“That’s the problem with summoning demons, you see. Sooner or later somebody else raises them against you.” Readers who enjoyed Stuart Turton’s previous novel will probably find The Devil and the Dark Water to be a far more captivating read than I did. While I personally was not enamoured by The Seven Deaths of Evelyn […]
MoreAlex Landragin has written an ambitious tale, one that begins with the following line: “I didn’t write this book. I stole it.”This prologue, written by a bookbinder, tells us of how this manuscript has come to be in his hands. The manuscript in question comprises three seemingly separate books: ‘The Education of a Monster’ written […]
MoreThe Eighth Detective is not quite the “thrilling, wildly inventive nesting doll of a mystery” it’d be promised to be. I approached this novel hoping for something in the realms of Anthony Horowitz. Sadly, The Eighth Detective seems closer to The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, in that both novels are hellbent on ‘confusing’ the […]
More“One thing was for sure: This Christmas was going to be anything but boring.” A Castle in the Clouds is the book equivalent of cotton candy. Fluffy, sickly sweet, and somewhat insubstantial. Nevertheless, with its Clue meets Scooby Doo story this latest novel by Kerstin Gier makes for an entertaining, if silly, read. A Castle […]
MoreWhodunnits, Agatha Christie, mysteries, and puzzles are all favourites of mine…so I was pretty excited to read The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle as it promised to combine all of these things together. “I suddenly have the sense of taking part in a play in which everybody knows their lines but me.” With a […]
More“She was good at all sorts of puzzles—word searches, hangman, acrostics, cryptograms, any puzzle with words.” Although I am not part of Winterhouse’s target audience, I do enjoy reading the occasional book aimed towards younger readers as they can be quite uplifting and entertaining reads. In fact, I picked Winterhouse up hoping for a […]
More“A person’s fortune always changes in the telling of it.” Turns out that reading The Luminaries was a phenomenal waste of my time. Eleanor Catton writes well, and the concept behind her novel had the potential of being interesting, but on the whole The Luminaries seems to be little more than a dull rehash of […]
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 […]
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 […]
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