Before I Go To Sleep

Reviewer rating: 

5

Pros: 

Unreliable narrator, fascinating premise

Cons: 

ended too soon!

Before I Go To Sleep is easily one of the best books of the summer, and I don’t throw around the term "best" lightly.

When Christine wakes the first morning we meet her, we are just as confused as she is. Who is she? Who is she in bed with? Why is she older than she thinks she is? How is it possible to live without knowing these things? By the time I got to the beginning of her journal, I was hooked for sure. I found this severe case of amnesia fascinating.

A Cutthroat Business (Savannah Martin Mystery)

Reviewer rating: 

5

Pros: 

Exciting, compelling

Cons: 

None

A Cutthroat Business by Jenna Bennett was a fun read!

A Drop of the Hard Stuff (Matthew Scudder)

Reviewer rating: 

4

Pros: 

Block makes us feel the importance of every decision Scudder makes.

Cons: 

Occasionally forgot who was who in the list of suspects.

I imagine that when you’ve written 16 books in a series that spans a few decades, you start to wonder about when your character needs to retire. Alternately, you can bring us back to his past, which is exactly what Block has done in this latest Matthew Scudder novel.

Really, it’s a stroke of genius. Some people don’t like to pick up a book this late in a series, but set it sometime after book #5, and you not only thrill your fans with a nostalgic trip to the past, but you have the chance to pick up new readers as well.

Sacrifice

Reviewer rating: 

5

Pros: 

Refreshing. The heroine is different to many of the popped out of a bubble pack leads in this kind of book.

Cons: 

None. Except that the heroine didn't actually top anyone with the horse gun. I'd like to have seen that.

I go through several books a week and have found myself increasingly despairing of my once-loved thriller genre. There is little new in the thrillerverse: the detectives/PIs/DAs who form the corps de plot of these books are usually PTSD-afflicted, drunks (active or recovering) who are scarred inside and out by running up hot and hard against some malefactor that you know will pop up again by page 63.

As a quincequonce, many get picked off the shelves, the blurb on the back is read and they get shoved back with a muttered oath or blasphemy.

The Charlemagne Pursuit

Reviewer rating: 

3

Pros: 

Does what it says on the tin: fast-paced entertainment.

Cons: 

Archaeological discoveries don't get more exciting by being interrupted by shoot-outs.

It's a story that's hauntingly familiar: a father has gone missing while exploring distant lands, strange artefacts from a lost civilization might hold the clues to his disappearance, and old monastaries must be searched to put all the pieces together. Political intrigues and assassins abound. There are even Nazis involved, although at one remove. And Berry plays it well, and puts it together so that you don't notice the seams even when you're looking for them.

Nobody Move

Reviewer rating: 

3

Pros: 

Snappy dialogue, interesting characters, morally ambiguous

Cons: 

Not as good as his short stories- too rigid

I read this book because of Denis Johnson's short stories. They have a fantastic quality of the bar room to them, amoral and quick and shocking.

This novel doesn't quite have the same feel as them. The short stories have such a chaotic, verbal story telling sense to them that can only come from meticulous planning, but here you can see the plotting.