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The Blurb On The Back:

Why is it important to talk about race?
How does it feel to experience racism?
Why does skin colour matter?

Talking about race is often discouraged, but in this book we’re aiming to bring everyone into the conversation. We explore the history of race and society and discuss how racist attitudes come into being. We look at belonging and identity, the damaging effects of stereotyping and the benefits of positive representation. We talk about why its important to identify and challenge racist behaviour, wherever it exists.

Together with contributions from a range of writers of colour, including Inua Ellams, Derek Owusu, Nadine Aisha Jassat, Asim Chaudhry, Wei Ming Kam, Chitra Ramaswamy and Becky Olaniyi, we talk about our experiences relating to race and racism and discuss why skin colour matters.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Claire Heuchan is an award-winning feminist blogger and author and Nikesh Shukla a writer, editor and co-founder of The Good Journal and Good Literary Agency. In this necessary, fascinating and thought-provoking must-read non-fiction book for children aged 10+ they aim to start a conversation about race and racism and why it’s important to identify and challenge racist behaviour and include moving personal experiences from guest contributors.

WHAT IS RACE? WHO ARE RACISTS? WHY DOES SKIN COLOUR MATTER? AND OTHER BIG QUESTIONS was released in the United Kingdom on 11th October 2018. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

TRANS GLOBAL explores the fascinating long history of transgender around the world. This book uncovers the cultures and people of the past and present who have embraced, challenged or quietly subverted society’s expectations about gender. Find out:

- which cultures accepted a non-binary lifestyle for centuries before ‘transgender’ became a label;
- who fights for the acceptance of the trans community;
- what it is like for young trans people just starting out on their journey.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Honor Head’s non-fiction LGBTQ+ book for children aged 12+ (with a foreword by Jake Graf and Hannah Winterbourne) highlights the history of transgender people and the different attitudes towards them around the world but while it’s strong on showing the attitudes of different cultures, some of the descriptions of gender behaviour and issues such as transgender sports people are too simplistic, which affects its usefulness as a primer.

TRANS GLOBAL: TRANSGENDER THEN, NOW AND AROUND THE WORLD was released in the United Kingdom on 13th September 2018. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

They can’t send you away. What will we do? We need us. I stop your angry, Jack. And you make me strong. You make me Rosie.

Rosie loves Jack. Jack loves Rosie.

So when they’re separated, Rosie will do anything to find the boy who makes the sun shine in her head.

Even run away from home.

Even struggle across London and travel to Brighton, though the trains are cancelled and the snow is falling.

Even though people might think a girl with Down’s syndrome could never survive on her own.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

It’s difficult to review Mel Darbon’s debut YA contemporary romance. Although she convincingly portrays a young girl with Down’s syndrome as a person with ambitions and emotions, a sex trade plotline struck me as implausible and seemed to show Rosie more as a victim driven by others than by her own desires, which undermined her agency such that the book ends up being about the reactions to Rosie and how they drive her than about Rosie herself.

ROSIE LOVES JACK was released in the United Kingdom on 6th September 2018. Thanks to Usborne Books for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

July 1983, Essex. Fox Farm is, thanks to two corpses, neither picturesque nor peaceful. The body in its kitchen belongs to eminent historian Christopher Cliff, who has taken his own life with an antique shotgun. The second, found on the property boundary, remains unidentified.

DI Nick Lowry’s summer is neither sleepy nor serene. And the two deaths are just the half of it. The fact County Chief Merrydown was a college friend of Cliff’s means Lowry is now, in turn, under scrutiny from his severely stressed and singularly unsympathetic boss, Sparks.

To catalyse his investigation, Lowry enlists the services of DC Daniel Kenton and WPC Jane Gabriel. Gabriel needs direction, if she is to begin a career as a detective. While Kenton, who appears solely focused on beginning a relationship with Gabriel, needs distraction.

Both the heat and the investigation soon intensify. The team find themselves interrogating enigmatic neighbours, shady businessmen, jilted lovers and wronged relatives; all the while negotiating the caprices of Sparks – whose attitudes remain as dated as Fox Farm’s antiques.

Only when they fully open their eyes and minds will they begin to see a web of rural politics, dodgy dealings and fragmented families – one that they must unpick before it ensnares them.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

The second in James Henry’s DI LOWRY SERIES is a disappointing historical crime novel that fails to build on the promise of the first novel with a plodding central mystery that takes an abrupt turn about half way through and gets bogged down in Lowry’s marriage break up (with Jacqui in particular losing a lot of her nuanced characterisation) and Kenton’s pursuit of Gabriel such that I’m not sure I’d rush to read the next in the series.

YELLOWHAMMER was released in the United Kingdom on 26th July 2018. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Is it a bird?
Is it a plane?
No, it’s Kevin!

Kevin the flying pony blows in on a magical storm and – DOOF – crashes into the balcony outside Max’s flat.

As the storm waters rise and the town is besieged by creatures (naughty sea monkeys ahoy-eep-eep!) Max and Kevin set about putting things right.

With Max’s quick thinking and a constant supply of biscuits for Kevin, there’s nothing this heroic duo can’t achieve!

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Philip Reeve’s and Sarah McIntyre’s illustrated novel for children aged 8+ (the first in a series) is an absolute delight from start to finish, featuring the charming friendship that builds between a boy and a flying horse who, despite his strange appearance thinks he’s perfect as he is and which features cameos from Reeve’s and McIntyre’s previous collaborations (notably the naughty sea monkeys) and plenty of custard cream biscuits.

THE LEGEND OF KEVIN was released in the United Kingdom on 6th September 2018. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

For Selvon, Ardan and Yusuf, growing up under the towers of Stones Estate, summer means what it does anywhere: football, music, freedom. But now, after the killing of a British soldier, riots are spreading across the city, and nowhere is safe.

While the fury swirls around them, Selvon and Ardan remain focused on their own obsessions, girls and grime. Their friend Yusuf is caught up in a different tide: radicalism is sweeping his local mosque, and he’ll do anything to protect his troubled older brother, Irfan, from it.

As the voices of Nelson and Caroline echo with a previous generation’s experience of violence and extremism, the story spirals towards its devastating conclusion.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Guy Gunaratne’s stylish debut literary novel about life and race on a working class estate (long listed for the 2018 Man Booker Prize) authentically conveys the language of the people who live there and the pressures of fundamentalism and those who use it for their own ends but the story is thin and driven by coincidence, the historical sections are heavy-handed and the friendship between the three boys is superficial at best.

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

The Blurb On The Back:

Bringing warring parties to the negotiating table is the aim of any peace process. But what happens when those negotiations falter and conflict resolution fails? Is everything lost, or are there prospects for meaningful change in even the most intractable of conflicts?

In this insightful book, leading scholar-practitioner in conflict resolution Oliver Ramsbotham explores the phenomenon of radical disagreement as the main impediment to negotiation, problem-solving and dialogue between conflict parties. Taking as his focus the long-running and seemingly irresolvable conflict between Israel and Palestine, he shows how what is needed in these circumstances is not less radical disagreement, but more. Only by understanding what is blocking the way and by promoting collective strategic engagement within, across and between the groups involved can deadlock be transformed.

Rich in detail and accessibly written, this book introduces a new and as yet relatively unexplored frontier in conflict studies. Its wider application to other phases, levels and war zones holds out rich promise for extending conflict engagement in some of the world’s deadliest and most difficult hot spots.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Oliver Ramsbotham is Emeritus Professor of Conflict Resolution at Bradford University and President of the Conflict Research Society and in this dense but accessible book aimed at non-academics with little knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he analyses why traditional conflict resolution strategies fail and argues that highlighting differences and radical disagreement is a more effective way to achieve success.

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

The Blurb On The Back:

When Jonah and Raff wake up on Monday, their mother Lucy isn’t there.

Although Jonah is only nine, he is the big brother, and knows enough about the world to keep her absence a secret. If anyone found out she’d left them alone, it could be disastrous for him and Raff; and she’ll be back, he’s nearly sure.

With growing unease, he puzzles over the clues she’s left behind. Who sent her the flowers Why are all her shoes still in the house? Why is her phone buried in a plant pot?

And who, in their diverse south London community, might know more about her than he does?

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Tamsin Grey’s debut novel is a coming-of-age story framed around a thin mystery but while there are times when the boys and their dialogue is pitch perfect and Grey captures the selfish preoccupation of the adults around them, Lucy comes across as an awful person (mental illness notwithstanding), Grey sometimes makes Jonah precocious for his years and the story is saddled with a soap opera finish that I didn’t believe in.

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

The Blurb On The Back:

Sarah Cook, a beautiful blonde teenager disappeared fifteen years ago, the same night her parents were brutally murdered in their suburban Ohio home. Her boyfriend Brad Stockton – black and from the wrong side of the tracks – was convicted of the murders and sits on death row, though he always maintained his innocence. With his execution only weeks away, his devoted sister, insisting she has spotted Sarah at a local gas station, hires PI Roxane Weary to look again at the case.

Reeling from the recent death of her cop father, Roxane finds herself drawn to the story of Sarah’s vanishing act, especially when she thinks she’s linked Sarah’s disappearance to one of her father’s unsolved murder cases involving another teen girl. Despite her self-destructive tendencies, Roxane starts to hope that maybe she can save Brad’s life and her own.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Kristen Lepionka’s crime novel (the first in a series) has a PI heroine who hits a lot of the detective clichés (an alcoholic whose private life is a mess) but puts enough of a spin on them to keep me interested (notably her bisexuality and the love triangle with femme fatale Catherine and Tom, her dad’s old partner) while the mystery unfolds at a decent pace and had enough twists and turns to hold my interest, such that I’d check out the sequel.

The Blurb On The Back:

January 1983, Colchester CID

A new year brings new resolutions for Detective Inspector Nicholas Lowry. With one eye on his approaching fortieth birthday, he has given up his two greatest vices: smoking, and the police boxing team. As a result, the largest remaining threat to his health is now his junior colleague’s reckless driving.

If Detective Constable Daniel Kenton’s orange sports convertible is symbolic of his fast track through the ranks, then his accompanying swagger, foppish hairstyle and university education only augment his uniqueness in the department. Yet regardless of this, it is not DC Kenton who is turning station heads.

WPC Jane Gabriel is the newest police recruit in Britain’s oldest recorded town. Despite a familial tie to top brass, Gabriel’s striking beauty and profound youth have landed her with two obstacles: a young male colleague who gives her too much attention, and an older one who acts like she’s not there.

January 1983, Blackwater Estuary

A new year brings a new danger to the Essex shoreline. An illicit shipment, bound for Colchester – 100 kilograms of power that will frantically accelerate tensions in the historic town, and leave its own murderous trace.

Lowry, Kenton and Gabriel must now develop a tolerance to one another, and show their own substance, to save Britain’s oldest settlement from a new, unsettling enemy.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

The first in a historical crime series by James Henry (a pseudonym for James Gurbutt) is an intriguing affair set in a period of change for the UK police force. Lowry is an interesting protagonist (oblivious of the issues in his home life while confronting the notion of masculinity) and although Kenton and Gabriel are more thinly characterised, the mystery neatly unfolds to draw its various plot strands together in a satisfying way.

The Blurb On The Back:

The body of a young woman is found on the streets of East London, in the shadow of the City’s gleaming towers. No ID on her, just hard-earned cash. But there is no doubting the ferocity of the attack.

DI Simon Fenchurch takes charge but, as his team tries to identify her and piece together her murder, they’re faced with cruel indifference at every turn – nobody cares about yet another dead prostitute. To Fenchurch, however, she could just as easily be Chloe, his daughter still missing after ten years, whose memory still haunts his days and nights, his burning obsession having killed his marriage.

When a second body is discovered, Fenchurch must peel back the grimy layers shrouding the London sex trade, confronting his own traumatic past while racing to undo a scheme larger, more complex and more evil than anything he could possibly have imagined.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Ed James’s police procedural crime novel (the first in a series) is a so-so affair that offers up another tortured male police officer devoted to his job and to finding out what happened to his daughter but with little emotional intelligence and whose interesting plot is spoilt by an overblown finale that was too overdone to be believable such that while I kept turning the pages, I don’t think I’ll continue with the series.

The Blurb On The Back:

Old spooks carry the memory of tradecraft in their bones, and when Solomon Dortmund sees an envelope being passed from one pair of hands to another in a Marylebone cafe, he knows he's witnessed more than an innocent encounter. But in relaying his suspicions to John Bachelor, who babysits retired spies like Solly, he sets in train events which will alter lives. Bachelor himself, a hair's breadth away from sleeping in his car, is clawing his way back to stability; Hannah Weiss, the double agent whose recruitment was his only success, is starting to enjoy the secrets and lies her role demands; and Lech Wicinski, an Intelligence Service analyst, finds that a simple favour for an old acquaintance might derail his career. Meanwhile, Lady Di Taverner is trying to keep the Service on an even keel, and if that means throwing the odd crew member overboard, well: collateral damage is her speciality.

A drop, in spook parlance, is the passing on of secret information.

It's also what happens just before you hit the ground.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Mick Herron’s latest addition to THE SLOUGH HOUSE SERIES is a tightly written short story that picks up where THE LIST left off with Herron’s customary wit and fast pacing but while it’s enjoyable, it’s more of an episode in a side series than a story in its own right and expensive for what it is. Unless you’re a hard core fan, my advice would be to wait for these novellas to be amalgamated into a collection rather than buying them separately.

THE DROP was released in the United Kingdom on 1st November 2018. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Following a brutal attack by her ex-boyfriend, Kate Priddy makes an uncharacteristically bold decision after her cousin, Corbin Dell, suggests a temporary apartment swap – and she moves from London to Boston.

But soon after her arrival Kate makes a shocking discovery: Corbin’s next-door neighbour, a young woman named Audrey Marshall, has been murdered. When the police begin asking questions about Corbin’s relationship with Audrey, and his neighbours come forward with their own suspicions, a shaken Kate has few answers, and many questions of her own.

Jetlagged and emotionally unstable, her imagination playing out her every fear, Kate can barely trust herself, so how can she trust any of the strangers she’s just met?

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Peter Swanson’s standalone psychological thriller is a hackneyed affair that’s driven by hackneyed coincidence, implausible characters, a deeply misguided romance with a peeping tom and a deeply silly plot that nods at STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and although I believed in the main character’s anxiety (which is well depicted), she’s very much a victim all the way through the plot, which made it impossible for me to empathise with her.

The Blurb On The Back:

Everyone’s going to remember where they were when the taps ran dry.

The drought – or the tap-out, as everyone calls it – has been going on for a while. Life has become an endless list of don’ts: don’t water the lawn, don’t take long showers, don’t panic. But now there’s no water left at all.

Suddenly, Alyssa’s quiet suburban street spirals into a warzone of desperation and violence. When her parents go missing, she and her younger brother must team up with an unlikely group in search of water. Each of them will need to make impossible choices to survive.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Neal and Jarrod Shusterman’s near-future YA apocalyptic novel is a timely story that draws on a real-life, on-going water crisis and features some interesting characters (notably Jacqui, the hard-boiled borderline psychopath and Henry, a self-absorbed opportunist) and challenging situations but the plot strains at times while also being oddly cliché and I found the deus ex machina ending disappointing.

DRY was released in the United Kingdom on 4th October 2018. Thanks to Walker Books for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

They sought the truth.
They found a nightmare.

A TV crew arrives at the Grand Canyon led by Nolan Moore, amateur archaeologist and host of The Anomaly Files. Following the trail of a turn of the century explorer, the team seek proof of a hidden cave within the canyon, filled with ancient treasures.

At first, it seems that, once again, the crew will be returning to LA empty-handed. But then their luck turns. They find a cave – and artefacts beyond their wildest imaginations. But quickly the team’s elation descends into a nightmare as they become trapped within the cavern’s dark passages with little possibility of escape.

Then events take an even more terrifying turn.

For not all secrets are meant to be found …

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

THE X FILES meets THE DESCENT in this entertaining horror thriller by Michael Rutger (aka award winning speculative writer Michael Marshall Smith), and while I was left with questions about the plot, the story is riddled with a wry, dry humour and throws a knowing wink at the conspiracy subculture that dominates certain aspects of the internet, which kept me engaged from beginning to end.

THE ANOMALY was released in the United Kingdom on 23rd August 2018. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

When Jordan Bishop sets himself on fire at school he triggered a nationwide crackdown on internet bullying. New laws empower teachers to become cyber snoops.

But this is not what Jordan would have wanted.

For Eli Bennett, too, the laws put fundamental freedoms at risk. So he joined a group of guerrilla hackers who are out to get justice for Jordan, Jordan-style.

What starts as a bit of fun soon spirals out of control.

Could revenge on bullies be classed as bullying itself? By avenging Jordan’s life are they risking the lives of others?

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Erin Lange’s contemporary YA novel is a thoughtful story about peer pressure, bullying, the flaws in social media and surveillance culture and personal responsibility and although I didn’t completely buy into the ending I think that there’s a lot here that the target readership can relate to through Eli’s experiences.

THE CHAOS OF NOW was released in the United Kingdom on 2nd October 2018. Thanks to Faber & Faber for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

On the Baltic Sea, no one can hear you scream …

Tonight, twelve hundred expectant passengers have joined the booze-cruise between Sweden and Finland. The creaking old ship travels this same route, back and forth, every day of the year.

But this trip is going to be different.

In the middle of the night the ferry is suddenly cut off from the outside world. There is nowhere to escape. There is no way to contact the mainland. And no one knows who they can trust.

Relationships are about to be tested. Ordinary people are forced to become heroes. But what happens this night may also bring out the worst in people …

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Mats Strandberg’s vampire horror thriller is an entertaining mix of THE POSEIDEN ADVENTURE meets 30 DAYS OF NIGHT and although the wide cast is broadly drawn there’s enough on the page to care about what happens to the central characters and the fun comes from seeing who deservedly (or undeservedly) dies or survives and although there’s nothing terribly original here I would nevertheless definitely check out Standberg’s other work.

BLOOD CRUISE was released in the United Kingdom on 12th July 2018. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

”Cross my heart and hope to die …”

Promises only last if you trust each other, but what if one of you is hiding something? A secret no one could ever guess.

Someone is living a lie.

Is it Lisa? Maybe it’s her daughter, Ava. Or could it be her best friend, Marilyn?

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

It is difficult to review Sarah Pinborough’s psychological thriller without spoiling it but this is a well-executed, pacey read that centres on the relationship between the 3 women while taking on board physical and emotional abuse, intense friendships and a horrific crime that the media will never let people forgive or forget but I did find the antagonist to veer close to being two-dimensional and I wished the ending had been a little braver.

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

The Blurb On The Back:

From the refugee camps of Greece to the mountains of Macedonia, a thirteen-year-old boy is making his way to Germany and safety. Codenamed ‘Firefly’, he holds vital intelligence about a vicious ISIS terror cell and its plans to strike at the heart of Europe. But the terrorists are hot on his trail.

When MI6 becomes aware of Firefly and what he knows, Luc Samson, ex-MI6 agent and expert at finding missing persons, is recruited to locate Firefly and get him to safety before the terrorists find him and kill him.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Henry Porter’s standalone spy thriller is a timely affair set against the backdrop of the European migration crisis and taking on board the horrors perpetrated by ISIS during the Syrian civil war. However although Porter has clearly done his research, the characters here (with the exception of Naji) have a stock feel to them and the plot is predictable, so that while I did keep turning the pages, I wasn’t as gripped as I wanted to be.

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

The Blurb On The Back:

In the ancient town of Cordes, an elderly tailor is found tortured and murdered.

He leaves behind a cryptic message with his granddaughter and her son – one that puts them in immediate danger.

Forced to go on the run, they find themselves hunted across France, on a journey that will take them into the heart of Europe’s violent past.

As they begin to unravel a dark truth, can the enigmatic Solomon Creed save them before it’s too late.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

The second in Simon Toyne’s SOLOMON CREED SERIES is another page-turning thriller with supernatural elements that advances Solomon’s backstory while simultaneously introducing further mysteries and has a fast-paced, well-plotted central mystery that neatly combines France’s current populist political fringe with its World War II past and sets up a third book, which I will definitely be checking out.

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

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I Read, Therefore I Blog

A Book Review Blog Belonging to Caroline Hooton

Recent Entries

What Is Race? by Claire Heuchan & Nikesh Shukla

Trans Global: Transgender Then, Now And Around The World by Honor Head

Rosie Loves Jack by Mel Darbon

Yellowhammer by James Henry

The Legend Of Kevin by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre

In Our Mad And Furious City by Guy Gunaratne

When Conflict Resolution Fails by Oliver Ramsbotham

She’s Not There by Tamsin Grey

The Last Place You Look by Kristen Lepionka

Blackwater by James Henry

The Hope That Kills by Ed James

The Drop by Mick Herron

Her Every Fear by Peter Swanson

Dry by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman

The Anomaly by Michael Rutger

The Chaos Of Now by Erin Lange

Blood Cruise by Mats Strandberg

Cross Her Heart by Sarah Pinborough

Firefly by Henry Porter

The Boy Who Saw by Simon Toyne