thereadingmum's reviews
775 reviews

I decided to read this in tandem with listening to Great Expectations on audio and it was an interesting experience. I'm not entirely sure if it enhanced my reading of both books or not, but it made for a very immersive week. 

While the story of Jack Maggs may be inspired by that of Abel Magwitch, it is quite different. So if you were expecting a spin-off, it's really not. 

It begins with Maggs returning to London to seek out his benefactee, Henry Phipps, as he has promised in his letters. However, Phipps is not at home. Instead, Maggs is mistaken for a replacement footman for the household next door, Mr Percy Buckle's residence. He decides to take up the position in order to keep an eye on the Phipp's house and find out where he is. There then ensues a few weeks of aggro misunderstandings, magnet-induced hypnotism and very tense, unnecessary shenanigans. 

Jack's protege, Phipps is vastly different and a much more corrupt version of Pip. The rest of the cast of characters are an extremely odd bunch, which add to the tragi-comic atmosphere of this story. There is a build of tension towards the end where I fully expected someone to die, instead it fizzles out into a weirdly happy ending. 

I've given this 4 stars but I'm still undecided how I really feel about this overall. 

A beautifully designed book cover enhances the reading process and helps smooth over the little niggles.

The first few chapters were a bit of slog mainly because the MC, Charlotte, was a goose, making glaring mistakes that made me want to shake her. However, I was reminded that she had just lost her mother, moved to a new country and that academia can be very cutthroat. Also that a person can be really book smart and still be a ninny in real life. Once I got over that, the rest of it flew by and while I still wanted to shout at her from time to time, I also wanted to continue reading. 

I enjoy stories where an author takes a historical figure and their story and twist or imagine something that could actually have happened. It makes the story much more believable and the reader more invested as I was. In this case, Lisa Medved, invented a mystery surrounding celebrated 18th century painter Rubens and his engraver, Lucas Voorsterman. She took a few liberties and moved time lines around, but overall, it was a good story. She even threw in a few red herrings that caught me off guard.

Medved made Charlotte's voice much more modern than Antonia's, which was an excellent way of differentiating the characters and time periods. 

Alex Michaelides is one of those authors people want to like, think they should and then are disappointed. I had seen average to below average reviews of this one so my expectations were low. I think this helped me to enjoy it more than others. I won't say it's great but it is good literary entertainment. It was also probably a lot better on audio.

His admitting that this is not a whodunit was clever and also helped me not get frustrated or annoyed, because it isn't. It's not a thriller as such but has a lot of psychological turns. I felt that he managed Elliot's character well even though you can kinda tell he's not quite right from the beginning, it was still a pretty good twist towards the end.

What I didn't like was that minuscule tie to his first book The Silent Patient right at the end. Unnecessary and oddly a bit egotistical? 

Murder at the Vicarage was the very first Christie I ever read and I fell in love with her writing and the cosy murder mystery genre because of this book. Yet it's not my favourite of her extensive ouvre. Here's why:
1. Almost all the males are ineffective. Inspector Slakk is rather obnoxiusly so. 
2. Miss Marple comes across as very feathery and I hate how she's always apologising.

The mystery itself was good and the use of all the village biddies to introduce red herrings was clever and thematic. 

I will say that I enjoyed this more than Mr Osman's debut popular seniors' murder mystery and preferred Jane to Elizabeth.

I'm utterly flummoxed how I expected this to turn out less dire than it did. After all, the bulk of her work is pretty grim. 

That said, Atwood did not disappoint. Her writing is flawless and makes me green. This almost novella follows cancer survivor Rennie as she escapes two failed relationships for an assignment in an unnamed Caribbean island nation where instead of writing the travel piece she was meant to, she gets embroiled in the island's political upheavals. 

On the surface, there doesn't seem very much to the story and nothing notable happens for most of it. However, with the glimpses into Rennie's past, we see how her actions and the events that happen to her stem from it. The ending, while seemingly grim and unresolved, is brilliantly contrived leaving me with a sense that it ties in beautifully with Rennie's state of mind. Did she engineer her own self-destruction? Or was she simply a victim of circumstances?

So much meat in such a small dish. Par the course for one of my favourite authors.

Ever since I discovered Brian Selznik's amazing creation, The Inventions of Hugo Cabret, I've loved the idea of a graphic-prose novel. In fact, all picture books use images and words in a symbiotic way to bring a story to life and it is a relationship that works. Most of the time.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Wayne Ree and Benjamin Chee's work. I thought the storyline was ingenuous and loved the inclusion of so many Asian folkloric characters. Chee's artwork is excellent and fits the theme really well. 

However, I didn't understand why the graphic portion was an interpretation of the prose portions. I was expecting it to continue and complement the prose portions instead of repeating the story in a different way. For such a small book, this repetition then feels like I'm being cheated of part of the story. For example, couldn't the graphic portion show the kinds of work Zee's emloyees did for them and/or how they then made the decision to go to the Company? It would be lovely if this were serialised and the story fleshed out more. 

Rika, an ambitious female journalist seeks out convicted serial killer, Kajii, for an exclusive story. She gets sucked into her orbit and her life starts to dissolve like buttery grease. Can she pull herself and the few people around her out of their uncannily simultaneous downward spirals?

On the surface, this novel based on a true story, sounded like a literary feast. It was tasty enough to satisfy a base hunger, but like a mediocre meal, doesn't really hit any highs and leaves a slightly unsavoury aftertaste. The social commentary about misogynistic Japanese culture and its obsession with looks and the perfect woman is accurate, but not new.

I haven't read all that many Japanese authors. This is possibly my sixth. However, I notice that most of them don't translate well or smoothly into English. The exception was Out by Natsuo Kirino, translated by Stephen Snyder. Despite trying to account for this, the awkwardness of the language tends to taint my reading experience.

I was expecting this to be like Out, a proper thriller. It wasn't. There was only one point where it was exciting. This was, for me, the climax. However, it happened around the middle and it sort of fizzled out like a failed firework. 

Then there was the psychology. It just didn't make sense. Characters did odd, one-off things that jarred with how they were drawn. The Rika, the MC, would at times would blaze with strength, then next moment she was weak. I mean I know people are often like that, but this really doesn't work in the context of a novel. If the MC is weak to begin with, they should grow and develop and then stay that way, not regress suddenly and dramatically near the end and build up again. The only character who was consistent and believable was Kajii, the murderer.

Lastly, I don't understand how Kajii could have been convicted of killing three men. There was no evidence that she did anything. Do people get convicted based on purely circumstantial evidence in Japan? Even calling it circumstantial is a bit of a stretch. The only evidence was that she spent a lot of time with them right before they either seemingly committed suicide or had accidents. I'm sorry but this crime procedural fan is just too incredulous to enjoy this book.

Most of these were pitch perfect.