Four in February

I read four books in February.

 

Fallen Angel by Chris Brookmyre

Amanda is delighted to be asked, out of the blue, to be a summer nanny in a villa in Portugal for the Temple family – a former actress, a famous professor, their children and grandchildren. She soon realises though that there are dark undercurrents to do with the disappearance of another grandchild in this place sixteen years earlier.

Excellently told (of course) and with a massive twist I didn’t see coming.

 

All Adults Here by Emma Straub

I remember enjoying an ES book a few years ago, although can’t remember which one. This, her latest, though was tiresome – more a series of anecdotes about the mostly unpleasant characters than a novel with a plot. ‘Funny and uplifting’ the strap line says; I found it to be neither.

 

This Could be Everything by Eva Rice

19990s Notting Hill. February Kingdom is still traumatised after a family tragedy when an escaped yellow canary appears to help her. Many musical references (she is Tim Rice’s daughter after all) that didn’t mean anything to me but that didn’t matter; I got the gist, and loved the story and the writing. It was a little reminiscent of one of my favourite books, I Capture the Castle.

 

Back When We Were Grown Ups by Anne Tyler

I’d read this before but never owned it so pounced on it when it came into the charity shop I do some volunteering in (sorting books; buying some of them is an occupational hazard).

Stepmother/grandmother Rebecca is the heart of her late husband’s family, the one who runs the family business, the one who pours oil on many troubled waters. But what, she’s begun to wonder, would her life have been like if she’d married college sweetheart Will, if Joe hadn’t appeared and swept her off her feet. Tentatively, she makes contact with Will … but is he the same person from all those years ago? Is she?

There is no one like Anne Tyler and that’s a fact.