Wulf's Book Reviews

This Book Made Me Think of You by Libby Page My rating: 3 of 5 stars "This Book Made Me Think of You" has a premise that all but guarantees a soft landing: a grieving woman, a stack of handpicked books, and letters from a husband who knew he would not be there to shepherd her through the first year without him. For the opening stretch, it works. The grief is immediate, the numbness feels recognisable, and the bookshop setting offers a believable kind of shelter. » Crying like that had emptied her out completely. « That is the novel at its best: plainspoken, emotionally attentive, and willing to sit in the messy quiet after a loss. Tilly’s tentative return to reading is also a lovely idea, because it promises something literature can genuinely do - give you language, shape, and temporary room to breathe. The trouble is that the “journey” takes far too long, and not in a luxuriant, character-driven way. It is long as in dilated: set pieces that should have sharpened into tran...

Sommerbuch von Tove Jansson Meine Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen Schon vor Jahren gemocht, aber jetzt mit "älteren Augen" nochmals gelesen und jetzt verdienen das Buch und ich auch eine "ordentliche" Rezension. ;-) Tove Janssons "Sommerbuch" ist für mich ein leises, präzises Buch über Nähe, Autonomie und die seltsame Zärtlichkeit, die im Streit steckt. Die Handlung ist eher ein Sommer zustand als eine lineare Story: Sophia und ihre Grossmutter leben auf einer winzigen Insel, und das Buch beobachtet sie beim Umherstreifen, Trotzen, Fragenstellen, Schweigen, Lachen. Gerade diese Episodenhaftigkeit fühlt sich nicht beliebig an, sondern wie eine Form, die dem Gegenstand entspricht: Familie als Wetterlage. » Faulbaum und besonders Ebereschen riechen, wenn sie blühen, wie Katzenpipi. « Solche Sätze sind für mich typisch Jansson: sinnlich, unerwartet, komisch, und zugleich poetisch genau. Das ist keine “schöne” Natur, sondern eine, die wirklich riecht, nervt, kleb...

Stolen Family by Lisa Regan My rating: 5 of 5 stars Lisa Regan’s “Stolen Family” hits like a heatwave and does not let up. Set against Denton’s Balloons and Tunes Festival, it opens with a tableau that is both theatrical and chilling: two bodies, mother and daughter, arranged beneath fairy lights, and marked with blood-red flowers. The case hooks on spectacle, but it tightens quickly into something far more unsettling - because the killer’s calling card is not just a flourish, it is a promise. » They're camellias. « From there, the novel sprints. Regan is excellent at drip-feeding information without ever letting it feel like stalling, and the heatwave setting adds a faint sense of delirium to the investigation; everything is bright, crowded, and slightly too loud, which makes the moments of quiet menace land harder. When the book swerves, it does so on the back of evidence, not authorial whim. The pacing keeps widening the circle without losing clarity. Each new lead feels like ...

Wicked Women by Angela Marsons My rating: 5 of 5 stars “Wicked Women” is one of those rare long-running-series instalments that makes you feel, within a handful of pages, that you have come home. As the twenty-third novel in the Detective Kim Stone series , it has every right to coast on familiar beats, but it does the opposite. Angela Marsons drops you straight back into Kim Stone’s world with that familiar, brisk authority - sharp observation, sharper dialogue, and a case that refuses to sit still. The premise flirts with witchcraft, but the book’s real trick is how elegantly it keeps the supernatural at arm’s length: present as culture, performance, fear, and suggestion, yet never allowed to bulldoze the procedural logic. Like Kim, I do not believe in witches, and I loved how the novel leans into that scepticism while staying delightfully ambiguous. » ‘But no one really believes in them,’ Kim stated. « That line sets the tone: we are here for evidence, motives, and human choices, ...

The Good Turn by Dervla McTiernan My rating: 4 of 5 stars Dervla McTiernan’s "The Good Turn" is, for me, the point where the Cormac Reilly series stops being “a case” and becomes properly his (and, to a lesser degree, Peter’s) story. Book three feels like the culmination of the internal conflicts he’s been dragging around since “The Ruin”: loyalty versus integrity, ambition versus decency, and the nagging sense that the job will always ask for more than it gives back. It’s a page-turner in the straightforward, genre-satisfying way you want from contemporary crime fiction. What makes “The Good Turn” stand out, though, is that the case is almost the excuse. The real investigation is internal: what Cormac will tolerate, what he’ll sacrifice, and what it costs to keep choosing the “good” option when everyone around you has a spreadsheet of compromises. » ”I don’t think you would, Emma, and I wouldn’t blame you because the truth is I wouldn’t be happy. That isn’t what I want.” ...

To Sir Phillip, With Love by Julia Quinn My rating: 1 of 5 stars When the “Happily Ever After” Feels Like a Moral Hangover This one was supposed to clear the air. Well, it succeeded in making it smell worse. Every single character, and every major aspect of this novel, left me with an uneasy feeling. Eloise Bridgerton is confused, snobby, garrulous, and somehow deeply ambiguous. She runs away from what exactly? Nobody forces her into marriage but herself. After a year of merely exchanging letters, she decides to marry a stranger and be a good, obedient wife. And yet, she also strains toward what might, at the time, have passed for an “independent spinster”. Phillip, meanwhile, basks in his self-sacrificing suffering-husband and widower roles while being emotionally estranged from his two eight-year-old children. The children are neglected, abused, and basically thoroughly traumatised, which Eloise unconvincingly tries to “love away”. Their mother, Phillip’s late wife, looms over the ...