Elizabeth Haynes (3)Rezensionen

Crime

3.5 stars

3.5 stars

Great start to a new series.

This Victorian historical crime novel is based on the true story of young Harriet Monckton, who was murdered in Kent in 1843. Harriet was 23 years old and was found poisoned in the privy behind the chapel she regularly attended in Bromley, Kent. Sadly, Harriet's murder remains unsolved, however Elizabeth Haynes has attempted to show us who Harriet was, why she may have come to harm and who might have been responsible for her untimely death.

Elizabeth Haynes is better known for writing psychological thrillers, and you might recall my reviews of Into the Darkest Corner (5 stars) and Human Remains (4 stars). With many more crime novels under her belt, writing historical fiction is a first, and I think she nailed it! Drawing on historical records and archives, including the content of two inquests, coroner's report and witness testimonies, The Murder of Harriet Monckton by Elizabeth Haynes is a convincing historical fiction novel by an author who has clearly done their Victorian era research.

The novel is presented in alternate chapters from several character points of view, and it took me a number of chapters to adjust to the regular shift in narration as a relatively large cast of characters began cycling through. One of the characters appeared guilty from the get go, but some of them aren't telling the truth:

"Trouble is, the truth is plain and easy to remember. Lies, though, that's different. You lie once, you have to remember the lie, the truth doesn't fade when time passes, but a lie does." Page 242

Harriet seems charismatic and is loved by many and envied by some, with characters seeing different sides to her personality:

"I felt my heart twist a little, at that. It reminded me of something Harriet had said to me once. That she should not meet anyone she loved as well as me. But that was the old Harriet, of course. The good, kind Harriet. Not the hypocrite, the harlot, the betrayer." Page 301

In the novel, we learn Harriet was pregnant, despite being single and unwed. Identifying the father of the child is a mystery just as compelling as the guilty party behind her murder. Are they one and the same?

"If I am spared, of course. It is at this time of night that I feel the most afraid; it feels that death and damnation lurk all around us, in the darkness, waiting to claim us. In the morning I shall feel foolish for these thoughts, of course, but now it seems that nothing good lies ahead for me." Page 405

Coming in at just over 500 pages, it was a little long, and Harriet's chapters did start to become a little tiresome as she fretted about her situation. A suspect is revealed by the end of the book, although of course we have no way of knowing if this is truly what happened.

If you'd like to give The Murder of Harriet Monckton by Elizabeth Haynes a try, you can read a free excerpt of the first 21 pages on the publisher's website. You might also like to check out my 2014 interview with the author: https://www.carpelibrum.net/2014/07/interview-with-elizabeth-haynes-author.html

The Murder of Harriet Monckton by Elizabeth Haynes is a slow burn, historical whodunnit based on a true story. Recommended!

UN-PUT-DOWNABLE!!!!!!!! I stayed up til 1:30 reading this because I wanted to find out how it would all turn out.

This was a Barnes & Noble special of the day, and one of the better books I've read in a while. Told in the first person view, but with chapters alternating between her life in 2003 and then 2007, this is a rich psychological thriller. The main female character suffers from OCD, and as the story is told, we see how she developed it. There are also some twists, and scary moments where I could not read fast enough.

Excellently written!!!

Une "réécriture" ou "libre invention" sur un drame victorien. Excellement écrit, finement mené. Un exercice maîtrisé de bout en bout.

Mantiene la tensión desde el principio hasta el final. Quizás esperaba más por las buenísimas críticas que había leído. Aún así, me ha gustado. Lo recomiendo.

This book gave me panic attacks. It was brutal and amazing....

Not going to lie, the end of this trilogy made me cry. I knew it was coming but all the same it was heartbreaking to read the last chapter.

End of Watch finds us back to the story of Mr. Mercedes. This final installment is has the same pacing and excitement level as the first book. We stick with our main gang of not investigators, and discover the lives of more people involved in the concert, and job fair from book one.

The character growth in this wrap up is spot on. I would love a full series that has Holly as the main character. Her struggles, and all that she is overcoming, awesome growth there. More of her adventures at the agency would be A content!

King has such a masterful way of writing thrillers, and dripping in a little paranormal that makes you feel like it could really happen. It's subtle, and disregarded by the average character in the story, but that makes it all the more terrifying. Brady is a excellent villain because he is just a guy, who had a messed up life, and messed up thoughts. We've all seen these guys in the news, so it makes his story resonate stronger than if the paranormal aspects had been thicker.

While I didn't really care for the second book, this trilogy is still going to be on my list of one of my must read recommendations from King.

Oh boy! I think i'll have to start a new book right away so i'll actually be able to sleep tonight! (..reading this while i'm home alone for a week is not the best idea!) BUT it was fantastic. I felt that Cathy was a realistic victim. Many books show victims moving on completely in a short time with minimal psychological damage which can happen but I find how Cathy's character dealt with the trauma more realistic and believable, especially once you find out exactly what had happened to her.
I quite enjoyed the style it was written in, Haynes switches back and forth between the past and the present so you learn about the events leading up while you are learning about the present. It was an interesting and new way of writing this type of story, one that i haven't seen yet anyways! It was also left kind of open ended so i'm hoping there will be a sequel, fingers crossed?

I would definitely recommend this book if you are okay with the fact that it goes pretty in depth with the descriptions of her assault.

4/5 stars

It was really long and some parts were a bit tedious but overall a really good book and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Different than other psychological thrillers I've read, and I really liked the OCD representation-- I felt that it was really accurate.

“This isn't normal. This isn't how normal people think.
Fuck off, world- what the hell is normal anyway?”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Into the Darkest Corner

Into the darkest corner is a very disturbing book. It follows the story of of a formerly abused woman Catherine (Cathy). The abuser is Lee.

Even though Cathy is free of Lee, (for the time being) she has not healed.

This book is about Domestic abuse as well as OCD and I found it to be very well written if tough to read.

I should also mention TRIGGER WARNINGS of domestic abuse and OCD. The book moves from the past to the present throughout the book. It is gripping, tragic and frightening.

I first heard of this book when reading another great read, "The Wicked Girls". I saw a review of that book from this writer and thought the title of this sounded interesting so I looked it up. Wound up reading it shortly after.

I will say I had to skim over sections, not because I did not like and appreciate the book ,but because elements of it were so tough to read. I believe it to be one of the most disturbing books on Domestic abuse I have ever read.

This was a haunting and dark tale of obsession..It is extremely well written and chilling. I found myself thinking about this book long after I had finished it.

I recommend it as long as you know you are getting a very dark and disturbing book.

My edition of the book has about 390 pages. The first 290 of them were profoundly boring. The last hundred were mostly disgusting - but at least more interesting.
I couldn't get into the story for so long that it was almost physically painful to keep reading. Still no idea why I persisted on finishing it, honestly, but I guessed who the murderer is somewhere around page 50, so maybe I just wanted to confirm my guess (and yeah, i was right).

Anyways, so I got to that last part and, well, it was glum and heartbreaking at times, because you already know how the story ends and that there's no hope for Harriet, and the despair and unfairness of it all makes your heart ache.
And the men, oh the men, they are just shit, aside from poor Thomas. That, that is what made this part disgusting - the men and their behaviour towards Harriet. The good for nothing reverend was a scumbag from the very beginning, of course, but here you can really, like REALLY see the depth of his hypocrisy and repulsiveness (is it even a word? i'm not sure). And Richard is not much better.

On a side note, the cover is hauntingly beautiful.

Gastkramande spänning. Svårt att sluta lyssna.

Well-written thriller with an exciting & satisfying if slightly predictable denouement. It kept me turning pages. The depiction of domestic violence is harrowing & the author admirably doesn't pull any punches, but it is not for the faint of heart. The main character Cathy was very well done.

Het is 2007, Catherine (Cathy) woont in een van de appartementen van een huis. Elke dag gaat ze naar haar werk (personeelszaken), maar het kost haar altijd enorm veel tijd om het pand te verlaten. Cathy heeft ocd; een dwangstoornis. Ze moet allerlei rituelen uitvoeren om de deur uit te kunnen gaan; controleren of de deur dicht is, en de ramen, op bepaalde dagen moet ze dit en op andere momenten moet ze dat. Als ze zich er niet aan houdt denkt ze dat er van alles kan gebeuren; daarom begint ze van voor af aan.
Dan springt het verhaal naar 2003 waar deze Cathy een jonge vrouw is, die graag uitgaat met haar vriendinnen en die geniet van het leven. Dan leert ze Lee kennen en ze wordt hartstikke verliefd. Al vrij snel blijkt dat Lee enorm jaloers is, dat hij de controle wil. Uiteindelijk loopt het uit op geweld.
De tijdsepisoden wisselen zich steeds af; langzaam kom je erachter hoe de jonge vrolijke Cathy verworden is tot een angstige vrouw.

Ik vond het een enorm goed opgebouwd boek. Er zit veel vaart in. Je wilt weten wat er gebeurt is. Zit qua verhaal ook goed in mekaar. Niet te zoetsappig, niet te pathetisch.
Aanrader!!

I can't pick stars for this yet. I liked it but I wouldn't say it's amazing. The book was creepy. The subject matter was disturbing but the author wrote about it well. It's hard to judge how many stars to give it right now so I think I'll let it fester for a while.

Rachel takes a temporary job on a remote Scottish island to work looking after the borders who go there. Fraser also lives and works on the island.

This book is certainly different to what Elizabeth Haynes normally writes. Dont go to read this book expecting a thriller. The story that is set around a man and a woman in a remote setting can only mean one thing.

Both characters have their own back story and how they came to be on the island. There is also another character Lefty thrown in for good measure.

So the story rumbles on slowly and Rachel and Fraser get it together, several times. I'm not against sex in books but this had just a little bit too much. One reviewer has said this book is fifty shades on an island and I tend to agree.

I didn't dislike the book, did skip the sexy bits but it certainly wasn't what I was expecting.

This was an oddly disturbing book. Annabel, a police analyst, finds her neighbor's body badly decomposing. She notices that the number of people in the area dying from natural causes, but found alone and decomposing, are significantly higher than in previous years.
Colin, a city worker, is troubled, and has a bizarre idea about helping people "transition" out of their misery. He also has a strange sexual fixation.
I liked Annabel, I didn't like Colin--not just because of his idiosyncrasies, but he was a completely unlikeable person. I did like the parts about analyzing the data, but thought Colin's account was tedious. I think some of the book could have been deleted, and it would have been more enjoyable.

Give me a book set on an island and I'll jump at the chance to read it. Make that island a Scottish one and I'm even more excited. Then make it a remote Scottish island and I'm off the scale! You, Me and the Sea is that book. It's set on the fictional island of Must, not far away from the real island of May. It marks a departure in style for Elizabeth Haynes, but proves her versatility as a writer and I hope that she might write more in a similar vein.

Rachel finds herself arriving on Must and escaping her Norwich life, even if only for a while, when she takes up a temporary position looking after the bird observatory on the island. The very definition of remote, there are only two other permanent residents, one of whom shouldn't actually be there. Fraser is a bear of a man, scary at first but then all of his many kindnesses are introduced. He doesn't want to share 'his' lighthouse with Rachel but he has no choice. And then there's Lefty, a young lad, a stowaway. Why is he there?

From the moment I settled down to read and spotted the map at the beginning, to the wonderful ending, I was captivated by this book. The setting is amazing and incredibly well-drawn. I really felt as though I could put myself there on the island. It's quite inhospitable but it grows on Rachel and it definitely grew on me too. Like many readers I'm sure, I would love to be able to visit it and am sorry it's not real (it certainly felt real).

The cast of characters is tiny. There are the three inhabitants and a few other characters who have minor roles. To keep a story about so few people so intense, so moving, so full of raw emotion, and so enthralling says a lot about the author's writing abilities. I could have carried on reading about the people and the island way past the end point.

You, Me and the Sea is a story of love, passion, revenge, loss, fear and vulnerability. There's still a hint of the author's gritty crime/thriller writing in there (this is definitely not a fluffy romance) but ultimately it's a beautiful story of three lost people finding their way amidst the stark landscape of a Scottish island. I absolutely loved it.

Wow. I’ve got to say it again. Wow. This was the most suspenseful book that I’ve read in a long time, and the suspense lasted right through to the last page. It was dark, creepy, scary – it was everything you know you shouldn’t be reading but can’t resist. I could not put this book down. I must now read all the books that Elizabeth Hayes has written as soon as I can get my hands on them. Have I mentioned before how much I love British authors?

The story maintains the same narrator, Catherine, as it switches between years (2003/4 and 2007/8). This put me off a bit in the beginning, because you never know how important it is to keep track of the time until you get a bit into a story. My advice – don’t worry about it with this one, think of it as simply Then and Now. In the Then, Catherine is an outgoing party girl who gets the boyfriend who makes all of her friends jealous. In the Now, Cathy is an introverted homebody almost crippled by her OCD and fear. The story of how she got that way is intense. They story of her trying to move on and take her life back is intense. The culmination of the book is, for lack of a better word, intense.

This book disturbed me in a way that few books do because the story didn’t just seem possible – it seems real. Haynes is one of my new favorite authors and I’m definitely going to read her other books. 5 stars and a night light!

This author’s debut novel, Into the Darkest Corner, left me breathless. It was the epitome of psychological suspense. I couldn’t put it down. Haynes had made my ‘must read everything this author has ever written’ list before I even finished the book. Just so you know, it’s a short list.

Imagine my delight when I stumbled upon another book written by Elizabeth Haynes at my local used bookstore. I usually consider myself lucky if I can find one of the authors on the crumpled ‘to read’ list I keep in my wallet. To find the author I want the most? Well, that’s my lucky day!

I left the store with the book in my hand and a smile on my face. Hmmm. At this point, you’ve probably noticed that I’m three paragraphs into a review and I still haven’t mentioned the book I’m reviewing. Double Hmmm.

Disclaimer. I know that writing a book isn’t the easiest thing to do. A lot of time and dedication goes into committing tens of thousands of words on to paper. I also believe in supporting authors. If the book is well written, if the plot is solid, if I enjoyed the book or can think of a valid excuse (I’m moody) of why I didn’t enjoy it as much as I hoped and why you might enjoy it more, I give it 5 stars. If a book is generally good but has some issues, maybe the pacing is off or the writing style detracts from the story, I give it 4 stars. If the author has seriously pissed me off, as in, they have talent and imagination but I just spent hours of my life reading something that wasn’t their best effort (to put it politely), I give it 3 stars. I don’t review books I can’t give at least 3 stars.

Now that that’s said, here’s my review. This book is about a woman who had worked as a stripper. It’s mentioned on the back page blurb, and since I really enjoyed the other book I read by this author, it wouldn’t have affected my decision to read the book (had I read the blurb before buying). However, when a stripper character muses about how empowering it is to be a stripper, how it’s a victory for women’s lib, and then that character is weak, stupid, vapid, generally unlikable, and only concerned with men and being desirable, well, that’s not a victory for anyone.

The book was well written, I’ll give Haynes that, but the plot? The only suspense or mystery I experienced was wondering when Haynes was going to wow me. I’m still waiting. This book left me so underwhelmed that I’m seriously wondering if maybe I was wrong about the other book I read by her. Maybe there was an uncapped Sharpie nearby when I was reading? Or the mushrooms on the pizza were ‘special’. This book had potential, but it seemed to be more a venue for the author to explore her personal fantasies than to woo her readers with suspense and intrigue. I’m not sure I’ll be giving any of her other books a chance. 3 stars.

This book was a friend's gift, an ebook.
I didn't know the author or the storyline.
And I'm not a fan of digital reading, but I decided to give it a try.
And the result? I really don't like reading e-books but Elizabeth Haynes has been a wonderful discovery for me!

I just don't like this kind of story.