The Weekend by Charlotte Wood

I enjoyed this much more than Wood's previous novel. It tells the story of three female friends in their seventies. They are clearing out the home of their fourth friend, Sylvie, who has recently died. Jude is a proud and fastidious restaurateur who has lived the life of a kept women. Adele is a widowed actor with money problems and Wendy is a widowed academic and writer. Wendy brings along her dog Finn who is so old and frail he should probably haver been put down some time ago.

The loss of Sylvie has changed the dynamic of the foursome and they're wondering if their friendship will survive it. The tension slowly builds as the women begin to get on each others nerves. It reaches its climax on Christmas Eve, which just happened to be the day I finished the book. There is very little backfill, the book focuses on the present. The dog acts as a symbol for ageing. He's frightened, frail, messy and constantly needs accomodating for, but Wendy still loves and needs him.

The wife and the widow by Christian White

This is an easy to read crime thriller with a great twist (the sort that has you going back through the earlier chapters looking for the clues). It takes place on a Australian island. Kate (the widow) has a holiday home there and Abby (the wife) is a local. Kate's husband is killed at a secluded part of the beach that is a known gay cruising spot.

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

I was expecting great things of this thriller but I have to say I was a little disappointed. The premise is great. A psychologist (Theo) interviews an artist (Alicia) in a psychiartric facility to try and work out why she shot her husband but she hasn't uttered a word since the incident. Theo delves into Alicia's life, her friendships, her family, her marriage and her work. He meets with anyone he can to try and piece together her state of mind at the time of the shooting.

There are great twists but I lost interest in all the interviews Theo was conducting. I've given it 4 stars as it was good but, based on other reviews, I was expecting it to be outstanding.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

The story begins with a house fire in the affluent suburb of Shaker Heights. The house belongs to Bill and Elena Richardson and their four teenagers. The youngest child, Izzy, is supected of starting the fire. The Richardson's own an apartment that they rent to a photographer and her daughter. The book explores the tangled relationships between the two families that culminate in the fire. It is a story about motherhood, what it means to be a mother and what lengths mothers will go to to protect their children.

It's a beautifully written book. It's not fast paced but there's enough going on to make it a page turner. There are a broad range of interesting characters and the author provides some great insights into photography and motherhood. This passgae really resonated with me "to a parent, your child wasn't just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all existed at once... And each time you left it, each time your child passed out of your sight, you feared you might never be able to return to that place again."

Come back for me by Heidi Perks

I really enjoyed this book. It begins on a stormy night in 1993. A family of 5, the Harveys, flee their home on the  small island of Evergreen (off the Dorset coast). The story then moves to the present day, when a body is found buried on the island at the bottom of the Harvey's garden. Stella Harvey is the youngest member of the family. She was 11 when her family fled and is now a counsellor in her thirties. Stella wants to find out why her family left the island she loved so suddenly, if their leaving is connected to the body, and why they moved there in the first place. Stella goes back to the island to try to reconnect with the people she hasn't seen in 25 years, against the wishes of her older sister Bonnie who hated the island and doesn't want to return.

The book is a page-turner. There are a lot of interesting and troubbled characters and I really wanted to find out what had happened. It's a crime novel but the investigation takes a back seat to the personal questions Stella is trying to answer.

The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas

The book tells the story of Starr Carter, a 16 year old black girl who lives in a poor nieghbourhood but goes to an expensive private school. She witnesses a white police officer shoot her unarmed black friend.

This is an important book and I learned a lot from it, particularly about gang culture. I enjoyed the story but my two complaints were firstly, I felt it could have been 100 pages shorter, and secondly I found the white characters to be a bit flat. They reminded me of characters from Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, Beverley Hills 90210 etc. Wikipedia describes the book as 'young adult' fiction. I'd assumed it was aimed at adults. I gave it 4 stars but it probably deserves 5 judged as young adult fiction.

The Scholar by Dervla McTiernan

This book is the second in the Detective Cormac Reilly series. It's definitely better then the first. A girl is killed in a hit and run outside the lab where Cormac's girlfriend Emma works. Emma finds the body and calls him. The series reminds me of Robert Galbraith's (aka J. K. Rowling) Cormoran Strike books. They got better with each book and hopefully this series will too. There were some unexpected twists but it didn't have me on the edge of my seat. I have to admit, I find the unpronounceable Irish names a bit annoying (Aisling, Aoife, Eoghan).