2024: Feb Group Read Halfway House, by Helen Fitzgerald

[David]

Halfway House, by Helen Fitzgerald>

"They`re the housemates from Hell...
When her disastrous Australian love affair ends, Lou O´Dowd heads to Edinburgh for a fresh start, moving in with her cousin, and preparing for the only job she can find ... working at a halfway house for very high-risk offenders. Two killers, a celebrity paedophile and a paranoid coke dealer – all out on parole and all sharing their outwardly elegant Edinburgh townhouse with rookie night-worker Lou.... And instead of finding some meaning and purpose to her life, she finds herself trapped in a terrifying game of cat and mouse where she stands to lose everything – including her life."

Link to Book on Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/42aDA3Z
Current Price on Kindle: £6.49

[Shell]

I enjoyed a lot about this book. It seemed a bit slow to get going, but once Lou started work at the halfway house it really picked up. I didn't like Lou at all. Friends, family and lovers she just used for what she could get out of them, picking them up or dropping them depending on whether she wanted something from them. She was hopelessly out of her depth with the residents at the house. A silly girl with no idea of the dangerous men she was dealing with. However, it was very amusing to see what happened and it did get quite violent towards the end. Also very funny in parts and the residents were all really interesting characters. I'd give it a 4 out of 5.

[Chris]

Just started, and finding the style a bit... difficult to describe. Annoying? Disjointed? Then I checked the author's bio and found she writes a lot of Young Adult, which explains it as far as I am concerned.
Looking forward to our selfish, lazy, all-about-her 'heroine' getting some sort of come-uppance. Fingers crossed.

[Chris]

Finished. Gave it an okay 3 stars but not really impressed. I just didn’t get into it. The heroine was awful, the situation ridiculous, and the style was such that I ended up skimming a lot in order to get done with it.
Memo to self - read the author bio as well as the puff before deciding to order in from the library. YA clearly not my genre.

[Shell]

I agree that the book had a lot of faults Christina. Rarely have I found a main character so unlikable and that made it impossible to have any sympathy for her at all. A lot of the plot felt very cobbled together and didn't really work. I did enjoy many of the parts with the other residents of the house though. I wouldn't pick up another book by the same author though.

[Beth]

Finished. Sort Of. Actually i gave up on this one. Didn’t like the characters and the story wasn’t much either.

It was my Caribbean beach read. Fortunately I downloaded more than one book

One star for the 3/4 that I read.

[Bill]

Four Stars

My first of Fitzgerald’s stories was The Devil’s Staircase and I’ve been huge fan ever since. Delightfully, once again our main character is an Ozzie expat committing mayhem without even trying. Twenty-three year old Lou, an army brat whose dad has taught her survival skills, loses her cushy existence as the mistress when not-very-demanding older lover’s wife insisted he end the relationship, and takes the only job in the UK she can qualify for online, to be the night attendant in a halfway house for ex-prisoners released on licence in Edinburgh. She arrives for the Festival, and whilst attending a performance of her cousin’s production, Plath: The Musical (plausibly yet totally-off-the-wallishly so beyond the fringe) Lou finds herself having al-fresco sex with an attractive young aristocrat named Tim who proves to be one of her charges, having as a teenager murdered his parents. She will also encounter a legless former rockstar called Lunch Box, who is trying to be cured of paedophilia. (He has finally been treated to be attracted to 17-year-olds, but finds them too old to offer a longer-termed relationship.) The entire story is in hilariously bad taste, with lots of R rated dialogue. Because the Kindle edition was delayed in America, I listened to the Audibile version. Nicolette Chin’s narration was absolutely delightful, giving us a rich variety of Aussie, posh, and demotic Scots voices. This book is a hoot!

[Shell]

I listened to the audio book too and did think she did a great job of reading the book.