Mid Year Freak Out Tag 2018

Hello everyone and welcome to a tag that’s really doing the rounds at the moment – the Mid Year Freak Out Tag which I loved doing last year. Here we go!

1.) The Best Book You’ve Read So Far This Year

This book has now made it onto my all time favourites shelf and I’m already dying to re-read it which usually doesn’t happen for a few years at least! It broke my heart and made me laugh in equal measure and if I’m ever asked for a recommendation, this is the latest book that I push into the hands of everyone who asks. 

2.) Your Favourite Sequel This Year?

I’ve got a feeling that one of the Marnie Rome books appeared in this spot last year, I’m so predictable haha! For me, this series keeps getting better and better and this book for “favourite sequel” spot was a no-brainer.

3.) A New Release That You Haven’t Read Yet But Really Want To?

Okay, so I was initially put off this book because I heard it was about ice hockey. I’m not a huge fan of reading about sports so thought it wasn’t for me. Then I started to see all the amazing reviews, then I realised it wasn’t just about ice hockey, NOW my fellow bloggers are starting to virtually bash me on the head for not having read it so far. This will happen soon, I promise. Er, this month or next month I mean!! For my interview with Fredrik Backman – please see my post HERE. (shameless plug).

4.) Most Anticipated Release For The Second Half Of The Year?

I think I might have already mentioned Melmoth by Sarah Perry in a previous tag but Bridge Of Clay by Markus Zusak is another one I’ve got on pre-order and am really excited for it to be released!

5.) Your Biggest Disappointment?

I was going to choose one of our Banned Books, Blood And Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause for this answer but in the end, I’m going to choose this. Lee Child has so many fans around the world, I really, REALLY wanted to like this book. I don’t know what it was, maybe I came to the series too late but I didn’t get on with it at all. Huge disappointment! Read my review HERE (but please LC fans, don’t come after me with pointy sticks!)

6.) Biggest Surprise Of The Year?

I read this as a buddy read with the lovely Stuart from Always Trust In Books. It was our first buddy read together so I will always have fond memories of it because of that but I honestly wasn’t prepared for how much I enjoyed this. I was completely gripped the whole way through and this is the first YA series that has got right under my skin for a long time now. Check out my review and our Twitter chat HERE.

We recently read a non fiction together, Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History by Bill Schutt so look out for our review on that coming in the next couple of weeks. We are also just about to start on the follow up to Scythe, called Thunderhead and I think I can say for both of us that we are VERY excited!

7.) Favourite New To You Or Debut Author?

This was an easy pick for me. I read Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine with my blogger BFF Janel at Keeper Of Pages as our second buddy read and it was also our second five star! Gail Honeyman is new to me and she is also a debut author so that ticks both boxes and I can safely say, whatever she writes next I will be pre-ordering and incredibly excited for.

8.) Your New Fictional Crush?

I have to be honest, I don’t really get fictional crushes but if I had to choose, I’d choose Henry from one of my all time favourite books, The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger which I re-read again this year. He’s a little bit mysterious, a little bit dangerous and I love the way he loves Clare. I’m not big on romance but their relationship just captured my heart.

9.) New Favourite Character?

I read the Nightingale with Janel @ Keeper Of Pages for our third buddy read and although my review isn’t up until tomorrow (spoiler alert, I ADORED it!) I had to include it on this tag because I completely fell in love with the character of Isabelle. I’ll talk more about her tomorrow but wow, I don’t think I’ll ever forget her!

10.) A Book That Made You Cry?

It takes a lot for a book to make me cry, I’m not sure why! But when a book does, I will never forget it. I came close to crying with The Heart’s Invisible Furies and The Nightingale, books I’ve already mentioned in this tag but I really teared up during a particular moment of H Is For Hawk, by Helen Macdonald, a non fiction book about grief and falconry where Helen is feeling sad and then plays with her hawk for the first time. It’s really heart-warming and was a passage I read over and over again.

11.) A Book That Made You Happy?

Matilda by Roald Dahl, an old childhood favourite and one Chrissi Reads and I picked for our Kid-Lit challenge this year. I absolutely adore it and it’s always a delight to re-read. 

12.) Your Favourite Book To Movie Adaptation That You’ve Seen This Year?

Has to be The Handmaid’s Tale, adapted from the novel by Margaret Atwood. I love the book (it’s another of my all-time favourites) and I loved the TV series too, I’m currently watching the second one on Channel 4 and it’s so chilling!

13.) Favourite Book Post You’ve Published This Year?

I hate this question as I’m always really insecure about how my blog posts are received. I guess there’s two I’m quite pleased with for very different reasons, Another Day In The Death Of America where I really enjoyed ranting about guns in America and The Time Traveler’s Wife which I’ve already mentioned above where I got into some quite personal details about my own life. 

14.) The Most Beautiful Book You Have Bought/Received This Year?

I’m actually on a book buying ban this year (this excludes pre-orders and any books I might receive for my birthday of course!) so I’ve been really good about not buying many. I did get this beautiful Penguin clothbound classic of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott from my boyfriend for my birthday while we were on holiday in Mexico which was a lovely surprise!

15.) What Are Some Books That You Need To Read By The End Of The Year?

These are the main two books that my fellow bloggers have been begging me to read soon. And I will, I promise!

So that’s my answers, thank you so much for reading and I hope you’ve enjoyed my choices. Let me know in the comments if you agree with me or tell me what you might choose yourself. Anyone who wants to do this and hasn’t done it yet, consider yourself tagged!

 

The Midnight Line (Jack Reacher #22) – Lee Child

What’s it all about?:

Reacher takes a stroll through a small Wisconsin town and sees a class ring in a pawn shop window: West Point 2005. A tough year to graduate: Iraq, then Afghanistan. The ring is tiny, for a woman, and it has her initials engraved on the inside. Reacher wonders what unlucky circumstance made her give up something she earned over four hard years. He decides to find out. And find the woman. And return her ring. Why not?

So begins a harrowing journey that takes Reacher through the upper Midwest, from a lowlife bar on the sad side of small town to a dirt-blown crossroads in the middle of nowhere, encountering bikers, cops, crooks, muscle, and a missing persons PI who wears a suit and a tie in the Wyoming wilderness.

The deeper Reacher digs, and the more he learns, the more dangerous the terrain becomes. Turns out the ring was just a small link in a far darker chain. Powerful forces are guarding a vast criminal enterprise. Some lines should never be crossed. But then, neither should Reacher.

What did I think?:

Oh dear, here we go. Unpopular opinion time. Before I get into it though, I have a little story about my experience with Lee Child and the Jack Reacher series. In that I have no experience at all! I actually had the first seven Jack Reacher books on my shelves to read before my boyfriend and I moved from London and to make moving a little easier, I had a giant cull of my books. I had the above mentioned Lee Child’s for years, languishing at the back of my bookshelves and just never getting round to them. Then I had to be brutal with myself. I have a huge amount of books as some of you might know and I had to be real – firstly, was I excited about these books? Secondly, when was I ever going to read them? So I decided I obviously wasn’t excited if they had been on my shelves that long and I probably wasn’t going to read them anytime in the next decade so off to the charity shop they went.

Any Lee Child’s here? Probably.

Now, you might know that I follow the Richard and Judy book club here in the UK quite religiously with my sister and fellow blogger, Chrissi Reads. Any books that we do read on each seasonal list, we usually discuss in a “Talking About” feature and if she doesn’t fancy reading any of them, I will read and review them on my own. I was kind of surprised to be honest when I saw the latest Jack Reacher novel on the Richard and Judy Summer Book Club list. I don’t think any of the author’s books have been featured before and it was interesting that they chose the twenty-second book in the series as one of their “must reads.” Initially, I was quite pleased to see it there. Finally, I could read a Lee Child book and see what all the fuss was about! It didn’t matter that it was quite far on in the series, I was pretty sure each novel could be read as a stand-alone and on finishing it, I can confirm this is the case.

Lee Child, author of the popular Jack Reacher series.

I read The Midnight Line on a trip home to see my parents and sister and I’m so sorry to admit that I was bitterly disappointed. I quite literally had to force myself to pick it up and read it and am kind of kicking myself that I just didn’t give it up when I realised I wasn’t enjoying it. No, no I MADE myself continue, even though I was barely concentrating on the story anymore, there were entire passages that I confess to skim reading, just to get to the end a bit sooner. Sadly, as my sister can probably confirm, I was finding other distractions, like looking at social media on my phone or checking train times (when I already knew the train times) just to avoid picking up the book again.

I won’t talk too much about what the book is about as the synopsis does that pretty well. In a nutshell, it’s about Jack Reacher, former military officer, freakishly tall and incredibly badass with morals and a heart of gold. He finds a small ring in a pawn shop one day that foxes him as he recognises the brand from a school he used to be part of. He starts to worry what has happened to the woman who once earned this ring as it’s something he doesn’t believe anyone would give up lightly. Therefore, he vows to find out the story behind the ring’s owner and try to help wherever he can.

So yes I was quite intrigued by this synopsis initially, especially as to what exactly had happened to the woman who owned the ring. Unfortunately, the story that unfolded wasn’t half as interesting as I had anticipated. I won’t give anything away for anybody who hasn’t read it but perhaps my main problem with the plot (and occasionally the male lead) was that I just found it somewhat unbelievable. If you’re a Jack Reacher fan, you might know that he gets compared to Bigfoot and The Hulk, something I struggle to comprehend with Tom Cruise being cast in the role but that’s besides the point. In one particular scene in the book, he faces off with a number of big biker men surrounding him (I think there are five, but I can’t quite remember). Now, I understand that Jack is a huge ape of a man and has had military training which obviously makes him quite handy in a fight but he manages to kick these guys asses by himself with barely a scratch on him at the end. Sorry, just don’t believe that would happen!

Theatrical release poster for the Jack Reacher film starring Tom Cruise. Image from: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37219725

There’s also various scenes involving drugs, the possession and use of drugs and Jack threatening and even following through with his threats to the “baddies,” in the narrative. Some of these things are carried out either right in front of law enforcement individuals or with their knowledge and nothing ever happens/or is said to Jack about his part in breaking the law. He just seems to get away with everything. Again….don’t believe it! I do understand that sometimes you have to suspend your disbelief in a novel and personally, I’m fine with that in magical realism or fantasy. If it’s a thriller/crime/mystery novel, I like to have an element of authenticity and if this goes beyond the realms of what I particularly believe in, I apologise but you’ve lost me as a reader.

I do want to end with positives as I really don’t want this review to be one long rant. If I’m writing a more critical review, I really like to say nice things too, there’s no sense in being rude. Lee Child has written a very popular series which is famous world-wide and obviously, a lot of readers are invested in it and thoroughly enjoy Reacher’s adventures. Perhaps the problem with this novel for me was that it was the twenty-second book in the series. Therefore, I haven’t had the pleasure of getting to know Jack Reacher from the beginning. I’m being quite judgemental about his character but maybe if I HAD read the series from the start, I would have connected a lot more with both his background, personality and his way of going about things. I just want to assure Lee Child fans that this is just my personal opinion, it may have not been the best book to start the series with and I’d love to hear from you about the books you’ve read and why you enjoy them. Are all the books in the series similar? Should I give Jack Reacher another shot?

Would I recommend it?:

Probably not.

Star rating (out of 5):