Tuesday, May 21, 2024
Schatten über Moabit by Jens Anker
Friday, May 17, 2024
Random Things Tours: The F**k It! List by Melanie Cantor
We still live in a world where women, including the highly educated, successful ones, should conform to society norms and expectations that were set for them, sometimes against them, but rarely by them. As women, we may be born with a to-do-list that strolls to age milestones. But what about if there is a reverse of it?
The F**k it! List by Melanie Cantor, a PR professional working as a celebrity talent agent, is an inspiration for everyone - every woman - that needs encouragement and support to just say it loudly to The List. Any List.
A successful interior designer, full of life and optimistic, Daisy is having a party to celebrate her 40th anniversary. A birthday party that ends up in an apparent disaster. Her beloved successful boyfriend is caught with someone else and shortly after Daisy is returning back to her childhood home. Her childhood bad. 40, not married, without a property on her name, no children. But she is not alone, and with the help of a trustworthy network of friends and there is also someone who may catch her broken heart when she was expecting less.
This book is for anyone going through a heartbreak but also for any woman who needed at least once in life to face the social pressure and discover the resources and strength laying ahead for getting over the bad times. In the end, it may be all for good.
I really appreciated how Cantor is treating the story in a very straigthforward way, brave and less melodramatic. The topics she approaches are important and difficult, and being storified in a romantic setting doesn´t make them less relevant for our everyday life.
A book that will make you think and hopefully better understand what really matters in life. F**k it! and start your life again and again.
Rating: 4 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own
Corylus Books Blog Tour: Murder under the Midnight Sun by Stella Blómkvist translated by Quentin Bates
While the debate about the real identity of writer Stella Blómkvist haunts the world of crime writers in Iceland and abroad, without any clear results in sight, Corylus Books is offering another translation of one of her suspenseful crime novels.
I really enjoyed Murder at the Residence, therefore I couldn´t resist the temptation of reading Murder Under the Midnight Sun, also translated by Quentin Bates.
Investigator Stella Blómkvist is taking over two separate sensitive investigations that may lead the reader deep into the intricacies of Icelandic politics. In the last 3-4 years, I had the chance to read quite a lot of crime and thriller books set in Iceland and it is surprising how different image emerges from the literary realm, compared to the outsider´s perception of the country (pristine landscape, Northern Lights, lonely yet content people enjoying a good middle class life). The crimes investigated in this novel do reveal unexpected underground networks were politicians and their networks of power are prevalent, although only for the trained eyes. Like Stella´s.
I am a big fan of Stella - the fictional investigator: lover of whiskey, seductive and when necessary, seductress, smart and hard to stop. The book - shortly over 200 pages, therefore a good time investment for a weekend crime read - it is written at the first person, which gives a certain subjective particular tone to the story.
Murder Under the Midnight Sun is eventful, surprising and realistic. I don´t necessarily want to know the real identity of Stella the writer but I may expect more books written by her. Her crime riddles are one of a kind and to not be missed.
Rating: 4 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own
Wednesday, May 15, 2024
Rachel´s Random Resources Book Tour: Murder at Raven´s Edge and Murder at Ravenswood House by Louise Marley
Rachel´s Random Resources Book Tour: Her Husband´s Lie by Amanda Reynolds
As in the case of previous books by Amanda Reynolds I had the chance to read and review, Her Husband´s Lie is advancing slowly but firmly towards a revelation towards the end of the book, and I really appreciated the ways in which the suspense is created through the pieces of smoking mirrors that are obliterating the truth.
Crime psychological thrillers evolving in a family environment may be a genre apart those days, and it´s justly so, as the everyday life may be the perfect unexpected source of surprises, as things are rarely indeed so glossy as they may look like at first sight.
In Her Husband´s Lie though, there is an unique game of emotions that are built through the story, which involves the reader into the story in a very direct and brutal way. You may encounter a lot of untrustworthy characters, hard to like, but they are actually the salt and pepper of the book. There are hardly likeable characters in this book and many of them do also act in a very unempathic egoistic way. But, how could you write a great thriller with good, likeable characters, after all?
Some of the characters, particularly Nic, may act so erratically at times, that it is very hard to show any solidarity towards her. As for Matt, it´s impossible to give him any excuse, as he seems the perfect soulless manipulator.
The timeline is very dense, so that you can hardly realize that the action is actionally taking place within few days, not weeks, how it feels at times like. The back and forth from present to the past, as fragments of Nic´s (mostly traumatic) past are shared adds even more weight to the timing of events and the story in general. The ambiance - both of the main location and geographically, in general, is not the strongest point of the book, in my opinion, but there is already enough tension in the air.
As the ways in which the story evolves from the very beginning - a relatively bourgeois family setting is shortly degenerating in a chain of deceit and lies - it was very hard to predict what will happen next. Thus, I felt compelled to follow up carefully every single detail of the events, hoping that somehow near the end, all those pieces will come up together to give the right key to solve the riddle. The fact that almost all characters do have something to hide from the police investigators - an arrestable offence, after all - may make the reader think that there are many things at stake that we might imagine.
For lovers of psychological thrillers, this is a very inspired choice for anyone looking to an eventful read, with many psychological turns and densely emotional as well. Once starting the book is very hard to put it down, as you are getting more and more curious to discover how far some characters went in pursuing their secret dark aims. Actually, very far.
Rating: 4 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own
Monday, May 13, 2024
The Falconer by Dana Czapnik
Sunday, May 12, 2024
Canción by Eduardo Halfon
Although my Spanish used to be more than decent - read it B1 to B2 in terms of officially certified languages - for years already, I didn´t dare to read literature in this language as I was definitely lacking that local, native touch of the language. As improving some of my languages and perfecting others was one of my objectives for this year - and we are almost half through it - I tried my best to keep track of my promises. With once the week full immersion into Spanish language - thanks to my lovely friend M., my knowledge of native nuances and subtleties improved considerably, hence my audacity of reading this month not only one, but three books in Spanish - covering various geographical areas of the language.
My first ever book read in original Spanish to be reviewed on the blog is a book I wanted to read for a long time: Canción by Guatemalan author Eduardo Halfon. The book was recently longlisted for Dublin Literary Award - but haven´t made it to the shortlist.
A short partly auto-fictional work, the book exposes the multi-layered identity and the treachery of memory. An author from Guatemala is invited in Japan to take part to a colloquia of Lebanese writers. His Lebanese part of identity is shared through his grandfather who was actually born at a time when Lebanon and Syria was one, as a Jew. The same grandfather who, as Halfon´s grandfather as well in 1967, was abducted by a faction involed in the Guatemalan civil war. One of his captors was called Canción.
As in my previous Spanish-written book I´ve reviewed a couple of days ago - read in translation thou - I am very much interested in auto-fiction set in the modern world, where personal destinies are notwithstanding with global or regional events. We cannot escape history and historical events do leave a trace even on the most recluse individual destinies. It leaves so much freedom of choice for the writer as you can combine individual destinies with way too many political events in infinite ways, but we may also realize that at the personal, real-life level, it really leaves us with a high-range of inter-personal stories.
Canción will for sure remain in my literary history as my first ever novel in Spanish read fully in the original, but my excitement for this personal achievement put aside, it´s a really intriguing book and I am looking forward to read more by Halfon, in Spanish as well.
Rating: 4.5 stars
Friday, May 10, 2024
Rachel´s Random Resources Book Tour: The Takedown by Evie Hunter
Thursday, May 9, 2024
Random Things Tours: Wild Treasures. A Year of Extraordinary Encounters with Cornwall´s Wildlife by Hannah Stitfall
Wednesday, May 8, 2024
Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener translated from Spanish by Julia Sanchez
Dedicated to my dear friend Giuliana: We should have talk about this book instead...
´I realize I´m trying to build something out of pieces lifted from an unfinished story´.
Tuesday, May 7, 2024
Rachel´s Random Resources: My Second Life by Simon Yeats
Already present on my blog with a collection of out-of-ordinary travel stories, Simon Yeats is back with a lengthy memoir of resilience. The joy of reading memoirs, at least for me, consists in the chance of getting to know individual destinies and various ways in which life prepares us to cope with unexpected episodes. This is very much available in the case of Yeats whose life - or rather said, many lives - is bigger than life itself.
My Second Life. One Man´s Inspirational Story does have many travel details threfore travel lovers will find a lot of adventurous inspiration in this book as well. The descriptions are vivid and the adventures are his best companion. Cheating death more than once is not easy.
But there is a before and an after and we are repeatedly warned to keep in mind this distinction between the first and the second life. First, there is the preparation. Secondly, comes the test and him becoming freed of fear.
Shortly in the second half of the book, after many exciting travel-related encounters, we are introduced to Simon Yeats, the family man. He just married his Brazilian-born girlfriend and works hard more than one job for raising a family that soon will include a Miami-born son. Seven years of marriage later, he is faced with a dramatic reality: it was all a lie and no matter what he is trying to do, it seems he lost his son, who is now residing with his ex-wife in Rio.
It follows a complex legal imbroglio that reveals the sometimes hopeless. Instead of travel adventures, he is navigating the muddy pathways of Geneva Convention and is having informative sessions at the State Department alongside with other parents in similar situation. It is definitely not too much to learn from this, as in most cases the authorities seem to be hopeless in returning children back from far away lands to their parents.
All those details of the legal proceedings at the Family Court in Rio may provide important information of what could happen when an international marriage or relationship involving children goes wrong.
My Second Life is informative and personal, a complex life story that do leave you with a bitter taste. But maybe there will be a chance of a third life as well, after all.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own