The Girl in the Red Coat
Kate Hamer
A moment’s lapse of attention and Beth’s daughter Carmel is swept away. As Beth tries to come to terms with her grief, Carmel is in her own story surrounded with adults who don’t care about her.
Carmel is so incredibly dumb. For an 8-year old, hasn’t she been taught about going off with strangers? Even if they do profess to be related, didn’t she ever know how to call other people? Or remember her own phone number? Doesn’t she know how to call the police? Why didn’t she ask to go to the funeral? Ugh. I couldn’t love her.
I felt more sorry for Beth and felt that she was more realistically portrayed. Unfortunately there wasn’t very much of her story, and no depth. How can anyone understand a mother’s grief? Why does she have to move on?
The supernatural in this novel happened too late for me to save it. And really, it just proved the religious righteousness, and then in the end nothing more was made of it. If you read this novel, you’ll understand – but I don’t recommend you read it at all.
I have no complaints about the language, or the world building (although since it is set in what I would call regular times that’s not a big problem). The pacing of this novel was its undoing. Sooooo slow. I tried to keep puttering along with reading it, but nothing significant occurred that anchored me into the reading.
I confess, I did not finish this novel. I have so many other good things to read, I couldn’t force myself to finish it. I got about half-way in, stopped reading for a couple of days, tried to get back into it, and then just read the last three chapters. I can fairly safely say that I didn’t miss anything, since it took a good long many years to get through the rest of the ‘trials and tribulations’.
The changes between the different perspectives were clear between adults and children, but the two kids, Jesper and Carina, their voices weren’t well defined. I could read one, and because what they saw overlapped, I got confused about how many things had happened.
Thomas and Charlotte are nicely characterised, and the novel pretty much jump starts itself. I felt like I was feeling every step in the wood, and every single thing Thomas was feeling/thinking/saying. There was a hint of sexual humour, but also thoughtfulness and kindness in there. There was just a few things that bothered me…
The characters really really get into their strides here. And well they should, as this novel neatly wraps up the first two. I don’t know how I felt about the ending. It was a little neat, but also open ended. I loved Adolin’s final gesture – finally! Get on it boy! Kal, hmm, don’t know what I think about you. Sometimes you are just so dumb, and sometimes you are brilliant.
Ellis is a tortured soul who is only trumped by Vada’s nightmares. Vada is the protagonist, and we see everything from her perspective. What wasn’t obvious to me was why Ellis pulled away after the accident. The blurb is misleading for sure. Just ignore the comments there, and jump into the novel.
This is a thriller, and it’s a bloody good one! I absolutely loved this book. 
This novel is told from a number of perspectives, and this usually urks me. I still felt irritated with this, because really, it could have been written mostly (particularly Shallan’s) in seperate parts. I didn’t have trouble keeping track of the story threads, but I did feel myself rushing through certain sections to get to the next mention of my favourite characters (mainly Kaladin).
It could be quite a heavy book but Lal makes an effort to keep the action moving and to always have a bit of humour. If not, there was a profound insight being shared, or expanded upon. I particularly enjoyed the notes from her brother’s journal.
So we’ve got a couple of kids are in high school and they all manage to intertwine into facing off the guys that are in charge of Liquidator. You see more and more characters being added to the visible ‘cast’, and yet you aren’t overwhelmed because the story is moving too quickly for that to happen!
For the first chapter of George you don’t actually know what’s happening in the story. George could be a girl or a boy’s name. Instinctively the problem is thatÂ