Author: Camilla Lackberg

Following The Ice Princess, the story in this book happens around 8 months later. Erika Falck is pregnant and there’s another murder in Fjallbacka.

A body of a young woman is found in a touristic destination in the small town, but the big surprise is that, under the body, there’s a skeleton and it seems to be quite old. When another girl disappears, Patrick Hedstrom works against the clock to try finding her alive.

The plot is interesting, but very predictable, and there are some points which I don’t understand and dislike:

1)    Patrick’s favorite partner in the investigation is Martin Molin, and throughout the book you get the impression that he’s a very competent and intuitive detective. So when and how did that miracle happen? Because, from what was said about him on the 1^st book, there’s absolutely NO WAY he could have turned into a great detective in less than a year! Here’s is a summary of his description from The Ice Princess: the youngest member of the team, Martin elicited varying degrees of parental instincts in all of them. They took turns acting as invisible crutches for him and only gave him assignments that a child could do. He was pleasant and good natured, despite his naivete – which made him totally unsuitable for police work – but they reckoned he couldn’t do any great damage in the Tanumshede Police Station…Do I need to say more?

2)    Erika: she’s heavily pregnant and stays at home all the time, basically entertaining a bunch of unwanted and very impolite guests. She doesn’t add a thing to the story, but I though she was, together with Patrick, the main character. I guess I was wrong.

Other thing that bothers me is how most female characters are weak and oppressed. Weird, as it’s coming from a female author.

Anyway, not so bad, but far from great.

Buy The Preacher from: The Book Depository or Amazon.

Author: Michael Connelly

In 1992, during the Los Angeles Riots, a young foreign journalist is found dead in an alley. With chaos spreading all around, Detective Bosch attends the crime scene but soon after the case is handed to the Riot Crimes Task Force, and no suspect is ever linked or arrested for the murder.

20 years later a bullet from a recent crime is linked to that old case and Bosch meticulously works to uncover the truth, at the same time dodging the pressure from his superiors to drop the case.

Harry Bosch is relentless in putting the pieces together in an intricate case that mix US soldiers, war crimes, abuse of power and money. He’s a great detective and Michael Connelly does a really good job developing the story and the character – not boring at all, and a page-turner.

Buy The Black Box from: The Book Depository or Amazon.

Author: Yelena Black

I was looking forward to read this book, as I thought the plot seemed very interesting, but I was wrong. OK, I have to admit that I was not expecting magic or supernatural in this book, so I was surprised on the prologue, and although I’m not a big fan of angels and demons – I prefer vampires, elves, orcs, etc etc – I kept going because regardless of my preferences, it doesn’t hurt to read about something outside my usual scope, right? And as I just said before, the storyline was very appealing…

The book started well, but then suddenly things went downhill.

Let’s start with the characters: Vanessa Adler is the main character, a 15 year old who goes to the New York Ballet Academy to find out what happened to her sister Margaret, who disappeared some years ago while attending the same school. Then we have Zep (short for Zeppelin), a mysterious guy, and Justin, another mysterious guy, and the author somehow tries to form a love triangle, but I simply couldn’t buy it, because there’s no good interaction between the trio. There is the choreographer, Josef, and his shadow Hilda, and as for the other characters, little is told about them and their backgrounds, and this is very annoying, as you read about a group of people that supposedly should be important, but you can barely distinguish them.

And Vanessa – she is SO STUPID that sometimes I wished I could slap and shake her so she would wake up and see the truth right in front of her nose…unbelievable.

Moving on to the storyline: poor. There are lots of things that simply don’t make sense – and I’m not talking about the supernatural, I’m talking about more mundane situations – like how the police or the teachers or the parents never ever suspected or investigated what was happening, and it took only a few months for a girl to suspect and discover the truth – with a phone call and an iPad! This is just one example, and I could list a lot more, but I don’t want to include spoilers.

Also, too many points are left unexplained: what really happened to Elly, or how Margaret knew and got hold of that invisible ink to write her diary…but as this is a trilogy, maybe these things will be explained on the next books – that I won’t read.

The one great thing about the book is the cover – very nice!

Here are the links if you want to give it a try: The Book Depository or Amazon.

Author: Doug Johnstone

Wow! That was amazing!

I’ve been reading a lot lately – and when I say a lot I mean at least 3 books per week – and I can tell you that Gone Again is one of the best books I’ve read in the last few months. I couldn’t put it down. Luckily I had enough free time in my hands, so I started and finished it in just a few hours

When Mark Douglas’ wife, Lauren, doesn’t show up to collect their son Nathan from school, doesn’t come home that night and doesn’t pick her phone up, he knows something is wrong. She has disappeared once before, just after Nathan was born, and being pregnant now, could she be freaking out again?

Although Lauren’s disappearance is the big mystery of the book, the main storyline is the family’s relationship and how Mark, while trying to find his wife, deals with their 6 year old son and with people close to them. Mark’s character is brilliantly portrayed as we discover more about the couple’s past and how things slowly changed throughout the years, and we see his fears and impulsive feelings – which, at one point, leads the police to believe he’s a suspect.

There are tragic events unfolded and the mystery is solved pretty quickly. In my opinion, it’s is a little bit too much and there are some lose ends and unanswered questions, but because the parental issue and Mark’s character are so genuine and real, the disappearance thing doesn’t seem that relevant to the point of spoiling the story.

Fantastic book – it’s out on the 7th March (paperback) and on the 26th February (Kindle), so pre-order yours now and tell me later if you liked it as much I as did.

P.S.: Thanks Doug + Faber and Faber for sending me a copy of the book

Buy Gone Again from: The Book Depository or Amazon.

It couldn’t get better!

The Book Depository is running a 25(!) hour campaign, with a new offer every 15 minutes.

The campaign will be launched on Thursday the 21st February at noon GMT (10pm QLD, 11pm NSW/VIC) and will end on Friday the 22nd February at 1:00pm GMT (11pm QLD, midnight NSW/VIC).

Don’t miss out, and remember: they have free worldwide delivery!

For more information, visit their website.

Author: Melinda Leigh

Two hikers disappear in the woods near a small town in Maine, but due to the terrible weather conditions, no suspicion is aroused.

A few weeks later, photographer Jayne Sullivan is assigned to go to Maine and get some pictures of a reclusive sculptor, Reed Kimball, who of course, is reclusive for a reason and doesn’t want the media sniffing around. But when Jayne is attacked, things change and secrets must be revealed…

Involving druid rituals and human sacrifice, it’s a fast paced and easy reading romantic crime book. There’s suspense, and although we have some hints of who might be the killer, it’s not until the end that we really get to confirm our suspicion. Jayne and Reed exhale sexual tension, and there’s even one nice sex scene in the story.

I just found it too much with the “love at first sight” thing, and also that Jayne seems to be a magnet for trouble.

Not spectacular, but still an enjoyable book.

Buy Midnight Exposure from: The Book Depository or Amazon.

Author: Richelle Mead

It’s all about Sydney and Adrian. Will they finally be together or Sydney will keep holding on to her beliefs and push aside the attraction they have for each other?

Even though there is some action on the book – Ms. Terwilliger trying to stop her sister Veronica from hunting down young ladies, and Sydney getting involved with Marcus Finch, the ex-Alchemist we’ve had a hint about in the last book, in the end it all seems to me like some kind of distraction, because the core of this book is the “relationship” between Sydney and Adrian. Not that I don’t like it – as I said on my previous reviews, I was eagerly hoping those two would be together soon, but I’m not convinced Sydney debating and struggling over and over with her feelings for the whole book was a nice thing. She’s supposed to be mature and rational.

As for Adrian, I’m a big fan of him, and in this book he is shown as the guy of probably every woman’s dream. It’s good that at least it’s not until the end that we know their fate – because everything else is predictable from the start – but I was disappointed to see what pushed Sydney to make her decision. As a mesmerized Adrian said, she considered the opinion of a 15-year-old girl + a piece of advice from “chihuahua trainer” Wolfe Malachi + the very vivid memory of a spirit dream – although the last one I do find plausible, all the rest is not very “Sydney” like…smart and responsible as she is, she could have figured that out by herself.

Well, and the end…of course there need to be something bad coming so we can all wait expectantly for the next book, but that? Really??

I was expecting more, but I still liked the book.

Buy The Indigo Spell from: The Book Depository or Amazon.

Author: Mark Lawrence

“War is a thing of beauty and those who say otherwise are losing”

Prince Jorg Ancrath was 9 when, trapped in a thorn bush, he watched Count Renar’s men murder his mother and little brother. Running away and becoming the leader of a band of outlaws, he is ready, at 13, to go back home and reclaim what is his and to revenge his lost family.

I was curious about this book after reading so many reviews saying how cruel, insensitive, repulsive and violent the character (and the book) is, but I was not even a little shocked or disgusted. Jorg is indeed cruel, cold, calculating and violent, and whatever he says his motives are, doesn’t matter, it’s very hard to sympathize with him, BUT he is an anti-hero-main-character, and you cannot expect him to be nice or friendly or have a flicker of hesitation or regret – and I guess this is why he can be so hated – because you would expect him to be just a little more “human” …

The beginning of the book is particularly violent, with rape, looting and murder – but, hey guys, you shouldn’t be shocked – or do you think a real war is much different?

As for the storyline, it is interesting, although sometimes I was lost with all its comings and goings between past and present – annoying.

“Let a man play chess, and tell him that every pawn is his friend. Let him think both bishops holy. Let him remember happy days in the shadows of his castles. Let him love his queen. Watch him lose them all.”

This is another quote from Jorg that I like. I don’t like him, but I think he’s very intelligent. And that’s something that I think it’s too much: he is young. Too young to be so intelligent and have these developed strategic skills, abilities and all. How come a band of dangerous outlaws would follow and respect a boy as young as him? He speaks like he’s a wise 100 years old man who has seen all there is to be seen in the world…that puts me off a little, and I’m not 100% sure I want to read the next book, because in the end, the story being nice or not, it all about Jorg all the time, there are no other important characters to read about and, Jorg being Jorg…well, I just don’t know (yet).

Buy Prince of Thorns from: The Book Depository or Amazon.

Author: Camilla Lackberg

Writer Erika Falck is back to her hometown Fjallbacka, after a car accident killed her parents, when one day she “comes across” the dead body of a childhood friend, Alex Wijkner – what presumably is a suicide. Asked by Alex’s parents to write something about her friend, she decides to discover everything she can about Alex – which turns naturally into an idea for a book – uncovering details for the investigation AND engaging in a relationship with detective Patrick Hedstrom, also a childhood friend.

This is the first book I read from Camilla, and I liked her style – chapters with points of view from different characters – but it’s very annoying that the characters find clues and we are not told about it, so we have to wait several pages to discover what was that they found out.

The characters, although simple, are not bad, and I guess she will develop them along the series, but the police, for example, sometimes seems a bit slow, which I can almost understand if they are not used to deal with murders at all – but it should not be an excuse anyway.

The crime and the motives are ok. I didn’t have a clue of what had really happened until the end, but I found the whole thing from the past very unrealistic.

All in all, it was an easy and light reading and I’ll surely get the next book to see if it will live up to my expectations that following Patrick and Erika is worth it.

Buy The Ice Princess from: The Book Depository or Amazon.

Author: Peter James

It is Tuesday night, and Michael Harrison, who’s about to get married on Saturday, is out with 4 friends to celebrate his stag night. After going to several pubs, his friends put him inside a coffin with a porn magazine, a torch, a bottle of whisky, a walkie-talkie and a breathing tube, and leave him in a cove in the middle of nowhere, planning to come back after a couple of hours – but, drunk as they are, they all die in a car accident.

Next day, a distressed bride calls the police to report her fiancee’s disappearance, and we are presented to DS Roy Grace, a cop that believes in spirits and the occult, and whose wife disappeared 9 years earlier without a trace.

The storyline is promising and the book starts very well, especially when we are transported to the coffin with Michael – but that’s it.

First, starting with the detectives: the main pair here is Roy Grace, 39 years old white guy with no life and tormented by his personal tragedy; and Glenn Branson, young black guy who likes hip hop. Now, is there a rule that every pair of detectives must have a white and a black guy? See, I have absolutely no problems with it at all, but what I don’t understand is the reason to create such stereotyped characters – what’s funny or smart about that? Also, I thought them not to be very efficient – there are certain moments that you think they should have realized something and acted much quicker than they did, and probably half of the troubles endured by Michael would not have happened…

Second, my impression is that this book was written to become a Hollywood movie, with the car chases and all, but honestly, it’s not good enough. From the beginning it’s already possible to know who’s involved and what the motives are, and it is a plain and too well known story – I’m sure there are lots of books/movies with the same plot out there. The only mystery is whether Michael will make it or not…

I know this and the whole series with DS Roy Grace are great bestsellers, but they are definitely not for me.  Anyway, here are the links, if you want to read it:

Buy Dead Simple from: The Book Depository.