WWW Wednesday (December 9th)

I’m back this week with a WWW; I didn’t post last week because I was so busy I hadn’t managed to finish the doorstop of a book that was Fingersmith. Hope you didn’t miss me too much 😉

This weekly meme is hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words. It’s open to all to participate. Why not join in and let us know what’s on your reading list this week…

To join in, just answer the following three questions…

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

I’m currently reading…

Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson

Starting this book next for my book club who are meeting next week. I hope it’ll make for an interesting discussion.

The blurb

Home is a foreign country: they do things differently there . . .

In a tiny flat in West London, sixteen-year-old Marina lives with her emotionally delicate mother, Laura, and three ancient Hungarian relatives. Imprisoned by her family’s crushing expectations and their fierce unEnglish pride, by their strange traditions and stranger foods, she knows she must escape. But the place she runs to makes her feel even more of an outsider.

At Combe Abbey, a traditional English public school for which her family have sacrificed everything, she realises she has made a terrible mistake. She is the awkward half-foreign girl who doesn’t know how to fit in, flirt or even be. And as a semi-Hungarian Londoner, who is she? In the meantime, her mother Laura, an alien in this strange universe, has her own painful secrets to deal with, especially the return of the last man she’d expect back in her life. She isn’t noticing that, at Combe Abbey, things are starting to go terribly wrong.

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I recently finished

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

Loved the twists in this book even though it was over 500 pages and took me double my using reading time to get through. Thoroughly recommend if you like historical fiction mixed up with some mystery and a pinch of villainy for good measure.

The blurb

London 1862. Sue Trinder, orphaned at birth, grows up among petty thieves – fingersmiths – under the rough but loving care of Mrs Sucksby and her ‘family’. But from the moment she draws breath, Sue’s fate is linked to that of another orphan growing up in a gloomy mansion not too many miles away.

I also read

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

I loved the illustrations throughout this book and the story itself is incredibly sad. I did have tears in my eyes at the end! Will be very interesting to see how this translates on the big screen.

The blurb

The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting. He’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the one he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming… The monster in his back garden, though, this monster is something different. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor. It wants the truth.

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What’s up next?

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

My daughter has recommended this to me and I’ve wanted to read more of Gillian Flynn since reading Gone Girl and with the forthcoming movie I didn’t want to wait too long.

The blurb

Libby Day was just seven years old when her older brother massacred her family while she hid in a cupboard. Her evidence helped put him away. Ever since then she has been drifting, surviving for over 20 years on the proceeds of the ‘Libby Day fund’. But now the money is running out and Libby is desperate. When she is offered $500 to do a guest appearance, she feels she has to accept. But this is no ordinary gathering. The Kill Club is a group of true-crime obsessives who share information on notorious murders, and they think her brother Ben is innocent.

Ben was a social misfit, ground down by the small-town farming community in which he lived. But he did have a girlfriend – a brooding heavy metal fan called Diondra. Through her, Ben became involved with drugs and the dark arts. When the town suddenly turned against him, his thoughts turned black. But was he capable of murder? Libby must delve into her family’s past to uncover the truth – no matter how painful…

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Have you read any of this week’s choices? Let me know what you’re reading…