Book Review: Hideout by Jack Heath

Spoiler alert number one! Timothy Blake is a cannibal. This is the third book in the series after Hangman and Hunter so if you didn’t know about Blake’s icky predilection already, you haven’t read the first two and this isn’t the book to start with. It’s best to read them in order because you get to experience the shock of discovering his penchant for eating human flesh and then decide if you can stomach reading about it for an entire series.

Spoiler alert number two! Timothy Blake doesn’t eat a single person in Hideout. And considering he’s hiding out in a remote farmhouse with a group of people who run a torture porn and snuff film website – so he’s got lots of worthy scumbags to choose from – it ends up being kind of a disappointment.

Book Review: The Woman in the Window by AJ Finn

According to TS Eliot, good writers borrow and great writers steal. Here is the book that proves it isn’t true. The Woman in the Window has literally cherry-picked plot points from so many well-known books and movies that it’s hard to find a single moment of originality within its pages. While it certainly makes for a readable (and very familiar) book, it’s hardly the formula for a remarkable novel.

Book Review: Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty

I think Liane Moriarty is a wonderful writer but I also think I started with her best books (Big Little Lies and The Husband’s Secret), which left me with perhaps unreasonably high expectations for all her other work. While her writing continues to be of the highest quality, I am finding the plots of her latest books to be far less poignant and much more improbable.

As the title may suggest, Nine Perfect Strangers is told from the points of view of nine people who attend a very expensive ten-day health retreat at a historic house with lush grounds in country New South Wales as well as the three wellness consultants in charge of the program. Frances is a romance writer whose career is faltering. Ben and Jessica are struggling after winning a life-changing amount of money in the lottery. Napoleon and Heather, along with their daughter Zoe, are stuck in a cycle of grieving after the death of their son Zach three years ago. Lars is a divorce lawyer who takes pointless revenge on his long-gone father by getting huge settlements for his female clients. Carmel is doubting her self-worth and identity after her husband dumped her for a younger woman. Tony is a former high-profile sportsman who has been described by his ex-wife as an “amateur human being”. Masha is the program director, Yao is a former paramedic who saved Masha’s life ten years ago and Delilah is Masha’s former PA from when Masha was a corporate high flyer. They each get to narrate chapters so it’s a lot of people and viewpoints to keep track of.

Book Review: One Way by SJ Morden

This book has such an interesting premise but I suspect it will be endlessly compared to The Martian by Andy Weir and it doesn’t quite stack up.

Franklin Kittridge is serving a life sentence in prison for killing his addict son’s drug dealer. His wife divorced him soon after he was jailed and he hasn’t seen his son since. Franklin is sure he did the right thing, the only thing he could, but jail is alternatively boring and violent. So when he is offered the opportunity to leave, he takes it.

Book Review: Into the Water by Paula Hawkins

When I read the blurb of this book, I thought it was strangely vague but it isn’t strange at all. Vague is exactly what this book is. There might have been a story worth telling buried in it somewhere but Paula Hawkins didn’t find it. And, unfortunately, that means it suffers from the same problem that so many second books do, which is that it pales in comparison to the author’s debut.

Into the Water should have been Nel’s story. But Nel is already dead from the moment you read the first words and narration duties are instead shared by Nel’s sister, her daughter, the police, teachers from the local school, other parents from the local school, the town eccentric and the killer. And they’re all so busy keeping secrets that this book could have been half as long.

Book Review: The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood

This book won the Stella Prize in 2016. I should know better by now. I am consistently disappointed by award winners. I’m going to blame it on being a Gemini. I need to know who, what, where, when, how and why. Not all at once but slowly revealed to show a complete picture by the end of the book. And The Natural Way of Things is distinctly lacking in most of these respects. What it does have is terrific writing and an intriguing concept but it’s not enough to completely make up for the other things it’s missing.

Book Review: Cleave by Nikki Gemmell

The Australia in this book is the Australia that all Australian novels are supposed to be about: set in the outback, full of indigenous characters, not appropriating their culture but living in harmony with them, battling the elements and inner demons. The problem with that is most Australians don’t live lives anything like what is described here and are made to feel less Australian than those living a supposedly more authentic life.

Book Review: The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty

I finished reading this book over two months ago. Normally I rush to the computer to write my review, eager to capture the way I was feeling as I closed the back cover. Not this time. Possibly because the way I felt at the time was exactly the way I feel now: meh.

Book Review: The Returned by Jason Mott

Jason Mott is primarily known as a poet and that helps make sense of this book because just like a lot of poetry, it’s beautifully written but it’s not really clear what it all means.

Harold and Lucille Hargrave are in their seventies and have lived most of their adult lives with the trauma of their son drowning when he was just eight years old. And then one day, one ordinary day, an FBI agent shows up on their doorstep with Jacob Hargrave. He hasn’t aged a day since he died and much to everybody’s confusion, he’s very much alive. And he isn’t the only one. The Returned are turning up everywhere.

Book Review: Gaslight Carnival by Tracy Cembor

Tracy Cembor sent me an email via the Contact Me page on this blog and asked whether I do book reviews in return for gift copies. Gaslight Carnival is her first novella and currently available on Amazon for US$0.99. For that price, I told her I’d happily purchase a copy to read and review it.