Thursday 31 July 2014

The Secret Place by Tana French


"The Secret Place" is a murder mystery. It sees the murder of a 16-year-old boy, Chris Harper, who is found in the grounds of "St Kilda's, girl's school, secondary, private, leafy, suburb. Nuns." 

The murder has gone unsolved for a year. Enter Detective Stephen Moran. He works in Cold Cases, "a dingy dead end". He wants his chance at bigger things and gets it when a St Kilda's girl brings him something new to the case. Holly brings him a card similar to that on the book cover, one that says "I know who killed him" together with a new picture of Chris Harper on it. The card was found in the secret place, the name of a pin-board in the school where girls can privately share their secrets in a safe way to get them off of their chest, although the secret place could also be referring to an enclosed place where four of the girls, who are amongst the main suspects, hang out together in the school grounds, the very same site where the murder took place.

The card sparks Detective Moran into action. He teams up with the lead on the original case, Detective Antoinette Conway, a no-nonsense, tough-nosed murder detective without a partner and without a successful solve to her name. She needs this as much as him.

Thus the case is brought back to life again with the book telling the story through alternate chapters following the real-time events at St Kilda's as they happened in the lead up to the murder and beyond, and the current day investigation interspersed between.


The book is gripping and the case gets solved, albeit with a slight supernatural element being conveniently introduced to help it along. Thoroughly enjoyable read.

(I got this book through a Goodreads First Read competition. This review is my honest opinion of the book.)

Publication date: 28th August 2014

Amazon UK link: The Secret Place

Sunday 27 July 2014

American Savage by Matt Whyman



"American Savage" is about cannibalism, which is quite a macabre subject, hence it may not be to everyone's tastes (literacy tastes, not food). However the author does point out that he wasn't trying to write "a novel driven by horror and gore," rather one about about our relationship with food, e.g. "as a culinary concept, cannibalism was not something Titus expected to break into the mainstream any time soon."

The book follows the Savage family in America. It is the follow-up to "The Savages" which you don't need to have read to get into this one. Also if you have read the original I don't know if by this book the joke is wearing a bit thin.

The book starts slowly. The family are introduced: Titus the father, Angelica the mother, Ivan the 15-year-old son, Katya the 5-year-old daughter, a little nipper in more ways than one, and the vegan lodger Amanda, who makes an exception to her vegan-ism for human meat. 103-year-old granddad Oleg lives just down the road too in a OAP home. They have a family "feast" at the beginning before their separate lives are told episodically throughout until there is a coming together of story-lines at the end. The main strand sees Titus, as head of the family, trying to source the main ingredient for the next feast, and the pressure everyone else is putting on him to do just that. However Titus has scruples and will only take someone who doesn't deserve to live, e.g. a problem tenant.

Other side-orders, for example, follow the family setting up a vegan restaurant whilst getting on the wrong side of a Russian gangster.

Overall then I felt that this book was OK, although it took a while to get going. Given the praise on the back cover "The Savages" is probably the better book.

(I got this book through a Goodreads First Read competition. This review is my honest opinion of the book.)


Publication date: 5 June 2014

Amazon UK link: American Savage

Tuesday 8 July 2014

Green Shoes Mean I Love You by Amie Ryan



"Green Shoes Mean I Love You" is a collection of memoirs, essays, short fiction and poetry, as stated on the cover. Therefore it is ideal if you like your reading in bite-size chunks.

The opening memoirs are strong. The opening lines of each separate piece draw you in to want to read the rest straight away, e.g. "In 1979 my father waged war on the Mormons." The memoirs include amusing anecdotes and some moving pieces too.

Then there are the thinking pieces, or essays, covering things such as aspects of Seattle, the author being a Seattleite, and things people of the Generation X (which the author is) would have went through. This includes "The Seattle NO", the author's blog piece that can be found on the web, and which is mentioned in the blurb for this book. The essays on Seattle would be best appreciated by those familiar with America.

The short fiction pieces are next with each having the potential to be expanded into more full stories, so you might feel short-changed by them as you want more, and the collection finishes with some non-rhyming poetry, a couple of poems cleverly being related to each other.

The poem that finishes the book is called "Green Shoes Mean I Love You," and also lends it's name to the book, bringing the big reveal as to why exactly green shoes mean I love you right at the end, just as if the book were a novel.

So all in all a variety of things within the covers, some ok, some good and some excellent.

(I got this book through a Goodreads First Read competition. This review is my honest opinion of the book.)

Publication Date: 31 May 2014