Gone by Mo Hayder

Mystery

In book 5 of the Detective Jack Caffery/Flea Marley, there's a carjacker on the loose. In the car, there was a little girl and the girl is still missing. Was the criminal after the car or the kid?

Flea is still struggling over covering for her brother killing his girlfriend and her whole team is getting tired of her attitude. Vowing that she's going to change, this case is her first in new mind set. Flea is convinced that the kidnapped girl is in an abandoned tunnel, putting herself and her team in danger. Past books have discussed more the way that Flea's dive team works and how they find clues hidden in the depths of water. There was less of that this book. It was more about Flea's emotional state and trying to bring herself back to normality. I hope next book we get back to more of how she works, but it worked well in this book.

Caffery, on the other hand, has very little character development, which is ok. He's trying to chase down this carjacker/kidnapper and realizes that the criminal may be closer than expected.

I don't mind the Caffery series, but I think Hayder is at her best with some of the more perverse mysteries like Pig Island.

First Line: "Detective Inspector Jack Caffery of Bristol's Major Crime Investigation Unit spent ten minutes in the centre of Frome looking at the crime scene."

Rating:
(3.5/5)

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

Fiction

David is a twelve year old boy that's just lost his mom. David's father eventually moves on with a new woman, Rose, and they have a child together. David feels left out and forgotten. He turns to books to pass his time, and finds that they whisper to him from their shelves. Slowly the characters start to come out of the books and David in to them. Eventually David finds himself within one of his books and needs to find the King to figure out how to get back home.

This is a coming of age story, mixed with fairy tales that don't end up the way we all think they do. David learns that "happily ever after" actually means "eaten quickly". David finds out he's a very brave boy and learns what is really important to him.

This book was a bit slow to get in to because it started off very cliche. A boy who hates his step-mother, how many times have we read stories like that? But once David got in to the book, I was much more interested in the story and really enjoyed the different takes on fairy tales. Snow white was a good one. This was a fun read, with a lot of extra (and unnecessary) bits at the end about the fairy tales used.

First Line: "Once upon a time - for that is how all fairy tales should begin - there was a boy who lost his mother."

Rating:
(4/5)

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Teen

Cadence is part of the group of Liars. Her family gets together each summer on their family's exclusive island and Cadence hangs out with the other Liars, her two cousins and one of their friends of a same age. When she was fifteen, Cady had a horrible accident and hit her head while she was out swimming. She can't remember anything so can't explain why she was in the ocean by herself and where her clothes were. Her mother keeps her away from the island the next summer but Cady wants to remember. The second summer Cady returns to the island hoping to find answers.

The family are rich and entitled. They have their own island with four cottages to spend the summer and the grandfather with all the money is getting old. All the sisters are fighting each other for the money and using their grandchildren to try and manipulate the father. Reading it makes you feel dirty and sad knowing that this shit is happening somewhere for real. The drama was a bit over the top for me though. I don't mind good family drama, I've read my share of Jodi Picoult books and enjoyed them, but this was on a whole other level. There wasn't really a character to ground the drama either. Cady was whiny and ridiculous and the other Liars weren't in the book enough for us to understand who they really were.

Plus, we never found out why there were called the "Liars"?

First Line: "Welcome to the beautiful Sinclair family."

Rating:
(3.5/5)