I usually start the month with TV reviews but as the first day starts on a Sunday, and a friend has a ‘newly discovered booka’ day on his Sunday FB I thought I’d post this today.

Recommended:

Salt in the Wounds by Mark Richards**** Beautifully written novel that also happened to be a crime story set on part of the Yorkshire coast familiar to me. I grabbed the next in the series, The River Runs Deep**** Another really good crime story and I love the way the author brings ‘my’ part of the world to life with a lot of detail. Very slow burn romance between the lead detective and a colleage (mf) adds to the pleasure.

The Flesh of Trees by Kath Middleton**** Modern fairy tale with echoes of Red Riding Hood and a nod to eco-warriors. Well written and quite intriguing.

Relatively Strange by Marilyn Messik**** Stella, living a very ordinary childhood in mid twentieth century London, discovers she has abnormal abilities. She gets involved with a group of similar ‘strange’ people and helps rescue a child from a doctor who is carrying out psi experiments. Alternating angsty and hilarious. An exciting read and I have the sequel lined up.

The readable:

Carillon’s Curse by Sionnach Wintergreen *** Gripping paranormal/historical/mm romance and crime. I thought the ending was rushed and not altogether believable. And the crimes were too gruesome (children murdered in a totally bestial fashion). However, it was well written and held my interest.

Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton *** This came highly recommended. Lots of gratuitous violence to children plus growing up in a dysfunctional family among drug dealers in Brisbane then the author’s notes suggest a lot of the story is autobiographical which makes it worse. Interesting and well written but I hated it.

The Wolves are coming by E.Broom *** Quite an exciting introduction to a series about a pack with mixed species. I loved the story but the quality of the proof reading was dire and kept throwing me out of the book.

The Corfe Castle Murders by Rachel McLean*** Reasonably competent police procedural with ff potential but I didn’t like any of the characters – police, victims or criminals – so I didn’t care about the case.

An outline of abnormal psychology edited by Murphy and Bachrach.*** Intriguing collection of articles written just after WWII – some could have been written today and others showed how far our thinking on mental health has changed since then.

The poor:

A history of costume by Carl Köhler** Disappointing. It only covered western Europe from the Greeks to the mid nineteenth century, and there was little or no attempt to relate change to social conditions apart from the French Revolution. Since patterns were given alongside pictures, it might be a useful book for a theatrical costumier. For a general reader it was less than stellar.

And the ones that didn’t appeal to me at all:

Withershynnes by Susanna M Newstead Abandoned. A shifter historical crime story should have appealed but as Mabel could shift into anything she fancied it seemed like a magical solution to crime investigation and didn’t really appeal.

Missy the Werecat by P G Alison. Abandoned. I gather it’s a long series and to be honest I couldn’t be bothered with teenage Missy and her sudden discovery of her shifter nature.

No-one likes humans by Clare Solomon. Abandoned. Detectives in space. Includes humour and possible mm romance. Poor world building, character development etc. Technically competent writing but the story lacks detail and I lost interest.

I did watch quite a lot of TV and will report my findings shortly!