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Awix (3310 KP) rated Forever And A Day in Books

Oct 20, 2020 (Updated Oct 20, 2020)  
Forever And A Day
Forever And A Day
Anthony Horowitz | 2018 | Crime, History & Politics, Thriller
8
7.8 (6 Ratings)
Book Rating
Pastiche thriller featuring you-know-who. It's 1950, and agent 007 is killed in action while investigating drug dealing in the south of France. The head of the secret service decides to send in a newly-promoted operative to investigate the death, a young chap by the name of Bond...

Horowitz's novel tries to do the same thing as the movie version of Casino Royale - to show how Bond becomes Bond. At this he is only really marginally successful, as Bond starts the novel as a pretty icy brute and ends only more icy and brutal. That said, the book evokes the Fleming formula rather well: there is the usual mixture of globe-trotting, good living, maniacal snobbery, action, torture, and sex in just about the right proportions. Some may complain that some contemporary politics have snuck into what's essentially an escapist fantasy - one villain is a bouffant-haired American tycoon with wandering hands, who thinks America should put its own interests first, while another gets a big speech about the smallness and insignificance of Britain, and its reliance on a close relationship with Europe if it wants to prosper. Nevertheless, fun, pacy stuff and very readable.
  
Seduce (Beautiful Rose, #1)
Seduce (Beautiful Rose, #1)
4
4.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
I can't say I felt anything towards the characters in this. Jack was a man-whore and Belle was...experienced. I didn't get attached to anyone of them really, and the sex scenes were starting to annoy me (that's becoming a habit in some of these NA stories, lately)

I wasn't quite expected the ending, well, the bit near the end anyway. I thought that A Beautiful Rose would have continued their story but obviously I was wrong.

As a Brit, there were a few things that didn't ring true:
One thing I didn't get was how if they were all British, they didn't know the legal ages for sex. In my experience, everyone knows it. And considering what a man-whore Jack is/was how did he not know? I'm sure he had a posh schooling but even then I'm sure he started early, so by rights, he should have known. And another is Belle saying she was in her last year of college; in Britain it would have made her seventeen, not twenty-one, unless she'd had to do several extra years.