Reading from my TBR pile: 5-star book alert!

5-star reviews are the hardest to write, because how could I do a book justice that has given me such pleasure and touched me so deeply? So I am going to keep these short and sweet and urge you to pick them up and judge for yourself!

STAY AWAKE by Megan Goldin

 

There is a good reason why Megan Goldin is one of my favourite thriller writers. I think that THE ESCAPE ROOM is still one of my all-time-favourite books and one that stands out from the rest, but her latest book is not far behind. It only took a few pages into STAY AWAKE to find myself utterly absorbed by the disjointed reality of Liv’s world.

 

I love thrillers that rely strongly on the doubt cast on the main protagonist’s mental state. Liv, a traumatised woman who forgets everything that has happened to her as soon as she falls asleep, is a perfect candidate to star in that category of unreliable narrators. With every plot twist, I admired the author for being able to create such an intricate, multi-layered and challenging novel without ever losing credibility. Every time I was briefly concerned that a thread would be left hanging or would stretch credibility too far, I was soon reassured by the background detail that made it all perfectly plausible and tied things up nicely in the end.

 

Liv’s world is like a crazy kaleidoscope of disjointed images and unanswered questions that consumed me until I had reached the end and finally found out the answers. It was lucky that I read this book on holidays, because I was loathe to put it down. With a perfect blend between action and mystery, Goldin again delivers a psychological thriller so carefully constructed that I never had a chance to guess the culprit – all my theories were totally wrong. I loved every minute of this novel and can’t wait to see what Goldin will come up with next.

WRONG PLACE WRONG TIME by Gillian McAllister

 

Can you stop a murder after it has already happened? This may seem like a silly question, until you get lost in Jen’s reality after she witnesses her teenage son committing a heinous crime. But when she wakes up the next day, her family act as if nothing is wrong. Just as Jen thinks she has suffered a horrible nightmare or some psychological breakdown, her gaze lands on the calendar – and she finds out that it is now the day before yesterday.

This premise may sound very confusing, but I guarantee you that it is one of the most original stories I have come across this year. Can a mother’s love be strong enough to create a time-loop, allowing you to go back to the past to try and prevent a terrible thing from happening to your child? Jen is about to find out.

WRONG PLACE WRONG TIME is not your typical time travel story. It’s also a most unusual mystery, since it investigates the cause of the crime going back to its origins. As Jen goes further and further back in time, she will uncover a lot of things she never knew about her family. I loved everything about this book, and it kept me totally spellbound until I found out the answers. Despite warnings from other readers that the story would be too confusing to follow on audio, I thoroughly enjoyed my audio version and was so engrossed that I had no trouble at all with the unusual timeline.

Time travel books require a lot of skill to stay believable, and I am happy to report that McAllister has nailed it. Not only was her story utterly intriguing, but it also touched my heart, just as Diane Chamberlain’s THE DREAM DAUGHTER did (where a mother time travels to the future to find a medical cure for her child’s heart condition). I was so taken by it that it was a no-brainer it would end up on my favourites list. One of the cleverest, most original books I have read in a long time, exploring the boundaries of a mother’s love and how far she would go to save her child. Beautifully written and intricately plotted, I fully recommend it to everyone who is looking for a thriller that stands out from the fray.

DAMNATION SPRING by Ash Davidson

 

I read this book ages ago, but at the time I was left so emotionally drained that I could not find adequate words to review it. DAMNATION SPRING is the sort of atmospheric, character driven novel that makes its way right into your heart until its characters feel like real life people.

 

Set in the 1970’s, the novel explores the fate of a magnificent forest from the perspective of the people living there – the tree loggers whose livelihood depends on it, and the infancy of the environmental movement, recognising the forest’s value as well as the damage done by the poisons used by the logging companies for exfoliating the trees. Now, in 2022, we may think that this is a no-brainer, but Davidson explores both sides with such insight and compassion that each voice has value, and the reader gets an insight into both worlds. With the advantage of hindsight on my side, I really appreciated the different perspectives presented, who signal a significant shift in thinking in that era, and the obstacles faced by people trying to be open minded and fight against the power of the logging companies that are fixated only on profit.

 

There were many moments when the novel struck a chord deep within me, especially the brave women fighting for their families and the fate of the trees. I even shed a few tears, and had the worst book hangover that prevented me from reading anything else for a while.

 

DAMNATION SPRING is the type of book that stays in your mind long after the last page has been turned, especially its emotional imprint. I loved the way it challenged me to understand various points of view and offered an insight into a life totally foreign to me. I also loved the descriptive writing, which captured the scene so beautifully, both people’s lives as well as its forest setting. The book will appeal to readers who love a slow-burning story rich in detail, emotion and description that will carry you off to another place.