JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

The Confession by Jo Spain

You find out who did it on the very first page.On the last page, you’ll find out why.

Late one night a man walks into the luxurious home of disgraced banker Harry McNamara and his wife Julie. The man launches an unspeakably brutal attack on Harry as a horror-struck Julie watches, frozen by fear. Just an hour later the attacker, JP Carney, has handed himself in to the police. He confesses to beating Harry to death, but JP claims that the assault was not premeditated and that he didn’t know the identity of his victim.

With a man as notorious as Harry McNamara, the detectives cannot help wondering, was this really a random act of violence or is it linked to one of Harry’s many sins: corruption, greed, betrayal?

The Confession by Jo Spain is an absolute page turner — a gripping psychological thriller that will leave you guessing for the entire book.

This book is not about trying to discover who committed the crime; it’s about discovering why they committed the crime. The reader ventures into the story knowing everything about the present. Harry is a disgraced banker and together, he and his wife Julie hold many secrets. And then JP bashes Harry late one night and it seems like it was for no reason.

Over the course of the novel, we are thrown into both the past and the present. We are taken back years to when Julie and Harry first met, and we discover all about their marriage troubles and Harry’s indiscretions and the crimes he committed whilst the CEO of his bank.

In the present, Alice is the detective assigned to the case and she’s having trouble believing that JP’s assault was not premeditated. She delves deeper into Harry’s past in an attempt to uncover his secrets.

The plot and structure of the book allows for an addictive read. Just when you’re reading about Harry and Julie’s wedding and the suspicious activities going on, you’re then thrust back into the present where Alice is uncovering evidence about the attack. The way this book is written means that I was desperate to keep going, and eager to get to the end of each thread to find out what happened.

“Toby was wrong. Harry wasn’t back within the week. I let him stew for a whole month…I was consumed with guilt but too full of self-pity and heartbreak to do anything about it.”

None of the characters in this book are likeable. Harry is manipulative and controlling. He may never physically harm Julie, but he does mentally. He is incredibly conniving, lying to her and twisting his words. He also encourages her to work less so that they can spend more time together, but then he isn’t home with her and she has to spend a lot of time alone. Additionally, Julie struggles to get pregnant for the years that they are together and Harry grows incredibly distant. Soon, Julie grows paranoid and becomes an alcoholic.

Julie is a weak character. She is portrayed as a person who has been so manipulated by her husband that she chooses to turn a blind eye to his bad behaviour. However, I felt like the characterisation wasn’t really there. Instead of really showing us how Julie has been brainwashed by Harry, Jo Spain tells us through Julie’s internal monologues. There’s a point in the novel where it’s really obvious that Harry is cheating on her and yet Julie decides not to witness it because once she witnesses it, then it becomes real.

“I knew I was being a coward, but I couldn’t bear physical witness to my husband cheating. I’d wait until he came back and confront him,once I’d got everybody out of the house. Once I’d summoned up the courage.”

As you can guess, she never really does confront him. She prefers to act blind to it, even though this doesn’t fit the character she was first introduced to us as. At the beginning of the novel, she’s portrayed as a strong character who refuses to be pushed around. But there seems to be no transition into this weak, timid character. Straight away, she’s being cowardice and it makes no sense to the reader. It’s actually incredibly frustrating. And then Julie says things like this and I realise she’s actually my least favourite character in the entire book:

“She’s not an ugly woman, I realize, despite her pear shape. Her hair is awful, sure. Greasy and thin, an insipid brown scraped back in a severe, unforgiving ponytail. But her face is very pleasant.”

I definitely think the second half of the book is stronger than the first half. Until about midway through the book, the reader is still blind to a lot of things, so I felt a little in the dark. Plus, Julie is so unlikable and at times I wish she were the one who was attacked. But as you read the second half of the book and Harry’s manipulation grows and Julie’s state of mind fractures even further, the details of JP’s history comes to light. We start to understand why he was there that night and how his life intersected with Julie and Harry’s. And the ending is rather satisfying.

I read this book in a matter of days. Once I’d hit that turning point halfway through the novel where things started to fall into place, I was desperate to get to the end. If you love crime and thriller novels, then you’ll love this. Just be warned: you won’t warm to any of the characters and Julie is just as frustrating as she is naive.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Confession
Jo Spain
January 2018
Hachette Publishers

The Book of Summer by Michelle Gable

Physician Bess Codman has returned to her family’s Nantucket compound, Cliff House, for the first time in four years. Her great-grandparents built Cliff House almost a century before, but due to erosion, the once-grand home will soon fall into the sea. Though she’s purposefully avoided the island, Bess must now pack up the house and deal with her mother, a notorious town rabble-rouser, who refuses to leave.

The Book of Summer unravels the power and secrets of Cliff House as told through the voices of Ruby Packard, a bright-eyed and idealistic newlywed on the eve of WWII, the home’s definitive guestbook, and Bess herself. Bess’s grandmother always said it was a house of women, and by the very last day of the very last summer at Cliff House, Bess will understand the truth of her grandmother’s words in ways she never contemplated.

The Book of Summer by Michelle Gable explores friendships, relationships, and one family’s connection to Nantucket’s Cliff House – and its secrets.

Bess Codman has just split from her husband and she has come home to move her mother Cissy out of Cliff House, which is now on the edge of its land and will soon collapse into the sea. Bess’ mother is stubborn and difficult, and the two women spend a lot of time together over the course of the novel.

Cissy and Bess are very different characters. Bess is reasonable, relatable, and level-headed. Cissy is a bull in a china shop and a dominant personality within the town. She wants to keep Cliff House and she has no problem fighting for it.

“Beth is pissed off. She can’t even track down the woman, as Cissy is about as reliable with her phone as Palmer Bradlee. Bells calls her mother repeatedly, but the kitchen counter never picks up.”

Their relationship is not perfect, and they both grow over the course of the novel and they learn to listen to each other.

Nantucket is a really lovely setting for the book; it feels enclosed and homely, but it doesn’t feel claustrophobic.

The book alternates between past and present, and we come to meet the people who have lived in Cliff House around the time of WWII. The dual storylines help drive the book and really drew me into the separate plots. I was definitely more interested in the past than the present, as truthfully, I found Cissy a little insufferable and I found the budding romance between Bess and her ex-boyfriend quite predictable.

“Evan’s voice has always been so persuasive. Deep, powerful, as if coming from his lungs, or his heart. And those earnest brown eyes, like precious heirlooms she left behind. Bless it, Bess is falling for his old schtick.”

The Book of Summer is dialogue-driven and quite slow-paced. I have to admit I didn’t fall in love with many of the characters, but I did like reading about newlywed Ruby’s story from the time of WWII. At times she came across as naive and gullible, but she also had heart and drive. I also loved Ruby’s friend Hattie Rutter, who is bright, wild, fun and a total spark. She’s a modern woman who has no interest in settling down.

All of the characters are flawed, which does make them more relatable. At times, their thoughts and actions are questionable, and you have to remind yourself that WWII was a very different time and certain actions were not considered acceptable back then.

“The photographs were, no surprise, exactly where she’d left them. Ruby removed the stack and flicked past the ones of Hattie, two of Mother unawares, and on down the the bottom of the pile. And there they were, same as before. All those pretty boys.”

I’d recommend this to readers who love historical fiction, but also small-town settings and stories from the war.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Book of Summer
Michelle Gable
January 2018
Pan Macmillan Publishers

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown

Tina Brown kept delicious daily diaries throughout her eight spectacular years as editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair. Today they provide an incendiary portrait of the flash and dash and power brokering of the Excessive Eighties in New York and Hollywood.

The Vanity Fair Diaries is the story of an Englishwoman barely out of her twenties who arrives in New York City with a dream. Summoned from London in hopes that she can save Conde Nast’s troubled new flagship Vanity Fair, Tina Brown is immediately plunged into the maelstrom of the competitive New York media world and the backstabbing rivalries at the court of the planet’s slickest, most glamour-focused magazine company. She survives the politics, the intrigue, and the attempts to derail her by a simple stratagem: succeeding. In the face of rampant skepticism, she triumphantly reinvents a failing magazine.

Here are the inside stories of Vanity Fair scoops and covers that sold millions–the Reagan kiss, the meltdown of Princess Diana’s marriage to Prince Charles, the sensational Annie Leibovitz cover of a gloriously pregnant, naked Demi Moore. In this cinematic audiobook, the drama, the comedy, and the struggle of running an “it” magazine come to life. Brown’s Vanity Fair Diaries is also a woman’s journey, of making a home in a new country and of the deep bonds with her husband, their prematurely born son, and their daughter.

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown is an astute, open-hearted, and hilarious memoir about her time as the editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair magazine.

This memoir is an inspirational book for young women, but also readers who have an interest in fashion or who want to work in fashion one day. Tina is confident, capable and courageous, and she succeeds in transforming Vanity Fair from a troubled and struggling magazine to a dominant and successful one.

“We accepted Libby’s resignation as editor of Tatler because we realised that she didn’t have your two most important attributes.” Pause. “Your looks and your lifestyle.”
What? That’s what he attributes to my turning around a magazine? I truly cannot imagine any man being told such a thing.

Considering how young Tina was when she started editing Vanity Fair, it’s really fantastic to read about her journey and how she cast aside all the prejudice against her to produce this successful magazine.

The Vanity Fair Diaries, in addition to everything else, is a really fun, gossipy read.

“The social energy of the eighties in New York was ferocious.”

In the middle of this memoir are pages and pages of images and scans from Tina’s collection. There are magazine covers and spreads from some of the first few issues, and there are photos of Tina with Tatler and Vanity Fair in its early days. It really gives you a nostalgic feel to flick through those images.

“Adding another three spreads of Lartigue is a waste of space,” I said. “I have so much great stuff to get in this issue.”
“But where’s the glory?” he replied with sudden impatience. “My dear, a magazine must know how to waste space. You have no glory in this issue.”

What I found to be a struggle in this book was all the ‘inside’ information that was lost on me. She talks about connections and personalities and the hiring and firing of prominent people in fashion, and yet, I had no idea who any of those people were.

I think this book could’ve been edited down, with a lot of the diary entries culled from the final product. At times, it felt exhausting to read this because it moved at a glacial pace.

I recommend this book to fashion lovers, but also people interested in the social landscape of the 1980s. Tina remixed the Vanity Fair magazine and it’s really interesting to read about how she did that, but it’s also really fun to read about the dinners and the parties she went to. This book is not without it’s gossip.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Vanity Fair Diaries 1983-1992
Tina Brown
October 2017
Hachette Publishers Australia

The Taste of Blue Light by Lydia Ruffles

These are the things Lux knows:
She is an Artist.
She is lucky.
She is broken.

These are the things she doesn’t know:
What happened over the summer.
Why she ended up in hospital.
Why her memories are etched in red.

Desperate to uncover the truth, Lux’s time is running out. If she cannot piece together the events of the summer and regain control of her fractured mind, she will be taken away from everything and everyone she holds dear.

If her dreams don’t swallow her first.

The Taste of Blue Light by Lydia Ruffles is a young adult novel about a young woman’s search for the truth. Lux has to search deep into her mind to remember what happened last Summer, and find out why her mind is so fractured.

This book is incandescent and at times, heartbreaking. The reader is kept in the dark — just like Lux — so with every new development and memory, we’re desperately trying to piece it all together to find out what happened to her over the summertime.

“Since I blacked out, the slightest thing seems to aggravate my brain and fill it with fire.”

Lux is not in control, and her friends struggle to help her. This book is as much about trauma and memory loss, as it is about self-discovery.

Following a traumatic event in the summer that Lux can’t remember, she suffers from terrible migraines and short bursts of rage throughout the day. Sometimes she’s verbally aggressive, and sometimes she’s physically aggressive. And she has no way of stopping it or controlling it.

She also doesn’t sleep too well, and when she does, she has nightmares and wakes up screaming. The Taste of Blue Light examines the relationship between Lux and those around her — her family and friends and also a new boy that enters her life. This book explores what it’s like for someone who is suffering mentally, and how that can have a ripple affect on the people around them.

“My stomach is chewing on itself when I wake up, as if I’ve had a fight with someone but can’t remember who.”

I found the novel to be a little slow, my concentration waning. For a long time, I wondered where this book was going, and despite the fact that Lux is intended to be an unreliable narrator with cloudy memories, I found myself lost in the plot a fair bit. Additionally, I found it unrealistic that Lux wouldn’t have found out what happened to her (no spoilers) considering the rest of the country would’ve known. I find it hard to believe that she wouldn’t have accidentally found out.

In saying that, the opening couple of chapters are really strong and draw the reader in. We come to understand Lux’s ‘voice’ and her characterisation, and the characters and their interactions with each other are definitely the strongest part of this book.

I recommend this book to fans of young adult literature, and perhaps mystery novels. This is not a thriller but it does feel a bit like a guessing game because the reader is trying to piece together all the information to find out what happened to Lux.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Taste of Blue Light
Lydia Ruffles
September 2017
Hachette Book Publishers

Did You See Melody? by Sophie Hannah

Pushed to breaking point, Cara Burrows abandons her home and family and escapes to a five-star spa resort she can’t afford. Late at night, exhausted and desperate, she lets herself into her hotel room and is shocked to find it already occupied – by a man and a teenage girl.

A simple mistake on the part of the hotel receptionist – but Cara’s fear intensifies when she works out that the girl she saw alive and well in the hotel room is someone she can’t possibly have seen: the most famous murder victim in the country, Melody Chapa, whose parents are serving life sentences for her murder.

Cara doesn’t know what to trust: everything she’s read and heard about the case, or the evidence of her own eyes. Did she really see Melody? And is she prepared to ask herself that question and answer it honestly if it means risking her own life?

Did You See Melody? is a crime novel that solves a cold case murder in the United States. Cara is swept up in the mystery when she takes some time away from her family for a break, and discovers that a young girl in the resort was supposedly murdered years earlier.

I’m going to have to walk past the two men in order to look natural. I slow my pace, hoping to hear some of their conversation, but it’s no use. The detective spotted me straight away and is saying things he’s decided it’s okay for me to hear: ‘Thanks for your help’ and ‘Worth a try, whatever the odds.’

Whilst the premise of the novel is intriguing and engaging, the characters are the weakest aspect of the novel. My favourite character was resort guest Tarin Fry because she was sharp, witty, confident and hilarious. But I felt like the other characters fell short. Bonnie Juno seemed like a stereotypical talk show host whose opinion was one-sided and whose presence in any scene was overbearing. Tarin’s daughter Zellie is spoilt and unlikable, popping up in the story when she really isn’t needed (Sophie could’ve cut her out of the story and it probably wouldn’t have made a difference).

And Cara Burrows is actually a really rubbish character — a weak, self-absorbed woman who I didn’t care for at all. She takes most of her family’s life savings and ditches them because they weren’t happy about her pregnancy. And the real reason she was unhappy was because no one asked her how she felt about the pregnancy. Any woman with a bit more backbone would’ve stood up for herself. Her whole backstory didn’t make much sense to me, and I lost respect for her within the first couple of pages:

“As I swim, I have an idea. I’m going to take some photos on the iPad Mason lent me and post them on Instagram, like I might if I were on a normal holiday, so that Jess and Olly can see I’m having a good time and there’s nothing to worry about.”

She ditches her family for two weeks but communicates with her kids via Instagram? She desperately wants to be alone for two weeks, but while she’s at the resort all she talks about is her kids and how she’s worried what they think of her. It’s kind of jolting when you’re reading it.

Another downside to the book was that it was overwritten. The first 50 pages are really slow because Sophie spends pages and pages describing the spa and the hotel. I thought I was settling in for a crime/thriller novel and yet the beginning of the book feels like a chick lit novel.

The premise of the novel is strong, and I kept reading the book because I was intrigued enough to want to find out what happens at the end. The novel switches back and forth between present day prose, to previously published newspaper articles and interview transcripts for Bonnie Juno’s show.

KH: Then, according to you, the Chapas planted the sock in Kristie Reville’s car, and also later moved it to Melody’s school bag?
BJ: Absolutely
KH: So they got lucky twice? Kristie Reville left her car unlocked twice, at two very opportune moments for Annette and Naldo Chapa?

There is a much larger mystery behind Melody’s disappearance, and it’s enjoyable reading the book trying to figure out who might be responsible.

“The sound of the key turning, the door opening: scrape, click, creak. I’ve taught myself to keep still when I hear these familiar noises. They don’t mean I’m going anywhere, or that anything will change.”

Whilst I kept reading so that I could find out the answer to the mystery, I still felt let down by this novel. I wouldn’t recommend this to crime fiction fiends. You’ll probably find yourselves disappointed. I would recommend this novel to readers who like to float between genres and aren’t too fussed with what they read, and who like a bit of mystery but aren’t overly loyal to it.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Did You See Melody?
Sophie Hannah
September 2017
Hachette Book Publishers

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