Tag: Books

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Review: Someone We Know

Rating: 4 Stars

Shari Lapena is an author I can always rely on to deliver the goods. Her book, The Couple Next Door, is one that I recommend to anyone who wants to read thrillers. While her other books are not as highly recommended, Someone We Know comes quite close. The twists and turns leave the reader breathless, and the ending makes them gasp. Just the way it always does with good thrillers.

The story starts with a teenager who has been breaking and entering into several homes in his suburban neighborhood in upstate New York. His intention is not of stealing or causing harm. All he wants is to hack a few computers and boast about it to one of his friends. However, things start to go downhill once his parents find out what he has been up to.

At the same time, a woman down his street is murdered quite gruesomely. The ensuing investigation is causing all sorts of problems in the neighborhood. When a couple of homeowners receive anonymous letters telling them that their houses have been broken into, the whole neighborhood becomes a hotbed of intrigue and secrets. Now the police is having trouble trying to separate facts from lies and omissions.

Lapena weaves a complicated web of truths, half-truths and outright lies, that make it difficult to guess who is guilty of what. It seems that in this neighborhood, no one is innocent.

I will also admit that having a teenager and a tween myself, I couldn’t help but empathize with Olivia Sharpe. There really is no manual on how to raise kids. Once they enter their teens, you can only hope that what you have given them is enough for them to come out unscathed on the other side.

I can also sympathize with Raleigh. It’s not easy to walk the boring path when everyone around you is having fun falling off it. Peer pressure has made kids do worse in real life. Also, you have to give the poor kid some leeway. After all, he has to live with that name all his life!

Overall, Someone We Know is a good thriller that made me glad I took out the time to read it.

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Review: Th1rt3en

Rating: 3.75 Stars

I love police procedurals and courtroom dramas if they’re crisp and don’t go into boring details. Thirteen by Steve Cavanagh is one such book. The pace is fast, and it shows both perspectives. This means no over-explaining and unnecessary detail. After I finished reading, I found out that this is the fourth book in a series, but it worked as a stand alone for me.

A high profile murder case is about to go on trial. The defense thinks the accused is innocent of the crime; the evidence against the accused is overwhelming. The real killer will go to any length to make sure the accused is found guilty.

The defense believes that the police is trying to frame their famous client, so they hire Eddie Flynn, a con-man turned lawyer, to go after the police department, thus taking the fall in case things didn’t work out.

The real killer has his own plans of infiltrating the jury and making sure that nothing stands in his way. He will make sure that the jury hands out a “guilty” verdict.

What everyone underestimates, is Eddie Flynn himself. When things start getting out of hand, Eddie decides that it’s up to him to prove that that his client had nothing to do with the crime, rather he was the actual victim of a very dangerous serial killer.

The action and suspense are quite adrenalin pumping, and once you really get into the book, Thirteen is hard to put it down. Steve Cavanagh spins a fast paced tale of murder, intrigue, subterfuge and deception. A true thriller in every sense. I think it might be a good idea to check out the rest of this series.

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Review: The Family Next Door

Rating: 3.5 Stars

The Family Next Door by Fiona Cummins is an above average thriller which takes some time to establish itself, but redeems itself as it proceeds. It tells the story of a dilapidated, quiet neighborhood shaken by a string of killings that have been baffling the police. The serial killer behind these murders has been named The Doll Maker by the press. No one has any clue about the killer or his motives.

The first 20% of the book was almost painful to read, and it looked like the book will be impossible to finish. Things get interesting, however, when the identity of the latest victim is revealed. At this point, the story starts to move forward at a better pace.

A new family moves to 25 The Avenue on the day that another body is discovered in the nearby woods. The Lockwoods are caught up in their own family drama and don’t have the luxury of passing up the opportunity to move to The Avenue. They have no choice but to ignore it’s poor upkeep and the horror surrounding it. They are ready to start afresh, willing to overlook the matter of the serial killings going on in the neighbourhood. However, they will soon realize that not all is as it seems on this street. Everyone has a secret that they are willing to protect at all cost.

Wildeve Stanton is a Detective Sergeant with the Essex Police, a part of the team trying to solve the murders. Then, one morning the whole case takes a turn that makes it very personal for Wildeve. Now, she will stop at nothing to find out who The Doll Maker is, and what is the motivation behind all these senseless and gory murders.

Suddenly, everyone is in everyone else’s way, and things start getting out of hand. It is just a matter of time before the killer strikes again. The police look like they will be too late to do anything about it, as usual.

I managed to figure it all out at the 77% mark, and had to see how it all pans out, but I think avid thriller fans will be able to figure this one out earlier than I did. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t read the book. The Family Next Door is enjoyable, if a bit explicit and gory, and quite interesting once you get past the 20% mark.

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Review: The Last House Guest

Rating: 4 Stars

After complaining of not finding good thrillers, finally I managed to read something that interested me enough to finish reading in a few hours. The Last House Guest by Megan Miranda is gripping and unpredictable, and you know you cannot trust any of the characters.

Avery Greer works for the Lomans, who own rental property in her small town, Littleport, Maine, which is a tourist attraction during summers. After going through some tough times, Avery was given the opportunity to work with the Lomans because their daughter Sadie took a shine to Avery, and became her best friend. This friendship was only for the summer months when the Lomans relocated to Littleport. It was an unlikely friendship that sparked strange rumours, but had held strong for ten years.

Then one summer, as the season is drawing to a close, Sadie is found dead; her death ruled a suicide. A year later, Avery is still not over the incident and Sadie’s brother and a police detective are suspicious of her. As Avery stumbles into one problem after another, she realizes that the police were too quick to close the case, and there is a strong possibility that Sadie was murdered. Unfortunately, the closer she tries to get to the truth, the more it seems to implicate her for the murder.

The book is fast paced, with something new being revealed in every chapter, the narrative jumping back and forth between the two summers. The chain of events is such that you cannot trust anyone, not even the narrator herself, who seems to reveal something new in her story every time you think you know what happened.

Though the real character of a town supposed to be dark and evil, never really comes through, I was relieved not to have to read through unlimited lines of prose dedicated to a town.

Overall, a good, interesting book after a long time.

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Review: The Travelling Cat Chronicles

Rating: 4.5 Stars

The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa is not the type of book that I read generally. I don’t know why I bought it, but I’m so glad I did, and that I made myself read it. The story of Nana and Satoru captures the beauty of Japan, and reaffirms your belief in selfless love, be it family, friends or man and animal.

Nana is a stray cat found and adopted by Satoru, and after five years living together, they’re now on a journey across Japan. Nana has no idea why they’re on this trip, or what is going on in Satoru’s mind, but he is content to be with his beloved human and travel the world with him.

As Nana and Satoru visit three of Satoru’s oldest friends, we gradually see the picture of Satoru’s life, and how it has been shaped by the people he has met along the way. In the midst of all this, we are also shown a picture of how beautiful and diverse Japan is. From big cities like Tokyo, to amazing places like Mount Fuji and Hokkaido, we see a Japan that is impossible to forget. As is the story of Nana and Satoru.

Even though you think you’re ready to read about what will eventually happen, it is still nearly impossible to stop your tears from flowing. I had thought this was a book for cat lovers, not people like me who have never owned a pet. Turns out, it is a story for everyone who has ever loved anyone. It is a story of love, friendship, companionship, family, and above all thankfulness.

A beautiful, beautiful book for everyone.

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Review: The Turn of The Key

Rating: 3.75 Stars

I will not call this an excellent book, but The Turn of The Key is my favourite one by Ruth Ware to date. I have found Ware to be a good writer who keeps the audience interested while giving the least surprising twists. This book is a bit different because it has more than one twists, and a couple of them are quite good too.

The book starts with a nanny imprisoned for murdering her charge, a little girl, writing to a well known lawyer about how it all came about, and how she is not the one guilty of murder. The book is in the form of a letter, where the nanny is writing about the whole nightmare experience in the first person.

Rowan came across the ad for a nanny by chance. She was intrigued by the ad as well as the unbelievable salary being offered for the post, and decided to apply for it. She expected to be rejected, so when she got the job she was determined to last longer than the other nannies who had ran away before her. Rumour was that the other girls all got spooked by the ghosts living in the house.

Rowan, who is practical and has no time for silly things like ghosts, thought that she was above all this nonsense. However, once she started working at Heatherbrae House, she couldn’t help but be scared by the unexplained things happening to her. The house itself was a technological miracle, with surveillance cameras and smart controls, which seemed to overwhelm her at all points. Add to that, the absence of her employers, and the presence of four girls of varying ages, three of whom were visibly antagonistic towards her, was enough to drive Rowan almost mad.

It didn’t help that Rowan herself was keeping some secrets that made her look quite guilty when they came to light. As she tries to set the record straight, you can’t help but wonder at what really did happen if she is telling the truth.

I admit the book was too boring in the beginning to keep me interested. It was only my determination to finish it that kept me reading on. However, as I read on, I found myself wanting to know how it all came about. I wasn’t expecting a scary book, or even for it to be too unexpected, so I was pleasantly surprised when I read the thrilling bits and was suitably spooked.

This was the first Ruth Ware book I read where the ending wasn’t neat or the matters resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. This just shows that she is getting better at thrills with each book.

A good book, if you can get past the first quarter of it.

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Review: Hijabistan

Rating: 4 Stars

Hijabistan by Sabyn Javeri is a collection of short stories about women, with a common thread of hijab running through all the stories. As a rule, I’m not one for short stories. They always leave me feeling like I missed the point. These short stories just sucked me in and left their mark. It is entirely possible that I might be biased towards this collection.

These stories speak to me personally because I have been through the struggle myself. This push and pull of wearing the hijab or taking it off has been a part of my life for most of last 15 years. Of course, it has never been as hard as it is for most of the protagonists in these stories, but I feel an affinity with most of them. There is no judgement about the garment itself here, just the people who use it as a weapon and those who let their views be coloured by it.

I liked almost all the stories in this collection, even those that might seem far-fetched to people who have no clue about how close to the truth they are. I will not talk about all the stories here, just my most favourite ones.

The Full Stop is about a young girl who gets her first period. It reads like a true story because it is the truth of millions of girls who are taught that menstruation is something to hide, something evil and disgusting. Girls are told that it is something to be ashamed of when they should be told that it is natural and something ordained by nature.

Only in London shows us a girl stuck between two cultures, not knowing which one to call hers. It is the dilemma faced by all immigrants, no matter where they come from. It is not easy to give up your old values and suddenly pick up new ones. When a person migrates to a new place, they inevitably become a mixture of the two, their country of origin, and their country of migration.

The Good Wife has to be my favourite story out of all. It is also the saddest. It tells us of a woman who covers herself because she wants to, who is not afraid of what others think of her, whose faith in her Creator is strong even if her husband’s is not. At the same time this woman loves her husband with everything in her and is not afraid to show her love as well. I was crying for that woman by the end of the story, and trying to make sense of our senseless world at the same time.

The last story, Coach Annie, is the sweetest and most upbeat story of the collection. I loved reading about Annie who has to wear the hijab at a tender age, yet she makes it her own, even when she is surrounded by men double her size. Annie makes me believe that women can do anything they put their minds to, regardless of how they choose to dress.

A great book about women and hijab that needs to be read with an open mind and a big heart.

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Review: The Guilty Wife

Rating: 3 Stars

The Guilty Wife by Elle Croft is the story of Betthany Reston, who loves her husband very much but is also having a secret affair. The affair has to remain absolutely secret because it’s not only Bethany who has a lot to lose. Her secret lover is married, and very famous. So, it is imperative that no one knows about them.

When her lover is murdered, following an argument with her, Bethany has to work very hard at hiding her grief from the world. She thinks she’s succeeding until she finds out that someone knows all her secrets. And, now they’re threatening to expose her as the killer. She knows she’s innocent, but there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. To prove herself innocent, Bethany must now find out who actually killed her lover.

The plot is interesting and the characters believable, except that the book gets increasingly boring as it goes on and on about Bethany’s quest to find the killer. Around the halfway mark, I just wanted to roll my eyes at Bethany and the determination of the writer to give her so many redeeming qualities to offset her audacity to conduct a secret affair!

There is no way to form any kind of opinion about the lover as he is only shown through the eyes of Bethany. The husband comes off as sort of loser in the beginning, and then more of a loser as the story progresses. The lawyer friend is like all lawyer friends in thousands of books that we have read. I began to suspect the killer quite early on in the book, and though I was suspicious of another character, I still bet on the one I first suspected. I was right.

It is unfortunate that we have had so many similar books about murders and mysteries, that there is hardly anything new to find anymore. I like books with twists and crazy endings, but it has to make some sort of sense at least. I would have been happier with the end if there hadn’t been an epilogue. The last chapter was enough to satisfy a thriller buff and maybe for someone to buy its filming rights. The epilogue completely spoiled the book for me, and that’s funny because the epilogue was what I had suspected from the beginning!

An average read that goes on for longer than it should.

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Review: The Death of Mrs. Westaway

Rating: 3.5 Stars

I realize that I’m a bit late to this party, but despite having bought this book back in July 2018, I only just got around to reading it. At first, it was the size that seemed too much to me, and then it was the fact that I wasn’t too impressed with Ruth Ware’s The Lying Game and didn’t want to be disappointed again.

The Death of Mrs. Westaway is more like Ware’s The Woman in Cabin 10, though. It is interesting, if predictable, and just fun to read. I mean fun for those who like light mysteries and thrillers.

Harriet “Hal” Westaway is a young Tarot card reader in Brighton, who has gotten into trouble with a loan shark. She is all alone in the world after her mother’s tragic death three years ago. When she gets a letter saying that she her grandmother has left her a bequest, Harriet knows that it’s not true. Her grandparents died more than 20 years ago, and she has no other living relatives that she knows of.

As the loan shark becomes more persistent, Hal decides to pretend to be the real Harriet Westaway, in order to get her hands on the bequest. It is only when she gets to the Cornish estate, that she realizes the pitfalls of the web that she is weaving. There seems to be someone who doesn’t want her around, and is willing to do anything to get rid of her.

Ruth Ware is not too much into suspense and thrills. I have understood that from her previous books. I was able to predict everything almost down to the last detail quite early on in the book. Nevertheless, it is quite gratifying to find that you were right about what will happen all along.

Harriet is a likable character, as are almost all other characters in the book. For once, we see a family who with all their differences possess enough love to want to welcome a long lost relative into their midst. It is a nice change to read about good coming out of the most adverse circumstances, of love and acceptance growing from a childhood of hate and neglect.

I enjoyed reading this book, even though it is too tame and predictable to be a thriller.

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Review: Believe Me

Rating: 4 Stars

When I read J. P. Delaney’s The Girl Before, I thought it was good, except the last part which fell flat for me. I don’t have any such complaints with Believe Me. This is my kind of book, with enough twists and turns, and grey characters to make me happy. This is one of those books that I picked up at an airport, not because I wanted to read it, but because it’s a sin to not buy a book from the airport! I had no idea what it was, and I have never seen a single review for it. Once again, I was so happy to be taken by surprise.

Claire Wright is a British student, some people say an excellent actress, with a problem. She’s studying drama in New York on scholarship, but doesn’t have much money for anything else. She cannot work like other students because she doesn’t have a green card and is not allowed to work off-campus. The only way for her to make ends meet and pay the rent is to work for a law firm, acting like an easy pick up to gather evidence against philandering husbands. Even this stroke of luck seems to be running out as the firm decides to part ways with her.

And then, a client is murdered and her husband, who had been one of Claire’s target, is accused of the crime. The police want Claire to help them catch the killer, and Claire, backed into a corner, agrees. As she plays her part, she begins to fall for the suspected killer, Patrick Fogler, and it dawns on her that things might not be as straight forward as they seem.

With the backdrop of New York, Broadway, theater and drama school, this fast paced thriller goes from one high to another without losing momentum. As soon as you start believing in a character, they give you reason to doubt. Everything that you read seems like a deception. There are no innocents, yet you can’t figure out who’s guilty either. It was a pleasure reading this book, which I managed to finish in less than a day.

Recommended for all fans of thrillers.

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