June Reads

My aim for the year was to read a minimum of two books each month.  A reasonable target that I have plodded along with until June when I have manged to exceed my expectations and read a whopping FOUR books.  In comparison to my younger, pre-work, years this is nothing but a definite improvement on the the last few years nonetheless.

The first book I read this month was "Needful Things" by Stephen King.

At first I found this book incredibly strange.  This was largely due to the fact that I have been using the Whispersync feature on my Kindle to connect with Audible versions of my ebooks and the Audible version had weird music on it. That almost put me off reading it I have to say!  One thing it did do was encourage me to use Kindle a lot more than the audio version of this book. Aside from that I ended up rating this 5/5 stars on Goodreads.

The consistent characters (Leland Gaunt and Alan Pangborn) were enough to give the plot stability in a novel where there was a lot of characters and lots of sub-plots all feeding into the actual story.  At first I found the jumping between characters and use of a third person narrative a little bit tricky but all too soon I was engrossed in the world manipulated by Gaunt.

In terms of the fear factor this was MUCH creepier than "It" and probably on par with "The Shining" for me.  Leland Gaunt's character really, truly got under my skin.  There were sections of character description so vivid that I felt like Gaunt could walk off the pages and appear in front of me. This is one that I will probably go back to read again in the future because I feel like there were chunks of the story that were revisited at the end that I had not given a lot of thought or consideration to but that would help the story make more sense towards the end. This book truly left me with the chills from start to finish.

My next June read was the first of two book club reads. That is "Red Queen" by Victoria Aveyard which was a 4/5 star rating for me but I think would probably be nearer a 3 in hindsight.

This was a fantasy novel which, to be honest, is not a genre I have been engaging with much in the past few years. The world is based around a dystopian society in which the population is split into two categories: silver bloods and red bloods.  The red bloods are treated as inferior and are forced into the more menial jobs in society.  The silver bloods are all equipped with special talents/powers which is what makes them superior.

The book was a really quick read for me but it was one that I had mixed feelings about. The characters were very difficult to connect with initially and a lot of what the main character (Mare) does seems insincere and does not make sense.  The plot is up and down and sometimes lacks a real sense of direction because it is doing so much in a short space of time.  For me the plot twists are too transparent throughout and I felt let down by the fact that these twists were fairly obvious and, as a result, I could easily predict the ending.  I HATE that in a book I must say.

The main redeeming quality of this book was the fact that the author had built such an amazing setting for her story to develop through.  I felt the setting was the one thing that really pulled this story up.

My second book club read of the month was "After the Crash" by Michel Bussi. This book could not have less than a 5/5 star review from me. I absolutely loved it.

This was a novel steeped in mystery.  It follows the search to find the identity of a baby who survived a terrible plane crash which killed everyone else on the plane.  As it happens, there were two babies of similar ages who were on the plane which casts doubt on which the survivor could be.

The characters created by Bussi were so advanced and realistic made me feel like they were real people living somewhere in France.  Very quickly this book had me totally engaged in the mystery and making excuses to take every spare moment to read further on.  The characters all had realistic flaws which made them more relatable.  I think the fact that the romantic aspect of this novel was so far removed from the main plot meant that it was not all cheesy and soppy but it was one I was rooting for to succeed.

At no point in the novel did I figure out the ending which bodes well for me.  I did struggle with the personality of the private investigator who was retelling the events of the life of the girl as she grew up.  There was some really weird sexual references that he made that were very sporadic but also SO creepy. This novel was nothing short of fantastically written.  I will be very surprised if this does not end up on my top 10 reads of the year.

Finally for June I read "11/22/63" by Stephen King.  This left me with real mixed feelings aswell and I only gave it 3/5 stars.

So what did this book do well? As with any Stephen King books, the main thing that stands out is his character development.  Jake Epping is a great protagonist and I really enjoy being in his head for the journey through time that he goes on.  His moral journey is as important as the physical trips that he takes.   The events of the story throw his moral judgement into question and as I read through it I was rooting for him to succeed but also a little bit hoping that he would be selfish and follow his heart.

This King novel dipped into several other storylines from his books including "It" and "Needful Things" mainly through the settings it used in bits and pieces.  There was a lot of cross-overs which, actually, I really liked.

The main flaws I found with this novel was that, in contrast to "Needful Things", it was just not very creepy. I think I expected a lot from this because I love historical fiction and this was something a little different because of the time travel element.  I think that King was far too indulgent with his character which meant that the plot was very slow moving and took a while to get to.  There was a lot of this story that could have been taken out and the story would have been just as good and the meaning would not be lost without these parts.

I think for now I am putting Stephen King to one side until I have gotten through some other authors.

My next post (hopefully this weekend) will be my June book haul. Pre-warning: it could be a LONG post - I went a bit daft!

Meg x