Review - Crippen by John Boyne (Transworld Book Group)

Crippen by John Boyne

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Blurb from Goodreads



July 1910: A gruesome discovery has been made at 39 Hilldrop Crescent, Camden.



Chief Inspector Walter Dew of Scotland Yard did not expect the house to be empty. Nor did he expect to find a body in the cellar. Buried under the flagstones are the remains of Cora Crippen, former music-hall singer and wife of Dr. Hawley Crippen. No one would have thought the quiet, unassuming Dr. Crippen capable of murder, yet the doctor and his mistress have disappeared from London, and now a full-scale hunt for them has begun.



Across the Channel in Antwerp, the S.S. Montrose has just set off on its two-week voyage to North America. Slipping in among the first-class passengers is a Mr. John Robinson, accompanied by his teenage son, Edmund. The pair may be hoping for a quiet, private voyage, but in the close confines of a luxury ocean liner, anonymity is rare. And with others aboard looking for romance, or violence, or escape from their past in Europe, it will take more than just luck for the Robinsons to survive the voyage unnoticed.



An accomplished, intricately plotted novel, Crippen brilliantly reimagines the amazing escape attempt of one of history's most notorious killers and marks the outstanding American debut of one of Ireland's best young novelists



My Review



This is my 4th book from the Transworld Book Group.



The story does a bit of jumping. From present day and the escapees, to the past when Dr Crippen was just growing up and then back and forward to meeting his wife and his live with her and the people in their lives and his career, however it is really easy to follow.



We get a background with his upbringing and his parents, his struggle to get to be a doctor and all the hardships he has to endure. I felt torn between dislike and sorrow for Dr Crippen as he can't seem to catch a break but he isn't a very likeable person.



Despite the story being quite low on action (a lot of it is showing what his life is like, how it is like that and all the people he comes across in his life and the realtionships) it is a fantastic read and I couldn't put it down.



As the end gets closer and you think you have everything figured out there is a few big twists in it. It was a pretty good read and as I loved the boy in striped pyjamas I have tracked down more of this author as I really like the style of writing and enjoyed both stories so it's a 4/5 for me.



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Review - Legacy by Danielle Steel

Legacy: A Novel by Danielle Steel

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


From the cover

A tale of love, courage and family, interweaving the lives of two extraordinary women - a writer working in the heart of modern academia, and a daring young Sioux of an unforgettable journey in the eighteenth century.

Someday is Brigitte Nicholson's watchword. Someday she and the man she loves, Ted, will clarify their relationship. Someday she'll have children. Someday she'll finish writing her book. Someday she'll stop playig it so safe...Then something happens that changes Brigette's life completely.

Struggling to plot a new course, Brigitte agrees to help her mother on a genealogy project - and makes a discovery that reaches back to the French aristrocracy. How did Brigitte's ancestor, Wachiwi, a Dakota Sioux, travel from the Great Plains to the French court of Marie Antoinette? How did she come to marry into Brigitte's family? Brigitte decides to travel to South Dakota and Paris to follow the path of this exceptional young woman who lived so long ago. And as she begins to solve the puzzle of Wachiwi's journey, her quiet life becomes an adventure of its own.

A chance meeting and a new opportunity put Brigitte back at the heart of her own story. And with family legacy coming to life around her, someday is no longer in the future. Instead, someday is now.

My Review

This is my 3rd book as part of the Transworld Book Group

For me Brigitte is quite an unlikeable character, to start with she just seems efficient and organised if maybe a tad boring. However as the story progresses she has two life changing events in as many days and her character becomes needy and pathetic. It was quite annoying to read and even offputting but I stuck with it and I am glad I did. We are introduced to her ancestor Wachiwi, who is everything Brigitte is not. Strong, courageous, brave, a fighter, she continues to fight for what she wants and loves and considering we are going back to the 1700s when woman had no place doing anything bar raising children and cooking it is a refreshing and amazing change of pace.

The story then goes practically chapter for chapter between the present with Brigitte and the past of Wachiwi's time. The difference between the two women and their lives is amazing and as Brigitte follows the traces to find out more about her ancestor as do we. I had hoped Brigitte would be more like her ancestor the more she discovered and if I am honest I only liked her character in the last chapter.

If the story had purely been about Brigitte it would have been a bore to read but with Wachiwi's tale it brought the rating from a 1 to a 3/5. If nothing else this book should be read for Wachiwi's story which I loved and would have liked to have seen as a stand alone book.



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Review - The colour Of Death by Michael Cordy

The Colour of Death by Michael Cordy

'I’m part of the Transworld Book Group!’

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


From the back cover



In a residential neighbourhood of Portland, Oregon, an unknown young woman uncovers a shocking crime by inexplicably sensing the evil within its walls. To the police, she is a mystery. She can't even tell them her own name. They christen her Jane Doe.

Suffering terrifying hallucinations, Jane is assigned to Nathan Fox, a forensic psychiatrist struggling with his own demons. Together they must piece together the jigsaw that is Janes identity.

Then a sequence of brutal killings terrorizes the city and Fox learns that Jane is the only cryptic link bewteen the unrelated victims. To solve the murders, Fox must discard his black and white preconceptions, look beyond the spectrum of normal human experience and confront the dark truth of her past...and his own.



My review



This is my second read from the Transworld book group and what a brilliant choice. The action starts right away in the prologue and by the first chapter I was hooked. Nathan Fox(Dr) and Jane Doe are our main characters and we are introduced to them straight away. For Nathan a doctor who is committed to his patients but wont let anyone get close to him after the horror he experienced as a child and losing his family.



Jane Doe we have to find out about her as she does herself, having no memory of why she saved the girls or even who she is or anything about herself except for a special genetic condition she has that scares her and shows her so much horror.



Between the two of them they work together to discover what is going on with Jane and her extraordinary "hallucinations" and before long they are tangled up in a web of murder and horror. Can Dr Nathan Fox find the key to helping Jane Doe remember who she is and what is has to do with these killings.



I loved this story, for a short while I thought I was going to not understand the condition Jane has as it is a bit complex but Michael Cordy explained it so easily in the book I got to learn about a new condition and understand it with ease. The book goes at a great pace and there is plenty of questions raised throughout the book. I love this with novels however hate that not every question gets answered, not in this case, Right up to the end your kept in suspense and then everything is explained, with an opening for a follow up maybe. Some of the scenes (especially near the end) are quite horrifying and uncomfortable to read (Delaney and Jane Doe scene) but it does not take anything away from the story.



This was my first Michael Cordy book and it won't be my last, I hope they make this into a series! 5/5 for me, a fantastic read, fresh and different and I stayed up all night to get it finished as I couldn't put it down.



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Review - Twelve by Jasper Kent (Transworld Book Group review)

Twelve by Jasper Kent

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I don't normally like war books but as this is part of the Transworld review books I thought I would choose something I wouldn't normally pick for myself.

A group of Russian officers ask for help from twelve mercenaries who say they change help win the war against France. It seems unlikely however before long they have proved themselves and then some. The way they take down the French is unknown although it is in such marked numbers people fear it is some plague that is effecting only the french. Eventually out group of officers find out why and begin to seek out the why and hows putting themselves in mortal danger.

The war side of it I actually enjoyed for a while which is suprising however the nature of mercenaries, not so much which is a first for me as I have loved every book dealing with those beings I have read. I felt the two didn't go well together this time, it seemed like too much was going on, two many hard names to remember and I often got confused as to who was who again. It took over 200 pages before we find out why the mercenaries are so good and by that point I was so sick of the hinting and waiting for somethig big to actually happen.

The other thing that really annoyed me was the main character Captain Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov (quite a mouthful isn't it!). He was just a soldier who at one point is almost super hero as he manages to take on and defeat an unseemingly beatable enemy when so many others perish so easily.

I think if the story had concentrated a bit more on one theme or the other it could have been really good but instead I felt it was thinly spread and didn't do either side justice and it seemed just too easy for the Captain by the end. 2/5 for me.



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