Dreams and Shadows by C. Robert Cargill

A bit of a modern fairy tale, a dark story of two boys (one a human, one a fairy) who get swapped at birth and end up rivals. Then a third boy enters with a genie and it all goes a bit pear-shaped.

Definitely a novel of two halves, the first was quite slow, setting the stories up without them seeming to relate to each other at all. The second half was much better, lots of action but still very. very dark.

We enjoyed the mythology and the extracts from the text book telling us the history of fairies to help explain some aspects of the storyline.

We would all recommend this book and would all read this author again (useful as the sequel to this one came out in March!).

Marks out of 10:
Jen - 5
Lisa - 7
Gill - 6

Average = 6/10

Susie chose the next book, The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell which we'll read for the July meeting.

Next meeting is at Susie's house and we'll be changing the date for this one as Susie can't do the usual Wednesday.

Before I Go To Sleep by SJ Watson

We all enjoyed this book, we found the writing and characters gripped us as the storyline unfolded and we wouldn't mind seeing the film (which came out in September 2014).

There were a few loose ends. what happened with Dr Nasch's paper? It seemed all important to him but was never mentioned at the end.

How did Christine escape the fire? Why was it so easy for Mike to walk out of the hospital with Christine?

We would all recommend this book.

Marks out of 10
Lisa: 8
Kate: 8
Gill: 8
Jen: 9

Average score: 8/10

The next book was chosen by Kate and will be The Martian by Andy Weir, Susie will be hosting the May meeting.

Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers

Well this is something a little different, a self-help book chosen in the New Year. It certainly provided lots of discussion.

This book talks through ways of pushing yourself, of looking at life differently, saying "Yes" and being more positive. It has some really good points, we liked the chapter on instead of thinking about multiple bad outcomes to a situation and worrying about them, just think to yourself "I can handle this, whatever happens I can handle it".

We liked the no regrets message, instead of going over mistakes and thinking about what could have been, move forwards. Every decision you have made up to now has brought you here so how can they be bad?

We also liked the life grid thingy, a way of thinking about different aspects of your life and ensuring you fill your grid. So if your relationship ends or you lose your job, you still have lots of things which make you happy, this ensures you don't rely on just one area of life to make you happy.

However, it was really cheesy and the anecdotes didn't ring true, it started to get a bit unrealistic towards the end of the book. But overall, we enjoyed it and we'd all recommend it.

Most of our categories don't fit with this type of book, so instead we each gave it a mark out of 10.

Kate - 7
Susie - 6
Jen - 6
Lisa - 5
Gill - 7

Average score: 6/10

The next book was chosen by Lisa and will be Dreams and Shadows by Robert Cargill, Gill will be hosting the April meeting.