readwatchdrinkcoffee's Reviews (382)

Sorry I Missed You is a modern story about a timeless frustration: the need for closure. "Ghosting" is a recent term, but it's not just something that happens to twenty-somethings on their smartphones. With the three vastly contrasting main characters representing three generations, there's something to relate to in each of their stories. Being ghosted by a friend, a sibling, or a lover are very different circumstances, but the one thing that remains the same is how you are left feeling abandoned and unwanted.

With this unique concept of something that many of us will have experienced in some way, Sorry I Missed You is a very poignant story which is brought together well at the end. The book certainly leaves you with some thoughtful messages and is filled with many relatable elements. One quote that stood out to me is: "I think that’s part of being an adult, you know? Your life is just frayed at the edges, and you have whole haunted cities full of people who owe you explanations and apologies. Cities full of ghosts."

But what it all comes down to is how well you can engage with the characters. The three women are described well and I enjoyed their contrasting personalities. I especially enjoyed seeing how a shared experience can bring people together, showing the worst but also best in each of them. Sunna and Maude aren't the most likeable of people, however, so you do have to find the humour and more light-hearted elements in them.

My one criticism of the book is that Larry isn't described very well. I couldn't figure out if he was supposed to be old and oblivious, middle-aged and creepy, or just an average but simple guy with a good heart. With how the story ends, I feel like we needed to have been given the chance to warm to him more, whereas I was stirring more towards finding him a bit creepy. Maybe this was to deter us from the actual goings-on and to keep us a little suspicious of him, but I would have liked to sympathise with him more.

Although the ghosts in the book aren't spooky - either because you think the characters have come to accept that the ghosts are real and present or because you think that there's a valid explanation for what's going on - I still felt their haunting presence. I just hoped that this notion was going to be put to good use and not just used as a distraction, but I was happy enough with how things played out in that regards.

On a final note, the cover of the book is lovely. This isn't how I pictured the three women, but it's a stunning illustration highlighting the slightly quirky feel to the story, and it represents the story well.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you TCK Publishing.

Similar to young adult dystopias such as The Hunger Games, The 5th Wave, The Maze Runner and Divergent, what makes Kill Code unique is that it, firstly, deals with more mature themes. Fleury's futuristic world is full of conspiracies and injustice, set against a backdrop of a failed economy and the rise of unemployment, which feels very realistic. It's more about human nature and a society gone wrong than anything too speculative, but it is still a quick-paced and entertaining read with a protagonist who stands up for what's right.

Secondly, the book has a more masculine feel to it, led by a male adult who fights for the nation's security regiment. There is a lot of action which wasn't really for me, but the scenes were still described well and I enjoyed the use of futuristic technologies and scientific advances to add a few original twists and developments.

Fleury does a good job of describing his dystopian world up, although I would have liked a little more detail in the set up about how the world came to be in this state, but it's when Hogan joins the National Security Council that the story gets really exciting.

You can tell that Fleury is an award-winning author and screenwriter because I could picture every scene vividly. Hogan is also a great character to follow. He's tough and determined, but he's always got his head on straight which is exactly who you need to lead a dystopian action series.

Personally, this story is a little too action-heavy for me, but it's definitely a book that I would recommend for those who like dystopias and a bit of gritty action.

Little White Secrets is an easily readable and well-developed domestic drama with a bit of a twist. The story opens up well as it begins with a staged photograph of the family for a newspaper article, showing the appearance of a perfect family. But the cracks in Emily's life are slowly unravelled, as you become eager to find out where it all went so wrong.

We know from the beginning that Eric has a secret, but whilst I guessed early on what that was, Mason often convinced me that I had got it wrong. She plots her story well, and the tension builds successfully until everything is finally laid out bare.

Although I enjoyed Mason's writing, I struggled to connect with her characters. I didn't particularly like Emily because she was at a point in her life when she was very fed up, and that oozed through her narrative. But Mason voices her characters well. Emily still felt genuine, and I always understood and agreed with her actions and feelings despite not feeling much compassion for her.

Mason really seems to understand Emily's emotions and the situation regarding her married life was explored really well. It's not often you would encourage a character in Emily's situation to do what she does, both against her family (regarding Steve) and for them (regarding Bethany), but you want Emily to stand up for her family as well as to do something for herself and find happiness at the end of it all.

However, it wasn't the fight to save her marriage that I thought it was going to be. Emily would do anything for her children, that was obvious, but she wasn't willing to fight for Eric anymore. She had given up by this point, and there was no love left. I don't blame her for that because Eric's actions are inexcusable and I thought from the beginning that she deserved better than him, but this just meant that it didn't have the sense of undying love that I expected it to have. It's more realistic than that, and whilst there may be some kind of happily ever after, this definitely wasn't a fairytale.

Whilst there's a lot that I could identify with, I still felt very disengaged with all of the characters which prevented me from loving this book. I think the problem was that I sympathised with the daughter more than the mother, so I was looking at the situation as my 14-year-old self rather than in any maternal way. Although Emily's actions speak loud enough towards the end, I didn't always agree with her actions beforehand and was pleading with her to see things from Zara's point of view more often and to be more sympathetic.

Overall, Mason details a number of personal struggles with a brilliant approach, creating very honest and real characters with relatable issues. It could have been rounded up more quickly at the end, but the rest of the book makes for a very intriguing read.

This is Mason's sixth novel and I'm certainly interested in reading more from her after reading this.

Rain Will Come is Thomas Holgate’s first book, having previously written films, TV series, nonfiction books, and magazine articles. His experience with writing is obvious as this is a complex and in-depth thriller with great attention to detail.

As the killer is revealed early on, the story is more of a cat-and-mouse chase than a whodunnit. We know who the killer is and begin to understand his motives, as the book begins to explore the mechanics of the human brain – of how we come to identify between right and wrong – and the sometimes-thin line between good (defending the bad for the protection of others) and evil (doing it for your own pleasure).

I found the book difficult to get into at the start but I couldn’t figure out why. I soon realised, however, that it’s because I’ve never read a detective thriller written by a male author before. This is my favourite genre for books, but I’ve only read them by females authors. Isn’t that crazy? I hadn’t even thought about that until now.

But you can tell that Rain Will Come is written by a man, as the story is very sadistic and gruesome. Gruesome isn’t something that I have a problem with, but I think it’s more about how upfront Holgate is in his writing. Our lead character, as well, likes escorts and cocaine, and he acts however he pleases. He’s brutish and hard-edged, but definitely in a more uncompromising way than how a woman would have written him.

Czarcik certainly isn’t the most likeable of characters, but he is such a well-developed one that we can easily forgive him for his vices. With the story often giving flashbacks into his past to explain his behaviour and attitudes, there’s a lot of time spent on allowing the reader to get to know him. This is really important in a story like this because we need to be rooting for him to catch this twisted killer. But his motives are strong and he puts his career on the line in the line of justice, as we get to see both the good and bad in the protagonist and the antagonist.

The title of the book is based on the quote from Taxi Driver which is mentioned throughout the story: “Someday, a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets.” In Rain Will Come, Daniel is that rain. He’s acting as a dark angel to rid the world of bad people. But the story makes you question whether his motives are right or wrong. Is he a hero like the Greek God Theseus who was known for being a great reformer, defeating those who acted maliciously? Or does the brutality of his actions outweigh his reasonings?

I struggled with this balance for a lot of the book, as the killer was adamant that he took no enjoyment from what he was doing but then he acted in such an inhumane way. Czarcik questions this, too. Would a world be a better place without these evil people? Or is Daniel just the same as them? The trouble is that he isn’t just killing, he is torturing, and no sane person could do that to another out of necessity.

As Czarcik questions, how much was a repressed bloodlust given life by a convenient excuse? And how relevant were any of the reasons for his behaviour? There seemed to be some lack of rationale around this at first but, without giving away too much about the story, it is eventually explored a little better as the killer’s transformation is discussed more towards the end.

“Now what separates you and me from him, from that, is that our sense of right and wrong — moral and immoral — is stronger than our basest urges. We may think, but we don’t act. It’s the difference between madmen and, well, men.”

In the same way, the story also reminds me of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, as we are also made to question who should act as the judge in these circumstances. Is that what makes Czarcik’s actions different from Daniel’s? Because he is in a role of power? Holgate poses so many questions and explores them all incredibly. It really is a thriller that gets your mind ticking, showing us the different ways that the answers to these questions can play out, and the different outcomes that they can lead to.

Although this is Holgate’s first book, he shows a tremendous amount of talent in his writing and he seems to know the genre well. Sometimes I feel like I’ve read it all when it comes to thrillers, but that’s never the case when you find a good author, and Thomas Holgate is definitely that.

The Silence is a well-written book and I will certainly read more from Pearce in the future, but it’s a plot that I’ve read before. There’s a current trend of authors relying on an unreliable female narrative to help develop their thrillers so, unfortunately, it all felt obvious from the start, for me.

The story reminds me a lot of The Wife Between Us, as you can easily make the assumptions that our female lead is being taken advantage of, with her fragmented memory only telling us half of the story. But it doesn’t leave much up to the imagination, as it’s obvious from the synopsis alone which character is behind everything going on.

There is a lot that still needs to be pieced together regarding exactly how the story is going to play out, but because you know that Stella is going to lose everything close to her before eventually regaining some control, I didn’t have a lot of patience with her narrative.

The problem is that she isn’t a very sympathetic character. Usually, you can understand why a character is made to behave the way they do, seeing the pressures around them build up which help you to understand why they so reluctantly give in to the abusive natures of others. But Stella comes across self-destructive and weak from the start, seemingly allowing herself to manipulated and pushed around which is what makes it so difficult to sympathise with her.

This is only made worse by the fragmented structure of the story which becomes quite irritating, constantly jumping ahead in time to reflect on Stella’s lack of memory. Because we don’t see the abuse at the start and only see her downing more and more pills as she hangs on to Marco’s every word, there’s too much that we’re missing out on for us to really engage with her. And him. Without getting to know Marco at all, either, it’s no wonder we don’t trust him from the start, so there’s not a lot of mystery left behind his motives to consider the possibility that it might be somebody else.

I guess this is the trouble with vulnerable characters, as you really need to get inside their heads to understand their actions. But whilst it’s obvious that Stella is an incredibly fragile character, I don’t think this was explored well enough in the beginning. The themes explored are heavy – including addiction, grief, mental health issues, and abusive relationships – but it just doesn’t have the impact it needs. It doesn’t feel personal, and that’s my main struggle with the story as I couldn’t get past the predictability of it all.

Towards the end, Stella does reflect back on some of her memories, revisiting scenes that she had blanked out to reveal what was actually going on at the time, but it’s all too late. The gaslighting subplot does give the story a sense of originality and it is this aspect that keeps your interest piqued, but the parts of the story that I was more interested in weren’t explored well enough in the end.

With the author being a huge fan of Stephen King, The Silence combines its mystery thriller genre with something more supernatural. You can see King’s influences throughout, almost acting as the gloomy, moist figure that creeps around the cottage himself. But neither genres are explored to their full potential. I would have been more than happy for the strange ongoings to be an actual ghost, but it’s never explained how much was going on in Stella’s head and how much was actually happening.

Moving the setting from London to a coastal town in Cornwall, it’s obvious that Pearce is a good writer as she uses beautiful imagery throughout. Being born in Truro, as well, she has a great understanding of the surroundings she writes about. Although the town of Tyrlaze is fictional, she describes the fog-heavy cliffs of the town well, mustering the senses of an often grey but always salty-scented feel of a Cornish town brilliantly.

There are also many tense moments that take place in the cottage and cliff side as Pearce does do well to build up the tension, another credit to her writing, but it’s just because I’ve read many similar stories that the revelations didn’t work for me.

So, whilst The Silence undeniably has some promising elements, it was too similar to other thrillers that I have read for me to get into the concept fully. In the end, it just feels like another example of a book that if you’re new to the thriller genre, then this will make for a great first read, but for fans of the genre already, it doesn’t add anything new, just the potential of a great author to keep an eye on.

Just like Mythos, Fry retells the stories of these heroes in a quick-paced, entertaining, and easy-to-understand way. He gives the characters each a memorable personality, making their dialogue humourous and their actions unforgettable, adding a unique voice to these rich and timeless tales.

If you're a fan of Greek mythology on any level, even if you just remember learning about it in some context during your early years at school and have always wanted to educate yourself a little further, then Fry's books are the perfect way to do so. He adds heaps of wit and promiscuity, teaching readers about the basics of these characters' lives whilst ensuring that they aren't overloaded with too much information or obstructed by lengthy prose.

These are bygone tales, after all, and whilst we all have some vague knowledge of Hercules, at least, not many of us will know the true in-depth details, so some summarisation and modernisations were definitely needed. And that's what Fry does so well, making these stories relevant and accessible to all in an immensely enjoyable manner.

When the stories get into the action, Fry's narrative works incredibly well. However, the trouble with compacting these historically lengthy stories so tightly is that they sometimes become difficult to follow. Fry attempts to round-up a lot of the background and context to avoid having to go into huge detail about less relevant aspects of the character's pasts and circumstances, but doing so results in a long list of unpronounceable names and relationships that you have to try and piece together.

The problem is that the book focuses on a collection of characters whose lives dip in and out of each other's, and who have so many intertwining connections that you do find yourself having to reread certain sections to get your head around the importance of someone's role or title. It does feel quite obstructed at times, with Heroes not feeling as concise or effortless as Mythos did. But once you get past these introductory paragraphs fogged with name and places, the incredibly interesting stories do stick, they just need a lot of your attention span to follow wholly.

Fry makes such a good time out of these characters' ultimate demises that you'll soon be filled with plenty of insightful knowledge and you will instantly feel more intelligent, without having to do too much work. After some initial dedicated focus, you will keep reading to find out how Theseus defeated the Minotaur and if Heracles ever did accomplish all of his tasks.

Alongside the many fantasy elements, the endless sexual appetites of the Gods, and the violent brutality of its heroes and villains alike, these characters are definitely worth reading about so you won't regret picking this book up.

As a female-led thriller, The Woman In The Window isn’t anything particularly new. The thriller side of the story is fine and I liked the Hitchcock feel to it with the constant references to classic black and white crime thrillers, but there wasn’t anything standout about it aside from that. There’s a lot that you can piece together yourself as there’s so much of the story that you know isn’t right and that will be unravelled in whatever way later on, so the generic thriller elements to it aren’t what you will remember this book for.

What I love about a story like this is that it’s often the things that you believe to be facts that are turned on their head. With the use of an unreliable narrator with faulty memories and problems with alcohol, the author plays around with your perception of what is true and what is imagined.

But the big twist for me wasn’t to do with the crime itself, but something else that I wasn’t thinking too much into that took me by complete surprise. This ‘twist’ along with the more powerful themes of depression and grief are what had me gripped throughout the second half of the book. I cried my eyes out for at least three chapters straight.

Anna isn’t very likeable at the beginning of the book as her problems seem to be of her own doing. It’s no wonder that nobody takes her seriously when all she does is drink and double dose on her medication into such a state that she’s just annoying to be around. But as the story progresses and we begin to understand her situation better, Anna becomes very relatable. The qualities that were once unlikeable now force you to sympathise with her in a really emotional way. As you begin to learn about how isolated and lonely she must be feeling, your heart cries out for her.

If you’re new to the genre, this is a great book for you to start with. If you’re already a fan of psychological thrillers, however, you’ll know exactly what to expect this average thriller, although there are definitely other elements to enjoy about it.

With short chapters and fast-pace, it feels like this book was written to be made into a film and I wouldn’t be surprised if that were true. The Woman In The Window is being adapted into a film in 2020, which I will upload the trailer for as soon as one becomes available.

The story is told in three parts through three narratives: Stephanie, Emily, and Emily’s husband, Sean. Because of this, the story goes back and forth, re-telling parts of the story to reveal the truth behind certain scenes and character’s actions, transforming a straightforward and simple plot into one more layered and twisted.

It is a story about lies and manipulation, led by two very different characters: Emily is powerful and confidence, whilst Stephanie is weak and pathetic. They both have secrets in their pasts, but they’ve obviously dealt with their situations in very different ways. But because their characters are such polar opposites, neither are really likeable. Emily is deceptive and uses Stephanie to her advantage, whilst Stephanie is a complete pushover. And neither of them redeem themselves in the end, so it’s difficult to be engaged by their actions.

The main twist is an obvious one but I still didn’t see it coming, so the plot is developed quite well. However, it doesn’t stand out from other female-led thrillers and it all goes downhill after things are explained. After more weird twists and a lack of a decent conclusion, it seems like the plot spent more time trying to shock than make the characters worth rooting for.

But what I did like about the story is the three different perspectives on motherhood. Stephanie talks about how it changes you as a person, the lack of sleep, and the loneliness. She also discusses the division between working moms and stay-at-home moms, which will always be a heightened debate between mothers. Emily then talks about the love that she felt for Nicky when he was born: the shock, the sentiment. And then finally, Sean talks about how Emily fell in love with Nicky and out of love with him. He shows a man’s side to parenting that is often missed out on. He talks about how he misses the warmth, affection, and mutual respect with his wife.

All three perspectives are very relatable and so interesting to see being explored, but it’s such a shame that these conversations are so sparse and only used to get to know the characters a little better before the story gets back to the less interesting mystery. If these conversations around ‘honest parenting’ were more frequent and linked into the story better than this would definitely have given the book a unique standpoint. Unfortunately, the characters just don’t have that much depth to them in the end.

Labor Day is a brilliant coming of age story. Narrated by 13-year-old Henry, we see the story through his eyes as he learns about things that all teenage boys experience as he goes through puberty and learns about his own sexuality, lessons that a father-figure teaches such as throwing a baseball and how to make the perfect pie crust, but also about things that are much bigger than the world he knows, including the power of love, the impact of betrayal, the power of jealousy, and the conflict between selfishness and selflessness.

It’s a relatable story for any young reader and Maynard captures the mind of a child on the cusp of becoming a teenager perfectly. It’s a brilliant technique to tell a tense story through the eyes of a young character as they see the world in a completely different light. They see the innocence in everything, which is something we lose as adults, and it’s because of this narrative style that we give all of these characters a chance before judging them too harshly.

It’s a fast read but it certainly one that grabs your attention. There are darker tones with the premise around a man who has been imprisoned for murder kidnapping and keeping hostage an unstable mother and her son and some more unsettling scenes around Adele and Frank’s past, but there’s also a powerfully raw tale of how love has no bounds that’s woven around this.

The lack of punctuation in dialogue is annoying as the speech isn’t always attributed, which does interrupt the flow of the story somewhat. But apart from that, the story is very moving at times and it is heart-warming throughout.

A huge fan of the Netflix series that was inspired by this book, I thought I’d take my first step into horror fiction and give Jackson’s genre-defining classic a go.

Often classed as one of the best horror books of all time, Jackson is a brilliant storyteller. Her characters are well-crafted and the descriptions of Hill House set up the eerie atmosphere brilliantly. Written in 1959, there is some old humour and the dialogue often feels out-dated, but the characters are still engaging for many different reasons.

But whilst the immaculate details of the house itself are unforgettable, the scares aren’t all that often. It’s more about the mood and the setting than any spine-trembling events, and because it’s not until the closing chapters that we begin to understand what’s going on, the story doesn’t grip you as I thought it would. We know that the house has affected Eleanor more than the others, but with so much of it going on in her head that we aren’t able to see or read in detail, I don’t feel like the tension is built up enough in the house.

However, the final chapter definitely gives you something more out of the slow build-up of the story as it concludes the bigger contexts in a thought-provoking and clever way. I was just hoping to be more scared and to be left too afraid to switch my bedside lamp off after putting the book down, but it’s more of a psychological journey than a ghost story. With the fear being more mental than physical, it’s no wonder that this story has been adapted so often as you certainly need the visuals to have a more lasting effect.

Whilst this book will always be discussed for its elements of horror, there is definitely an underlying theme of repressed female sexuality going on, especially with Eleanor facing the same fate as the elder Crain sister’s companion. It would certainly be an interesting book to study in this regard as everything is left so ambiguous, but that’s why books like this are so successful because their open-ended narratives open up so many discussions about what may or may not have been intended. Jackson has always responded that it is about feeling closed in and repressed in all ways, not just sexuality, but I think that in itself is a brilliant concept to delve into more deeply.

There’s definitely a lot going on than the story at hand which is why The Haunting of Hill House is deemed a classic. It’s not often that you can learn more about a book after you’ve finished reading it, but there’s so much about this story that Jackson loosely touches upon – themes of depression, isolation, loneliness and mental instability – that enables its readers to interpret the underlying characteristics in their own personal ways.

I guess it’s that concept that the Netflix series that is based on this book puts its focus on, as the TV series only hints at elements of Jackson’s story whilst using the infamous haunted house as its premise.