Bogormen

Title: Thyme Out (also published as "Second Thyme Around")
Author: Katie Fforde
Genre: Chick-lit
Rating: 2.5/5
# pages: 384
Date read: May, 2016

When Perdita Dylan delivers her baby vegetables to a local hotel and finds that her unpredictable ex-husband, Lucas, has taken over the kitchen, she is horrified - particularly when she discovers he's being groomed as the latest celebrity chef and needs her picturesque, if primitive cottage, and her, in supporting roles.

Her life is further complicated when Kitty, her 87-year-old friend, has a stroke. Perdita needs someone to lean on - and Lucas seems so keen to help that she starts to wonder if he's really such a villain. Can she cope with all this alone? Or should she face up to the fact that 'You can't cuddle lettuces'?


It's difficult for me to give this a fair rating, as the different parts of the book were of so very, VERY varied quality.

The first 100 pages infuriated me, and I felt like tossing it across the room. If it hadn't come very highly recommended by people whose opinions I trust, I wouldn't have gotten any further. But I stuck with it, and fortunately it improved, until the last 100 pages, where I had a very had time putting the book down. So with the first 100 pages deserving just 1 star, and the last 100 pages deserving 4 stars, I decided to average it out.

My problems with the book can be boiled down to just one thing - lack of boundaries. In those first 100 pages, Perdita decides she knows better than Lucas how to run his restaurant ("Oh, but she did it for a good cause!" Grrr. So what if she did? That doesn't give her the right! Lucas would have had every right to fire Janey because of it), and Lucas stomps all over Perditia's boundaries not one, not two, but three times. But because he turns around and helps her with Kitty, we're supposed to just forget all of that? In any real-life relationship where somebody behaved like this, I'd call red flags all over the place. Seriously, the "jerk with a heart of gold" trope is getting old. The good things he does later, don't cancel out his jerk'ish behaviour earlier.

*Sigh*

Fortunately after the first 100 pages both Perditia's and Lucas' behaviour improved, and the plot turned a lot more enjoyable, so I no longer considered giving it up as a DNF. I was still slightly disappointed in it, as I'd had it recommended to me as a "foodie novel" which wasn't the case at all - it was a romance, plain and simple. Sure, one of the characters worked in a restaurant, but that part took up a LOT less page-space than I had expected. I also wish we'd have gotten to see Roger's reaction to getting his comeuppance, but that's a minor detail.

All in all, not a book I'd recommend. But if you do end up reading it, try to just ignore the first 100 pages, and the rest of the book will be a lot better for it.

Title: The Fun Family
Author: Benjamin Frisch
Genre: Graphic Novel
Rating: 1/5
# pages: 240
Date read: May, 2016

Beloved cartoonist Robert Fun has earned a devoted following for his circle-shaped newspaper comic strip, celebrating the wholesome American family by drawing inspiration from his real home life... but the Fun Family bears some dark secrets. As their idyllic world collapses and the kids are forced to pick up the pieces, can they escape the cycle of art imitating life imitating art?


I received this book as an ARC in return for an honest review.

Let's get the good stuff out of the way first - I liked the style of the drawings in this, even if it did get difficult to tell Mike and Robby apart at times, and the mother's face had a weird shape.

There. That was it.

There was literally nothing I enjoyed about this comic. I kept reading it, under the assumption that it just HAD to get better eventually... but it never did. Instead it ended on an extreme low, that just made me push the book away in disgust.

Full disclosure - I don't know Benjamin Frisch, and have no clue if the Fun family is based on a newspaper comic strip of some kind. If that's the case, I can see Benjamin Frisch getting so tired of his own story, that he felt the need to write a book about their life going to hell in a hand basket, in order to get some sort of therapeutic release. That would make sense, and that would make the book make sense. It wouldn't make it any more enjoyable, but at least I'd understand what he was trying to do.

Instead what I got was a book full of dysfunctional adults and only marginally less dysfunctional kids. Until the very end, I'd sort of expected that the grandmother's ghost would help the family get back on their feet again, but instead she just introduced a whole new level of weirdness into their lives.

The parents were the worst though. They kept making bad decision after bad decision, leaving the kids to bear the brunt of it and pick up the pieces. I wanted to kick some sense into both the mother and father, for them to wake up and take responsibility already!

A deeply unpleasant book that I wouldn't recommend to anybody.

Title: Fellside
Author: M.R. Carey
Genre: Suspense
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 496
Date read: May, 2016

Jess Moulson is convicted of murder. But it's a murder she can't remember committing.

Nothing is quite clear from the drug-fuelled night when a blaze set in her apartment killed the little boy upstairs. But when the media brands Jess a child killer, she starts to believe it herself.

Now she's on her way to Fellside, the biggest, most formidable women's prison in Europe, standing in the bleak Yorkshire moors.

But Jess won't be alone in her prison cell. Lurking in the shadows is an unexpected visitor... the ghost of the ten-year-old boy she killed. He says he needs her help - and he won't take no for an answer.


I read and loved "The Girl With All the Gifts" earlier this year, so when I discovered "Fellside" on Netgalley, I immediately requested it. And I'm very happy to have read it. While it couldn't quite live up to my expectations, I had a hard time putting it down, and could never figure out what would happen next.

The writing style is just as good as in his earlier book, although perhaps not quite as tight. I did feel some of the chapters were superfluous, and that it would have benefitted from being cut down just a bit. Mostly, it frustrated me that other than Jess, there were no real sympathetic characters - not even Alex, whom I'd expected to be supposed to like.

It started out strong, the middle fell a bit flat, and then it ended on a strong - albeit unexpected - note as well. I don't think it's a book I'm likely to reread, but that's mostly because the surprises along the way is what makes this book so fascinating the first time around.

Title: Grower's Omen (The Fixers #2)
Author: Audrey Faye
Genre: Sci-Fi
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 162
Date read: May, 2016

Sometimes the right choice feels like anything but. Tyra Lightbody lives steeped in family, community, and promises made long before she was born.

Her next mission will try to take all that away.

She's being sent to an experimental-species biome to see why the locals are having bad dreams and throwing beakers at each other. What she discovers will test her loyalties, her courage, and her ability to make the very hardest of decisions in the very darkest of nights.


A bit slower to take off than the first book in the series, but once it did, I enjoyed it just as much. Especially the ethical dilemma Tyra faced, and her absolute dedication to staying on the right side of the equations, even if she did have to cross certain lines along the way.

After reading the first one, I was glad to see that there didn't seem to be any romantic interest for Tyra in this one. While I loved the story of Kish and Devan, I still appreciate that the focus is on the Fixers' jobs, rather than on getting them all paired up ;)

Title: Spun by Sorcery (Sugar Maple #3)
Author: Barbara Bretton
Genre: Fantasy, Crafts
Rating: 2.5/5
# pages: 324
Date read: May, 2016

Chloe is always losing things-but an entire town? Just when she was about to settle down in Sugar Maple with her soul-mate Luke MacKenzie, her Fae enemy Isadora strikes, and her new hometown is gone. Even the Book of Spells, her lifeline to magick, can't help her now. Just in the nick of time, her friend Janice roars up in Chloe's ancient Buick with Penny the cat and her yarn stash in tow. If she is going to save her home she has to go back to Salem, where family secrets and centuries- old feuds pull her into the fight of her life.


Definitely the weakest of the lot, unfortunately. I liked the general plot well enough, but a lot of the details made me want to roll my eyes - which is annoying enough when it's obviously the intention, but even worse when it's involuntary.

I still like Chloe and Luke, and would like to know what happens to them next, but as the books have been slowly declining in quality, I may just pretend it's a trilogy (as the ending was relatively free from loose threads) and end my visit to Sugar Maple here.