First a quick explanation!
Due to some severe health issues over the last few years, and a lingering chronic condition, my planned review schedule went right out of the window and I have been scrabbling ever since to get it back on track.
In my latest attempt to try to regain some lost ground, I have been scrunching some of my (overdue) reviews together into one or two posts each week: shorter reviews, but still covering all of the points I intended to.
That’s the plan anyway, so let’s stroll on into this summer of reading!
Title: The Bridge of Little Jeremy
Author: Indrajit Garai
Publisher: Indrajit GARAI
Blurb: The adventure of a young Parisian artist and his dog. A novel of action and reflection; of fidelity and trust; of resilience, love, and the power of art. Jeremy’s mother is about to go to prison for their debt to the State. He is trying everything within his means to save her, but his options are running out fast. Then Jeremy discovers a treasure under Paris. This discovery may save his mother, but it doesn’t come for free. And he has to ride over several obstacles for his plan to work. Meanwhile, something else is limiting his time…
Review: Set in Paris, this is the touching story of ‘Little’ Jeremy, who lives alone with his mother, his dog Leon and a limiting heart condition. Jeremy’s little family struggles with poverty (due to inheritance tax issues) and we follow him as he tries to take on adult responsibilities without upsetting his mother – not just attempting to earn the money they need but also trying to protect his mother from local perverts, trying to protect Leon from his instincts and from other people and worrying about the local bookstore owner, Paolo. Then he finds a painting that may solve some of his worries… if only he can restore it perfectly.
In other words, he has a lot on his plate for a pre-teen, especially one who is supposed to be resting!
Written in first-person narrative, the story chronicles Jeremy’s adventures and stresses and the ups-and-downs of his daily life. There is a lot of information about art and painting, and a deep sense of the boy’s emotional connection to his work and his painful joy in getting it right (or despair at getting it wrong).
The ending, whilst not exactly a happy-ever-after, feels fitting and offers a tentative hope for a better future, but I turned the last page feeling less hopeful and more gently nihilistic.
I’d recommend this for those who are looking for a thoughtful, heartfelt read about striving and caring and taking on the world’s burdens valiantly, and for those who prefer stark realism over lighter, fluffier feelings.
Purchase Link: The Bridge of Little Jeremy on Amazon
Title: The Ghost Camper’s Tall Tales
Author: Elizabeth Pantley
Publisher: Independently published
Blurb: Hayden meets a mysterious ghost with secrets to tell. Can he help explain the unsolved mystery surrounding the death of someone who was already dead? Can Hayden, with the help of her family, friends, and her sassy cat, Latifa unscramble this mystery and keep Destiny Falls safe?
A mysterious old man keeps popping up to tell Hayden a series of tall tales. Who is he? And is he actually glowing? Are his stories fiction, or is he telling her the history of her family, the enchanted islands, and the witch? And why did a dead body show up . . . of someone who is already dead?
Can Hayden and her quirky sidekick, Latifa unscramble this mystery?
Hayden’s adventures in the magical world of Destiny Falls continue in this gripping story that answers your questions about the mysterious world she entered through a mirror in book one, Falling into Magic. We learn more about her missing mother, whose story begins in book two, The Disappearance of Emily.
Review: I would definitely recommend reading this series in order (this is book 3), as the mysteries of Destiny Falls and of Hayden’s family keep building with every book!
We rejoin Hayden as she continues in her new career of journalist in Destiny Falls, flirts with a certain handsome investigator, finds out more about her mum and the mysterious Gladstone Island, and inevitably investigates another murder.
Now that the setting and characters are fully established and familiar, this series has started to feel more like a ‘normal’ paranormal cosy mystery. We see less of the cave-bound witch here – which I preferred, as the intervals with her take us away from the main plotline, which I am enjoying more and more as it unfolds – and the history we find out via the ‘ghost camper’ is really interesting and helped me to understand the background and the villain’s potential motivations better
This is an easy-to-read and increasingly engaging cosy mystery series, with a magical house, talking cats and a likeable main character who is out of the loop but determined to uncover the truth. I would suggest this is a great series for teens and older to explore the genres of fantasy and mystery and the space where the two overlap.
Purchase Link: The Ghost Camper’s Tall Tales on Amazon
Title: The Glass
Author: Carl Long
Publisher: Independently published
Blurb: The Glass is a contemporary Gothic Horror ghost story. Christopher Higson procures an ornate, cheval-glass mirror amongst the cultural carrion at a house clearance on the ancient and heirless Bradley Estate, a gift for his wife, Maria, to help save their dying marriage. Their young son, William, caught in the crossfire in the battle between his parents, suddenly finds an imaginary friend, Jenny, and the only time he sees her is in the mirror. Amongst the blood and broken glass, Christopher and Maria try to save their marriage, and themselves, as they discover the horrible truth about William’s imaginary friend.
Review: Proper, traditional horror – in the tradition of Poltergeist or What Lies Beneath – this book would be ideal for adaptation to film or TV screens.
We have all the ingredients here: sceptical, logical dad; creepy, disturbed young child with an ‘imaginary friend’ who might not be; frightened mum who believes and begs to leave; and the strange old mirror that sets everything into motion. Although this is all fairly predictable to anyone familiar with the genre, the story is well-written and works exactly as it is supposed to, whether you see the scares coming or not.
The marital and parental issues the characters struggle with help the reader to empathise with and root for the characters to survive, no matter how doomed they may seem, keeping you engaged with the story right up to the final page.
The Glass is a good, solid ghost story that I would easily recommend to fans of the genre, or to newcomers looking to dip their toes into the haunted waters.
Purchase Link: The Glass on Amazon
Title: Travelling Without Moving
Author: Nathan Jones
Publisher: Independently published
Blurb: A fast-paced adventure through a world like no other, following unique, quirky characters on the journey of their lifetime. Plenty of novels are set in domes, but none are as colourful, spellbinding, and inventive as Travelling Without Moving.
Earth is in ruins, uninhabitable, and the remaining population live in bio-domes. A Roman tribesman, Napalm Carton, believes that life in his clockwork habitat is some kind of lie. A trap, or a construct, or an experiment gone wrong, whatever. Post-apocalyptic existence makes no sense to him, and all he wants to do is escape to the reality beyond the dome of lies.
Spurred on by visions, Napalm creates a multiplayer game called tickets, with the intention of opening a door to the next level of existence. He needs the help of his sceptical friends, but first, he has to convince them that the tickets are more than a game. He also needs to confirm his suspicions that someone or something is trying to steal his invention before it’s game over for everyone.
Review: This story is a bit of a mindbender, so I can’t claim I always understood what was going on!
The worldbuilding ideas are super cool – clockwork, talents/specialisms handed out by a Main Computer, the dome, the “emotion colour” drugs and so on – but I struggled to get a clear picture of how it all worked at times. That said, my confusion is partly a function of deliberate plot and style elements as the atmosphere of the story is quite trippy and Inception-ish. The reader is kept in suspense for most of the story as to whether everything is actually happening as described, happening in a drug-induced dream or delusion, or part of some big conspiracy. Nothing and no one can be trusted.
With a cyberpunk aesthetic, but dreamlike logic and tone, the whole narrative is unreliable and disorienting – deliberately so! – and it is also gritty, fun, humorous and inventive, so well worth a read for fans of post-apocalyptic dystopia with multiple layers of misdirection and mystery.
Purchase Link: Travelling Without Moving on Amazon
Title: The Art of Almost
Author: Natascha Graham
Publisher: Tipping the Scales Press
Blurb: Published by Tipping the Scales press, The Art of Almost is a lesbian short story by author Natascha Graham.
Excerpt:
The house had been full of ghosts since Ted had died. Cards from the past dropped through her letterbox daily, people she had all but forgotten sent bouquets of sweet-smelling flowers, and the neighbours bought over a casserole that she’d given to the dog.
Everyone was sorry. Sorry that Ryan had lost his father, at only six years old. Sorry that she had lost her husband, sorry that he had died. Now she had a mantelpiece full of cards from people whose surnames she didn’t know, people who had no idea about her life, or her, or how it had been, and that actually, the fact that he had been knocked down and killed by a Land Rover whilst staggering home from the pub had been one of the best things that had ever happened to her.
And now, she was standing in the kitchen, looking out of the window, the glass fogged up with steam from the kettle boiling on the Aga. She stared at her own reflection, sullied and blurry, hair all over the bloody place, curling about her jaw, slipping out from the French knot that she had attempted at the nape of her neck. Her hair, an unremarkable colour at the best of times, but in this steam bleached reflection it was even limper, even more of a non-color – an insipid pale brown with more than a fleck of grey, and her eyes, staring back at her, like the eyes of another more recognisable ghost, almost too pale to see, almost the same colour as the sky.
It was the end of February. She wouldn’t change this light for the world. Early spring light that breathed a thrilling sense of possibility through the house, this silent house, as sullen and creaking as she was, but beautiful, with its own charm.
Evening, the cool air, everything dull, and tinged with grey, blue and gold, the time of day when everything seemed to slow down to the beat of a heart.
Review: A bittersweet short story of love, fear and longing, The Art of Almost captures Gillian as a teen teetering on the cusp of womanhood, then again as a mature, weary adult.
The writing is beautiful – poignant and evocative. You can taste the warm, flat beer or lemonade and smell the dusty heat and see it shimmering hazily. The atmospheric nostalgia is tangible and potent, and took me straight back to my own teen summers, despite the setting being completely different.
There are some dark issues raised in this short space, centred on domestic violence and marital rape, but there is nothing gratuitous and the eventual, sapphic outcome is a positive and hopeful one.
Read this short story for a brief but powerful exploration of the deep, self-inflicted unhappiness of trying to live the life you feel you should, and the euphoric relief of finding the courage to step out of the life prescribed for you and be true to yourself and finding your own happiness.
Purchase Link: The Art of Almost on Amazon
There’s some real food for thought in today’s batch of books, along with some classic horror and paranormal mystery to lighten the mood a little and give your brain a rest.
Mine certainly could do with one as the combo of hayfever and heat has turned my poor thinking-noodle to cottage cheese.
Still reading though, and shining through the sneezes – see you next week (and next month) for more booky goodness! 🙂
Bookshine And Readbows 