mh_books's Reviews (1.12k)

There are novels that just long to be a TV series. With breath taking action, dramatic scenes, sweeping vistas of devastation, startling revelations, and characters that are just this side of fully fleshed out and longing for an actor to breathe the life into them. This is one of those novels.

Very much looking forward to reading Season Book 2

I read this book as part of #TomeTopple

This is not always true but this novella is probably best expressed by the quote that you can find on the back cover.

“ I am as Ambitious as ever any of my Sex was, or can be; though I cannot be Henry the Fifth, or Charles the Second, yet I endeavour to be Margaret the First”.

This is a fictionalised account of the life of the self-styled Margaret the first (or Mad Madge to the common folk). Margaret Cavendish duchess of Newcastle was larger than life and the first women ever to be commercially published. Her life was fabulous and ideal source material for historical fiction.
Danielle Dutton does Margaret proud imagining her as a woman with foibles and passions blossoming from a young quite imaginative introverted girl to an opinionated strong willed passionate woman. We see flashes of the young girl’s insecurity no matter how successful the woman becomes.

However it is the lyrical, descriptive, prose that makes this novella a sparkling gem.
“As for our mother she was beautiful beyond the ruins of time.”
“Fireworks, speeches , gun salutes, a ball.”
“The sun has risen, the sky is piled with clouds.”
These images are strung together like pearls on chain telling incidents of Margaret’s life in chronological order. We jump years sometimes between each pearl.

There are some oddities here. The switch from first person to third person was strange (unlike most reviewers I preferred the first person). The ending was a little rushed as if Dutton couldn’t imagine any pretty or interesting incidents in the final years.

Overall though a charming book that cries out to be reread to be fully appreciated.
This novella is recommended to those who like something that is beautifully written and true.

Really 4.5 stars.

Let’s go through the four reasons this book shouldn’t have worked:
1. It was a reread. Not always good in the crime genre.
2. The premise is far fetched
3. It is not much of a mystery and there is very little detective work, clues, and suspects.
4. The prose is literally, descriptive and long winded.


1. LOL This was a reread for me but I didn’t realise it until about 50 pages in! So I have read this book first in the Tana French Murder squad series. Despite being a reread, this book had me unashamedly putting aside my other books to read this one exclusively for a while it as it was so compelling. So what was so compelling? I think my answer lies somewhere in 3 and 4 below.

2. The premise of this novel simply shouldn’t work. Lexi Madison was an undercover identity of Detective Cassie Maddox. Years after the Lexi identity is abandoned a dead body is found that looks like Cassie and is using the Lexi identity. Cassie must go undercover again as the new version of the Lexi identity to find the murderer. In a small country like Ireland where everyone knows everyone? As I said this shouldn’t work but it does. Tana French managed to dispel my disbelief and wrap me up in the world of Cassie/Lexie and the inhabitants of Whitethorn House.

3. The opening tells you all you need to know.

“This is Lexi Madison’s story, not mine. I’d love to tell you one without getting into the other, but it doesn’t work that way. I used to think I sewed us together at the edges with my own hands, pulled the stitches tight and I could unpick them anytime I wanted. Now I think it always ran deeper than that and further, underground; out of sight and way beyond my control. “

Tana French stories are about their complex characters, who happen to be police detectives solving a crime. As such, if this book is anything to go by, they should be read in order to understand the lead characters. This book deals as much with what happened to Cassie in the first book, Into the Woods, as it does with what is happening now. The murder mystery is secondary to how Cassie is going to cope with this new Lexie's life and the impact this is going to have on Cassie when she comes out of undercover?

4. Underlying the story is Tana French’s amazing prose. Easier to give an example than to explain.

"… the taste of undercover on my tongue again, the brush of it down the little hairs on my arms. I’d thought I remembered what it was like, every detail, but I’d been wrong: memories are nothing, soft as gauze against the ruthless razor-fineness of that edge, beautiful and lethal, one tiny slip and it’ll slice to the bone."


So overall this series is recommended to those who love a tale with compelling characters and spectacular prose.

This is about the dread and fear of being isolated on top of a mountain.

Add a touch of altitude sickness and you have a scary situation.

Add your climbing companions inadvertently leaving you behind and you have a terrifying situation.

Add a malevolent presence on the mountain that, whether real or not, most definitely wishes you harm and you have Michelle Paver's Thin Air.

A five star read from the Moth Box April selection I think. The opening line is:

“In case it’s slipped your mind, Dear Sir, let me remind you: I am your wife.”

Filled with twists and turns this novella explores the real harm we can do to each other as a result of destructive relationships. This is a story about the ties that bind family and marriage together and the chaos unleashed should those ties ever be undone. It is told from three perspectives. The Wife’s letters to her husband, written in the 1970’s just after he left her for another woman. A current day perspective from the Husband. And finally, the perspective of the grown daughter of the two children.

This is not the normal type of story I would read but I admit to finding it engrossing. Each person’s perspective completes the story of a very fractured family. It was a page turner to the end.

Recommended for anyone interested in a clever family drama.

I triple dare you not to fall in love with Ari and her Jasper. Review to follow.

Picked up a little towards the end :) Will finish the Buddy read before posting.

I will write more in this review soon but for now, let's say.

I really enjoyed this and it is probably one of the goriest visceral vampire stories I have read of date. It beats Stephen King. Infact, I think only Salem's lot and this one makes a good attempt at horror? Bram Stroker and Anne Rice are wrapped up in the romance of their Vampires. I don't think Glittery Vampires count towards anything :) and Buffy vampires very too handily turned into dust.



The multi-person perspective took a little time getting used to, however, the story more or less carries you through. The ending though kind of petered out for me. I am not particularly happy with it. However, there is a follow on short story that may clear things up?


Onwards to the movies based on the book which I will watch on Netflix. More exciting is I have just found out that this is a play as well and it's coming to the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in time for Halloween - how on earth are they going to do this on stage??? I absolutely must get tickets.

This is recommended for those who enjoy a gory vampire tale. Warning this tale includes sometimes graphic sexual violence towards children.

I want to get some of my own writing done tonight so I will write the review in a couple of days but need to say I loved it.