Lovesong - Alex Miller

Lovesong is the love story of John and Sabiha.

John Pratterner is an Australian backpacker who enters a Parisian cafe to escape a rain storm. This is where he meets Sabiha and the pair instantly fall in love. 

The story gives us insight in to their early married life, then follows their desperate journey to conceive a child and the obstacles that stand in their way.

When I saw that this story had won the Age Book of the Year 2010, I was instantly intrigued.

This is the first novel I had read by Alex Miller, and I enjoyed his style of writing and found that he is capable of offering the perfect amount of detail, without being too over the top He provided enough detail to start the picture but allowing my own imagination to finish it off.

Overall the story itself is sweet. I felt for Sabiha and her desire for a child, but also in this respect I found the story quite monotonous in the middle. It seemed that it took 16 years for her to stop being depressed about her struggle to fall pregnant, and get the courage to actually do something about it.

At times I was frustrated as the story kept telling us how in love John and Sabiha were, but it was hard to see or feel the strong connection between them, we just had to trust the author that it was there.

All in all it was a good story and I enjoyed reading it, but it also is not one that I would probably read over again and again. (I don't know if this book would have been my pick for the winner of Book of the Year, but definitely a finalist.) While the story was nice, I finished wishing there was a bit more excitement and passion in the characters and their lives.

I would recommend this book to someone who is looking for a quick, light read that doesn't require much energy on the readers behalf.

The Sleeping Doll - Jeffery Deaver

This novel is based around the central character Kathryn Dance, an investigator with the California Bureau of Investigation. Dance is the lead cop handling the escape of psychopathic killer Daniel Pell, dubbed "Son of Manson" by the press for his "family" of young runaways and his most horrendous crime, the murders of computer engineer William Croyton, Croyton's wife and two of their three children. The only child left alive, nine-year-old Theresa, is known as the Sleeping Doll. Pell, charismatic and diabolically intelligent, continually eludes capture, but Dance, a specialist in interrogation and kinesics (or body language), is never more than a few suspenseful minutes behind.

Despite other reviews saying the book is too predictable and 'sags' in the storyline, I was hooked and got carried away with the twists and suspensful story. And true to his reputation (although admittedly this is the first book of Deaver's I have actually read), the twists keep coming right to the very end.

The characters are nicely detailed and while the story sounds quite gruesome, Deaver definitely insinuates violence but never goes in to too much uncomfortable detail.

I would definitely recommend this book if you are in the mood for an action packed crime thriller.