Landing by Emma Donoghue

A delightful, old-fashioned love story with a uniquely twenty-first-century twist, Landing is a romantic comedy that explores the pleasures and sorrows of long-distance relationships--the kind millions of us now maintain mostly by plane, phone, and Internet. 

Síle is a stylish citizen of the new Dublin, a veteran flight attendant who's traveled the world. Jude is a twenty-five-year-old archivist, stubbornly attached to the tiny town of Ireland, Ontario, in which she was born and raised. On her first plane trip, Jude's and Síle's worlds touch and snag at Heathrow Airport. In the course of the next year, their lives, and those of their friends and families, will be drawn into a new, shaky orbit.

A trans-Atlantic lesbian love story.

A nice, easy read that I enjoyed. I didn't like the friends of either main character. It was a solid 7 until the end, and then it became an 8.

A Spot Of Bother by Mark Haddon

At fifty-seven, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels, listening to a bit of light jazz. Then Katie, his tempestuous daughter, announces that she is getting remarried, to Ray. 

The family is not pleased, as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has 'strangler's hands'. Katie can't decide if she loves Ray, or loves the way he cares for her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by the way the wedding planning gets in the way of her affair with one of her husband's former colleagues. And the tidy and pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials.

Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind.

Annoying characters, really annoying.

Cloud Of Sparrows by Takashi Matsuoka

Emily Gibson has come to Japan as a missionary, to start a new life. In America her beauty drove men wild. In Japan she possessed no beauty at all.

Matthew Stark speaks like a missionary but wears a pistol like a gunslinger. Emily has come to Japan to bury her past, Start has come to kill his.

It is 1861 and after over two centuries of isolation Japan has been forced to open its doors. A whole way of life is about to die.

Lord Genji of the Akaoka Clan knows this. Blessed with his family's power of prophecy he has foreseen that his and Japan's fate lie in the hands of outsiders. But this knowledge is dangerous to many powerful men, and deadly for Genji. As intrigue mounts and the city of Edo and the Shogun's palace are threatened by foreign ships, Genji plans his escape to his ancestral home, Cloud of Sparrows.

With him travel Emily and Stark, and Heiko, his beautiful geisha and a deadly spy. However, the road is long and there are many places along the way for a samurai to attack and for Genji to die.

Beautiful story about two Americans and an amazing cast of Japanese warriors whose lives are intertwined in 19th century Japan. Lots of political intrigue, violence, cultural references, gorgeous settings and descriptions.

8/10

The Girl Who Was Taken by Charlie Donlea

Megan McDonald is a high school senior when she disappears from the small town of Emerson Bay. Miraculously, after two weeks held captive, she escapes from a bunker hidden deep in the woods.

Now, one year on, Megan is a national celebrity thanks to her bestselling book, Missing. It's an inspiring story - except for one inconvenient detail.

There was a second girl who was taken. Her classmate Nicole Cutty.

Livia Cutty is a forensic pathologist. Every time a Jane Doe arrives at the morgue she wonders if it's her missing sister. However it's the body of a young man, an apparent suicide, who finally offers the first clue to Nicole's fate. So Livia reaches out to Megan for help.

But Megan knows more than she's revealed. Flashes of memory are coming together - and they are pointing to something darker and more monstrous than anything her chilling memoir describes.

Chilling read, clever plot with lots of red herrings. Lots of flashbacks too. My favourite bits were the forensic pathologists story.

7/10

The Girl In The Moon by Terry Goodkind

Angela Constantine is a girl born broken.

The daughter of a meth addict, Angela is convinced she was born a monster. Haunted by an abusive childhood, she was forced to become a woman far too soon. And in the process, she became more.

Angela Constantine has a secret.

Living in a secluded mountain cabin and juggling several jobs, Angela leads a double life right under everyone's noses. Because her family's bloodline carries the ability to recognize killers, she adopts a solitary existence in service of her own violent mission in life. When she unexpectedly finds herself stalked, Angela is the only one who knows the truth of what they are about to do. She's an unlikely hero. She's also our only hope.

The book starts out slow but after a few chapters I couldn't put it down.
Obviously this is fantasy /crime and so some things are never going to happen. I didn't see where it was going to go, but wow, it was good.

9/10

The End Of The Wasp Season by Denise Mina

When notorious millionaire banker Lars Anderson hangs himself from the old oak tree in front of his Kent mansion his death attracts no sympathy. But the legacy of a lifetime of self-serving is widespread, the carnage most acute amongst those he ought to be protecting: his family. Meanwhile, in a wealthy suburb of Glasgow, a young woman is found savagely murdered in her home. The genteel community is stunned by what appears a vicious, random attack. When DS Alex Morrow is called in to investigate, she soon discovers that behind the murder lurks a tangled web of lies.

We know from the beginning that two boys from a posh private Catholic school killed young Sarah Erroll and that they have made some sort of mistake about her identity. The question is: which of them is most responsible and who were they really after? 

A nasty grizzly murder involving nasty, rich people who think they shouldn't have to have any consequences for their actions and they raise their children the same. 

A well written book. A bit slow moving at times but I enjoyed it. It just didn't call me to keep reading until about half way.

7/10

The Lace Weaver by Lauren Chater

Each lace shawl begins and ends the same way – with a circle. Everything is connected with a thread as fine as gossamer, each life affected by what has come before it and what will come after. 

1941, Estonia. As Stalin’s brutal Red Army crushes everything in its path, Katarina and her family survive only because their precious farm produce is needed to feed the occupying forces.

Fiercely partisan, Katarina battles to protect her grandmother’s precious legacy – the weaving of gossamer lace shawls stitched with intricate patterns that tell the stories passed down through generations.

While Katarina struggles to survive the daily oppression, another young woman is suffocating in her prison of privilege in Moscow. Yearning for freedom and to discover her beloved mother’s Baltic heritage, Lydia escapes to Estonia.

I skimmed a bit when the detail on the oppression of Estonia under Russian control got a bit much...which was a lot of the time.

6/10