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    Bigfoot (2019)

    Bigfoot (2019)

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    Tired of horror comedies that forget the horror, the laughs, even both? Us too. Get ready for a true...

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Zuky the BookBum (15 KP) rated The Keeper (DCI Antonia Hawkins, #3) in Books

Mar 15, 2018  
TK
The Keeper (DCI Antonia Hawkins, #3)
Alastair Gunn | 2017
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Also read it here: http://bookbum.weebly.com/book-reviews/the-keeper-by-alastair-gunn

NOW AVAILABLE IN THE UK!

<i>No interesting quote for this book I'm afraid...</i>

This started badly, for me. There’s nothing like starting a new detective book and being planted in the middle of a therapy session. Who would have thought a senior police officer who has enough baggage to need therapy? Well I never! That’s something I’ve only seen done 1 million times before… <i>sigh.</i> Thank God it picked up with the excitement afterwards because I wasn’t interested in Hawkins’ anxiety or love life.

This was by no means unique to other detective novels out there. They all have the same sort of plot and characters and themes, but this one did keep me more interested than some of the others I’ve read, purely because there was a humorous side to it as well as the serious side too.

This had some really exciting moments and it had some really drawn out, drab moments where we were repeatedly updated on how the case was going, even though we already knew… cause we were reading the book… so I think a lot of this novel could have been cut down to make a shorter novel. 400 pages is quite a lot for a detective series novel, especially one where there’s not a lot of evidence or leads to the case. This really was up and down, up and down, the whole way through. I lost interest so much in some places that I was completely distracted while reading it but then when we got onto a big reveal or breakthrough part, I rushed through it to know what happened next! There were some really great edge of the seat, nail biting moments! It was quite the hit and miss story.

As far as characters go, there weren’t any that I really connected with very well, but none of them were dislikable people. It could get a bit confusing to remember who was who because they’d go from their first name to their last name, back to their first name and then their last name again etc etc. It would have been nice to have some consistency with what the author called them.

This was by far a 3 star read until the twist at the end. I mean, really, I should have seen it coming, I’ve read a million crime thrillers before, but I just hadn’t suspected this one! Really, there were two twists at the end of this, the first one shocked me and then the second one I was expecting because of the first. The ending of this novel was really thrilling and nerve-wracking, it was a great way to finish it off.

Also, considering this is the third novel in a series (something Netgalley hadn’t made me aware of when I requested it!) this did really well as a standalone novel. I didn’t feel like I was missing any part of the characters stories, even when it came to the subject of Hawkins’ therapy sessions.

Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin UK - Michael Joseph for giving me the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review.
  
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Goddess in the Stacks (553 KP) rated The Book of Essie in Books

Dec 25, 2018  
The Book of Essie
The Book of Essie
Meghan McLean Weir | 2018 | Fiction & Poetry, Gender Studies, Religion
10
8.1 (7 Ratings)
Book Rating
It's so hard to decide where to start with this book. First: it's amazing. Second: Content Warning. For a number of reasons. Rape. Incest. Gay Conversion Therapy. Suicide. Nothing extremely graphic; the most graphic concerns the conversion therapy, which is where the suicide occurs. That section was hard to read. A lot of sections were hard to read. But the book was SO GOOD. It's about Essie and Roarke's escape from all that, so ultimately it focuses on the future, and it's a hopeful, light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel kind of book. But daaaaang these topics.

I loved so many of the characters here. Essie and Roarke, Roarke's best friend Blake, Liberty, the reporter, her boyfriend and her camerawoman. They're all amazing. Essie's determination, Roarke's courage, Blake's understanding - every character has something to offer in this book. The way Liberty's history entwines with Essie's, so she knows where she's coming from and can offer advice from experience, and how Liberty flashes back to her childhood so the reader understands her conflicts - it's all just so amazing.

I identify pretty closely with a lot of this book myself; I was raised very conservative Christian, though at least not in a crazy cult like Liberty was. But the way Liberty talks about her boyfriend challenging her beliefs and waking her up from them hit very close to home. It was weird to see it on the page.

"I had been home as well, a painful few months during which I began to see my parents, our family, and our church as Mike might see them, as anyone who was not us would see them. I still loved my parents, very much, but I was also deeply ashamed. I began to wonder what would have happened if I'd seen it earlier....I decided that I would not go home again."

I was cheering for Essie as she broke free of her bigoted family. Every step of the way. And Roarke - oh, Roarke, who my heart broke for, who stepped up to the plate and loved Essie in his own way, and gave Essie what she needed. It helped that Essie offered him precisely what he needed, too, but I didn't expect how their relationship evolved.

I loved this book, start to finish. This is definitely one of my favorites of 2018.

You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.com