Simon & Schuster | April 2017 | 336 pgs
Source: Library
I've always love reading a locked-room mystery and what's more the setting of this story is in a luxurious cruise, Queen Charlotte, which is on its maiden voyage to Southampton.
At its core of this story is the murder of eighty-six-year-old Lady Emily Haywood and a priceless Cleopatra emerald necklace, which, according to legend, places a deadly curse on whoever brings it to sea. Before Lady Em set her foot on board the cruise, she'd already made known to whoever's concerned that she'd be wearing the necklace. Although it was bought by her late husband, it is also a known fact that the necklace was a tomb loot. Lady Em had then decided to donate it to the Smithsonian Institution after giving some thoughts about it and it seems there wouldn't be such a case considering the circumstances.
On board the luxurious cruise are several passengers who are connected to Lady Em in some ways; they're her personal assistant who's been working with her for twenty years, as well as her financial adviser whom she has known so well due to a long working relationship with his family, beginning with his grandfather. There're also some passengers who are on board either thanks to a stroke of luck (like winning a lottery or winning a church raffle) or some simply conducting some lectures engaged by the entertainment director for the cruise trip. These are people from all walks of life and although each projects a respectable demeanour, some of these passengers harbour a secret and most importantly, they've a hidden agenda and their personal evil goal to fulfill until the death of Lady Em ruined their plans. To complicate matters, there's also the ship owner who intends to keep things quiet since he has invested lots of money and efforts in publicising Queen Charlotte, which is believed to have outdone the splendour of Titanic minus the ill-fated tragedy, that is.
Unfolding over the course of six days on board the cruise, this is an addictive mystery filled with intrigue and a cast of unlikeable characters who would make you doubt their credibility as the story unfolds. While the mystery itself is intriguing, it is actually the characters who stand out the most in its entirety and I'd had a fun time analyzing them alongside with my guesses.
© 2017 Melody's Reading Corner (https://mel-reading-corner.blogspot.sg/), All Rights Reserved. If you are reading this post from other site(s), please take note that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.
Penguin Publishing Group | March 2013 | 368 pgs
Source: Library
This is my third Simone St. James book and my love for her books continues to grow the more I read them.
London, 1924. Jillian Leigh, an Oxford student, is required to take a short leave after receiving news from a lawyer that her uncle Toby had passed and that she is to travel to a seaside village of Rothewell to pack up his belongings since her parents are tied up with their work. The coroner had ruled Toby's death as an accident as there wasn't any evidence that there was foul play; plus Toby was a renowned ghost hunter and he travelled to places for his ghost hunting assignments. It is likely that he'd fallen to his death from a cliff while he was pursuing something in the dark and lost his footing.
When Jillian settles in the boarding house where Toby used to stay, she begins to encounter a few unsettling incidents which convince her that an angry spirit might be the cause of those terrifying experiences. Known as Walking John to the Rothewell residents, the two-hundred-year-old ghost is believed to haunt Blood Moon Bay and no one dares to roam the woods or anywhere near the sea once darkness falls. Walking John may seem frightening but in fact his story was a sad one. John Barrow was a smuggler and had lost his beloved son to a drowning accident. Filled with grief, he shot himself after shooting one of his crew when the latter tried to move his son's body from him. This probably explains why his spirit roams and haunts Rothewell. Jillian knew Uncle Toby came to this place because of it.
As Jillian ponders over her uncle's mysterious death, Scotland Yard inspector and former RAF pilot Drew Merriken has a few queries over the case and during the course of investigations the two of them found themselves attracted to each other. As they begin to search for answers surrounding Toby's purpose and his visit to Rothewell as well as the legendary resident ghost, they soon learn that Rothewell harbours some spine-chilling secrets which have nothing to do with the supernatural and most of all the reason Jillian is connected to the case.
Once again I found myself engrossed in Simone St. James's wonderful storytelling and her skillful writing in this atmospheric read with a combination between the dark of the World War and the superstition of a creepy seaside village. While there isn't any war scenarios, the horror of it still lies in the minds who'd gone through the battles; like inspector Drew Merriken who rarely mention it but still evoked many emotions in him whenever the topic is brought up. The setting was well written and gave off that creepiness vibe with the tales of Walking John. What I enjoyed about this story is aside from the writing and the characterisations, the author leave her readers in suspense as one couldn't tell if Toby's death is the act of a vengeful ghost or a flesh and blood murderer until the truth hit you towards the end. I also loved it that there is romance element amid this dark, suspenseful tale but I found the attraction between Jillian and Drew happened a bit too quickly. That said, I still found myself rooting for them as they raced through their investigations. A perfect book to read especially on a stormy night.
© 2017 Melody's Reading Corner (https://mel-reading-corner.blogspot.sg/), All Rights Reserved. If you are reading this post from other site(s), please take note that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.
Park Seo-joon and Kang Ha-neul played two young police cadets in this action comedy and I've to say aside from their cuteness overload, it's also a story of their friendship, their dreams and passion as well as to right the wrong despite their inexperience and various bureaucracy obstacles.
The story opens with the two of them admitting into Korean National Police University where they learn to be a cop and master various martial arts. However, most of the things they've learned are mostly textbook theories and in spite of their two years training, they still find themselves at a loss and just when they're having doubts about being a cop as their career, they witness a kidnapping when they're out partying one night. They manage to track down the location and the kidnappers eventually but they're faced with several obstacles - lack of evidence, inexperienced and such cases have to be dealt with the appropriate departments and bureaucracy. They decided it'd be too late by then and the only option they could come up with is to take matters into their own hands.
(L: Kang Ha-neul, R: Park Seo-joon)
I've been a fan of Park Seo-joon (Fight for My Way and Hwarang are some of his works this year) so naturally this movie captured my attention. While Kang Ha-neul is no stranger to me, I've to admit I'm not really familiar with his works since I can be selective when dramas/movies are concerned and this explains why I may have missed him while choosing a new drama to watch. That said, I was quite impressed with his acting here as a quiet, nerdy cop as I understand he is actually an easy-going guy and one who smile a lot. I totally loved the rapport and the guy bonding moments they've for each other. But of course what moved me most is their passion and their enthusiasm in pursuing justice (human trafficking and selling of young women's eggs to illegal fertility and surrogacy agency are the cases they're investigating here and I think these topics will further raise the awareness considering the seriousness and a problem the world still face today.) Overall I enjoyed the movie and I'll definitely keep an eye on Kang Ha-neul's future works.
© 2017 Melody's Reading Corner (https://mel-reading-corner.blogspot.sg/), All Rights Reserved. If you are reading this post from other site(s), please take note that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.
While You Were Sleeping is a story about dreams, connections, justice and not to mention, love.
At its core of this drama is our protagonists, Nam Hong-Joo (starring Bae Suzy) and Jung Jae-Chan (starring Lee Jong-Suk) who both have the ability of dreaming what might happen in future, usually circumstances involving them. Both share the same fate of losing their fathers when young over a same unfortunate incident, but each doesn't know the existence of each other until the funerals, which both deceased families held their respective wake within the same building. Jae-Chan mistaken Hong-Joo's gender due to her boyish look and her dressing style, for she always wore a baseball jacket and a cap and had her hair cropped really short. They shared their misery, and most importantly Jae-Chan had comforted her in some ways which no one else could.
As an adult, Hong-Joo is haunted by seeing the future deaths of others in her dreams; one including her mother. Jae-Chan, on the other hand, is a rookie prosecutor and together with his younger brother they move house and become Hong-Joo's new neighbour. At this stage, they're unaware of each other and their minds didn't connect with each other's identity given the years passed and that they're both grown up. Their acquaintance only begins when Jae-Chan has dreamt of an accident which allowed him to prevent Hong-Joo's dream from becoming true. What they didn't know is that this course of direction might change or have an impact of other course of events and along the way they'll befriend a police officer, Han Woo-Tak (starring Jung Hae-In) who has the same ability as them.
(Han Woo-Tak, starring Jung Hae-In)
I enjoyed this drama immensely due to a few factors - actor Lee Jong-Suk (so far I've loved most of his works), the fantastical concept of dreams and the inter-connections among the three characters, intense lawsuit cases and last but not least, the romance between Jae-Chan and Hong-Joo (I loved it that fate and their shared abilities have brought them together). I also have to highlight actor Jung Hae-In for his fresh look and the ability to turn heads in his smart police attire. In the story he has a crush on Hong-Joo and while some viewers would expect a love triangle relationship, I've to say there wasn't any because the relationship between Jae-Chan and Hong-Joo are already set in stone (think of how they met and what pulled them together) and plus, Woo-Tak is too sweet and a gentleman to do something outrageous and unthinkable (I've to admit his adoration towards Hong-Joo melted my heart). There are a few other heartwarming and emotional scenes as well but I'm not going to delve into them. Better still, watch it and you and I can talk about it.
© 2017 Melody's Reading Corner (https://mel-reading-corner.blogspot.sg/), All Rights Reserved. If you are reading this post from other site(s), please take note that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.
Random House Publishing Group | July 2017 | 368 pgs
Source: Library
At first glance, Watch Me Disappear may seem like a psychological suspense but at its core it is actually a story revolving family dynamic and how well you really know your loved ones.
Billie Flanagan had gone missing from a hiking expedition in the Desolation Wilderness a year ago and till present her body couldn't be found. Her husband, Jonathan and their sixteen-year-old daughter, Olive are still coping with the grief of losing her while awaiting for the court issuance of her death certificate, which has proved to be a long struggling wait considering that there is no solid proof and that her death remains a mystery. While Jonathan tries to cope with the loss and hoping for a closure that would allow them to move on with their life through the insurance settlement, Olive, on the other hand, starts having visions of her mother. Each of these visions seems to tell Olive that Billie might be alive and that Olive should try to find her.
Meanwhile, Jonathan isn't so sure about Olive's visions and thinks his daughter is hallucinating with her grief and denial. Worrying over her emotional stability, he sent Olive to visit a therapist while he himself drinks as he works on a memoir about his marriage, which is part work as a writer to a publishing house and part in loving memory of Billie. And as he finds her laptop and stumbles upon an encrypted folder, his mind wanders in different directions the more he starts unearthing secrets from her past through his little diggings and investigations. Who was the woman he knew as Billie Flanagan? What happened to her on that fateful day when she went hiking alone in Desolation Wilderness?
I've to admit it took me a little while to get engrossed in this story. It had a slow beginning and focus much on the mundane life and relationship within the Flanagan household. The reader also get to know a bit more of Olive, her relationship with her mother as well as bits of her school life. Olive is an angsty teenage girl who will go anywhere to find the truth about her mother's disappearance. Jonathan believes in his family but he hadn't been paying much attention towards Billie and Olive; he was too involved in his work and he didn't want to intrude upon their "girl bonding" moments until there was a time Olive slowly drifted away from that bond.
As mentioned before, if you're expecting this to be a psychological suspense then you'll be disappointed because this is leaning more towards the issues of family dynamic, marriage and relationship and what you tell yourself about the people you love. That said, the story has a few twists and turns and like Jonathan and Olive, I was totally clueless and dying of curiosity over Billie's disappearance until the final page, which left me speechless as my mind finally settled on the last three paragraphs. This is a well written story which will prompt a discussion (because I sure want to discuss that ending with whoever had read the book!)
End note: I googled Desolation Wilderness out of curiosity and was surprised to learn that it isn't fictional (OK, perhaps it's only me who didn't know this fact) and is located in El Dorado County, California. (More info here from Wikipedia)
© 2017 Melody's Reading Corner (https://mel-reading-corner.blogspot.sg/), All Rights Reserved. If you are reading this post from other site(s), please take note that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.
Penguin Publishing Group | April 2014 | 384 pgs
Source: Library
After reading Simone St. James's The Broken Girls (my review will be posted nearer to its publication date, which is March 2018), I was totally wowed by her writing style and her storytelling and thus begins my search for her older books. This book is one of them.
Set in England 1919, our protagonist Katharine "Kitty" Weekes flees her home to escape from her abusive father. With no money and no education, she lied her way into getting a job as a nurse at Portis House. A remote hospital for soldiers left shell-shocked by the horrors of the Great War, Kitty decided that this would be an ideal place for her hiding as well as getting paid. Her eldest brother had gone to war and there isn't any news of him so she is well on her own.
Portis House was once a magnificent private estate owned by a Swiss family. There wasn't any news of the Gersbachs when the estate was took over by a Mr. Deighton who later refurbished it into a hospital. Portis House seems to be understaffed with nurses and orderlies and Kitty is accepted partly due to that reason and that the Matron who is in charge was away when her application came in. Kitty is initially glad to have found a place to settle in, but soon that relief has turned to nightmares as not only she has to face the challenging work of attending to the patients but also the Matron who seems to dislike her and give her the worst duties such as cleaning the men's lavatories and doing night shifts with little rest in between. But the worst is, Kitty feels something in Portis House. Aside from the eerie noises from the old plumbing and strange breaths of cold waft through the empty rooms, she also hears footsteps at times but whenever she turns her head to look there isn't anyone.
As the days go on, Kitty notices that the patients all seem to share the same nightmare yet no one dares to speak of it. What most intriguing is Patient Sixteen who is kept in a room by himself and only nurses who have clearance by the Matron could attend to him. Kitty will soon learned that he is once a war hero and that they will later form an alliance to uncover the truth about Portis House and what really happened to the Gersbachs.
Silence for the Dead was a good read but not as good as The Broken Girls (TBG). Don't get me wrong, this book has good writing and an engaging storyline which has the Great War as the backdrop (not precise but still part of the scenario) but I think if I'd read this book before TBG, my opinion would've differ (I suppose that shows how much I enjoyed TBG). That said, this book has great characterisations and I enjoyed reading the interactions between Kitty and a vivid cast of supporting characters (I really felt for the soldiers. One would think they must be mentally ill to be admitted to Portis House but as you read more about them, you'll come to know that there is more than meets the eye.) It even has a slight romance element which lighten a bit of the dark atmospheric mood. A must-read for readers who love some supernatural theme in a mystery and do look out for The Broken Girls in March 2018.
© 2017 Melody's Reading Corner (https://mel-reading-corner.blogspot.sg/), All Rights Reserved. If you are reading this post from other site(s), please take note that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.
Little, Brown and Company | March 2017 | 368 pgs
Source: Library
It all started on one particularly wine-soaked dinner party. Lucy and Owen invited a couple over to their house for some chitchat and mingling and their conversation has somehow steered towards relationship and open marriage. Lucy, the ever practical and sensible woman she is, balked over the idea for she couldn't imagine a normal couple would agree with that kind of suggestion. Lucy and Owen have been living in Beekman for a while where it is a town filled with stay-at-home moms who would team up to cook the school lunches and the dads would make things like pickles and cheese and ground their own spices for dinner parties. They're simple just like that.
Lucy and Owen have traded their cramped Manhattan apartment to Beekman partly for the laid-back atmosphere but also for the sake of their autistic son, Wyatt. Lucy and Owen may not be a perfect couple but they do try their best to make their life happy and stress-free, which is challenging due to Wyatt who requires attention most of the times. As much as Lucy is dumbstruck over the open marriage issue, there is a small part of her which is intrigued by it. After their friends left their dinner party, Lucy and Owen casually discuss about the matter once again and ultimately they've come to an agreement of trying it out for six months. They named this short marital experience as 'The Arrangement' with some ground rules; which is no snooping, no leaving and no falling in love. They think a break from monogamy now could give them a moment to refresh their marriage life and come back as a happier and a more loving partner. But what follows is a series of events which they've never anticipated, and towards the end they'll have to ask themselves if 'The Arrangement' benefits their relationship or is it simply "the grass is always greener on the other side"?
At times entertaining and at times thought-provoking, The Arrangement was an addictive read about a couple's bizarre experience to revitalise their marriage and ended up learning a few lessons along the way. As much as I found the open marriage issue appalling, I think there are some parts like middle-aged and dealing with challenging children is both relatable and spot-on. While I don't agree with 'The Arrangement' plan, I held on to the story because it was entertaining (I've never read anything like this before), hilarious (the dialogues and some events could be funny at times) and most of all, I wanted to know what happened to Lucy and Owen and hoped that they'd walk out from that experience to be wiser and more understanding towards their other half. Aside from Lucy and Owen, there are also a few characters that made this story interesting with their own stories and yes, they're somewhat connected to Lucy and Owen in some ways. Overall it was an entertaining read though I can't fathom why Lucy and Owen would think 'The Arrangement' is a good idea initially.
© 2017 Melody's Reading Corner (https://mel-reading-corner.blogspot.sg/), All Rights Reserved. If you are reading this post from other site(s), please take note that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.
Picador | July 2017 | 368 pgs
Source: Library
High school student Lucinda Haynes is found murdered in the suburb Colorado on a wintry morning. Her death shakes the community in Jefferson High and while some guessed she was sexually assaulted, no one really knew the truth of her death; not even the police.
Surrounding Lucinda's mysterious death is our three protagonists with their narratives written alternatively. Cameron Whitley, a boy who is both fascinated and obsessed with her to the point that he would watch her secretly. Jade Dixon-Burns, a girl who hated her openly and practised witchcraft (more like basic voodoo) hoping that she would be gone from her life and never expecting that what she'd wished had turned up something sinister. And then, there is Russ Fletcher, a cop assigned to look into Lucinda's death. He knew Cameron's father back when the latter was a cop but an incident had sent him leaving home. Russ also finds himself having problems with his wife and his brother-in-law.
Although this is classified as a suspense, it is more like a case of characters study with murder as the backdrop. While the mystery element is still there, this story is navigating towards more of the inner thoughts and struggles of the three narratives who are more or less related to Lucinda. Each of these characters is flawed and appear as somewhat unreliable. Truth be told, it took me a while to get into the story. The slow setting, the characterisations and not to mention there wasn't much intensity and police insights relating to Lucinda's death. However, the author's writing is beautiful and lyrical and I think it is fitting to the story, which I came to realise later that this is more on the reflections of the three characters before and especially after the tragedy surrounding Lucinda's death. A different read from your typical psychological thriller and if you don't mind the slower pace and more on characters study then this is the book for you.
© 2017 Melody's Reading Corner (https://mel-reading-corner.blogspot.sg/), All Rights Reserved. If you are reading this post from other site(s), please take note that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.
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