Back on the Blog

Part One

It’s been more than a year since my last blog post (17 months!), I don’t really know why I haven’t posted anything, but I do want to start up again; I’m just a little out of practice. I’ve been keeping my blog up to date with what I have been reading and the book group books, I just haven’t reviewed anything. My last blog post was for H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, since then I have read 56 books – I’m not planning on catching up on them all individually. Maybe the most useful thing would be a highlights reel…

Sacred by Dennis Lehane

Sacred is the third novel in Dennis Lehane’s ‘Kenzie & Gennaro’ series. Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are Boston private investigators and have featured in ‘A Drink Before the War’ and ‘Darkness, Take My Hand’ previously. Both of Sacred’s predecessors I enjoyed hugely, Lehane writes with grit, realism (to a degree), and a wit that runs throughout each novel.

At the beginning of Sacred, Kenzie and Gennaro, still reeling from the events that occurred in ‘Darkness, Take my Hand’, are employed by a Billionaire, Trevor Stone, to find his missing daughter. However, they are not the first investigators on this case – Kenzie’s one time mentor was searching for Desiree Stone for a few weeks but is also now missing. As the investigation gathers momentum, Kenzie and Gennaro find themselves embroiled in lies and deceit from every side of the story.

The Children Act and On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

         

I have recently read The Children Act by Ian McEwan for book group and this inspired me to then immediately re-read On Chesil Beach. I have read quite a lot of Ian McEwan novels over the last 10 years, most are excellent (notably The Innocent, Enduring Love, and Atonement), some not so much (The Comfort of Strangers), so I was really looking forward to reading The Children Act. McEwan’s books can be split into two main categories, novels set in the modern day, and those set in the earlier part of the 20^th Century.