Book Review: YOU by Caroline Kepnes

 

Title: YOU

Author:  Caroline Kepnes

Read: July 2021

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

 

Book Description:

 

When a beautiful aspiring writer strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe Goldberg works, he does what anyone would do: he Googles the name on her credit card.

There is only one Guinevere Beck in New York City. She has a public Facebook account and Tweets incessantly, telling Joe everything he needs to know: she is simply Beck to her friends, she went to Brown University, she lives on Bank Street, and she’ll be at a bar in Brooklyn tonight—the perfect place for a “chance” meeting.

As Joe invisibly and obsessively takes control of Beck’s life, he orchestrates a series of events to ensure Beck finds herself in his waiting arms. Moving from stalker to boyfriend, Joe transforms himself into Beck’s perfect man, all while quietly removing the obstacles that stand in their way—even if it means murder.

My musings:

 

Why did I wait so long to read this book? Once I got started, I couldn’t put it down!

 

Writing snarky, twisted and yet believable characters is an art form mastered by very few. I am generally not fond of getting the POV of a sociopathic killer, because very often they are either stereotypes, or utterly despicable, or both. But not Joe. Joe is something else entirely. I admit that I haven’t had this much enjoyment out of getting into the head of a twisted sociopath since Jane in JANE DOE, or Lily in THE KIND WORTH KILLING. Is it safe to admit that I even cheered Joe on at times, or does that make me an accomplice in his crimes?

 

Not only has Kepnes nailed the portrayal of an obsessive stalker, but she also does so in a format that has never worked well for me in any other book. Because the whole story is narrated through Joe’s POV, as if he is talking to the object of his affection / obsession, the almost equally dysfunctional but beautiful Beck. In effect, we, the readers, not only get a deep insight into Joe’s disturbed psyche, but almost feel as if Joe is talking about us, or to us, making it an emotionally much deeper and more personal experience. Also, Joe is funny! His cynical, sarcastic but honest thought processes, especially those concerning the nasty people standing between him and Beck, were often laugh-loud-loud hilarious. As were the many obstacles that popped up every time he almost got what he wanted – to get Beck into bed with him. Joe is not holding back in using obscenities or explicit sexual content to tell his tale, and whilst this is usually a complete turn-off for me, it strangely worked here. Caroline Kepnes, what kind of magic spell have you cast over me?

 

Through Joe’s eyes, the other characters soon took on a life of their own. Beck, certainly. But also her manipulative friend Peach, or Benji, the object of her affection, or Nicky, who should have known better. Perhaps it was easy to overlook Joe’s homicidal tendencies because each and every one of his adversaries was so flawed and unlikeable. I admit I didn’t want him to be caught. Even though I knew he would be one creepy dude in real life. But somehow Joe wormed his way into my psyche and his flawed logic made – not sense, exactly – but at least for a compelling argument.

 

 

Summary:

 

In summary, I was as obsessed with reading this book almost in a single sitting as Joe was with trying to get Beck into bed. Joe really was one of a kind! It’s difficult to say why all the things that are usually a turn-off for me in a book (the POV of the sociopathic killer, the unusual story telling format, the swearing, the sex) strangely worked well here. It’s a credit to Caroline Kepnes to have come up with one of the most enigmatic and funny sociopath in modern crime fiction. I immensely enjoyed this book and will definitely read the next in the series – soon.

 

 

 

 

Book Review: ANXIOUS PEOPLE by Fredrik Backman

 

Title: ANXIOUS PEOPLE

Author:  Fredrik Backman

Read: January 2021

Expected publication: out now

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟1/2

 

Book Description:

 

A poignant, charming novel about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined.

 

My musings:

 

Fredrik Backman’s BEARTOWN is one of my all time favourite books, and since then I have been devouring everything he has written. With ANXIOUS PEOPLE, Backman again shows what a versatile writer he is. Whilst every one of his books contains a wry sense of humour and some gentle wisdom, his latest one often made me guffaw and snort with laughter as I marvelled about his keen observations of human nature. Some characters were almost caricatures and perhaps a little bit over the top, but presented in a way that made me reflect on those parts in myself that related to the character traits portrayed here.

 

Whilst ANXIOUS PEOPLE revolves around the tale of a bank robbery gone wrong, it is so much more than that. Backman throws together a bunch of unlikely characters in a type of comical hostage situation, and with their interactions makes us reflect on being human, on relationships, life, death and the way we all just try our best to muddle through life. The story is quirky as it is observant, and the irony in some of his scenes made for some laugh-out-loud moments and yet also prompted reflection on its emotional depth. The message is clear: be kind to one another, because when it comes down to it, we all have our burdens to bear and are trying the best we can. In the time of the global pandemic, this struck me as especially timely and relevant.

 

Quirky may be your thing or it may not – here it strangely worked for me, even though I may not have swallowed this as readily from another author. However, despite all the guffaws and the banter, I found that I did not connect as deeply to the characters here as I did to the cast of BEARTOWN (a book that utterly broke my heart), or A MAN CALLED OVE. I also thought that quirky is best taken in small doses, not devoured as rapidly as with Backman’s other books. In the end, I thought it was a fun read but not my favourite by the author – so if quirky and whimsical is not for you, I urge you to try some of the author’s other books because he is a man of many talents.

Book Review: RASH by Lisa Kusel

Title: RASH

Author: Lisa Kusel
Publisher: WiDo Publishing
Read: February 2019

Expected publication: out now

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Book Description:

Writer Lisa Kusel, while living comfortably in her California home, feels an unsettling lack of personal contentment. When she sees a job posting for a new international school in Bali, she convinces her schoolteacher husband Victor to apply.

Six weeks after his interview, Lisa, Victor, and their six-year-old daughter, Loy, move halfway around the world to paradise. But instead of luxuriating in ocean breezes, renewed passion, and first-rate schooling, what Lisa and her family find are burning corpses, biting ants, and a millionaire founder who cares more about selling bamboo furniture than educating young minds. Not to mention Lisa’s fear that one morning she might see the Dengue Fever rash on her young daughter.

RASH is an unfiltered, sharply-written memoir about a woman who goes looking for happiness on the Island of the Gods, and nearly destroys her marriage in the process. For anyone who has ever dreamed of starting over in an exotic locale, this is a poignant reminder that no matter where you go, there you are.

My musings:

I don’t normally read a lot of memoirs. Lisa Kusel’s book Rash made me reevaluate that choice, because there is something infinitely touching about someone sharing their life story with you, the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. As I laughed, cringed and shuddered my way through Lisa’s honest and vivid account of her year in Bali, I related on many levels to her story. For us, the thing that would fix all of life’s problems was a three-year stint travelling around Australia in a caravan with two kids under five. I wish that I could be sitting around the campfire with Lisa and compare notes, because what a laugh that would be!

Who would give up the comfort of their life in California, uproot the whole family and move to a little tropical island in Indonesia? Someone looking for a change. Change is good, right? A change of scenery may even fill that hole of chronic discontent in our heart that niggles that there must be more to life. So when Lisa found an advert looking for teachers to help set up an innovative new school in the tropical rainforest of Bali, it was like a dream come true. Her husband Victor applied for the job, and soon the whole family set off to embark on their new adventure.  But life is usually not that simple, and Lisa and her family soon find out that their tropical paradise is not what it was supposed to be.

I loved Lisa’s candid writing style, her self-deprecating humour and her warts-and-all approach in describing her “seachange”. There are no enlightened moments with Balinese medicine men or serene rides through lush rainforest on an old-fashioned bicycle to the gentle tinkle of windchimes. Instead, her days are spent squashing giant killer ants that threaten to carry off her daughter in the middle of the night, hiding under layers of netting to escape swarms of dengue infected mosquitoes and scraping thick mould off bamboo furniture and walls to the deafening sounds of gamelan music as she is reflecting on her crisis-stricken marriage. There were quite a few funny moments, too, like Lisa’s standoff with a protective male monkey, which I related to from our own personal experiences in Bali – I never forget the time when my husband tried to fend off the fang-bearing killer monkey with his thong (the flip-flop kind, not the underwear) whilst his womenfolk fled in panic. Lisa, if you had indeed spent some time in Kuta with those beer-swilling Aussie rugby teams you may have learned some life-saving thong combat action!

Whilst Lisa spends many lonely, miserable days in the country she had hoped would be the answer to all her problems, she reflects on the eat-pray-love phenomenon and questions herself on her lack of Gilbertian enlightenment. Having been to Bali I can see that living in a rather basic bamboo hut in the middle of the Balinese rainforest without some of the conveniences we take for granted would look a lot more serene in a movie (or the Green School advertising clip I found on Youtube) than in real life. I appreciated Lisa’s honesty as she shared her struggles every step of the way, and the way her Western views regularly clashed with the different cultural practices she is faced with in her new home. Her inner probings to explore her capacity for unhappiness are relevant in our society today and made for some reflection on my part whilst I was reading her honest account. I have read somewhere before that characters in books never seem to eat or pee – well, Lisa has it all in her book, which makes it all the more relatable! What also made this book speak to me is that I knew most of the places Lisa talked about in her story – we may even have aooommmmhed on neighbouring yoga mats during a yoga session at the Ubud Yoga Barn without realising it. 

Summary:

All in all, Lisa Kusel’s memoir is a poignant account of a woman searching for happiness and contentment in a far away land, only to find that all her problems have followed her. Written with honesty and humour, Rash will appeal to everyone who has ever dreamed of escaping it all. I hope that Lisa and her family have found contentment in their new life in Vermont and that the year in Bali is but a distant memory that ultimately brought them closer together. If nothing else, it made for a damn good read!

Thank you to the author for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.

Book Review: SNAP by Belinda Bauer

Title: Snap

Author: Belinda Bauer
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Read: February 2018

Expected publication: 3 July 2018

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

"It was a spectacular day for murder."

Book Description:

On a stifling summer's day, eleven-year-old Jack and his two sisters sit in their broken-down car, waiting for their mother to come back and rescue them. Jack's in charge, she said. I won't be long.

But she doesn't come back. She never comes back. And life as the children know it is changed for ever.

Three years later, mum-to-be Catherine wakes to find a knife beside her bed, and a note that says: I could have killed you.

Meanwhile Jack is still in charge - of his sisters, of supporting them all, of making sure nobody knows they're alone in the house, and - quite suddenly - of finding out the truth about what happened to his mother.

But the truth can be a dangerous thing . . .

My musings:

I know I should wait with this review until a bit closer to the publishing date, but I cannot possibly contain my excitement for that long. This book was amazing!

In Snap, Belinda Bauer has created one of the most terrifying opening chapters ever. And she does so without gore or shock factors, but simply by messing with the mind of the reader. Three abandoned children are waiting on the edge of a motorway in a hot, broken down car for their mother to return. An hour passes. They cannot wait any longer. Hot, thirsty and scared, they start to walk down the road to go looking for her ... And so it begins. Bauer is the queen of small, chilly details. You can hear the buzzing of small insects and the crunch of gravel underfoot, smell the cloying scent of decaying roadkill, feel the trickle of a bead of sweat down young Jack’s neck as he carries his small sister Merry on his back. See the dangling telephone receiver on the side of the road as an ominous harbinger of dread. The whole scene sent goosebumps down my spine!

So, irretrievably sucked into the story I knew I could write off my day as this was one book I would not be able to tear myself away from. Bauer writes with a dry sense of humour vacillating between tongue-in-cheek and outright sarcasm that really appealed to me, and I laughed out loud many times as she comments wryly on her characters’ characteristics. There is the jungle of Marvel’s nose hairs, or the plucky, pregnant Catherine, who muses about the loss of her sexuality to her huge belly and bravely fights off midnight intruders on her own.

She crept on to the landing and picked up the vase from the bookshelf. It was chunky Swedish glass and she’d never liked it. Throwing it at an intruder would kill two birds with one stone.

Small, clever observations strewn into the story like lollies for the observant watcher, bringing the characters to life. I couldn’t get enough of them!

Besides, who would not be touched by the characters of three orphaned children, who have lost their mother to a cold blooded killer and their father to grief? Whilst the story tugged on my heartstrings, I could not have predicted where it would lead, and how devious Bauer’s mind works, creating spine chilling situations in the seemingly mundane.

Summary:

  

Without giving anything away, Snap is undoubtedly one of the cleverest thrillers I have read in a long time, and stands out from the fray in its original premise, writing style and characters. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for something clever and different, you won’t be disappointed! 

Thank you to Edelweiss and Atlantic Monthly Press for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.

Book Review: YOU BE MOTHER by Meg Mason

Title: You Be Mother

Author: Meg Mason
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
Read: October 2017

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Book Description:

What do you do, when you find the perfect family, and it's not yours? A charming, funny and irresistible novel about families, friendship and tiny little white lies.

The only thing Abi ever wanted was a proper family. So when she falls pregnant by an Australian exchange student in London, she cannot pack up her old life in Croydon fast enough, to start all over in Sydney and make her own family. It is not until she arrives, with three-week-old Jude in tow, that Abi realises Stu is not quite ready to be a father after all. And he is the only person she knows in this hot, dazzling, confusing city, where the job of making friends is turning out to be harder than she thought. That is, until she meets Phyllida, her wealthy, charming, imperious older neighbour, and they become almost like mother and daughter. If only Abi had not told Phil that teeny tiny small lie, the very first day they met… 

My musings:

You Be Mother is a delightful, bittersweet book that left a certain warm and fuzzy feeling in its wake long after I finished reading it. There are too few of these types of books around, where you get sucked so deeply into the story that you wish it would never end. But to call it just a feel-good book would be doing it an injustice, because it is so much more than that. In Abi and Phil, Mason has created unforgettable characters that I would love to meet down at the local coffee shop for a cuppa and a chat. I was so reluctant to let them go when the book ended, feeling like I was losing lifelong friends! I also admit shedding a few tears, because when I say bitter-sweet, I mean that the book tackles a few of life’s difficult issues, like death, abandonment, loneliness and the different dynamics found in families, including this most precious and fraught relationship of all, the mother-daughter bond.

Abi, a young mother from Croydon, arrives with her small baby in Sydney, to be reunited with Stu, her son’s father, and start a new life. Settling in Cremorne, in a small flat owned by Stu’ parents, Abi soon finds that Stu may not be ready yet to play happy families as he continues to lead his bachelor life, leaving her and baby Jude alone for long periods of time whilst he studies and meets his mates at the pub until the early morning hours. She tries to overcome her loneliness by taking Jude for long walks in the pram. It is during one of those walks that she stumbles across the Cremorne ocean pool, and meets Phyllida Woolnough, who turns out to be her neighbour, living in a stately home next door to the apartment block. Phil is also battling with loneliness after the recent death of her husband, and all her grown- up children having flown the nest to live overseas. Soon Abi and Phil strike up an unusual friendship, each filling a need in the other– Phil serving as a mother substitute for Abi, and Abi and Jude seamlessly slipping into the gap Phil’s children have left behind. But blood is thicker than water – or is it? As Phil’s children get involved, Abi and Phil’s friendship is bound to get a lot more complicated ...

Having emigrated myself at an early age and raising my babies without the help of family, far away from my old life, I really related to Abi. I remember walking for hours with my first-born asleep in the pram, just to get out of the house and talk to other grown-up people. We also created our own extended “family” from older friends who filled the grandparent gap for my children. Lucky for me, I had a partner who was very involved with his kids, and some great friends, who soon quelled the loneliness. But reading about Abi brought back so many memories of that time, and I felt like giving her a huge bear hug of the sort I often craved myself when crying for my mother!

Phyllida Woolnough, Phil for short, was a delightful character and reminded me of someone I know in real life (though I can never reveal who). She is, as she states herself “in the dusty flute stage of life” and was so delightfully eccentric that there were many laugh-out loud moments as she shared her wry observations and ideas with the reader. Phil is a bit of a mercurial character, warm and welcoming one minute and somewhat remote and cold the next. In her postscript, Mason calls Phil “the pleasure of my life to write” and states that she cannot believe Phil doesn’t really exist. Yes, I felt exactly the same. In fact, all characters, the Woolnough children included, seemed so real to me they could have stepped out of the pages of the book, seamlessly inserting themselves into reality. Kudos to the author for creating such a believable “alternative truth” that I am still grieving for the characters now that the last page has been turned. 

Summary:

I loved You Be Mother and found it to be a delightful read that took me off to another world and made me look forward to the hours I could spend reading. Sometime laugh-out-loud funny, other times sad, this was a warm, insightful, bittersweet and very poignant book about families that I cannot recommend highly enough. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it! 

Thank you to Netgalley and HarperCollins Australia for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.

Read about Meg Mason on writing You Be Mother: link

  

Book Review: ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE by Gail Honeyman

Title: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

Author: Gail Honeyman
Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers Australia
Read: May 2017

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Book Description:

“I am a self-contained entity.”

Thirty-year old (Miss) Eleanor Oliphant lives her life by a strict routine. Monday to Friday, her 8.30 to 5.30 job as an accounts clerk in a graphic design firm fills in her waking hours. On Wednesday night, a 15-minute phone call from “Mummy” will leave her exhausted and seeking the oblivion of sleep. And on Friday evening, there is a pizza from Tesco to look forward to, and vodka. Lots of vodka. Often she doesn’t see another human being from Friday night until going back to work on Monday, but Eleanor is fine with that, absolutely fine. She doesn’t really need anyone else in her life. After all, she has a house to clean, Polly the houseplant to water, and vodka to keep those dark doors in her mind firmly closed.

But Eleanor’s life is about to change when her computer at work breaks down and the IT guy drops into her office to fix it. Meet Raymond, a thirty-something scruffy man who just doesn’t get Eleanor’s hints that she really is not in the mood for chit-chat. Instead, annoyingly, he insists on walking to the bus stop with her, as if she was an ordinary person, not the office oddball people whisper about. When an elderly stranger collapses in front of them, Eleanor reluctantly helps Raymond take care of him. Against her better judgment, mind you. Little does she know that this one incident will change Eleanor’s life – and routine – forever.

My musings:

I cannot adequately express how much I adored this book! It was love at first page! I laughed out loud, I shed some tears, and most of all, it left a warm fuzzy feeling with me all day as I heard Eleanor’s voice in my head (ok, that sounds a little bit crazy, but I mean that in a good way). Eleanor’s voice is the most refreshing thing I have read all year! A cross between A Man Called Ove and The Rosie Project, this damaged, judgmental and totally honest thirty-year-old woman wormed her way into my heart immediately, and I looked forward to every minute I could spare to keep reading. I started highlighting the passages that made me laugh out loud, or ponder life, or those where I would throw a punch into the air, exclaiming: Yes! Exactly! as the ever honest Eleanor states it just as it is. How often have I thought exactly the same thing, only for social convention to hold me back actually voicing it. It was so liberating! When I found that I was drowning in a sea of highlighted pages I realised how very, very much this book spoke to me.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is not all fun and games, though, as it explores the effects of childhood trauma and people’s reactions to those who may not quite fit societal norms.

“I’d tried so hard, but something about me just didn’t fit. There was, it seemed, no Eleanor-shaped social hole for me to slot into.”

Step by step, we get to know Eleanor through her “good days”, “bad days” and “better days”. Bittersweet and deeply insightful, Honeyman has created a character so damaged that she has long given up hope of ever being loved – or being able to love.

“I was thirty years old, I realised, and I had never walked hand in hand with anyone. No one had ever rubbed my tired shoulders, or stroked my face. I imagined a man putting his arms around me and holding me close when I was tired or upset; the warmth of it, the weight of it.”

Eleanor’s journey of self-discovery is as touching as it is humorous – and there are indeed a lot of laugh-out-loud moments in this book.

“No, thank you,” I said. “I don’t want to accept a drink from you, because then I would be obliged to purchase one for you in return, and I’m afraid I’m simply not interested in spending two drinks’ worth of time with you.”

Warning: Eleanor’s honesty is infectious. As I found out when my fingers typed out an email stripped of the polite word-play that usually disguises the issue at hand in political correctness – I only just managed to wrench my index finger away from the ‘send” button in time. I guess my circle of friends and colleagues may not be ready for such an Eleanor Oliphant-esque moment of truth quite yet. But how liberating it may have been!

Summary:

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine has definitely been one of my favourite reads this year and will make it on my all-time favourites list. I am indescribably grateful to the Goodreads community for recommending this gem of a story, as I probably would not have picked it up otherwise – and what a loss this would have been indeed. This book was everything I look for in a book: tender, touching, funny, quirky, heart-breaking, heart-warming, inspiring and just totally and utterly GOOD! Reading it felt like a warm hug by a good friend whilst pouring your heart out to them. This is apparently Gail Honeyman’s debut novel – amazing! I can’t wait to read more from this talented author in future! 

Quotes:

Grief is the price we pay for love, so they say. The price is far too high.

You can make anything happen, anything at all, inside a daydream.

I suppose one of the reasons we’re able to continue to exist in our allotted span in this green and blue vale of tears is that there is always, however remote it may seem, the possibility of change.

Thank you to Netgalley and Harper Collins Publishers Australia for the free electronic copy of this novel, and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.