As you, who have followed me for a while now, know I love crime/thrillers as my book of choice but being a Gemini I also love fantasy books, historical books, the very occasional romance book and novels too! So you could say any book. However it has to be the right book!!
What do I mean by the right book? Well, although they say “do not judge a book by its cover” I do. If the cover does not look right or I don’t like it then generally I don’t like the book itself. I know that is perhaps shallow but it has stood me in good stead with my choice of books. This is part of what I am going to tell you about. Audio books. The App I am using, and it has been very good, is BookBeat. They have varying Memberships and depending upon how much you want to use the App depends upon the cost. I am on the top amount because I am using it quite a bit but they do a try out for 30 days free. I tend to listen to the Books when I am at Eldest’s working there and it has been really good and I also listen to them on the drive home tool
Now this was the book I was reading and listening to on our October Friday Book Club and I had just started it. Well It was a little slow to start with but I thought it would pick up when Liv got to the Library and then meeting Evar. It didn’t! It was dreadful, it was boring, the characters were flat and they never seemed to get anywhere. The story was just about them being in the Library and doing well not a lot. Mr Lawrence kept referring to things but nothing ever happened. So I got to page 480 out of 576 and then DNF’d it! The worse part; it is Book One of a trilogy and I also have the other two books and all three are now in my donate pile! Can I tell you what a huge disappointment this was and I loved the cover!
This is my next book that I am reading, not listening to. Now this book is another story in a series of The Dahlia Stories, which I have not read before., so I will be able to go back and read the others. Rosalind, Caro & Posy are used to playing the part of Dahlia Lively Detective in films but they have discovered a talent for investigating real life crimes. They are all invited, with their partners, to a high society wedding at Christmas in a Scottish Castle and no sooner have they arrived when a dead body is found on the beach beneath the castle wearing a very expensive diamond necklace and a wedding dress! Will the wedding be called off or can the three lady “detectives” solve it and help the bride and groom?
I have only just started this but so far it is giving very cosy, blanket and cup of tea vibes, not forgetting Coco curled up next to me.
Now I listened to this over two days and gave it five stars! However if you are not in the mood for a trial, especially based in the British legal system then you may find this borning. However as it is the field I worked in for ten years it brought back so many memories and I could follow all the ins and outs of it.
A retired teacher leaves his home on New Year’s Eve to buy a bottle of champagne for him and his wife to toast the New Year in as their original plans were cancelled due to the weather. Whilst he is out he comes across three male 17 year olds who attack him and he loses his life. All three are charged with Murder and the three Defence Barristers are busy trying to defend their Clients whilst blaming the other two for the murder. The Preosecuting Barrister is busy trying to prove that all three did it but the evidence starts to show a different story. Over the course of the chapters we get to hear from all the defendents and their back stories until we get to the conclusion of the case and the Jury retire to consider their verdict. There are a few twists at the end of the book.
I really enjoyed it but as I say a few people have said that they found it boring and basically too much talking!
Finally I come to “His and Hers” by Alice Feeney whose books I have seen around but never read any of them. Again I listenend to this one and began it on October 12th and finished it on the 15th. I did give it five stars as I did think the story was good and the narration of the male parts was done by Richard Armitage. Now if you don’t know who he is, he played Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbitt and he does have a very distinctive voice!
Anna Andrews is a newsreader for the BBC News Lunchtime programme, a job she has been doing since the previous news anchor went on maternity leave and then got pregnant straight away after the first baby. So Anna has enjoyed a few years in the top spot. This has been her salvation after a traumatic few years when her marriage to Jack ended in divorce. He was busy with his job as a DCI in the Police and then there was their daughter. Her colleague comes back to work and Anna is transferred back to being a roving reporter and her first assignment is back in her childhood village of Blackdown and where all her problems started. A woman is found dead in the woods and as Anna begins to report on it she discovers it is an old school friend of hers and Jacks and then Jack is suspected of knowing something about the death. Can they prove tht he had nothing to do with it and find out who the actual killer is?
My only complaint of this book, and I was talking to DH about this, is that I guessed who the baddy was by the middle of the book! Now is this because I have read so many thriller/crime books over the years that I have become so habituated to these stories? I got to the end of it and although I did enjoy it, I also felt a little flat when the ending came with a sort of shrug of the shoulder! What I am also concerned about is, is it because I am listening to these books instead of reading them? Do you not gain the same enjoyment listening to a book as you do from actually holding the book and reading it? I am going to see how this goes with the book I am currently reading as opposed to the one I am currently listening to!
I am going to get some reading done this weekend, along with my quilting and a few other home jobs which need finishing too. The weather is forecast to be not very nice with a possible storm coming through on Sunday, but Coco and I will be tucked up at home and DH will be at the swimming pool. Hopefully it will have passed over by the time he needs to pack all the equipment up!
