Am going to try something a little different with my reviews. Am hoping this idea (which I am "borrowing" from Winn from Literary Diversions - hope you don't mind...)
No, I am not going to do their Bingo Board of Hell (my mood reading brain is my worse enemy on that front)! Instead, am doing their Tops and Bottoms. It's a Ronseal (it does exactly what it says on the tin) - basically, instead of writing up my thoughts on EVERY BOOK AND AUDIOBOOK, I pick a few and go "Here are the best and worse over the past few months. If I can sum these up in a few sentences/a Gif, I will, but not all. You can go to my Goodreads/Storygraph for that! (oh, I need to update reviews on these platform!)".
So, let's start with some VERY basic stats: over the course of January and February, I have:
- Read 6 eBooks
- Listen to 4 Audiobooks
- Did Not Finish (Quit) 4 Audiobooks
Let’s start with a TOP (as I am not sure if I can include a DNF as a bottom) and let’s go with A Fatal Thaw by Dana Stobenow. Now, this is the second book in the Kate Shugak series (the first being A Cold Day for Murder), this book kinda sealed the deal on me on my Kindle Unlimited experiment (which I am extending till Easter). In this, we have a crime thriller with a prickly anti-Miss Marple set in Alaskan wilds where a gunman shoots several people but, on further inspection, one of the victims is shot by a different gun… Enter Kate, a native Aleut who is smart, stubborn, has a scar across her throat due to a nasty incident in her previous job who isn’t afraid to rub people up the wrong way to get to the truth.
The first book in the series was very much an introduction to Kate and the people in her life with a missing person case alongside it. But here, we hit the ground running and I am shocked that I have never heard of his series till a month or so ago as I flew through these. So much as I am planning to do the next book - Dead in the Water - in the next few days (the fact that I didn’t start this as soon as I finished Fatal Thaw shocked me as I could have so easily done this!). So yeah, I think I am going to have fun with this series!
I suppose now I should do a BOTTOM and I am sad to put this title here: Evil Bones by Kathy Reichs. You guys know how much I adore Kathy Reichs. She was one of the first thriller writers I ever read and I still, even now, how a soft spot for that book (Bones to Ashes) and I have plans to read some of her earlier titles. But the last few releases I have read haven’t hit the mark in my opinion and Evil Bones just didn’t. The characters didn’t feel like the characters I knew with the decisions and their actions, the ending was a mess and … sigh… this just wan’t up to Kathy Reichs usualy standard for me. Maybe I’m being a bit picky but I wanted more. Maybe I should go back to her works…
Another TOP I want to chat about, very briefly, is Beth is Dead by Katie Bernet. Main reason for this being short is that I’m planning to write a fuller review/blog post later this month, but yeah. I had fun reading this. So, I should mention another title instead - so, here is Bears and Bakeries by Dylan Drakes. This is the second book in the Sweet and Stocky series (the first is on my TBR list) and this is a cosy MM romance which was sweet and fun, but had a edge to it as it touched on addiction, anxiety and abandonment. As someone who doesn’t like antsy romance, this worked for me. It’s warm and fuzzy hug of a read.
sigh… Ok, another BOTTOM and it was The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, performed by Paapa Essiedu. We mostly know the story of the Woman in Black, a junior solicitor from a London firm is summoned to go to a client’s funeral and to sort through her papers at Eel Marsh House. But as he attends the funeral, he notices a young woman in black, whose face is wasted. It’s here when the creeping dread begins and it only gets worse when he’s at the lonely house…
The story is a slow creepy story and I am sure I have read this once before. But I wasn’t a fan of Audible using 3D Dolby sound effects, nor with the narrator. Some of the choices he made felt odd (pausing in certain places, accents, etc). Plus, it didn’t help I saw the stage performance and that was creepy as heck (if you can, go watch the stage version. Very good and very jumpy!).
I might wrap this up with one more TOP. His Face Is the Sun by Michelle Jabès Corpora is the first book in a trilogy set in the world inspired by Ancient Egypt which has strong Libba Bray’s Diviners vibes to it. It’s a nice mix of fantasy, politics, the beginnings of both romance and horror, and I’m surprised that this worked for me the way it did as, there were a few occasions I wasn’t sure on my feelings of the characters and the direction of the story but having four main leads, each important but with no idea how they are connected or why and all being so different makes laying down the questions for this series interesting. I am intrigued on where book 2 goes… (and hopefully, this will kick me in the rear to do book two of the Diviners series…)
Let’s leave that here and I shall go write my review for Beth is Dead and hopefully, finish the book I was meant to finish before the end of February…
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