Difference between revisions of "Book Reviews From The Bookbag"

Ava's parents like to nag. They nag her about her spelling, about eating with her knife and fork, or sitting straight on her chair, or going to bed on time...nag, nag, nag! But then one day she finds a card advertising 'The Parent Swap Shop' and when her parents nag her one more time she packs them off and sets out to find herself a new set of parents! Full review...

The Silenced by Brett Battles

In the fourth instalment of the Jonathan Quinn series, Quinn and his team are hired to clean up after an operation and find a mysterious woman has followed them there. Before they can stop her, she disappears. On the next job she turns up again, this time with friends, and things start to go drastically wrong. Quinn must find this woman and stop her, but in the meantime somebody has become very interested in finding out Jonathan Quinn's real identity and is getting closer to his family. Quinn has to make a choice; do his job or save his family? Full review...

The Eddie Dickens Trilogy by Philip Ardagh

Confident Readers

Meet Eddie Dickens. Aged eleven years old, he's only been allowed to be away from home twice in his life - once for about eight years on a boat, when a crate of luggage went to school in his place, and once for about three years. Now though he is being forced to move in with Mad Uncle Jack and Even Madder Aunt Maud, as his parents are very ill. But they're so deliriously bonkers, there's very little chance of him getting to actually move in with them. Who knows - he might even end up stuck in an orphanage instead? Full review...

Spell Bound by Kelley Armstrong

Fantasy

Wow. Gosh. Can it be true? We're on book 12 of Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series already. It seems like only yesterday that I became acquainted with her world of werewolves, witches, necromancers, demons and sorcerers, but Wikipedia tells me it was way back in 2001.

Spell Bound opens right after Waking the Witch left off, with Savannah Levine struggling to cope with her guilt in the wake of a disturbing murder case. Full review...

Tarantula: The Skin I Live In by Thierry Jonquet

In a large French country house, an expert in facial reconstruction surgery keeps a beautiful woman locked up in her bedroom. He placates her with opium, but barks orders through hugely powerful speakers and an intercom. She tantalises him with her sexuality, which he tries to ignore, except for when he seems to abuse it in a sort of S/M way when he does let her into society, as he forces her to prostitute herself. Elsewhere, a young, inept bank robber holes himself up in a sunny house, waiting for the heat to die. And finally, a young man is held chained up in a cellar at the hands of an unknown possessor. Full review...

Dresden Files: Ghost Story by Jim Butcher

Fantasy

It's been a while since I've read a Dresden Files novel, so I am fuzzy on the details before I begin 'Ghost Story', the latest instalment of the wildly successful urban fantasy series. 'Ghost Story' is an unconventional one, even by Jim Butcher's standards – it begins after the narrator, Harry Dresden, was shot by an unseen sniper in the previous novel Changes. There is no deus ex machina or cliffhanger resolution in the first chapter – Harry really is dead as a doornail. For any fan of the series, this is naturally a conundrum: how do you continue the Dresden Files if Dresden is no longer alive? Jim Butcher gets around this seemingly insurmountable problem by having his brash lead character remain equally as incorrigible and unforgettable as before – it's just that now he's having a bit of trouble with his reliable 'punch first, ask questions later' doctrine, as his fists tend not to make contact with human flesh any more. Yep, Harry's a ghost. Where do you go from here? Full review...

Precious and the Monkeys by Alexander McCall Smith

Someone has been stealing food at Precious' school. There are suspicions about who it might be, but no one is sure so Precious sets out to try and discover the truth as to just where all those snacks are disappearing off to... Full review...

Collusion by Stuart Neville

When I read the back cover blurb carefully, I discovered that most of the story is located in Ireland and not New York as I'd previously thought so I was just a little disappointed before I'd even opened the book. I'm usually a sucker for anything American in the fiction stakes.

Policeman Jack Lennon (his proper name is John and there's a good piece later on illustrating the fact that he's officially called John Lennon). Jack's on surveillance duty watching a couple of no-users as they sit and talk in a local cafe. Jack's in the comfort of his vehicle but still, he's not impressed with his latest task and says in his own words 'Yep, ... shit work.' Full review...

The Submission by Amy Waldman

Literary Fiction

The front cover of the book that I received for review is subtle (as befitting the sensitive contents) and I can see the two twin towers (as was) depicted in grey in the title word submission. The back cover announces that this novel will be Published in time for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. No pressure then. I open the book with a certain amount of trepidation, I have to admit and feel slightly as if I'm about to tread on (literary) eggshells. Heavens - what if I don't like the book? Full review...

Tempest Rising by Tracy Deebs

Sixteen year old Tempest is going through some changes in her body. But they’re not the usual changes teen girls go through as they grow up. Instead, she’s developing gills and a tail. Full review...

Eight Keys by Suzanne LaFleur

Confident Readers

On moving to middle school, eleven year old Elise's life takes a turn for the worse. She's bullied by her cool and popular locker-buddy Amanda, and embarrassed by her best friend Franklin – who's decidedly uncool and certainly not popular – she's also struggling to cope with the new arrivals at her home, Aunt Bessie's younger sister Annie and her baby daughter Ava. Just when she doesn't know how she can cope with everything, help arrives in the form of a strange key with her name on it. As she opens a door to find out about her past, Elise starts to realise that she can take control of her future. Full review...

Death on the Rive Nord: An Inspector Lucas Rocco Mystery by Adrian Magson

Illegal immigrants are not a recent phenomenon. Back in 1963, in Picardy, a truck dropped a group of illegal workers close to a deserted stretch of canal, at the dead of night. Seven people left the truck, and it was only when the driver investigated that he found an eighth inside the truck, stabbed to death. It was a few days before the body surfaced in the canal and Inspector Lucas Rocco was given the job of investigating the death. The problems in Algeria were in the past but not forgotten and Rocco would find himself involved with notorious gang leaders from the former colony – and occasionally wondering if he has bitten off more than he can chew. Full review...

Sektion 20 by Paul Dowswell

It's the early 1970s and Alex is living with his family in East Berlin. His Western counterparts are enjoying Coca Cola, fashion and rock music, but Alex can only dream of these things. His time is spent at school listening to endless lectures on the superiority of the socialist system or avoiding saying what he really thinks, even when he's with his family and closest friends. Nobody in East Berlin wants to come to the attention of the Stasi, the state security service. Full review...

August by Bernard Beckett

In an alternate world, Tristan and Grace come from The City, a closed and enclosed society in which religion dominates. Tristan had been an acolyte at St Augustine's. He spent a childhood being drilled in philosophical discussion of free will by the Rector. A star pupil, a single event made him question everything he had been taught. Grace had spent the first part of her childhood in the convent, but a single act of kindness led to her excommunication. Full review...

The Boys From Brazil by Ira Levin

A small group of powerful Nazis gather for a convivial post-prandial meeting, and collect identities and orders from their leader, who is sending them to different corners of the world in order that many innocent people may be killed. But this isn't when you might expect - it's the mid-1970s. It isn't where you might expect, for these Nazis are remnants of Hitler's regime that fled to south America for safety. And the deaths are being ordered for reasons you will never foretell. In that regard, then, you are as well-informed as chief Nazi hunter Yakov Lieberman, who hears tantalising hints of the plot, but cannot fathom it - nor indeed find proof it has indeed started. Full review...

Seven Days One Summer by Kate Morris

Women's Fiction

'Seven Days One Summer' tells of an Italian holiday that should be perfect but somehow is not. When one reads on the front cover, the words 'what could possibly go wrong?', one somehow knows that this is going to be the holiday from hell. All of the couples that arrive at Sam's villa have their own problems and secrets that they seem unable to keep to themselves. Jen finds it hard to put up with Marcus' constant drive for success that impinges even on their holiday as he is constantly making calls about business; Tara and Dave are newly-weds but Tara is already disillusioned with married life; and Toby and Miranda are engaged to be married but he does not know whether he is able to put up with her controlling ways. Jack is a successful film star but struggles to entertain his small children on their first holiday since separating from his wife, Ellie. There are so many tensions that you could cut the air with a knife. Full review...

Wild Abandon by Joe Dunthorne

When your first novel has been successful, it adds pressure onto the second. This is the situation facing Joe Dunthorne, as his debut Submarine won several awards, was adapted into a film and came highly praised by The Bookbag. This means Wild Abandon has to be rather good to keep his reputation intact. Full review...

The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Star of India by Carole Bugge

Crime (Historical)

A woman with a distinguished scent about her appears flustered at a concert recital. A famous landlady gets kidnapped while on an innocent holiday to the west country. A malformed, brilliant modern-day alchemist gets murdered. There is only one person, who famously went over a certain Alpine waterfall, who could piece all this and more into a threat to the Royalty and Empire itself. But there is also only one person, who famously seemed to have stayed dead in going over the same Alpine waterfall, with the strength of mind to put the whole game into play. Full review...

Last Dance with Valentino by Daisy Waugh

Literary Fiction

When I read on the front cover that this book is described by the Sunday Times as A gripping, bittersweet love story it wasn't a particularly good statement for me to read. As a rule I don't generally 'do' love stories. If I happen to read one every once in a while then that's fine by me but I don't encourage them! But, both the lovely title and the front cover did their job and pulled me in - just a little. Full review...

Forgive My Fins by Tera Lynn Childs

Spirituality and Religion

You think you've got problems with your love life? Spare a thought for Lily Sanderson, who has a huge crush on swimming god Brody Bennett, an obnoxious biker-boy neighbour Quince Fletcher, and a serious deadline problem. She's totally convinced that Brody is the right man for her, and needs to get him to realise this and take him home to meet her father. Who just happens to be the King of Thalassinia. Of course, that will also means revealing her big secret. You see, Lily is half-mermaid. With all this going through her mind, it's no surprise when she gets confused, leading to a kiss which changes everything... Full review...

Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel by Alexandre Christoyannopoulos

Whilst I've long been a Christian, I've never considered myself an anarchist. My thinking is that anarchy is something you're more likely to see on the news than on 'Songs of Praise'. However, there is a school of thought that suggests that Jesus' teachings were so counter-cultural and so against Roman law that it constitutes anarchism. Full review...

Final Friends by Christopher Pike

When Jessica Hart and her friends end up at a new school, she decides to throw a party to get to know some of the cute guys there. It seems like a great idea at the time – but it will have far-reaching consequences which will mean their senior year will be nothing like they expected. Full review...

Conference at Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Humour

There are no Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm.

To those of you who've not read Stella Gibbons' magnificient original novel, this is hardly likely to be a major shock - to the Gibbons fans amongst us, though, this is chilling news indeed. And when Robert Poste's child Flora returns to the farm - now a modernised monstrosity full of members of the International Thinkers' Group – sixteen years after her original visit, the news get graver and graver, as the cows Feckless, Graceless, Pointless, and Aimless have passed away of shame due to the disgrace of the bull Big Business. With the menfolk trying to make their fortunes abroad, and the women struggling, it's left to Flora to try to save the day once again. Full review...

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

After his grandfather's death, sixteen year old Jacob is sent to a psychiatrist. He swears that he'd seen a monster of some description - just like the weird and unusual things the old man used to tell him about - when he discovered the body. As you can imagine, everyone thinks Jacob is crazy. But then events set in motion a visit to the island off the coast of Wales where Jacob's grandfather grew up, and as Jacob finds Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, he discovers that his grandfather may have been telling the truth all along... Full review...

Westwood by Stella Gibbons

I was instantly attracted to this novel as it's set largely in Hampstead and Highgate, which is territory I'm fortunate enough to be familiar with. I was also instantly attracted to Margaret – a young woman with the worries of the world on her shoulders. Continually concerned with politics and the impact of war on those far away as well as close by, Margaret has genuine warmth and concern for her fellow human beings, and this pulls the reader into her story straight away. Full review...

Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan

Sid and his friend Chip are revisiting their youth, more than 50 years ago. They were jazz musicians, living and working in Berlin and Paris, until they had to escape Nazi occupied Paris in 1940 to return to Baltimore. Now it is 1992, and all the others they worked with are long since dead. They have just been involved in a documentary about their experiences, and are about to return to Germany (soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall) for a jazz festival in memory of the great Hiero Falk. Hieronymus Falk was a young black German musician with an exceptional musical talent, the star of their band, the Hot-Time Swingers. He was picked up by 'the Boots' as Sid refers to the Germans, in Paris in 1940, and disappeared into a concentration camp, then they heard he was released but died in 1948. Full review...

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Humour

Orphaned at 19, Flora Poste – a London sophisticate – is led to retreat to deepest Sussex to live off her relatives the Starkadders at the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, a mournful bunch who take her in as they couldn't refuse anything of 'Robert Poste's child', but seem less than happy with having to do so. As she meets the preacher Amos, his over-sexed younger son Seth, his flighty sister Elphine, and the hugely memorable – if barely seen – Aunt Ada Doom, the first person in literature to see 'something nasty in the woodshed' – she resolves to take the family in hand and solve their problems. Full review...

Sean Griswold's Head by Lindsey Leavitt

When she finds out her dad was diagnosed with MS some months ago, but no-one had felt the need to tell her, Payton's world starts to fall apart. So much so, that when her new counselor suggests picking something as a Focus Object to write about, she decides to go for it, and chooses Sean Griswold's head. But what starts off as a supposedly academic study of the said head becomes something rather more interesting, as she realizes that Sean himself might be someone worth focusing on. Full review...

No! by Marta Altes

No! is all about one family pet's desperate attempts to please his owners. He helps with the laundry, tastes their food before they eat it to make sure it's all right, and even warms up their beds for them before they go to sleep...the poor deluded pup thinks his family love him very much since they're always calling out what he thinks is his name, 'Noooooo!' Full review...

The Hanging Shed by Gordon Ferris

This book is already The No 1 eBook bestseller so I was expecting a good read. Part of The Douglas Brodie Series, where Brodie, the central character, is a no-holds-barred journalist, although his past reveals that he's been a soldier and a policeman. Ferris elaborates further and gives his readers some background on Brodie. Brodie comes across, right from the start, as a resourceful, likeable and forthright man who has not been afraid to break away from his small-town roots in the west of Scotland. His present job is based in London but it's obvious that Brodie's heart's just not in it. He wants to return to Scotland, Glasgow in particular and try his journalistic luck there. An opportunity soon comes along - but it's one he was never in a million years expecting. Full review...

Sometimes by Rebecca Elliott

Clemmie is Toby's big sister. Sometimes she has to go and stay in hospital. This story tells us all about the fun Toby and Clemmie have in hospital together, and some of the harder parts of being poorly too. Full review...

Black by Design: A 2-tone Memoir by Pauline Black

Autobiography

As the front cover of this volume of reminiscences reminds us, Pauline Black is remembered first and foremost for fronting The Selecter, one of the few 2-Tone ska bands to enjoy fleeting chart success at the end of the 1970s. Yet reading this reminds us that that was only the tip of the iceberg. Full review...

Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto by Maile Chapman

Literary Fiction

American nurse Sunny Taylor needed to get away from home and everything familiar. She takes a gamble into the unknown and ends up in Finland. The language barrier seems to be the least of her problems. As a healthy, relatively young female she sees on a daily basis ailments, minor and major, imagined and otherwise. Suvanto (which gives the novel its title) is the name of the well-known and well-regarded hospital. It operates on a tier system - those who can pay well for medical care and those who are less well-off. And the accommodation, level of nursing and medical care and even the food also operate on this tiered system. Full review...

The Lost Stars by Hannah Cumming

Everyone in the world is terribly busy, rushing around, using all their gadgets and gizmos and lights, far too busy to look up into the night sky and see the stars. The stars get fed up and so they decide to go away on holiday for a while. No one notices until one day the power runs out and suddenly everyone is in the dark... Full review...

How to Survive the Titanic or the Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay by Frances Wilson

Biography

As I read 'How to Survive the Titanic' I was conscious that we're only a matter of months away from the centenary of the sinking – and a slew of media to mark the occasion. Given that the subject has been mined extensively over the years it will be interesting to see whether there's anything new to be said about the tragedy. It's a subject which has always fascinated me – and it was with a sense of anticipation that I opened the book. Full review...

Townie: A Memoir by Andre Dubus III

Autobiography

The book opens with Andre and his father taking a jog. Seems a normal and natural activity - what's to write about here, you could be asking. Well, I'll tell you. By this time the father no longer lives in the family home, the mother is struggling to pay the bills and to put food on the table - and the author, Andre is too embarrassed to admit to his father that he doesn't own a pair of jogging shoes. He's borrowed his sister's even although they're about two sizes too small, he's in agony seconds into the jog but is he going to own up? Nope. Bloody feet and pain are a by-product of precious time with his father. So straight away, I'm getting the gist of the book and the relationship between father and son. Full review...

Rip Tide (Dark Life) by Kat Falls

Our favourite Dark Lifer and his Topsider friend are set for another post-apocalyptic adventure in this follow-up to Dark Life. Ty and Gemma discover a township chained and sunk on the ocean floor, every one of its hundreds of residents murdered. But before they can begin to unravel the mystery, another crisis takes centre stage. Full review...

The Burma Campaign: Disaster into Triumph 1942-45 by Frank McLynn

History

I'm no military historian; I'm not really interested in war. In the Second World War, if push came to shove, I would probably have claimed pacificism. But when this paperback version of the recently published hardback came up, by prolific and highly-esteemed historian Frank McLynn, I just had to read it. The subject is very special in our family, because “Grandad was there”. Grandad fought over the tennis court at Kohima, and he has carried the trauma in his head to this day. Frank McLynn describes that particular battle as “... a scene from Hieronymus Bosch out of Passchendaele”. I knew I had to steel myself to read this book, and was very pleased that the author wrote sensitively about the reality of close combat for lily livers like mine. Full review...

Frank Merlin: Princes Gate by Mark Ellis