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Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2206 KP) rated The Mountains Wild in Books

Jun 24, 2020

Mystery from the Past; Race Against Time in the Present

In 1993, Maggie D’Arcy’s cousin Erin vanished while living in Ireland. Maggie went over for a couple of months trying to figure out what happened, but the mystery was never solved. It did have a profound impact on her life since after returning home, Maggie become a cop herself on Long Island. Now, another young woman has vanished. In the search for her, a skeleton has been found, and buried with the skeleton is Erin’s scarf. Has Erin been found after all these years? Where is the new woman who has vanished? Are the cases connected?

It’s been years since Sarah Stewart Taylor released a book, but I was thrilled to pick up something from her again. I’d forgotten just how atmospheric her writing is, but I was soon back under her spell. The pacing was off near the beginning since Maggie doesn’t have any jurisdiction in Ireland, but eventually she found a way into the case and we started getting the twists that lead us to the climax. The book takes place in 1993, the present, and even further in the past as Maggie and Erin are growing up. All of these time periods are easy to follow. They also allow us to see how characters have matured over the years, which I enjoyed. This is Maggie’s story, and I couldn’t help but feel for her as the book progressed and the story unfolded. The story also switches from past to present tense depending on which time period we are reading about. It took my brain a bit of time to adjust to this, but I did rather quickly. This is more serious than the cozies I often read, but if you keep that in mind, you’ll enjoy this book as well.

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iTheory Driver Theory Test

Education and Games

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Award-winning educational software with all of the questions and answers you need to pass your exam...

Sarah Thompson (2 KP) rated The Heart's Invisible Furies in Books

Feb 1, 2018

The Heart's Invisible Furies

John Boyne | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry

9.3

(3 Ratings)

Book Rating

I finished reading The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne late last night. I thoroughly enjoyed this book; by far the best book I have read so far this year and January has been a good book month!
A tale beginning in Ireland in the 1940s and spanning several countries and decades, it encompasses so many different aspects of life, love and death with the main focus being relationships, bigotry and sexual intolerance.
Beautifully written and somewhat Dickensian in essence, I fell in love with the characters and some of the experiences they had saddened me while others were just utterly hilarious. Cyril and his wry humour was just wonderful.
Just to add from John Boyne's note on The Heart's Invisible Furies "The desire to love and to share one's life with someone is neither a homosexual nor a heterosexual conceit. It's human".

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Phil Leader (619 KP) rated Holiday for Skins (Bongo Fury #2) in Books

Nov 11, 2019

Following on from the events in the first Bongo Fury book, this novella once again follows the music shop owner Jimmy Black as he unwillingly gets mired in the underworld of Northern Ireland. After the events of the first book, a silent struggle for power among the criminal elements is escalating and people are dying. All Jimmy wants to do is make sure he isn't one of them.

As with the first book the charm of this sequel is in the leading character. Wry, witty, foul mouthed with an eye for the darkly humorous observation, having Jimmy once again show us his world is very welcome. Together with the twists and turns of the plot (a little less straightforward than the first novel) this makes a cracking quick read that combines noir thriller and laugh out loud humour.