1980: Aspiring writer Emma writes
in her journal of having left her small-town life -and her small-minded
parents- behind. She’s better than that; better than them. Emma plans on living
a life full of adventure. She’s gone travelling to broaden her horizons, and as
such she plans on her time abroad being culturally rich and populated with interesting
characters with whom she’ll have much more in common than the boring folk back
home. However, travelling on her own is not all Emma’s cracked it up to be,
especially since, at eighteen, she isn’t exactly worldly wise. A devastating
incident in Marseille derails Emma, changing her outlook on life and leaving
marks on her soul that will last a lifetime. But Emma is a survivor. She
carries on, and in Athens, with is relentless sun, dusty streets, strong
alcohol and readily available supply of drugs, she finds her travelling feet: courtesy first of a boy with beautiful eyes,
and then with a girl who looks just like Emma, so much so that they could be
twins.
But Emma’s story doesn’t have a
happy ending. Emma’s life is one that ends with a murder.
2013: Kate doesn’t believe in happy endings, she
gave up on them long ago. She knows that
she at least, doesn’t deserve a happy ending, not after what she did. And yet,
to the world at large, it looks like Kate has the perfect life, along with the
perfect husband, one who has, in the past, been mistaken for George Clooney.
Kate knows all about pasts; what she doesn’t know is that hers is about to come
back to haunt her in a case of revenge from beyond the grave.
An absorbing page-turner, The Long Fall is perfect holiday reading.
The mystery of the story isn’t too taxing, and the myriad twists and turns are
predictable enough, but this is nonetheless a gripping read with a host of
multi-layered characters and a compelling travel journal in which Crouch really
captures the essence of Emma’s character, the places she visits, and the people
she meets.
If you love the combination of
travel and mystery in Emily Barr’s books – then The Long Fall by Julia Crouch is one to put right at the top of
your summer reading list.
The Long Fall by Julia Crouch. Publisher: Headline. Release date: June 19th 2014. Ages: Adult My Rating: 4/5. Source: Received from publisher for review.
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When her husband, Jackson, drowns
as sea, Eva is devastated. Her life as she knows it, all the hopes and dreams
she had for her future with her wonderful husband, are gone – just like that.
Eva doesn’t know where to go from here; she doesn’t know what to do next – she just
knows that she can’t go back to the home, to the life that she shared with Jackson. So she leaves.
She goes to Tasmania, where Jackson
grew up, and where his family – Jackson’s
dad and his estranged brother Saul – still live. Eva is hoping to get to know Jackson’s family, she’s
hoping she can share stories about her husband with them; she’s hoping she can
find some solace in their shared grief. Nobody back home gets it – the loss
that Eva feels, the love she and Jackson shared – but surely his family will;
surely surrounding herself with other people who loved Jackson will help Eva come to terms with her
loss.
However, things don’t quite go to
plan in Tasmania.
Jackson’s father offers little in the way of
consolation to the grieving widow, and so Eva makes her way to the remote Wattleboon Island,
where Jackson’s
brother Saul lives. Here, though, Eva meets a wall of resistance; a wall built on
secrets and lies. Why is Saul so unwilling
to share details of his brothers past? And, why, when Eva wears him down and he
does eventually speak of Jackson,
does Eva feel like Saul is talking about a complete stranger? Because the Jackson that Saul speaks
of is definitely not the man that Eva married. Then again, Eva and Jackson married after a
whirlwind romance, and little by little, as she spends more time with Saul, Eva
wonders if she ever really knew her husband at all.
Similar to Lucie Whitehouse’s Before We Met in that it warns against
marriages made in haste and built on lies, A
Single Breath starts of blisteringly well as we wonder of Jackson’s secret past and what exactly it is
that he was keeping from Eva. I admit that I was hooked by this premise – who
doesn’t want to find out all about a bunch of deeply buried secrets, after all – but after such
a great start, I felt that the story really dipped when Eva reached Wattleboon,
where day after day she doesn’t really do a whole lot at all apart from hanging
out on the beach –fun to do, not so much fun to read about unless it’s in On the Island by Tracey Garvis-Graves. The pacing, then, in this novel is uneven,
because the twists when they do happen happen all at once, and they just don’t
work, or at least they didn't for me. After such a slow build up, the reader needs a truly shocking pay-off,
and that just didn’t happen here. It could have been great, it could have been
dark and twisty and brilliant, but instead, A
Single Breath was all a little too predictable for my tastes.
Don’t get me wrong, A Single Breath is a well-written,
partly-absorbing read but I guess overall, it wasn’t really for me. I’d recommend
Clarke’s debut Swimming at Night (a.k.a The Sea Sisters) which
I read and enjoyed last year – over this one.
A Single Breath by Lucy Clarke. Publisher: Harper. Release date: March 27th 2014. Ages: Adult
My Rating: 3½/5. Source: Received from publisher for review.
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A controversial
tale of illicit love in a sultry summer setting, The Lemon Grove by Helen Walsh has been the subject of something of
a marketing blitz ever since its release back in February. It may be
everywhere, but does this tale of a middle-aged woman falling for her
stepdaughter’s seventeen year old boyfriend live up to the hype? Does The
Lemon Grove truly feed into middle-age fantasies, or is it simply a seedy
tale for the masses to read on their kindles this summer?
Well, a little
bit of both, I guess.
Jenn and her
husband Greg (a little bit overweight, a little bit boring) rent a villa in Majorca every year with Greg’s daughter, fifteen year-old
Emma, joining them. This year, Emma has begged to bring her boyfriend, seventeen
year-old Nathan along. Emma, you should know, always gets her way. The relationship between Jenn and her step-daughter
is fractious at best, and so Jenn doesn’t think twice about hooking up with
Emma's all-too-willing boyfriend. Soon, Jenn and seventeen year old Nathan are
doing the wild thing up against walls and in bathroom stalls. Romance, this is
not. Rather it is an empty, soulless affair of an aging woman trying to
recapture her youth at any cost.
What is
interesting about The Lemon Grove is
not the affair itself, but Jenn’s motivations for partaking in it. Jenn feels
young, she feels attractive – by all accounts Jenn is an attractive woman who
takes pride in her appearance. Next to Emma, though, in the first flush of
womanhood and enviable curves, Jenn feels old, and saggy and wrinkly. Emma has
what Jenn has lost forever – youth. But,
hey, at least Jenn isn’t completely past it, as she proves when she hooks up
with Nathan here, there and everywhere. Then again, Nathan isn’t picky. He’s a
seventeen year old boy, and boy oh boy, is he a seventeen year old boy with an
appetite – I’m not talking food guys!
My impression
on finishing this book was ‘Is that it?’ The
Lemon Grove ends on an ambiguous note that left me wanting more – and not
in a good way. Walsh’s sparse prose works perfectly with the soullessness of
the affair, adding tension to the story, but in the end this book all just felt
a little bit empty and lacking to me -kind of like Jenn and Nathan’s affair.
Not really worth
all that hype then, in my opinion.
The Lemon Grove by Helen Walsh. Publisher: Tinder Press. Release date: February 27th 2014. Ages: Adult
My Rating: 3/5. Source: Purchased.
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I'm sorry you didn't love Last Breathe. I thought it was pretty entertaining, but you are better at figuring out those plot twists than I am! I do think the pacing could have been better though---you are definitely right there! I was also curious as to what you thought about The Lemon Grove….it sounds like I should skip that one. I love the cover though!
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