JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

The Russian Wife by Barry Maitland

When the Russian wife of the owner of one of the most valuable private collections of modern art in the UK is found dead, Detective Chief Inspector David Brock is drawn into a high-stakes world very different to his own. From the dealers and galleries in London’s West End, his investigations take him to Hanover, Miami and New York on the trail of international forgery and fraud.

At the same time, his old colleague Detective Chief Inspector Kathy Kolla, who now leads one of the Metropolitan Police Murder Investigation teams, finds herself at the wrong end of a corruption charge. With her whole career in the balance, she will do almost anything to clear her name.

Barry Maitland’s The Russian Wife is an extension of his well-loved crime series, following UK detectives David Brock and Kathy Kolla. Whilst this may be the 14th novel featuring these characters, Barry offers required explanation when referencing old storylines so that new readers don’t feel lost.

A standard police procedural, the core crime is about the apparent suicide of a Russian woman. But soon, when her lover also appears to commit suicide, it becomes clear there’s more to the story than what’s on the surface.

“They moved back out to the hall and Julian went upstairs to continue his search. Brock waited in the hallway, wondering what Miki had taken from the house in such a hurry; his mother’s computer?”

The Russian Wife is heavily embedded in the world of fine art and art fraud. Strengths include characterisation, particularly the secondary characters. Whilst it’s clear that the Russian wife’s death was not suicide at all, there are quite a few people in her life that could’ve been responsible so it does provide quite a bit of intrigue.

Whilst Barry’s writing style appears quite direct and perhaps flat, it does suit the genre well because it keeps the story stripped and fast-paced. We’re not bogged down by the writing or the prose — only relevant information is kept.

“The following day, Friday, Brock sat at his computer studying Miki Babington’s police record — three separate convictions for drug possessions and supply, two as a juvenile. He’d been lucky to avoid jail time.”

The book is let down by its Kathy Kolla storyline — it doesn’t tie in with the rest of the novel at all. She’s hunting a serial killer, and then suddenly suspended from her job over suspicion of corruption, but the problem appears to solve itself rather quickly without Kathy really doing anything. And then the storyline ends.

It’s incredibly lazy writing and completely unrealistic. The monologue confession is almost too easy, and then when the storyline wraps up Kathy merely moves on and it feels like the entire first half of the book was for nothing. It doesn’t feel like the two characters — Kathy and Brock — are working seamlessly in the book. They’re in conflict, and I think readers will feel disappointed with the plotting.

“Molly listed the three things that were necessary for an artwork to be recognised as authentic: an expert scholar of that artist’s work would have to agree that it looked right; forensic tests would have to confirm that the age and character of the work’s materials were appropriate; and there should be documentation connecting the present owner back to the artist in order to establish provenance.”

Fans of Barry’s works will enjoy this latest offering, but I do think seasoned crime and thriller readers will find themselves a little let down by the plotting of The Russian Wife.

Readership skews male, 30+

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

The Russian Wife
Barry Maitland
December 2021
Allen & Unwin Book Publishers

Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult

Diana O’Toole is perfectly on track. She will be married by thirty, done having kids by thirty-five, and move out to the New York City suburbs, all while climbing the professional ladder in the cutthroat art auction world. She’s not engaged just yet, but she knows her boyfriend Finn, a surgical resident, is about to propose – days before her thirtieth birthday. Right on time.

But now she is stranded, alone on what was planned to be a romantic idyll with Finn. Unfortunately, Finn is trapped thousands of miles away, and Diana is on one of the world’s most beautiful islands with no food, no luggage, and no place to stay, forced to test her personal limits to survive.

Struggling to find her feet, Diana gradually connects with a local family when a teenager with a secret opens up to her. As Diana helps her fight her demons she learns more about herself, and about the islands of Galapagos, where Darwin developed his theory of evolution. The dramatic and sometimes dangerous terrain reflects Diana’s own experiences, her new relationships and growing awareness that she too is evolving into someone quite different.

A near-death experience brings Diana abruptly back to familiar city surroundings, where she tries to pick up the threads of her old life. Has she changed or have the people around her? Diana is no longer prepared to be just a follower, at work or in her relationships. She breaks down years of estrangement with her mother, takes the initiative in her career, and looks at Finn through new eyes.

Jodi Picoult’s latest novel Wish You Were Here follows art-enthusiast Diana after she’s stranded on a secluded beach holiday. Back at home in NYC, her surgeon boyfriend is realising first-hand how rampant and dangerous COVID is. Spending time with the locals forces Diana to re-evaluate the kind of life she thought she wanted.

From reading the blurb, I wasn’t expecting a COVID book. Diana is stranded in the Galapagos because she travels there without her boyfriend and then the world shuts down. Whilst I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of reading a COVID story — we’ve all lived through it enough for a lifetime — this story does feel universal. We can all imagine what that’d be like, getting stuck halfway across the world. We know how easily it can happen, considering how easily borders can shut — how soon places can be locked down.

“The ocean is flirting with the shore, rushing over it and then retreating. A movement draws my attention as a ragged outcropping of rock suddenly animates — not lava rock, as it turns out, but a tangle of marine iguanas that slide into the waves, diving down.”

The strength of this book lies in its depiction of COVID-19, the pandemic, and life on the front line for healthcare workers. Diana’s boyfriend is a surgeon and initially unphased when COVID infiltrates the USA. But, over time, through emails he writes to Diana, we come to understand the full extent of what COVID is like inside those hospital walls. For most of us, this is the most insight we’ll ever get, and Jodi tackles the pandemic with compassion and sensitivity. I’m sure she’ll have many readers who lost a loved one to COVID-19, and perhaps reading this latest novel might help them understand that what happened was completely outside their control.

Other strengths include how easily Jodi captures characters and their conflicts. Over time, Diana starts to question her job, her career, and her relationship, and the turmoil is handled realistically. Additionally, Jodi leaves each chapter and section with an opportunity of observation for reflection. This encourages readers to keep turning the page, feeling invited into the storyline.

“The sound comes from behind me and when I whip around, the spray of water keeps me from seeing anything. I turn away and it happens again. But this time when I turn, I’m a foot away from the curious stare of a sea lion. His eyes are black and soulful, his whiskers bob.”

Admittedly the love story between Diana and Gabriel didn’t quite feel realistic — I couldn’t help but feel it was a little rushed, as the climax of their story neared. And the friendship between Diana and Beatriz, and how Diana prompts Gabriel to re-connect with his daughter over her sexuality, felt a little didactic in its dialogue and interactions. Some of Jodi’s previous books I haven’t really liked as much because they felt a bit preach-y, and Diana and Beatriz’s relationship felt like a similar vein.

As the novel is split into two sections, Diana’s story in the Galapagos had to be established, developed and wrapped within a much shorter time frame and it did feel like there was room for expansion.

“I think of Finn, telling me to leave New York City. I think of the paid-in-full room waiting for me within walking distance of these docks. If the island is locking down for two weeks, then they must be assuming that’s how long it will take for the virus to be controlled.”

Timely and atmospheric, Wish You Were Here is part life story and part romance. It’ll make you miss international travel, and life before COVID. Although please note this book is heavily embedded within the pandemic, and some people won’t be interested in reading about it. Readership skews female, 25+

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

Wish You Were Here
Jodi Picoult
November 2021
Allen & Unwin Book Publishers

The Stranger in the Lifeboat by Mitch Albom

Adrift in a raft after a terrible shipwreck, ten strangers struggle to survive while they wait for rescue.

After three days, short on water, food and hope, they spot a man floating in the waves. They pull him on board – and the survivor claims he can save them.

But should they put their trust in him? Will any of them see home again? And why did the ship really sink?

Atmospheric and imaginative, Mitch Albom’s The Stranger in the Lifeboat is quite a compact novel – at just over 250 pages in a gorgeous hardback, ten shipwreck survivors try to last in a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean. Days turns to weeks, and soon their supplies are running low. When they pull in a stranger floating in the ocean, he claims to be God – the group are more worried about sharing their rations than they are about understanding where he’s come from.

The story moves back and forth between past and present. In the past, the ten survivors are on the water trying their best to last. One of them, a man named Benji, narrates this perspective and writes his experiences in a notebook. In the present, someone discovers an empty lifeboat along a secluded beach and inside is a notebook detailing what happened on that lifeboat. As the novel progresses, we come to understand what happened to the survivors and how that lifeboat ended up on the beach – empty.

“I grabbed the safety rope along its side. Whoever had been waving that flashlight was gone. I can only imagine he or she was thrown off by those waves. I tried to look for a body in the water, but another wave began curling into form, so I gripped the rope with both hands, and instantly I was tossed again.”

Mitch’s writing is poignant and the premise is enough to entice and engage until the final pages. The story and the characters’ survival is surprisingly detailed, and I found Benji’s narration inviting and compelling. You’re drawn into their secrets, and the overarching mystery around how the luxury ship sunk is a plot device designed to keep you turning pages until the very end.

Whilst not all survivors in the lifeboat are memorable, they’re not meant to be. Naturally, not everyone is going to survive until rescue, so Mitch keeps the focus centred on pivotal characters – Benji, Lambert, God, and a silent young girl called Alice.

The other pivotal storyline is that of Chief Inspector Jarty LeFleur, who is determined to find out what happened to the survivors when an empty lifeboat washes up on a deserted beach. He is still grieving the tragic death of his daughter, and the resulting estrangement from his devastated wife. Studying the lifeboat and the notebook he finds inside allows him to come to terms with what happened to his family.

“The proper protocol was to replace the bag immediately and call in higher authorities. Pass it up. Step out of the way. LeFleur knew this. But he also knew the moment he called his bosses, he would be excluded from the process.”

Admittedly, interwoven throughout the story are news reports that felt incredibly jarring. News reporters would reflect on some of the victims of the sunken ship by detailing their life to date, and I found it didn’t add anything to the overall story – to be honest, I skipped these parts entirely. Additionally, these sections interrupted the narrative flow and the pacing, taking us out of the lifeboat and somewhere else entirely – I was always interested in the survivors more than the media element of the book.

Another area of the book I couldn’t quite get behind was the dialogue and language from the character claiming to be the ‘Lord’. At times, what he said felt caricature and stereotypical, and it detracted from the otherwise-engaging scenes.

“We made vain attempts at catching fish – from trying to club them to trying to grab them over raft sides – but without a hook, there is not much chance.”

Recommended for readers of short fiction and short stories – literary readers may also find something to love in these pages. Readership skews 30+

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

The Stranger in the Lifeboat
Mitch Albom
November 2021
Hachette Book Publishers

The New Hustle: Don’t Work Harder, Just Work Better by Emma Isaacs

What if we’ve been served a big, fat lie about what it takes to be successful at work?

Pro-hustlers will tell you living in a work-more, sleep-less world is how we get ahead. But on the back of the pandemic, entrepreneur and Business Chicks founder Emma Isaacs believes the hustle is now dead. Moreover, traditional ways of working – long commutes, unproductive meetings and outdated systems of bureaucracy – actually don’t work at all.

Emma believes we don’t have to work harder; we just need to work better. In fact, we can slash our hours, take shortcuts and still get more done – without feeling depleted. By becoming more intentional and reimagining the way we work, we can rewrite the old work rules and reinvigorate our lives.

The New Hustle condenses Emma’s wisdom into 77 anti-rules for maximum dip-in-and-out efficiency. Drawing inspiration from her team, the member of Business Chicks and the many entrepreneurs and leaders who have graced the Business Chicks stage – from Elizabeth Gilbert to Simon Sinek – she guides us towards embracing radical flexibility, making quick decisions and working smarter, from the emails we craft to the talent we recruit . . . and say no to the things that don’t matter, so we can say yes to the things that do.

Written with humour, insight and a serving of tough love, The New Hustle is your go-to for more productive, creative and meaningful work by one of Australia’s most unconventional and effective entrepreneurs: a bestselling author, mum of six – and a woman determined to start an anti-hustle revolution.

Emma Isaac’s The New Hustle is the latest addition to a long suite of go-to business guides with practical, useful advice to people working within a professional environment. The New Hustle will also suit readers wanting to pursue a new passion — people who are perhaps afraid to take a leap towards something different.

Given we’re eighteen months into COVID-19, there’s a lot of content in here that feels relevant and timely. Businesses have had to learn how to adapt to the pandemic, and Emma’s inclusion of COVID makes the book a welcome inclusion in this genre.

“Making better deals is not just about making more money. It’s about being able to enjoy our work more and it’s about being able to truly work smarter and not harder. Sometimes to make a better deal you just need to be a bit more creative and think of alternative ways to structure it.”

There is an element of vulnerability to this book — it’s as much about advice and rules as it is about Emma revealing the lessons that she has learned throughout her career. She’s experienced hardship and failure, and she doesn’t shy away from introspection and delving into personal stories.

The book is broken up into short chapters to allow for easy reading — you’ll devour this very quickly. I can imagine many of Emma’s fans, particularly members of Business Chicks, will enjoy having this on a bookshelf for the odd occasion that you need some life tips.

“Sometimes we’re so used to something being normal, we forget to interrogate why we’re going along with it in the first place. A great example of this is the work hours that most workplaces accept as normal.”

Whilst there is plenty of advice and wisdom in here that readers can take away from, if you’re the kind of reader who regularly delves into these kind of books, you will find a bit of similarity here. There were a couple of nuggets in this book that I felt I hadn’t read before, but some of this is common sense and I wonder if the target audience of this book might already know what they’re reading.

Something else I felt when reading this book is that it seems to mostly serve people who work in management roles, rather than professional workers who are lower down the pecking order within the business. There’s a chapter about companies needing to adapt work hours to reflect contemporary lifestyle — great! love it! but that’s not a decision I can make, nor is my boss. We’re a company with thousands of employees. Ideally, we’d need the CEO to read this book.

It felt like the book never really settled on the type of reader it was speaking to. Is this for creative people wanting to start their own business? Is this for bosses? Management? Is this for entry-level workers wanting to move up? What about middle-level? Each category of reader may find something relevant in this book, but interest will differ depending on what chapter you’re on.

What does feel different about The New Hustle are the personal experiences, the anecdotes, and the life lessons along the way. Whilst sometimes, and it’s just sometimes, Emma tells a story from a time she did something ‘right’ and it comes off like a humble brag, it is nice to have examples tied to most of her advice so that we can gain further understanding. It is also refreshing when authors admit what they’ve struggled with over the years, how they’ve failed, and the lessons they’ve picked up along the way.

“Another great way to keep in touch with the people who matter to you is just to drop them a short email from time to time. I do this regularly with our members. I’m never after anything from them, but a random, unexpected note to say ‘I’m thinking of you’ can go a long way towards making others feel great and building upon a relationship.”

Recommended for readers wanting some direct advice on their career, and how to achieve what they want. Readership skews female, 35+

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

The New Hustle
Emma Isaacs
September 2021
Pan Macmillan Book Publishers

The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang

When violinist Anna Sun accidentally achieves career success with a viral YouTube video, she finds herself incapacitated and burned out from her attempts to replicate that moment. And when her long-time boyfriend announces that he wants an open relationship before making a final commitment, a hurt and angry Anna decides if he wants an open relationship, then she does, too. Translation: She’s going to embark on a string of one-night stands. The more unacceptable the men, the better.

That’s where tattooed, motorcycle-riding Quan Diep comes in. Their first attempt at a one-night stand fails, as does their second and their third, because being with Quan is more than sex-he accepts Anna on an unconditional level that she herself has just begun to understand.

However, when tragedy strikes Anna’s family, she takes on a role that she is ill-suited for, until the burden of expectations threatens to destroy her. Anna and Quan have to fight for their chance at love, but to do that they also have to fight for themselves.

Helen Hoang’s The Heart Principle is both a contemporary romance novel and commercial women’s fiction novel exploring identity, self-sacrifice and belonging. The second half of the novel painfully explores the role of family expectations and caregiving.

Protagonist and violinist Anna is struggling with her music — after experiencing viral fame, she feels her music is riddled with errors. She’s also struggling to connect with her family, and her sister’s continued disinterest and disregard for Anna’s feelings creates friction between them. Anna’s connection with Qual after an intended one night stand allows her to confront her insecurities and her hesitations (particularly relating to intimacy), and work to understand herself a little better.

“There’s a confidence and relaxed coordination in the way he moves that suggests he’s been in a few fights — and won them. Have I lost my mind that this is intensely appealing to me, that hint of danger?”

Helen’s strength lies in her narration and voice. Written in first person, Anna’s voice offers reflection at key moments. She’s wise and intelligent, and she’s considerate. Too considerate. She puts others before herself, and she doesn’t quite understand how unhappy she is — how she’s not living the life she wants.

For most of the novel, Anna battles with herself as she tries to overcome her music struggles and her family’s judgement of her. When Anna’s psychologist tells her that she’s likely autistic, it allows Anna the chance to understand who she really is, and how she can progress in her personal life and her career.

Many readers will understand that multi-faceted feeling of pressure — from family, partners, career, and society. Sometimes we are our own worst enemy, so it’s nice to feel reassured about who you are and where you are in life.

“Parts of me don’t look quite right anymore. That’s the simple truth and something that I feel I need to explain. There’s also the other thing, the thing that I haven’t told anyone yet, because it’s awkward and it sucks and sometimes it still makes me cry.”

Admittedly, the novel does a bit like a clash between priorities. Is this a romance first and foremost? The first half certainly feels like it, but the second half almost feels like a different story. I’m not saying it’s not enjoyable — I binged the book in one day — but it did feel a bit like a jolt as I made my way through the story. The progression of Anna and Quan’s romance certainly felt predictable, and the ending foreseeable.

Personally, I loved that Anna’s relationship with her sister was left unresolved at the end of the novel. It shows that not everything can be fixed or wrapped up in life, and that sometimes relationships can remain broken.

“His words catch me off guard, and I stare at him for a moment. I need to run, to escape, to crumple up tonight like a ruined sketch and start with a fresh sheet. And he’s telling me not to. Worse than that, he makes perfect sense. And he’s smiling again, taking my breath away and making me stupid.”

Heartwarming with a lot of soul and charm, The Heart Principle is recommended for fans of romance and commercial women’s fiction. I can see YA readers loving this as well. Readership skews female, 20+

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

The Heart Principle
Helen Hoang
September 2021
Allen & Unwin Book Publishers