ClareR (6081 KP) rated Her Last Holiday in Books
May 16, 2021
Fran, a 50-something single, teacher, is roped into attending a Wellness retreat by her mother - a retreat run by the same man who ran the one in Gozo where Fran’s sister, Jenna, went missing two years previously. The male counsellor, Tom, has just served two years in prison for the deaths of two other people on the retreat, and his wife wants him to get back to work as soon as possible. This may not have been a wise move.
I liked the flashbacks to Jenna’s retreat - there was as much tension in these parts as in her sister Frans present day parts. Neither past events or the present day make it any easier to guess what might have happened to Jenna, but there’s definitely something fishy going on in both timelines.
There were parts where I felt it best to leave my rational thoughts at the door - but hey, this is fiction. If I wanted real life, I’d read a newspaper (ahem. Or something). Many was the time over the 10 day period of reading this, where I was so frustrated at the end of the stave - I just wanted to read on. It’s definitely a book written for a day long binge read!!
The Emperor of All Maladies
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Winner of the Guardian First Book Award 2011 Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Non-fiction 2011...
Deadly Beautiful: Vanishing Killers of the Animal Kingdom
Liana Joy Christensen and Ian Faulkner
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Did you know that the humble marmot is responsible for more than one billion human deaths? Or that...
Xanderath (690 KP) rated 47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019) in Movies
May 19, 2020
With the Old Breed
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The inspiration behind the HBO series THE PACIFIC This was a brutish, primitive hatred, as...
Into the Night (Gemma Woodstock, #2)
10.0
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After the shocking murder of a high-profile celebrity, Gemma Woodstock must pull back the layers of...
Police procedural Australia Melbourne
Into the Night
8.5
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After the shocking murder of a high-profile celebrity, Gemma Woodstock must pull back the layers of...
fiction series gemma woodstock
Dragon Called
7.0
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In a kingdom that has fallen into chaos, one young woman—and her dragon—are thrust into the role...
dragons fiction fantasy young adult ya epic fantasy
This book is narrated by the former queen, whilst she’s living in the convent, reflecting on her time as a queen two times, as the wife of Lear, and a mother to her three daughters. Even though she has been exiled from her former life and forbidden from seeing her daughters for a very long time, when she hears of their deaths she’s devastated. She imagines that she can see their ghosts. She comes close to madness herself. This is a very human woman, not just a queen. In fact, most of the other women living in the convent, don’t know that she was once their queen. They do know that she was a woman of status, and they defer to her - not least because of her steely demeanour. She’s a formidable woman.
This did take me longer than usual to read, but there were several factors involved in this: taking in the gorgeous prose, and the fact that I desperately needed reading glasses (which I now thankfully have! 🤭). It really is beautifully written, and I think that it’s going to be one of those rare books that I’ll read again.
Lyndsey Gollogly (2893 KP) rated The Redeemed ( Jenny Cooper 3) in Books
Apr 2, 2023
Book
The Redeemed (Jenny Cooper 3)
By M.R. Hall ( Matthew Hall)
⭐️⭐️⭐️
A man's body is discovered in a church yard, the sign of the cross carved into his abdomen. Later he is found to be Alan Jacobs, a troubled psychiatric nurse. It seems to Jenny Cooper, Severn Vale District Coroner, this is likely to be an open and shut suicide case, but something tells her to probe a little deeper ...Then an enigmatic young priest, Father Lucas Starr, entreats Jenny to hold an inquest into the death of reformed porn actress, Eva Donaldson. Jenny's investigations will lead her to a powerful new religious group The Mission Church of God; and when it later emerges that Jacobs was also a member of the church, Jenny realises that more could link the deaths of these victims than she could have realised. Meanwhile Jenny must finally confront the demons of her past; and as her private life threatens to shatter, faces intense pressure from all angles to cease her investigations. But to Jenny Cooper, whose whole life has been governed by deception, the truth is everything..
I really like this series I really do but this one while it was good and I enjoyed it to a point it was just lacking a little. Seemed very rushed at the end and I’m not quite sure that the ending with Craven was needed. Maybe it’s just me? Overall I like the writing style and detail in his books I just wanted more from this. Still a decent read.