Books I've read this summer

Our staycation made it a really good summer for reading books.  

The Curator - MW Craven

This was a dark feeling thriller were investigators are after a manipulative bright killer, who uses other people as a proxy to kill.  I was confused over the roles & responsibilities of the main charactors as they were not really part of the police force but more regional intelligence but i've never really figured out these structures.  In the end that did not matter to just enjoy a thrilling book and hope they catch the guy before more deaths occur. 

De Verborgen tuin - Erica James

A story of a heart-broken girl escaping her life to the country house of her great-aunt where that country house and it's garden has a rich history dating back to the lives of nobility and servants that has repercutions on the current lives.  Gardening is a red line through it all.  It seems very British. 

Kinderen van de rivier - Lisa Wingate 

A book that brought me along the rivers of the Missisippi and deals with child abuse, child trade, ...Quite raw and shocking and unforunately based on a true scandal in the US. 

De Fluisteraar - Karin Fossum

I have read Karin Fossum before and I know she can write detectives with a strange twist.  

In this book we follow a simple naieve and very shy women who gets interviewed by the police for a crime she committed.  We go back in time for all sorts of events that happend in her life in the recent months and that clearly build up to the crime she committed...but it's only around page 200 we figure out as a reader what she did. 
You are in the mind of the criminal in the book and get sympathy but also frustrating. Itt's very well done and a weird sensation as a reader. Much more intriguing than a regular "who done it" detective. And this one in particular, more than the other Karin Fossum's that I read, really smacked in the face and stuck around. 

De Belofte - Damon Galgut

I went out of my comfort zone with this family novel on a family in South-Africa.  Over some generations they carry the burden of a non-executed promise that weights on this very disfunctional family. I was lost to all references to South-African politics so while I wanted to learn more about South-African society I felt more frustrated as I guess I didn't get all the points in the book.

In the end, it was just a confusing book to me that was not my cup of tea at all. 

In de schaduw van de wilg - Suzanne Kelman

Another book about an English garden (and to be honest, the next one lined up seems to be by coincidence also about a gardener.). And also this book was about a girl escaping the city after a broken heart and then discovering secrets from the past that we live with flashbacks.  Uh, while she says she was inspired by the famous book "The secret garden" from Frances Hodgson Burnett but I wonder if she has also read Erica James.

While the structure of those 2 books which I read with just 2 months difference is remarkably alike, the story is fortunately different. Here the flashbacks are to 2 Russian spies that operate in WWII in England.  That is a point of view I've never had for the 2nd World War before. 

All in all it was a romantic story that reads smoothly but that won't stick around. 

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