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Big Little Lies
Big Little Lies
Liane Moriarty | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry
9
8.6 (97 Ratings)
Book Rating
Diverse intersection of characters. Amazing build up of tension. Who done it based in the OZ Suburbs. (0 more)
I can't think of any other than I wish I read the book first! (0 more)
A perfect example of a who done it with added school politics!
Okay, so a small confession...
I may have watched the TV series before this book and didn't know it was actually a book before Nicole Kidman and Reece Witherspoon brought the rights.
I loved the TV show and the book certainly didn't disappoint.
It was quite relevent for me too ATM as my son is about to start reception class and I can certainly imagine all the different school politics that go on!
This book was hard to put down and whilst on holiday of managed to read it in a couple of days.
It delivered everything I want in a book and more.
(This bear in mind with me knowing what does actually happen as I had seen the series already). To read this for the first time without seeing the show I can imagine locking myself away and calling in sick to work to keep reading.
I loved the pace, tone and voice of the book and how it switched between each character and how they thought and felt.
As a mother I identified with all of the main characters at one point of another as their lives all intersect around a fatal event which occurs at a fundraising Trivia Night.
You know this from the outset, and I really enjoyed the comments from all the secondary characters throughout the chapters too.
They really did help set the scene and tension in the build up to the big event.
I loved this author so much I've already brought and started reading another one of her books and will likely be buying them all!
  
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Tom Turner (388 KP) rated Winter in Books

Apr 30, 2021  
Winter
Winter
Marissa Meyer | 2016 | Children
6
8.9 (26 Ratings)
Book Rating
For me, this book could easily have been 150 plus pages shorter than it was. The fact the climax to the story happens almost 100 pages (I'm guessing here as I listened to the audio version, so estimating based on percentage and Goodreads page count) before the actual end is testimony to that. It just felt like it needed more editing. Sadly, for me this made it the weakest of the series, as I ended up getting lost as to my position in the plot, abs felt the characters got diluted due to the size of the plot. For me, the strength of the series were the characters and the dynamics between them, but they got shifted around so much that all of that was lost. It's a shame, because it really should have ended on a high!
  
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Sam (74 KP) rated A Place Called Here in Books

Mar 27, 2019  
A Place Called Here
A Place Called Here
9
8.8 (6 Ratings)
Book Rating
I’m a massive fan of Cecelia Ahern and I hadn’t even heard of this one until I saw it at a charity book stall at the hospital. So, for 50p, I definitely couldn’t resist.

This is one of Ahern’s more abstract novels, based on the idea that all lost things that people have stopped looking for end up in the same place – a little village called ‘Here’.

Sandy is a private investigator who has always had to find missing things since a girl from school went missing when she was younger. She was always losing things but always made a task out of trying to find every single one, hardly ever giving up. She finds herself in a strange place, surrounded by missing people and objects, and no knowledge of how to get home.

Jack’s brother is missing, and he enlists on Sandy’s help to find him. Only, Sandy never shows up when they arrange to meet.

Sandy is the person to go after the missing people, so who will look for her when she goes missing?

I loved reading this and loved the question it raised over what really happened to Sandy when she went missing. The book is based on such a unique idea and made an interesting read and one of my favourite books of 2017.
  
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Deborah (162 KP) rated The Dressmaker in Books

Dec 21, 2018  
TD
The Dressmaker
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
I have previously read Posie Graeme-Evans' trilogy based around Anne de Bohun, and very much enjoyed it. The Dressmaker was another well written book with a likeable female protagonist. I found the first half of the book a bit of a struggle to get through as so many bad things happen to Ellen, our heroine and you get a sense of how awful things are, but the lingering sense that worse is still to come! I liked the second half of the book better as it had a more positive feel to it and of course it did have a satisfying ending.

The book opens with Ellen visited by a mysterious man. We don't know very much about what is going on at this point, but she is clearly shaken by the encounter. After this, we are taken right back to the day of Ellen's birthday and see how events unfold that take her up to the moment we saw in the prologue.

Overall I did enjoy this, but especially to get through the first part I think you need to be in the right frame of mind.