Matt McAvoy Book Review

Whenever I am sent a historical fantasy with “Volume 1” in its title, my heart sinks a little.  This genre is particularly characterized by long word counts and abrupt, unfulfilling endings.  But, in this book’s case, while it certainly does have the former, the latter is thankfully avoided by this tremendously good author.  Yes, it is part of a saga, and yes, it is long and wordy, but it is also self-contained in its own right, feeling like more of a chronicle from the series, with thr...

I enjoyed this book. The author, Mark Bulahao, is an artist and has the ability to see the small details in every scene that I would miss. In the story of Paco he impresses me with the importance of these little things. He weaves a tale for me in order that I might pay attention to a less dominant voice in a culture that itself is less dominant in our western world.

Paco is nineteen and yearns to be free. He is ‘an awkward fellow’ physically, the product of his father’s waywardness, �...

I wouldn’t call this a therapeutic self-help guide, as perhaps the book’s title and associated blurb might suggest, but rather in fact a therapeutic memoir, written for the benefit of the author.  Clearly with a truly shocking, devastating trauma in her childhood, CJ has, throughout her life, found her own ways to cope, starting with forgiveness (for what, exactly, I’ll leave to the author to share), and this book, I suspect, is more of the same – written at the stage she is now at, i...

Not at all what I was expecting, Call Numbers is a surprisingly gritty, and I have to say a particularly angry book, with all of its somewhat disagreeable characters displaying a level of aggression and antagonism which occasionally took me aback, and seemed strangely out of context with the book’s supposedly tranquil, library workplace setting.  That is not to say it is not a good book – it is, and very well written by an undoubtedly good author – I’m just not sure what the intended ...

Easy reading and inoffensive in any respect, this YA tale is no more or less than a modern-day, tech-arena Famous Five-style mystery, about an elite, teenage group of cyber-security gurus who investigate when their employer’s biggest client is targeted by an ominous, highly sophisticated hacker.  Whilst this may not sound like the most dramatic or action-packed storyline, it actually gets pretty exciting, and gripping, too.  Sue Loh clearly knows her subject, and is obviously something of a...

If I hadn’t started this book only very late one evening, I would have finished it in a single reading. Not Pregnant by Karina Savaryna is an expression of the grief of every woman in every century who has longed for a child. Like the mother of the Jewish prophet Samuel, she is ‘a woman sorely troubled’, speaking out of her great anxiety and distress. The book is intense and unrelenting but it is also as gripping and expressive as Shakespeare. Having begun to read, one is drawn in. The ...

Henry Harris is about to be awakened.  He has passed his entire twenty-nine years in his parents’ comfortable apartment in Manhattan, devoid of relationships, other than with books.  But his passion for creating poetry proves his salvation, when he bravely decides to leave his front door for the first time in his life, to attend a summer writers’ retreat at the Hôtel Inspiré, a guesthouse in the south of France, in a mountain village devoid of infrastructure.

As a special education tea...

This author knows his stuff, and this is a high-quality work – hugely entertaining and instantly engaging.  I was hooked right from the off, and this didn’t fade; in fact, the more I read, the more eager I was to find out where this unusual tale was heading.

Alternating two parallel timelines, it accompanies a grieving, middle-aged U.S. State worker, back for Xmas from working in Afghanistan, who finds himself immediately hospitalized for a DVT the moment he lands in the U.S.  As he recu...

Yvgeny Yedynak is an undertaker with panache.  He employs a gravedigger the police mistake for a zombie, carries the finger of his dead father in his pocket and drives a hearse called Cerberus, in Greek mythology the dog who guards the gates of Hades.  He is selectively honest and sees no harm in pawning anything of value remaining on a corpse once the relatives have surrendered it for burial. However, when he discovers the headless and handless body of an elderly man in one of his freshly-du...

This is one of those books which isn’t really about anything (though, the ending is genuinely staggering).  Set over the course of a weekend, it tells, from a multi-person viewpoint, of the everyday lives of a group of young twenty-somethings – and a few peripheral others – who appear to live for nothing but smoking weed, drinking shots and getting laid.  Despite its excellent writing, it didn’t really appeal to me; in fact, in the main, I think this book is probably more suited to an...

Another day, another excellent Vietnam war book from Glyn.  A direct sequel to Promises to the Fallen, this instalment kicks off immediately following the tense ending to its predecessor as, much to his new wife’s horror, Eddie is to return to the jungles of Quang Ngai for his second tour of duty.  This time, however, his experience values him much more highly, and he is selected for a small, novel search and rescue unit.  His new adventures will reunite him with old friends, and introduce ...

For a book clearly rushed out extraordinary quickly, the author has actually done a tremendous job.  Sure, it needs tidying up for layout and Arnett has missed more than a handful of errors in his haste, but a sincere hats off to him for the remarkable achievement of this inspirational and comprehensive (surprisingly the latter, given the low word count) advice guide.

Arnett is the kind of person you want with you in a nuclear bunker; he has a positive spin and well-being solution for every ...

If you’ve ever wondered how academics justify their existence, then Ivy is a Weed by Robert M. Roseth is the murder mystery for you.  Set within a university in the Pacific Northwest of the USA, the novel is sophisticated yet still on planet Earth, and the plotting is as finely crafted as any novel I have read by well-known crime writers.  One cares about the protagonist Mike Woodsen, university reporter turned amateur sleuth, so it is a rewarding journey taken with him to investigate his s...

This interesting, entertaining book is a very enjoyable way to kill an hour or two.  Written by an ADHD sufferer, its very simple format tells us first about the condition, then about the healing power of music generally, before finally combining the two topics in its third part, to suggest how music can help those affected by ADHD to manage their mental health.  I, for one, was in no doubt about this suggestion before I even picked the book up, so Luz had no need to convince me.  Music is un...

However you feel about yoga, or your opinion of the whole spiritual energy concept generally, sometimes a good story is just a good story.  In this motivational life-help book, yoga teacher Christa presents both.  She is an experienced, inspirational professional, and also a creative writer with a flair for language which could appeal to adults, teens and even very young readers alike.  As well as encouraging the reader to learn more about the arts of breathing she refers to – and helpfully...

I won’t lie, this slow, moody and incredibly melancholy book was a little bit of a struggle for me.  Don’t get me wrong, it is very well written and Marcello is undoubtedly extremely good quality; I am in no doubt that if you are a fan of this type of book, genre and writing style, you will love it.  The good reviews are well-merited, but I think this is more for me a matter of personal taste.  It is incredibly slow and poignant, which I don’t have a problem with, of course, but in such...

How to describe this book?  Absurd, depraved, dark, gritty, bonkers and at times utterly delicious.  For the most part, though, it is crude, grotesque and unpleasant.  Not that those qualities are enough to put me off or mar my enjoyment of a book in any way (and I do enjoy my horror); though, I do think it is fair to say that sci-fi-horror hybrid Monsters Inside was not really my cup of tea.

This graphic and bizarre novella, told from a multi-person viewpoint, is definitely a book which wil...

I have been fortunate enough to read all of Robert’s books in the “Rob and Tex” series, helping him work on one or two of them, and this is certainly one of the better ones.  Without the gung-ho action of Freedom’s Light, or the profound wartime trauma of Bullets and Bandages, Butterfly Lake is perhaps a more understated and subtle piece of work, and this certainly suits it.  Set in the beauty and tranquillity of the Pennsylvania mountains, which Rob clearly loves, there is more an ai...

At first glance, this book comes across as your average, happy-memories, reminiscent memoir, with friends, drink, girls, cars and all the usual fare – and, that it most definitely is.  However, as you read on, and indeed between the lines, you realize there is more to it, and more to its author – perhaps even he is unaware of it.  Your admiration only grows for T.J., his general attitude and his strength of character.  Sure, his life was ordinary, but his childhood was far from what one w...

Jesus said: ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.’

My first thought when I read this story about the woman caught in adultery was: Where is the man?  It is true, as the Reverend Susan Bowman discovered, that if you are one: a man, and two: not ordained, then you can get away with a great deal.  If you are a woman priest, then you are toast.

I come from Sydney, Australia, the home of the ‘S’ word: women’s ‘submission’ to men in the Anglican (aka Episcopal) Church.  ...

Donald Gates is a fine espionage author with an enviable knowledge and an admirable work ethic, and The Soloist is no less than a gripping, interesting, exciting thriller, which lingers more on the cerebral than the action, and relies on the intelligence of its reader - which is always a good thing, and something I take as a compliment, as the reader.  In the vein of Frederick Forsyth, the antagonist is the lead character, and a very cool, callous one he is at that, going about his business w...

This extremely long tale starts off with a real air of epic fantasy about it, as we parry back and forth between the Heavenly Kingdom of the angels and northern Spain, at the turn of the 13th century. As the celestial beings come into conflict, and some fall, there is the promise of mighty things to come in this 750-page odyssey. After the opening quarter, however, we find ourselves in modern-day London for the duration of the book, which is perhaps a touch disappointing (no less for me than ...

This short, enjoyable memoir is a real gem.  Written with clear quality by an author with undoubted credentials to do so, we get to join Doug and his experienced sailor friends, crossing the Atlantic from the Canaries to Antigua, on their custom-built catamaran in the 1980s.  They are blessed for the first part of the journey to be joined by renowned boat designer John Shuttleworth, an expert in the field, who also writes a very welcome foreword to this book.  At times utterly tense, sometime...

Nobody Gets Out of Catering Alive really is a funny memoir.  My congratulations to the author.

Set in the 1990s and related in a rolling comedian chant – ‘I wish I could stop this compulsive entertaining’ – Joe Montaperto is a comedian down on his luck.  His hair is falling out, he’s only earning enough to pay for the bus to work and he’s living with his parents, creating his own maudlin entertainment by watching 1960s reruns.

As he lurches through his thirties with chronic inso...

A beautifully written book, if not about anything specific, but then, simultaneously, about everything.  Ritch Gaiti takes us on one man’s hugely personal journey of enlightenment, across the unnamed wilderness and through his own spiritual realm.  For the most part, it is difficult to tell if the narrative of The Strawberry Road is a metaphor for his whole life journey, a particular life challenge the narrator is facing, or if he actually is simply walking, with no purpose but to see where...

Galina, Arizona 1960. A town of economic hardship and racial tension experiences a mysterious storm of red hail, and out upon the mesa three children are spoken to by beings they can’t describe. Then follow four stages of an illness so inexplicable that even the local wildlife is affected.  But is the problem physical, spiritual, or something else entirely? Researchers in both 1960 and 2020 try to explain it as magic, curses, fungus, infections, illness, psychology, and finally aliens.But b...

This atmospheric collection of short supernatural chillers is right up my street, and I loved every moment of reading it.  The five mysterious tales – which I personally think are suitable for adults and (probably more mature) kids alike – are thoroughly entertaining, and I read the whole book in one enjoyable sitting.

Rio writes beautifully, in a simple, eloquent and professionally elegant style.  His language is easily savoured and although English doesn’t appear to be his first lang...

Robert has clearly put a huge amount of work into this Vietnam war drama.  For somebody who never fought himself, but has written this book as a clear tribute to the brave men who fought and died, with help from his veteran brother, the research and passion he has applied to it is admirably on show for all to see.  I have read many Vietnam war memoirs, and I can truly say that this is as authentic an account as you will read from an author who was not present; the terminology, feelings of fea...