Alex the Book Reviewer

    Fresh from Strictly eviction, Tom Fletcher is yet another celeb turned children's author. But he's generally very good at it so I don't mind. The Christmasaurus series is fab. However, I do wonder how non-celeb children's authors who had to really slog their way through to publication feel about the celebrity-take-over of children's fiction. I imagine I'd be quite cross. Anyway, the story in the Danger Gang is fun but there are plot holes so big that Thelma and Louise could evade the police in them. But, look, it's a kids book so lets pretend it's all perfectly fine. All the kids in a class get affected by a weird storm and start getting super powers (? I'm not sure "powers" is the correct word, I mean one just keeps turning into a baby which isn't massively 'super'). One turns into a shark when he comes into contact with water. And one keeps turning into a massive hamster ... or was it guinea pig... I forget. Anyway it...

  This was surprisingly enjoyable. I'm not 100% sure why I downloaded it (it was an audio book). It's possible I did it by accident. But then again it did say something about remains of a girl being found in three parts and posted to the detective, which is always enticing and going to get me intrigued. So.... a girl is killed in a way that is reminiscent of a magic trick that just so happens to be the finale of the act of The Magic Mephisto, a famous magician who is currently in town. The magician also just so happens to be an old friend of the detective to whom the body parts are sent. They are old war buddies. But this, of course, is not a coincidence. It's all connected. It's full of misdirection and intrigue and flashbacks and blood and gore and mystery. The trouble is the misdirection is so obvious it's a bit like the magician going "don't look at my hand! whatever you do don't look at me stuffing this card up my sleeve!" It's so complete...

   "No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No." Me at the end of this book.  It is completely impossible to review this book without revealing the ending so read no further if you have not read it! The story is about a woman who believes her daughter to have been the product of a virgin conception. She, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts a local newspaper who sends a reporter, Jean, to investigate.  I found one tiny premise of the story a little bit odd in that Jean is immediately the main friend of the Tilbury family, she's immediately the sort of surrogate godmother to the daughter, Margaret, and go to confidant for them all. I mean, in a way this is explained away by alluding to none of them really having any friends but it felt a bit, I don't know, not forced exactly but a bit contrived maybe. I could understand her falling in love with the husband and more of a connection forming there... but with Gretchen and Margaret. I know it says that Gretchen doesn't really ha...

I'm not completely sure what to do about this review. I read the book before I knew the background and it gave me a range of very, very angry emotions. Then I read the background. It's very confusing to know what to say about it. So. This book is ostensibly a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, set about 15 years later. Scout has been living in New York and comes back to visit Maycombe for couple of weeks each year.  But it's not that simple. I found out afterwards that she wrote it before TKaM but decided not to publish it. There was a tiny section in it, a memory of a case that Atticus Finch defended, and she decided she wanted this to be the story after all. She wanted it to never be published but her family saw a money making opportunity and had it published against her wishes. In it, Atticus is a racist old man. It's heartbreakingly awful to read if you don't know that it's not to be read in conjunction with TKaM.  What would it be like if it the book was pu...

  This book, this type of story, is why I read. Holy shit, the emotions this book made me feel. Sadness, despair, occasional hope, depressing inevitability, claustrophobia. Which all put together doesn't sound much fun, does it? Well, no, it's not fun. At all. But I still can't recommend it enough. It starts with Shuggie Bain aged about 15 living in a one room bedsit all alone. It introduces him and his lonely, pretty hopeless, existence and then, after the first chapter, it goes all the way back to Shuggies's mother, living in her parent's flat with husband and three children including Shuggie aged about one. Yep, it totally starts the way it means to go on. Agnes, the mother is beautiful and has always been beautiful. But a totally self destructive alcoholic. Shuggie's father is Shug, a taxi driver and total bastard. Slowly and deliberately destroying Agnes mentally, emotionally and physically. Using his taxi service as a way to pick up women as often as possi...