Book Review: THE NOWHERE CHILD by Christian White

Title: The Nowhere Child

Author: Christian White
Publisher: Hachette Australia
Read: May 2018

Expected publication: 26 June 2018

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟1/4

Book Description:

On a break between teaching photography classes, Kim Leamy is approached by a stranger investigating the disappearance of a little girl from her Kentucky home twenty-eight years earlier. He believes she is that girl.

At first Kim brushes it off, but when she scratches the surface of her family background in Australia, questions arise that aren’t easily answered. To find the truth, she must travel to Sammy’s home of Manson, Kentucky, and into a dark past. As the mystery unravels and the town’s secrets are revealed, this superb novel builds towards a tense, terrifying, and entirely unexpected climax.

My musings:

How would you feel if you found out that everything you believed about your family was a lie? Shocked? Confused? Betrayed? Perhaps all of those, and more. When a stranger turns up on Kim Leamy’s doorstep in Melbourne, telling her that he has reason to believe that she might be Sammy Went, a little girl who disappeared at the age of two from her home in Manson, Kentucky, never to be seen again, she dismisses it as a bad joke at first. However, her mother has recently passed away, and there are some niggling questions about her childhood Kim cannot answer. As evidence mounts, Kim knows that there is only one way to find out – to go to America herself and retrace Sammy’s last steps.

Am I the only one that finds skeletons in family closets simply irresistible? As soon as I heard the premise of this novel, I knew that I had to read it. Perhaps because my own mother died when I was a child, and there are so many questions I will now never know the answer to. So I fully “got” Kim’s confusion and frustration, and her need to find out the truth – as shocking as it may turn out to be. Because what can be more confronting than finding out that your parents may not be who they have claimed to be, and that you may have a whole other family in another country – a family who gave you up for dead twenty-eight years ago! White doesn’t leave it at that, he also throws in some interesting plot twists and settings that added something unique to this story. The “then” and “now” timeline lets us explore the events that led to little Sammy’s disappearance, and finally give us the answer to Kim’s many questions – though they may not be what you had expected.

I admit that despite its intriguing premise, I had a few issues with being able to connect to the characters, which made me feel a little less invested in the mystery than I had hoped. A couple of POVs felt unnecessary to me, stalling the story and distracting from the main narrative, although other readers may disagree. Personally, I found I wished for a bit more suspense, as all the right foundations had been laid and were there for the taking, but never totally paid off for me and I felt my interest waning a few times as the story digressed from its main focus. That said, The Nowhere Child was a quick and entertaining read that kept me turning the pages, and although it did not raise goosebumps, the final denouement was satisfying and held a few surprises in store. All in all it should appeal to lovers of mysteries that are based around dysfunctional family dynamics, and those readers who like a somewhat unusual setting (you will know what I mean when you read it). The Nowhere Child is White’s debut novel, and I look forward to reading more from this author in future – with his self-professed passion for true crime podcasts, there may be some more interesting stories coming our way soon!

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

Book Review: THE LOST FAMILY by Jenna Blum

Title: The Lost Family

Author: Jenna Blum
Publisher: Harper Books
Read: May 2018

Expected publication: 5 June 2018

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟1/4

Book Description:

In 1965 Manhattan, patrons flock to Masha’s to savor its brisket bourguignon and impeccable service and to admire its dashing owner and head chef Peter Rashkin. With his movie-star good looks and tragic past, Peter, a survivor of Auschwitz, is the most eligible bachelor in town. But Peter does not care for the parade of eligible women who come to the restaurant hoping to catch his eye. He has resigned himself to a solitary life. Running Masha’s consumes him, as does his terrible guilt over surviving the horrors of the Nazi death camp while his wife, Masha—the restaurant’s namesake—and two young daughters perished.

Then exquisitely beautiful June Bouquet, an up-and-coming young model, appears at the restaurant, piercing Peter’s guard. Though she is twenty years his junior, the two begin a passionate, whirlwind courtship. When June unexpectedly becomes pregnant, Peter proposes, believing that beginning a new family with the woman he loves will allow him to let go of the horror of the past. But over the next twenty years, the indelible sadness of those memories will overshadow Peter, June, and their daughter Elsbeth, transforming them in shocking, heartbreaking, and unexpected ways.

Jenna Blum artfully brings to the page a husband devastated by a grief he cannot name, a frustrated wife struggling to compete with a ghost she cannot banish, and a daughter sensitive to the pain of both her own family and another lost before she was born. Spanning three cinematic decades, The Lost Family is a charming, funny, and elegantly bittersweet study of the repercussions of loss and love. 

My musings:

Years ago, in one of my previous jobs, I had the privilege to meet many holocaust survivors who shared their heartbreaking stories of survival and new beginnings in other countries far from their home. Although I greatly admired their resilience and the human survival spirit, and their capacity to forgive and start over, I also realised that there was often a huge price to pay for the trauma they had endured. One was survivor’s guilt, of having escaped the death camps when so many of their family and friends were not able to. Although they had moved on, married and had children in their new country, many said that they were not able to share their experiences with those nearest and dearest to them, and that the past remained an ever present ghost in their lives, which their families could not understand. This lasting effect of trauma is the very thing Blum explores in her latest novel, The Lost Family. Peter Rashkin, a German Jew who has managed to escape the death camps and has fled to America to start a new life, is still haunted by the death of his wife and their small twin daughters during the war. When he meets the vivacious, beautiful and innocent model June Bouquet, he thinks that she will be his salvation, the woman who will rescue him from his grief and allow him to move on. But Peter’s trauma is a heavy burden, one that will threaten to destroy his marriage and affect his daughter Elsbeth, who grows up in the shadow of the ghosts of her half-sisters, even though Peter will never talk about them.

Blum’s novel is told in three distinctive parts. Part one is told from Peter’s POV, as he is trying to make a new start in America, working in his restaurant Masha’s in New York. It is there that he first meets and falls in love with June, whose youth and happiness seems to be the perfect cure for his grief. June, who has grown up without a father, is drawn to the much older and mysterious Peter, basking in his adoration. When a shocked June first finds out about Masha’s and the twins’ deaths and suggests that Peter see a therapist to talk about his trauma, he replies: “Why would I need an analyst? I am happy now. I have you.” Part two is set ten years later as an unhappy June reflects on motherhood, marriage and her lost dreams, trying to find a way out of her lonely life. The last part, another decade on, tells about sixteen-year-old Elsbeth, who is propelled into adulthood through a chance encounter. For me, the first part of the novel was definitely my favourite. I loved the atmospheric setting and the descriptions of the magical food creations Peter serves up in his restaurant, named after his dead wife. As he first meets June and falls in love, for the first time hoping that the future will bring a new beginning, I so much hoped that he would be able to find happiness.

The latter two thirds of the book are a lot more difficult to read, as they deal with the fall-out of Peter’s past on the other family members, who will never be able to grasp the full extent of the trauma but are nonetheless deeply affected by it. As the granddaughter of a POW I recognised the signs of PTSD in Peter, which also scarred my grandfather, and therefore his children, including my mother. Blum paints an insightful and realistic picture of a marriage where both partners are trying to find salvation in each other to escape the past, but which ends up drowning them. It is, at times, unspeakably sad and tragic to read. There were a few things left unanswered that stayed in my mind long after I finished reading, and I realised how deeply this story had troubled me.

 Summary:

In summary, Blum’s novel The Lost Family is an insightful portrayal of a family shaped by loss and grief. With its atmospheric setting and believable characters, it effortlessly propelled me into a New York of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, as each of the family members drift away from each other, flotsam of a war that left a heavy burden of grief to carry. This is a topic not often explored in novels, and although it left me feeling unspeakably sad, it was a poignant reminder of the burden of the past impacting on our relationships and shaping future generations. I look forward to reading more from this author in future.

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

Audiobook Review: THE CRAFTSMAN by Sharon Bolton

Title: The Craftsman

Author: Sharon Bolton
Read: May 2018

Expected publication: out now

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Book Description:

August, 1999 

On the hottest day of the year, Assistant Commissioner Florence Lovelady attends the funeral of Larry Glassbrook, the convicted murderer she arrested thirty years earlier. A master carpenter and funeral director, Larry imprisoned his victims, alive, in the caskets he made himself. Clay effigies found entombed with their bodies suggested a motive beyond the worst human depravity.

June, 1969

13-year- old Patsy Wood has been missing for two days, the third teenager to disappear in as many months. New to the Lancashire police force and struggling to fit in, WPC Lovelady is sent to investigate an unlikely report from school children claiming to have heard a voice calling for help. A voice from deep within a recent grave.

August, 1999

As she tries to lay her ghosts to rest, Florence is drawn back to the Glassbrooks' old house, in the shadow of Pendle Hill, where she once lodged with the family. She is chilled by the discovery of another effigy - one bearing a remarkable resemblance to herself. Is the killer still at large? Is Florence once again in terrible danger? Or, this time, could the fate in store be worse than even her darkest imaginings?

My musings:

“What is it that you love so much about this author?, one of my friends asked me after having to listen to my half hour rant about how very much I was looking forward to Bolton’s latest offering, The Craftsman. Mmmh, where do I even start?

There is the delicious dark and claustrophobic setting with gothic undertones that is a trademark of each and every one of Bolton’s books, which thankfully also forms a large part of The Craftsman. To add some extra interest, this latest book is set in the mysterious region of Pendle Hill, Lancashire, the place of the Pendle witch trials in 17^th century England. Apparently, the hill continues to be associated with witchcraft, and Bolton has incorporated this element into her story, which added extra mystery and an air of the supernatural to the story. I am always intrigued by a spooky, claustrophobic setting, and the book features quite a few of those!

Then there are the characters: in her epilogue, Bolton states that she wanted to write a story featuring women that may not fit the common mould, and PC Florence Lovelady certainly is a fine example of that. From her florid name, to her shrewd eye for patterns and detail, to her courage even in the face of adversity, this is one plucky woman that makes a worthy protagonist for this multi-faceted mystery. Bolton tells her story in two separate timelines, which means that we get to meet Florence both as a young brand-new WPC who has to fight for her place in the squad as the only female officer in the whole area, and later as a successful senior Assistant Commissioner who has earned her place and is respected by her peers. I especially loved how the young Florence never gave up but stood up for what she believed in, even when it may have been more prudent for her own career to keep her mouth shut. Over the years, Bolton has introduced us to many plucky female protagonists, but Florence may be my favourite yet (except of course Lacey Flint, who still has a special place in my heart)! Apart from Florence, there is the usual cast of three-dimensional, interesting characters, some of which had me totally under their spell and whose motives I was never totally sure about.

Not only is Bolton the Queen of gothic crime, but she also knows how to deliver a multi-faceted, well crafted plot that takes the reader on a journey with so many twists and turns you need to take some travel-sickness medication to stop your head from spinning! Despite having read every one of Bolton’s previous books and thinking I had some idea of how this author’s mind worked, I could have never foreseen the unexpected turn the plot took at the end of the book, and I am still slightly dazed with wonder. Don’t take anything for granted, is all I can say!

Personally, I especially loved the dual timeline in this one, and the realistic description of Florence’s struggles in a male-dominated career in the 1960s. Bolton totally nailed that era for me, and I thought it made for the perfect setting, from the small-town politics at the time to the ghosts of the past still casting a spell over the area’s residents, especially the female population. Witchcraft featured strongly in the book, but in a way that did not detract from the main storyline, nor did to push the story too far into the supernatural. In fact, I found the region’s history so fascinating that I would love to visit the area myself! As usual with Bolton’s books, this one is not for the faint hearted and features some pretty disturbing themes, like people being buried alive and dying horrible agonising deaths. If you are, like me, a person who finds little morbid details fascinating, such as the difference between a coffin and a casket and the amount of time one could survive trapped in one, then this book is definitely for you! Although you may want to get your chores done early and avoid having to traipse through the dark backyard to lock up your chickens after reading this (learning from my mistakes here!).

Summary:

I am rambling, so I will try to sum it up briefly: if you are a fan of dark, gritty and well-constructed mysteries then I suggest you rush out and beg, borrow, buy or steal this one right now, lock yourself away in your bedroom and enjoy a massive read-a-thon (don’t think you will get anything else done until you have finished it!). As I said, Bolton never disappoints, and this one may be one of her best novels yet to date. I am overjoyed that this is apparently the first book in a trilogy – which means that there will be more – woohoo!!!!!!! I can’t wait to learn a bit more about Florence’s past, as I am sure she has a few more skeletons in the closet for us to find (pun intended)!

Book Review: BABY TEETH by Zoje Stage

Title: Baby Teeth

Author: Zoje Stage
Publisher: St Martin's Press
Read: May 2018

Expected publication: 17 July 2018

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟

Book Description:

Meet Hanna.

She’s the sweet-but-silent angel in the adoring eyes of her Daddy. He’s the only person who understands her, and all Hanna wants is to live happily ever after with him. But Mommy stands in her way, and she’ll try any trick she can think of to get rid of her. Ideally for good.

Meet Suzette.

She loves her daughter, really, but after years of expulsions and strained home schooling, her precarious health and sanity are weakening day by day. As Hanna’s tricks become increasingly sophisticated, and Suzette's husband remains blind to the failing family dynamics, Suzette starts to fear that there’s something seriously wrong, and that maybe home isn’t the best place for their baby girl after all.

My musings:

Why do you think that we find books about psychopathic children so intriguing? Perhaps because it goes against all our instincts that children are born intrinsically innocent? It also raises the age-old nature vs nurture question that makes for brilliant debates in bookclub meetings. When I saw that Baby Teeth was being compared to We Need to Talk About Kevin – which is on my list of both most brilliant and most disturbing books I have ever read – I absolutely had to get my hands on it. Even more so when I saw all the divided opinions on social media, with people either loving or hating it in equal measure. So, you ask, which camp am I in?

To be honest, in neither. Baby Teeth was one of those books that kept me turning the pages but left me feeling vaguely dissatisfied. There was so much potential for this story to be either totally creepy, or suspenseful, or at least offering some insights into what makes an “evil” child tick. It touched on all of these points, but never really lived up to its full potential for me. I blame this on one thing: Hanna’s POV. I am not usually a fan of reading books that offer the psychopathic perpetrator’s POV, finding that only a few authors can pull this off successfully (perhaps because they are not psychopathic killers – just as well!). Most end up exaggerating the depravity until it crosses the line of credibility, or ends up being too sick for my liking.

With Hanna, a seven year old girl, it was the former. No matter how brilliant Hanna’s mind may have been, I found the idea of a two-, four- or seven-year old being capable of carefully plotting her mother’s death simply too farfetched. The one reason We Need to Talk About Kevin was such a success for me was that we only ever got Eva’s POV, which pre-empted an ever present niggly doubt in the back of my head: was Kevin really as bad as she claimed? Was it her parenting that was defective? Was she misinterpreting his needs and motives? It added suspense and tension, which I found lacking in Baby Teeth. Hanna’s POV never left any doubt about her motives, which at times were bordering on silly. Whilst I found Kevin truly terrifying, I thought Hanna was a brat that could have done with a bit of parental discipline. I may have been able to buy it had Hanna been a bit older and more able of the thought processes described here. The only other way that this could have worked for me would have been to add a creepy supernatural element, some horror, anything to add some suspense or make Hanna appear a threat.

All that said, I kept turning the pages despite my sigh of exasperation about 30% into the book as I flung it from me in frustration and vowed to DNF it. But I picked it up again and kept reading – to the very end, which I guess earns it at least three stars. Why? I’m not sure – on one hand I want my four hours back, on the other the thought of having a child you are frightened of was intriguing and I constantly wondered what I would do if I were in Suzette’s shoes. There was one point at which a therapist came into the picture and added a brief hope of learning something interesting about Hanna’s personality disorder, but unfortunately the thread was not fully explored. 

Summary:

To sum up the experience for me, a We Need to Talk About Kevin it was not. It was, however, strangely compelling and kept me reading. I can see that Baby Teeth will make some waves in the bookish community once it comes out in July with some staunch loved-it or hated-it factions battling it out on the review front, whilst I am still sitting on the fence watching with morbid fascination as it all unfolds. I guess there is only one way to find out whether this one is for you, so by all means, get yourself a copy and read it!

Thank you to Netgalley and St Martin's Press for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.

Book Review: WHEN I FIND YOU by Emma Curtis

Title: When I Find You

Author: Emma Curtis
Publisher: Random House UK
Read: May 2018

Expected publication: 9 August 2018

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Book Description:

What do you do when someone takes advantage of your greatest weakness?

When Laura wakes up after her office Christmas party and sees a man’s shirt on the floor, she is horrified. But this is no ordinary one-night-stand regret. Laura suffers from severe face-blindness, a condition that means she is completely unable to identify and remember faces. So the man she spent all night dancing with and kissing – the man she thought she’d brought home – was ‘Pink Shirt’.

But the shirt on her floor is blue. And now Laura must go to work every day and face the man who took advantage of her condition. The man she has no way of recognising.

My musings:

With the sheer number of psychological thrillers out there, I always greatly admire an author who can come up with an original premise that hasn’t been done a million times before. Such as giving the main character a medical condition that makes them just a little bit unreliable and casts doubt over the events unfolding. We saw it with the agoraphobic protagonist in A.J. Finn’s The Woman in the Window, or S.J. Watson’s character Christine in Before I Go toSleep, who had suffered a brain injury and couldn’t form memories. Curtis uses the rare condition prosopagnosia, or face blindness, for her main protagonist Laura, and I admit that when I first started reading I had no idea that this debilitating condition could form the basis for such a riveting story – or where exactly the author was going to lead me. Aren’t those mysteries the best kind?

Laura, a creative ad designer in a successful advertising agency, has managed her condition from her work colleagues, even though she struggles with it on a daily basis. There is nothing wrong with her eyesight, but her brain is unable to interpret facial features, which makes her “face blind”, i.e. unable to tell one face apart from another – even those faces of the people nearest and dearest to her, including her own face in the mirror. She heavily relies on other features, such as hairstyle and colour, mannerisms, clothing etc to be able to tell who people are, but these things are changeable and not always reliable. Social situations are her worst nightmare, such as people approaching her in the street or on the train, where the context is missing and she has no reference points to help her identify them. When Laura finds herself in a situation where someone exploits her vulnerability to his advantage, it struck me how debilitating her condition really is! Imagine there is a perpetrator out there somewhere, but you are unable to recognise him, even if he sits next to you on the train, chats to you in the canteen, or shows up at a dinner party. It came as no surprise to me that Laura became anxious and neurotic, living in constant fear and suspicion.

Apart from the very original and fascinating concept of face blindness, I found Laura to be an enigmatic and interesting character who courageously fought to overcome her limitations. As Laura shares insights into her daily struggles, it was obvious that Curtis had done her research into the condition, which made for fascinating reading and a story that kept me turning the pages. To turn this into a well-written mystery was an added bonus! I also really enjoyed the two separate POVs in the story – whilst the main part is being told in the first person through Laura’s eyes, her accounts are fleshed out by a third-person account from the perspective of Rebecca, one of Laura’s bosses. I was slightly puzzled at first as two why these two very different women were being chosen to tell the story, but it was perfect!

There are a few well-executed twists in the story which took me by surprise, and the final denouement was satisfying and fitting for this original, character driven story. Overall, I really enjoyed a mystery that stood out from the rest with its intriguing concept, and I look forward to reading more from this author in future.

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