Book review: The Malice Box by Martin Langfield

The Malice Box by Martin Langfield
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I went into this book with high hopes, ready for adventure, full of history, mystery and intrigue. The Malice Box had quite a few of these elements, but there was one other massive element, the supernatural.
Maybe I've been a bit harsh on this book simply because it's not was I was expecting but in the end it didn't keep me very interested. I didn't like the characters of Adam Hale, or Katherine and I was pretty much indifferent to the main character Robert Reckliss (which is such an utterly stupid name). I loved Terri and Horace and would have been quite happy if it was just the two of them running around New York.
Here's the point where I will give credit where credit's due. The author describes New York like a person, the buildings, parks, monuments. It made we want to go and see it, taking the book as a guide.
However, for the main part of the books, I was disappointed. I wanted Robert to follow clues to historical places and have to push letters in a certain order for a drawer to pop out and give him a piece of the puzzle. Really I wanted The Crystal Maze in a book. Instead, to pass one trial he had to sleep with someone and by the end I really didn't care if he saved the world or not.

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Book review: Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon (Outlander #1)

Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My Mum (and various other female members of my family) have been banging on about these series of books for ages. Time travel, Scotland and romance, what more could a girl want?
Well, it was brilliant, but I'll get to those points in a minute, because there were some things that niggled at me a bit.
For a start, once Claire is back in the 18th Century that's it, there's no other time travel of any description, so forget the time travel part of this book, because really there isn't any. In my eyes that was a bit of shame. I would have liked to see her go back and forth a bit, I wanted to know how time progressed back in the 1940s and if Frank was worried about her at all. We also meet one character to appears to be from another time, and I wish we'd learnt more about them as well. The biggest mistake to make is going into this, thinking it's a time travel story, because it's not, it's a historical romance. Once I'd got over that, I could enjoy myself.
The second niggling thing is that Jamie came to save the day, every time. I know he loves her and all that, but it was getting to the stage where it was becoming ridiculous. He would be miles away, unreachable, and he would still come and save her.
Right, rant out of the way, let's get back to the good stuff. The characters are absolutely exceptional. Claire is ahead of her time even in the 1940s and is a strong female character, a rarity. I've never loved a character as much as I've loved Jamie. He is a wonderful person, and someone you follow, despite his flaws. The supporting characters are all brilliant, unique and well thought out. Diana Gabaldon is brilliant at writing characters, and stories. I held my breath several times throughout the book, waiting to see what would happen next, even if sometimes, the amount of things that happened to them was a bit unrealistic for the short space of time.
Overall a fantastic sprawling read, that you can get your teeth sunk into and is unputdownable. I look forward to the next in the series.

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The Osmonds: Up Close and Personal

For my Dad's most recent birthday I took him to see The Osmonds at the Brighton Centre. Seeing as it was his first birthday where I was getting regularly paid I splashed out on meet and greet tickets. The concert was the first time my Dad had been out without a member of staff since his stroke in November.
I must admit, I was expecting pushing his wheelchair to be easy seeing as I do it fairly regularly at work but pushing it along the roads of Brighton sea front was a different challenge all together.
Once we arrived, we were taken to meet Merill, Jay and Jimmy, alongside the other people who had paid for the meet and greet experience. All three were absolutely lovely, making my Dad and me feel so comfortable, like we'd known them for years. It didn't strike me until afterwards that the first American I've ever met was Jimmy Osmond.
After they'd met and spoken to everyone they treated us to a Q&A session and some Acapella singing.I know that everyone remembers the Osmonds for Crazy Horses and Love Me For A Reason but their singing and harmonising is beautiful. Maybe it takes blood relations to get that kind of chemistry and perfection that only people like the BeeGees, the Osmonds and the Jacksons can get.
The actual concert was also superb. They opened with Crazy Horses and a guitar that fired sparks from the end, moving into a combination of old and new tracks. I'm not overly familiar with their songs, this concert being more for Dad than me, but sung along to Love Me For A Reason, Let Me In and Crazy Horses. It was lovely to see the home pictures of the large Osmond family and they shared some memories with us in between their performances. On top of that they performed some songs from their new album Can't Get There Without You. The songs were catchy and more often than not poignant. One particular track Remember Me which had special guest vocals from Alan, Wayne and Donny Osmond was beautiful. Film of them singing their parts was projected on to the screen behind them. The crowd went absolutely wild.
Even though I didn't know all the songs, The Osmonds definitely know how to throw a party. People were crammed in front of the stage dancing and everyone was enjoying themselves. It was a wonderful, emotional experience and something I will remember forever.

Book review: Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde (Thursday Next #2)

Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the second Thursday Next book I've read, and the second in the series. Somehow I've managed to read them in order.
I love Jasper Fforde's style of writing, especially the Nursery Crime books, and although I am a massive literary fan, I don't love the Thursday Next series as much. Fforde is a genius author. He creates whole worlds for his book, and reading the little sections at the beginning of each chapter are brilliant and fascinating. Reading how he imagines certain characters to be, such as Miss Haversham, when their not in their own books is very clever and I enjoy his wild imagination.
However, there are certain things that disappointed me. For a start, I like the story to be resolved in one book. If the author is planning a series, there should at least be a story per book, because I left this book wishing there was more to read. That there was some sense of closure. Secondly, I wish there was a new adversary for Thursday. It seems like I'm rereading old stuff, and I want something new, something fresh, even if it leading up eventually to the bigger picture.
I'll keep reading these books, as they're always a joy, and always make me smile, but I want more!

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Book review: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Douglas Adams is a superb writer. That much is evident from whatever you read of his. I'd read Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy and absolutely adored it. Adams makes you laugh out loud and makes complicated ideas or stories simple and believable when they shouldn't be!
This was the problem I had with this book. I was on board for the ghost, the electric monk and his horse, even for the time travel, but the space ship for me was a step too far. I know that's a completely absurd thing to say, but I just think Adams took it too far to a stage where I was actually bored a didn't care. In fact I skipped quite a bit towards the end.
It took far to long for the reader to meet Dirk Gently as well. In fact, the book was really about Richard and his various problems. Richard was a brilliant loveable character who struggled with several things including wrapping his head around the whole concept. Dirk on the other hand was a bit of an arse. He spent the majority of the last third of the book sulking because someone beat him to an idea.
In the end I'm quite glad that I watched the series first because I loved it. Stephen Mangan is a fantastic Dirk Gently that can be an arse and loveable and Darren Boyd is a brilliant Richard MacDuff who bumbles through the case, trying to clear up Dirk's mistakes. I don't think I'll be reading another unfortunately.
Just a quick note. Adams is brilliant with dialogue and he has a wonderful sense of imagination.

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It's time to begin, now count it in... 5, 6, 7, 8!

When I was a kid, Steps were one of the biggest groups in the UK. I knew all the dance moves, had all the music and the lyrics were burnt into my brain. When I heard they were touring again, I practically squealed like a little girl. Tickets were purchased, a hotel was booked and train tickets ordered and soon me and my friend Sophie were on our way to Birmingham.

After an uneventful train journey, an eventful journey around Birmingham trying to find the hotel, a quick dash to get changed and a speedy taxi ride to the LG Arena we discovered not only were we on time, we were early and had to sit through Kamaliya, who sounded like a dodgy entry on the Eurovision song contest. Before Steps came on stage, they played music videos by their favourite artists. It was a nice touch and I wish they'd had that instead of any support artists, rather than as well as. 
Then finally, they arrived. Steps used their background screen to full advantage and started off with a vault door, the numbers counting down until it exploded open, and five pod like tubes appeared on stage, inside each of them a member of Steps. The crowd went absolutely wild, seriously, screams of absolute joy and excitement. I'll admit, I was one of them. 

Just after You'll Be Sorry

After the first few songs with a distinctly science fiction theme, we moved on to the biggest dance game ever. Each part of steps took a part of the audience, which had a certain dance move to do. Then they performed some of their biggest dance hits, wrapping it up with 5, 6, 7, 8. Deeper Shade of Blue was amongst this lot, and I was proud to say that I remembered all of the moves (ish!) and had the best time of my life doing them. I was there with a load of Steps fans, doing the dance moves and for once, I was not cheesy! Seeing the whole crowd do the same moves all at the same time was brilliant. But Steps did cop out a bit, leaving us to watch YouTube like videos while they went to get ready for the next part. 
Following that was Better The Devil You Know, outfits were changed to red and sultry and frames were placed on the stage. The song was mashed up with Lady Gaga's Judas, which was a genius move. They're obviously a big fan of the woman in question and both songs worked brilliantly together. All this was rounded off with a bit of fire throwing, as you do before they moved on to the next stage of the so far exciting, but quite tiring night.

Claire's solo performance of I Surrender

Up next was the solo section. Each member took to the stage by themselves to give us something 'specially for you' as they said. It started off with Lee doing a mash up of Moves Like Jagger and S&M. He isn't the strongest vocalist, but every single woman in the crowd screamed like teenage girls when he appeared on stage, red shirt wide open. The mash up worked brilliantly as well. Following him was Faye, with Dreamgirls number, One Night Only. The backdrop was filled with beautiful images of her and she sang brilliantly, accompanied by some lovely looking lads in pink hot pants. Then there was H, he sang Don't Stop Believin', which I was a little worried about to start with, but the crowd adored it, singing along to every word. His performance very cleverly used the background, to make it appear that he was catching rain drops and being fired across it. Lisa followed him, and she did some dance tracks that I didn't recognise. I didn't enjoy it as much as the others, simply because that's not my kind of music, but at one point she wore some fantastic wings, that looked incredible. And as always, they really saved the best for last. Claire is by far the best singer, and her performance of I Surrender was simply stunning. It was just her, in a beautiful gown and sparks showering down. That was all she needed. 

One For Sorrow

Following the solo section, they sang a selection of slower songs, such as The Way You Make Me Feel and Heartbeat, rounding it up with One For Sorrow. To be honest, it was a welcome relief to sit down for a few minutes and just listen to them. Their harmonies were lovely and the slower songs are some of my favourites. 

The final part of the concert was basically Disco hits. There was a costume change into neon colours and sequins and they performed Chain Reaction, Dancing Queen, and finally for their epic encore, Tragedy. It really was epic. To see a whole crowd doing the whole dance routine. As the others, the moves came back in a flash and it was an absolute thrill to be in sync with the rest of the audience, singing out hearts out.

Steps were never well known for their touching song lyrics, or originality, but there is one thing they are the Kings and Queens of, and that is fun. Even if you're not a fan, you can't leave the arena without having had a fantastic time. They definitely know how to put on a show, and a smile on your face.

Chain Reaction

Book review: One Day by David Nicholls

One Day by David Nicholls
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As usual, I'd seen the film before I'd read the book. One Day isn't the book I'd normally go for. I don't read romance novels but seeing the film, with the humour and characters and a recommendation from my friend Helen, I finally picked it up from my shelf.
I love the concept. The idea that the story is told through one day over several years is brilliant and is certainly unconventional. You go straight to the interesting parts without the waffle.
However, there were some downsides. Any of the early chapters where Emma and Dexter were together was annoying. All they did was argue. I know that it was supposed to be playful etc. but really it just got on my wick. It put me off both characters.
Even separately, they were a bit annoying. Emma was hypercritical, disapproving of Dexter's numerous girlfriends but banging the headmaster and Dexter blamed the majority of his problems on his mother's premature death. I just wanted to bang their heads together.
However, as they grew older, they became less annoying and finally the inevitable happened and the last chapters are lovely. I came to like Dexter more and more as he tried his best to be a good husband, father and manager. Emma meanwhile was still a bit childish. She still started arguments for the sake of it.
At the end, the characters got to me and by the final chapters I was bawling my eyes out. It is exceptionally well written, made me laugh out loud and is full of eccentric and eclectic characters.

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