The Hoodie and the Humpback

2/5

by
Faye Meredith

Amazon.UK
Amazon.com

This was the most strangest book I think I've ever read! The prologue opened like a children's book, but the main story was most definitely adult.

The main character Tanya was a troubled teen who drank, smoked, swore and stole without a care in the world. Society owed her (or so she thought) and I didn't like her. She was the dregs that society wanted to forget--but then something profound happened to make her question her existence and I began to like her.

This book is very gritty, and sometimes disturbing. I thought the dialogue was a little stilted at times and there were minor typos, which stuck out a bit too much for me to be able to ignore.

Blurb:

People cross the road when they see Tanya coming. A fact she's immensely proud of; being feared is essential for survival on her London estate. But when her friend Lena gets picked to join a gang and she doesn't, Tanya's life changes. She wanders home in the early hours, nursing the world's worst hangover and sees the bizarre sight of a whale swimming up the Thames. Apart from dangerous dogs on studded leads, Tanya's never seen a wild animal before. She gets obssessed with the whale and blags her way onto the muddy bank where it's stuck. Before long she's volunteering to drench it in buckets of water. Meanwhile, Lena's new lifestyle puts her in terrible danger and Tanya has to decide whether to save the whale or her friend.

Ecelectic: Ten Very Different Tales

3/5

By
Jonathan Hill

Amazon.com
Amazon.UK

Like it says on the tin (or book cover) ten very different tales. Some of them were a twist in the tale, others were just fragments of a character’s life.

I didn’t read every story because not every story could hold my attention. I found the lengthy paragraphs unwelcoming on the eye, but one tale really had me giggling: The Ornithologist. It wasn’t a horror tale, but one of observance. Its dry humour appealed to me, and made me understand that Jonathan Hill is clearly an author who has a strong sense of how the human psyche works.

I could imagine him writing a chilling thriller in the near future!

Blurb

ECLECTIC: Ten Very Different Tales

From humour to horror, drama to pathos, this book of short stories will move and surprise you.

Starting with a relationship spanning an entire lifetime in just several pages and ending with a boy's struggles both at home and school, via stories including a woman's disastrous brush with modern art, a teenager's deadly obsession with video games, a man's ghostly encounter and even a humorous poem, this five-star book of eclectic tales has something for everyone.

Enjoy the variety!

The Curse of Fin Milton

3/5

by

Vivian Mayne

Amazon.UK

Amazon.com


The concept of the book is excellent: have you ever wondered what's happening inside your head when you fall in love? Why you can’t eat or sleep? Or why you can’t stop thinking of this one person? 


Then suddenly after loving this person for weeks, months, years, the person, overnight, acts as if you don't exist. He/she can't see you. Doesn't even have any memory of you. 


Then you find out you're a victim of a magical spell. A hex that rears its head every few years making that person, who you love desperately, forget everything about you only to re-remembers you years later. She/he is determined never to forget you this time - can't even believe she/he can forget you. But she/he does... and it begins all over again.

This is the theory for The Curse of Fin Milton: fantasy, magic and romance, and one that I was very excited to begin to read. But the multi points of view and many characters made it difficult to follow at times, hence me awarding it only three out of five. As this book is going to be the first of a series I wonder if readers would benefit from having a family tree at the beginning? I know the author does have a FB page dedicated to the story, but not every reader has a Facebook account.


Anyway, the premise of The Curse of Fin Milton is two families at war with the other, and the feud goes back years. Main character, Fin Milton, is in love with a woman who can only remember him every so often. He's determined to break the spell, and has to delve deep into his family's history. 

It's a packed book, and probably not for light-reading. The fantasy element means you have to keep an open mind, but I like how Vivian Mayne makes it all seem believable - even 'astral planing'. I'd not heard of that term before reading this book. It's a state of consciousness where a person's consciousness can travel anywhere in the world while his/her physical body is safely asleep. (I looked it up and apparently it CAN happen. I will remain sceptical though).


The characters in The Curse of Fin Milton are all fleshed out, and present as real people, and the scenery (especially Cornwall) is vivid, so I congratulate Vivian Mayne on that.

Blurb
Set in modern day London and Cornwall, England, this enchanting ghost story follows the quest of a young man who carries a curse that condemns him to a life without the woman he cares for most in the world. His quest to lift the curse threatens the lives of all those he cares for.

The couple first meet as children, but were predestined to suffer a supernatural romance as a consequence of a curse cast in days gone by. Aided by a beautiful and dangerous ally who herself has mystic gifts he has to ward off paranormal forces as he seeks to unshackle the restraints of the curse. The two lovers are constantly at the mercy of a ruthless family whose interests would be threatened if the the curse were lifted.

RESTRAINT

3/5

by 

Sandra Madera

Amazon.UK
Amazon.com

Laura Carter's mother died in childbirth to her, and her father could never forgive Laura for that. Or so Laura (and the reader) is led to believe. Instead, she begins to uncover a horrific family secret and the very reason her father appeared to hate her so. When her father dies, Laura and her sister are left in the care of their uncle Raymond Reynolds and are shipped off to England.

The opening was strong and hooked me in, but I soon became a bored with the characters and all their "because it's expected of me" culture. Then it took a bizarre and somewhat exciting turn, and I was up until the early hours reading - but it took almost half way through to get to the interesting part. I'm glad I stuck with it though. Vampire stories are becoming something of a cliché lately but Restraint was different simply because it was written very much in the historical genre. I also wasn't expecting the vampires to be so scary and evil.

Suitable for 16 plus Restraint contained no swearing or "rude scenes", but the suggestion of something more was evident in the scenes with Laura and Bryan Froster. I sensed an attraction between them even though Laura detested and was frightened of him. 

Restraint is part of a series, and although this story ended with all ends tied it left the reader wanting to know more about the characters, especially Laura and Elias (love interest? Maybe it'll be revealed in the next instalment?). I felt there was a lot more to the story than the author was willing to reveal, and I wonder how the saga will pan out? 

The most annoying, but small, thing that irked me about Restraint was that the main characters, Laura and Linda, had such similar names that I had to keep flipping back to see who was who. It was even more annoying than the typos I found (although they didn't detract from the story) were too many for me not to notice. It was a shame because otherwise Restraint was very well written.

Blurb:

After the abrupt death of her father, Laura Carter and her sister, Linda, are shipped off to England by an uncle they barely know. They are taken to a large house in Annesley to begin a life of service. When Laura becomes a governess to a young boy named Marcus, she begins to experience strange things in the night... horrible things.

Creatures in the night. Bite marks on her body. 

Laura is about to discover a secret that has existed in her family for generations... Something wants to possess her. It wants her blood, but it didn't expect her to resist and lose all restraint.

My Pet Zombie

4/5

by 

Wesley Barber

Amazon.co.UK
Amazon.com


I was going on a short journey and I wanted something short and sweet to tide me over and I fancied a Zombie story. This was short, tongue-in-cheek, very British but really not bad at all. I don't know what I was expecting, but nothing good that's for sure.

It had a simple process: teenager Luke has a pet zombie kept in a rabbit hutch in his wardrobe, and he creeps out at night killing animals so he can take them back to feed his pet. 

The short isn't for the squeamish or animal lovers, so if offended by cats being stabbed in the neck by a screwdriver don't download!

My Pet Zombie is well written, and it has all the acquired bits: beginning, middle and an end - and what an end! It's a story with a twist, so it wouldn't be fair if I revealed it here.

I "bought" it because it was free, but I wouldn't pay almost £2 for a short-story, so my only criticism on this is that for a short story it's much too expensive.

Blurb: 

A feral blast-beat of a short story, in which a teenager struggles to balance the pressures of having a girlfriend, dealing with over-anxious parents, getting schoolwork done on time and the additional burden of keeping a ravenous undead creature of the night in his closet.

Tell a Thousand Lies

4/5

by 

Rasana Atreya

Amazon.co.UK
Amazon.com

Three sisters, Pullamma, Lata and Malli have been brought up by their grandmother. The grandmother wants to find them a husband, but only two of the girls are "pretty". Pullamma is too dark to be considered attractive in 1980 India.

That’s the theme in essence. We don’t have anything to do with Malli (although her wedding brings us Kondal Rao and he’s is going to be Pullamma’s nightmare), Malli is married off from the start and we only begin to get to know Lata towards the end of the book. It’s Pullamma’s story and her that we life we get to know, but she’s a girl very much of her time and heritage. All she wants is a husband and a family. Unlike her twin, Lata, she isn’t interested in education.

In the beginning I did wonder if the book had too much "info dump" because there was a lot telling about how people from that culture lived, but before I realised I was hooked on Pullamma's story and found myself keen to finish. There were a few flashbacks that became a jumble at times, and I did wonder if the story was too "big" for the author, but overall I think Rasana Atreya did a very good job indeed. It was easy reading, and opened my eyes to how "free" Western culture is and how much it's taken for granted.

Pullamma, as a character, was delightful, although I found her too naive at times, especially as she openly trusted people even when, one after the other, they took advantage of her. Her husband was a character I couldn't warm to at all! I hoped Pullamma would dump him by the end of the story for being such a wuss and a pushover, but no, she "loved him".

Tell a Thousand Lies is a story I’m going to remember (for all the right reasons), I do think there was a lot packed into it, maybe too much? It wasn’t so much as a roller coaster read, but a long, fast straight ride until you arrive with a bump the end. There was no break, no respite from the misery dumped on poor Pullamma, or if there was, it was in very short supply of a line or two of prose. I was quite out of breath towards the end!

In short it is a powerful book, and very much worth a read.

Blurb: 

In a land where skin colour can determine one's destiny, fraternal twins PULLAMMA and LATA are about to embark on a journey that will tear their lives apart. Dark skinned Pullamma dreams of being a wife. 

With three girls in her family, the sixteen year old is aware there isn't enough dowry to secure suitable husbands for them all. But a girl can hope. She's well versed in cooking, pickle making, cow washing -- you name it. She's also obliged her old-fashioned grandmother by not doing well in school. Fair skinned and pretty, her twin sister Lata would rather study medicine than get married. 

Unable to grasp the depth of Lata's desire, the twins' Grandmother formalizes a wedding alliance for the girl. Distraught, Lata rebels, with devastating consequences. As Pullamma helps ready the house for her older sister Malli's bride viewing, she prays for a positive outcome to the event. 

What happens next is so inconceivable that it will shape Pullamma's future in ways she couldn't have foreseen. TELL A THOUSAND LIES is a sometimes wry, sometimes sad, but ultimately realistic look at how superstition and the colour of a girl's skin rules India's hinterlands.

Trinity

5/5

by

Patrick Fox

Amazon.UK
Amazon.com

The cover didn’t grab me, I must admit. It looked too much like a man’s western, which didn’t appeal to my chick lit, light-hearted romance type of read.  But the blurb sounded interesting, so I downloaded the sample – and was immediately hooked!

It had all the elements of a chick lit novel – fun, light-hearted with a little bit of exaggerated realism. The only difference is that the protagonist is male; but it could easily hold its own alongside any Matt Dunn's novels.

Ben Rider was unhappily married (only he didn’t know it at the time), and when his wife died it shocked me, and I almost stopped reading. So glad I didn’t! The death was sensitively done, but there was no lingering over it and soon the story moved on with the same humour and warmth that was there from the beginning. On the eve of her death Ben’s imaginary friend reappears – Trinity. He has come to lead Ben into all sorts of scrapes all in the name of “his destiny”.

Trinity is a cowboy (hence the cover) with three other personalities, which are hilarious in their own right. Love the cowardly pirate!

Ben’s dry narration throughout the novel is a lot of fun, and has many laugh-out-loud moments. He meets Bonnie through his work, and when he discovers she has an imaginary friend all of her own and one that he can see, well, I didn’t think the book could get any funnier.

Trinity is well-written and I can fully recommend it. A well-deserved 5 out of 5 from me.

Blurb
When Ben Rider finds his childhood imaginary friend, Trinity, in his kitchen, he knows something isn't right. Trinity hasn't changed a bit. He still has three personas: cowboy, pirate, and private eye. He still smells of chocolate, and he still has a habit of massaging his earlobe.

Ben is trying to keep his video game development business alive and finalise a deal with an American games publisher, while keeping his disintegrating marriage together. Now, with the reappearance of his imaginary friend, he has his sanity to worry about too.

Trinity claims he has come back to help Ben sort out his life and guide him to his destiny. But over the days that follow, Ben's life goes haywire, and it looks like he might meet his destiny sooner than he thinks. Thanks to Trinity, Ben will have a restaurant collapse on top of him, be seduced and later shot at by a Welsh femme fatale, meet someone else's imaginary friend, and lose both a wife and an ex-wife. But will he find his destiny, or is Trinity's real reason for returning, something else entirely?