I’ve read more than a thousand books since I started this book blog back in 2011. By now, I’ve forgotten what I wrote in most of the reviews and am left only with an residual emotional memory of the books, like cooking smells clinging to my clothes after a meal. So, I’ve decided to do a little time travelling by book blog and re-read some of the reviews I’ve posted.

This month I’m travelling back eleven years to May 2014. It was a very busy year for me. I felt as if I had almost no time to read (although I can see from GoodReads that I read sixty-four books that year) so I was keen to make sure that I spent my time on books that worked for me. In May 2014, I only reviewed three books but they were all great reads. Two of them kicked-off series that I followed with pleasure for years to come. I’ve shared my impressions of them below. If you’d like to time travel with me, follow the links to the original reviews.

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Looking back on the three books that I reviewed in May 2014, two things jump out at me. The first thing is , how escapist the books were: a book about time traveling historians, a book about a newly-turned-and -hiding -it zombie working at a morgue and a book about a Norse God that gave a very different view than the Marvel comics one I’d absorbed unquestioningly as a child.. The second thing is how original each of the books was. I recommend all them to you.

‘Just One Damned Thing After Another‘ (2013) was a wonderful find. A book that I took a risk on and which turned out to be one of my all-time favourites

Why a risk? Well, t was about time travel, which wasn’t at the top of my subgenre list and it was a debut novel that had originally been self-published, back when self-publishing was new.

I picked it up because the title and the cup of tea on the cover seemed to signal something new and I liked Zara Ramm’s narration.

I fell in love with the book at once.. Since then, I’ve read another nine St. Mary’s books and this is still the one I like most.

So what’s so good about it? Let me quote my own review:

The thing I enjoyed most about this book was that St. Mary’s, both the institution and the people who give their lives to it, are quintessentially English in the way that they muddle through from one crisis to the next.

They break the rules when the rules are silly or even when they’re just inconvenient. They are chaotic to the point of recklessness, irreverent and prone to inappropriate humour. They’re driven by a passion to do the right thing. They stumble over the simple day-to-day aspects of life. They are emotionally inarticulate, deeply loyal, keep their heads in a crisis, move TOWARDS the gunfire and do what needs to be done to make a bad situation better and, no matter how battered or beaten they are, if someone asks how they’re doing the answer is always “I’m perfectly fine. Apart from a few cuts, scratches, a broken arm and a mild concussion. Nothing to worry about.”

Of course, the English aren’t REALLY like this, but they’d like to be. They’re probably the ONLY ONES who’d like to be. Which is where the charm and the emotional impact of this book lies.

You can find the full review HERE

‘My Life As A White Trash Zombie‘ (2011) introduced me to one of my favourite Urban Fantasy characters: Angel Crawford. Angel is a  high school dropout with a pill problem, on probation for a felony and living with her alcoholic deadbeat father in the swamps of southern Louisiana. For Angel, becoming a zombie is the best thing that’s happened to her for a while.

I loved this book. I eagerly read the next five books in the series. If you haven’t read them yet, give the first one a try.

Here’s an extract from my review:

I don’t read zombie books.

Well, not unless they’re original, funny, well written, and make you fall in love with the main character, not because she’s a zombie but because she’s doing her best to be a good person who just happens to need to eat brains, in which case, I’m reading “My Life As A White Trash Zombie.”

This book is pretty close to perfect except for the cover art, which is cool but not remotely related to the character of Angel Crawford in the book. The story is fast-paced enough to keep you turning the pages (or listening, in my case), the language is vivid, fun and unconventional and the “voice” of Angel Crawford is authentic and compelling.  I strongly recommend the audiobook version of this novel because Allison McLemore’s narration makes good text even better. Her accent, timing and emotional range are a perfect fit for the story. She helped make Angel Crawford real for me.

The full review is HERE

‘The Gospel Of Loki’ (2014) made an impact on me partyl because it was so different from the other Joanne Harris books I’d read and partly because the style of story telling was so unexpected.

At first, I wasn’t comfortable with it. It wasn’t the fantasy I thought I’d been looking for.

Then I realised that the clue was in the title: “The Gospel of Loki: The Epic Story of the Trickster God”. Epic tales have a particular form and the idea that any story about Loki could be a Gospel, literally Good News, has to be a conceit or a trick.

Here’s what I said in my review:

There are lots of good things in this book: the language and the imagery are rich without being obtrusive, the  original Norse stories are faithfully rendered but made new by being seen through Loki (admittedly lying) eyes, and the scale and the pace of the book are epic. Perhaps the most admirable thing is the way Harris positions Loki, the ultimate unreliable narrator, to reveal some hard truths: that Chaos and Order cannot abide or even begin to understand one another, that humour is an honest but misunderstood act of rebellion and that not trusting anyone is a limitation and not a strength.

This epic tale stuck with me. It made me appreciate why men might choose to have a trickster God.

My full review is HERE.