2023 - Book Challenge - Second thread

Book 81 The End of Us by Olivia Kiernan - I thoroughly enjoyed this book and couldn't put it down. Had to shelve all the chores and lie on the sofa to finish it!!

The story is of Myles and Lana living on a gorgeous new housing development in a very expensive house they can only just afford. Myles loses a lot of money in a bad investment but is afraid to tell his wife, and when he eventually does, she goes ballistic. They will lose everything.

Gabriel and Holly move in nextdoor and they become friends. After a lot of drinks one evening, Myles and Lana hint at their money worries and a solution is put forward, partly as a joke..... only it's not !!

Lots of twists and turns..... an un-put-downable book. I shall definitely look for others by this author.

#60 Tales From The Folly Ben Aaronovitch.
A collection of short stories about some of the characters in the author's very successful Rivers Of London series. Good but you do need to be familiar with the world of Rivers.
#61 The Rise Ian Rankin.
A short story/novella about a murder at an exclusive high rise apartment building. This was a freebie I received as part of Amazon Prime. Enjoyable.

Have just read book 131, Dust to Dust, by Tami Hoag. I really enjoyed it.

TerriBull I have read The Four Winds and it was a real eye-opener. It's definitely a book that stays with you.

I think you would enjoy Mudbound by Hilary Jordan.

I have just finished Other Women by Emma Flint and it is a page-turner. I was swept up into this tale that starts as a love story set in the early 1920s and then becomes something much darker (don't want to give any spoilers). It is thought-provoking and compelling and evocative. I had to drop everything in order to finish it this afternoon! I've decided to buy it for my daughter for Xmas.

61 Marple - various authors

A collection of short stories by twelve writers endeavouring to capture Agatha Christie's style in a reinvention of her Miss Marple. I don't really know why this has become a thing, reinventing bygone authors, in this instance the brief is all too brief! in spite of having top crime writers, most notably Val McDermid and Elly Griffiths, to try and encapsulate a murder/who done it and the essence of Christie's unique Miss Marple in 30 pages is too much of an ask. I'm not a fan of short stories per se and these didn't work for me possibly if they were longer the individual writers would have had more scope to capture the reader, Anthony Horowitz does a pretty good Poirot pastiche in his Moonflower Murders in that sense. This book, which was a Christmas present from maybe last year, is pretty woeful and will be finding its way down to my nearest charity shop.

62 The Four Winds - Kristin Hannah

I'd never read any of her stuff before, at a wedding reception, meeting up with a friend of a friend who works at PanMacmillan we fell into a discussion about the books they publish and she said "you should try Kristin Hannah, I'll send you some".

Never judge a book by its cover! in other words pastel shades don't always equate to lightweight romances, not that there is anything wrong with those, sometimes I'm in the mood for that type of book. I picked up The Four Winds thinking that possibly it was of that genre Wrong! a tough and unrelentingly gritty account of 1930s dust bowl farmers set against the harshest of times. I thought I knew the bare bones of America's Great Depression, but had no idea quite how bad it was! This is a story of Elsa Martinelli a girl from a reasonably affluent middle class Texas family who finds herself pregnant by the son of an immigrant Italian family who came to America with nothing and managed, through very hard times to buy their own farm and achieve a reasonable but not affluent standard of living through sheer hard work. Disowned by her own family she marries Raffaello and moves to his family's home to raise their child. Through sheer hard work Elsa manages to ingratiate herself to his family and in time they come to love her.

A perfect storm of The crash of '29, bank foreclosures, followed by droughts, dust storms, in one instance as much soil thrown up as the amount dug out in the construction of the Panama Canal conspire to make life untenable for so many who lived in the American plains. Elsa's husband known as Rafe is a dreamer, who hates the life of a beleaguered farmer and eventually takes off, leaving Elsa their two children and parents in law to eek out an existence. When her young son becomes so ill through dust in his lungs and the advice of the hospital doctor is to leave if she wants to save his life, she has no choice but to follow those instructions. The parents in law opt to stay so she sets out, with the children in the old jalopy with a meagre amount of money, food and basic provisions for the 1000 mile trek west to California. The journey is not without its hazards and, especially as they approach their final leg passing through the Mojave Desert on a wing and a prayer hoping that the old jalopy won't give out on them, seeing so many abandoned wrecks by the side of the road, knowing that would probably be a certain death for them too!

When they reach California, it soon becomes apparent this is not the land of milk and honey of their dreams, there are no houses to rent for the mass migrants of the dust bowl states. Their only option is to set up in tent city, queue for back breaking work picking cotton for susbsistence level money. The resistance to unionisation at that time in America was appalling! Again the elements work against them when their makeshift home is washed away. Although initially life appears to take an up turn when they are offered a small timbered structure in one of the encampments for cotton pickers, but like everything it comes at a price, they are paid in tokens, not money, which can only be traded at a very overpriced shop on site and then 10% is deducted for that trade in. The shop never accepts money only credit, credit which their wages never cover so in effect they become indentured. This is poverty on a Dickensian level, with all the accompanying horrors of water borne diseases that go with poor sanitation. Kirsten Hannah, I imagine wrote the book with a nod to much in the now, the fecklessness of banks,the greed of big business, the discontent of the native Californians being the recipients of the mass migration and their unwelcoming attitude in their demonisation of the incomers, just how over supply of wave upon wave of migrant labour suppresses wages to a pittance, the phenomenon of extreme weather and how ruinous that was for crops in particular, although it was thought that some of the problem was caused by bad farming practices. When discussing the contents of the book with my husband he said "ah well you should read John Steinbeck's, The Grapes of Wrath" he still has his copy so I probably will, on Googling that book, which is no doubt the definitive account of that awful era, and like Dickens who lifted the lid on the grinding poverty of London slums, so did Steinbeck on the itinerant Californian migrant's lot of the 1930s.

A standout book for me.

Just finished Book #80 The Trial by Rob Rinder.
I thought this might be interesting because Rob Rinder is a barrister and although his book is fiction, I thought he'd know what he's talking about.

And the book is quite good ... an easy read ... but somehow I expected more.

I`ve just finished book 130, If They Knew, by Sophie Flynn. It was OK, but not the best I`ve read.

Sara1954 I totally agree about The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley. It seemed silly at the start but I stuck with it hoping it would improve ... it didn't.

Book 52
Babysitter - Joyce Carol Oates
One of my favourite writers.
This book is set in a white, privileged American neighbourhood, Hannah, wife, mother, bored unappreciated, seeks thrills elsewhere.
This drags her into a world of cruelty and evil, her lover is a despicable human being, and yet she goes back.
There are a couple of other things going on, babysitter, named by the press for his kidnapping and murdering of children, is there a connection?
Joyce Carol Oates writes so well about dysfunctional America, enjoyed it.

Book 53
The Paris Apartment - Lucy Foley
The last book of Lucy Foleys I read, I decided would be the last, and yet here I am reading another one.
This one will definitely be the last, didn’t enjoy it at all.
Jess, car crash of a young woman, goes to Paris to stay with her half brother, but when she arrives, he seems to have disappeared.
No one is who you think they are, every character is really unlikeable, it’s all a bit far fetched and silly.
Is Ben alive or dead? Honestly by the end I couldn’t have cared less.

I may be gone a while now, I’m about to start The Running Grave.

92-Possession-Peter James. This stand alone story surprised me , as it was so different from his Detective Grace books. It was a ghost story that was a bit spooky. Alex is devastated when her son is killed in a car accident, but is scared when he keeps appearing in her home, but not in a comforting way. She turns to a medium and then the church with the hope of understanding what is happening. A bit unsettling to read but unputdownable!

Followed that with book 129, Listen to Me, by Tess Gerritsen, enjoyed it.

Thank you for the good wishes. I`ve just finished book 128, The Mirror Man, by Lars Kepler. It`s translated from the original Swedish, I don`t always like Scandi noir books, but enjoyed this one.

#59 The Boys from Biloxi John Grisham.
Two immigrant families, fathers and sons, who are on opposite sides of the law. The two sons are childhood friends but they move in different directions as teens. One follows his father into the legal profession and the other his father into crime and vice. Very good read.

Ooops! that should read Dead Water.

91-Dark Water-Ann Cleeves. This follows on from Blue lightning, where Jimmy's fiancee was murdered, so I was keen to read it. Detective Perez hasn't gone back to work as he feels guilty about Fran's death, but when a body is found in an empty boat he is encouraged to help with the investigation. I've read several of the Shetland stories in the order they were written and I am beginning to warm to the regular characters and am looking forward to the next one. Which is strange as I didn't warm to the tv series at all.

Wishing you a good convalescence, Hellogirl. Welcome back.

Hellogirl1 I hope you soon feel better.

I agree TerriBull - life's too short.
So many wonderful books and so little time

1summer

Only on book 21 but it’s Murder in the Family by Cara Hunter.
Struggling with the format it’s written as a transcript to a murder mystery documentary television programme.
Has anyone else read this, I will keep going- never give up on books but hoping I get into it.

I read it Isummer, I'd only previously read her first book which I didn't particularly like. I did however really like Murder in the Family, I didn't struggle with the format, Janice Hallet another crime writer always sets out her narratives through transcripts and emails, different! possibly not for everybodyl. Honestly, if you really don't like it, maybe bin it! life's too short for books that don't do anything for us, having said that I often ignore my own advice and persevere with something that I find quite boring, but always on eventually finishing, it wish I hadn't bothered..

Only on book 21 but it’s Murder in the Family by Cara Hunter.
Struggling with the format it’s written as a transcript to a murder mystery documentary television programme.
Has anyone else read this, I will keep going- never give up on books but hoping I get into it.

#79 Trust by Chris Hammer

I thought it was a follow-on book from Scrublands which I thoroughly enjoyed, but unfortunately there's a book in between the 2 which I have missed, so there were parts of Trust which were harder to follow, plus it contained too much information on financial trading and fraud which didn't interest me.

I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as Scrublands

Welcome back Hello Girl and I wish you a speedy recovery, it's good to see you posting again, I did wonder where you were being such a prolific poster here.

It's lovely to see you again, Hellogirl1. I hope you are feeling better. I cannot think of anything better than reading for convalescence.

Due to a few weeks in hospital, I let my list lapse, but did make a note of all that I read, so here goes,
Book 108, The Match, by Harlan Coben, 109, Notes on an Execution, by Danya Kukafka, 110, Local Gone Missing, by Fiona Barton, 111, A Litter of Bones, by J.D.Kirk, 112, The Killing Code, by J.D.Kirk, 113, Atom Bomb Angel, by Peter James, 114, The Whispers, by Heidi Perks, 115, Take Your Breath Away, by Linwood Barclay, 116, Cold, Cold Bones, by Kathy Reichs, 117, The Miner`s Girl, by Maggie Hope, 118, Until the Darkness Comes, by Kevin Brooks, 119, Baby Doll, by Hollie Overton, 120, Ahead of the Game, by J.D.Kirk, 121, An Isolated Incident, J.D.Kirk, 122, Colder Than the Grave, J.D.Kirk,123, A Hill to Die On, by Ed James, 124, The Last Thing to Die, Ed James, 125, 23rd Midnight, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro, 126, Desert Star, by Michael Connelly, 127, Never Seen Again, by Paul Finch.
The reason for me reading so much is I can`t do much else at the moment.

Sparklefizz
That sounds really good. Scrublands, I’m going to put it on my wish list.