December Reads!

Happy 1st December! The festive season is already well and truly underway at our house. Tree and lights are up, advent calendars are opened, and the naughty little elf has already made its appearance! I'm usually one to stick to tradition and start decorating around 12 days before the big event, but (and as I've heard so many say already) it's 2020! Why not? I think we all need a little Christmas joy right now.

As you may know, I've been rereading the David Raker series by the incredible Tim Weaver. I'm currently up to book number 4: Never Coming Back. As always, I am thoroughly enjoying it and can't wait to get to the remaining 6 books in the series.

I'm hoping to squeeze all of them in before the Christmas madness really gets going! I have a few others on my 'TBR' pile that I'm really looking forward to reading, so let's hope I stay organised and on track to get around to them before 2020 is out!

What are you reading? Share with us in the comments below!

Until next time, Rachael. x

Goodreads Review - The Dead Tracks by Tim Weaver

The Dead Tracks by Tim Weaver
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Read this for the second time four years later. Increased my rating from 4 to 5 stars. Fantastic book and I love the series. David Raker is an incredible character - a bit like a Smartie; hard as nails on the outside but incredibly soft on the inside, driven by emotion and the events of his past.

The Dead Tracks is gripping, thrilling and creepy. Weaver has transformed modern London into a Victorian dystopia here, in a Jack the Ripper style mystery, meshed with more contemporary crimes. The Dead Tracks setting really gives you a feeling of wanting to satisfy curiosity, but also stay away from the danger. You can almost feel the tension through the pages, and I was genuinely both saddened and impressed to discover that the location described as The Dead Tracks, doesn't exist in real life. Tim has expertly brought it to life and created the perfect setting for the grisly storyline.

5 stars and on to the next in the series. 😊

View all my reviews

Monday Musings

 Just a short update this Monday evening to remind any of you lovely readers that the blog is back! (And very much still under construction!) I am using my non-reading, non-reviewing, non-working, non-parenting time to learn a few skills, including web design; so watch this space! 

In the meantime, I am currently re-reading the David Raker series by Tim Weaver. I first came across the series around 4 years ago, and there may (or may not) be a previous blog post about it because I loved it! I saw a post on Twitter last week advertising the latest release in the series and having just finished the Kate Marshall series by Robert Bryndza, I thought it's probably a great time to start the Raker series all over again to really dig deep into the character. When you read (or binge watch) a series consecutively, I feel like you really get to know the characters on a deeper level and you don't have that time lapse in between where you can forget some of their quirks and flaws.

I raced through the first in the series - Chasing the Dead, and I'm almost finished book number 2, The Dead Tracks. Check out my short review of book 1 on Goodreads here, and if you're looking for a fast-paced, mystery/thriller, then I would highly recommend this series. 

If you're already a fan of the series, the latest book - No One Home is available now.

Until next time.

Rachael. x

And so she returned...

Hello fellow readers. It's been a while. Over two months now, in fact. I have dearly missed blogging and reading some of the lovely feedback I get from my readers. Fear not, I am still lurking in the community and I am still reading, perhaps less ferociously than before, but reading nonetheless. A family of 5, life sometimes gets in the way!

I would like to share with you some of what I have read over the last few months, which, as you will notice, is mostly non-fiction, a genre I haven't really blogged about much before. Sometimes I think non-fiction requires a certain frame of mind, or headspace. I have read lots of non-fiction over the years, particularly in the self-help and business sections and I very rarely encounter a book that I don't like.

I cannot tell you how I came to read this first novel. I am a massive fan of Queen and grew up in the late eighties and early nineties so Freddie Mercury & Co. featured heavily in my childhood. I read a news piece a while back about the upcoming biopic of Freddie's life and came across Somebody To Love by Mark Langthorne and Matt Richards. I jumped in, expecting a standard look at the life of a famous rock star in the 70s and 80s but instead, what I found was a pretty in-depth history lesson on the AIDS epidemic, and it's devastating effect on one of the World's biggest stars.

It truly fascinated me and led me into many, many documentaries, books and articles on HIV and AIDS. It was bordering on obsession at times, this thirst for knowledge and understanding of something that has always been present for me but never really comprehended. If you have any understanding of the Myers-Briggs personality types you probably wouldn't have a hard time figuring out that I am an INTJ and when we stumble upon a topic, we have to pursue it to it's end. It's a dogged and unrelenting trait that I often loathe because, in the moment, all else is forsaken and forgotten. When you are a parent of three children, their needs have to come first and so it is often frustrating for an INTJ to have to put certain pursuits on the back-burner whilst tending to responsibilities.

It is this dogged research that has kept me busy the past few weeks, and only now that I feel I have exhausted the topic can I move on with my newly acquired knowledge and opinions. So, I am back to the real world, back to some of my favourite fictional genres and back to writing some views and reviews on what Rachael is reading next.

Until next time...

Rachael xo

Some of what I've been reading and watching...