allmyprettybooks-new

I had expected Girl in the Walls to be a gothic thriller, perhaps with ghostly goings-on in the vein of Sarah Perry or Laura Purcell, and was very pleasantly surprised to discover this is a literary thriller, whose story leaps off the page and demands to be read to its conclusion. While reading, I could easily imagine this book in movie form.  Elise is a young orphan, returned to the house she considered her true home, though as another family now lives there, she survives by secreting herself in the walls.Her occupancy does not go wholly unnoticed: Eddie, the younger of two teenage boys, often thinks he sees someone from the corner of his eye. An awkward boy, he wonders if the presence is a figment of his overactive imagination. Until his boisterous older brother confesses that he's noticed things too.  I truly don't want to share any more of this fast-paced plot. Suffice to stay that events unfold which spiral out of control and put the lives of all the main protagonists in ...

Description from Goodreads:  Lucy and Jake live in a house by a field where the sun burns like a ball of fire. Lucy has set her career aside in order to devote her life to the children, to their finely tuned routine, and to the house itself, which comforts her like an old, sly friend. But then a man calls one afternoon with a shattering message: his wife has been having an affair with Lucy’s husband, Jake. The revelation marks a turning point: Lucy and Jake decide to stay together, but make a special arrangement designed to even the score and save their marriage–she will hurt him three times. As the couple submit to a delicate game of crime and punishment, Lucy herself begins to change, surrendering to a transformation of both mind and body from which there is no return. Told in dazzling, musical prose, The Harpy is a dark, staggering fairy tale, at once mythical and otherworldly and fiercely contemporary. It is a novel of love, marriage and its failures, of power, control and reve...

A brief synopsis from the publisher: The Labyrinth of the Spirits is an electrifying tale of passion, intrigue and adventure. Within its haunting pages Carlos Ruiz Zafón masterfully weaves together plots and subplots in an intricate and intensely imagined homage to books, the art of storytelling and that magical bridge between literature and our lives. I took a long time to read and properly engage with this book. Perhaps because I knew it would be the last in a long and beautiful series, but also because I felt the timing was wrong the first time around. This long and enchanting novel weaves together the threads from all the previous in the quadrilogy (which began of course, with Shadow of the Wind). It does so beautifully, and in a hugely satisfying manner. Carlos Ruiz Zafon remains (and likely, always will be) one of my favourite authors and a master story-teller. Reviewed by Amanda Kennedy on 31/08/2020. Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. The Labyrinth of the Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafon is...