What Tana French, one of my favorite authors, has done here with The Witch Elm (her first non-Dublin Murder Squad book) is very interesting, but I will acknowledge it probably won’t be for everyone. The two starting points for inspiration on this book are Who Put Bella in the Witch Elm? and the idea of: what if your protagonist was a guy who has never had to work hard for anything in his life? And then you swirl those ideas around for a while in […]
I felt stupider after reading this
I read this a few months ago and am just now reviewing it for CBR10 Bingo. I think it fits best in the ‘Brain Candy’ slot, as I quite like reading psychological thrillers for the ‘escapism’ value–I read them fast and enjoy them then forget about them. This one also fits best under ‘candy’ because it requires no intelligent thought to read. The basic premise is thus: Laura is super posh and a super ‘devoted’ (read: overbearing) mother to her son Daniel, whose only personality […]
Män som hatar kvinnor (Men Who Hate Women)
CBR Bingo entry: And so it begins. And BINGO was his name-o! I originally considered reading this novel for the CBR Bingo square “The book was better?” because I have seen both the American and Swedish versions of the film. In fact, I saw them both on the same day. My husband and I went to see the 2011 Hollywood production starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara and appreciated it, so we decided to come home and watch the original Swedish version on Netflix. Because nothing […]
FRAMED FOR MURDER!!! (Yawn)
The Guilty Wife was an okay book. That’s where I’d like to leave this review, but I guess that’s against the rules. The Guilty Wife, like all books labeled a “psychological thriller” post Gone Girl attempts to be sly and have at least one (possibly two or three) twists. And quite frankly? I’m sick of the twists…especially when you can see the big old twist a mile away down the road. I teach a fiction writing course and I always tell the kids that […]