Win by Harlan Coben
Normally I’d start a review with a brief plot summary. I know opinions are divided on this, but personally I appreciate not having to go to another website to look up the plot when someone raves about a book. But I honestly don’t remember much about this book. Something with two stolen paintings, a dead hermit, and a rich guy. Because Winford Something III would very much like you to know that he is rich. Very rich. Private jet rich. Helicopter rich. He can’t help […]
The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley
Chronic fuck-up Jess has once again chronically fucked something up, so she decides to do the only sensible thing she can: hightail it to the French capital, where her brother resides. Her brother has assured her she’s always welcome in that way people have when they don’t mean it, but though Jess isn’t expecting a particularly warm welcome, she’s surprised that her brother is nowhere to be found. Nevertheless, she lets herself into his fancy apartment, hoping he’ll come home soon. He doesn’t, and soon […]
Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell
Yeah, I made a typo, but it’s staying. London, 1967. Bass player Dean Moss is flat-out broke, homeless, and ready to give up on his dreams and head back home to find some dreary menial job for the rest of his life, when he meets a music producer named Levon. Levon hasn’t had much luck so far and this is his last stab at success, so he sets Dean up with folk singer and pianist Elf (short for Elizabeth Frances), drummer Griff and guitarist Jasper. […]
City of Thieves by David Benioff
Seventeen year old Lev lives alone in Leningrad. It’s 1942 and the siege is in full swing; Lev’s mother has left the city with his younger sister. Lev’s father, a renowned poet, has been dispatched by the NKVD years ago into an unmarked grave, and so Lev lives alone in his apartment building, with people who share his fate but that aren’t his friends. There is little more to do for Lev than read chess manuals and focus on the all-encompassing hunger he feels. One […]
The Boy from the Woods by Harlan Coben
Dead Lake by Darcy Coates
After forcing my way through one of the hallmarks of 19th century European literature (voluntarily, no less) I decided I deserved something less fussy, and so I picked Coates (always a reliable plck for moderately scary yet uncomplicated) and Harlan Coben, whom I’d never read before and kept putting off because people were giving me high expectations. Let me preface this by saying I’m typing this after spending the entire weekend abroad with my students and coherence is not my forte at the moment, so […]
11.22.63 by Stephen King
It’s 2011, and Jake Epping is a high school English teacher in a sleepy Maryland town when his friend Al, who runs an implausibly cheap diner on the edge of town, asks him for a big favour: go back in time and stop the Kennedy assassination. You see, Al’s diner has a somewhat unusual feature in its storeroom: a portal back to 1958. After a few furtive explorations, Jake agrees to go down the rabbit hole, find Lee Harvey Oswald, and stop him before he […]
