It's coming to the end of the year so I was looking for a quick read to boost my book count and stumbled upon the audio version of this on You Tube.
It's a quick and imaginative tale. Like a stocking filler. A small treat that I enjoyed even though I am a forty something year old bloke and not the intended audience whatsoever.
A fun read.
4/5
This is a book I read a few months ago but forgot to add to my list. I was doing my return to practice at that point. Sadly that has all gone tits up but I found this book invaluable for anybody either returning to nursing practice or student nurses in general. In fact I wish I had had this book when I was a student nurse a whole lifetime ago. Simply, it's brilliant and very helpful. I took notes whilst reading it and I am sure it will yet again prove helpful if I go back into nursing when the time and finances are right at my end.
5/5
Location Edge Hill, London.
A new outside swimming pool opens in Edge Hill and Natalie is curious. But her curiosity ends up taking her down a path of no return. A path of excitement but also danger.
Looking at the blurb on the back cover of this book this sounded like it was going to be a cleverly written piece of literary fiction and a dark psychological thriller. It is a bit misleading as the majority of the book reads like a typical chic-lit book. It is full of rich people and their husbands and pool parties and cocktail parties. It is only towards the last 100 pages or so that the book escalates into thriller mode.
I am not really a fan of chic-lit but the book kept my interest because of the slowly burning plot that was ever so slowly being revealed. You do need a dictionary for the first 300 pages and that's not a bad thing as I like to learn new words. In the latter part of the book the long words disappear quite cleverly and the pace quickens and the book comes to a dramatic climax with quite a few twists and turns. One thing I also found was that this is probably one of the only books I have ever read in my life where none of the characters were actually very nice!
Overall it was a good read but I could have done without a few of the cocktail parties and more of the drama.
4/5
Location
Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft And Wizardry
The 4th instalment of the Harry Potter series.
This is a pavement slab of a book but it is easy to read. It's pretty much as entertaining as the others but I found this one to be a lot more darker. It seems nothing seems to go right for poor Harry from the first page onwards. By the time I came to reading this one I had mostly forgotten the plot of any of the previous books although the locations and characters were still familiar. I don't know what that says about the books. Maybe it suggests that the magic of the Harry Potter series lies more in the Hogwarts fantasy world and it's characters than the plots. But I still enjoyed it even though I am by no means the intended reader, not by a long chalk.
But that just goes to show that these books can be read and enjoyed by the whole family.
Two more to go.
4/5
This book has been gathering dust on my bookcase for longer than I can remember. I don't even remember buying it. I can only guess that I purchased it from some charity shop or book sale at some point. Probably one of the reasons I never got to reading it is because like a lot of King books it is pretty much a brick at 760 pages.
What is worth it? Well I'd say absolutely. Is it my favourite Stephen King book? Nope. It has a long way to go to reach the likes of The Stand, Bag Of bones, Misery, The Long Walk and maybe The Shining. But I'd say it is a typical run of the mill King book all the same. It had all the elements I'd expect. I liked the main characters and I enjoyed the slow build up to the climactic ending which was pretty much a Stephen King ending. When all is said and done big books can take over your life more than a smaller book as long as they are not boring. This wasn't boring. It kept my interest all the way and it has to sit alongside most other books that I have read by Stephen King. I liked the unique twist and hook of this book and the story and it's characters will stay with me for a while and that says a lot.
4/5
