Booklog #4

Firstly, apologies for being a day late - November is Birthday Month in our family and it seems like barely a weekend can go by without meals out to celebrate various relations turning a year older.  It was too late to engage my brain last night when we got home (and is almost too late now, but luckily I drafted this on paper during my lunch break). 

This week I've sampled two 'Quick Reads' - novellas by well-known authors, intended (I presume) to tempt you to read their full-length novels.  I've never been a massive fan of short stories as I prefer to get really immersed in a long book, but these were less than a pound to download to the Kindle so I couldn't resist...  Oddly, they both have similar names - The Perfect Holiday (Cathy Kelly) and The Perfect Murder (Peter James).  But that's where the similarity ends! 

I haven't read any Cathy Kelly before but I have to say that I quite enjoyed The Perfect Holiday.  I don't usually go for what I would call 'normal life' stories, i.e. stories that aren't predominantly comedy, fantasy, history, thriller or whatever.  I don't know why but they've just never appealed - perhaps because part of me thinks that they wouldn't be different enough to normal life to be interesting.  However, I liked the way that the stories of the various characters staying at the same hotel are interwoven and also how the events that unfold lead to their lives changing in different ways.  Although it touches on serious subjects (alcoholism, bereavement) it's not overly gritty and serious and still feels quite warm and touching.  Without wishing to sound condescending, it just has a nice feel to it and I think I'll most likely go on to try some of Cathy Kelly's novels.  4/5

The Perfect Murder, on the other hand, has no such warmth and humanity - quite the opposite!  The main characters are a middle-aged married couple who are so fed up of one other that they each plot to murder the other.  I won't throw you any spoilers of course, but will just say that it's a clever plot with a good ending.  I've read Peter James' Looking Good Dead which is also very good - if you're looking for a new thriller writer to try, you could do worse than him.  4/5

And so to wrap up...

This week I finished:

The Redbreast ~ Jo Nesbo
I think you've probably gathered from my previous posts that I didn't enjoy this much.  Everything does get resolved and explained in the end, but to be honest I was so annoyed with it that I read it as quickly as possible and someone else from my book club had to explain it to me!  2/5

Angels ~ Marian Keyes
Now that I've finished it, I think this has just about the right balance of comedy and seriousness.  Things are revealed well into the second half of the story that explain a lot of issues lightly touched on in the first half and I found myself less and less able to put it down the further in I got. It starts out seemingly quite frothy and light but becomes a very compelling read.  4/5

This week I started:
Fallen ~ Lauren Kate (seems quite Twilight-esque so far, but with fallen angels instead of vampires)

I'm still reading:
Pillars of the Earth ~ Ken Follett
The Children's Book ~ A.S. Byatt (up to chapter 21)

That's all for now - happy reading!  :o)
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