Sandysbookaday (taking a step back for a while)’s Comments (group member since Sep 17, 2015)

Sandysbookaday (taking a step back for a while)’s comments from the All About Books group.

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Just started Irreparable Deeds by Sloane Kady and listening to Come Home by Lisa Scottoline

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This is my third CJ Box book. Having previously read Back of Beyond, and The Highway and really enjoying them, Badlands fell a little flat with me.

I don't particularly enjoy stories about drug/gang wars and so this was a negative for me from the start. I was looking forward to continuing the story of the hunt for 'the Lizard King', and in this respect the book starts off promisingly enough. But we are soon diverted into the drug war by a shift of location for Deputy Cassie Dewell to Grimstad, North Dakota, where Cassie has just been appointed Deputy Sherriff.

Grimstad was a nothing town until oil was discovered. Now it is growing too fast for its infrastructure and problems are beginning to surface. Drugs and prostitution abound. There is a least one 'bad' cop in the department whom Cassie has been tasked with uncovering. And there is a twelve year old paperboy who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and who picked up a package thrown out of an overturned car and took it home.

There are people looking for that package, bad people who will stop at nothing to recover it. And they certainly are not going to allow a twelve year old learning challenged boy to stand in their way.

I loved Kyle's character. He is a charming, determined boy with a bad life but big dreams, and is probably the highlight of this whole book.

This is not a bad book. It just didn't have the same sense of tension that I felt in the previous two.

Will I read the next book in this series? Definitely. This Lizard King thing has me hooked.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers Australia for the ARC of Badlands in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

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Just finished The Ballroom by Anna Hope 5 very brilliant stars from me. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

About to start Badlands by C.J. Box

Just finished The Ballroom by Anna Hope. Can't recommend this read highly enough. Beautifully written. This is a keeper for me on my very favourite books shelf. This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. The language is almost poetic, the descriptions draw you into the scenery, the characters are carefully and cleverly crafted.

The story is set in an lunatic asylum on the edge of the Yorkshire moors in 1911 and revolves around four central characters. An asylum should be a place of refuge, where the insane are cared for and protected. This is far from the truth. And it is far from true that everyone incarcerated within is insane.

Ella Fay worked in a mill where all the windows were painted over to prevent the workers from looking outside and wasting their employers time. Desperate to see the sky, to not be confined in this prison of noise and cloth that leeches the life out of her, Ella breaks a window and is then confined to Sharston Asylum until such time she can be declared sane and not a danger to herself or others.

Clemency has been incarcerated by her father and brother for refusing to marry a man who used to teach her. A man who was not kind to her, and who may already have abused her trust and that of her family. Clemency is a private patient - her family pay to keep her there - and she is able to wear her own clothes rather than the asylum uniform, and to have some of her own treasured belongings.

Charles Fuller is the son of an eminent surgeon, Charles destined to follow in his footsteps. But instead of studying for his exams, he is seduced by music and fails miserably. He takes the position of Second Assistant Medical Officer at Sharston (one of four), purely because he is also to have the role of bandmaster.

John Mulligan is a solitary type of man, and resident of one of the 'chronic' (long term) wards. He is a kind man, keeping some of his bread ration to feed the canary imprisoned in a cage in the day room, and trusted enough to be one of a work party charged with digging the unmarked graves, each holding six coffins piled one atop the other, and working on the farm that supplies meat and grains to the asylum.

The one point of beauty in Sharston is the Ballroom, vast and beautiful, where every Friday evening of every week selected patients (the ones who have 'been good') come together and dance. It is here that John and Ella meet for the second time and their fate is sealed.

The Ballroom quietly details the atrocities and lack of kindness common in asylums. This is an emotional and heart-wrenching read, one I will come back to time and again.

I award The Ballroom five very brilliant stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers Doubleday for the ARC of this wonderful book in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

Just finished The Summer Guest by Emma Hannigan https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and

Strange Tide by Christopher Fowler https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Just started Strange Tide after finishing The Widow by Fiona Barton. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

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Just starting Splintered by Kelly Miller

Just finished e-Murderer: A Jenna Scali Mystery by Joan C. Curtis
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

If you are looking for a good Scottish crime series I thoroughly recommend Owen Mullen's Charlie Cameron series. Two books so far Games People Play and Old Friends and New Enemies. These were both 5 star reads for me and I sincerely hope he is working on a third book.

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So far this year my favourite books have been (and I mean CLEAR favourites!) Owen Mullen's Charlie Cameron series Games People Play and Old Friends and New Enemies. Bring on #3! Hope you are busy writing Owen Mullen!

Short Stories by Thomas Ryan