Currently reading

Got 4 books on the go at the moment as I’m in a conflicted mood. 

Currently reading:

Started War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (I LOVED Anna K and so I have exceptionally high hopes for this one once I’m done blundering my way through understanding who is who and the complex Russian names.

Finders Keepers- Stephen King. Quite unusually this series is more thriller than horror and I am enjoying this better than the first one but not as great as his horror stuff in my opinion but we will see.

Bazaar of Bad Dreams- Just finished reading the first story in this collection of short stories ‘Mile 81’ A promising start but I do prefer Kings novels ultimately.

The King Series-Tawdra Kandle. An urban fantasy series of sorts. My new favourite obsession / genre as you’ll have seen from a previous post. Is very good reading so far!

The Shadowland by Elizabeth Kostova- Review

I can’t find the words to describe how disappointed in this book I am so suffice to say, I am very, very disappointed.

Elizabeth Kostova is one of my favourite authors. Her book ‘The Historian’ is my ultimate and completely favourite book ever published and I also really really liked her follow up, ‘The Swan Thieves’

This book however, just does not compare to either of her previous works.

So the story tells of Alexandra who is in Bulgaria and comes across an Urn with a persons ashes in, it is her mission to get these back to the right people and so the story begins. It also shows flashbacks from her life which were interesting and then flashbacks to another persons life- Stoyan a violinist and not so interesting.

This book as the others are, is particularly well written, most of the characters are developed well enough but the pace was atrocious. I was last half way and virtually nothing has happened which surprised and disappointed me.

I picked it up to read tonight and I realised I wasn’t looking forward to it so I decided to DNF’d it.

Heartbroken. Totally heartbroken. This could have been an excellent book but just wasn’t.

1.5 stars.

Lie with Me- Review

Loved this book and now love this author. This was a 5 star read for me. I absolutely loved it.

I loved the writing style mostly, that is what kept me turning the pages. It was addictive! The plot was great and kept me liking the book even though I wasn’t a massive fan of the main character who I don’t think we were ever seriously meant to like.

It also makes you think. Think about the consequences of even a little lie. I would say this book is fairly though provoking as well as being just awesome!

A perfect psychological thriller and I will be reading the rest of this authors work.

Lie with me

So my replacement book turned out to be a good choice. I absolutely love this author’s writing style. It’s such a readable book and I’m really enjoying it, even the reading of the mundane simply because of how well written it is. Love it. Can’t see where it’s going at the moment, too early to tell but I’m excited about seeing where it goes.

Sharp Objects- Gillian Flynn

Soooooooo I really wanted to like this one. I really did especially since Stephen King seemed to rate it and he is of course my favourite author. To be totally honest though, I got to a 106 pages in and no, I didn’t like it.
My problem with it was it was so incredibly slow. Nothing really seemed to be happening and it was just boring and a real chore to pick up. I also didn’t particularly like the characters and the main character with her history, seriously, what a weirdo!
The writing was fine, no problem with that and it was fairly readable apart from the bore factor which I describe above.
Not for me I’m afraid. I need faster paced books. This just didn’t get me turning the pages at all and wasn’t fast paced enough for me.

1 star.

Elizabeth Kostova-The Shadow Land

Just about to begin this beauty! I love Elizabeth Kostova and her Historian book is my favourite book ever so I’m hoping this will be really good!

Initial thoughts

Currently waiting for a job to come in (I’m a self employed defence lawyer) so what better use of my time than to use the library and read some more. (I wanted to sit outside with the nice new furniture but a bit nippy!) with my lavender oil burning in my burner. Very chilled out!

Current thoughts on reads:

Sleepy Hollow- Rise Headless- Richard Gleaves

This is an independent/self published book I downloaded for free on my kindle. I’m having good luck with freebies on the kindle recently, the last one was a favourite of a year and this is incredibly good also. Really enjoying it. It’s creepy but good.

Sharp Objects- Gillian Flynn

This has a very disturbing subject matter at its heart but it is very readable, I like her writing very much.

Clockwork Prince- Cassandra Clare

I love this author. I loved her Mortal Instruments series but I can’t seem to find the same love for this series. I rated the first one 2 stars and although this is fairly readable, it’s just heading for 3 stars at the moment. I keep putting it down and reading the other two books as above instead. Hopefully I’ll start to like it more soon.

The Chemist-Stephenie Meyer- Review

So, I finally finished this tomb of a book. 

I was really looking forward to this when I heard it was coming out but it ended up just being a THREE star book for me.

This is totally different to Stephenie’s other books and she should be admired therefore for trying her hand at other genres. However I found it to be a rather average book. I liked it, I managed to finish it but it just wasn’t absolutely amazing as I expected initially it may be.

I won’t detail the plot in too much detail as I’m sure many people before me have, just sum up my thoughts. But it’s essentially a Bourne novel except the protagonist Alex is female.

The characterisation was well done, I liked Alex and Daniel, I thought they were great, I didn’t like Kevin though to be perfectly honest!

The plot moved enough to keep me reading but I wouldn’t say it was particularly fast paced and to the contrary, it really dragged in some places. I got a little bit bored towards the end and skim read a few of the pages, I think the problem with this book is it was too long and it just didn’t hold me interest the entire way through.

Good although average read. Nothing special.

Three stars