Tag: mystery

Blurb Book Review: The Soulmate by Sally Hepworth (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

Gabe is the love of Pippa’s life; he’s charming, successful, and loving but can also be unpredictable and manic. They buy a cottage near The Drop, a cliff face, and Gabe stops several people from jumping off. That is, until one woman takes her own life in front of him. Pippa, watching from the window, misses the event but sees Gabe with his arms out after the woman went over. Suspicions grow when Pippa finds out Gabe knew the woman.

This novel reminds me more of a romance, the way Pippa keeps reminding the reader how much she loves Gabe and how he’s the centre of her life. Pippa rationalizes a lot of Gabe’s behaviour even though his actions are erratic and sometimes extreme. A diagnosis of ADHD seems to fit, but Gabe continues his manic behaviour even while medicated. Later, the true mental illness is revealed.

Pippa’s character arc is a good one. She loves her husband and her children, but has been cleaning up his messes for so long that she’s not really living, just reacting to his behaviour.

Overall the novel was a good depiction of what it’s like to live with someone, and love them, with mental illness.

Blurb Book Review: My Murder by Katie Williams (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

Lou is a clone, taking the place of her former, murdered, self. Brought back by a government program along with four other women murdered by the same man, she’s trying to adapt to life with no memory of her murder or the days preceding it. While she’s still herself, she’s also not; this body wasn’t the one who bore her baby or that sustained a scar from a childhood accident. A support group with the four other women helps, but also raises questions about her murder, questions that lead her to a shocking conclusion.

The concept of this novel is good; a woman is brought back and feels slightly out of step with the rest of the world. But the execution wasn’t great. I had no real image of the other women, or even Lou, as they weren’t described well. I also found the dialogue to be frustrating and empty, like the author was trying to bulk up the novel and missed the mark. The reveal at the end is interesting, but raises more questions than it answers.

I felt like I had to slog through parts of the novel because the pacing didn’t urge me to turn the page at all. I felt as though I could put the book down and forget to pick it up again.

Blurb Book Review: Rose/House by Arkady Martine (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

Detective Maritza Smith gets a call from Rose House – an AI-infused house – informing her of a body inside, dutifully fulfilling the duty-of-care directive of notifying the authorities of a deceased person within the house.

Except the house’s creator has already passed and is currently a diamond sitting on a plinth inside the house, and the only person who the AI will allow inside is in Turkey, nowhere near the Mojave Desert.

Detective Smith needs to figure out how the deceased got inside while also trying to get inside herself.

The novella didn’t quite tie up the loose ends in a way I’d prefer. The plot is complete; of how Smith gains entry, what she sees, and how the person died in there, but the story is left open-ended. Smith ends up leaving with some valuable tech, but does she use it or not?

AI houses are common in this universe. Or at least, houses with embedded AI. But Rose House is different, it’s more sophisticated. The deceased wanted to take the code and use it to create a city, buy why? Why would humans want to have buildings operated or infused with AI?

Anyway, the novella is well written and engaging, it’s also a peek into a near-future dystopia that I’m not sure I’d like to live in.

Blurb Book Review: Murder By Memory by Olivia Waite (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

Dorothy Gentleman is on a generational ship, 300 years into a 1,000 year journey, and has placed herself in her memory book where she can rest in the library for a while. She awakens in someone else’s body instead of in a blank, which tips her off that there might be a problem.

As she acclimatizes to the body, she sets out to solve a murder. Murders happen on the ship, although not too often since the person can just be put right back into a blank body, and as the ship’s detective it’s up to Dorothy to solve them.

It might help if the ship wasn’t drunk from the magnetic storm, though.

This is a novella, only 100 small pages, barely enough time to really get to know the characters or setting. As I read and found out the motive for murder, I found my head spinning as I couldn’t quite track the information. There were too many characters mentioned and not enough development of them to have them fully root in my mind. I feel like this book could use a little more padding, a few more hints about the financial aspects of the ship, for the payoff of the motive to be satisfying.

Otherwise, this was a delightful read, one that I did in one evening, and I’d read more by this author. This is the first in the Dorothy Gentleman series, so I have some more novellas to look forward to.

Blurb Book Review: The Only One Left by Riley Sager (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

Kit is a caregiver on suspension because her last client died due to her apparent carelessness. Desperate for a job, Kit accepts a position at Hope’s End, caring for a woman who’s rumoured to have murdered her whole family just over 50 years prior.

When Kit arrives, she sees the house is crumbling along with the cliff face. While navigating the tilted house, she hesitantly takes up her duties caring for Lenora Hope, a victim of several strokes and unable to move anything except her left hand.

Lenora teases Kit with details of the murders by typing out pages on an old typewriter. As the history of the murders is revealed, so are secrets about the family that have been kept for five decades.

This novel has several reveals by the end, all of them hinted at throughout the work. Just as I absorbed reading about how the murders were committed, I was hit with what really happened to both sisters, Virginia and Lenora, as well as how Kit’s family was involved. By the end, every thread is tied up neatly and masterfully.

My only nitpick was that the author repeated information quite often, making parts feel repetitive and drawn out. The reveals at the end make up for this, though.

Blurb Book Review: Sacred by Dennis Lehane (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

Kenzie and Gennaro accept a new client: a rich man who’s dying and wants to find his daughter. Kenzie’s mentor was looking for her, but now he’s gone missing too. The two detectives, flush with upfront cash, hunt for the daughter and uncover a cult in the process.

This is the third Kenzie and Gennaro novel.

I felt like this novel was clunkier than the past two. The characters are taking shape and the world is filling out nicely, but while reading I was constantly reminded that this book is a product of its time.

Published in 1997, the novel features beautiful women. One so beautiful that every man is blinded by her. Kenzie, of course, finds Gennaro more beautiful. All the women featured were described by their beauty, actually. The reader is reminded fairly often about Gennaro’s beauty and what effect her stunning looks have on Kenzie. Honestly, it was tiresome.

For that matter, so was the sardonic banter between characters. I didn’t feel like any character grew during the novel and that most of them had something sarcastic to say. After a while I just wanted some genuine emotion.

But what was most bothersome was when Gennaro stuck her tongue out at Kenzie as a mock fight. How infantilizing.

I’ll keep up with reading the whole series of Kenzie and Gennaro books, though. I remember the later ones were really good. Of course now I’m wondering if the novels will hold up to my memory.

Blurb Book Review: Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

Kenzie and Gennaro are hired by a woman to watch her adult son. A photo of him was taken and he told her he’s being stalked by someone. While Kenzie and Gennaro can’t find any evidence of foul play, someone starts targeting the people Kenzie loves and some dark secrets about his family come to light.

This is the second novel in the Kenzie and Gennaro series and it’s better than the first one. The author develops the characters well in this novel. Gennaro’s husband Phil is shown trying to be a better person by quitting drinking and the childhood friendship of Phil and Kenzie feels robust and nostalgic. The relationship between Kenzie and Gennaro deepens as well, almost to the point of restarting a sexual ember.

Honestly, I would prefer not to have the will-they-won’t-they between the male and female lead characters. I find this tiresome and worn out. Having said that, this novel was written in 1996, so it’s kind of expected.

Overall, this novel is a giant step forward from the first book in the series. The author does a better job of setting the scene here, keeps the reader engaged by giving reminders of how the clues stacked up, and rounds the characters out well. I’m looking forward to reading the third in the series.

Blurb Book Review: One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

Lyla is at a crossroads in her career as a virologist. Her post-doctorate research has ended and she might not have another contract right away. Plus, things are rocky with her boyfriend Nico, who is aging out of being a young actor.

Nico gets the chance to be on a reality TV show, One Perfect Couple, filmed on a beautiful desert island and wants Lyla to join him. Without her, he can’t go. She sees that this might be his last big chance at getting noticed for his acting, plus her work has dried up, so she reluctantly agrees.

They agree that she’ll sabotage one of the challenges early on so she can go home inside of two weeks, but the reverse happens. Nico is the first one sent home.

That night, a storm rolls over the island. The boat carrying Nico and the production crew doesn’t come back. In the morning, two people are found dead. Now, there’s only eight of them left, the radio is slowly dying, and they have limited food and water. Plus, there seems to be a killer among them.

The author does an excellent job at writing tired, hungry, stressed, and injured characters. This discombobulated state of mind is believable so when Lyla doesn’t draw connections to things right away, it’s easy to hand-wave it away as a reader.

However, there’s a teensy twist at the end, a page or two explaining why these couples were hand-picked for this reality show but I don’t think those breadcrumbs were given to the reader, making it very difficult to guess.

Having said that, the author holds the tension well throughout the novel. I was glued to it and found excuses to keep on reading. I’ve read a few other novels by this author and will likely keep looking for new releases.

Blurb Book Review: Where the Dead Sleep by Joshua Moehling (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Where did I get this cover image? Yeah, from Goodreads.com

As acting Sheriff and on call, Ben Packard is called to a crime scene where he finds a man has been shot to death in his bed while his wife slept upstairs. Packard investigates the murder, digging into the Gherlick family secrets, including their narcissism, and deals with the inevitable death of the town’s Sheriff, Stan. The town council calls for the formal election of a Sheriff, so now Packard needs to decide if he’ll run. It’s not a job he wants, but his running mates are less than qualified.

I enjoyed the author’s previous novel, And There He Kept Her, where Ben Packard was introduced. The author put a few tiny breadcrumbs in the first novel about the reasons why Packard moved to Sandy Lake and picked them up right at the end of this novel, but left the reader without any answers. Instead, this novel ends on a cliffhanger.

The novel does solve the crime of the man shot in his bed, though. No loose ends there. The author has a flair for describing characters to make them each feel well rounded, even if they have very little page time.

I enjoyed the narrative style and kept finding excuses to keep reading, which is good. I’m looking forward to the third novel in the series as well.

Blurb Book Review: How To Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ 2 Comments

Cover image from Goodreads.com

Annie receives a letter saying she’s an heir in her Great Aunt Francis’ estate and to be at the lawyer’s office so it can be discussed further. When she arrives, she finds her aunt dead. The condition of the Will is that she has one week to find the killer or her entire – and very large – estate will go to a developer.

Annie’s mother is supposed to be the one to inherit everything and this last-minute change stymies Annie, but she shows up at the lawyer’s anyway. Great Aunt Francis was known to be paranoid and deeply believed in a fortune told to her at a fair in 1965 when she was a teen, so while a change in her Will is a surprise, it’s not unheard of.

Finding her aunt dead before the Will can be discussed is a shock. According to the lawyer, the race is on between Annie and another potential heir to find her killer before the deadline. The reader follows Annie as she reads entries from Francis’ diary and tries to follow the clues that led to her murder.

This back-and-forth storytelling is engaging, although some hand waving is needed because the diary entries read like mini stories, not actual diary entries. This detail took me out of the story, but I see why it was needed. The narrative style is easy to read and the clues are laid out well. I didn’t guess the killer, but when the killer was revealed it made sense.

The story is book one in a series and the ending sets up a few details of the series without making the novel feel unfinished, which was good. I’ll likely seek out the next one and read it too.