a repeating phrase is not a good thing. See.

So, if you're into earworms, throwing books and kindles around and cheese, then read this book. Else, give it a skip. It's not worth your time. 

Why did I finish it? I couldn't say for sure. I blame my mother, who chased me around the house with cauliflower once, because I didn't clean my plate.

Almost as bad as The President is Missing.

ISBN: 9781617734670

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Ten of the Best #135

Well hello there. It's the fantabulous weekend.

Time to catch up on all we missed - and it was quite a week. All the Presidents at the UN, the testimony of Ford about Kavanaugh's behaviour, and some rants, followed by some great music.

Hope you find something you missed, or wanted to come back to. You know what to do - click on the pics for the stories, and come back for the rest, keep scrolling if you've seen it all before.




The United Nations laughs at Trump - here's the moment. And he was late. In NYC - if anyone should know how long the traffic takes, it's him. Unacceptable.

And then my favourite Prime Minister - Jacinda Ardern from New Zealand (here's why she's so awesome) explains to Steven Colbert why the UN laughed at Trump.

Bring Me Back by B.A. Paris

When you're having a bit of a binge on mystery/ thriller books, it doesn't really matter, right? The plot can be iffy, the characters not so great, there can be lots of suspension of belief, and as long as there is figuring out to do, you'll keep reading until the end.

Wrong.

And in this case, more so because B.A. Paris's previous novels - Behind Closed Doors and The Breakdown were actually quite good.

In this one, Finn and Layla, madly in love, holiday in France and stop at a restroom/gas station. Layla disappears and is not seen for years. It's 12 years on, when Finn is planning to remarry, and the little Russian dolls start arriving. Which is a Layla trademark, and definitely a message, and some sort of ominous warning.

I can't work out whether it was the characters - I'm usually quite forgiving, and like most characters - even the villains, or the plot, but this was just too much for me to swallow. Finn was so stupid at times, Ellen, just pathetic, and the hurried reveal-all ending felt too contrived and rushed and unreal.

It's like an all-day hike. That first niggle - hmm, not sure about that, coincides with the first time you need to stop and take a breath; the second - you pause for longer, and wonder - is this up to standard? by the time you've been climbing a while, you feel like you could take a break the rest of the day and it wouldn't be enough. I so nearly gave up. But the pace of the book was good, and I'm just sorry that there wasn't a view at the end that made up for persevering through all the questions.

Mediocre.

2 stars

ISBN: 9780008244873

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Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter

You know when a book is so eagerly awaited in your household that, on the day, on the way back from the local bookstore, when your husband sends you a text message "Did you know the new Karin Slaughter is out?" and you send one back "Yes I do, because I've already bought it", it's a Very Good Day. Seriously, because I'd forgotten it was coming out, and when I saw it, I didn't hesitate. It was done.

And boy am I glad. Slaughter gets better and better.

This one's about a mother and daughter - Laura and Andy. You know when you think you know everything about your mother, but you haven't even scratched the surface. And you know your daughter's clever and brave, but you don't want her to have even more opportunity to prove it; and then you find yourself giving her all sorts of tips and tricks to assist with survival. Yes, survival.

It starts with violence in a mall. Normal, everyday violence, if you know what I mean, until Andy thinks a little harder about it, and realises that her mom may have a little baggage from somewhere. This quickly escalates into both being questioned by police, followed, and running for their lives. And in order to know where to run, all sorts of truths must be confronted. The history is also intense - life was so different a generation ago, for women in particular.

Karin Slaughter is one of my very favourite authors, and she has outdone herself in this one. We adore Will Trent and Sara Linton, and we can't wait another year to get that next instalment, but then we read this, and Cop Town and The Good Daughter and Pretty Girls, and we discover that actually, we really can wait, after all. And we really couldn't, before.

I loved the pace, the tension, the characters, the plot, the drama, the everything.

5 Scintillating stars.

ISBN:9780062430298 

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Broken Ground by Val McDermid

"The slap of spades in dense peat was an unmistakable sound. They slipped in and out of rhythm:overlapping, separating, cascading, then coming together again, much like the men's heavy breathing."

A body? Almost definitely, I thought. But it's not. And if I gave you a thousand guesses, I doubt you'd guess what they're burying in peat (unless you've read the book).

Back at the office, DCI Karen Pirie has a new boss. You'd think, since she's a woman, life would be better for Karen, but no - the DCI and DC Jason "The Mint" Murray have DS Gerry McCartney foisted upon them, ostensibly to spy and report to Ann Markie (Dog Biscuit). Their Historic Case Unit investigates cases younger than 70 years, but "cold" in terms of evidence. Meanwhile, Karen's friend, River, a forensic anthropologist gets the peat mystery.

Karen and Jason must navigate the bad politics, blurry lines drawn between cases, while they cannot escape the feeling that one bad move will have them blown up and out of jobs.

Val McDermid weaves an imaginative plot, including Highland games, a real highlander, and ties to spy-training units in WWII.

I thoroughly enjoyed the pace, the tension, the detail and the resolution, even though it did come a little suddenly.

4 stars

ISBN: 9781408709351

You may also enjoy The Punishment She Deserves by Elizabeth George, or Snap, by Belinda Bauer.

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Ten of the Best #134

Hey people - it's Saturday. Time for the Ten, or eleven or twelve best clips and articles from my social media feeds this week. Have fun.

This interpretative dance clip won for me this week. David Armand must have rehearsed so hard. I'm surprised they didn't interrupt him with a guess ten seconds into the song, but very glad they didn't. I can't stop watching it. There are more similar clips on Youtube, BTW. I know what I'm doing later.

A little history and backstory behind the Booker prize decisions over the years fascinated me - click the comment by the judges for the story from The Guardian. 

And in the BBC short story competition - judged blind - guess what happened?

Friday Books - Broken Ground

Welcome to BookBeginnings and Friday56 -where we share books on Fridays. It's a great way to start the weekend.

Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader.

 Here's the beginning of the book I'm featuring today.

The slap of spades in dense peat was an unmistakable sound. They slipped in and out of rhythm:overlapping, separating, cascading, then coming together again, much like the men's heavy breathing.

So what do you think the men are doing? My first thought was digging a grave. But they're not, although this book has at least one body in peat. It's Val McDermid's latest, featuring Karen Pirie, and so far, it's great.

At Freda's Voice, you'll find the Friday56, where the excerpt comes from page 56 or 56% in your Kindle.

Here's an excerpt from page 56 of Broken Ground by Val McDermid.

She cut the music and rang the number of her best friend. She thought it was going to shunt straight through to voicemail, but at the last second, Karen Pirie's voice filled the car. "Hey River, how's tricks?" It sounded like they were doing the same thing, driving on a fast road at speed.

How often does that happen? River is listening to Amy Winehouse belt out Valerie, and Karen has Chris Rea, Road to Hell playing. Both are driving on the motorway, not far from one another, as it happens.

What are you reading this weekend? I'd love to visit your blog and check it out.

The Craftsman by Sharon Bolton

It's a brave move when an award-winning author changes direction in the writing of her novels. We're quite a fussy bunch, that way - not too much the same - it becomes formulaic, and not too different - you will lose your audience. You can imagine the discussions with the publishers.

And that's exactly why Sharon Bolton changed publishers to write this one. She grew up in Lancashire, was raised on the legend of the Pendle witch trials. (Sheds some light on how she's able to make all her novels so dark and twisty.) According to the  Pendle Witch website (that's a few hours of your morning gone now!)  [the witches] were executed at Lancaster on the 20th of August, 1612, for having bewitched to death 'by devilish practices and hellish means' no fewer than sixteen inhabitants of the Forest of Pendle.

But what else is this about? Well, Florence Lovelady, in 1999, together with 15 year old Ben, her son, returns to Sabden for the funeral of Larry Glassbrook, a man she helped convict 30 years ago, when she was a young detective and he confessed to burying children alive - he was the undertaker after all - together with clay effigies. Told in both Florence's revisiting of the places she detected in the 1960s, and her memories (sometimes dual timelines annoy - but here they flow together like tributaries of a river), we meet the local DC Tom Devins, the sexton, Dwane, Larry's wife and children, and Avril and Daphne, who run the local coven.

Evidenced by an average rating of 4.23 stars on Goodreads, and countless reviews saying 'I don't read witchy stuff, but I'd read anything Sharon Bolton writes', this is already a resounding success. I agree. It's creepy and menacing, the stakes are stupendous, and added to the voices of the ghosts that cry out for justice from the graves, is the young Florence (Flossie) in a tough world where women's voices are never heard, trying to do a great job despite the prejudice and sexism rife in the force.

In a word, this is brave.

It worked for me. If you 'don't read witches', you may want to start with this one. She doesn't write witches either, but hell, she can.

ISBN: 9781409174110

You may also enjoy Sharon's first novel, Sacrifice, or Dead Scared, or what about Little Black Lies, Daisy in Chains, or Dead Woman Walking?

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