~The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Taylor Jenkins Reid At 79, Evelyn Hugo has spent her adult life as a Hollywood darling. Now that everyone important to her is dead, she has decided to put a tell-all memoir of her life out into the world… to be published posthumously. Evelyn knows her story will be a hot commodity: after years of her life playing out in the media she then chose to hide herself away in relative anonymity. It is something of a surprise then that she hires an unknown journalist to write the book. Evelyn grew up poor and trades her virginity at 15 for a ride to Hollywood and from this point on there isn’t much she wont do to get what she wants. Keen to make it big she changes her name, dyes her hair blonde and stops speaking Spanish in an attempt to hide her Cuban roots. She finds an agent who also becomes a life long friend. And she marries. And then she marries again. And again. And again. But yes, while we learn all about Evelyn’s seven husbands the stories are not what you might imagine. And that’s the real magic of this book. It never takes you where you think you’re going to go. There are layers upon layers that are peeled back and threaded through it all is a much deeper and serious topic which examines the question of living an authentic life and the search for identity. At 79, Evelyn remains unapologetic about using her looks as a bargaining tool and holds no remorse for any of the things she has done to either protect herself or those she loves. And yes, at times she isn’t a terribly nice person and some of her decisions are a little controversial, but you can’t help but stand up and cheer for her fierce spirit and unabashed candour. Running throughout, but never really pulled into full focus until the very end, is the question of why Evelyn hired Monique, a relative unknown in the journalism world and someone with no real status at the magasine she works at. There are two reasons, as it turns out, both of which play perfectly into the storyline. One is more subtle, the other arrives with a bang. So yes, this is indeed a big, fat juicy Hollywood tale, drowning in scandal and secrets. But it is so much more than that. It is a well-crafted, old fashioned story with hidden depths and unexpected intricacies.
~The Woman In Cabin 10 Ruth Ware Laura “Lo” Blackwood is a travel reporter who gets an assignment to write about a week long cruise on an exclusive ship. Before she leaves however, her house is burgled, she comes face to face with this man in her home and consequently begins her trip traumatised. We also know that Laura has suffered from anxiety in the past and takes medication for it. All of this, of course, sets our narrator up as unreliable. Can we trust her? Are events real or is Laura simply losing her grip on reality? On the first night, Lo is awakened to noise from cabin 10 next door. Was that a scream she heard? Was that the sound of someone being thrown overboard? Lo is certainly convinced that it was despite the staff telling her that there is no-one in cabin 10. Our intrepid Lo is a journalist, however, and while she doubts herself plenty, she pushes forward with questions. For various reasons, she has no idea who to trust so she feels isolated and the fact that all of this is playing out on a ship, lends an air of claustrophobia to everything. The twist we have all come to expect with “grip-lit”arrives somewhere in the middle and it’s pretty clever. As with most books of this type it is really hard to say much without giving the game away. Suffice it to say this wasn’t a book that left me pissed off, which automatically makes it halfway decent. It’s fast paced and engaging with little in the way of completely ridiculous shenanigans. And to be perfectly honest, I’m convinced that the outcome of these books relies entirely on the mood you’re in. In a bad mood? Then twists, details and explanations can be irksome and annoying and makes you pick holes in the story until all you’re left with is a block of Swiss cheese. In a good mood? Then your generosity of spirit enables you to gloss over all of these things and just enjoy the ride. For The Woman in Cabin 10 I (mostly) enjoyed the ride.
~Into The Water Paula Hawkins For anyone not particularly taken with The Girl on the Train and is reading this book with trepidation, let me tell you, author Paula Hawkins does not make it easy on you. Into The Water is pretty difficult to get into. The first few chapters go back and forth between a good dozen or so characters, frequently comprising just one or two pages before jumping to someone else. Not only does it feel disjointed but having to flip back and forth to figure out who’s who gets very annoying. What doesn’t help is that there isn’t a great distinction between characters so everyone sounds the same. However, something that I failed to notice until about fifty pages from the end is that the name of the person who is currently telling the story is written at the top of the page. This really helps. At least when you set the book aside for a bit and then struggle to recall who’s talking, a quick glance to the top of the page sets you straight. As always I found myself a smidge irritated by the typical style of a thriller, taunted by bits of information parsed out over pages and the deliberate vagueness that’s necessary to move the plot forward while not giving too much away. Having said all of that, at around page 80 or so the book kind of fell into itself. Once you have all the characters squared away the story starts to reveal itself and I thought it wasn’t half bad. A woman, Nel, and a teenage girl, Katie, both drown, months apart, in a river in a small northern England town. Nel is survived by her 15 year old daughter, Lena, and Nel’s sister Jules arrives home to take care of Lena who is reeling from the death of both her mother and best friend, Katie. Both deaths were deemed suicides, but were they really? The part of the river where they died is known as the Drowning Pool as years prior it was where witches were drowned. You can’t help wondering of course, if a supernatural element is going to play out. There is an odd bird in town, Nickie, who considers herself something of a psychic and has a few things to say. My lips are sealed on that score though. Far be it from me to spoil the fun. Obviously the river and water play a huge role in the book, having impacted most of the characters in some way. But if The Girl on the Train was all about an unreliable narrator, Into the Water is more about unreliable memories. It is key to the relationship, or lack thereof, between Nel and Jules and also to Sean, a detective in the novel whose mother died many years before. And in true thriller style, all the storylines, the deaths of Nel and Katie and also the past death of Sean’s mother, criss-cross and tangle, to be finally straightened out. Overall, I thought this was a good solid read. The rather urgent, feverish pitch of Girl on the Train is replaced with something I found to be more mature and grown up — a much slower burn. This will please some and annoy others I imagine. What impressed me the most was Ms. Hawkins solid grasp on the ways teenagers think and feel, for the story of Katie and Lena is pretty central to the storyline, and something that could easily have been trite felt authentic. The other storyline, involving Jules and her childhood perception of an event and how her sister handled, resulting in the breakdown of their relationship, also rang true. For me, these two things helped override any wobbly bits.
