Set against the opioid crisis in Philadelphia Liz Moore’s thought-provoking novel portrays the long-lasting and devastating effects that addiction have on an individual, on a family, and on an entire neighbourhood. “These girls, he says. He looks at me and puts one finger to his right temple, taps it twice. Stupid, is what he means. […]
More“A large fortune means freedom, and I’m afraid of that. It’s such a fine thing, and one should make such a good use of it. If one shouldn’t one would be ashamed. And one must keep thinking; it’s a constant effort. I’m not sure it’s not a greater happiness to be powerless.” The Portrait of […]
MoreThe Bone Houses is a delightfully creepy and atmospheric book that makes for a quick and entertaining read. “The things that crawled from the lake were sinew and rotting flesh. They were silent, with hollow eyes and bodies that caved in. They were called bone houses.” The story follows a quest of sorts in a […]
MoreThings You Save in a Fire was a heart-warming if occasionally cheesy read. “For the first time, I understood. In all the times I’d remembered that story, I’d experienced every single part of it from my own perspective, standing in my own sixteen-year-old shoes. Now, for the first time, I saw it unfold from a […]
MoreFor the most part The House of Silk was an entertaining read. Horowitz captures the essence of the dynamic between Sherlock Holmes and Watson so that readers will find his portrayal of these two famous characters to be all too familiar. As per usual Horowitz also cleverly combines more than one mystery together, throwing in […]
MoreAlthough short Summer is an interesting read. Feelings and actions are obliquely revealed or hinted at, so much so that many of the decisive events that our ‘heroine’ Charity experiences are only alluded to or described in an indirect fashion. Because of this, the changing dynamics between the various characters can at times be hard […]
MoreAfter finishing The Angel’s Game I was eager to start The Prisoner of Heaven as I was hoping that we could see how unreliable a narrator David was. Tonally The Prisoner of Heaven is closer to the first book in this series, yet its short length and fast plot-line seemed more in a line with […]
MoreLast summer I read and loved Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind. It was a fun romp filled with melodrama which owed much to 19th century sensationalism (in that it implemented puzzles, Gothic and Romantic elements, clever twists towards an overarching quest of sorts). Reading that book was a fun experience. Although The Angel’s Game […]
MoreFor the most part We Came Here to Forget was a somewhat inconsistent read. Perhaps this is due to the two timelines, one which follows Katie Cleary as she grows up, and the other one focuses on the aftermath a personal tragedy. In order to escape from her unbearable existent (one in which she has […]
MoreDennis Lehane has written many superb novels, and while Since We Fell demonstrates many of his strengths, the story seems a lot less focused than his usual ones. The intriguing prologue leads into a story which follows Rachel Childs. In the first 1/4 of the novel we follow her quest for her father. I found […]
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