Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy | Book Review

Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy
Published by Flatiron Books, 2021
Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Charlotte McConaghy blends powerful eco-fiction with the intrigue of a thriller in this stunning look at human nature.

Environmental biologist Inti Flynn has just arrived in Scotland. The head of a controversial rewilding project, she is tasked with overseeing the release of wolves throughout Cairngorms National Park. Fearing for their livestock, the surrounding community of rural farmers is immediately resistant, and their hostility reaches a fever pitch when a man is found dead. Inti is determined to absolve the wolves of blame — and thus spare them from a brutal culling — but to do so means proving there’s a killer in their midst.

McConaghy’s prose is gorgeous, without ever feeling overwrought. She paints vivid pictures of Scotland’s rugged landscape, contrasting its beauty with the inherent dangers of living and working on such harsh terrain. The nuance of her writing is such that, though the novel is a gripping page-turner, it also delves deeply into the psyche of its characters, as more and more secrets bubble to the surface.

You can find my full review over on BookBrowse. To go alongside it, I also wrote a piece about efforts to rewild Scotland.

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The Secret Talker by Geling Yan | Book Review

The Secret Talker by Geling Yan
Translated from the Chinese by Jeremy Tiang
Published by HarperVia, 2021
Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

A good literary novel tends to wow with its linguistic prowess and the depth of its social commentary. A good thriller serves as a captivating page-turner that draws you in. When the two are brought together in perfect harmony, the effect can be fantastic. In many cases, however, aiming for a literary thriller dooms the book to underwhelm somewhat on both fronts; being neither thematically rich nor quite captivating enough to please lovers of either genre. Sadly, The Secret Talker feels like a prime example of this for me.

The concept is great. We follow Hongmei, a Chinese woman living in America, who finds herself drawn into an increasingly intimate and all-consuming correspondence with an anonymous stalker who seems to know her every move. Though undeniably creepy, their conversation brings to the fore how much her relationship with her husband is failing. As their conversation deepens, both Hongmei and her stalker feel increasingly drawn to each other; compelled to unpack long-held secrets on both sides.

While the stalker set-up will undoubtedly appeal to fans of a good thriller, the novel is in fact a largely character focussed look at relationships, communication, identity, and the need to feel seen and heard. There are a few twists peppered throughout (the most important of which I saw coming a mile off), and I was certainly intrigued throughout, but I did feel we were moving in circles at times.

Despite being hampered by this uneven tone and an occasionally confusing timeline, the book did keep me engaged. Its look at the anonymity of the internet and the thrill of the unknown worked well, and I’d be happy to see the author tackle similar themes within a framework that allowed for greater depth. Given the rise of technology and social media since the book’s original Chinese publication back in 2004, I think there’s lots she could draw on.

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Thank you to the publisher for a free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

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The Others by Sarah Blau | Book Review

The Others by Sarah Blau
Translated from the Hebrew by Daniella Zamir
Published by Pushkin Press, 2021
Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

The Others blends the intrigue of a thriller with pertinent social commentary. The book opens with the news that one of Israel’s most prominent feminist scholars has been murdered. Even more distressing, her body was displayed in a horrifying tableau clearly designed to send a message: tied to a chair, a baby doll glued to her hands, the word mother scrawled across her forehead. Sheila, a former college friend of the victim, understands right away: someone takes serious issue with their long-ago pact to remain childless. But that means she and her other old friends could be next in line – or the ones responsible.

Blau does a great job of crafting an anti-heroine. From the off, it’s clear that Sheila is not only holding back information, she is also a highly flawed person, capable of intense jealousy, vanity, and even cruelty. This serves to make her narration somewhat unreliable, forcing the reader to remain on their toes as to where the guilt truly lies.

Employing such unlikable characters is also a clever way of highlighting the complex nature of feminism. The central group’s desire to defy the rigidity of ascribed gender roles – to gain autonomy over their own lives and bodies despite pressure and derision – is an admirable cause that is easy to get behind. But this ferocity of spirit does not make them exempt from treating each other to the kind of catty, underhand behaviour that feels indicative of everything feminism should stand against. In short, we contain multitudes, and women are each other’s worst enemies as often as they are their greatest allies in their fight for equality.

The novel is chiefly concerned with women seeking the freedom to make – and change – their own minds, the pressure to become a mother, and the fine line between friendship, love, and hate. The setting of contemporary Israel allows the author to weave in commentary on the likes of religion, politics, and gender, but that’s not to say the story ever feels dry. On the contrary, the book moves along at a canter, well-placed reveals keeping you hooked and making this a compelling read despite – and because of – the big themes it tackles.

That said, things can get a little heavy-handed at times. On occasion, the book also deliberately leans into genre tropes, but rather than tackle them from an unexpected or original angle, a character simply declares, “This is like something out of a bad crime book!” – a device I find a little grating. But that was never enough to hinder my enjoyment of the time I spent with this genuine page-turner. It’s rare you find a book that would just as likely spark debate in a serious gender studies class as it would a casual book club, but this just might.

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The Wicked Sister by Karen Dionne | Book Review

The Wicked Sister by Karen Dionne
Published by Putnam, 2020
My rating: ⭐ ⭐

For 15 years, Rachel has been voluntarily admitted to a psychiatric unit, following the deaths of her parents when she was just 11. Though it was ruled a murder-suicide, Rachel’s only memory of the day her parents died is of her standing over her mother’s body holding a rife, convincing her that she must have been responsible. But when a new piece of evidence suggesting otherwise comes to light, she chooses to finally leave the hospital; to return to her childhood home, confront her sister Diana, and unlock her repressed memories once and for all.

I don’t want my relatively low rating to detract from the fact I found this a quick and enjoyable read. And yet, though precise details aren’t revealed until late in the game, the nature of the twist itself is both obvious and underwhelming, so it’s important you head into this with appropriate expectations. What you can hope to enjoy instead is a fun cat-and-mouse game set at a remote lodge surrounded by bear-filled woods, which lends everything instant atmosphere and tension.

The early chapters establish that both Rachel and Diana are not necessarily to be trusted; a detail that I really liked. Flashbacks to the past reveal Diana’s diagnosis of childhood psychopathy, while Rachel’s admission that she finds it amusing to trick her fellow inpatients into believing she has various different psychological conditions suggests she too is a competent liar with a potential cruel side. Though not much is done with the latter thread, its implications still added another layer to my reading experience.

It’s also established from the start that Rachel believes she is able to communicate with animals. I assumed this would be used to suggest she was indeed mentally unwell and somewhat unreliable as a narrator, but it went oddly unexplored, being used instead as a device to propel the story forward or point Rachel in the direction of clues at convenient moments. This element of magical realism felt at odds with the rest of the novel tonally, and I don’t think it added to the narrative in any meaningful or necessary way.

There’s no denying that things become a little ridiculous during the climax and reveal, but if you’re able to suspend your disbelief and take everything at face value, this is a swift read with a good use of setting that presents us with some standout tableaus on the way to an obvious if satisfying conclusion.

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Thank you to the publisher for a free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. You can pre-order The Wicked Sister by clicking here.

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The Body Lies by Jo Baker | Book Review

The Body Lies by Jo Baker
Published by Doubleday, 2019
My rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

While The Body Lies is indeed a thriller, it also functions as an examination of the genre itself. Our unnamed narrator is a published novelist who accepts a job at a remote university in an attempt to escape the trauma of a random attack she suffered several years prior. Once there, she must attempt to balance the strain of a long-distance marriage, parenting a toddler, assimilating into a new community, and mediating heated debates in her MA writing course. Things take a sinister turn when it becomes clear she is the focus of the novel being written by one of her students; a student who seems to be unhealthily fixated on her.

Though this has all the hallmarks of a typical thriller (a mystery to be solved, a dangerous adversary to be thwarted, and a sense of mounting tension that builds towards a breathless climax), it’s important to be aware that much of the novel is slower, more ruminative, and character focussed than typical examples of the genre. This is deliberate, with Baker primarily focussed on dissecting and subverting the common trope of thrillers opening with the body of a woman. The narrator and her students have several discussions about the topic, bemoaning the victimisation of women, the objectification of their bodies, and the use of female figures as plot devices devoid of context or agency, used to further the stories of men. Baker’s novel opens with the same motif, but not only does she go on to uncover who this girl was – and who she could have been – she also takes the time to craft a complex, believable heroine who is never defined by her relationship to a man despite the attempts of those around her to quash her sense of control.

Baker shrewdly suggests why women in thrillers are typically presented the way they are, highlighting the parallel struggles they face in the real world to rid themselves of the male gaze; to retain true autonomy and live without fear in a society that constantly puts them at risk. The narrator’s job as a creative writing teacher allows the book to organically discuss its own themes in a pleasingly meta way – often playing with the line between reality and fiction – while also providing commentary on the treatment of women in academia.

It’s not a perfect read, however. Though it invites lots of discussion around the role of women in genre fiction, it is guilty of falling back on a couple of equally common mental health tropes that go disappointingly undeveloped. It also falls into the trap of providing a rather twee concluding chapter that reads like a checklist of loose ends that need to be wrapped up. That said, this is definitely one of the more interesting thrillers I’ve read in a long time, with strong prose and thematic depth that should see it appeal to fans of genre fiction and literary fiction alike.

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You can pick up a copy of The Body Lies from Book Depository by clicking here.

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My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing | Book Review

My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing
Published by Michael Joseph, 2019
My rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Sometimes, you want thought-provoking thematic depth, and sometimes, you just want a good story that sees you flying through the pages. The next time you’re in the mood for the latter, you could do a lot worse than My Lovely Wife.

This well-plotted and deliciously dark thriller isn’t a whodunnit. On the contrary, we know from the off that the unnamed protagonist and his wife have been literally getting away with murder for quite some time. As such, it’s never about who is committing these awful crimes, but why, and if and how they will get away with it. Putting us inside the mind of a serial killer not only makes us constantly question our narrator’s reliability, but it allows Downing to pose interesting questions about our own moral compasses. Though he is undoubtedly a horrible human being, he shows himself to be surprisingly remorseful at times, and genuinely caring towards his teenage children. Emerging as the lesser of two evils when held up against his wife, some may find themselves sympathising with or even rooting for him, leaving us – the reader – in a bizarre moral quandary.

I loved the way this dynamic advanced throughout the story. The more complex the characters’ web of secrets and lies became in order to cover their tracks, the more the ripple effects began to impact those closest to them – their children, their friends, and their community. Watching their disparate reactions to this, and once again asking us to consider if there is some kind of ‘scale’ of badness, was a unique and refreshing angle from which to approach a thriller.

With such a melodramatic setup – a husband and wife committing a spate of murders whilst trying to uphold their domestic obligations – there’s a slight suspension of disbelief required. The readable prose and well-placed twists keep everything moving at a great pace, however, meaning I was more than willing to submit myself to the story and enjoy it at face value. I would definitely read more from this author.

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If you’d like to give My Lovely Wife a go, you can pick up a copy from Book Depository by clicking here. If you’ve already read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Little Darlings by Melanie Golding | Book Review

Little Darlings by Melanie Golding
Published by HQ, 2019
My rating: ⭐ ⭐

Following an unsettling encounter in the hospital, a young mother becomes convinced that her new-born twins are under threat of abduction. Drawing on changeling myths, the book taps into our fear of not being believed, and strikes a successfully ambiguous line between the supernatural and the struggles of mental health.

The prose itself isn’t exactly flashy, but it does a fine job of propelling the narrative forward. The concept is solid, and there are a couple of suitably creepy moments. I was genuinely intrigued, and wanted to see how everything would turn out, but therein lies my main issue with the book: it hits every single narrative beat you’d expect. A thriller that plays with fairy tale tropes, and flirts with the murky line between psychology and the possibly supernatural should be able to toy with reader expectations and provide satisfying twists. Instead, it all panned out exactly as I expected. This isn’t helped by the fact that the book opens with a brief glimpse of the story’s climax before jumping back in time to show us how we end up there. Knowing where we were going, predicting exactly how we would get there, and being unsurprised by how it all turned out left me feeling very underwhelmed, even if the reading experience itself was perfectly fine.

Some of the characterisation felt off to me as well, particularly with the protagonist’s husband. In one scene, he is selfish, cruel and disinterested, to the point of being a caricature. In the next, he is loving and supportive to the point of being sickly sweet. I understand that some people are like this, hiding their abusive personalities under a mask of kindness. But the dichotomy in his character went completely unexplored, meaning it came off as inconsistency rather than complexity.

We’ve seen many stories that explore the idea of changelings. I hoped this one would offer something original and genuinely disturbing, but sadly it just didn’t quite deliver on either of these fronts, being let down instead by its familiarity and reliance on coincidence.

On a positive note, one of the main characters is bisexual. Her sexuality has no bearing on the plot and is merely incidental. This kind of normalised representation of diversity is great! I also hope my largely negative review doesn’t detract from how quickly I flew through this. It was an easy, escapist read, and though it didn’t offer anything new, it was fine enough to spend a few evenings with.

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If you’d like to give Little Darlings a go, you can find a copy by clicking here. If you’ve read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite | Book Review

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Published by Doubleday, 2018
My rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Put simply, this sort-of-thriller is a fun, fast read, with a pleasing dash of the macabre. The story opens with Korede, whose sister, Ayoola, has come to her for help. Help, that is, getting rid of her boyfriend’s body. Though Ayoola claims she killed him in self-defence, this is the third of her partners to die under suspicious circumstances. Familial love pushes Korede to act, but her evidently dangerous sister soon sets her sights on the man she secretly harbours feelings for. With someone she cares about at risk of becoming her sister’s next victim, the strength of her loyalty is put to the test.

People who pick this up expecting a full-blown thriller will likely be left disappointed. The shocks, twists, and core element of mystery that normally underpin the genre are more-or-less absent here. Instead, this serves much better as a character study of two fascinating women, exploring the limits of sisterhood, the duty of family, what it takes to make a murderer, and if such a crime can ever be justified.

The prose itself is very simple, but it propels the story forward at a gripping pace. I also really liked the way social media was implemented into the story. Its inclusion can feel forced in many contemporary reads, but here it felt natural, and allowed Braithwaite to bring a satirical edge to the narrative. In a similar vein, it has to be said that she implements a couple of tropes, but she does so in an often blackly funny way, once again adding a touch of wit, and allowing for some social commentary; particularly with regards to the weight society puts on physical beauty.

In terms of emotional development, things could definitely have delved deeper, but I absolutely flew through the book, and I can easily see it being one of the most accessible and commercially popular offerings from the Women’s Prize longlist.

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You can pick up a copy of My Sister, the Serial Killer from Book Depository by clicking here. If you’ve already read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Enduring Love by Ian McEwan | Book Review

Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
Published by Vintage, 2016 (first published in 1997)
My rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Enduring Love is a psychological literary thriller, in the truest sense of the words. The skill that evidently went into crafting this book is phenomenal; its balance of page-turning tension, eloquent prose, and thought-provoking thematic nuance so exact it’s like a masterclass of the genre.

The plot follows Joe Rose. Whilst enjoying a picnic with his wife, Clarissa, they become involved in a freak accident that ends in tragedy. Jed Parry, a fellow witness to the incident, becomes instantly and inexplicably obsessed with Joe from that moment. He begins to stalk him, testing Joe’s mental stamina, calling into question his rational outlook on life, and threatening to tear apart his relationship with Clarissa; all the while convincing him that Jed poses a serious threat to their safety.

What’s interesting from the off is the undercurrent of science versus religion. Our protagonist is a freelance scientific journalist. By contrast, his stalker is a religious fanatic, adamant that God has willed them together, and determined to convert Joe to the same line of thought. The dichotomy between Joe’s meticulous and rational approach to life, and Jed’s blind, overwhelming faith is stark, and serves as a major source of conflict and uncomfortable tension between the two. There’s also undoubtedly a note of critique in the way Joe’s harassment is handled, with the police uninterested given the initial lack of physical violence.

It becomes increasingly clear throughout the narrative that Joe is struggling to accept the role he played in the tragic event that began his ordeal, and to make peace with his sense of survivor’s guilt. As such, coping with trauma is another notable theme. It’s also true, however, that we can’t necessarily trust Joe as a narrator. He is telling us his story in first-person, after the fact, analysing events even as he describes them. Given that he frequently muses on the unreliability of memory, and how often people question his version of events with regards to his interactions with Jed, McEwan is clear that we shouldn’t necessarily take everything he says as gospel. This adds another interesting dynamic to the reading experience, and is represented well by this passage, which also shows McEwan’s prose at the height of its power:

‘No one could agree on anything. We lived in a mist of half-shared, unreliable perception, and our sense data came warped by a prism of desire and belief, which tilted our memories too. We saw and remembered in our own favour and we persuaded ourselves along the way. Pitiless objectivity, especially about ourselves, was always a doomed social strategy. We’re descended from the indignant, passionate tellers of half truths who in order to convince others, simultaneously convinced themselves. Over generations success had winnowed us out, and with success came our defect, carved deep in the genes like ruts in a cart track – when it didn’t suit us, we couldn’t agree on what was in front of us.’

How much is genuine harassment, and how much is self-projected victimhood, brought on to distract from latent guilt? This is the question central to Joe’s development as a character, our perception of him, and his interactions with those around him.

My only real criticism came at the end, where there is a brief section presented as an academic psychology essay, using the events of the novel as a case study. Though this is interestingly meta, given Joe’s line of work, I did find it a somewhat dry note to end on, and I can’t say it added much from a narrative standpoint.

That said, I thought this was an excellent book. I was gripped from the off by its almost unbearably drawn out recounting of the accident. This in itself was a stroke of tonal genius, perfectly capturing the sense of a horrific event playing out as though in slow motion. From there on, its look at psychosis; a relationship pushed to breaking point; and a man’s attempts to process a traumatising ordeal was utterly compelling. It reaffirmed for me how much I can enjoy McEwan’s work, and fuelled a desire to explore more of his back catalogue.

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You can pick up a copy of Enduring Love from Book Depository by clicking here. If you’ve already read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Book to Film | Before I Go to Sleep

Before I Go to Sleep’s book cover (left) and film poster (right).

Before I Go to Sleep is the story of a woman who is suffering from amnesia following a traumatic attack, who wakes each day thinking she is decades younger than she really is. Every morning, she must piece together who she is, what has happened to her, and figure out who she can trust.

Thrillers, more than any other genre, live or die by the effectiveness of their endings, and in particular the preservation of the central ‘twists’. The best thing I can say about the screen adaptation of Before I Go to Sleep is that, despite having already read the book (though admittedly it was a while ago) and therefore knowing how the story would conclude, it held my interest and gave me the feelings of tension you would want and expect from such a film.

It was, plot-wise, a very faithful adaptation, in fact. The only real change was the switch from the heroine keeping a written diary to track her memories in the book to her keeping a video diary in the film, and visually this made a lot of sense, as since this forms such a central part of the story, we would have spent a lot of time watching her silently scribbling away.

The casting choices were good, I felt, with Kidman in particular putting in a solid performance as the confused and mentally frail Christine.

The film’s principal cast, from left to right: Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth, Mark Strong and Anne-Marie Duff.

***spoiler warning***

I also felt the choice to have Colin Firth portray the villain worked well to preserve the twist, since we all tend to associate him with playing the dashing hero, and that does, at first, appear to be the role he plays in this.

***end of spoiler***

Granted, neither the book nor the film are necessarily anything especially new or ground-breaking within the genre, but as far as thriller conversions from page to screen go, I think this one fared pretty well.