Buried Under Books https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk Reviews by Emma Hamilton Fri, 15 Mar 2024 14:12:38 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.19 REVIEW: ‘Ravenous’ by David Dimbleby https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/review-ravenous-by-david-dimbleby/ https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/review-ravenous-by-david-dimbleby/#respond Fri, 15 Mar 2024 14:12:38 +0000 https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/?p=3271 ‘You may not be aware of this…but you do not control what you eat.’

We don’t tend to think of ourselves as being part of systems, but in this fascinating book, Dimbleby explains how the global and, specifically, UK food system is simultaneously supporting us, manipulating us and even killing us.

What’s it about?

In his role as author of the National Food Strategy, Dimbleby looked closely at how our food system works and made some discoveries that horrified him, as well as some that gave him hope for the future. In this book he shares how he and his colleagues investigated the food system, some of the thinking behind the recommendations made to government and the extent to which they have been implemented.

What’s it like?

Genuinely interesting, informative and – often – disturbing. There are no simple answers and few quick wins in a food system dominated by big food and, increasingly, big pharma. Of course, this is by no means an attitude shared by everyone. Is the food you eat making you too fat? Then here’s a pill / injection / operation. Let’s fix you, not the system, enthuse the medical profession. Surely, Dimbleby demurs, in the long-term it would be more democratic and cost-effective to fix the system?

Along the way he looks at a diverse range of relevant topics, including how farming practices could evolve to ensure that we can still access sufficient calories from the land, without extracting these in a fashion that impoverishes the soil and the world, how countries with ‘good’ eating cultures have established this, and how the government could encourage food manufacturers to tweak their recipe formulations to ensure that food is healthier, or at the very least less harmful.

Final thoughts

This was a consistently detailed exploration of a myriad of important factors involved in the food system, which ultimately left me with a sense of frustration that the U.K. government does not share Dimbleby’s urgency and isn’t using the legislation it already has to create change.

I liked that this book is focused on the U.K. food system as it’s where I’m based and that Dimbleby sees personal responsibility differently to the many politicians and right wingers who preach that we all have to ‘make the right choices’ about food. Instead, Dimbleby explores the social imequalities driving rapidly exploding obesity rates and advocates for campaigning: our personal responsibility is to address problems with the food system in any way we can, be that through education, legislation or simply requesting that our children’s schools share their food policies with us.

In other words, it’s good to choose an apple instead of a doughnut when reaching for a snack, but it’s more useful to demand both items be priced in a way that reflects their true environmental impact and that encourages manufacturers to reduce the sugar load of their products.

I listened to this as an audiobook and it has encouraged me to seek out The National Food Strategy document to see where I might be able to (within my comfort zone!) promote necessary changes.

Recommended reading for anyone curious to understand why, as a nation and across the Western world, we are increasingly becoming unhealthier than previous generations.

‘Ravenous’,
Henry Dimbleby,
audiobook, Bolinda, 2023
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REVIEW: ‘Every Trick in the Book’ by Bernard O’Keefee https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/review-every-trick-in-the-book-by-bernard-okeefee/ https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/review-every-trick-in-the-book-by-bernard-okeefee/#comments Fri, 16 Feb 2024 06:32:30 +0000 https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/?p=3265 ‘Whoever did it must have read it.’

When local author and recently retired teacher Liam Allerton is found drowned in Barnes Pond, just like the retired teacher in his debut novel, it’s a curious case of life imitating art – or rather, his death imitating his art – but when DI Garibaldi reads Allerton’s novel, it seems this is only the first of some startling coincidences…

What’s it about?

The eerie similarity between the deaths of Alex Ballantyne and his author, Liam Allerton, begins with a drowning. Alex dies the night of his retirement drinks at The Sun pub; Liam dies the night of his book talk after having drinks at The Sun pub; and both are found floating in the same spot in Barnes pond. It’s impossible for the detectives not to look closely at Liam’s book to check for parallels, which quickly mount up.

DI Garibaldi reads and re-reads the novel, searching for clues, but even as the parallels persist he and his team try to maintain a broader view of the case. Just because Liam died in the same manner as his character doesn’t mean the book holds the key to his murder – or does it? It’s certainly holding the key to something, and there are four rather worried teachers who may have featured in Liam’s book as victims of blackmail and who were definitely at The Sun pub with Liam the night he died.

Was Liam also a blackmailer? Are any of the teachers guilty of the crimes Alex accused his colleagues of? Or do the answers lie outside the pages of Liam’s novel?

What’s it like?

This is a slow paced police investigation, summed up beautifully at one point by the detective himself, outlining the scope of both Allerton’s ‘Schooled in Murder’ and O’Keefee’s ‘Every Trick in the Book’ whilst ostensibly commenting on the former! This was one of the elements I most enjoyed: there’s a very entertaining focus on reading and evaluating crime fiction that implicitly encourages readers to reflect on O’Keefe’s novel as much as Allerton’s. While Garibaldi concludes that Liam’s story, ‘Has its flaws but it’s actually pretty good’, his colleague is concerned that it’s all a ‘Bit unlikely, isn’t it?’ But Garibaldi notes that:

‘People don’t read these things for their truthfulness, do they? If they did we’d have pages and pages of him sitting at his desk reading reports, wouldn’t we?’

This is the kind of gentle playing with the boundaries of fiction that I enjoy and I found it a genuine source of pleasure.

The plot itself unspools a little repetitively; we visit the same four teachers and get the impression they are worried…then we revisit them and they are a bit more worried, then we…you get the picture. Garibaldi and his colleagues talk about Allerton’s book and the parallels to his death, then they say that they really shouldn’t look exclusively at the book, but it’s hard to escape it when there’s so many bizarre similarities, and then they talk about the book again. I enjoyed all the theorising about the book and random facts about other books, but I also wanted them to realise the obvious connections and the spot the very logical villain!

Final thoughts

I really enjoyed all the talking about the book, but in terms of the actual crime solving, it felt like that mostly happened in the last five minutes of the story and was largely due to an unforced error on the villain’s part and the late fixing of similar on the police side. Garibaldi prides himself on being smart (he’s very keen that everyone know that, actually, graffiti is plural, so the vandalism encountered later on in the story should be referred to graffito, singular!) so I would have liked to see him spot the obvious. He did work out several things, but I think these initially distracted him from the logical conclusion. Obviously if he had, that would have potentially made for a much shorter or a very different story!

O’Keefee writes well and this is easy and fun to read. I enjoyed Garibaldi’s characterisation (I absolutely will be using that graffito fact) and the scenes with his family didn’t feel like they were interrupting the main action. This book is the third in a series and it worked well as a standalone, probably at least in part due to Garibaldi’s quite positive characterisation. Although he has nothing good to say about his ex-wife, he’s perfectly cheerful and his biggest concern (other than the fact that he appears to be still getting advice from his dead mother) in this book is that his son briefly staying with him stops him frolicking with his girlfriend. All in all, I’d be quite happy to try another book in this series.

‘Every Trick in the Book’,
Bernard O’Keefee,
2024, Muswell Press, paperback
Many thanks to the author, publisher and Anne Cater’s Random Things Tours for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review and a spot on the blog tour.
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REVIEW: ‘The Skeleton Key’ by Erin Kelly https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/review-the-skeleton-key-by-erin-kelly/ https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/review-the-skeleton-key-by-erin-kelly/#respond Tue, 30 Jan 2024 14:42:54 +0000 https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/?p=3260 Our families are often the people who hurt us the most.

This is certainly true for Nell Churcher, who, despite being attacked by an obsessive ‘Golden Bones’ fan when she was was in her early teens – a fan who believed they needed to carve out Nell’s pelvic bone to resurrect a fictional character called Elinore – continues to be more hurt by her family’s inability to comprehend her. As always, Kelly deftly captures the true nature of family: the people we know best may be those we despise the most, and it may turn out that we still don’t know the depths they can plumb…

What’s it about?

For fifty years, Frank Churcher’s family has been defined by a beautiful treasure hunt tale he authored as a young artist: ‘The Golden Bones’. A tale of obsession gave rise to an army of obsessive fans and Frank’s daughter, Nell, (who, much to her disgust, was christened ‘Eleanor’, giving her a dangerous connection to the Lady Elinore in her father’s creation.) has long stood separate from her kin, determined to make her own way in life.

Now, Frank has an announcement to make and a surprise to reveal, so the Churchers gather together for the grand reveal: the location of the missing bone. However, some secrets are meant to stay buried, and the reveal soon veers dangerously off course, unveiling other secrets the family have kept hidden all these years…

What’s it like?

After a shocking prologue, ‘The Skeleton Key’ is a slow burner in terms of plot, but is a consistently beguiling tale that gradually paints a tale of two intertwined families, the Churchers and the Lalleys. Nell despises her parents and refers to them by their first names, and even Dominic and Rosaleen, Nell’s brother and sister-in-law, decide early on in their relationship to live their lives by deciding what their respective parents would do, then doing the opposite. Clearly, the children don’t dote on their parents.

The reader quickly learns about Frank’s adultery, Cora’s tendency to absent herself from reality and Lal’s alcoholism, but the real shocks are saved for the final third of the book, where we learn what Bridget knows and the long held family hatreds begin to burn ever brighter…

Final thoughts

Kelly perfectly captures the difficult dynamics dysfunctional families can share. Nell is simultaneously appalled by and protective of her father; Dominic feels the need to protect his ineffectual mother; and sensible Rosaleen turns out to be the classic rebellious teenager; but all of this feels absolutely convincing, sad and inevitable, given the characters involved.

Similarly, Kelly shows the way perfectly ‘normal’ people can do and compartmentalise heinous actions. There are no psychopaths here, though if one character’s complete actions were described independently of the rest of the narrative, I think they would certainly risk attracting that label!

I was surprised by Frank’s behaviour in the final chapters and wondered whether Kelly’s final, understated reveal somehow had more to do with his decision than anything else. (I found myself re-reading the relevant chapters as obsessively as one of the story’s Bonehunters might!) Other than this unexpected development, I loved the way the whole story developed and gradually revealed just how far a family will go to protect their own.

Having previously thoroughly enjoyed Kelly’s ‘He Said / She Said‘ and ‘The Burning Air‘, I look forward to reading more of her books.

‘The Skeleton Key’,
Erin Kelly
2023, Hodder, paperback
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REVIEW: ‘Dead Man Driving’ by Lesley Kelly https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/review-dead-man-driving-by-lesley-kelly/ https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/review-dead-man-driving-by-lesley-kelly/#respond Fri, 01 Dec 2023 16:10:13 +0000 https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/?p=3252 I love books that are completely real whilst also being darkly comic.

Welcome back to the North Edinburgh Health Enforcement Team, now on their fifth outing in a fictionalised, mid-Virus-epidemic-Edinburgh. Bernard is still surprised daily by the demands of his job, (which is supposed to be about healthcare but is really a sort of police team used by their boss to try to hush up political scandals that they’ve been instructed to smother by their boss,) but now he’s got a new boss, he hopes his work life might calm down long enough for him to go out to dinner with his girlfriend’s parents. This seems like a perfectly reasonable hope, which is why long time readers know Bernard has no chance of achieving this minor success.

What’s it about?

Two years into a devastating pandemic, food shortages are critical. When the government introduces ‘Consumable Purchase Restrictions’ (AKA rationing) the population are livid, so this is a bad time for Carlotta Carmichael, Virus Minister, to lose a lorryload of luxury foodstuffs meant to feed the V8 ministers. Determined to prevent protests flaring into riots, Carmichael instructs the HET to track down the lorry and its driver – immediately.

Remarkably, this proves not just easy to do, but is almost a pleasant break from tracking down the typical health defaulters (junkies, criminals and now ‘holiday defaulters’ – people who have somehow acquired a beautiful golden tan whilst being too ‘ill’ to attend their monthly health check), until Bernard and Maitland find a dead body in the lorry… Who is she? What happened? And will Carlotta Carmichael ever allow the truth to make the newspapers?

What’s it like?

Wonderfully accurate and entertaining. Kelly teams completely convincing characterisation with dark humour and murky situations until yet another ending that shows Mona striding off fearlessly in pursuit of the truth while her colleagues are still confirming the final outcomes of their latest investigation.

While Maitland bemoans his own lack of involvement in the latest violent trauma to befall poor Bernard, and Bernard frets about how to tell his girlfriend that he still wants to support his pregnant wife through her pregnancy, Mona is moving on to uncover The Truth about the virus, whatever that might be. Oh and Carole is still suing the HET after they decided to invoke the clause that means only your own death is a lawful excuse to stop turning up to work.

Final thoughts

I typically prefer stories where we don’t learn a lot about the background of the investigating team as I like the investigation to be the focus, but here the focus is really on the characters and the spot on depiction of the politicking surrounding the virus. The investigation is resolved as far as it is possible to do so, but like so many of these stories, there’s a tension between what the HET are allowed, even encouraged, to find out, and what they are actually allowed to share, which tends to lead to a similar feeling of not-quite-closure – which may be why stories in this series tend to end with Mona running into the distance, ready to keep seeking The Truth, which is the wider story arc encompassing the Health of Strangers series.

This could be read as a standalone but would be better read in order. If you think you like the sound of this then I’m confident you’ll enjoy starting with ‘The Health of Strangers’ and reading through the books in sequence. There is now quite a lot of recent history that Kelly needs to keep readers apprised of and so there were several brief recap paragraphs. These don’t disrupt the narrative but reinforce that these are stories which would benefit from being enjoyed in the sequence in which they were written.

‘Dead Man Driving’.
Lesley Kelly,
2023, Sandstone Press, paperback
Many thanks to Vertebrate Publishing for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

 

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REVIEW: ‘Mania’ by L. J. Ross https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/review-mania-by-l-j-ross/ https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/review-mania-by-l-j-ross/#respond Wed, 15 Nov 2023 15:02:03 +0000 https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/?p=3244 King Lear is meant to die – but the actor performing the title role isn’t.

When Sir Nigel Viliers collapses and dies on stage during the opening night of King Lear, everyone around him appears to be startled: Sir Nigel is a leading light of the London stage – so it’s even more startling when it seems his death may be due to unnatural causes. When Doctor Alexander Gregory is asked to advise the police regarding the mind of the deceased actor and any potential killer, he soon realises that all the evidence is pointing to an event from Sir Nigel’s past. Perhaps he wasn’t universally loved after all…

What’s it about?

Dr Gregory and his friend Professor Douglas agree to create two profiles, which means Gregory working closely with DCI Hope, despite being previously ill treated by her colleagues. As the body count rises, Gregory considers whether Sir Nigel had cause to do himself harm – and whether other people felt that Sir Nigel had done them harm! It seems the answers may be buried in Sir Nigel’s past at Cambridge, but after all these years, is it possible to find out the truth?

What’s it like?

Highly engaging. Well plotted. Interesting to reflect upon.

I really enjoyed the way that, as the narrative evolves, the reader is offered greater insight into certain characters and events, gradually leading to an aha! moment for Dr Gregory and the reader. It has occurred to me that, although we gain understanding of who did what, we are never shown second by second what transpired during the crucial moments that caused Sir Nigel’s death and I like that: we know the essentials and don’t need a lengthy viewing of the actual event.

Throughout the story Ross explores the value of reputation – and the devastation that the loss of it, anticipated or actual, can lead to. There was also a wonderfully appropriate focus on misdirection, which seemed highly appropriate when exploring events within the acting community!

Final thoughts

‘Mania’ is actually the fourth book in a series, but works fine as a standalone. I haven’t read the preceding three and didn’t feel like I was either lacking in information or being bored by info-dumps from previous books.

The ending introduces a large cliffhanger which does hang on ideas from a previous book (which may be why the aha! moment felt unconvincing to me – how on earth could Gregory possibly know that he knows what he thinks he knows?) and successfully creates a lot of tension. I feel like on a different day this might have annoyed me – it’s so obvious a ploy to try to yank readers into reading book five; does the author not trust the quality of their writing to make us want to keep reading their books? – but it did make perfect sense in terms of the plotting, I just didn’t think it reasonable that Dr Gregory instantly divined what he did.

Speaking of Dr Gregory, he’s a bit of a mini-Sherlock, amusingly irritating DCI Hope at one point by casually alluding to facts that she has had to use police work to discover but he had simply intuited. This is entertaining to read and means that this definitely isn’t a team-effort style mystery, but a celebration of Gregory’s profiling skills. It entertained me and I would definitely try reading another one of L. J. Ross’ Dr Gregory thrillers.

‘Mania’,
L. J. Ross,
2022, Dark Skies Publishing
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REVIEW: ‘The Summer Party’ by Rebecca Heath https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/review-the-summer-party-by-rebecca-heath/ https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/review-the-summer-party-by-rebecca-heath/#respond Fri, 10 Nov 2023 14:06:47 +0000 https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/?p=3240 The strapline promises a perfect family with a devastating secret.

We know these tropes: we know that this family will turn out to be anything but perfect; we know there will be multiple secrets that emphasise just how broken their family unit truly is; and we know that Lucy will find herself in danger, likely from whoever she least suspects; but we hope that the story telling will fuse these well known elements into a transfixing tale that captures us from the discovery that ‘may contain human bones’ until the final chilling denouement, when we learn just who transformed a human into the remnants of their skeleton. I am pleased to report that ‘The Summer Party’ does exactly that, despite Lucy’s surprising naivety.

What’s it about?

When Lucy’s grandmother dies, she returns to the scene of some memorable childhood moments to pack up her grandmother’s life. Queen’s Point, South Australia, was never a town that interested Lucy until she met the Whitlams – elegant Mae, artistic Harry and friendly Annabelle – and edged her way into their charmed social circle. Despite warnings from her grandmother, teenage Lucy flirts with Harry and hangs around Annabelle until the titular Summer Party marks the end of her stay, never realising that one party guest hadn’t left alive until twenty years later when human bones wash up on the beach…

In a storyline that flips between the period approaching the party in 2000 and events following the discovery of the body in 2020, Lucy is equally enthralled by the rich Whitlams and their lavish lifestyle (2000’s Annabelle has stacks of DVDs carelessly piled up in her teenage bedroom), failing to heed the most obvious warning signs and desperate to cling to her historical relationships as if they were current friendships, even as the evidence of foul play starts to point towards her…

What’s it like?

Highly engaging. Mildly gothic. Mildly frustrating! Lucy’s teenage naivety is forgivable; her adult naivety is not. Of course Lucy stalks the whole family on social media; of course they completely ignore her in response – except Harry, who’s not averse to a booty call. As the family alternately pull her close and push her away, whispering the secrets they want her to know, Lucy seems unable to form a thought that doesn’t involve their being old friends and therefore trustworthy. Even Lucy’s marriage seems to have been a hostage to her feelings for the Whitlams and now she’s a widow with a distant, adult step child, Lucy has no remaining family to warn her that the rich don’t stay rich by being nice to their underlings…

Local cop Jake tries to warn Lucy that she should stay away from the family at the centre of his investigation, but this just gives Lucy an opportunity to be torn between the good cop and the bad boy, seemingly fancying whichever one happens to drop by her house. That said, while I thought Lucy vacillated too much between the two men, I liked the direction Heath took this in towards the end of the book – and I enjoyed the drama of the actual end.

Final thoughts

Gradually, Lucy begins to recall the complex relationships in the Whitlam family, (and Heath offers the reader glimpses into all three of the siblings’ 2000 thoughts to show the pressures they were under,) but she’s still remarkably willing to be used by them all, until a final invitation places her in a truly dangerous situation. Those who live apparently perfect lives must not have that image disturbed by the housekeeper’s granddaughter…

I enjoyed reading ‘The Summer Party’, despite Lucy’s childishness, because I enjoyed finding out more about the family relationships and I liked the slight gothic tone to parts of the story (like Lucy’s visit to the deserted beach). I was also interested in finding out what had happened to the body before it ended up in the water, though that part got a little complicated due to the sheer number of characters who had just cause to loathe the dead character!

I’ll be interested to see what Rebecca Heath writes next.

‘The Summer Party’.
Rebecca Heath,
2023, paperback, Head of Zeus
Many thanks to the author, publisher and CrimeFest for providing me this ARC.
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Cover Reveal: ‘Clickbait’ by L. C. North https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/cover-reveal-clickbait-by-l-c-north/ https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/cover-reveal-clickbait-by-l-c-north/#respond Wed, 08 Nov 2023 12:31:53 +0000 https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/?p=3236 Today I’m excited to be part of the cover reveal for L. C. North’s new thriller ‘Clickbait’

 Isn’t it pretty? But of course, we shouldn’t judge a book purely by its cover, so here’s the blurb to tempt you further:

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‘We’re not famous anymore. We’re notorious.’

For over a decade, the Lancasters were celebrity royalty, with millions tuning in every week to watch their reality show, Living with the Lancasters.

But then an old video emerges of one of their legendary parties. Suddenly, they’re in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons: witnesses swore they’d seen missing teenager Bradley Wilcox leaving the Lancaster family home on the night of the party, but the video tells a different story

Now true crime investigator and YouTuber Tom Isaac is on the case. He’s determined to find out what really happened to Bradley – he just needs to read between the Lancasters’ lies . . .

Because when the cameras are always rolling, it won’t be long until someone cracks.

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For fans of Murder in the Family and The Club, Clickbait is told through mixed media, from video transcripts to diary entries, capturing a unique and addictive commentary on ruthless ambition and the dark side of fame.

 

Genre:  Bookclub thriller

Publication Date: 11th April 2024

Publisher: Transworld/Bantam

Pre-order link: https://linktr.ee/clickbaitbook

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REVIEW: ‘Undoctored’ by Adam Kay https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/review-undoctored-by-adam-kay/ https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/review-undoctored-by-adam-kay/#respond Sat, 21 Oct 2023 12:25:04 +0000 https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/?p=3230 ‘Medicine was harder to leave than O2 or Virgin Active gyms.’

Adam Kay is back with his second memoir, reflecting on his experiences not just as a student and doctor within the NHS but with his own mental and physical health.

What’s it about?

Kay’s adult debut, ‘This is going to hurt’, was sad and funny. Built primarily from at least semi-humorous anecdotes collected during his career as a gynaecologist, the final painful chapter was quite a harsh break from the preceding material. (Much like his live stand up show, it’s all funny, albeit dark humour, until the painful event that terminated his medical career.) ‘Undoctored’ clearly shares genetic material with its predecessor, but is sharper, ruder, darker.

‘This is Going to Hurt’ opens with Kay’s resignation from the medical profession and then explores the reasons medical students might sign up to such a challenging career (basically the chance to be a superhero). The first anecdote involves inept creation of email addresses and it takes until page 16 before readers are treated to the first truly gruesome anecdote, which involves a lamp post, a young man and a, ahem, de-gloving incident.

‘Undoctored’, by contrast, opens with:

‘You know what it’s like when you’re cutting up a dead body. No, of course you don’t. It’s a perverse and horrific thing that should only ever be experienced by coroners and gangland criminals. Unless of course you’re one of the 9,000 eighteen-year-olds who sign up to medical school in the UK each year. For them, it’s just what you do each Friday morning’.

This is Kay unleashed. The disapproval of the way medical staff are trained, the lack of support they endure, the suicide rate of doctors, this is now the dominant thread, explicated by way of anecdotes.

As a whole, this book is also just plain ruder. By page 2 Kay is reflecting on the properties of different kinds of biscuits when competitively masturbated upon. God only knows what insights Kay might see fit to share with the general public if he writes a third book for adults in this vein!

What’s it like?

Angrier, cringier, darker. Not angry in a ranty way, but Kay has plenty to say about the dubious approach to doctor welfare he witnessed and experienced.

Gruesome and gross. Expect to be treated to a detailed account of the egress of a kidney stone and a bout of D and V, among other passages that will surely leave you wincing with sympathy and horror.

Really rather sad. Yes, Kay maintains a dark humour throughout, but his honesty makes him seem incredibly vulnerable, and it has been suggested that this memoir could benefit from certain trigger warnings.

Final thoughts

This wasn’t quite what I expected after the (in hindsight!) rather more light ‘This is Going to Hurt’ and ‘The Nightshift Before Christmas’.  In places it is really quite difficult to read because it is so extremely personal. Reading about the medical mishaps of complete strangers is somewhat desensitising, but reading about Kay’s struggles felt genuinely saddening. Yes, the tone is consistently humorous – ‘J thoughtfully distracted me by initiating a huge argument’ – but ultimately this is much more personal and brutal than Kay’s previous books.

Still very funny – but very dark.

‘Undoctored’,
Adam Kay,
2023, Trapeze, paperback
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REVIEW: ‘The Wife Upstairs’ by Rachel Hawkins https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/review-the-wife-upstairs-by-rachel-hawkins/ https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/review-the-wife-upstairs-by-rachel-hawkins/#respond Thu, 28 Sep 2023 13:43:28 +0000 https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/?p=3248 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 reveals early on that this is not her real name); both books contain an unwanted wife – except that isn’t true either, as ‘Eddie’ Rochester definitely isn’t done with Bea Rochester; and while the original novel ends with everyone suitably chastised, this story doesn’t care for moral flourishes.

What’s it about?

Jane is walking dogs for a living in the kind of neighbourhood where people “do lunch”, for the kind of people who don’t notice when their expensive earrings go missing, when she meets Eddie Rochester in a way that is presumably meant to be sort of rom-com-ish but is mostly bizarre. He buys a dog for her to walk literally the next day, and instead of taking this as a warning that he might be a bit…obsessive? stalker-ish? odd?…Jane decides to try and grab an easy life by cosying up to him, all while hiding her big, dramatic secrets…

Does Jane sound like the kind of character you’d like to spend time with? She swears, steals and manipulates, treating us to mini flashes of hardship to engender some sympathy. Her best feature is probably her contempt for the bland, manicured women around her, leading dull, flashy lives – but then she tries to become one of them and the storyline is pretty dull, until Jane thinks she hears some thumps overhead…what, exactly, happened to Eddie’s wife? Suddenly, Jane has to find out…

What’s it like?

Ridiculous. There are so many elements of this story which just defy belief. At least, I could sort of ignore them while I was reading the story, but now that I’ve finished it I feel like the whole story is basically impossible.

I can’t elaborate on the plot holes because that would involve spoilers, but I really need to discuss how silly this all was with someone else who has read it, because the longer this storyline floats around my head, the more I’m bewildered that a reader is meant to swallow this.

I’ve read a fair few reviews that recommend suspending disbelief and just enjoying the show, but I can’t say I particularly enjoyed the reveals either. This probably says more about me and my habit of reading domestic thrillers than the actual book, but I felt like something was hinted at, then outright stated, then stated again from another character’s point of view. One genuine surprise was an unexpected change in viewpoint, but this actually led to further disappointments. I wanted more from these characters. More…planning. More strategy. At one point, someone thinks, ‘oh x will know what to do’ and they just…don’t. Meh. Maybe I was hoping for an evil genius but what I got were characters who were horrible without being clever and a penultimate twist / event that just doesn’t make any sense.

Final thoughts

I found the idea of a modern Jane Eyre interesting, but I found the ‘heroine’ of ‘The Wife Upstairs’ to be actually bland and nasty. Eyre was angry and challenged her elders, but Bell is possibly a sociopath and these attitudes are not the same!

There’s been a lot of interesting discussion about Bertha, the original wife, in Eyre’s classic: a lot of re-evaluating her position has taken place over the years and I think I expected that to inform Hawkin’s re-telling more, but the more I think about the ending of ‘The Wife Upstairs’ the more I can see why people might really like it. Looked at from the right angle, it’s brilliant: the perfect ending for such a modern tale. But no matter how hard I squint, I can’t sustain that angle. Maybe I just dislike this Jane too much!

I think my expectations skewed my response – I was disappointed by Bea – and I am aware that a lot of people have really loved this book, but I think ultimately it just wasn’t for me. I finished it because I did enjoy the audio narration and it was easy to listen to.

‘The Wife Upstairs’,
Rachel Hawkins,
2021, HarperCollins, eAudiobook
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REVIEW: ‘Wrong Place, Wrong Time’ by Gillian McAllister https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/review-wrong-place-wrong-time-by-gillian-mcallister/ https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/review-wrong-place-wrong-time-by-gillian-mcallister/#respond Sun, 10 Sep 2023 13:39:40 +0000 https://buriedunderbooks.co.uk/?p=3220 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 her teenage son one dark October night when she witnesses him stab a complete stranger. This isn’t the Todd she knows, but before Jen can get any information out of her son, the police arrive, Todd confesses and he is taken away to be charged.

Full of questions, Jen and her husband follow the police to the police station, but they are not allowed to see Todd, who is refusing to see a solicitor.

Exhausted and confused, Jen eventually falls asleep on the sofa, but when she wakes up, her confusion deepens as she realises that she’s somehow woken up yesterday – the day before the murder.

As the yesterdays mount up, Jen realises that if she can only discover why the murder happened, she might be able to stop it…

What’s it like?

Instantly and consistently engaging. Very relatable. Superbly plotted.

I loved this from beginning to end (though found the token attempt to explain the time loop unnecessary) and immediately began re-reading it again to spot the clues I knew I must have missed the first time around. (Like the fact that Jen feels deja vu even before the stabbing…)

Everything about this worked for me. Relationships are one of McAllister’s key strengths and this mother – son relationship is convincing right from the start, as Jen quickly reflects on the ways her son has been changing lately – losing weight, becoming more moody, more secretive – and realises that, in the hectic day to day of everyday life, she has missed some significant moments that might have allowed her an insight into Todd’s problem sooner.

Nobody stabs a stranger, of course, (significant mental health issues aside) and the gradual unravelling of the characters’ relationships and histories unfurled beautifully. Working backwards definitely makes it harder to predict what certain characters are referring to and every secret revealed packed a punch.

Then there’s the ending, where the final threads pull together and then – oooh, I loved that final chapter!

Final thoughts

I thoroughly enjoyed every part of this story, but I think I particularly enjoyed the threads McAllister established around the middle section of the book. Any reader who frequently reads crime fiction will immediately suspect the husband of involvement somehow, but McAllister focuses on Jen’s anxiety to the point where it’s almost equally plausible that she suffers from debilitating anxiety or her husband is gaslighting her. Almost!

Actually, this does remind me of my one niggle about the storytelling: Jen spends a lot of time reflecting on how her mothering may have contributed to Todd’s predicament, and a lot of this anxiety is focused around her work. Motherhood is demanding and parenting obviously has a significant impact on children, but Jen’s concerns are pronounced:

‘Never a confident parent, Jen feels certain, deep inside herself, that something must have happened. Maybe in Todd’s early years. When Todd was four, she clean forgot to collect him from nursery’.

I almost wanted to shout at her, You did the best you could! One mistake does not a murderer make. Perhaps this is just my own sensitivities flaring. It is very easy to feel like you are failing as a parent and to worry about the impact that might have on your child in their future, and Jen – understandably! – does this a lot, which probably just felt rather close to home.

Very enjoyable. Highly recommended.

I also recommend McAllister’s earlier books, ‘Anything You Do Say‘, and ‘The Evidence Against You‘. Follow the links for my reviews.

‘Wrong Place, Wrong Time’,
Gillian McAllister,
2023, Penguin Books, paperback
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