prettylittlewriter

 Synopsis
‘The book club was her idea, of course. Alice's.
It was her way into our group. A chance to get close.
I knew from the day she arrived that she couldn't be trusted.

Our MC Lucy has only been in her little village for around 3 months, but she’s already made some great friends who are all incredibly close, and love going to the pub together and getting jolly.

Suddenly she gets a new next door neighbour, Alice, who seems to be acting strange around her, and is inserting herself into her friendship group quite easily, even managing to organise a book club.

Lucy just thinks she’s very friendly to start, and desperate to make friends, but it starts to become clear quite quickly that she is actually there to cause problems.

Lucy left London due to having an affair with her boss and it ending badly, and we know early on that Alice knows about this, and for some reason is seeking revenge.

Each character within the story gets their own voice for some chapters, and we start to see the cracks within their friendships, as they are all keeping secrets from each other, some worse than others.

Alice isn’t just trying to fuck up Lucy’s life, she’s also determined to ruin the lives of the others.

There were some parts of the story that I found far-fetched, including a murder and attempted murder from Alice, as I just don’t think it would happen like that in real life. I also was a little bit disappointed with the outcome of the story, Alice’s reason for going after Lucy seemed a bit of a reach (although you can tell she’s a psychopath, so she probably thought it made sense) and also the way things get left with Lucy at the end of the story just seemed very anti-climactic.

However, overall I really did enjoy the story and the build up to the ending.

3/5 stars

 Synopsis
‘When the eight-year-old daughter of an Oxford College Master vanishes in the middle of the night, police turn to the Scottish nanny, Dee, for answers. As Dee looks back over her time in the Master's Lodging—an eerie and ancient house—a picture of a high achieving but dysfunctional family emerges: Nick, the fiercely intelligent and powerful father; his beautiful Danish wife Mariah, pregnant with their child; and the lost little girl, Felicity, almost mute, seeing ghosts, grieving her dead mother.

If you want a novel that has the perfect gothic and historical setting, then you will enjoy Magpie Lane. Set in Oxford, there are so many landmarks and descriptive paragraphs to the novel, I often felt like I was there, and could picture everything quite vividly, although I have never visited Oxford myself!

You could tell from the offset that Dee was an unreliable narrator, and there were parts where I had to re-read it as there weren’t any clear speech marks during her conversations with the police, so it wasn’t always obvious if she was talking to them or she was narrating. I really did feel for her though as she had a terrible childhood, and the trauma she suffering surrounding her daughter must have been incredibly hard to bear.

I also felt incredible sympathy for Felicity; her father and step-mother were atrocious, and it was clear that she would have a much better life away from them, so when she went missing, I hoped profusely for the outcome that I believed was coming.

I also really enjoyed the character of Linklater, and was quite frustrated when Dee would rebuff his advances, as she deserved some happiness and he seemed like a lovely person.

I can’t say anything else without the risk of spoiling the book if you haven’t read it, but I will say that although this novel had promise, and it was occasionally creepy and atmospheric, it was let down by the fact that you could see the ‘twist’ coming a mile off and the ending left you wanting a little more to conclude.

3/5 stars

 Synopsis
‘Twelve clues.
Twelve keys.
Twelve days of Christmas.
But who will survive until Twelfth Night?

I thought this was very cleverly done!

Although it wasn’t festive in the traditional sense, the use of the Twelve Days of Christmas within the game and the addition of a full on snow storm certainly reminded you that it was Christmas!

Each character was intriguing, and I really did feel for Lily, losing her Mother so young and not really knowing the truth surrounding her death most of her life, to then losing her Aunt, who was a second Mum to her, she’d had an extremely difficult life. There were other characters that I really liked too, such as Ronnie and Rachel, but also one that I despised all the way until the end *ahem* Sara. Each of them had their own unique reasons for being at the house to participate in the game, but not all of them were obvious reasons until the end of the story.

The murder aspect itself was quite brutal, with 3 or 4 murders taking place within the story. I went in expecting it to just be figuring out the murder of Lily’s mum, not a bunch of her family members also getting killed off! The only thing I didn’t like with this was the sense of ‘un-urgency’ from most of the characters once the murders started. Yes they couldn’t leave due to the snow (or call anyone), but none of them really seemed that panicked to say that they were being picked off one by one!

It was also very convenient that the house had an ‘ice house’ for the dead bodies that were piling up!

I did manage to guess who the main baddie was quite quickly, as a certain ‘tryst’ gave it away for me. Although it was obvious, it was also saddening as I liked the character!

Although I thought this was easy to guess, it still made for an incredibly interesting read, and I found it thrilling trying to solve the sonnets along with the characters (although I never actually managed that; anagrams aren’t my strong point!). I also loved that Alexandra included a couple of separate games for the reader to figure out along the way too, anything that gets the reader involved is brilliant to me!

Overall an intriguing mystery, with cleverly written sonnets and some great characters. It’s also quite an easy read as the chapters aren’t too long and the writing fairly big so I got through this quickly!

4/5 stars