Mini review Mondays is a meme I host, which I put together 2 or more reviews for books I gave 3 stars or less.

Bring Me Back by B A PARIS

This wasn’t a bad read to be honest. I really got into it, and I was hooked. However the good and promising start turned into a game of repetitions. And this is one of the books I really disliked the ending!!! Totally couldn’t buy that ending.

Finn is living with Ellen. Ellen is Layla’s sister. Layla is Finn’s lost ex-partner.

Huh? Yes, you heard right. Layla went missing in France, during a holiday. No one knows, if she is dead or alive.Finn is a very confused man. Yes he is. And psst. I’ll give you a secret: He has anger management  issues.

12 years after  Layla has disappeared, Finn and Ellen are living in a nice rural life in a village near Cheltenham.  About to get their partnership tightened up with a marriage aaaaaaaaaaaaand….They start receiving small tokens of Layla’s reminders. Who’s sending these Russian dolls? Is Layla alive and after Ellen and Finn? What is going oooon?

This question gets you hooked to the book until the halfway, but then it starts to get a bit dull, especially when you start figuring out what’s going on. And that ending!!! I totally disliked the ending. Not only illogical, it was a bit of a cheat. If the end was different, I might be topping up this to a 3.5 but only 2.5 stars from me! Still, I think it was a quick and easy read. I’d grab it to read on a plane, during holiday etc.

 

The Power by Naomi Alderman

Can I be really cheeky if I say Power was the “Eleanor Oliphant is completely Fine” of last year. Of course 2 books are completely different, but I am talking in the context of ‘hype’-ing up.

The Power was everywhere last year, everyone talking about it, almost a Khaleessi : winner of awards, bringer of feminist sci-fi, headliner of book review blogs, source of pride for British novelists.

So after all that hype my expectations were BIG. GRAND. Seriously. Especially when Facebook sponsored ads popped it up for me saying Margaret Atwood finds it : Electrifying. I said to myself: Thou shalt read this. (I love Atwood.)

I’ll be honest. Didn’t like it. Didn’t like it at all. I think it was a clever idea but very poorly executed. There is just too much, way too much going on in this book.

I consider myself a feminist, however I found the plot very aggressive.  (maybe I am no feminist?) Nearly women seem to turn against men. A 14 year old girl acts with the wisdom and wits of a 41 year old. People keep moving from places to places, in a hasty way and some of the characters adapt to every situation without a BLINK. No, not working for me. Even in a dystopia you need a harmony & logic. Everyone in this book seems to be so sure of themselves.

MY final verdict about this book is : the idea was much, much better than the execution.

 

Thanks for reading. Did you read any of this books? What do you think?