==General fiction==
__NOTOC__
{{newreview
|author=Kevin Gosselin
|title=Hunt for the Blower Bentley
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Connecticut innkeeper Faston Hanks is obsessive. He's very keen on food but it's cars – and particularly old cars – which drive him. This time he's involved in the search for the only one of the fifty Blower Bentleys made which remains unaccounted for. SM3912 was originally purchased by Lord Brougham and Vaux and ownership can be traced to one D H Sessions, after which the trail goes cold. We know something which Faston doesn't know though – the Bentley came into the hands of Stephan Sidlow, who was high up in the APR during World War II, by less than honest means. But then Sidlow was less than honest about which side he was supporting in the war.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780920180</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ernest Cline
|summary=Lilybella Tatiana Blossom Button (who thankfully – for our sake as well as hers – goes by a simple Lily) has had an upbringing almost as unconventional as her name. Raised by her grandparents, we join her following their recent deaths and soon discover she is quite unlike most other 20 year olds. It’s going to be a brisk transition from a sheltered life in a small cottage, nursing elderly relatives to the Real World but with no money to speak off, she’ll have to pull herself together, and quickly. Her background is an important part of Lily and contributes enormously to her trusting and a little immature personality that will later be her downfall. A few weeks later, though, and things are looking up. She has taken a room in a house where she is much more one of the family than just a lodger. She’s found some cleaning work and, even more exciting, one of her agency clients is a rather dashing ex-celeb and his beautiful, elegant wife. Yes, Lily’s star is definitely on the rise.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755351371</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Erinna Mettler
|title=Starlings
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I have to say that what was a big factor in me choosing to read (and review) this book was its urban front cover. Monochrome, a bit gritty but with plenty of sky. The first character we meet is Andy, an ex-prisoner. He's on his own now and time is heavy on his hands. He stares out of his window, twelve floors up and thinks back to when he had a nice family life. All that's gone now. He stands and looks down at the children in a nearby playground and temptation rises all over again (he was convicted as a paedophile). He'll need to find the inner strength to resist - but can he?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956511929</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alexander McCall Smith
|title=Isabel Dalhousie: The Forgotten Affairs of Youth
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=My husband is soon to take a work trip to Edinburgh and I am very jealous. Mainly because thanks to AMS' novels I feel like I already know the city, and I would love to walk in the footsteps of Isabel or any of the characters from his other series, '44 Scotland Street'. So, to console me, I have turned to the latest in the Isabel Dalhousie series. I must admit, I was a little wary at the beginning since I was quite disappointed with Isabel's seventh outing, [[Isabel Dalhousie: The Charming Quirks of Others by Alexander McCall Smith|The Charming Quirks of Others]], and I wondered what I would do if this one also proved to be a let down. Fortunately it wasn't, and dear Isabel is back in sparkling form!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408703394</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sara Gruen
|title=Ape House
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Isabel Duncan is a scientist working with Bonobo chimps, teaching them sign language. John Thigpen is a journalist who comes to meet the apes and write a story about Isabel's work with them. He is moved by the apes, by their behaviour and Isabel's obviously very close relationship with them. Soon after he leaves, however, there is a bomb at the centre by a group of extremists who want to liberate the apes. Isabel begins a desperate hunt to try and discover where they've gone, and John finds himself also caught up, trying to discover the truth of what's happened.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444716026</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Roger Smith
|title=Dust Devils
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary="Rosie Dell had come to end it. For keeps this time."
''It'' is the affair that she's been having with Ben Baker, one of the richest men in the country. Unfortunately for Rosie, she doesn't say what she's come to say… unfortunately for Ben, for Rosie, and for her family, someone has plans to end it for her. Actually, not plans, as such. She shouldn't have been there. Everything that happens next wouldn't have, if she hadn't been.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687950</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Monique Truong
|title=Bitter in the Mouth
|rating=3
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Linda Hammerick, a young girl growing up in North Carolina in the late 1970's, is different. She suffers from synesthesia, tasting things when she speaks or hears words. She grows up with her great-uncle, Baby Harper, as her best friend, as his
singsong voice is the only one she can hear without the accompanying tastes, and writes letters back and forth with her best friend Kelly rather than have long conversations with her.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099474743</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Meg Rosoff
|title=There Is No Dog
|rating=3.5
|genre=Teens
|summary=Ok. Imagine God is actually a teenage immortal, much in the vein of teenage humans. He rushes his coursework (creation) and while there are flashes of brilliance and potential in it, there's no real thought or organisation and so the whole thing doesn't really work properly. But God is too busy having a lie-in or lusting after buxom young women to be ironing out these sorts of boring creases in the making of a successful planet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141327162</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kirsten Reed
|title=The Ice Age
|rating=2.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Two people road trip across America. Sort of. They don't start off together, or meet up intentionally, and the age gap is purposely provocative. She likes him because he's old and has pointy, vampire teeth he might use to bite her with (Twilight sell out, much?) She is 17. We don't know her name, but it is she who tells us the story. He is called Gunther. People think she is his daughter. They hope she is. It's just too odd to comprehend otherwise.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447200411</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Patrick deWitt
|title=The Sisters Brothers
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Invariably, the Booker Prize longlist contains one book that is more on the side of light reading than the more worthy and overtly literary fare that it is usually associated with. 'The Sisters Brothers' is the 2011 choice. Set in the US in 1851, it details the adventures of two brothers, Eli and Charlie Sisters, who are hired hands for a mysterious boss known only as the Commodore. Narrated by Eli, who has slightly more of a conscience than his older brother, the story starts with the Commodore ordering a hit, for reasons unknown, on a certain Hermann Kermit Warm.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847083188</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Vanessa Diffenbaugh
|title=The Language of Flowers
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The story see-saws a chapter at a time between the teenage Victoria and the child Victoria. The book opens with (the teen) Victoria leaving foster care for good. She's been a difficult child to place so, now at 18, she is a troubled and angry young woman with many unsolved issues. The constant link has been Meredith, the loyal social worker. But Victoria now wants shot of the lot of them, Meredith included. Victoria can now be as free as a bird and do what she wants, when she wants. Bliss. Or is it?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230752586</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Margaret Pelling
|title=A Diamond in the Sky
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=We meet Dora in a reflective mood in what used to be the nursery. Well, it still is - except there's no baby there now. Pelling tells us down the storyline exactly what happened and why and the (a bit mushy for me) title of the book is key to the story of Dora. It gets mentions throughout. As Dora sits in the empty nursery she can't help but re-live that tragic event all over again. ''Her arms were wrapping themselves around her so tight that she was having trouble breathing.'' She's now a total mess and that's about the sum total of her life at the moment. Dora now thinks she's a dreadful person. And no one will want to know a dreadful person, will they?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906784280</amazonuk>
}}
