book review

  • Butter by Asako Yuzuki – Review

    Manako Kajii loves to cook almost as much as she likes to eat. She dated older men and took their gifts, mainly financial, providing gourmet quality food in return. But after the death of her three gentlemen, she sits in prison, convicted for their murders. Rika Machida, a junior writer for a weekly magazine, is…

  • My Top 5 Horror Books

    Do you like to be scared? Not the oh-my-gawd-there’s-a-madman-with-an-axe-chasing-me-down-the-corridor type of scared, but the ‘safe’ scare of a good horror film or book, the type of scare where the monster stays safely inside the cinema or the pages of your book? I do. While you’d never catch me on a rollercoaster, the thrill ride of…

  • West Seattle Blues by Chris Nickson

    West Seattle Blues is the second outing for music journalist Laura Benton. Set several years after Emerald City, Laura is now married with a son who is almost walking and a husband in the book business. She still works, albeit not as much as she used to, writing reviews and doing occasional interviews. When the…

  • The Quick by Lauren Owen

    I love a book which conjures me away to a different time, a different life and The quick, the debut novel by Lauren Owen certainly ticks those boxes. Brother and sister James and Charlotte live in Yorkshire where, in the absence of parents (a dead mother and disinterested father), they are looked after by household…

  • The Troop by Nick Cutter

    I love horror films but it is rare that a book in the horror genre satisfies and excites as much as a good movie. The Troop by Nick Cutter is one of few to hit the mark. Set on a small uninhabited island off Prince Edward Island in Canada, a small group of scouts –…

  • Gideon Smith and The Mechanical Girl by David Barnett

    I really enjoy reading Steampunk and I have reviewed one or two here on my blog. Not every author captures the essence of the alternative Victorian technology and society as well as David Barnett does in Gideon Smith and The Mechanical Girl. So, what is this book about? Gideon Smith is the son of a…

  • The Humans by Matt Haig

    You hear a lot of people talk about an author’s ‘voice’, discussing how it is one of the most important things to get right. In The Humans, Matt Haig’s writerly voice is so good, it’s only after finishing the book that you are aware of how well he nailed it. Professor Andrew Martin has solved the…

  • Carniepunk by Various

    I have always found carnivals and traveling fairs very sinister places; places where the ‘freaks’ and dispossessed gather together and, at least in my imagination, seduce the unaware into the underworld, never to be seen again. It seems I’m not alone in my madness as Carniepunk, an anthology of urban fantasy stories set in and…

  • Emerald City by Chris Nickson

    Mention Seattle to me and what comes to mind is Microsoft, Frasier and rain. But Seattle is also the setting for Emerald City, the new book by Chris Nickson. It’s 1988 and Laura Benton is a music journalist at The Rocket, a publication at which the author also worked in the 1980s. It’s a male-dominated…

  • The Night Rainbow by Claire King

    Telling a story, especially an adult story, from the point of view of a child is a very difficult thing to get right. Among authors who have been successful in achieving this are Emma Donoghue in Room, John Boyne in The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas and John Harding in Florence & Giles. With the…