Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

I received a free copy of this book for review thanks to publisher William Morrow and Edelweiss.

This book was like a flame to me. A thriller book about someone recreating 'perfect' murders from literary crime fiction? Fantastic! I was a little nervous it wouldn't live up to my expectations but thankfully my fears were for nothing. Eight Perfect Murders is the story of Malcolm, a crime bookshop owner who has been living a relatively unassuming life. One day an FBI agent shows up on his doorstep because they believe someone has been recreating a list of 'perfect' fictional murders he wrote about for a blog once. As he gets involved in investigating, he starts to wonder if someone is targeting him specifically.

I loved this book. It does spoil the plots of quite a few famous mystery books (the ones in the blurb on Goodreads plus The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie) so be warned but for any crime/murder mystery fan, this was a beautifully-done homage. One thing I really liked is it addressed the possibility for an unreliable narrator fairly early on, which was such a relief. I thought just from reading the blurb that Malcolm being behind the murders might be used as a last-minute twist but instead, it gets introduced as a possibility near the start and then is neither confirmed nor denied until the end. This might sound a bit odd but it is done in a brilliant way and it stopped me being impatient, allowing me to properly get invested into the story.

The characters are pretty good as well on the whole. Swanson does seem to struggle a bit with having characters act like real people, and one or two do suffer from that in this book. However, it is nowhere near as prominent as in some of his other works. The main character was interesting and keeping things from the reader was actually incorporated into his personality which I liked. The eventual ending and solution to everything is satisfying and done pretty well.

On the whole, this is a brilliant thriller and has quickly become one of my favourites. It takes a fantastic premise and manages to deliver on it with a gripping story full of fun tidbits for crime fans. I definitely recommend!

Overall Rating:

.5

Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Blythell

I received an ARC of this book thanks to Net Galley and publisher Profile Books in exchange for an honest review.

I must admit, when I first started reading this book I was skeptical. The format means that it is literally told through diary entries which I wasn't aware of, and this took a little getting used to. Even the most interesting person in the world will have dull bits in their diary, and these haven't really been edited out. It is also a sequel which again, I wasn't aware of before reading. There hasn't been a ton of effort put in to make it accessible to people who haven't read the first one so, while a lot of it you can deduce, there were quite a few mentions of people or things which I had no idea who or what they were. This was a bit jarring and it meant I almost DNFed this book immediately.

Having said that, I am very happy I persisted with it. There's a weird sort of comfort in reading this book and it turned out to be a unique and enjoyable experience. Something about the repetitiveness of the entries paired with the topic of running a second-hand bookshop makes for a very easy read. There were parts where I felt the author was being a little mean-spirited but, having worked as a bookseller myself, I could understand a lot of his points. I think this might have benefited from being told in themed chapters with chosen anecdotes but then, that would be a very different book.

Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the source material and for people who aren't looking for something too informative or brief. If you want an insight into running a small secondhand bookshop or are just interested in reading about someone's daily life, then this is the book for you.

Overall Rating:

.5

Fabulous Monsters by Alberto Manguel

I received an ARC of this book thanks to Net Galley and publisher Yale University Press in exchange for an honest review.

This is an interesting little collection of discussions about literary characters, for want of a better description. The title 'Fabulous Monsters' is meant to represent all of them but I find it a little confusing on the whole given that many of them are heroic characters. Each discussion is accompanied by a doodle of the character and I really liked these. They added a layer of charm and really helped linked the discussions together. The content of the discussions were sometimes interesting but there seemed very little link in terms of what Manguel chose to discuss about each character. I guess there doesn't need to be but for some of them, the character themselves was barely mentioned. This was particularly baffling with Alice in Wonderland for example, whose discussion was a lengthy comment on Wonderland rather than anything to do with Alice herself, who is actually a pretty interesting character given her origins. I did enjoy this and found it very charming but a few of the literary references were lost on me. A great gift for a fan of literature though.

Overall Rating:

For the Love of Books by Graham Tarrant

I received an ARC of this book thanks to Net Galley and publisher Skyhorse Publishing in exchange for an honest review.

I very rarely read nonfiction, despite having quite an impressive collection of various nonfiction books. When I saw this on Net Galley I thought it looked so interesting that I couldn't resist requesting it and I'm so glad I did! This is an absolute must-read for anyone with an interest in books, authors or literature-based history. It is full of fascinating facts about such a wide range of authors, mostly focusing on the more literary ones but occasionally dropping in facts about contemporary writers.

I loved how this book was laid out and it made it immensely readable for me. Each chapter has a theme (for example, authors who went to prison or famous crime fiction) and then is divided further into sections about specific authors or events. There are also additional information boxes which, while a little randomly placed in topic, were formatted perfectly in ebook format. None of them divided up any of the smaller sections which was fantastic because I hate it when I have to flick back and forth.

The breadth of topics was good, although I must admit a lot of the references to american authors were lost on me. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing since I loved learning about something entirely new, but I did find it interesting how absolutely none of them were covered by my UK-based education. I'm sure someone with a higher degree in literature would find it even more interesting having heard of more of the authors, but it definitely didn't deter from my reading experience. It also covers authors from many different countries which is really cool. I think both people with an expert knowledge of literature and people with a casual interest in books will find the information in this book fascinating. While I can't say for definite how common this knowledge is within the field, there was enough variation and detail that I can't imagine anyone knowing everything already.

Overall, this is a fantastic trivia book for people who love books. It's well-written, well-organised and full of both indepth anecdotes and fun little snippets you can randomly share. I am so glad I read it and I will definitely be suggesting it to my bookish friends.

Overall Rating: