Category Archives: Fiction

The Chinese Orange Mystery by Ellery Queen

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In a nutshell:

Short synopsis:

Ellery Queens once more helps his father to solve a baffling mystery.

Language I read the book in: English

Did I like it? Yes

For people who: love whodunnits, locked room mysteries

My thoughts:

I always liked Ellery Queen mysteries. They are the perfect whodunnits with a clever detective, a father/police officer sidekick and a nice atmosphere. The plots are always elaborate and puzzling.

This one is no exception. A body is found in an anteroom and the murderer has left curious clues behind. The dead man has all his clothes on backwards, all furniture, clocks, paintings are turned to the wall, even the fruit bowl is turned upside down. All people involved seem to have a past or a secret to cover up or – at the very least – an obnoxious attitude.

As usual, Ellery solves the mystery in his own style and leaves everybody speechless. I completely failed the challenge to the reader that you will find in every Ellery Queen mystery. It tells the reader that now he has all the clues and he should be able to figure it out. I didn’t. This mystery is so tied to the time it is set in that no modern reader would deduct the solution from what he knows. Times have changed and what was common and obvious back then is now so extraordinary that it would not come to mind immediately. Once explained it makes sense, though.

A very quick and enjoyable mystery. If you like whodunnits you will love this.

Beware! Spoilers follow:

There are various things I want to mention for people who don’t mind spoilers. If you do, do not read on!

The story first doesn’t appear to be a locked room mystery, however, when we get the solution it turns out to have been one all along. Unusual!

How the murderer was supposed to have done the crime is unfeasible. Yes, Ellery explains the how and that is plausible, but there was just not the opportunity. The situation is almost a little bit like in Agatha Christie’s “The murder of Roger Ackroyd” where the murderer is the narrator. Here the story is not told from the killer’s point of view but we accompany him during the hour in which the murder takes place and there is just no evidence that he had time to commit the crime. He works in his office and during that time four people come in to talk to him. Are we to believe that he is supposed to have gone next door, bludgeon a man, discover something unexpected, think of a ruse to cover that up, execute it (which includes rearranging all the furniture) and then process with his original complicated plan of bolting the door inside from the outside? Um, no!

The title of the book, by the way, is a MacGuffin. All the time Ellery goes on about the tangerines, aka Chinese oranges, which were available in the anteroom and of which one was eaten, either by the victim or murderer. In reality the tangerines are of no importance at all, the orange refers to something completely different.

Still, a very good mystery and baffling to the extreme.

Movie tip

The Mandarin Mystery (downloadable for free as it is in the public domain). However, I would only watch it for scientific reasons, it is absolute bollocks and does not resemble the book in the least. I am not kidding.

Product info and buy link :

Title	The Chinese Orange Mystery
Author	Ellery Queen
Publisher	Open Road Media
ISBN	ASIN: B00B1MSILY
I got this book from	the publisher via Netgalley
Buy link	Buy The Chinese Orange Mystery from various sources

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders by Gyles Brandreth

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Cover Oscar Wilde and the candlelight murders by Gyles Brandreth

In a nutshell:

Short synopsis: Oscar Wilde as Sherlock Holmes.

Language I read the book in: English

Did I like it? Yes

For people who: like cozy/historical mysteries, Oscar Wilde

My thoughts:

I like Oscar Wilde and I like historical mysteries, so “Oscar Wilde and the candlelight murders” was an obvious choice for me. I was not disappointed.

The story is told from Robert Sherard’s first person point of view. He was a close friend of Oscar Wilde’s and his first biographer, but a rather dull Watson to Wilde’s Sherlock Holmes. The comparison to the Sherlock Holmes suggests itself naturally because Wilde displays extraordinary powers of deduction, a bit too extraordinary for my taste, he might give Holmes a run for his money. On top of that Arthur Conan Doyle is a key figure as a friend of Oscar Wilde and – according to this book – based the character of Mycroft Holmes on him. Be that as it may, Wilde and Sherard are the typical sleuth/sidekick pair with Wilde being quite in the know while Sherard has no clue as to what is going on.

Oscar Wilde is shown as a character with a lot of facets, amiable, the perfect gentleman with impeccable manners, a bit of sloth like, but at the same time extremely moody and unpredictable. His homosexuality is only hinted at by making him "worship" pretty young boys a bit too much to be just a lover of aesthetics. Sherard seems oblivious to this or chooses to ignore it. Strange, because towards the end he becomes outraged when he witnesses some "musical" activities ("musical" being the euphemism used at the time).

The mystery is quite puzzling, even though the reader gets an inkling rather early of who might be involved. It develops very slowly, the investigations are taking place over a long period of time and are not really the main focus of the book. The book lives from the atmosphere and the characters, most of all Oscar Wilde himself. You will find a lot of very familiar quotes interspersed throughout the book and and some that COULD be by Wilde but are Gyles Brandreth’s own.

The end is in the nice and cozy Poirot manner. Everybody is gathered in a room and the sleuth presents the solution, gives his reasoning to a stunned audience and presents the murderer.

This is a lovely, super quick and entertaining read and I am looking forward to the next books in the series already. If you are not familiar with Oscar Wilde at all it might be helpful if you read a little about and/or by him first, but even without this knowledge, cozy mystery lovers will enjoy this book a lot.

Product info and buy link :

Title	Oscar Wilde and the candlelight murders
Author	Gyles Brandreth
Publisher	John Murray Publishers
ISBN	9780719569302
I got this book from	a friend
Buy link	Buy Oscar Wilde and the candlelight murders
More info	The Oscar Wilde murder mysteries

If you click on the buy link above you will be taken to The Book Depository.co.uk. If you buy the book through this link I will earn a small commission. You can find my general affiliate links to The Book Depository, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com here.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough

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Cover The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough

In a nutshell:

Language I read the book in: English

Did I like it? YES

For people who: like ancient history, historical fiction, ancient Rome, political scheming, power struggles, warfare

My thoughts:

It took me almost a year from buying this book to finishing it, exactly as I predicted in May 2012. But this is in no way a reflection on the quality of it. If you are watching my Goodreads feed then you might have noticed that reading sped up considerably a couple of weeks ago, the point when I managed to get this book as an e-book. Usually I prefer paper to e-book, but in this case reading the e-book is so much better. Carrying 900 pages around is no fun – at all.

It is impossible to talk about the plot of this novel as so many people’s lives are explored and so many things happen that, once you reach the end of this book, you are just stunned!

To mention a few of the occurrences: the book covers the efforts of Marcus Livius Drusus to enfranchise the Italian allies, the subsequent so-called Social War, the start of the war against Mithridates, the rise of Sulla and his march on Rome, the fall of Gaius Marius, his seventh consulship and the short reign of terror the follows it. And by covering I mean covering in detail. Even though sometimes a lot of time elapses between events, everything is told and explained carefully, what caused it, who was on whose side, what were the consequences. Once more the amount of research that went into this book just astounded me.

After you read this book you think you know all those Romans. You might not completely understand them, as their mindset is a different one, but to a certain extent you can follow their reasoning and realize why they could not have acted differently – except for Marius at the end, but then, he was as mad as a hatter.

The book ends with Gaius Marius’ death, and I am already looking forward to the sequel. A lot of the people playing a major part in the first two books are dead now, but new ones are coming up on the horizon, Pompey (whose father Pompey Strabo here dies from an illness instead of from lightning, which I found a bit strange), Gaius Julius Caesar (who received a most unwelcome appointment at the end of this book ), Cicero – and of course, Sulla has yet to fight his Pontic war and return to Rome. Exciting times are lying ahead of us!

Product info and buy link :

Title	The Grass Crown
Author	Colleen McCullough
Publisher	Arrow Books
ISBN	9780099462491
I got this book from	I bought it
Buy link	Buy The Grass Crown
More info	Masters of Rome series
Still more info	Gaius Marius and Sulla

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

This post is part of the Tea & Books Reading Challenge which is hosted by The Book Garden.

August is a wicked month by Edna O’Brien

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Vacationing in France can be dangerous and sobering.

In a nutshell:

Short synopsis:

With her ex-husband and her son away on a camping trip, Ellen travels to the Côte d’Azur for a bit of adventure, preferably the sexual kind.

Language I read the book in: English

Did I like it? Yes, but I didn’t think much of the heroine

My thoughts:

I liked this book and how it was written but I didn’t like the heroine. Edna O’Brien conjures the image of a sexually frustrated woman who, after an affair that faded out into nothingness, decides to revitalize her (sex-) life with a trip to the South of France. Her ex-husband is away on a camping trip with her son, so she is free to go.

I loved the atmosphere, I could feel the woman’s frustration, her eager desire to find someone, I could feel for her and yet I found her not very appealing.

She goes abroad without telling anyone where she was going, something I can’t understand at all. When you have children there is always something that can happen and then what do you do when people can’t find you? I found this highly irresponsible.

Even though she is not wealthy she goes to the Côte d’Azur of all places. From the start she has to watch how much she is spending, but then, due to unforeseen circumstances, she stays longer than she intended and at the end is astonished about the hotel bill and the countless cups of tea appearing on it. Well, hotels cost money, a vacationer should be aware of it.

She goes with basically anyone who she hopes will give her a a good time, and as a result she finds her adventures disappointing and lacklustre. She can consider herself lucky that she got away without being raped or dead, as it happens. When she arrives at home another tragedy awaits her.

I absolutely love Edna O’Brien’s writing style and I enjoyed this short novel even more than I enjoyed her short stories. If it hadn’t been for the final blow I would have been perfectly ok with it – what she got until then is just what you are getting when you are not careful –, but the end was just too much for me and left me depressed. However, if you want a great read and don’t insist on a happy-go-lucky ending, pick up this one.

Product info and buy link :

Title	August is a wicked month
Author	Edna O’Brien
Publisher	Open Road Publishing
ISBN	9781453247327
I got this book from	the publisher via Netgalley
Buy link	Buy August is a wicked month as e-book

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

Diary of a wimpy kid by Jeff Kinney

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Very short synopsis:

Illustrated diary of a middle school kid, describing his life at school and at home.

I read it in: German (Gregs Tagebuch)

I liked it: Yes

My thoughts:

I can’t praise this book enough. If you have a school child who HATES reading and so far has never picked up a book voluntarily, try this one! We didn’t listen to the advice of the book sellers at our trusted comic shop (this book is not a comic, though) and discarded their suggestion of that very book because we thought it had too many pages, was too intimidating etc. However, a few weeks later our non-reader came along and told us that he wanted exactly this book. With pleasure, son! He read it in five evenings (224 pages), a miracle. He even copied a paragraph out of the book to take it to school and read to his friends, because I didn’t allow him to take the book. Voluntary writing – another first.
We had ordered the sequel at the same time and he started reading right afterwards.

As the book was also on my TBR list I read it after him and totally enjoyed it. There are a few situations where I cried with laughter. Oh, the things Greg and his mate get up to! It’s just too funny!

If you need a good laugh, even as an adult, get this book!

Product info and buy link :

Title	Diary of a wimpy kid
Author	Jeff Kinney
Publisher	Puffin Books
ISBN	9780141324906
I got this book from	I bought it
Buy link	Buy Diary of a wimpy kid

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

Let the right one in by John Ajvide Lindqvist

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Cover Let the right one in by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Not your ordinary vampire romance

In a nutshell:

Short synopsis: Oskar meets a strange girl in his apartment complex. At the same time strange murders take place in his suburb of Stockholm.

Language I read the book in: English. Translated from Swedish by Ebba Segerberg

Did I like it? Yes. A lot.

For people who: love vampires, but not the schmaltzy smooching, don’t mind a little gore.

My thoughts:

When I started reading I vaguely knew what was coming as John has read the book and watched the two movies and had told me a little about it. But I was not prepared for this wonderful coming of age story, combined with gore, vampires, great side characters and an overall great atmosphere. Every person in this book has a distinctive personality and the writer took his time to develop each of them. We get to know the story from various points of view and this worked very well – even though I normally don’t enjoy character jumping too much. Apart from a few people, everybody was really likeable – which is quite an achievement considering the atmosphere in this book is dark, dreary, violent and not a happy one. Everybody has problems, everybody is fighting, and it still is an uplifting story!

What I particularly liked was that a lot of the side characters had facets that you normally don’t find in books. A glue sniffing boy with a problematic background has a great sense of humour (I really felt for Tommy in many ways. Not only does he have to spend the night with Hakan in a dark cellar, he also has to put up with insufferable Staffan, which is only slightly less unsettling). Drunken bums are very well educated, literate people (how many people you know can tell that the corresponding cat to Thisbe should be named Pyramus?). I loved them all.

The vampire angle was done really well, gave vampires a bit of a new spin and was quite exciting to read about, even though I found a few situations quite disconcerting and not for the faint of heart. But not the nightmare inducing kind either, at least not for me.

I do have a couple of complaints though. The end was disappointing. The conclusion of the book was done way too quickly. After writing five hundred odd pages and after developing the relationship between Oskar and Eli slowly and in depth, the author creates an end of one page That is unacceptable. It is cut off from the previous chapter, like a time lapse where some important things were forgotten to be told. I prefer stories to fade out slowly instead of coming to an unexpected halt.

Second I feel cheated. I battled my way through a lot of unsavoury scenes all the while hoping for Johnny and his mates to get their comeuppance and then when they finally do I don’t get to savour every detail, but have to read it in a witness report the length of a couple of paragraphs! Sorry, but this just does not do it! I was deprived of my satisfaction and I did not like that.

Other than that, this was a pleasure to read. Now I must get the short story “Let the old dreams die” to find out what happened next. I am glad the author wrote it because during reading I got this nagging thought that maybe Eli is just having Oskar around as the new caretaker, and I need to know that this is not so.

Product info and buy link :

Title	Let the right one in
Author	John Ajvide Lindqvist
Publisher	Quercus Publishing
ISBN	9781847248480
I got this book from	we already had it lying around
Buy link	Buy Let the right one in

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

DNF: Started early, took my dog by Kate Atkinson

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Cover Started early, took my dog by Kate Atkinson

Elena recommended Kate Atkinson to me and I can see why she did. Kate Atkinson is a writer who conjures up an atmosphere with a few well chosen sentences and her stories are cleverly built. Unfortunately, I neither particularly enjoyed the way she writes, nor did I like the atmosphere.

Even though I got used to the elliptical writing style after a while I never got into it. I like it in a title (I wasn’t aware that the title of the book reflected the writing style THAT much), but not in a 400 page book. (Find the book’s beginnings here).

As for the story, I am a novice to Kate Atkinson and have not read the previous Jackson Brodie books. Maybe I should have started with the first book in order to understand better what was going on with him, but to me he seemed to be a whiner who mostly thought of and felt sorry about his previous relationships and who didn’t like himself very much. I probably could have lived with him, but the story is full of characters who all have so many problems and who are so full of self loathing that it was depressing.
A child spending some time with a corpse (this is my deduction, I didn’t get to the revelation of that particular thread), a dead child, a woman in a coma, a spinster who buys a child, an old demented woman, a number of old, and possible corrupt policemen, an adoption officer with a secret, the list is endless. Give me a break!

I am sure that somewhere towards the end all the various storylines – and there were many with time jumps back and forth continuously – came together in this cunning way where you go, "ah, now I see why this was said there and then, and what was the meaning of this and that 200 pages earlier" but I didn’t make it that far. When Jackson Brodie woke up next to a woman whose name he didn’t remember and had to sneak out of her house I was finished with the book. Sorry, but I do want to enjoy reading and not dread what might come next.

However, if you enjoy a real downer of a book, I recommend this one.

Espresso Tales by Alexander McCall Smith

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Very short synopsis:

The second instalment in the 44 Scotland Street series with news of all the inhabitants.

inanutshell

I read it in: English

I liked it: Yes, it was a great continuation of the series.

Again we are left behind with a few loose threads that I can#t wait to find out more about. What is going to happen to Bertie? Whose baby is Irene having? Is Janis a gold-digger or not? That one thought of hers in the restaurant indicates as much, but the latest conversation between Matthew and his father says different. Bruce is gone – good riddance! Is Pat’s father buying the flat for her? Is she going to be available for Matthew now because of his financial prospects? “Love over Scotland” is already waiting for me.

Product info and buy link :

Title	Espresso Tales
Author	Alexander McCall Smith
Publisher	Abacus
ISBN	9780349119700
I got this book from	I bought it
More info	The 44 Scotland Street series
Buy link	Buy Espresso Tales

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith

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Cover 44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith

Tales of the city in Edinburgh.

In a nutshell:

Short synopsis:

Short instalments about the life of the inhabitants of a house in Edinburgh and the people they meet.

Language I read the book in: English

Did I like it? Yes, absolutely.

For people who: love a cozy atmosphere, great locations, interesting people, short chapters that leave you wanting more.

My thoughts:

I want to move to Edinburgh. Not because it is a lovely place (it is, but that is not the reason), but because I want to be able to enjoy Alexander McCall Smith’s books set in Edinburgh more than I already do. If you live there I am sure the reading experience will be exceptional. The way he moves his characters around, through streets, around quarters and inside shops is so enjoyable, even if you have no idea about the places; it must be absolute bliss to be able to picture the real locations that you know from experience while reading his stories.

When I started reading I wasn’t aware that this was previously published as a serialised novel in a newspaper, but I was pleasantly surprised. The chapters are very short, but always with an ending that made you want to read on. If I had read that in the paper I would have waited eagerly every morning for the new instalment.

Pat moves into a room in a flat at 44 Scotland Street. From now on we follow her life and that of her flatmate Bruce, an extraordinarily vain surveyor, of their neighbours Domenica (I want her to live next door to me), Irene, an extraordinarily pushy mother, and her son Bertie and of the people they know. As this series has the same setting as the Isabel Dalhousie books I almost expected her or Jamie to come around the corner any minute, but unfortunately this did not happen. I could have imagined Isabel turning up at the lecture at the Portrait Gallery, for example.

The whole book is a delight to read. The little incidents and goings on are sometimes common, sometimes annoying, sometimes completely absurd, sometimes exciting even, but never to the point where your heart rate starts to go up.

One of my many favourite passages:

“Why did you set fire to Daddy’s copy of The Guardian, Bertie? Did you do that because guardian is another word for parent? Was The Guardian your Daddy because Daddy is your guardian?”
Bertie thought for a moment. Dr Fairbairn was clearly mad, but he would have to keep talking to him; otherwise the psychotherapist might suddenly kill both him and his mother.
”No,” he said. “I like Daddy. I don’t want to set fire to Daddy.”
”And do you like The Guardian?” pressed Dr Fairbairn.
”No,” said Bertie. “I don’t like The Guardian."
“Why?” asked Dr Fairbairn.
“Because it’s always telling you what you should think,” said Bertie. “Just like Mummy.”

I am glad I have the next book in the series already sitting on my shelves.

Product info and buy link :

Title	44 Scotland Street
Author	Alexander McCall Smith
Publisher	Random House
ISBN	9781400079445
I got this book from	I bought it
Buy link	Buy 44 Scotland Street

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

Chapter & Hearse by Lorna Barrett

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Cover Chapter & Hearse by Lorna Barrett

Tricia is meddling again.

In a nutshell:

Short synopsis:

After killing a book seller a murderer seems to be after Bob and Angelica.

Language I read the book in: English

Did I like it? Yes, but the heroine is annoying, as almost always with cozies.

For people who: like lovely settings, aggravating heroines

My thoughts:

This second book that I read in the Booktown Mystery series is quite a nice cozy mystery again. It is the fourth in the series, my prediction after book one regarding a relationship between Tricia and Russ has come and gone, meanwhile she has had another thing going with a police officer and her love life is non existent once more. On the mystery side it is a run of the mill cozy where the Booktown is yet another token theme that has no bearing on the actual story. Those people could be selling anything from books to jam to second hand clothes and it would be just the same.

What I realize more and more is that I have a real problem with the cozy mystery heroines. Why do they always have to be either idiots, have attitude problems or both? Tricia is no exception. I find her aggravating and insufferable. Sorry!

Tricia meddles in business that is not her own. She is condescending and prejudiced. She does idiotic things even though she knows better (I suppose you have to be grateful for that). The number of times I shook my head and thoroughly disliked her I can’t count. I don’t know what is wrong with cozy writers. Can’t they create women that are sensible, reasonable people who deal with things in a respectful and cautious manner?

Agatha Raisin is a natural cheater and liar. (Agatha Raisin series by M.C. Beaton)
Theodosia is nosy and –again- meddlesome to the extreme. (Tea Shop Mysteries by Laura Childs)
That woman from Murder Unleashed (DNF for me) doesn’t want to deal with the police because she is wanted for attempted murder in another state!

Maybe is should stop reading cozies for a while and turn to something else.

Product info and buy link :

Title	Chapter and Hearse
Author	Lorna Barrett
Publisher	Penguin
ISBN	9780425236017
I got this book from	Birgit at The Book Garden
Buy link	Buy Chapter & Hearse

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

The lost art of gratitude by Alexander McCall Smith

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Isabel Dalhousie meddles once more.

In a nutshell:

Short synopsis:

Minty Auchterlonie asks Isabel to help her in a private affair. Isabel should know better, but does she?

Language I read the book in: English

Did I like it? Yes.

For people who: like Edinburgh, Isabel Dalhousie, meddlesome people, slow and comfy plots.

My thoughts:

By now the way Isabel Dalhousie books develop is well known to me. The plot is always interesting, intriguing, but never overly exciting or thrilling. This book was no exception and it was a nice and lovely read.

Brother Fox made a prolonged appearance in this one and Jamie, Charlie and Grace are fixtures again. Isabel’s niece has yet another, unsuitable guy at her side and once more it leads, well, not to disaster, but to another breakup.

And again there were some points that just made me ponder the nice and comfortable life of Isabel Dalhousie. Her son Charlie is 18 months and already she thinks of him as a man of 21, “coming to the end of his university days”. Talk about plans for your children. I just hope than Charlie does not turn out to be a person who does not want or is not able to pursue an academic career. Isabel – as open minded and philosophical she might seem – is a terrible snob. She walks through Edinburgh thinking to herself how she is fond of both the “romantic tourist posters and this unadorned, workaday Scotland”, and about ten lines later she does not “like this street and wished it was not there”, because it was full of cheap Italian restaurants and low-life bars with bouncers. Then she constantly thinks about being a good person, but her thoughts about colleagues are less than charitable. Actually, she is a hypocrite in every way.

On the other hand she can be rather certain that her son will not disappoint her in later life, seeing that he is such an angel at this point already. An angel! He never cries, he goes to sleep and never wakes up, he eats without spilling anything, he has a gourmet taste in food and is just PERFECT in every way. At one point someone says to Isabel “You’ve got a journal to run, as well as a child and a fiancé. You’ve got more than enough in your life.” Oh, has she? All I can see is someone who has not to work for a living, who can go out at any time and leave her son in the hands of her trusted housekeeper, who has all the time in the world to meddle in other people’s business and who has enough money to buy expensive art for pleasure. Oh yes, Isabel has enough on her plate to deal with. I don’t mind her situation at all, but at least she should be honest about it, for God’s sake and not pretend otherwise!

Product info and buy link :

Title	The lost art of gratitude
Author	Alexander McCall Smith
Publisher	Anchor Books
ISBN	9780307741974
I got this book from	I bought it
Buy link	Buy The lost art of gratitude

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

Just one night, part 1: The stranger by Kyra Davis

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Cover The Stranger by Kyra Davis

Being engaged but not altogether certain about it can be difficult.

In a nutshell:

Short synopsis:

Woman is engaged to boring, but reliable guy and looks for a one night stand to “be young” for once. Doesn’t work out the way she had planned.

Language I read the book in: English

Did I like it? Not so much

For people who: liked Fifty Shades of Grey without the kink but with a rival for Grey.

My thoughts:

“Just one night: The Stranger” is the first part of a trilogy and it is very short. At about 130 pages it keeps the plot to a minimum and jumps right into the sex. I am sorry to say that, even with erotica, sex without context doesn’t do it for me, so I found the erotic scenes not so much erotic but rather boring and uninspiring.

Kasie goes to Vegas because her best friend tells her she has to sleep with a stranger before she marries her reliable, secure, but rather boring boyfriend. She does it and, needless to say, the stranger, CEO of his own company, turns up again as a client. She is a business consultant, and at this point -in spite of my complaint that the plot was scarce- I cursed that there was plot at all. The business babble between the consultants or between them and the client was so vague, tedious and empty that it made you wonder why anyone would pay for their advice.

Anyway, the whole client-consultant relationship was just there in order to drive on the sex development which it did splendidly. Kasie and Robert have sex and then some more. In between she beats herself up over it and thinks of herself as a sinner. In order to justify her betrayal of her boyfriend/fiancé she comes up with all sorts of ideas. For example she asks her boyfriend whether he is ever tempted by beautiful female colleagues and when he says that he isn’t she conveniently interprets this answer as a lie (it came too fast to be true) and thus regards her own behaviour as excused.

She is constantly torn between her desire for Robert – which is huge, she dreams about him 24/7 and practically drools just from the thought of him – and her wish to be respectable. How dreadfully boring! One day she tells Robert they can’t meet again, the next day she seduces him, one day later she tells him to stop…after a while she so got on my nerves, I just skipped whole paragraphs. What bothered me most was the fact that she loves the idea that Robert knows the woman who lies underneath her business like exterior instinctively (and he does seem to know her very well), on the other hand she is so clueless about him that probably his bin men know him better than she does. It’s a tragedy.

The end is just another cock teasing episode with a twist when her boyfriend changes the course of events.

SPOILER

At the end of book one there is a short teaser for book two, called "Exposed". At the end of “The stranger” Kasie has to literally leave Robert and go back to her fiancé without another word to Robert. You would imagine that this calls for something other than sex at the beginning of the sequel, but no! It starts with a scene where she has just been violated by her fiancé and now has fantasies about Robert again. Bloody Hell! She has just been threatened by her fiancé, possibly raped, had to leave her lover for good and all she does is come?! I find this hard to believe.

Read this if you must. I will stay away from the sequels.

Product info and buy link :

Title	Just one night: The stranger
Author	Kyra Davis
Publisher	Pocket Star
ISBN	9781476711102
I got this book from	Netgalley
Buy link	Buy Just one night: The stranger (release date: 22 January 2013)

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

Murder is binding by Lorna Barrett

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Cover Murder is binding by Lorna Barrett

Who knew book lovers lived so dangerously?

In a nutshell:

Short synopsis:
A cook book shop owner is murdered and the next door neighbour, mystery book seller Tricia, is the only suspect for the police sheriff who holds a grudge against her.

Language I read the book in: English

Did I like it? Yes, rather

For people who: like books about book lovers and cozy mysteries

My thoughts:

I got this book from Birgit and as it sounded nice and entertaining I read it right away.

Once I started reading it drew me right into the atmosphere of this little New Hampshire town with a whole street full of antiquarian books stores. Sounds like a reader’s dream come true.

There was budding romance (don’t recoil, it was ok for a mystery book), quite interesting characters, a sisters’ conflict, an intriguing murder and a dislikeable sheriff. A few of the plot items will definitely carry on into following sequels and I find it quite inconsiderate of Birgit that she didn’t send me the next book, but the fourth. Just kidding, I love Birgit, but now I somehow have to get the two mysteries in between in order to be in the picture. I am predicting a relationship between Tricia and the publisher of the local newspaper in the future, but we will see.

Anyway, a nice mystery, the series is definitely worth reading on.

One thing that I would like to mention that totally rubbed me the wrong way was the fact that the characters (and thus the author) talked about a child with Down Syndrome as being "retarded" which I find offensive. I have a child with Down Syndrome and I find that word hurtful. Obviously the author knows that the word is debatable to say the least, because in one scene she has one character say something along the lines of "you can call her [the child] retarded, it won’t offend me". Well, it did offend me as a reader and that little detail (as unimportant as it may seem – the story doesn’t revolve around the DS issue) was in the back of my mind during the whole book and bothered me.

Product info and buy link :

Title	Murder is binding
Author	Lorna Barrett
Publisher	Berkley Mystery
ISBN	9780425219584
I got this book from	Birgit at The Book Garden
Buy link	Buy Murder is binding
More info	The Booktown mystery series

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

Shades of Earl Grey by Laura Childs

4 Replies

Very short synopsis:

A cat burglar is causing trouble in Charleston and, of course, Theodosia feels compelled to investigate.

inanutshell

I read it in: English

I liked it: So so. I was not too impressed.

For people who like: cosy mysteries, tea.

This was my second book in the Tea Shop Mystery series after Death by Darjeeling and I was not too thrilled with it. Theodosia is again way too nosy for her own good and towards the end downright stupid, which gets her into a situation that could have ended very badly for her. No idea where she gets the idea that she has an obligation to help out her friends by finding the culprit when moral support would be more than enough (reminds me a lot of Isabel Dalhousie; at least, Isabel uses obscure philosophical reasons as an excuse though). Also she has not learned anything from previous experience and is just as ready to suspect everybody for no reason whatsoever as she was before.

However, the very cosy atmosphere with Charleston as scenic background and the lovely tea shop as immediate location is very agreeable. I might read more of these books just for that alone – and take the meddlesome sleuth as a necessary evil.

Product info and buy link :

Title	Shades of Earl Grey
Author	Laura Childs
Publisher	Berkley Publishing
ISBN	9780425188217
I got this book from	Birgit at The Book Garden
Buy link	Buy Shades of Earl Grey

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne

6 Replies

Cover The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Elena from Books and Reviews recommended this short story to me after we briefly talked about The Monkey’s Paw, a great little horror short story that I re-read for last year’s RIP.

I had never heard of The Birthmark before and when I saw that it really is very short, I read it right away.

On a few pages Hawthorne creates a very uncomfortable, creepy atmosphere and he needs nothing but two protagonists and a supporting character. We have a scientist who thinks he will triumph over nature, a pliant wife, a somewhat pessimistic assistant and an obsession to create perfection where there is no need to.

I have to admit I am not sure whom I disliked more. The man who gets obsessed with the removal of his wife’s birthmark or the wife who is so under his influence or is so willing to please her husband that she starts to dislike it even more than he does.

In fact she should have been a little more suspicious of his achievements and not trusted him so easily (even though she was ok with even dying in the process, so it didn’t matter). On the one hand he tells her he has found the elixir of immortality and could make anyone live or die at will, on the other hand his journal is a list of failures (by his own standards). I found this discrepancy rather odd.

Apart from the topics whether man should try to meddle with nature, perfection vs. imperfection and all that symbolism of the birthmark being the manifestation of sin (give me a break!) etc., what interested me most was the aspect of what sort of relationship Aylmer and Georgiana were leading. Definitely not a healthy one! If transferred to nowadays Georgiana’s online name would most probably be “aylmerswife” and I thoroughly dislike that sort of attitude.

Anyway, this story is super creepy, a perfect short Halloween read. But not only that. It leaves you with a distinct uncomfortable feeling that will linger for some time. Haunting!

Read The Birthmark for free by downloading, for example, Little Masterpieces at Project Gutenberg.

Want to know what others thought of this book? Have a look at:

The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne at Books and Reviews

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

3 Replies

Harry Potter readalong

I know, I will probably get some hate mail in the near future.

This is about the third time or so that I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and, once more, it was like reading it (almost) for the first time. Harry Potter books are – for me – “forgettable”. I can’t imagine how there are adults out there who remember every little detail about every completely inconsequential character, every meaningless detail, every irrelevant incident. I can’t. Every time I read Harry Potter it’s a new experience.

That being said, a new experience is not necessarily a good one. This time I found the book rather dull, uninspiring, full of stereotypes and lifeless. Harry Potter seemed like a meddlesome, precocious little boy who doesn’t know his place. He is making wrong assumptions all through the book, is prejudiced and a general nuisance.

The message of the book – that continues in the rest of the series – is a dubious one in parts. Why, oh why, does Voldemort have to look like the caricature of Nosferatu in a snake mask (I admit I am somewhat influenced by the movies here, but his movie looks do come close to his description in the books)? He should be a charming and maybe average looking man with charisma instead. Most people who are evil don’t look the part, and vice versa. How he gained so many followers is a mystery to me, considering that he kills his supporters just as ready as he kills his enemies. Why follow him if you don’t gain anything from it?

The role of unreliable Hagrid is also puzzling. Why Dumbledore would trust that oaf (sorry, Hagrid lovers!) I can’t imagine. I mean, he gives away the secret of how to knock out Fluffy to a complete stranger in a pub! Not to mention the fact that he thinks he can raise an illegal dragon on Hogwarts’ grounds without it being noticed. The man is a liability.

The only fairly interesting character in the whole book is Snape. I love poor Snape (blame Alan Rickman!). Even though he seems to be the good guy at the end of the Philosopher’s Stone his dubious role is being played out until practically the last pages of the whole series. An easy method to keep up the tension without any further efforts.

I don’t know what I saw in those books when I read them for the first time (and I was not a kid back then). I suppose the nice setting in a wizard world ensnared me and I didn’t realize how unsubstantial the books really are. I am sure that lots of people are going to tell me now how well planned out everything is and how a little detail in book one already was the harbinger of an occurrence five books later and how greatly interwoven the whole storyline is. That may be so, just I can’t see it because by the time I read book five I have completely forgotten what I read four books (or one book) earlier.

I have been watching the movies at the same time that I was reading The Philosopher’s Stone and enjoyed watching them for the beautiful setting, the good actors and all the action. I’ve got to admit though that I am rooting for the bad guys – to no avail, I am afraid.

Never seduce a Scot by Maya Banks

4 Replies

Another Highland romance with a little twist.

In a nutshell:

Short synopsis:

Clan chieftain is forced to marry enemy clan’s daft daughter, but not everything is at it seems.

Language I read the book in: English

Did I like it? Yes, rather.

For people who: like Highland romance and the standard romance components

My thoughts:

After the absolute disaster with 50 Shades of Grey I needed another romance to get that book out of my system. After reading a Random House newsletter and looking on Netgalley I got a historical romance by Maya Banks. Can it be a more sure thing than Scotsmen and Maya Banks? I don’t think so.

I have read books by her before, but they were contemporary ménage stories, and I somehow must have expected some happy threesome with a fair maiden, a fierce chieftain and a gentle healer or something because I was surprised to find a rather standard Highland romance. In fact it reminded me a lot of two books by Julie Garwood combined, “The Secret” (bride comes from an enemy clan, just that in The Secret it is kept, well, a secret) and “Saving Grace” (brutal ex husband comes for “his” woman again). But I suppose all components of a Highland romance are so formulaic that you take them from a pool and combine them at will and they will always make a nice romance read.

In this story we have an additional twist with the bride/wife being deaf , and it takes some time for her man to find out. How her family has not noticed this in years and just thought her daft is a mystery to me, but I will let that slide, as it is mandatory to the plot.

The whole story is a really enjoyable read, not as hot as other Banks books, but rather sweet and cosy. I just saw on Goodreads that is is book 1 in a series and that makes perfect sense. Both clans have a couple of brothers to find brides for and it is only reasonable to give them their own books.

Why the book is called “Never seduce a Scot” I have no idea. So far I haven’t come across one Highland romance where the Scot in question isn’t a prefect specimen of his kind. In fact, seducing a Scot (or alternatively being seduced by one) should be a top priority on every girl’s bucket list.

Product info and buy link :

Title	Never seduce a Scot
Author	Maya Banks
Publisher	Ballantine Books
ISBN	9780345533234
I got this book from	Netgalley
Buy link	Buy Never seduce a Scot

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

Come together by Josie Lloyd & Emlyn Rees

3 Replies

One couple, two points of view.

In a nutshell:

Short synopsis:

The story of Jack and Amy, told from both sides.

Language I read the book in: German (Come together)

Did I like it? Yes

For people who: like modern romance (not erotic).

My thoughts:

When I got this book from a swap partner I didn’t know whether I would like it, but the idea about the two voices sounded nice.

Both protagonists start telling the story at a point some time before they met and it was quite good to get to know them beforehand. As is often the case with me, I immediately sided with the guy and didn’t think Amy was such a nice person. Her irresponsible behaviour in her job (she is a temp) made her unlikeable to me. My initial feelings about her were confirmed later in the book in various other situations, but that didn’t spoil the reading fun.

The plot covers all the usual ups and down, the story is realistic and definitely not being told from a pink cloud. Insecurities, jealousies, misunderstanding, stubborn behaviour, we have all been there.

For my taste people could have been a little less inebriated. I am no teetotaller by any means, but in general I don’t like people to get drunk at every party until they can hardly remember their name the next morning. And I dislike it even more when they do things while drunk and then use that as an excuse.

One thing I really could have done without was the corny way Jack was thinking about things. Well, I read this in German, so I can only give you a (translated) idea, but there we go:

I saw, I conquered, I came.

How awful is that? There are some passages like this one where you just have to shake your head and quickly read on, otherwise you’d throw the book in the corner, but otherwise it is a fun read. There are a couple of sequels out and I am waiting for “Come again” to turn up in my mailbox.

Product info and buy link :

Title	Come together
Author	Josie Lloyd & Emlyn Rees
Publisher	Arrow Books
ISBN	9780099279273
I got this book from	a swap partner
Buy link	Buy Come together

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

A chance acquaintance by Charles Chadwick

5 Replies

Odd couple gets together and then part ways again.

In a nutshell:

Short synopsis:

Ugly Elsie meets a man on the bus who will soon give her life a different direction for a while.

Language I read the book in: German (Eine zufällige Begegnung)

Did I like it? Yes.

For people who: like quiet stories, interesting and unusual characters.

My thoughts:

I got this book because the title caught my interest. I had no idea what to expect, Charles Chadwick was an unknown name to me and I just started reading.

The story is told from various points of views and at first I found it a bit difficult to get into it. After a while, however, I just could not stop. It was obvious that the acquaintance would not turn into romance but rather into a friendship and until now I still can not figure out where the line was.

Elsie’s disfigurement makes it impossible to awake any romantic feelings in Stan, even though he wishes this was different. On the other hand Elsie has feelings for Stan, but knows they will never lead to anything. I liked her attitude towards herself. She never indulged in self-pity and just took things as they were without making a fuss about them.

All characters were well developed and believable. Elsie’s brother and uncle I found absolutely insufferable. How his sister’s looks can play such a big part that he even lies for years to his children (or rather lets them believe something which was not true) is incomprehensible. Her uncle Geoffrey is such an ass, but you find people like him all over the place. His character was so realistic it was frightening. Pretending to be generous, but then never living up to his own words with some“excuse” or other. I thoroughly disliked him.

The only complaint I have is that the relationship between Elsie and Stan came about a little too quickly. On the other hand, maybe people like them have to make snap decisions in order to grab what is being offered. I don’t know. Maybe we all should be a bit more like that.

This is a quiet and quick read that, in spite of it being so unspectacular, will stay with you for a long time.

Location: Mostly Dorset, UK

Dorset Cottage Durdle Door, Dorset

Images from flickr user j-sin and wikipedia user Saffron Blaze

Product info and buy link :

Title	A chance acquaintance
Author	Charles Chadwick
Publisher	Short Books Ltd.
ISBN	9781906021405
I got this book from	I swapped it
Buy link	Buy A chance acquaintance

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

5 Replies

I never knew buttons could be so frightening.

In a nutshell:

Short synopsis:

Coraline has to fight an evil witch to get her parents back. At the same time she rescues a few lost souls.

Language I read the book in: German (Coraline)

Did I like it? Oh, yes.

For people who: like children’s adventures, good vs. evil, witches and smart cats.

My thoughts:

This was my first book by Neil Gaiman and I didn’t know what to expect. I have heard a lot about him, but it was always referring to adult literature and not children’s books.

I finished Coraline in one afternoon which is rather remarkable as I normally drag books around for ages. But this was a quick read, very entertaining (in a spooky sort of way) and – I wanted to get it over with. I never read thrillers or horror (not anymore, that is), and now you know, why. If Coraline is already scaring me to death, what a bundle of nerves would I be after reading some adult thriller?

Coraline is such a courageous girl, it is amazing. She is sensible, clever and fearless. The book should be read by every child out there so she can be their role model. The ideas Neil Gaiman came up with – OMG, I have no idea how kids relate to them, but I found them frightening to the extreme. Fake parents with buttons for eyes, a world that slowly dissolves, some ancient being acting as a corridor? Bloody Hell, for me that was about as much as I could bear. But I am a bit of a scaredy cat.

Anyway, this story had me from the beginning and I just couldn’t stop reading until it was over, evil was outplayed and everything was good again. Totally recommendable for children and adults alike.

Movie tip

Coraline

Product info and buy link :

Title	Coraline
Author	Neil Gaiman
Publisher	HarperPerennial
ISBN	9780061139376
I got this book from	the library
Buy link	Buy Coraline

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

Death by Darjeeling by Laura Childs

6 Replies

Tea can be deadly, and so can amateur sleuthing.

In a nutshell:

Short synopsis:

Local developer gets murdered. Tea shop owner Theodosia Browning feels obliged to investigate.

Language I read the book in: English

Did I like it? Yes, sort of, but I had some misgivings.

For people who: like cozy mysteries, tea, nosy amateur sleuths

My thoughts:

At the start I thought I would love this book. I posted its beginning last week and the whole atmosphere of Charleston, the tea shop, the people, it spoke to me.

However, after a while, I started to seriously dislike our heroine (from now on I call her TB, her name is just too long). Frankly, she is a nosy bitch with preconceived opinions who lies through her teeth to find out things. Not that those things help her much, mind, at the end she is as clueless as she was in the beginning, just that her snooping almost kills her.

Just a few examples what I didn’t like about the whole story/character:

One of TB’s employees, Bethany, is a suspect and is being questioned by the police. Nothing wrong about that. Nothing in the book indicates that the police is unfair, they do not abuse her, they are only doing their job. However, at a meeting with the detective TB says to him: “The more you continue to harass her, the more you look like a rank amateur.” No wonder the guy is flabbergasted, the police did nothing of the sort.
At the funeral TB gives the impression to the deceased’s sister that she was “very close” to him. She actually says that to her when the sister asks her whether she knew her brother. Just on the next page, however, TB muses that the sister “had obviously mistaken her for a female friend of Hugh Barron”. Um, no, she has not mistaken her, TB has TOLD her that she was a “very close” female friend.
Bethany was sacked from the Heritage Society after the murder, a fact that was never properly explained. In fact it is treated in the book as if the president was this unfair old man who fired her unfairly. Well, let me tell you, if I was the board president and I got into an argument with a new board member (who later gets killed), the last thing I’d expect was an INTERN to interfere and give her two cents. And, what is more, to see her address the new board member later and apologize for the unfair treatment by the rest of the board.
TB lies to about everyone to get information. She goes as far as going to the local morgue and acting as an undertaker who comes to pick up the corpse! Needless to say the morgue employee hands out freely all info about the lab results of a murder case to an undertaker who is unknown to him and who comes from a funeral home he has never heard of before. Standard procedure, that!
TB finds out that another suspect (of hers) has worked in the jungle and knows about frogs whose poison is used for arrows. From that little nugget she presumes that the man “knows all about toxins”. Of course, if you have ever heard of a rattlesnake it makes you an expert on poisons of all kinds and at the same time a potential suspect in ANY poison case ever.

So, as far as the investigation goes, I was thoroughly disappointed. The assumptions and conclusions were just too weird and illogical to make any sense to me. On top of that the reader was misled on purpose by some strange internal thoughts from one of the suspects that were put in a way to make him sound extremely odd, stalker-ish and suspicious, when in fact he is only a harmless man smitten with TB. No doubt this was done to obfuscate the whole story and I did not appreciate that.

That being said, I liked it for the atmosphere and general feeling which was just right for a cozy mystery. We will see what the other book in the series that I have will be like.

Location: Charleston, South Carolina, USA

Broad Street, Charleston

Images from wikipedia.

Product info and buy link :

Title	Death by Darjeeling
Author	Laura Childs
Publisher	Berkley Prime Crime
ISBN	9780425179451
I got this book from	Birgit from The Book Garden
Buy link	Buy Death by Darjeeling

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

French Pressed by Cleo Coyle

6 Replies

Chefs are an arrogant and insufferable bunch. But do they deserve to die?

In a nutshell:

Short synopsis:

Clare’s daughter is the main suspect in a couple of murder cases and now she has all hands full to find the real killer.

Language I read the book in: English

Did I like it? Yes

For people who: like cozy mysteries, feisty heroines, the restaurant scene.

My thoughts:

So far I liked this one best, I think. Birgit did say that the series gets better and she is definitely right. I start to really like Clare even though she is a terrible busybody who thinks everybody and everything is her business.

Her daughter, however, is a different matter.
The first time you stumble on a corpse and then get to be the main suspect it is a tragedy, if it happens again it becomes a farce. How stupid can you get, for Christ’s sake? Her boss and lover humiliates her in front of the whole staff and dumps her like an old rag, so she flees from the scene. And what does she do next? Goes back to retrieve her knives at midnight when she can be certain the guy will be there and most probably alone! Isn’t humiliation enough? Well, she paid for her idiocy.

This story takes place in the restaurant scene and chefs and cooks play a huge part. As I have experience with cooks myself I can vouch for the realism in most of the book. Even though I find it totally unbelievable that a four star restaurant – no matter how avantgarde or extraordinary – does not have a coffee machine and the maitre d’ allows the waiters to serve clients staff coffee from some dirty old coffee maker. This is unheard of.

S P O I L E R !

Clare’s assumption that the man she suspects to be the killer has knife skills is ridiculous. He is not a butcher, he is the SON of a butcher. Why would the son of a butcher have knife skills? That would be the same as saying the son of an accountant is an excellent bookkeeper.

On another note I am glad to say that no artists made an appearance in this story and so Jackson Pollock can rest in peace today.

In spite of all these little things that bothered me I very much enjoyed reading this cozy and am looking forward to the next one already. I particularly like how every book puts a spotlight on a certain “scene”, the high society in the Hamptons, the fashion people, the coffee business and now the top restaurants. Highly entertaining!

Location: Greenwich Village, New York City, NY, USA

Washington Square Park MacDougal street

Images from wikipedia

Product info and buy link :

Title	French Pressed
Author	Cleo Coyle
Publisher	Berkley Publishing Group
ISBN	9780425220498
I got this book from	I won it from Birgit at The Book Garden
Buy link	Buy French pressed
More info	The Coffeehouse mysteries series
and more info	Cleo Coyle’s Internet coffeehouse

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

Decaffeinated Corpse by Cleo Coyle

2 Replies

Decaf is not for the faint of heart.

In a nutshell:

Short synopsis:

An old friend of Matt and Clare comes up with a decaf coffee plant. Are others after it and stick at nothing to get it?

Language I read the book in: English

Did I like it? Yes

For people who: like cosy mysteries, a down to earth heroine, a slowly developing love affair.

My thoughts:

Birgit was right when she said the books get better, as opposed to a lot of other cosy mystery series. I am slowly coming to like Matt, Clare’s ex husband, as well as her ex-mother in law who plays quote a bit part in this story again. I particularly liked her drug deal and how cool-headed she is.

Clare is the typical busybody amateur sleuth. Always suspecting something, always sniffing around in people’s lives and asking indiscrete questions. I don’t know how people put up with that. Also she is so persistent when questioning people (with no right to do so, mind) she doesn’t seem to have any sense of shame or embarrassment inside her.

The obsession with coffee in this series is still slightly over the top. OK, people work in a coffee shop but that doesn’t necessarily mean they HAVE to be fanatical coffee aficionados who place a well made coffee above everything else. Sometimes I get the feeling that, as long as the coffee is perfect, life is as well. If it was just that easy.

All in all, another nice, cosy read. I still have one book to go from Birgit’s batch, after that, I will have to look around for some more.

Location: Mostly Greenwich Village, NYC, NY, USA. Around Halloween

Images from wikipedia. Image links go to source.

Product info and buy link :

Title	Decaffeinated Corpse
Author	Cleo Coyle
Publisher	Berkley Publishing Group
ISBN	9780425216385
I got this book from	I won it from Birgit at The Book Garden
Buy link	Buy Decoffeinated Corpse
More info	The Coffeehouse mysteries series
Even more info	Cleo Coyle’s Internet coffeehouse

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

Latte trouble by Cleo Coyle

4 Replies

Cober Latte trouble by Cleo Coyle

Java Jewelry, Lattes and Murder in the fashion world

In a nutshell:

Short synopsis:

When Clare suspects a murder victim was not the intended one she starts to investigate during New York Fashion Week.

Language I read the book in: English

Did I like it? Yes, quite. It’s an easy and quick read.

For people who: like cosy mysteries, coffee, fashion labels, first person POV

My thoughts:

Right at the start I realized that the book I read before this one “Murder most frothy” is actually the one after “Latte Trouble”. Ah, I hate reading out of order, but that couldn’t be helped now.

Clare Cosi is a rather likeable character and in this book we get to know her a bit better as far as her relationship with her ex-husband is concerned. Matteo is in this book for most of the time, so there is a lot of interaction between them. Somehow it seems he always turns up at the right time and always in the company of an influential, rich, trendsetter he can make use of. Not a bad connection to have for Clare, even though her feelings about these relationships are ambivalent.

The murder story is rather uneventful and even a kidnapping and visit to a hellhole of a club turns out to be not as bad as anticipated. Does anybody else find it remarkable that Clare knows off the top of her head that the fourth circle of hell is the circle of the greedy (she calls the hoarders)? Wow, this woman is literate, indeed! On the other hand she has no clue that the artist is called Jackson Pollock, not Pollack, for Christ’s sake! (see my review of Murder most frothy)

The solution to the mystery was –I wouldn’t call it far-fetched, but rather unexpected. The murderer turned out to be someone totally unrelated until then, something I am not a big fan of.

Brand labels play a big part in the book, not as hints to the mystery solution but rather as continuous name dropping. Bloody Hell, ok, it is fashion week, but I couldn’t care less whether witnesses wore a Prada dress, a Chanel costume or whatever. Got on my nerves, that.

All in all:

The whole plot is rather straightforward and easy to follow. A comfort read without much brain engagement involved.

Location: New York, New York, USA, during fashion week

Images from wikipedia users mangostar and mandiberg.

Product info and buy link :

Title	Latte trouble
Author	Cleo Coyle
Publisher	Berkley Publishing Group
ISBN	9780425204450
I got this book from	I won it from Birgit at The Book Garden
Buy link	Buy Latte Trouble
More info	The Coffeehouse mysteries series
Even more info	Cleo Coyle’s Internet coffeehouse

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.

Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James

13 Replies

If that sorry effort is what modern women get off on, it’s not looking good for the future of erotic literature .

In a nutshell:

Short synopsis:

Ditz meets rich guy and consents reluctantly to a D/s relationship.

Language I read the book in: English

Did I like it? No, it was complete drivel.

For people who like: not sure.

My thoughts:

Starting to read:

I don’t know what the hype is about. This story is exactly like any other (erotic) romance that is out there. Just much worse.

The two protagonists are run of the mill:

Little self conscious woman who is embarrassed way too easily. Who gets intimidated by the powerful, rich, extremely handsome man. Who bites her lip way too much (which turns him on no end).
Uber attractive, richer than God stud who is a control freak. Who sometimes lets his mask down and shows how lonely and desperate he is. Who is always smiling ironically. Who always seems to be amused and, at the same time, exasperated about the heroine.

Give me a break, this is just Christine Feehan without the paranormal.

Later on:

Why does Christian think that She. Is. So. Sweet? That woman has nothing going for her, nothing. She is a klutz and an idiot who doesn’t get a thing. It can’t be her witty conversation or her great sense of humour, her elegant poise or her sophisticated tastes. There is none of that. It can only be her naive innocence, and ingenues can get on your nerves very quickly, not to speak of the fact that soon the innocence will have vanished.

The whole contract concept seems very simplified to me. Given that everything else in the book is described very detailed, this doesn’t work. No experienced Dominant can expect a total newbie to come up with a list of things she won’t do. She doesn’t even know what CAN be done. If you have no idea about BDSM would you think of, let’s say, games involving breath control to include in your list of no- nos? You wouldn’t even think that this is a possibility.

Ana is an odd mixture of contradictions when it comes to sex. She is a virgin, is taken by surprise that “That was inside me”, seeing that Christian’s cock is so big (and bad… just kidding), on the other hand she is expertly deep throating Christian when she gives him her first blow job ever. I am not buying that.
How often we read about her “inner goddess” I can’t count. That goddess is constantly revelling in her success to arouse Christian. Or she feels rejected or disappointed or whatever. Her “inner goddess”! Have you ever thought of your inner goddess when pondering a man? I haven’t.

I had another Christine Feehan déjà vu when it came to Christian’s eyes turning “molten gray”; the “molten lava” won’t take much longer to turn up, I am sure. Given that Christian’s eyes are gray to begin with, I don’t think they have changed much by becoming molten, but what the heck!

A bit later still:

No molten lava yet, but how about molten silver? I wasn’t too far off.

OK, I haven’t talked about the erotic factor. It took the story a while to get there, that’s why I am only mentioning it now. I have read car manuals that are more erotic than this. Someone who calls this erotic must have limited themselves to reading non-fiction up to now. The sex scenes are boring and uninspired to the extreme. There is NO sexual tension to speak of between Christian and Ana, even though we are constantly told how much they want each other. The scenes are a lacklustre sequence of sexual activities without even making an attempt to engage the reader’s imagination.

The writing style is repetitive and simple. The number of times someone is staring at their hands/fingers, blushing, gasping or talking in a small voice (mostly her, but he DOES gasp once in a while) is mind boggling. Also get used to “holy crap”, “holy cow” and “crap” in general. They are the default beginnings of sentences (again, her).

Want a sample? Here you go:

Situation: She has sent him an email to which he responds by showing up in her bedroom (btw, she is a 21 year old student in the year 2011 and has no computer and no email address. In order to rectify this he gifts her with a state of the art MacBook Pro).

Holy Cow, is he offended? I stare down at my fingers. How am I going to dig myself out of this? If I tell him it was a joke, I don’t think he’ll be impressed.

“I thought you’d reply by email.” My voice is small, pathetic.

“Are you biting your lower lip deliberately?” he asks darkly.

I blink up at him, gasping, freeing my lip.

“I wasn’t aware I was biting my lip,” I murmur softly.

My heart is pounding.

About 55% done:

I am going to stop reading now. This is such insufferable drivel, I can’t continue this. Apart from all the things I mentioned before it annoys me no end to continuously read that someone is “fucked up” and “depraved” simply because he likes that lifestyle. If that is the way he rolls, fine. It has nothing to do with depravity or being fucked up. If it is not your thing, then just walk away!

I don’t have to read this book until the end, and so I won’t.

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