Book review: The three day rule by Josie Lloyd & Emlyn Rees

The Three Day Rule - Josie Lloyd & Emlyn Rees

Synopsis:
Every year the Thorne family travel to small and isolated Brayner Island, just off the coast of Cornwall, to celebrate the Christmas holidays.
However the bonds that once tied the family together have unravelled over time, and long-held rivalries, jealousies and arguments lay under the surface of what looks like a happy family unit.
Elliot is having a secret affair with one of his colleagues, Kellie, and his wife Isabelle is oblivious to his betrayal. His teenage daughter Taylor is rebelling after being sent to boarding school, and her acts of rebellion impact on her over-protected cousin Simon, and local boy Michael, who lusts after her.
Simon’s mother, and Elliot’s sister, Stephanie, is dealing with a grief that she can’t let go of, and blames her husband David for their loss.
Despite their problems, they all congregate on the island to celebrate Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day- only three days that they have to endure together before their lives can return to normal.
But when a violent storm crops up, bringing with it snow and furious winds, the Thornes find themselves cut off from society, and those three days seem to drag on forever as they find themselves struggling to cope in their close confines.

What I gained from reading this book:
This novel brings up the topic of affairs and how they can affect different people, whether they are part of the relationship or not.
Kellie plays a major part in this story, being the mistress of Elliot, and the reader often sees the story from her perspective. As much as she loves Elliot, she doesn’t want to be known as the ‘other woman’, and begs Elliot to end his marriage so that they can be together and start a family. But Elliot is hesitant and keeps breaking his promises to Kellie that the relationship with his wife will soon be over. She longs to be accepted by his extended family and create a friendship with his daughter Taylor, and her yearning to be a part of the family is what makes her accept Elliot’s proposition- that she stay in a hotel on the mainland so they can be near one another over the Christmas break. However, her meeting with Ben, whose father owns a water taxi service, makes her begin to re-evaluate her relationship with Elliot, especially after she finds out how his ex-wife’s affair ruined their marriage.
Through these situations, readers are able to grasp a different perspective on affairs, and see how sometimes love, while special, can be the cause of many problems.

Positives:
The characters in this novel are interesting and very true to life. Who doesn’t have at least one family member who they can’t tolerate? The authors’ are also very good when it comes to portraying the events in the novel, writing from the view of a cheating husband, a grieving mother, a lustful teen and a couple of people in search of love, while still keeping the reader involved in the story.

Negatives:
For some people, the events in this story might strike a little close to home, with grieving, jealousies, betrayal and lust being a major part of the novel. But these characteristics are also what make the novel so enjoyable to read.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Genre: Family/ Relationships

Recommended for: People with families like the Thornes- you can’t live with them and you can’t live without them.


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Book review: Anybody out there? by Marian Keyes

Anybody Out There? - Marian Keyes

Synopsis:
Anna Walsh may have The Most Fabulous Job In The World- working in the marketing department of one of the best cosmetic lines on the planet- but she is living a shattered existence.
While she once spent most of her time wining and dining with big-shot magazine beauty editors in New York, and finding zany outfits to wear that were symbolic of her brand, her days are now reduced to laying in bed at the family home in Dublin, Ireland, while she recovers from the physical and emotional scars that have changed her life forever.
When Anna is finally able to return to New York, she is treated like a china doll that has just been meticulously glued back together after falling off a shelf. Her best friends are sympathetic but can’t truly understand what she’s been through. And despite her attempts to contact him, her husband Aidan, who she’s missed the most, appears to have vanished.
Everybody who knows her thinks that it’s time Anna moved on. But is that really the answer?

What I gained from reading this book:
This novel primarily focuses on people’s ways of dealing with unfortunate events. Aidan’s absence, at the beginning of the novel, is dealt with in several different ways by the different characters. Anna’s parents and sisters think that simply avoiding mentioning Aidan is the best way to help Anna cope. They involve themselves in various plots, including spying on dog-walkers, to lighten the mood and take her mind off her dilemma. Similarly, her best friend Jacqui, who moved to New York with her, insists on regaling her with stories about the celebrities who frequent the posh hotel she works at, in an effort to help her forget about her missing husband. Anna even encounters an eclectic group of people intent on communicating with the dead, who try to help her in their own ways.
By using all of these examples, the author is highlighting that there are many ways for people to deal with their problems, with no path to resolution being the right one.

Positives:
Anna’s family is as crazy as they come, and provide quite a few entertaining moments. Her oldest sister Claire is pushing forty years of age but still acts like a young party animal, despite having a husband and three children. Rachel is a former cocaine addict who lives with her boyfriend Luke, and works at a rehab facility in New York. Anna’s youngest sister Helen has her own detective business, where she is hired to trail people suspected of cheating on their partners. Surprisingly, the ‘Black Sheep’ of the family is the second eldest, Maggie, who refuses to be ‘deliberately obstructive’ and is known as the ‘lickarse’ of the family. Yes, these are strange notions but are funny all the same.

Negatives:
Anna’s repetitive struggles to contact Aidan begin to grate after a while, especially since the reader is still unaware about what happened to him, and haven’t yet found out the reason why Anna is so physically and emotionally broken. But her actions are understandable when you consider that he is her husband and she is unable to locate him- most people would be doing the same thing.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Genre: Family/ Relationships

Recommended for: People who want to read a heartfelt novel that features loss but is also filled with laughs.


Australians can buy the book by clicking the picture below:

Book review: Till we meet again by Lesley Pearse

Till We Meet Again - Lesley Pearse

Synopsis:
Susan Wright and Beth Powell meet by chance one hot day in August 1961, when they are just ten years old, and instantly become the best of friends.
They ride their bikes, watch boats steer down the lock and have picnics in their own secret cubby, and when they aren’t together, they write each other long and detailed letters about what’s happening in their lives. But although they have spent every August together for five years, they hide personal family secrets from one another and secretly harbour small jealousies regarding one another’s seemingly perfect lives.
Eventually the holiday catch-ups cease, the letters become far and few between and the girls drift apart, due to difficult and unforeseen circumstances.
Twenty-nine years later, Susan and Beth are reunited after Susan walks into a busy doctor’s surgery and guns down the receptionist and a doctor, seemingly in cold blood. Beth, now a criminal lawyer, is assigned to defend Susan and try to find out why she became a ruthless killer, and it is then that she discovers that the murderess is in fact her old childhood friend.
As the women become reacquainted with one another, they find out about each other’s secret pasts, and their friendship becomes stronger. But as the evidence against Susan grows, Beth begins to realise that the sweet, placid Susan she once knew is not the same Susan who now sits before her, and learns that terrible circumstances have a way of changing a person for good.

What I gained from reading this book:
This novel highlights how different circumstances can change a person’s life- and not always for the better. Susan’s role as a full-time carer started when she was only sixteen years of age, and she had no time for herself, working almost twenty-four hours a day for eighteen years. This took a toll on her social life, self-esteem and mental wellbeing, and only led to more difficulties later on. While Beth didn’t face the same traumas as Susan, she had to deal with a lazy, heartless and oppressive father who physically abused his family because he had a “position to maintain”. Both of the women faced problems in their families but each came through their experiences in different ways. Likewise, Detective Inspector Roy Longhurst, who was Susan’s arresting officer, grew up in an undesirable area full of crime but he ascended above the expected norm and became an honest man and honourable police officer. This novel shows that past experiences can easily shape people into what they will become in the future, or at least have some bearing on what they will do with their lives.

Positives:
The secret lives of the women, and their different perspectives of certain events are revealed gradually throughout the novel, which helps to make the storyline more riveting for the reader. Readers are also kept on their toes with unexpected twists popping up every now and then.

Negatives:
This is not your average crime novel, as the murderer is revealed from the start. So people who are looking for the excitement that is derived from working out who the killer is may be disappointed, but the process the author uses to withdraw Susan’s reasons for murder are befitting of any criminal fiction.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Genre: Mystery/ Crime

Recommended for: People who have lost touch with childhood friends and then met up with them again after decades of time apart.



Australians can buy the book by clicking the picture below:

Book review: Code Name: Blondie by Christina Skye

Code Name: Blondie - Christina Skye

Synopsis:
Miki Fortune is undertaking the most important assignment of her career- shooting photos for a beach calendar that could mean the difference between becoming a professional well-paid photographer or a down-on-her-luck small-time amateur.
Unfortunately for Miki, Vance Merchant, who makes the final decision about the calendar shoot, is also a sleazy bastard who thinks that having her on his books also means having her for himself.
After their flight is delayed following a short altercation between the pair, Miki, Vance and their pilot Dutch take off from the island, but their postponement proves to be fatal when they crash land into the ocean during a violent storm.
Despite all odds, the island they crash closest to is occupied by Navy SEAL Max Preston, and his remarkably gifted dog Truman. The biologically and genetically enhanced duo is on a mission to find and destroy Enrique Cruz, who, while once like them, has now turned into a villainous murderer.
In order to protect his position on the island, and unable to ignore the injured survivors of the plane wreckage, Max rescues those that lived, including Miki, in spite of the possibility that they could be informants of Cruz’s. Despite himself, he comes to appreciate Miki’s fiery determination to live, and her ability to focus on the situation at hand. But regardless of this appreciation, trust issues plague both Max and Miki, and with a hurricane approaching, and the deadly revenge of Cruz on the cards, they have to put aside their differences in order to survive.

What I gained from reading this book:
This novel could be seen as an introduction into biological and genetic enhancement in soldiers and government forces. While this may seem farfetched in reality, I think it provides an insight into what could be possible in the future, although perhaps not to the extreme of what is featured in the book. Whatever the case, some of the abilities that feature in the story really make you think about what future technology holds in store for us.

Positives:
The way the author explains the intricacies of Max’s abilities is very interesting, and readers are able to relate to him as he struggles to maintain the professionalism expected of him to get the job done, while also protecting the plane survivors who have interrupted his plans. Miki is also an interesting character, at first seeming to be nothing more than a person centred on her career, but who proves herself to be proficient when it comes to island survival. She is easily able to cast aside her photographic equipment (which is water-damaged anyway) and become someone a Navy SEAL can depend on.

Negatives:
It may be difficult for people to comprehend some of the more unbelievable aspects of the story, mostly involving scientific experiments that enable some of the Navy SEAL’s to have special abilities- special abilities that could be classed as paranormal.
However, if you can get your mind past these abnormalities, you’ll probably enjoy the novel.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Genre: Romance/ Action

Recommended for: Lovers of books where the hero and heroine are trapped on a desert island and surrounded by deadly forces.



Australians can buy the book by clicking the picture below: