Fiction

The Lily Bard Mysteries Omnibus Review

Janereads5 Comments
The Lily Bard Mysteries Omnibus by Charlaine Harris review
The Lily Bard Mysteries Omnibus by Charlaine Harris, ISBN 9780575096448, 935pp

For Christmas my husband gave me The Lily Bard Mysteries Omnibus (along with a whole stack of other books). This bumper bind-up includes five books by Charlaine Harris. For those of you who don’t know, Charlaine wrote the Sookie Stackhouse series of thirteen books which the TV series True Blood was based on. She’s also written a few more series.

The five Lily Bard books in this 935 page brick of a book include:

  1. Shakespeare’s Landlord
  2. Shakespeare’s Champion
  3. Shakespeare’s Christmas
  4. Shakespeare’s Trollop
  5. Shakespeare’s Counselor

These five stories revolve around Lily Bard, who is a plain speaking, tough woman in her thirties who runs a cleaning business. She lives in a sleepy little town named Shakespeare which is located in Arkansas. Lily always seems to get involved in the murders and mysteries that crop up in this small town. She is also the survivor of a brutal attack that left her scarred and in the news a few years ago and she came to Shakespeare for a fresh start. Continue reading →

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Review

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The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton review
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton, ISBN 9781408889510, 510pp

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle* by Stuart Turton is a book which defies classification. It’s uniqueness will have you puzzling out an unpredictable mystery and at the mercy of an unconventional plot. It’s a hybrid of a book which mixes a classic whodunnit with Groundhog Day, Downton Abbey and The Good Place.

This complicated mystery is set in a once great, but now moldering, manor named Blackheath House. Every night Evelyn Hardcastle is murdered at a party thrown by her parents. This happens every night at the same time. Each day Aiden Bishop, inhabiting the body of a different guest (host), has to try to figure out who the murderer is. He will finally be allowed to escape this ongoing time loop and leave Blackheath once he identifies the murderer. But he is not the only one tasked with solving the murder and other people are bent on stopping him by any means necessary. Continue reading →

Landline by Rainbow Rowell Review

Janereads5 Comments
Landline by Rainbow Rowell review
Landline by Rainbow Rowell, ISBN: 9781409152125, 320 pp

I devoured Landline by Rainbow Rowell over a 24 hour period but it left me with mixed feelings. Landline is about a TV writer, Georgie McCool, who is married to Neal and has two young daughters. When Georgie has to write a new pilot in the lead up to Christmas with her writing partner, her husband takes the kids to his mother’s place without her.

Georgie then can’t reach her husband on the phone. He’s not replying to any of her calls or texts. But then she manages to reach him with an old phone and landline from her childhood bedroom. The only problem is that she’s magically connected to a past version of Neal from years ago before they were married.

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Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng Review

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Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng review
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, ISBN 9780349134284, 320pp

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng is a book I’ve been meaning to read since reading Little Fires Everywhere by the same author at the start of 2018. It took me almost a year to finally buy this book. Once I started it, I couldn’t put it down.

This book is about the Lees, a Chinese American family living in a small Ohio town in the 1970s. The dad, James, is a Chinese American college professor who marries Marilyn, a white girl with ambitions of becoming a doctor. Getting pregnant with their first child halts Marilyn’s ambitions. They go on to have three children: Nath, Lydia and Hannah.

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Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty Review

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Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty review
Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty, ISBN 9780330427166, 376pp

I’ve been going through a mini Liane Moriarty reread phase. I read Three Wishes years ago but I couldn’t remember what happened. So it was nice to revisit this book again. Three Wishes is about the three Kettle sisters – Cat, Gemma and Lyn  – who also happen to be triplets. The book starts with the eyewitness accounts of bystanders who witness the triplets have a raucous dinner in a Sydney restaurant. The dinner ends with a violent argument and one sister throwing a fork at her pregnant sister, impaling her stomach. The fork thrower then passes out from the shock. Just like the bystanders, the reader has no idea what this is all about and which sister is the culprit. Continue reading →

Sheltering Rain by Jojo Moyes Review

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Sheltering Rain by Jojo Moyes review
Sheltering Rain by Jojo Moyes, ISBN 9780340960356, 500pp

My husband bought Sheltering Rain by Jojo Moyes for me from a second-hand bookstore online. It’s her very first novel and I had never heard of it before. I love Jojo Moyes books so I was excited to get stuck into this one.

Sheltering Rain tells the story of three women from the same family. There’s Joy who grew up in Hong Kong and meets her husband Edward, a naval officer, in the 1950s. We later meet her as an elderly woman who lives in Ireland with her husband and looks after horses. There’s Joy’s daughter, Kate, who lives in London with her daughter and is going through relationship problems. And there’s Kate’s daughter Sabine, who is fifteen-years-old and has a whole heap of attitude. She is sent for a short visit to see the grandparents she barely knows as her mother doesn’t have much of a relationship with Joy. Continue reading →

My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan Review

Janereads3 Comments
My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan book review
My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan, ISBN 97800062740649, 323pp

My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan tells the story of American Ella Durran who goes to Oxford to study on a Rhodes scholarship. It’s meant to be a short academic year stay to make her resume look great and to fulfill a childhood dream to study at Oxford. Even though she’s only twenty-four she is asked to help out on a political campaign back home in America where there’s a high chance the candidate could become the next president. So she’s studying at Oxford, helping in a political campaign and a bright future is mapped out for her when she gets back home. Continue reading →

Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty Review

Janereads6 Comments
Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty review
Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty, ISBN 9781743534922, 493pp

Liane Moriarty is an instant-buy author for me. As soon as she releases a book, I snap it up. It started with Big Little Lies a few years ago and then I bought all her backlist books on my kindle and read them all. I picked up her latest book Nine Perfect Strangers on its release date and finished it a few days later. It was an addictive page turner that I just couldn’t put down.

Nine Perfect Strangers is — like it’s title — about nine strangers who meet at ten-day long health retreat. They are all there for different reasons and bring with them plenty of emotional baggage. The reader comes along for the ride, learning things about each of the nine people along the way. Continue reading →