Book Review: Our House by Louise Candlish #BookReview #THATlastline #Suspense

Title: Our House

Author: Louise Candlish

Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK

Date: September 1st, 2018

Pages: 448

Format: Paperback

Source: from Publisher for a review and to give away

Synopsis (from Goodreads): On a bright January morning in the London suburbs, a family moves into the house they’ve just bought in Trinity Avenue.

Nothing strange about that. Except it is your house. And you didn’t sell it.

When Fiona Lawson comes home to find strangers moving into her house, she’s sure there’s been a mistake. She and her estranged husband, Bram, have a modern co-parenting arrangement: bird’s nest custody, where each parent spends a few nights a week with their two sons at the prized family home to maintain stability for their children. But the system built to protect their family ends up putting them in terrible jeopardy. In a domino effect of crimes and misdemeanors, the nest comes tumbling down.

Now Bram has disappeared and so have Fiona’s children. As events spiral well beyond her control, Fiona will discover just how many lies her husband was weaving and how little they truly knew each other. But Bram’s not the only one with things to hide, and some secrets are best kept to oneself, safe as houses.

Review:

I feel like Our House took our blogging community by the storm. Ever since it first came out in April, all the amazing bloggers who review adult titles rave about this novel.
Some reviews are very positive, but there are also ones that do not think Our House is the best book written.
Me?
I think this novel is very good and I am so grateful that I had chance to read it.

I would like to thank Sara-Jade Virtue for sending me a paperback copy of Our House to read and pass on to someone else in the #ibelieveinbookfairies project, where people leave books in different places for other people to find it.
I left mine on the Model of Zagreb in Kaptol, Zagreb, Croatia.

Every now and then I would come across a review for this story. You can’t help it when you read blogs and book reviews on regular basis. However, I was good when it comes to avoiding spoilers, so I still found myself surprised while reading.

First thing that surprised me was that Our House is actually more of suspense then a thriller.

Second thing was the way it was written.
You see, this novel does not have that regular, every day way of storytelling.
In fact, it is told from two POVs, one written as podcast and the second one written as documents (that actually sound more like a diary or confessions to me).
There is the third way of storytelling that unites those two POVs into one whole.
Never before have I ever read anything similar to that, so I welcomed it.

The story follows Fiona who lost her house and her husband Bram who is the reason why she lost it.
I don’t want to tell you too much about it because I feel like the less you know the more interesting reading experience you’ll have.

I have to stress out that during the reading process I didn’t have anything to think too much about, like, there was no mystery to be solved.
The story itself was interesting enough, but was is not puzzling as I assumed it would be.

The characters of the story were pretty memorable but not one of them was likeable. However, I feel like that was author’s goal, to give us unlikeable, realistic characters that we can not trust.

The story itself has some dull and boring moments, but I highly encourage you to keep reading because once you get to the end, it is all worth it!
The end is the best part of this novel, so unique, and one of the best endings I read in a very, very long time.

Book Review: Annabel Lee by Mike Nappa

Title: Annabel Lee

Series: Coffey & Hill (#1)

Author: Mike Nappa

Publisher: Revell

Date: March 1st, 2016

Pages: 363

Format: Paperback

Source: from Publisher for review

Synopsis (from Goodreads): On a farm fourteen miles east of Peachtree, Alabama, a secret is hidden–a secret named Annabel Lee. Her uncle’s last words before he hid her away: “Don’t open that door for anybody, you got it? Not even me.”

Review:

Annabel Lee was somewhat interesting read.
It’s a suspense thriller, and I naively fooled myself into thinking I’d read horror (don’t even ask me how I managed to do it, I’ll just blame the cover) so my whole reading experience was similar to the one one would have if he turned on TV thinking he would watch House at the End of the Street, but ended up watching an episode of CSI Miami instead.

However, I enjoyed reading this book.

The story follows three perspectives: Trudy’s, Mute’s and Annabel Lee’s.
Two of them are told in third person (Trudi’s and Mute’s), while Annabel’s was written in first person (later in the story we find out that her perspective are actually pages from her diary).

The story talks about 11 years old girl, Annabel Lee, who’s uncle locked her in the basement (with his dog whom Annabel is afraid of) and gave her an order not to open the door to anyone, not even to him, without a secret code.

We don’t know why Annabel’s uncle Truck did what he did, nor was it done with an aim to protect Annabel, or protect someone else from Annabel.
We get an impression that Annabel is important, even special in a way, but we don’t know why.

Right after her put her in the basement, Annabel’s uncle was killed and Mute witnessed the murder.
Now, Mute’s mission is to keep the girl safe, before bad guys take her. In order to save her, Mute has to get her out of the basement, but he has no secret code.

That is where spouses from Coffey & Hill come in (Trudi and her ex husband Samuel). Samuel got the secret code from Truck years ago, and now all three of them work together to save Annabel.

Nappa’s writing style is solid and although this book reads quickly, the pacing is very slow, with lots of descriptions.

I enjoyed reading all of the perspectives, but Annabel’s POV was my favorite.
She is really smart, educated and patient little girl who gets under reader’s skin so easily.
Regardless, I have to state that I didn’t like how she often sounded like a 30 years old women, instead of like 11 years old girl that she is.

Mute was my best-loved character in this story.

What I liked the most was the relationship between the girl and her ~~uncle’s~~ dog.
It’s development was described so well, and I welcomed how at the very beginning anytime Annabel talks about the dog she calls him “it”, and along as the story progesses, “it” becomes “he”.

When it comes to the bad guy who wanted to take Annabel, his idea was mean, but yet genius at the same time.
I don’t want to sound weird here, but I kind of admired his purpose.

One thing that needs to be stressed is that Annabel Lee is piece of Christian fiction.
To be honest, I am not sure why is that, because I didn’t feel like anything religious was forced in this story (or maybe I am just blind to those kind of things).
One thing that I noticed was that in the basement, among so many books, there was also a Bible.
And once, closer to the end of the novel, Annabel said something about Jesus and his purpose.
It was only one sentence and it felt more like a general thought.

This is the first book in the series, but the story it covered is completed.
In the next book, The Raven, we follow Trudi and Samuel solving another case.
I already have the book in my possession, and I plan to read it pretty soon, while the characters are still fresh in my mind.

Book Review: The Girl Who Came Back by Susan Lewis

the girl

Title: The Girl Who Came Back

Author: Susan Lewis

Publisher: Penguin Random House UK, Arrow

Date: February 25th, 2016

Pages: 409

Format: Hardback

Source: from Publisher, for a review

Synopsis (from Goodreads): When Jules Bright hears a knock on the door, the last person she expects to find a detective bringing her the news she’s feared for the last three years.

Amelia Quentin is being released from prison.

Jules’s life is very different now to the one she’d known before Amelia shattered it completely. Knowing the girl is coming back she needs to decide what to do. Friends and family gather round, fearing for Jules’s safety. They know that justice was never served; every one of them wants to make the Quentin girl pay.

The question is, what will Jules do; and which of them – her or Amelia – has the most to fear?

vrpca

Review:

„In her heart she knew what Aileen was thinking, it was what she was thinking too, but neither of them was prepared to speak the words aloud in case fate overheard and turned them into an unthinkable reality.“

This is the story about family tragedy.
This is the story about shattered lives.
This is the story about injustice.
This is the story about the girl who came back.

Starting this novel with a prologue, Susan Lewis introduces Amelia to us as a nine year old girl, but even from those few pages we can see what kind of person she will be in her future (and what kind of peronality she already has).

This story follows a woman named Jules. The first chapter opens with her finding out about Amelia being released from the prison, in that she was sent after commiting a crame that shattered Jules’ family apart.

As the story progress we follow two different times: present and the past (the past starting over 20 years ago, coming closer to the present with every chapter).

While doing my research for this review, I found out that the character called Aileen Lawrence also appears in another Susan Lewis’ novel, Behind Closed Doors.
However, two novels are both standalons.

Going into this book, I expected for it to be a quick read.
Nevertheless, as I was reading, I noticed that wasn’t the case.
The story demends you to take your time with it, to observe and take everything that it gives to you.

It took me over 50 pages to get used to Susan Lewis’ writing style and over 100 pages to finally keep up with all the characters.
While reading, you can see that the author really knows her characters. She gives you the whole family tree, friends and friends’ family, and it does take some time to place everyone in your head, as a reader (if I was smarter, I would place characters on paper to follow them better, but I managed to place everyone after some time).
I even bet that if you asked Lewis what were her characters’ hobbies, favorite food and all those little things that weren’t actually in the book, she would still have answers because she knew them that well.

She also did a lot of research for this book, and you can tell it.
At some parts, I tought about calling her out because I was sure something wouldn’t go that way because of law, but few pages after she wrote exactly what I was thinking of.
The same case happened when I was thinking about one particular situation, how it would be illogical to develop in the way it did, but I was running before herd again – few pages after, the author explained perfectly why and how.

Although this is a story in which the story as itself is important, what has a bigger role in this piece are inner struggels and how one can deal with an injustice that’s been done to him, how to deal with the tragedy that can make you lose yourself, to find the strenght when there’s no hope and to overcome the demons that call you for revenge.

As you probably figured out by now, this isn’t an easy read.

Anyway, it is still an enjoyable read.
There was only one time while reading that I felt like it was dragging, and it was closer to the end of the book.

There were three things I wasn’t a fan of:

Magic realism element (if we can call it that (but there’s a big chance that I just couldn’t understand it)).
Towards the end one particular situation that will be discussed in my spoilers section
I still can’t, and never will understand Daisy‘s parents when it comes to Dean (my reason will be in the spoiler section).

spoiler vrpca

Spoiler Alert!!!

I didn’t like how those three men took Amelia, captured her and wanted her to confess she’s the one who did it all.
In my mind, at that point, I was screaming at them AND at Lewis how that confession will mean nothing, if taken in those circumstances. The good thing is that the usthor did her research and wrote the same thing few pages after.

I can’t understand how Daisy’s parents were on Dean’s side. Yes, they knew him from his young age, yes, they are friends with his parents, but still: HE RAPED THEIR DAUGHTER! Nothing can change that!
He can say he felt forced, he was afraid Amelia would kill Daisy, but he still got hard and was able to rape.
And even if that all was true (it’s just his words against Amelia’s) he still didn’t try to use his force and actually stop Amelia, but like a weak boy he was, he submited.
He deserved to be in prison, along with Amelia.
And how could Daisy’s parents just forgive him like that???

spoiler vrpca

Overall, this is a good read that will leave you with a feeling like you know more then you did before. It is a story that focusses more on the feelings then on the pace, although the pace is what activates those feelings.
If you decide to give this book a try, I suggest you to give yourself some time with it.
Also, it may take a while for you to get used to the writing style and to get to know the characters, but after you do it will be worth it.

3,75