Black and Blue - Rebus on the wagon!

There is a killer on the loose, who has been nicknamed "Johnny Bible". He seems to be paying a grim homage to the infamous killer named Bible John who was active some twenty years previously, but was never caught and seemed to just stop killing. This stirs up bad memories for John Rebus (in this, his 8th outing), the troubled detective based in Edinburgh, who had known one of Bible John's victims and has always felt the failure of never bringing the killer to justice. Is there a connection between the two killers, or could they indeed be the same person? Whilst itching to be put onto the Johnny Bible case, Rebus is, instead, assigned to investigate the grim discovery of a body impaled on some railings ... bad enough one would think, but the man was also tied to chair and had a plastic bag over his head. Was this murder or a bizarre accident? Not only that, but he is hounded by the press and is put under investigation when a person he helped to put away commits suicide in prison, still claiming his innocence. Rebus can't help but antagonise pretty much everyone around him and is given a baby sitter in an attempt to keep him out of mischief ... it kind of works in that it helps keep him off the bottle, but his baby sitter gets sucked into helping Rebus with the many threads to the investigation. Ian Rankin does a great job of combining the personal and professional lives of those in the police force and brings into focus the difficulty of keeping those two things separate with any great success. With plot twists by the bucketful and comings and goings involving the North Sea Oil Industry, the reader is led in all sorts of directions but slowly and gradually, everything starts to come into focus. The writing is, as you would expect from Ian Rankin, realistic and engaging. The ending is not the one that Rebus would have chosen, and, I suspect, not all readers will like it either ... there is no clean tying up of all loose ends here, but then, life's like that! Black and Blue does not leave Rebus a happy chappy  ... but then, that's just as it should be, any other way just wouldn't suit him!

My STAR rating: FOUR.

Length: 516 print pages.
Price I paid: Free, borrowed from my husband.
Formats available: print; audio CD; unabridged audio download; ebook.

Treasure Island - Yo Ho Ho!

Due to the numerous TV and film adaptations of this classic tale of buccaneers and buried treasure, many people will be familiar with this adventure story. I certainly was, but have never actually read it, so when I spotted a freebie audio version a few months ago, I couldn't resist. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson begins in a nondescript public house run by Mr and Mrs Hawkins. They are just about scraping a living together in this quiet West Country backwater when their lives are rudely interrupted by the arrival of a loud and paranoid seafarer ... who turns out to be a pirate on the run from his former crew mates. Much rum is imbibed and endless verses of Yo Ho Ho And a Bottle of Rum are sung, but in quiet times, the rough and ready pirate engages young Jim Hawkins as a kind of lookout. However, following the death of Mr Hawkins, lookout duties are forgotten, and the grim Blind Pugh turns up and delivers the dreaded Black Spot to the resident pirate, sending him into a tail spin, which leads to his sudden death. Before Pugh and his rabble return, Jim finds a treasure map amongst the pirate's belongings and he and his mother flee. When the local Doctor and Squire see the map, a plan is hatched to go on a treasure hunt, and Jim gets to go too. Unfortunately, the Squire does not chose his crew wisely and ends up recruiting Long John Silver and his cohorts who were part of the crew looking for the map. Now the adventure really kicks off with a long sea journey ending up at Treasure Island. Jim overhears talk of mutiny, and those loyal to the Squire club together to try to save themselves ... but what will become of the treasure, and is there someone already on the supposedly deserted island? This is a real adventure and there is plenty of action, with Jim getting into all sorts of scrapes. There are two stand out characters, Jim and Long John Silver, the latter being particularly engaging as he veers from kindness to viciousness, and cunning to treachery with alarming speed ... and don't mess with the parrot! The audio version, narrated by David Buck, worked well for me, as what could have become a bit too stagy was dealt with in a largely understated manner. Overall, an enjoyable (but not exceptional) time was had by all ... except for the pirates! It buckles the swashes and shivers the timbers in fine, if a little dated, style.

My STAR rating: THREE.

Length:122 print pages.
Price I paid: FREE.
Formats available: print; unabridged audio download; ebook.

The Fault In Our Stars - too many faults, not enough stars!

I don't get it! Is there something wrong with me? I chose to read this book because I'd kept seeing really great reviews about it and didn't want to miss out on what everyone else seemed to be saying was a fabulous read. However, The Fault In Our Stars, by John Green has left me with the feeling that I am on a different wavelength to all of those people. The plot is brave - basically, a love story between two teenagers - Hazel Grace, a 16-year-old terminal cancer patient, and the devilishly handsome Augustus, a 17-year-old cancer survivor - surely, this can't end well. Hazel is clever but quite insular and seems to be hanging onto life purely for the sake of her parents. Augustus is athletic - despite the loss of one of his legs to cancer - smart, funny and has a heart the size of Alaska. She initially resists his advances as she does not want him to suffer the inevitable loss when she dies ... but of course, she fails. His dogged persistence and his overwhelming and quite unbelievable awesomeness(!) wear her down ... as if we didn't know! At this point, I will say no more about what happens so as not to give any more of the plot away ... but I suspect that most people will guess. The underlying theme of living with cancer and what it does to the individual and those who love them is laudable, but the two central characters are so unrealistic in how they talk to each other that it ruined it for me. No two people are THAT smart, THAT funny and THAT wise at THAT age. I'm all for love stories, but this one left me cold. It's fiction yes, you do have to suspend your disbelief on occasion, but this story pushed me way beyond the limit. It's all too contrived and I felt like it was just trying too hard. Does this make me a bad person? Maybe in some people's eyes, but when an author doesn't seem to trust the reader to have any intellectual connection with their work, I feel a little let down. Many will love this book, but my heart strings were left well and truly un-pulled. If you want a tragic love story that will stay with you for ever, then look no further than Birdsong.

My STAR rating: TWO.

Length: 336 print pages.
Price I paid: free, borrowed from library as an ebook.
Formats available: print; unabridged audio download; ebook.

Juliet, Naked - obsessive fan vs reclusive rock star

Annie and Duncan have been living together for 15 years in Gooleness, a sleepy seaside town where the most exciting thing to happen was when a dead shark was washed up onto the beach in 1964.  Neither seem happy, but have stuck it out together partly through a mutual interest in music, but mostly through inertia. The object of Duncan's real affection is Tucker Crowe, a rock star who suddenly disappeared from the public eye many years ago after creating a masterpiece of an album. Annie puts up with this obsession because she is a bit of a fan too. One day, a CD is delivered to the house, which contains the raw, bare demo tracks for that album. Annie listens to it first and is not impressed, but Duncan thinks it is THE best thing he has ever heard and writes an incredible review on the fan website. When Annie writes a counter review, completely dissing it, the gulf between them finally cracks open and a major fallout ensues! Annie is wondering how she could have wasted all those years on such a freak as Duncan, when she receives an email in response to her online review ... and the email is from Tucker Crowe himself. They begin to correspond and this leads us into Tucker's life and we start to find out more about why he dropped off the radar and what he's been doing since then. Can this electronic relationship ever become anything more or, as Annie fears, is this all in her mind ... has that 15 years with Duncan affected her own sense of reality? In Juliet, Naked, Nick Hornby brings together a cast of characters who are letting life slip them by for a variety of reasons. Despite their many flaws, the author has written them so that you can feel for each and every one of them and there is also some crackling dialogue between the main protagonists. There is a Seize The Day feel about the book, and there is an urge to grab at those second chances should they come your way. Life goes by so quickly, try not to waste too much of it with the wrong people! This is an easy, quick read - ideal for a holiday or a cold and rainy evening when there's nothing on the telly!

My STAR rating: FOUR.

Length: 256 print pages.
Price I paid: Free, borrowed from library as an ebook.
Formats available: print; unabridged audio download; ebook.

The Rosie Effect - outstanding follow up!

The Rosie Effect is a welcome return for the unique Don Tillman, an Australian man whose particular mental condition means that he is pretty much socially inept. He is a professor of genetics who, in his first outing, set out to find himself a wife. Incredibly, he was successful and ended up marrying Rosie. The two Aussies are now in the USA, Rosie is still studying medicine, and Don is professor at Columbia University. Don, a man who needs routines to keep him from the meltdowns he is apt to have is actually happy. Everything is "on schedule" in his life, and it is good. However, when Rosie falls pregnant, this upsets his equilibrium and his own way of coping is to read up on pregnancy, and then inform Rosie about what she can and cannot do. Rosie, a strong individual herself, does not take too kindly to this and things go from bad to worse when Gene, Don's only real friend and Rosie's supervisor, comes to live with them (unbeknownst to Rosie) after he splits from his wife in Australia. Don, who takes everything literally, but who has no natural empathy with anyone, even his wife, keeps on getting himself into deeper trouble with Rosie and, in his attempts to understand what it means to be a father better, ends up getting arrested in a children's playground. Desperate to keep any possible stress away from Rosie, he tries to tackle all the scrapes he gets into by himself, and things start to spiral out of control. All of which helps to convince Rosie that while she might be able to cope with Don, there would be no way that a baby or child would do so, and therefore, he is not good father material. Will their marriage survive? Author Graeme Simsion brings the familiar characters from the first book back to life, and by transporting them to a different place, takes the opportunity to add a couple of cracking new ones. There are some really amusing scenes, and some heart breaking ones too. Don is such a frustrating man that you want to be able to reach into the book to stop him making yet another poor choice or decision - decisions which seems totally logical, but only to him! Whilst Don is the main feature, I would have liked to have seen more of Rosie. She, by default, has to be a strong person in her own right to put up with Don, but she seems too much in the background and we don't really get to engage properly with what she is going through. I just wanted to scream JUST TALK TO EACH OTHER! Maybe that's the whole point of the book ... to remind us that communication is everything in a relationship and that things can go horribly wrong when the talking stops and the assumptions begin! Take heed ... for there's a little bit of Don and Rosie in all of us! I didn't enjoy this book as much as The Rosie Project, which blew me away, but it is still a great read, particularly the audio edition which I read, narrated by Dan O'Grady.

My STAR rating: FOUR.

Length: 432 print pages.
Price I paid: £1.99.
Formats available: print; unabridged audio download; ebook.