A(nother) Review: One of Us Is Lying by Karen M McManus

Here it is, the final book in the Thumping Good Read shortlist – One of Us Is Lying by Karen M McManus.

 

I already mentioned last week that this is one of my favourites, and as I sat down to write this post, I found myself grinning as I remembered it.

 

One of Us Is Lying is a novel about five students who all find themselves in detention. Some of them regulars in the detention room, some of them there for the first time, all of them denying having done any wrong-doing.

 

When one of the students suffers an allergic reaction and dies, it is seen to be a tragic accident. At least, at first. Simon runs – ran – an app detailing all the gossip at their school and soon the other four students from detention are all in the frame for his murder – with all of them keeping secrets that Simon was about to reveal.

 

There’s not a lot more I can say about the plot without giving too much away, but for me, this is the epitome of a book you can’t put down. I had to read on to find out what each of their secrets were and to try and work out ‘whodunnit’.

 

McManus makes it easy for us to read as well, the focus shifting between the four suspects, never lingering too long, so if there’s a character you don’t like as much as the others, there’ll be one that you do along any minute.

 

I love this kind of split narrative. Mostly because typically, I like all the characters but there’s one character, one story that I want to read more of.

 

A lot of people I know that have read this have likened it to The Breakfast Club – I’d love to agree, but I’ve never seen TBC so both you and I will have to take their word for it. But if that means anything to you, then it sounds like a good recommendation, doesn’t it?

 

For me it reminded me of other Young Adult novels by David Levithan and John Green. This was very much in that vein, so perfect for fans of both of those authors.

 

And there’s the thing. It’s branded and promoted as a Young Adult read.

 

Having handed this book out to a few different people, a couple of them have responded saying they hadn’t realised it was Young Adult – for them it was just a really good read (Thumping Good, perhaps).

 

I always worry that YA branding will put some people off of reading it, but I’ve come to realise I don’t care. It’s their loss, and actually if it helps young people who might not normally read find an accessible way into books, then that’s just fantastic.

 

But, if the only reason you’re not picking up this book is because you don’t read Young Adult, then take your hang-ups, pop them in a drawer and settle down with one of my favourite books of this year.

 

(Even though, it first came out last year…)

 

More importantly, other than being a really great read, I have a happy memory of it. Seeing the cover, thinking about writing this review has put a smile on my face. There are other books I have enjoyed that give me different feelings when I remember them (melancholy, tension, despair), but this is one of the few that makes me smile fondly.

 

One of Us Is Lying is available now from Penguin and is half price in all WHSmith High Street stores until Wednesday 18^thJuly.

 

The winner of Thumping Good Read will be announced on Thursday 19^thJuly

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A(nother) Review: The Other Woman by Sandie Jones

We’re on our penultimate book of the Thumping Good Read Award shortlist and we’re onto one of my favourites (Yes, ok I’ve said that before, but to be fair, they wouldn’t be on the list if I didn’t enjoy them!).

 

Before we get into The Other Woman – that didn’t come out quite the way I intended, but I’ll leave it there – I should let you know that there is only a day and a half left to vote for your favourite.

 

Head over to the WHSmith blog where you can find out more about the seven shortlisted titles – including the only one I’ve not featured yet One Of Us Is Lying (it’s another one of my favourites!). You have until the end of Friday 6^thJuly to vote for your favourite and help decide who will win the £10,000 prize.

 

But back toThe Other Woman– what’s it about? It’s not about a mistress as you might initially think. Instead, it’s about a mother-in-law. Pammie.

 

Pammie.

 

You can just tell by that name that she’s going to be difficult, and boy does she cause trouble.

 

It’s been a couple of month since I read The Other Woman and I can still remember her name. I read a lot of books, all of them with a lot of characters and a lot of names. The plots stay with me – for better or for worse – but you can tell when a character is well-written, because they linger in your mind for ages.

 

The other way you can tell a character is well described is when you talk about the book with someone else, and you both say the character reminded you of the same person. In this instance @LucyHine and I both said Pammie was Bridget Jones’ mother.

 

 

This might be all you need to know about her… but I’m going to tell you more. At least about the book.

 

Emily meets Adam and they instantly fall head over heels with each other. Things are going really well right up to the moment Adam takes her to meet his mother. This is where things start to take a turn.

 

Adam and Emily argue on the way to see Pammie, their first proper argument, but this is overshadowed by Pammie’s reaction to Emily. In public, she’s all smiles, but in private, she undermines Emily, starts playing games.

 

Emily starts to wonder if she’s imagining things, but it soon becomes clear that Pammie has taken a dislike to Emily, and is intent on doing anything to split her and Adam up. Not that Adam can see this.

 

The whole book is like a car crash, you can’t help but watch it, though you know how badly things are going to turn out.

 

The decline of Adam and Emily’s relationship is gradual, as an outsider, we can see it happening, in the same way that we sometimes look at our friends relationships and can see that it’s not working. But when you’re Emily, when you’re in the middle of the relationship, you just can’t see it.

 

The Other Woman is a compelling slice of relationship drama with an antagonist that is so vivid and ever-present that it’s hard to shake her months later. The only problem is that the character development of Pammie comes at the detriment to some of the other characters.

 

An example: Emily has a best friend whose sole function in this story is to be Emily’s friend, he has no life of his own, at least one that’s not explored – the few times we meet him, he’s a mouthpiece to Emily’s issues, we learn nothing about him – barring a few identifying clichés – and we skim over the conversation that’s not about Emily.

 

Generally, that’s ok, secondary characters are secondary for a reason, but the problem here is that because the story is told from Emily’s point of view, it colours her character and she comes across as self-centred and a little vacuous, which in turn hinders the amount of sympathy we’re being asked to direct to her.

 

But it’s a little gripe and is made up for entirely by a memorable villain and a brilliant, unexpected ending. This book ain’t going where you think it’s going.

 

The Other Woman is published by Pan and is available now as part of the Thumping Good Read award in WHSmith stores.

A(nother) Review: Here and Gone by Harlan Beck

For the last few weeks I’ve been talking about the Thumping Good Read award (pop over to the WHSmith blog for more details) and this week, we’re onto Book 5 – Here and Gone by Harlan Beck.

 

This was one of the first ones I read and one of my favourites of the whole bunch.

 

The story starts out with Audra driving across America with her two small children. It becomes clear that she is running from something, though we’re not exactly sure what. She is pulled over by a policeman on a deserted road, who writes her up for having her car too loaded up.

 

A routine investigation escalates and she soon finds herself jailed for possession with intent to supply, despite protesting that she didn’t know how the drugs got into her car. This is just the beginning of her nightmare, though.

 

Once jailed, she asks the police officer how her children are. He simply replies there were no children in the car when he pulled her over.

 

Audra flips.

 

As you would.

 

Soon, she’s accused of having done all sorts to her children and she must fight to prove her innocence. And her sanity.

 

From this moment, Here and Gone had me hooked. Audra found herself in this situation so simply, it could happen to any of us. What would we do if we found ourselves in this situation when we just KNEW we were right?

 

This seems like a good time to crack out a picture of Dr Beverly Crusher:

 

 

Here and Gone is tense throughout, and leads to one of those endings where your fingers are turning the page faster than your eyes can read because you just need to know what happens.

 

A definite page-turner, I loved it. I think you will too.

 

Here and Gone is available now from Vintage and is half price in WHSmith High Street stores until Wednesday 4^thJuly

A(nother) Review: Guess Who by Chris McGeorge

There are so many different reasons why we pick up books – word of mouth, an exciting jacket or intriguing title, even a special offer, but sometimes the marketing does its job and the slug on the front of the book, explaining the concept manages to sell it in just ten words.

 

That was the case with Guess Who by Chris McGeorge for me:

 

One room.

Five suspects.

Three hours to find a killer…

 

That said it all for me, I wanted to read this book and I wanted to love it.

 

If you need more than that to whet your appetite, there’s not much I can say without ruining the plot too much, but I’ll try. TV personality Morgan Sheppard (think Jeremy Kyle but a detective version) wakes up in a hotel room, chained to a bed and slowly comes to realise that there are other people in the room with him, all starting to wake up as well.

 

He is the only one locked up and when the TV turns on with a message for them all, it seems to be directed straight at him. Their captor challenges him to solve a mystery within three hours, or they will all die.

 

Does it live up to its premise? Did I love it?

 

Well… not quite. It’s still very good, and McGeorge is a great writer, but the narrative jumps out of the hotel room into Sheppard’s past quite regularly and so doesn’t quite maintain its feeling of mystery and claustrophobia.

 

But, that’s a big challenge anyway. It’s difficult to wring tension and drama out of that situation and the exposition was necessary for the pay-off… I just wish the author had found a way to keep all the action in the room.

 

I wondered as I reached the end, whether the concept would work better as a play. Tense silences, suspicious glances and a restrained location can work wonders on the stage, but are very hard to convey in writing. Hard, but not impossible.

 

It’s still definitely worth a read, and I’d highly recommend for a summer read, but it doesn’t quite live up to its marketing.

 

Guess Who is published by Orion and is available now as part of WHSmith’s Thumping Good Read Award. It is half price in High Street stores until next Wednesday.

 

 

A(nother) Review: The Silent Companions

Here we go.

 

After a couple of weeks of reading books that are away from my usual fare, we’re back firmly inside my comfort zone with The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell

 

This one has been around for a while and one of those I’ve been meaning to read for ages, so I was really pleased when it made it on the longlist for Thumping Good Read.

 

Little secret: As part of the team that chose the shortlist, I’m not supposed to have favourites, but if I were to have one, this MIGHT be it.

 

If you don’t know – this is a story about Elsie, a widow who travels from London to her late husband’s country estate The Bridge. There she deals with her grief and her growing pregnancy, but there are some mysterious goings on – all centered around life-size paintings on wooden boards. Think a ye-olde-cardboard cut-out.

 

Nowadays, these things would be sold in hipster cafes that also sell vinyl, or in a motorway service station, but back in the nineteenth century, these things are extremely creepy – especially when they seem to move on their own accord.

 

It’s a brilliant, atmospheric gothic horror with a plot that constantly evolves and develops. As a reader, I wasn’t sure where it was going to end up – I, like Elise, assumed there had to be a practical explanation, but I just couldn’t think what it might be so I started to believe that maybe – in this world at least – ghosts were real.

 

As I alluded to before, this MIGHT be my favourite from the Thumping Good Read list – but my opinion doesn’t matter. It’s your job to vote for the favourite (by clicking on this link right here).

 

The Silent Companions is available now from Raven Books and is half price in WHSmith High Street stores until Wednesday 20^th June

 

A(nother) Review: Sail Away by Celia Imrie

After last week’s heart-stopped, testosterone-filled spy thriller Capture or Kill, this week’s #ThumpingGoodRead2018 is a complete 180-degree-turn. And another book that I wouldn’t normally read (starting to realise how niche my reading list can be!).

 

It’s Celia Imrie’s Sail Away.

 

Everyone will know Imrie of course for her acting and has most famously appeared on TV alongside Victoria Wood in Acorn Antiquesand in films such as Calendar Girlsand – rather left-field – Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.

 

But Imrie, in latter years, has also dabbled in writing and Sail Away is her third novel. It follows two women who are in their – let’s say twilight years – Suzy Marshall and Amanda Herbert.

 

Through a series of misunderstandings, they both find themselves on a cruise across the Atlantic. They meet all sorts of strange people, including a few who can’t be trusted. Their lives are inter-connected in ways they don’t yet know, and they are thrown together in a way that might just solve all their problems.

 

Sail Away is NOT a love story.

 

It most books store it sits in a strange genre of books – that of general fiction, which is essentially the home for any book that isn’t a thriller, crime, sci-fi or old-lady-romance. With the soft pastel colours on the cover you might be forgiven for thinking it is a love story.

 

Most books are these days.

 

But this is a story about two women, friendship and farce.

 

I have a problem with ‘funny books’ – I often think humour is the hardest of all emotions to invoke in a reader. Particularly me. I *LOVE* slapstick and farce, I love watching people fall over and run in and out doors.

 

It’s the sort of humour that relies on fast-paced visual gags. Even if you can describe them perfectly, you probably won’t be able to do it at the pace that keeps it funny.

 

However Imrie manages to strike the right tone with Sail Awayand I really enjoyed it – especially as you can easily imagine the BBC turning it into a lottery-funded British film starring a list of people who all have Dame or Sir before their names.

 

Like I said, it’s not the sort of book that I would normally read – I love prolonged explorations of death and terrible things that make me cry – but this is the perfect book to give you a break from all the angst of those.

 

Next time I’m heading on holiday, I’ll definitely be looking for more books by Imrie to read around the pool.

 

Sail Awayis available now from Bloomsbury Publishing and will be half price in all WHSmith stores until Wednesday 13^thJune.

 

You can find out more about Sail Away, the Thumping Good Read award and all the other  contenders by visiting the WHSmith blog.

A(nother Review): Capture or Kill by Tom Marcus

After five years of writing blogs the inevitable is finally happening and my blogs are colliding with my work.

 

We’ve just relaunched the Thumping Good Read Award– a prize that WHSmith ran from 1992-2003 and for the next seven weeks my blogs are going to coincide with the seven featured titles in-store.

 

It might appear that I’m selling out slightly and becoming a corporate mouthpiece for ‘The Man’ – but the truth is, a few months ago, I spent a lot of time reading a lot of books, and darn it, I’m going to use that for personal gain if I can.

 

I’m also actually really excited for Thumping, it’s a great prize that will celebrate the best of commercial fiction – and hopefully it’s exciting for the authors too – the winning writer will get £10,000!

 

You can find out more by visiting the WHSmith blog here

 

Meanwhile, on this blog, you’ll find my thoughts about each of the books and about the experience of choosing the shortlist.

 

First up is Capture or Killby Tom Marcus.

 

What can I say about this book?

 

Literally, what can I say? When it was first submitted, we didn’t actually receive a copy of the book straight away because MI5 were still going through it and checking to see if they would allow it to be published.

 

I’m not even sure if I can say that!

 

Capture or Killis about Matt Logan an MI5 agent who – driven by personal tragedy – leaves behind his life to become part of a deniable unit known only as Blindeye. No rules stand in their way, they can do anything they need to to achieve their mission, but if they’re caught doing what they’re doing, the government will claim they acted alone.

 

Think 24 when Jack and Chloe go a bit rogue and you’ve about got it.

 

I loved 24, but this isn’t exactly my normal sort of book. That was a challenge for me during the whole reading process, trying to find brilliant books across multiple genres. What we didn’t want was seven amazing crime titles, or a whole raft of tearjerkers (suspect the collective noun for that is probably a tissue).

 

The whole point of Thumping Good Read is to showcase a title for everyone. A whole family could buy the lot and everyone would find a different title they loved.

 

The rest of this year’s shortlist are all brilliant books in their own right, including some thrillers – but Capture or Kill is relentless action from start to finish. But that’s not all.

 

In a way, the genres that I don’t normally read were the easiest to put forward for the shortlist. They all have great stories that transcend the genre that they’re being presented in, so that even if you’re not necessarily into the heart-pumping action of a spy thriller you can still enjoy it.

 

And if you DO love heart pumping-action and detailed descriptions of the undercover operations then you’re in for an extra treat, because this has all of that and more.

 

In short, it’s a Thumping Good Read.