Category Archives: Book Reviews

Review: Iris Johansen & Roy Johansen – The Naked Eye

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The Naked Eye
Iris Johansen & Roy Johansen

Colby should be safely dead, but Kendra can’t shake the conviction that the guesome serial killer is just biding his time hidden somewhere. Drawn to murder scene after murder scene, it seems like Kendra might be too close this time to avoid being pulled into the scandal surrounding her work. How can she protect everyone?

23014581Kendra! I love you! I love you every time I read you. You’re plucky, irritating, and yet becoming more human all the time. I do wish you weren’t so stubborn, you should know that your friends will go first, but ah well. Everyone has their blind spots right? [How punny!]

The novel is going to catch you, pull you in, and keep you reading all night long. Or all work day long if you are guilty old me. The plot introduces a couple more characters of direct interest to the reader  so you don’t get too bored with her rather uptight point of view.

Ooh, that ending! I can’t even begin to imagine what the next and final novel is going to be like. The first three have been linked (Close Your Eyes, Sight Unseen) but the next one has got to have something new in it…

Even just in returning to the first page to check the publication date lead me to want to reread the first chapter. Guilty confession here, I did reread that little bit. Just so I could love her again. So this will be 5 stars, and maybe I should go back and re-star the others…

5star

Macmillan Australia | September 2016 | $9.99 AU | ebook

Review: Peter James – Love You Dead

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Love You Dead
Peter James

There is a Black Widow on the loose – having first turned to plastic surgery to make her beautiful, all that remains for Jodie Danforth to make herself rich by marrying a rich man. She isn’t all that excited about remaining married though – and she kills them off almost as fast as she gets married.

27993438There is no need to have read the 11 books in the Roy Grace series before this. Other reviewers have complained that it took ages for the Detective to enter the story – I didn’t miss this because I didn’t know what to expect of him. I actually loved being in the mind of the ‘Black Widow’ and the other criminals.

I liked the criminals. I perhaps liked them more than the Detective himself! I was excited to get inside their thoughts and experience things. I actually sympathised with the petty house thief the most and wished he could have gotten straight before, well, dying.

If you have a thing for reptiles and interesting poisons, the thing you’re going to love about this novel is the reptile room. I would have loved to learn more about the poisons, but there are still limits on facts you can include in a novel, even one this large.

I really enjoyed reading this novel, and would have given it 5 stars, had it not been that I was reading a Iris & Roy Johansen crime novel with my favourite heroine Kendra at the same time. All in all, this was ‘just’ another crime novel, albeit a very well written and researched one. I’m certainly not going to turn down other novels by Peter James!

4star

Pan Macmillan | 26 July 2016 | AU $29.99 | Paperback

Review Update: 7 December 2021 – Why yes, I did enjoy this a second time around! It still skips between perspectives a bit too much for my liking, but I felt like I could see the net closing in! And again, I’m still fascinated by the poisons, and wish I had learnt more about them.

Review: Josephine Angelini – Firewalker

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Firewalker
Witches Do Not Die Quietly
Josephine Angelini

Lily survived fueling her army but is left covered with burns back in her own world with only one mechanic to save her. Good thing that mechanic is Rowan, and he knows how to deal with her not-so-crazy-after-all mother and her supportive sister. When others in her original world are drawn to her for her power, Lily must make a very difficult decision to save her own life and theirs.

25394030Lily is very… cold. I found it difficult to empathise with her because she seemed unchanged by deaths she had caused. Is it simply a side effect of being a witch? Or is it something else about her character that makes her too much like Lillian. They are the same person after all. I don’t think it was all about Lillian manipulating Lily, much as Rowan wanted to blame her.

Carrick, you are wonderfully twisted and I could have heard more from you. Maybe I’m slowly becoming a convert to multiple points of view in a novel… No, not really. It’s just that I needed more than just what I got from Lily to see what the ‘bad guys’ were doing.

I wished that Samantha had been able to find another Rowan in her own world. I wanted to know what had gone on there. Additionally, I wanted to know what had happened to Juliet and Samantha in the old-world. I can’t say too much here without giving away the novel, but you will understand once you read it yourself (I highly recommend it).

Gobble gobble. I couldn’t read this fast enough. And when I finished it, I really regretted reading these two novels without the third and final novel in the trilogy being published! I need it! I can’t wait for it to come and seal up all those odd occurrences for me. 5 stars from me.

5star

Pan Macmillan | 8 September 2015 | AU $16.99 | Paperback

Review: Isobelle Carmody – Scatterlings

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Scatterlings
Isobelle Carmody

Merlin wakes with no personal memory of who she is, just a jumble of memories that point to a world that seems long gone. A journey that should seem simple enough in order to find answers turns out to be fraught with dangers that have not yet been explored by anyone.

25956231There is no feeling of Merlin as a character as she begins simply as a construction of impersonal memories. The novel is plot based, and moves at a relatively fast pace once Merlin encounters other inhabitants of the desolate world. As long as you read this lightly without too many preconceived notions of how an apocalyptic novel should go, you will enjoy it.

Perhaps oddly, the female character on the front of the novel reminds me of Isobelle herself. It’s the free-flowing red hair and the slightly otherworldly skin. I also take issue with the male character that is Ford who should by rights be missing an eye.

Again and again in Carmody’s fiction we see her preoccupation with the many ways humans can destroy the earth. In Obernewtyn, we see what could happen after a complete nuclear disaster. In Alyzon Whitestarr, a sickness rises and contaminates people to create hatred. Here is the outcome of

Other reviewers have ripped this novel apart for simply reusing apocalyptic world atrocities and not bothering to make sense of the characters. They seem to forget that this is a relatively early novel and it is now more than 20 years old. I’d have to say it would have been a ground breaker novel in its time. People continue to put their heads in the sand about Global Warming and the mess that humanity will never be able to extract itself from.

I owned this novel for many years without reading it. After meeting Isobelle Carmody twice in the space of a month, I got this novel signed. Then it came to rest on my direct to-be-read pile as a personal choice novel. I feel strongly about all Isobelle Carmody books in giving them positive 5 star reviews. This one is no exception.

5star

Review: Fleur Ferris – Black

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Black
Fleur Ferris

Ebony is in her final year of highschool, and can’t wait to get out of the tiny town she’s been stuck in, especially since her three best friends died. A local cult thinks she’s cursed – and Ebony starts to worry about it too. When she goes on a date with the new cute kid, things begin to get out of control.

28052598I gobbled this up in an hour. I couldn’t put it down. The way Black interacted with her family, with Ed and with the others spoke strongly of her ability to keep on going. But Black, I’m sorry. Sometimes you just aren’t that bright. Sure, you are under a lot of stress, but seriously! Then again, you are only a teenager and teenagers tend to do things like that.

What more can I say about this novel? I felt like I read it almost too quickly to form any lasting impressions of it. In that way, perhaps it wasn’t as meaty as it should have been for a young adult novel, but it certainly fit the bill of a teenage fiction novel.

What I enjoyed most was that both Black and the reader didn’t know what was happening or why things were the way they were. Things were creepy and uncertain, and it was good! Along with the other crime novels I have read at the moment, I’ve got more than enough terrifying scenarios – and I’m proud to say that this novel held its own for being horrifying.

I’m giving this 4 healthy stars. If only it had a little more depth in terms of hints and clues for the reader to interpret, I would give it 5 stars.

4star

Penguin Random House | 27 June 2015 | AU $19.99 | Paperback

Review: JE Hunter – Tales of a Redheaded Sea-Witch

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Tales of a Redheaded Sea-Witch
J.E. Hunter

What Nessa knows won’t hurt her, right? When her father dies, she finds herself causing strange watery issues and then she is packed off to a deserted island with just her crazy grandmother for company.

25790128Nessa is an interesting character with her own mind, and she truly grows throughout the novel. It’s not just plot driven, there is definitely character development. Not to mention some very nice world-building of the island and its inhabitants.

Don’t you love the cover? It fits in perfectly with the novel, which is that the author has perfectly meshed a ‘normal novel’ into a fantasy world that I could believe exists only minutes away from me. At first I thought the use of a ‘real photograph’ was a bit tacky, then I realised that it was perfect. Have I said perfect enough times?

The title is a little posh for what the novel contained. ‘Tales’ puts in mind multiple stories, when really this is just one. It holds a traditional book plot graph for me, as in several small events keeping the reader’s interest with the novel, finishing with a breathtaking confrontation near the end.

I could have sworn I had made some notes about this novel, but in fact perhaps I only wrote them in my head. I’ve given it 4 strong stars though, because it’s an excellent teenage fiction novel that has the right touches of fantasy to keep a reader’s interest.

4star

Review: Josephine Angelini – Trial by Fire

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Trial by Fire
I Am A Witch and Witches Burn
Josephine Angelini

Lily suffers in her own world because she is allergic to things that no doctor can determine. After a party goes wrong, Lily finds herself literally in a whole different world, fighting for her own life in a different way.

26064760To an extent I felt like I didn’t know Lily, despite having things from her perspective the whole time. She is a crucible I suppose, so being empty is part of it. I did feel like her character progressed though. Rowan on the other hand felt very static, although his attitude to Lily changed. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

This novel is going to keep you off balance the whole time. Lily is never sure what she is doing, and so the reader doesn’t ever get the big picture either. At the same time though, you know that there will be some sort of major confrontation.

Don’t let this title mislead you. It’s referring to the Salem witch trials, which don’t play a major role in the actual timeline of the novel, but were important in the past. Although basically everything could have been important in the past because of the multiple timelines.

Thank goodness I had the next novel in the trilogy waiting for me to read it. There are so many lovely loose ends that need to be cleared up! Yes, the novel circles back and you could consider it finished, but there are so many things still to be discovered.

4 stars from me. I read it breathlessly and couldn’t put it down.

4star

Pan Macmillan | 10 November 2015 | AU $16.99 | Paperback

Review: Lola Lafon – The Little Communist Who Never Smiled

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The Little Communist Who Never Smiled
Lola Lafon

A merging of fiction and non-fiction to fill in the gaps, this novel follows the early life and career of Nadia Comaneci, a pioneering Romanian gymnast who broke the scoring system by receiving the first 10 in the history of gymnastics.

9781781255148The first half of the novel kept me enthralled, but this petered out in the second half. I was fascinated by the gymnastics, not by the politics. In the end, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to take away from the novel. Translated from French, I think this novel may have lost some of its charm.

At times I felt like the narrator and Nadia spent too much time fighting – and I was really confused about the intersection of the conversations they had. Were these actual conversations the author had with Nadia? Or something else? Nadia has also written an autobiography which I think could also be interesting.

Off the back of this novel, I watched Nadia’s performance at Montreal on Youtube. It is amazing the things they used to do on bars (they weren’t separated as they are now). My breath stopped every time it looked like she was going to fall. What many of the commenters on these videos were saying were that the tricks back then were easier than they are now. Having read this novel, I can confirm that is not the case. Many of the moves have changed, due to changing equipment or banning of particularly dangerous moves.

I’ll give this novel 3 stars – 4 stars for the first half, and 2 stars for the second half!

3star

Allen & Unwin | 27th July 2016 | AU $27.99 | Paperback

Review: Claudia Gray – A Thousand Pieces of You

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A Thousand Pieces of You
Claudia Grey

Maggie’s father has just died, and the culprit has run off – into an alternative dimension no less. With the help of another student, Maggie forces her own way across dimensions in a hunt for him. Little does Maggie know that things will always be more complicated than they seem.

20969698I liked the realistic imagining of the different time periods. Phew, parallel worlds went completely nutty! There are so many ways for people to die, and then be refound. Maggie in particular gets to ‘enjoy’ this particular feeling, which is pretty crazy!

Now, I read part of this, and then put it down again. I just wasn’t in the mood of it I guess. It’s promised that this will have an ‘epic love affair that feels both dangerous and inevitable’, but I didn’t feel it. It wasn’t epic at all! Yes yes, you might be falling for two guys at the same time, and yes, you might have gotten confused about who is who and who might be real.

You will not expect the ending. You will not expect most of the action. You may feel lost and confused at times. That is ok. Maggie feels the same way, and since you are seeing things from her point of view it’s to be expected.

I didn’t feel anything in particular after having read it, which is a bad sign. It took a while to warm up, and then I felt like I wanted some other perspectives to work with (very strangely for me, I normally hate other perspectives).

If you want a novel with time travel, please look at The Square Root of Summer. That was the last time bender I read, and it had a great storyline that kept me consistently reading.

3star

Review: Sarah Mlynowski – Think Twice

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Think Twice
Sarah Mlynowski

After a homeroom goes for flu shots, they develop a group mind, capable of reading people’s minds in just a glance at their unprotected eyes. When the first one of them loses their talent, there is a panic to maintain those that are left. Some people are happy to be free, while others dread it.

28241823This novel’s perspective can be a little off-putting before you get used to it. It’s written as ‘we’, which progressively gets to be a smaller ‘we’ as the book goes on and more of them lose their powers.

I didn’t read the first book in the series, but I think I would have really enjoyed it. ESP? Yes please! This one is as humorous as I would expect the first one to be. Basically they start trying to keep their abilities, and in doing so develop a whole range of side effects!

This is light teenage fiction, and I’d probably recommend it for girls, simply because to me the male characters’ voices seemed to be drowned out by others, particularly Tess and Polly/Pi.

This is another novel I left for too long without reviewing. Luckily I put how many stars I thought it was worth when I originally made this draft, so I must have thought it had some really good points then to give it 4 stars!

4star