Wulf's Book Reviews

You, with a View by Jessica Joyce My rating: 4 of 5 stars After two extremely bad novels, I needed a winner to overcome a severe reading slump - and this one served very well. Amusingly, the one genre I never used to read - romance - led me straight back to reading. Noelle, going on 30, has lost her beloved grandmother Kathleen, her job and her flat; the latter, adding insult to injury, leading to her moving back into her childhood bedroom at her parents’… At that point, still deeply grieving, Noelle finds out that Kathleen had a great love before her eventual husband. Her curiosity piqued and in continuation of an old secret-trading game Noelle and granny played, she finds Paul, her grandmother’s old lover, and his grandson - her college “nemesis” Theo. Theo has become a hotshot entrepreneur, a Forbes' 30 Under 30 - you get the gist. There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark, though… Together, our three protagonists go on a roadtrip to the core of their respe...

Murder in Tuscany by T.A. Williams My rating: 1 of 5 stars I came to this book knowing nothing about it. I’m leaving it unfinished at 50%, knowing I hate pretty much everything about it… First of all, it’s rare that I read a novel and can tell after 5% that the author is an old white man. Why, you ask? Well, the hero, a retired police detective, never stops lamenting about his estranged and soon-to-be ex-wife while at the same time never stopping to ogle and lust after other women. Always commenting on their bodies, never on anything else… » She had short hair and was wearing no make-up but didn’t need any. « How very generous of him! The hero also keeps assigning “funny” nicknames to everyone around him, e. g. “» Agatha (aka Marge Simpson) « or the housekeeper/valet whom he calls “ Dracula ”. Of course, he’d never say that to anyone’s face. Also, our hero is full of entitled self-pity and oh-so-funny remarks… » This is justifiably reputed to be one of the greatest work...

Nolyn by Michael J. Sullivan I tried really hard to like this but couldn’t. In fact, I’m giving up at 62%… I liked “ Legends of the First Empire ” and that series’ protagonists. I love Michael’s Hadrian and Royce . “Nolyn”, though, is a different matter: We’re 800 years after the events of “Legends” and some of the old heroes are still around which is one of the issues: All the human protagonists are, of course, long gone; but the elves are still around. Unreasonable lifespans of several thousand (!) years are poor, unconvincing and annoying storytelling devices. Yes, that was made clear in “Legends” and I was worried that might create a problem but it never mattered in that series. Now, Nyphron is still around but - before I DNF’ed - he doesn’t appear. He’s talked about but we don’t get to “see” him. Also, an old nemesis from “Legends” is still around, still conspiring and plotting which is very annoying: Don’t reuse old enemies; they had their time and place and 800 ye...

Toasty by Alexa Riley The plot in a nutshell: Caveman grabs a woman, deflowers her, and knocks her up in the process. Woman flees, caveman captures her again, woman turns out to love cavemen and especially this one. Lots of sex ensues, in-between woman tells caveman she’s pregnant. Caveman: “We would have had kids anyway!”. Two epilogues with escalating numbers of children and some more caveman behaviour. One star out of five. Ceterum censeo Putin esse delendam View all my reviews https://turing.mailstation.de/toasty-cozy-2-by-alexa-riley/?feed_id=2902&_unique_id=65cca6f5a70b2

Face Her Fear by Lisa Regan My rating: 4 of 5 stars By this 19th instalment in the Josie Quinn police procedural series , Josie, our heroine, has gone through many traumata: The death of her ex-husband, the shooting of her grandmother, and the death of a colleague - things have amassed and despite being in therapy, Josie suffers from severe insomnia and now there’s bad blood between her husband Noah over… something new! No wonder Josie follows her therapist's advice and goes on a retreat with a renowned trauma therapist in a remote, isolated location in the wilderness - what could possibly go wrong?! In a setting that reminded me of Agatha Christie’s classic “And Then There Were None”, Josie faces her fear(s) when one of the other participants is murdered… A wild bear also makes an appearance and to top things off, a snowstorm suddenly starts and causes everyone to hole up together - a murderer among them! Without her team, Josie must not only work on her mental healt...

Chocolat by Joanne Harris This is one of the rare occasions I’m giving up on a book but I just don’t enjoy this one at all… From the beginning, I’m confronted with “paranormal”, “supernatural” bullshit. » My mother was a witch. « Yes, sure… But that’s not all, superstition abounds… » The forking of the fingers to divert the path of malchance. « Then there’s the catholic priest… I despise anything related to so-called “churches” which, to me, are dens of bigotry, hypocrisy and a haven for hostile and misanthropic beliefs and people. And, worst of all, home to any kind of preacher (the child-molesting variety gets extra protection). So, yes, even in a negative context as in this novel, I don’t want to hear about those male harpies. Also, a novel that in all seriousness tells me » Scrying with chocolate is a difficult business. « is beyond redemption. The 25% I’ve read were also very, very clichéd with simplistic characters, a heroine that left me entirely and completely d...

Battle Royale by Koushun Takami My rating: 1 of 5 stars Wow, this was bad, really bad. It starts with the reason for this novel’s popularity: It consists of 98% pure violence porn: We get to witness how about 40 15-year-old classmates from junior high school brutally murder each other. Actually, they’re more like slaughtering each other and through my reception of the text, I had the very unpleasant feeling of watching a violence-obsessed author act out his most revolting fantasies. Takami almost gleefully presents his sadistical ideas with excessive and gratuitous violence. While I presume the novel is meant to be a commentary on societal pressures and the dehumanising effects of violence, I felt that the graphic descriptions of bloodshed and gore were used purely for shock value and did little to further the plot or develop the characters. Speaking of which: The next percent is the characters displaying the character depth of a paramecium, a single-celled organism… Taka...