Review: The Solitary House

Title: The Solitary House
Author: Lynn Shepherd
Length: 340 pages
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Suspense
Source: Publisher as part of Early Bird Reads
My Rating:
Synopsis (from Goodreads): London, 1850. Charles Maddox had been an up-and-coming officer for the Metropolitan police until a charge of insubordination abruptly ended his career. Now he works alone, struggling to eke out a living by tracking down criminals. Whenever he needs it, he has the help of his great-uncle Maddox, a legendary “thief taker,” a detective as brilliant and intuitive as they come.

On Charles’s latest case, he’ll need all the assistance he can get.

To his shock, Charles has been approached by Edward Tulkinghorn, the shadowy and feared attorney, who offers him a handsome price to do some sleuthing for a client. Powerful financier Sir Julius Cremorne has been receiving threatening letters, and Tulkinghorn wants Charles to—discreetly—find and stop whoever is responsible.

But what starts as a simple, open-and-shut case swiftly escalates into something bigger and much darker. As he cascades toward a collision with an unspeakable truth, Charles can only be aided so far by Maddox. The old man shows signs of forgetfulness and anger, symptoms of an age-related ailment that has yet to be named.

Intricately plotted and intellectually ambitious, The Solitary House is an ingenious novel that does more than spin an enthralling tale: it plumbs the mysteries of the human mind.

My Review: The Solitary House was a gripping, if somewhat confusing, novel of suspense. Lynn Shepherd did an excellent job of making her reader feel as if they were a part of 1850's London. While reading this book I felt transported which always makes for a better read. As dreary a place as London in the 1850's could be, I enjoyed being there, feeling it, smelling it.


I found Charles to to be a bit naive/brash on occasions which caused me to feel a little upset with him at times. This, however, only took away slightly from the overall feel of the book. I loved how Shepherd used perspective in her writing. Writing as if we were an audience watching the story with her. The feeling that we were "in the know". I don't think I've ever read a book from that perspective before.I also must admit that Inspector Bucket became quite  favorite at the end!


The sub-plot was introduced and played out in a very intriguing way. The ending was a surprise to me and I felt as if there were a few loose ends that weren't tied up. That being said, I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in suspense, mysteries, historical London, and an overall good story.  I am looking forward to reading Ms. Shepherd's first book, Murder at Mansfield Park!

Review: Cloudland

Title: Cloudland
Author: Joseph Olshan
Length: 304 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Genre: Mystery, Fiction, Thriller
Source: Goodreads Giveaway
My Rating:
Synopsis (from Goodreads):

A stunning literary thriller set in rural Vermont from the much praised author of Nightswimmer and Clara's Heart

Catherine Winslow, taking a walk during an early spring thaw, discovers the body of a woman leaning against an apple tree near her house in the Upper Valley of Vermont. From the corpse’s pink parka, Winslow recognizes it as the latest victim of a serial killer, a woman reported missing weeks before during a January blizzard. Once a major reporter for a national newspaper, now a household hints columnist, Catherine is disturbed and galvanized by her discovery and with the help of her neighbor, a forensic psychiatrist, as well as a local detective, starts to research the River Valley murders.

At the same time, her younger lover from an excruciating, failed love affair resurfaces after two years, trying to manuever his way back into her affections. As she delves into the murders, she realizes that certain friends and acquaintances may actually be suspects or even worse.

My Review: I'm not normally a huge fan of mysteries or thrillers. Occasionally one will come along that I really enjoy so I give them a try every now and then.  This one sounded interesting on Goodreads, I entered to win it and......I did!  When it arrived I settled down to read it.

Within the first few pages I began to wonder if this was going to be a book I had to force myself to read.  There was something about the writing style which was putting me off.  Luckily whatever it was either resolved itself soon after or I became too involved in the story to notice. After getting over that first hurdle I continued to have the problem that I just didn't like Catherine, the main character. She was inconsistent, and I often felt annoyed by her during her assessments of the investigation and of the other characters. Unfortunately a lot of the other characters weren't developed enough for me to put a lot of stock into their part in the story. The third problem was that the ending seemed a bit abrupt to me.

So after all that you may wonder why I gave it an "OK" or one smiley instead the unhappy face.  It was because at the end, no matter how I felt about the rest of the story I was on the edge of my seat, I was tense and anticipatory. The author obviously accomplished the lead-up well and the writing was enough to have me involved. I wouldn't read it again but I do not feel that my time was wasted with this book.

Review: The Snow Child

Title: The Snow Child
Author: Eowyn Ivey
Length: 389 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Genre: Literary fiction, Fantasy
Source: Purchased
My Rating:
Synopsis (from Goodreads): Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.

My Review: I read this book about a month after it came out. As soon as I read the description I ordered it. It promised to have historical fiction, mystery, magic, love, and a Russian fairytale all rolled into one. I couldn't resist. The truth is that it did have all of these and the writing was beautiful. I devoured the story.  However, once I was finished I had the feeling that I missed something, that there was something I didn't understand. Soon after I came across a version of the fairytale this story was based on, Little Daughter of the Snow .  I picked it up hoping that it would help me understand the ending of The Snow Child. This didn't help me feel any clearer, as this version had been mention in  The Snow Child. but I enjoyed it's story and beautiful illustrations.  I will hopefully have time to re-read this story and find what I was missing so I can say I loved this book as I felt I should.

If you've read it or happen to read it, as I would recommend, I would love to hear your impressions. 

Review: The Thirteenth Tale

Title: The Thirteenth Tale
Author: Diane Setterfield
Length: 406 pages
Publisher: Atria
Genre: Fiction
Source: Purchased
My Rating:
Synopsis (from Goodreads): Biographer Margaret Lea returns one night to her apartment above her father's antiquarian bookshop. On her steps she finds a letter. It is a hand-written request from one of Britain’s most prolific and well-loved novelists. Vida Winter, gravely ill, wants to recount her life story before it is too late, and she wants Margaret to be the one to capture her history. The request takes Margaret by surprise–she doesn’t know the author, nor has she read any of Miss Winter’s dozens of novels.

Late one night while pondering whether to accept the task of recording Miss Winter’s personal story, Margaret begins to read her father’s rare copy of Miss Winter’s Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation. She is spellbound by the stories and confused when she realizes the book only contains twelve stories. Where is the thirteenth tale? Intrigued, Margaret agrees to meet Miss Winter and act as her biographer.

As Vida Winter unfolds her story, she shares with Margaret the dark family secrets that she has long kept hidden as she remembers her days at Angelfield, the now burnt-out estate that was her childhood home. Margaret carefully records Miss Winter’s account and finds herself more and more deeply immersed in the strange and troubling story. In the end, both women have to confront their pasts and the weight of family secrets. As well as the ghosts that haunt them still.

My Review: This was a tale that sucked me in from the beginning and didn't let me go until the very last page and then I still just sat there and thought about it, let it haunt me for a little longer.  It was literary fiction, it was a Gothic novel, it was a mystery, and for me it even turned into a tear jerker. I can't tell you exactly when anything in this novel takes place and that is because a date is never mentioned.  It does nothing but add to the feel of the book, increases your wondering, increases the mystery.  To say much about the actual plot, other than what it says in the synopsis, I think would be a bit of a spoiler.  This story must unfold as you read it, as you become as invested in it as both Miss Winter and Margaret are. There are enough twists and turns and sub-plots to keep just about anyone interested.  If you enjoy a well written, engrossing, haunting novel then I would suggest you give this one a try.

Review: Prague Fatale (Bernard Gunther #8)

Title: Prague Fatale (Bernard Gunther #8)
Author: Philip Kerr
Length: 416 pages
Publisher: A Marian Wood Book/Putnam
Genre: Historical fiction, Mystery, Political thriller
Source: ARC from Goodreads Giveaway
My Rating:
Synopsis (from Goodreads): September 1941: Reinhard Heydrich is hosting a gathering to celebrate his appointment as Reichsprotector of Czechoslovakia. He has chosen his guests with care. All are high-ranking Party members and each is a suspect in a crime as yet to be committed: the murder of Heydrich himself.
     Indeed, a murder does occur, but the victim is a young adjutant on Heydrich’s staff, found dead in his room, the door and windows bolted from the inside. Anticipating foul play, Heydrich had already ordered Bernie Gunther to Prague. After more than a decade in Berlin's Kripo, Bernie had jumped ship as the Nazis came to power, setting himself up as a private detective. But Heydrich, who managed to subsume Kripo into his own SS operations, has forced Bernie back to police work. Now, searching for the killer, Gunther must pick through the lives of some of the Reich’s most odious officials.
     A perfect locked-room mystery. But because Philip Kerr is a master of the sleight of hand, Prague Fatale is also a tense political thriller: a complex tale of spies, partisan terrorists, vicious infighting, and a turncoat traitor situated in the upper reaches of the Third Reich.

My Review: I'll start off by saying that I enjoyed this book. If possible I would actually give it 2.5 instead of 2. I have not read any previous Bernie Gunther novels but did not feel as if I had to to read this book. There was obviously some history I was missing between Heydrich and Gunther, but it did not really detract from the story. 

The mystery was an interesting one with some good twists and turns.  There is also a side romance involving Gunther and a woman named Arianne.  However that is all it was, a side story.  I didn't feel that it added much to the story though it did serve as a means to help tie up some loose ends.


This story kept me interested but not "on the edge of my chair" interested. I also felt that the story was a little uneven in it's pace. With that said I would definitely say that this book was worth my time and I would be willing to try reading something else by Philip Kerr.