Review: Cross Her Heart

Promises only last if you trust each other, but what if one of you is hiding something?
A secret no one could ever guess.
Someone is living a lie.
Is it Lisa?
Maybe it’s her daughter, Ava.
Or could it be her best friend, Marilyn?

Cross Her Heart publishes 17th May 2018. You’ll just have to wait to find out…

Review: Behind Her Eyes

Behind Her Eyes

Don’t Trust This Book

Don’t Trust These People

Don’t Trust Yourself

And whatever you do, DON’T give away that ending…

I like Sarah Pinborough. I like her Twitter account, which makes me feel like we should be pals, and (more importantly) I also like her writing. I read The Death House in 2015  and Thirteen Minutes last year and I loved them both so I was ridiculously excited about Behind Her Eyes as soon as I heard it was going to be a thing, and then there was the whole hashtag thing going on – and whoever does Sarah’s publicity deserves a high five because this book has been all over my twitter for the longest time and the buzz generated by #wtfthatending has been pretty remarkable. It was like a secret gang and I totes wanted in.

I finally got round to reading it last week, and it’s the worst isn’t it when it takes you so long to read a book you really want to read; when it’s always there at the back of your mind and you just. can’t. get. to. it. Anyway, I started it one night about 10pm in a hilariously misguided ‘I’ll just read the first chapter’ which resulted in me not turning the light off til 11.30 and then thinking about it all the next day and stopping up waaaaay too late again the next night and it’s a problem really. It’s a problem because I need my sleep. All the sleep, I need it. I wasn’t working on Friday last week, so stopping up too late reading wasn’t as bad as it had been the night before but still, I had plans. Only with myself but still, there were plans.

I went to Skipton because I was going to be one of those ladies that mooches around pretty market towns being all carefree and stuff, but I had my Kindle in my bag and there was a Starbucks and I accidentally sat down with a coffee and read the last 30% because I could not stop with the page turning and then all of a sudden I’d finished the book and done zero mooching and it was time to head home again to hang with my bestie. Whoops. Not that I’m really complaining because in actuality, is there a better way to spend your day off than in a coffee shop with a good book? I think not.

Anyway.

This book.

It’s about Louise –  a single Mum in a bit of a rut who kisses a guy(David) on a night out, only to find out when she gets to work on Monday that the guy is her new boss. Her new married boss. I know, right. It gets better though, because Adele,  the new friend that Louise has just made? Yep, that’s David’s wife and trust me on this, you might think you can predict where this story is going. BUT YOU CAN’T.

First off the ending, and never has there been such an accurate hashtag because erm, #wtfthatending. AKA #wtfhow. It’s super good. It’s creepy and chilling and dark and so gripping. It’s twisty and turny and you know some serious shit is going to go down but you’re never quite sure what its’s going to be and you get totally drawn into this incredibly well -crafted story of lies and deceit and fucked up levels of control and you can’t relax at all because you don’t trust anybody and you don’t really like anybody all and it’s the most wonderful kind of messed up.

It’s obvious from the beginning that things are so far from right and the secrets are sort of just there, you can practically taste them, but you can’t quite reach them and you do have to suspend reality quite a bit and I don’t want to say too much about that either but basically, I loved it.

Mostly I loved it because just when I thought I’d sussed it, something else happened that had me thinking ‘what the fuck oh ok maybe not then.’ I mean, never has a character gone from being bad guy to good guy and back again as many times as David did in this book. It’s so clever and the characterisation is so freaking good – Adele especially. As character she’s freaking excellent, the kind of character you just don’t get to see enough of. Actually, this book as a whole is the kind of thing you just don’t get to see enough of. The story in itself is something else but what made it for me is what Sarah Pinborough does with words because the characters whilst excellent aren’t likeable and the story is nutso and it jumps back and forwards so much that a lesser writer would only leave you feeling a little seasick but Sarah Pinborough can write and she unravels this tale so beautifully and so cleverly and I was kind of mesmerised actually. And there is so much I want to say but I am afraid to because I don't want to accidentally give anything away but it’s out now and you should get involved.

Things That I Have Seen and Liked

So, this is a post I am going to title ‘things that I have seen and liked’ (and who knows, I might make it a semi-regular feature, because I could do with some of those) and in it I’m going to talk to you about, well, about things that I have seen and liked. It’s pretty self-explanatory really: over-complicating things is not something I am fond of. 

Basically ,this is totally just an excuse for me to get stupid excited about books and albums and TV shows and pretty shoes and other such things that have caught my eye. It’s a small glimpse I guess into what makes me tick.IT'S ALL ABOUT THINGS I LIKE.

So, where else would I start than with books?

I treated myself last week to Sarah Pinborough’s Poison.

I read Sarah’s The Death House earlier in the year and I loved it and you know when that happens, when you find a new author and just want to devour every word they’ve ever written, shopping lists and all? Yep, that happened here, so I checked out Sarah’s book list and then did some kind of crazy flappy dance because GUESS WHAT: REIMAGINED FAIRYTALES. I LOVE a fairytale, I especially love a twist on a fairytale and that’s exactly what this book – Poison – is. It’s Snow White’s story, but it’s told from a different angle and it sounds like all kinds of excellent and it’s also really freaking pretty. Hurrah.

I’m dreaming of Book 2 in Cathrynne Valente’s Fairyland series. I’ll come back at some point and talk about The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making soon but til then you need to know only that Jen made me read it, and not since Harry Potter, or His Dark Materials have I fallen like this for a series of books. So, I need the second one. Stat. (I amuse myself when I get to use phrases like that. Ha) I tried to buy it in Watersones at the Trafford Centre last night but alas, they only had books 3 and 4. Instead I bought these pretties for my 2015 book challenge. 

I’m not going to buy another book now til April, which is a shame for Fairyland but very good for my bank balance.

However, and this may come as a total shock, but, I don’t only read books. sometimes I watch things on Netflix, oftentimes on my iPad in bed because I love my bed, I love it a lot. Right now I’m watching The Vampire Diaries because we lost track of it a while back due to a Sky+ fail and it’s all there being shiny and pretty on Netflix and I have like, a series and a half of Damon Salvatore to catch up on so WOOP WOOP for that. Oh, Ian Somerhalder you are an attractive being.

I’m also crazy excited because Netflix has just added Once Upon a Time to it’s catalogue (see above re my love for fairytales) which Channel 5 cancelled and I feared I would never see again until this weekend when I opened the app for said Salvatore fix and THERE IT WAS!! All the episodes I missed plus the latest season updated weekend. I did a happy dance, from the comfort of my bed. More of a head bob than a dance really, but the feeling was there. Once is so good and it has the added bonus of Robert Carlyle. I have had a crush on Robert Carlyle for 20 years omg.

 

On the commute to work I’ve been listening to Taylor Swift’s 1989, which holy excellent album batman. I kind of love Taylor unashamedly. I do. Gimme all the catchy pop songs on my drive please.

So yep, I’m listening to that and also to The Overtones and also to an old Bon Jovi album I found whilst tidying up. If you’re new here then here’s a thing about me: I have pretty much loved Jon Bon Jovi my whole entire life. All of it. Forever. I have always loved him and I will always love him because THAT ASS. And also because of other reasons that do not involve my objectification of his being such as I’ll…I’ll come back to you.

And, just to tie this post up nicely, other random things that I have seen and liked:

I am in desperate need of these two t-shirts, this one, which tell me about it, stud. Why would I not need that in my life?

and also this one because The BFG is right up there with Matilda and Danny as my fave Roald Dahl book of all time. 

I feel I would be much happier, generally, if these were nicely folded in my t-shirt drawer. I really want a t-shirt with ONJ’s face on it ok? I just really do.

Also, cowboy boots. I spend so much of my life lusting after pretty cowboy boots. There’s a pair of tan ankle ones that I am totally going to get a pair of for the spring, but what I really want is some of of the amazing Corral or Durango ones (that I should have bought when I saw them in NYC 7 years ago dammit. Regrets, I have them.) I’m clearly not getting any because wow the price tag on those babies but still, SO MUCH PRETTY.

I want (need, want, who knows the difference) a new bag. I also know exactly what it looks like. The closes I have seen to the bag that lives in my head was in Debenham’s last night. It was £115.

River Island has this though, which is cute:

And lastly, I'm on a storage box hunt because people (me) need storage and I’ve seen all these ‘shabby chic’ trunks that are just so old and beautiful and perfect so I’m all about those right now too. How many books I wonder, could one get in a trunk..and I wonder if my Dad still has one in the cubby hole at their house? Oooh, there’s a thought…..

So, talk to me: what are you reading/watching/listening to right now? What pretty things are you spending your pennies on? What things have you seen and liked?

Review: The Death House

Well then. This is a book I loved. I loved it in a ‘couldn’t put it down, needed some downtime when I’d finished it, honest to goodness book hangover’ kind of a way.

TFiOS for the dystopian fan, that’s how this book was sold to me and let’s be real, if you want to sell a book to me then that’s pretty much the sentence to use. GIVE ME ALL THE WORDS. I devoured it. I couldn’t read it fast enough and now I’ve finished it and I’m mad at myself because it’s over now and I half wish I’d taken my time because now all I am left with is ALL THE FEELS. I cannot with this book. I cannot. 

Toby's life was perfectly normal . . . until it was unravelled by something as simple as a blood test.
Taken from his family, Toby now lives in the Death House; an out-of-time existence far from the modern world, where he, and the others who live there, are studied by Matron and her team of nurses. They're looking for any sign of sickness. Any sign of their wards changing. Any sign that it's time to take them to the sanatorium.

No one returns from the sanatorium.

So basically, there’s this group of kids, aged between around 10 and 17 living in this kind of boarding school type house, on an island.

The Death House.

They’re all 'defective', which means at some point they’re going to present with unknown symptoms and be taken to the sanatorium where they’ll never be seen again. Nobody knows what happens in the sanatorium, or even really what the sickness is: it’s never ever explicitly stated and the symptoms seem to vary from person to person so that even a sniffle becomes something terrifying.  There are whispers of all kinds of horrors 'they say it makes you bleed from the eyes'; this is the very definition of living in fear. 

The children - teenagers mostly - pretty much have free rein: there are nurses, who administer their vitamins at night, and teachers who don’t seem to care much about teaching these kids that will likely not reach adulthood and there’s a matron who’s always kind of there in the shadows, a formidable presence, but mostly, they’re left to their own devices: forming friendships and rivalries and waiting until it’s their turn to be wheeled away in the dead of night.

It’s all kind of monsters-under-the-bed stuff really though in a way, the fear of the sickness. I mean it happens: children do get sick and once they are, they're taken, but the fear of that isn’t all there is, it’s ever present but not overbearing; there’s more going on in this book than that, so much more. Pinborough has a story to tell that goes beyond her dystopian setting and she tells it so damn well. The story is incredibly compelling and the characters utterly fascinating – Toby, Jake, Clara, all of them, they get under your skin so that every single one of them makes you feel something different. The book is miserable, God, so miserable and there’s a fear that you can almost taste but at the same time it’s strangely uplifting and some parts were so bittersweet they made my heart hurt.

The use of language is kind of refreshing too – this book contains swear words, kids, - and I liked that, I liked that Toby would tell people to fuck off now and then because let’s be real: you’re 16 and in a house full of people, yourself included, that are waiting to die. A simple ‘go away’ isn’t going to cut it.  It felt like it really was narrated by a 16 year old boy with little time for bullshit. There’s bitterness and anger here, just like there should be and it’s portrayed incredibly well – Pinborough doesn’t shy away from emotion in her writing and it’s incredibly powerful. In Toby, and in Jake – Jake is a freaking incredible character – that emotion is so well written that it makes your fists clench.

There’s this thread of fear the whole way through – of death and of isolation and of the unknown – and an indescribable sadness, but more than that, this is a study of how we react to the things that are inevitable and an incredibly insightful look at human nature and relationships; it’s a character driven story, a heartbreaking tale of love so atmospheric you’ll have goosebumps. And the ending, well. WELL. 

It’s beautiful, this book.  It made me cry.

I’ve been left feeling achey and I’ve been left wanting more and I’ve been left feeling sad that I will never get to read this book for the first time ever again. This book is extraordinarily beautiful. It’s moving and haunting and despite the tragedy of it all, there’s this constant glimmer of a zest for life. Not quite hope (abandon hope Helen, should you choose to enter here and consider this fair warning) but a strange sort of lightness, a demonstration of happiness being found in the strangest of places (and I need to use that Dumbledore gif again don’t I? Oh God. Sorry not sorry.)

Bascially, please please read this book.