Autumn '16 Gut Reactions

  AAARGH! I forgot to write notes about this season’s books as I went, and now, having just been fully immersed in a rewrite of my story, I have forgotten most of my thoughts. So this is going to be a scant reactions blog I suspect, and it’ll be based on me staring very hard at this picture:

 and then trying to remember what I thought a while ago.

I’m giving Book of the Season to the Lockwood & Co series (MG), which I belted through, one after the other and Son One did exactly the same. He’d gone off reading for a bit, much to my woeful lamenting, but these books brought him back to the light. It’s ghosthunting essentially, but as only kids can see the “visitors”, they are employed to catch and eliminate them. Stroud doesn’t dumb things down, the tension and scenes can be properly scary. Normally, my boys can be utter wusses when it comes to anything frightening – reading or viewing-, but I rather neglected to mention the ghost bit to Son One when I started him off, and he was hooked before he could get scared.

My only whinge is that it took until book four for the narrator and the actual main character (girl) to make it onto the front cover, as opposed to her colleague Lockwood (boy). Shows that marketing depts. still won’t risk putting boy readers off a series by having a girl on the front. So I'm going to put a bigger picture of it here, just because I can.

  Jackaby (MG) was a similar set up; girl narrator, quirky boss, facing the supernatural, but set in Victorian times, on the east coast of America. Lockwood & Co was more punchy, but it was still a fun adventure.

Another day (YA) – I love books where you get an alternative view. This didn’t disappoint, I might even have liked it more than the original -, but then I could only do that having read the first one first, if you see what I mean.

 The Widow (Thriller) was a gripping read. One of those books where really the action isn’t high octane by any means, but the tension grows and grows.

  And the other stuff;

  One of these books, by a writer I admire, seemed well… a bit pointless in the plot. Made me think that had it been their first book, it wouldn’t have been taken on.

  One of these books was a deep disappointment. It’s been a bestseller, raved about everywhere, and the setting was interesting, but the end was dire. It made me want to shout. So many unresolved issues, and maybe it was so it could be ‘deep’, but it just felt half-arsed and weird.

  That’s it. That’s all I can remember. My small brain is full of other stuff – my own plot for example.


  I’m doing something slightly different this year for the Winter TBR pile. You’ll have to wait and see.