Wulf's Book Reviews

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn My rating: 1 of 5 stars This was an all-around bad book. Most of the story elements were pilfered from the abundance of old films mentioned here, e. g. “ Rear Window ”, “ Witness To Murder ”, and large parts from more recent films like “ Copycat ”. It also reminded me a lot of an old song by Tom Lehrer: Lobachevsky . It has basically no redeeming qualities. If you want more details, read on, but be warned: Spoilers ahead! [su_spoiler title="Spoiler"] The protagonist, Anna Fox, is an ex-psychologist who suffers from agoraphobia after both her husband and her child died after an accident. She drove the car and was the sole survivor. She still talks to both of them and pretends they’re alive but live separately. Anna is on strong medication but takes those with lots and lots of wine which she’s getting delivered in bulk. She doesn’t quite see dead people yet but suffers from lots of side effects. One day Anna witnesses...

Happy Place by Emily Henry My rating: 5 of 5 stars There seem to be two Emily Henrys : The first one writes straightforward, somewhat simple rom-com novels like “ Beach Read ” or “ Book Lovers ” which aren’t outright bad but decidedly average in many ways. I read both, wrote a review and awarded three stars each and promptly forgot about them. The second Emily Henry writes much more nuanced and complex. With “ People We Meet on Vacation ” she created a novel about a decade of vacations that’s, ultimately, about the concept of home. Now this Emily Henry, the one that I vastly prefer , wrote a novel about long-time friends and keeping up traditions that’s in fact about change and personal growth. » Everything is changing. It has to. You can’t stop time. « Harriet and Wyn were engaged, broke up months ago but never told anyone and now have to spend a week on holidays with their friends. Since this trip is the end of an era, everyone pretends nothing has ever changed and re...

It Started with a Kiss by Melanie Moreland My rating: 3 of 5 stars I vividly remember a rainy, cold, ugly day on holidays with my parents when I was probably around six years old. The only upside was: They were playing games with me and I was allowed to eat as many sweets as I wanted. This was outrageous, unheard of, and I could neither believe nor really trust in my luck - so I revelled in sweets till I was on a sugar high (and beyond…). This is what reading this novel felt like: Sugary bliss. Just like all those years ago, I finished it all in one sitting, and suffered for it. I came across this novella on my Goodreads feed because the reviewer DNFed during the epilogue citing the “ nauseating sweetness ” - and, yes, it can’t be denied: There’s hardly any drama, the plot is negligible - it’s a sugary fairy tale, completely over the top; a happily-ever-after wasn’t good enough for the author and so her epilogue… Oh, well, if you’re in the mood for a sugary, spicy romance...

A Chateau Under Siege by Martin Walker My rating: 1 of 5 stars This is the new low point of a once-great series. Once a series about Bruno investigating mysteries in rural France, and his friends, this has moved to international spy/tech fiction. This novel doesn’t even have any real mystery anymore… The technological stuff isn’t anything new or interesting, and the spy stuff is just completely over the top. As for the international setting, it involves France, the USA, Russia, China, India, the United Kingdom, Germany, and others… I won’t hold back any spoilers (marked on platforms supporting that), so proceed with caution. [su_spoiler title="Spoiler"] The story is extremely simplistic: A top-ranking intelligence official, Kerquelin, is attacked and Bruno is investigating. Sadly, it is obvious early on that the attack was staged. The reason for staging it is never revealed, though, and it hardly makes any sense anyway… Kerquelin had invited friends to the e...

The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren My rating: 5 of 5 stars » Books are life, they are brain food, they bring joy, and relief, and connection. « (From the ackowledgements) Finally, a good one again! This novel was much more fun than I had expected and it had two brilliant protagonists. Olive and Ethan hate each other - until they don’t. (Or maybe they never hated each other but who wants to be a spoil-sport?). On the tropical island of Maui they try hard not to fall for each other but fail miserably. The good thing is: They do so by actually communicating (mostly) intelligently and honestly with each other. They start to trust each other. They support and encourage each other. They grow with each other. Before that happens, though, I really enjoyed their banter: » “I am totally out of my depth here.” “That’s been my general impression so far. Be more specific.” « (Is that great art? No, but it’s highly entertaining.) Trust needs a deeper level, though, than just amu...

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry My rating: 5 of 5 stars » “Um.” I try to think of how to explain it. Years of undying love, occasional jealousy, missed opportunities, bad timing, other relationships, building sexual tension, a fight and the silence afterward, and the pain of living life without him. “Our Airbnb’s air-conditioning broke.” « Now, this was interesting. I had deliberately aimed low - I’m on holidays; in, at and around my pool. It’s 31°C (roughly 88°F) and I wanted a nice fluffy romance and, yes, I got it. The quotation at the beginning (in which Poppy, our heroine, explains how the happily-ever-after began) pretty much perfectly sums up this nice little romance. » “Ready,” I confirm, and Alex Nilsen sweeps me up into his arms and carries me down a motherfucking mountain. No. I really could not have invented him. « If it had just been that, I'd have been satisfied: I smiled at the amusing banter, the interludes of Poppy’s and Alex’ ten years of ...

Hermit Girl by E. M. Collyer My rating: 3 of 5 stars “ I’m a bit like moss; at first you don’t notice me, but while you’re not looking, I secretly grow on you. ” I got this book for free as an advance review copy by the author who happened to like my review of “ Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine ” and approached me. Thanks, E. M., I appreciate it! Secondly, I’d like to point out that “ten percent of the profits of this novel [are being] donated to the Children’s Adventure Farm Trust” by request of said author. That’s pretty cool as well. So, now that the introduction is out of the way; what’s this all about? Essentially, it’s about Willow who is a “socially-challenged” young adult, working as a temporary employee in a (for her) boring office job. Living at home with her overbearing mother, Willow is not much of a happy camper. In fact, she is a bit bitchy at times and annoying. Also, she’s a YouTuber and not very successful at that – she has like 10 subscribe...

The Stationmaster's Cottage by Phillipa Nefri Clark My rating: 1 of 5 stars The Stationmaster's Cottage (Rivers End #1), by Phillipa Nefri Clark A literary letdown of epic proportions: a painfully banal narrative filled with annoying characters, questionable dialogue, unending melodrama and a failed attempt at blending mystery and romance in the most abysmal way imaginable. This was a thoroughly, abysmally and disgustingly bad book. The worst book I’ve read in a very long time. I picked it up because it was shelved as Romance and Mystery, two genres that I usually enjoy and I was intrigued how this would play out. Little was I prepared for the almost unbearable banality of the "mystery" that turned out to be a silly family drama and the extreme levels of melodrama. » “How could you have done it?” Christie cried. “I will never forgive you. Never! ”« (On a graveyard, towards a dead person, during a thunderstorm.) Basically, in the past Martha and Thomas...

Winteraustern von Alexander Oetker My rating: 4 of 5 stars Schon seit Jahrzehnten habe ich eine Schwäche für Frankreich. Allerdings ist mein Französisch doch inzwischen sehr, sehr “eingerostet”, so daß eine Kommunikation auch stark von Gestik und Mimik abhängt. Insofern bin ich immer dankbar, wenn man sich - meist lachend - auf halbem Wege entgegen kommt. Andererseits aber verbindet Deutschland und Frankreich nach Jahrhunderten der (milde ausgedrückt) Rivalität eine im Vergleich dazu noch junge Freundschaft. Nimmt man dazu noch Verdun, Izieu, Lyon und all die anderen Gräuel, die Deutschland, mein Land, seinem Nachbarn Frankreich angetan hat, so ist es keine Selbstverständlichkeit, daß meine Familie und ich immer mit offenen Armen empfangen wurden. Insofern sei auch geschrieben, was ich sonst nur beim Überqueren der Grenze ausrufe: “Vive la France!” Seit einigen Jahren bereits nimmt ein interessanter Trend zu: Ausgerechnet deutsche Autoren wie Jörg “ Commissaire Dupin ” B...

Amongst Our Weapons by Ben Aaronovitch My rating: 2 of 5 stars Finally! I’m free of this book! I used to really like this world and its rather unique inhabitants as well as the stories Ben Aaronovitch so expertly told us. This time around, though, I was bored by the lacklustre story at the centre of “ Amongst Our Weapons ”: An “Angel of Death” is killing the owners of some obscure rings with Lesley being on the hunt for said rings. Peter does his best to prevent further deaths. Through 80% of this instalment in the series, I only read it in bed because it served as a perfect sleeping drug. The abysmal pacing, being told about Beverly’s pregnancy (mostly referred to as “the bulge” which felt derogatory even though it most certainly wasn’t meant like that), quite a few encounters with the culprit but hardly any progress until the very end - it all made for a veritable snoozefest. Nightingale is mostly around and yet feels strangely absent - he doesn’t have much of a role at...

To Kill a Troubadour by Martin Walker My rating: 4 of 5 stars I’ve been a Bruno fan since the first book in the series and really enjoyed Martin Walker's congenial blend of mystery, world politics, joie de vivre and common-sense policing in a rural French environment. At times, especially in books 12 and 13 , Walker overdid certain of those aspects: Were it cooking or politics, those books were annoying to read. Now, with To Kill a Troubadour we’re at book 15 and Walker has fully regained his literary balance: Bruno is investigating a case of looming terrorism with a connection to the very real struggle of Catalonia (a region in Spain with minor partls in France) for independence. Then there’s Florence’s (a series regular) ex-husband out on parole and other minor issues Bruno has to take care of. All our literary friends are with us again as well: The Baron, Isabelle, Gilles, Pamela, Bruno’s mayor and so on. In this newest instalment - written in 2021, please k...

Bretonischer Ruhm by Jean-Luc Bannalec My rating: 3 of 5 stars » Der Wind bläst, wohin er will, bei Regen wird alles nass. Bretonisches Sprichwort « So eröffnet dieser zwölfte Band in Bannalecs Dupin-Reihe und schon in diesem Moment dachte ich, “Okay… Was will mir der Autor wohl damit sagen?”. Leider ging es auch weitgehend genau so weiter. Diesmal geht es um den Mord am Ex-Mann einer Freundin von Dupins frisch angetrauter Ehefrau Claire, einem Winzer. Dupin und Claire sind gerade in ihren Flitterwochen an der Loire, als sie in den Fall hineingezogen werden. Wobei “hineingezogen” in Dupins Fall fast wörtlich zu nehmen ist, denn Claire ist wild-entschlossen, den Mord gemeinsam mit Dupin und ihrer Freundin Cecile aufzuklären und zerrt den sich diesmal beinahe wehrenden Dupin mit hinein. Was sich entspinnt, ist eine wilde Hatz zwischen - im Wesentlichen - zwei Handlungsorten, die Dupin und Claire, manchmal mit der sehr blass bleibenden Cecile im Schlepptau, immer wieder aufs...