Review: One for Sorrow

One for Sorrow by Helen Sarah Fields
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I received an ARC of this book.

This book made me gasp in the first several pages! It was action-packed, full of tension, and told a very poignant story.
DCI Ava Turner has vowed to find the killer of one of her very dearest friends. It appears that a crazed bomber has let loose a reign of terror on Edinburgh and is setting up intricate yet horribly devastating bombs all over the city with mass casualties. Turner and her team, including DI Luc Callanach, must do their best to find who is responsible before even more damage is done. In the meantime, another storyline, which takes place "Before," details Quinn, a young woman with a kind heart who is seeking to find her place in the world as an adult and as part of her family. The reader has to wonder how exactly sweet Quinn fits into the story of a bomber who is not afraid to deal out tragedy and gruesome death to dozens of people at a time.
This book moves at an incredibly fast pace. Turner and her team are doing their best to track down a smart and meticulous killer who always seems to be one step ahead of the authorities. This is contrasted very well with the story of Quinn as her relationships with her friends and family develop and change. As the plot progresses things begin to fall right into place, but I don't want to give away any spoilers, so I will leave it at that.
The only flaw that really stood out to me were the few slow spots in the book. These dealt with the backstory between Ava, Luc, and their best friend Natasha. Because this is the first book in the series I have read, the backstory didn't really resonate with me as much as it probably would someone who has read the other books in the series. So I won't count it against the book, and I will most likely look for other titles in the series, because I really enjoyed this one.
If you are looking for a gripping thriller with twists and turns that you won't see coming, definitely check this book out.

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Review: Who Took Eden Mulligan?

Who Took Eden Mulligan? by Sharon Dempsey
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I received an ARC of this book.
I wanted to like this book, and I tried to like this book, but I just didn't. And I was disappointed.
The story opens with a young woman, covered in blood, confessing to the murders of at least 3 other people. When the police go to investigate the cottage where the crime was committed, they find a reference to a missing persons case from decades ago. What happened, why did this young woman confess, and what does this all have to do with the long-ago disappearance of Eden Mulligan?
I think the problem for me was that I wanted to have all of these questions answered and the author was too busy dredging up back-story on the two main characters, Rose and Danny. Backstory should be revealed in an organic way, and not told to the reader in a surface-level repetitive manner. I got bored and frustrated, waiting for Rose, Danny, and the rest of the investigators to start INVESTIGATING the crime instead of sitting around thinking about things that happened at university or in their childhoods or in their past investigations. Rose didn't like her mother--we get it. Danny messed up when investigating his last case--we get it. Both Danny and Rose have unresolved feelings toward each other--we get it. I really wanted them to stop ruminating over things in their heads and thinking about what they should or should not do/have done and DO SOME POLICE WORK.
I don't think I would recommend this book. It had creepy, gritty potential, but then got lost somewhere in a misguided attempt at fleshing out the main characters. Constantly being told about the characters instead of being shown just made me bored.

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Review: Mrs England

Mrs England by Stacey Halls
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received an ARC of this book.
I am not quite sure how to rate or review this book. It was well-written and drew me into the story. But it was also very slow-paced and I don't think it's going to stay with me for very long. Once I got to the very end, I wasn't sure what the point of everything was. It just kind of left me shrugging my shoulders, but not really invested enough to spend much more time thinking about it.
This book, despite its title, focuses on Ruby, the newly employed nurse to the England family. Ruby moves to their isolated house and does her best to take care of what turns out to be slightly neglected children. Their mother, Mrs. England, seems to be forgetful at best and completely out of touch with reality at worst. She doesn't seem to have or want much of a relationship with her children, and much of the running of the household falls to her husband, Mr. England. Ruby is able to get the nursery back into tip-top shape and creates a wonderful routine for her charges, but begins to wonder if something isn't very wrong in the England home when things go missing, she intercepts enigmatic glances, and various disasters are narrowly averted. Is there something truly wrong with Mrs. England? Is Mr. England hiding secrets?
The author did a wonderful job of creating a setting and drawing the reader into an upper-class home at the turn of the 20th century. The world of Ruby May was described in great detail--almost too much detail. A great portion of the book was spent on describing washing nappies or combing out hair or making sure the pram was ready to be taken out. It got a bit repetitive and slightly boring. There were so many obscure mentions of little "clues" in the story that got lost by the wayside of the "daily life in an early 1900s nursery" that I got frustrated and needed a bit more meat and a lot less filler. This really threw off the pacing of the book. The real "story" of the book became more and more ephemeral as it went on and I wasn't sure where I should be grasping at it and what was a red herring or just a detail mentioned in passing. There were also quite a few weird interactions between the characters that I wasn't sure what was supposed to be important and what was just strange.
This wasn't a bad book, it was just slow and felt slightly disjointed. I liked Ruby and I was rooting for her, even if I didn't always agree with her decisions. I will say that I wasn't quite sure what to make of the last three sentences in the book.
If you like VERY slow-burning gothic mysteries, maybe this is the book for you. I don't think it was the book for me, though.

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