patchworkbunny's Reviews (2.12k)


Atlanta, 1974: Amanda Wagner and Evelyn Mitchell are young, female police officers in a man’s world. A step up from secretaries, they are assigned to sex crimes and rarely see a serious case. When they are sent to Techwood Homes in the projects to speak to a rape victim, they find themselves in a world populated with drug users, prostitutes and the poor, a far cry from the white, middle class homes that Amanda is used to visiting. They are already suspicious of why they were sent out there, so when they realise the prostitutes are disappearing, they start to dig further. But the men aren’t happy, girls aren’t meant to be police after all…

This is really Amanda’s story. The woman introduced in 1974 is a world apart from the one we have come to know in the present day. She is the daughter of the notorious Duke who is currently on suspension pending investigation. She may think that the family name holds clout but she soon learns that it’s nothing to be proud of. She really wanted an office job and isn’t at all suited to a life of fighting crime, she’s more than happy writing up reports for the homicide detectives. Evelyn is another matter, everyone's shocked that she returned to the force after giving birth, it’s not like she needs the money. Amanda’s father would disapprove of them being friends but despite their differences they become closer and Amanda slowly evolves into an independent woman who wants to be judged on her abilities not her gender.

Setting the story in the 70s has given Karin the opportunity to explore a period of change in Atlanta. Women’s rights were only starting to emerge and even finding somewhere to live without a man to sign things proved difficult. That women could be expected to uphold the law in the role of a police officer seemed laughable to many. Yet they offered equal pay so it was an attractive proposition to young women who dearly wanted to earn their own living. Evelyn and Amanda are ridiculed on a daily basis just because they are women although their intelligence, bravery, compassion and perseverance mean they end up doing a better job than anyone else.

The story does jump between the past and the present, with Amanda’s story revealing hidden parts of Will Trent’s past and going a long way to explain their unorthodox working relationship. Will and Sara’s relationship is still on rocky ground and he’s scared that she’ll leave him if she knows everything about him, that she is far too good for her. Whilst Criminal reveals a lot about him, his part in the plot is minimal so he comes across as a rather needy character if you haven’t grown to know and love him through earlier books. I would hope that he can start to put the past behind him and realise how amazing Sara is to him. It’s starting to get a bit annoying how Angie keeps popping up and being manipulative and setting him back all over again. Can we start a Liberate Will Trent campaign? And more Betty the Chihuahua please!

The moment that my brain started to make the connections between past and present, I didn’t want to put Criminal down. There are some incredibly moving moments between the characters and the historical element really puts into perspective how much has changed and we shouldn’t take our liberty for granted. Not to mention, Karin Slaughter manages to concoct disturbing criminal minds and makes you double check the locks before you go to sleep…

Echo has no memories of the event that left her arms horribly scared. Once part of the popular crowd, she now hides away from the rumours flying around school about her. Her so-called friends think if she would only get back together with her ex-boyfriend, Luke, everything would go back to normal. But for Echo, all she wants to know is what really happened to her so that she can fill the black hole inside.

Noah has been in foster care since his parents died in a fire. He was separated from his younger brothers and wants nothing more than to be a family again. He knows what the system is like and he can’t leave them to suffer but can an 18 year old boy really become a single father? At school, he’s an outcast, known for a string of one-night stands, until he and Echo are forced together and he gets a glimpse of the broken girl underneath the girl he thought was stuck-up.

The overriding theme of Pushing the Limits is a desire to be normal, whatever normal may be. Both Echo and Noah have been struck by tragedy more than once. Echo lost her brother to the war, her mother to mental illness and her popularity to an event she can’t even remember. It’s incredibly frustrating for her that no one will just tell her but her on-going therapy is realistic and there is no sudden revelation. Noah not only lost his parents, but also access to his remaining family, his brothers that he loves so much and, like Echo, has also lost the acceptance of his peers.

After the first few chapters, I wasn’t sure if I was going to love it as it starts off with typical school politics on the battlefield that is the cafeteria, but as soon as Echo and Noah started their awkward friendship, I was hooked. Every character has their flaws and, what seem like stereotypes at the start, get prised apart as little truths come out. Every moment of honesty seems like a success and Echo starts to see that her world isn’t black and white; there are things she is too self-absorbed to understand. And yes, teenagers in general are self-absorbed so this isn’t a criticism of her as a character, more that her growing awareness echoes her steps to becoming an adult.

Whilst Echo’s overcoming tragedy story is not uncommon in young adult fiction, it was good to see the topic of custody tackled. There are thousands of young adults that do take on the role of caregivers, whether or not their parents are still alive, and Katie McGarry highlights the stark reality of what it involves. Life in the system has made Noah grow up faster than other kids but he has to grow up a lot more before he can really see what’s in front of him.

The central relationship is a gripping rollercoaster ride, whilst moments may be predictable I was never sure if they’d get their happy ending or not. After all, how many of us have normal? I loved Noah character except half way through he started calling Echo baby all the time and it just sound insincere. Maybe this is just my older, more cynical mind but wish it had been toned down a bit. These teenagers swear, drink, smoke pot and have sex. It’s refreshing not to skirt around the things that everyone knows is going on without endorsing the behaviour. Contemporary young adult writing at its best.

Jane’s living in Paris when she meets too-good-to-be-true Malcolm; rich sexy and he seems to genuinely like her. So when he asks her to marry him after one month, of course she says yes and gives up her life as a trainee architect to live with him in New York. But before she leaves, she discovers her family’s secret and the reason electrics are always on the blink around her; she’s a witch. When she arrives at Matthew’s family home, she realises that she’s marrying into one of the most powerful families in New York and she’s about to lose all her freedom if she’s not careful.

666 Park Avenue can’t quite decide if it’s humour or a more straight urban fantasy. It’s certainly not romantic, with the proposal seeming incredibly rushed to me but Jane doesn’t notice anything amiss. There are some wonderful, amusing observations and a few rather dark moments but the character development is lacking and it doesn’t quite knit together. Perhaps it’s the overly materialistic environment that Jane has found herself in but I found her a bit of a wet blanket and the moments where she should have been emotional left me flat. I guess if it had been more on the funny side, the lack of realism wouldn’t have mattered much…yes I expect an element of realism in a book about witches and socialites!

I really liked the idea though, that beneath New York’s society is one of witches in a battle for supremacy. Especially as everything is done on the sly, no big magic fights but slowly getting into people’s minds and taking over control in a way that would appear no different than other powerful movers and shakers. I also enjoyed the moments where Jane started to connect to "real" people and make friends. It just needed a little bit more oomph. It’s a quick and easy read if you’re looking for something fun to pass away a few hours. This is Gabriella Pierce’s first novel so I would certainly give her another go; a sequel, The Dark Glamour, is not far away.

The year is 1811. On the streets of Wapping, a family have been brutally slaughtered in their home. There is no motive and the police on land have no interest in investigations. However the watermen who patrol the river have other ideas. Jump back in time to 1564 and a ship is setting sail to the coast of Africa, embarking on a mission that will change history, and not for the better.

The English Monster paints a murky picture of Britain's maritime history, there's a real sense of how the streets of around London's burgeoning docklands would have felt at the time. There are lots of historical elements woven into the fiction and there is a pretty comprehensive author's note to explain what is more fact than fiction and vice versa, just in case you keep putting the book down to google names and events. It is not straight historical fiction so history purists may want to back away now. It's hard to explain this novel without spoilers but it will help to keep an open mind that something other may be going on. I think the author has hinted enough to this fact in interviews that it will not be too big of a spoiler on my shoulders.

Based on the real life Ratcliffe Highway murders, it also highlights the huge difference between the early days of policing and what we know now. The city-based police did not care at all about solving crimes and were most likely to arrest criminals caught in the act or if they conveniently fell at their feet. Don't expect a riveting historical police procedure because, in all seriousness, they were no procedures. This is itself is a fascinating facet of the novel.

However not all the story is set in 1811 and it has what I like to call the Cloud Atlas Effect, in which the story jumps in time and place without any obvious connections, other than the maritime element. Unlike Cloud Atlas, it all does come together in the end but I felt it slowed down the pace. I would be getting into one plot-line and all of a sudden would have to reacquaint myself with another set of characters. And there are quite a lot of characters, so I never felt I got to know any of them very well. Perhaps that is the pitfall of historical fiction, there is only so much you can make up about real people, especially those whose lives are well documented. It would be fictional justice for John Hawkyns to fall overboard and be eaten by sharks but history means we (I had to look him up) know he goes on to live a life of praise. Boo hiss.

It occurred to me that the real English Monster of the title may not be the 19th century murderer but instead, the slave trade, sanctioned by the crown and responsible for so much suffering. Some of the scenes may be hard to read but unfortunately they are based on history that many would prefer to brush under the carpet.

Lloyd Shepherd has a journalistic and digital background which may explain the use of parentheses throughout the text. I am not used to these in fiction (but I do use them myself (quite a lot)) and they seem a little modern compared to the language used but I am no means an expert on the history of punctuation.

I had a bit of an immature giggle at the naked gunfight (piqued your interest have I?) and pendulous cocks but mostly it's a dark and sinister tale. I think it would make a great book group choice, there is plenty to discuss and you wouldn't have to tiptoe round spoilers either. Whilst it is a great standalone read it hopefully marks the start of a series which I look forward to seeing more of in the future.

DNA. It’s in all of us but did you know it tells a story? Both of the human race and its own story of discovery. The Violinist’s Thumb is not only an introduction to the science of DNA but a trip through history from Mendel to the Human Genome Project and Neanderthals to crazy cat people.

My knowledge of DNA comes from high school biology, Jurassic Park and numerous crime shows and books, so I’m by no means in a position to understand high-brow scientific tomes. Instead, Sam Kean manages to entertain and educate. The conversational tone dips into more technical territory now and then but just as you think it’s about to go over your head, it returns to an amusing anecdote. I fell I have a better understanding of how DNA works and how it’s shaped us as humans.

I learned so many fascinating facts. That there could be a biological reason that otherwise sane people turn into crazy cat hoarders; toxoplasma gondii (a parasite caught from cats) will release dopamine into the brain when the infected individual smells cat pee. So cats make them happy. The case study here, were a couple that held the world record for most cats in one home; 689! I could go on all day about the things I picked up but I need to leave some for you to discover yourself.

What is often left out of scientific history, are the people behind the discoveries. We may know all about Mendel’s peas but not that his research was destroyed because of his politics and not his science (I’m pretty sure his fellow monks were appreciative of his pea improvement). It’s also quite common for geneticists to try and explain historical figures through their genes, what does Einstein’s brain say about his genius? And there was a wonderful section about Toulouse-Lautrec, whilst his family’s inbreeding was tragic, his disadvantages probably led to his art. Just as a genetic condition blessed and blighted the title’s inspiration, virtuoso violinist, Niccolò Paganini.

My only grumble was a couple of errors that should have been picked up by an editor. We cannot possibly be 8% not human and only 2% human; that just doesn’t add up. I know that the author meant 8% virus DNA and 2% unique to human DNA, but it wasn’t worded that way and for a scientist, maths should be important. There was another similar thing, where he stated “virtually all animals” and then excluded all mammals in the same sentence. Virtually all would imply mammals to most of us, would it not? There may have been other slip-ups but these were surrounded in paragraphs that included things I wanted to quote and realised they didn’t make sense when I looked more closely. The fact that I still think this a five star read, shows you how much I got out of it.

Araby Worth lives in a city destroyed by disease and controlled by the cruel Prince Prospero. The contagion first struck when she was a child and she was the first to wear a mask, made by her father, to keep the germs at bay. But her brother fell ill before her father had a chance to make a second mask and she has spent the rest of her life depriving herself of what her brother will never have. Instead, she spends her nights with her friend, April, at the Debauchery Club where she can lose herself.

The Masque of the Red Death is inspired by Poe rather than adapted from the original story and there are little nods to him throughout, such as the club called The Morgue. The Red Death of Poe’s story does occur but is perhaps not the ones that started it all. At first I thought the steampunk style setting was due to the plague halting progress, but as Araby remembers the beginning the timeline doesn’t account for this. If anything the plague has pushed them to invent more, steam carriages, defensive masks and research into disease. I think it’s more of a made-up world that can echo that of Poe’s era. The fashion trends subvert those of the 19th century, whereby dresses are tattered or worn short to prove that they are disease free. Because health is more important than modesty.

Araby’s time at the aptly named Debauchery Club is decadent and risky. Seeking release from her painful thoughts, she uses drugs (never implicitly mentioned but syringes and passing out give little room for doubt) and is found by Will who tests patrons of the club as they enter. She’s had a silent crush on him for a while but her pact with her dead brother holds her back. Will is love interest number one. Then there’s April’s brother Elliott, nephew to the evil prince who is most likely using her for his own agenda. Despite what would appear to be a love triangle, it’s not mushy or predictable and I found myself swaying between the two in who I wanted to “win”.

Unfortunately for me, there’s no real conclusion. Yes, it’s another young adult book that just stops and left me feeling unsatisfied. Perhaps I should just wait until trilogies and series are complete before reading them as I otherwise enjoyed it. The end can’t even be called a cliffhanger; it just sort of carries on at the same pace and then it’s the acknowledgements. If you can’t feel a story coming to a close, it’s not being done right.

When Maura Isles meets a handsome man at a fundraiser, she welcomes a bit of harmless flirtation. Or that’s what she thinks. The next day she wakes up on her couch with no memory of how she got there. Had she really drunk that much? When Rizzoli turns up at her door with questions, Maura starts to worry. A dead man has been found in the park and he has her business card.

John Doe is a digital short in Tess Gerritsen's Rizzoli and Isles series. I’m not sure the plot suited itself to a shorter format as it started out like a full length novel and then had to speed up to get everything wrapped up by the end. There are some situations that lend themselves to short fiction but a serial rapist and a cold case seem a bit much to wrap up in a couple of days.

Saying that, it’s a good little read to pass an hour or so and will help keep fans going until the next instalment, Last to Die, is out later this month.

In the 16th century, 114 colonists mysteriously vanished from Roanoke Island. Hundreds of years later, the mystery remains unsolved but has become just a story for tourists, re-enacted each year in the local theatre. Miranda is a summer intern at Waterside Theatre, the freak at school and a Blackwood, a family name that brings with it a history of outcasts. After losing her mother her father hit the bottle and her only friend is her dog Sidekick. When 114 people vanish overnight, including her father, she finds herself at the centre of it all. And then Phillips turns up; the boy who claims to hear the dead.

Having never heard of the Lost Colony, I was intrigued by the historical aspect and how it would be explained away. It did make me smile when a certain historical character turned up (not Marlowe but getting nearly as common in fantasy). If anything, it has piqued my interest in finding out more about the history. There’s a lot going on and I wonder if the pace suffered because of this. There’s Miranda’s family problems, a sinister birthmark that carries a curse, a boy who hears the dead, a murder, an FBI investigation into the missing people and a whole host of excitement that happens after. It took me ages to get into and every time the pace picked up, something new was added to the plot which slowed it down again.

There’s potential for it to be really rather creepy but Miranda came across as a bit detached which made it hard to connect to her. And there lies my problem, it wasn’t in-depth enough on any one of the plot points to keep my interest and yet I didn’t care enough about the characters to overlook that. Their dry humour may appeal to others but it felt like they were hiding their real selves behind it. It’s also a little irritating when writers put in little cultural references and go on to explain them. When they’re not relevant to the plot, it doesn’t matter if the reader doesn’t get them and explaining it just comes across as awkward.

On the plus side, it doesn’t fall into any of the obvious romantic traps of young adult. Really, it’s not romantic at all and the developing relationship between Miranda and Phillips is rather tame and sweet. It’s also refreshing to read a standalone novel, that has *gasp* an ending. Overall it’s something a bit different which is what Strange Chemistry is aiming for.

13 is the thirteenth and final book in Kelley Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld series and therefore this review may contain spoilers for the earlier books. This is one of my favourite series, so I highly recommend going out and getting your paws on Bitten if you haven’t been bitten yet…

"Anything you thought you knew about our world? Forget it. Someone has tossed out the rulebook. Ghosts can cross the divide. Hell-hounds can manifest. Demi-demons can possess living children… It’s not going to get any better until it’s over."


Having just escaped an exploding building, Savannah is on the run with Jaime at her side. Her magic is still on the blink but she knows it’s there if she can just conserve it. So it’s not very helpful when they both get arrested on suspicion of terrorism. It doesn’t take long for them to realise all is not what it seems? Is it the Supernatural Liberation Movement (which Savannah has nick-named SLAM) or could it be another cabal? With Savannah’s half-brother Bryce at death’s door, time is against them to find a cure. The supernatural community is taking sides but which will win? Reveal supernaturals to the greater world or stay hidden forever?

It’s certainly a grand finale for the Women of the Otherworld series. You know in the last episodes of Angel where it all starts hitting the fan and everyone gets involved a bit? Well 13 is a bit like that, but with all your favourite Otherworldly characters; each major player making an appearance. Really, I’m not sure if it will make any sense if you haven’t read the series and it is certainly not the place to start (go read Bitten, please) but it’s a fond farewell for existing fans. Narrated mostly by Savannah, it makes the last three books (Waking the Witch, Spell Bound, 13) a trilogy within the series.

There’s plenty of closure and redemption, although no one character really gets to steal the show. Savannah is a little distracted by the developments between her and Adam, and I found them a little awkward at times, especially her doubt and worrying about what others will think. She comes across a little younger than she did in Waking the Witch and Spell Bound. I loved the demon lords, who developed some personality just in time for the end. There are a few moments when my heart was in my mouth and I doubt very much the ups and downs will be a disappointment to fans.

If you buy the hardback edition, there is a bonus Elena short story. I enjoyed having this as an epilogue as I have always been a fan of The Pack and would have felt a little bit lost without their final say.

Now you may be sobbing over the end of your favourite series but Kelley has promised a brand new adult series starting next year, a third Nadia book, the final book in her second YA Otherworld trilogy and further Otherworld short fiction… and she hasn’t even ruled out returning to the Otherworld in the future. She just needs a break and I’m sure we can all understand that. I’m really looking forward to the Nadia book and seeing where her talents take her in the next few years. Plus, I’ve stored up a pile of short fiction to keep me going in the mean time!

On the island of Trinidad, floods have destroyed Gavin’s home and wrought havoc on his family. Left to raise his six-year-old daughter, Océan, by himself he’s struggling with work and overwhelming loneliness. When he wakes up one morning he decides he wants to run away; take his boat, his dog and his daughter and sail out into the Caribbean and beyond.

Archipelago has made me want to hire a boat and sail round the Caribbean! Whilst the natural beauty may be a tourism advert, it is balanced by the darker side of the islands, unethical tourism, natural disaster and the seedier side of the locals. The sea itself is both mesmerising and dangerous. And whilst Gavin and Océan are surrounded by beauty, there is an underlying feeling of melancholy and a loss that is rarely talked about.

Océan makes a convincing six-year-old; she is perceptive and curious but not in a way that is beyond her years. She comes out with questions typical to children her age and her sadness is quiet, from someone who is not quite sure what is wrong in her world but knowing it is definitely not right. Despite some of the content, I never found it a depressing read and there are several moments that will bring a smile to your face to counteract the bad. It might be a bit too slow a read for some but if you love books about the sea, I would highly recommend.