Short version: this wasn’t for me. Longer version: ‘The Wife Upstairs’ suffers from a few plot holes, to put it mildly, and despite being promoted as a modern re-telling of Jane Eyre, bears very little resemblance to that classic. Both books contain an orphan whose name is Jane, and even that isn’t true (Jane Bell […]
How do you stop a murder when it’s already happened? I was hooked by the tagline and reassured from reading previous McAllister books that such a brilliant premise wouldn’t fizzle out or otherwise disappoint. This, I was certain, would be a brilliant read – and it was. What’s it about? Jen is waiting up for […]
A murdered woman. A missing husband. An impossible crime scene. The strapline sounded a bit like a locked room mystery, but this is a police procedural with a purpose. When a wealthy woman is found dead in her locked London mansion by her cleaner, the key questions that arise are: what is the meaning of […]
Imagine that you have ended up in prison, as a result of poverty and constrained life choices. Now imagine being told that you will serve out the rest of your prison sentence on the other side of the world – and you are unlikely to ever find your way home. Such is the fate facing […]
‘It’s a bit like butchers telling you they’re taking good care of animals.’ Ouch. Peter Wohlleben is not pulling any punches in his discussion of ‘clear cuts’ in forestry, (removing all the trees) but then, why would he when he considers “traditional forestry” to be the very definition of madness – “doing the same thing […]
Do you feel happy? Sad? Or do you mostly just feel – blah. Flat emotions may not be a sign that someone is experiencing depression, but it can be a precursor to it. After all, we might desire a life without sadness, fear and anger, but no one wants a life devoid of joy, excitement […]
Did you know that lions no longer live in prides? It makes sense when you think about it: of course, as available territory has reduced and can’t sustain large groups, lions must necessarily live and hunt in smaller groups. This was one of the many thought provoking pieces of information my daughters and I discovered […]
Everyone knows that we should eat 5 fruits / vegetables a day to protect our health – but that’s not true. The real figure, arrived at through considerable research, is 9, but public health messengers decided that the public didn’t want to hear that – it wasn’t a figure they would consider realistic or achievable […]
Sometimes it’s nice to try reading something a little different. ‘Where the Water Flows’, a story about a dramatic event rather than a crime, certainly fits that description for me. The Blurb: It had been a long, hot summer followed by a very wet autumn. The River Hawk, lying to the north of a former […]
Imagine that a novel virus caused chaos and led to significant restrictions on public movement and… Oh. Hello Covid-19! No need to imagine the government crackdown or the population’s reactions. But actually, that just makes ‘Songs by Dead Girls’, first published in 2018, EVEN BETTER because it’s so perfectly pitched. Now I don’t mean that […]