How To Murder By Your Life by Cat Marnell

The Blurb On The Back:

”I was twenty-six years old and an associate beauty editor at Lucky, one of the top fashion magazines in America. That’s all that most people knew about me. But beneath the surface, I was full of secrets: I was a drug addict, for one. A pillhead. I was also an alcoholic-in-training who guzzled warm Veuve Clicquot after work alone in my boss’s office with the door closed; a conniving and manipulative uptown doctor-shopper; a salami-and-provolone-puking bulimic who spent a hundred dollars a day on binge foods when things got bad (and they got bad often); a weepy, wobbly, wildly hallucination-prone insomniac; a tweaky self-mutilator; a slutty and self-loathing downtown party girl; and – perhaps most of all – a lonely weirdo. But, you know, I had access to some really fantastic self-tanner.”

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Cat Marnell was the former Beauty Editor for Lucky magazine and xojane who gained a viral following for writing confessional pieces based on her life as a drug addict and her place in New York’s beauty elite. In this repetitive, glib, self-absorbed memoir that lacks any nuance or depth, Marnell sets out a broad account of the chemical highs and emotional and physical lows of her life to date that demonstrates only that a white girl born into a well-to-do family will be forgiven the most abominable emotionally abusive behaviour provided she can string a sentence together.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The President’s Gardens by Muhsin Al-Ramli

The Blurb On The Back:

On the third day of Ramadan, the village wakes to find the severed heads of nine of its sons stacked in banana crates by the bus stop.

One of them belonged to one of the most wanted men in Iraq, known to his friends as Ibrahim the Fated.

How did this good and humble man earn the enmity of so many? What did he do to deserve such a death?

The answer lies in his lifelong friendship with Abdullah Kafka and Tariq the Befuddled, who each have their own remarkable stories to tell.

It lies on the scarred, irradiated battlefields of the Gulf War and in the ashes of a revolution strangled in its cradle.

It lies in the steadfast love of his wife and the festering scorn of his daughter.

And, above all, it lies behind the locked gates of The President’s Gardens, buried alongside the countless victims of a pitiless reign of terror.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

First published in 2013 and long listed for the I.P.A.F (the Arabic Booker) Muhsin Al-Ramli’s literary novel (translated from Arabic by Luke Leafgren) is a dreamy, sorrowful lament on Iraq’s tragic history as seen through the prism of male friendship as it’s battered by the demands of village tradition, war and male rivalry but there’s a lack of strong female characters and the abrupt ending was too open-ended for my taste.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Dark Net by Benjamin Percy

The Blurb On The Back:

Hell on earth is only a click away.

The dark net is a shadowland where criminals operate anonymously online. Or so they think. A demonic force is hacking their minds, and now it’s threatening to invade the real world …

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Benjamin Percy’s horror novel neatly brings traditional occult themes into the social media age in this fast-paced and enjoyable story with some great ideas that’s marred only by a disposable supporting cast and an ending that didn’t quite satisfy me.

THE DARK NET was released in the United Kingdom on 3rd August 2017. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

Fever by Deon Meyer

The Blurb On The Back:

One man with a dream.

One boy with a gun.

Once chance to rebuild the world.

Nico Storm and his father Willem drive a truck through a desolate land. They are among the few in South Africa – and the world, as far as they know – to have survived a devastating virus.

Willem Storm, a thinker and a leader, has a vision for a new community rebuilt from the ruins. And so Amanzi is formed of a disparate group of survivors: there’s Melinda Swanevelder, rescued from brutal thugs, Hennie Flaai, with his vital Cessna plane, Beryl Fortuin with her ragtag group of orphans and Domingo, the man with the tattooed hand. And then there is Sofia Bergman, the most beautiful girl that Nico has ever seen, who changes everything.

As the community grows, so do the challenges it must face – not just from external attacks, but also from within. And Nico will have his strength and loyalty tested to their limits as he undergoes an extraordinary rite of passage in this brand new world.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Deon Meyer’s post-apocalyptic novel (translated from Afrikaans by K. L. Seegers) is an epic coming-of-age tale set in South Africa about Nico who’s torn between two fathers (Willem and Domingo) and although the murder device doesn’t really come off due to an anti-climatic pay-off and the framing device means that Nico is never in jeopardy, the story is well-researched, believable and had me completely engrossed from start to finish.

FEVER was released in the United Kingdom on 15th June 2017. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.