Tag: Review

Blog Tour: Gone Without A Trace by Mary Torjussen

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Gone Without A Trace Blog Tour Banner

I’m delighted to be hosting today’s stop on the blog tour for Gone Without A Trace by Mary Torjussen and to bring you my review of this chilling, twisty thriller.

GoneAbout the Book

No one ever disappears completely…

You leave for work one morning. Another day in your normal life. Until you come home to discover that your boyfriend has gone. His belongings have disappeared. He hasn’t been at work for weeks. It’s as if he never existed. But that’s not possible, is it?

And there is worse still to come. Because just as you are searching for him, someone is also watching you.

Book Facts

  • Format: Paperback
  • No. of pages: 352
  • Publisher: Headline
  • Publication date: 23rd March 2017
  • Genre: Thriller

My Review (4 out of 5)

Hannah arrives back from a conference to find that her boyfriend, Matt, has left their shared home taking all his possessions with him.   That’s all his possessions plus every trace of their life together.  It’s as if he’d never been there, as if their relationship had never happened. Distraught, Hannah sets out to find out where Matt has gone and why he left. But the more she discovers, the more questions it poses, the more she is driven to search for answers. Her single-minded search for him will have unforeseen consequences for her, her friends and family.   It’s impossible to say much more without giving away the plot except to say that the narrative pace definitely picks up in the final third of the book so plan your available reading time carefully!

This book is like a mystery tour where all you know is you’re in a car going somewhere but you’ve no idea what that destination is, you’ve just got to trust the driver to get you there. And Mary Torjussen is one hell of a driver. There’ll be unexpected bumps in the road, dead-ends, stop signs and abrupt hand brake turns. You’ll think you know where you’re going and then – wham – you’re taking a sudden, unexpected detour. So all I can say is: fasten your seat belt (tightly), sit back (if you can) and enjoy the ride!

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of the publishers, Headline, in return for an honest review.

To buy a copy of Gone Without A Trace from Amazon.co.uk, click here

In three words: Compelling, suspenseful, unsettling

Try something similar…Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Mary Torjussen About the Author

Mary Torjussen has an MA in Creative Writing from Liverpool John Moores University. She worked for several years as a teacher and lives outside of Liverpool, where Gone Without a Trace is set.

Author links:

Follow Mary on Twitter
Follow Mary on Goodreads

 

 

Review: Meeting with my Brother by Yi Mun-yol

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meeting

Autobiographical account of the impact on one family of a divided nation

Publisher’s description: A sobering yet hopeful depiction of the volatile relationship between the divided Koreas. Yi, the narrator, is a South Korean university professor searching for his father who defected to the North at the outbreak of war. Instead he finds his half-brother and their tense meeting takes a surprising turn. This semi-autobiographical account upends the West’s assumptions about North Korean life.

My Review

This is my first experience of Korean literature and, although a slim volume, I found it quite a challenging read as it contains a great deal of detail about the history and politics of Korea, notably the separation of North and South Korea and prospects for reunification. There are a lot of allegorical features with characters representing particular aspects of ideological thought, such as Mr Reunification. Similarly the two brothers really represent the two parts of the divided nation. Only a small portion of the book covers the narrator’s meeting with his half-brother and, for me, these were the most successful aspects of the book with some interesting details of Korean tradition and rituals. The other parts I found quite dry. At times I felt the book verged on political essay rather than novel. What does comes across from the two brothers’ sharing of their experiences is that the people of each part of the divided Korea have suffered as a consequence of war, retribution (the law of “guilt by association”) and economic collapse. Ultimately, grief over their father’s death and this commonality of experience brings (albeit limited) reconciliation between the divided families.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of NetGalley and Columbia University Press.

Book facts: Publication date 4th April 2017, translated by Heinz Insu Fenkl with Yoosup Chang

My rating: 3 (out of 5)

In three words: Didactic, autobiographical, informative

About the Author

Yi Mun-yol was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1948 but the outbreak of the Korean War and his father’s defection to North Korea forced his family to move about until they settled in Yeongyang, his family’s ancestral seat.  He has written several novels and more than fifty novellas and short stories.