Month: Nov 2015

Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller

It’s worse than I imagined.’ He sniffed. ‘The rest of the world has gone.’ That’s how he said it; just like that, matter-of-fact.

When her concert pianist mother embarks on a European tour (probably to serve as a break from a now loveless marriage) 8 year old Peggy is left in their London home with her Survivalist obsessed father.

They start camping in the garden, living as though the house behind them doesn’t exist. Shortly after this, spurred on by a survivalist friend turning up to stay, the father decides to take Peggy with him to live in a remote wood cabin (die hütte) in the middle of a Bavarian forest.
Soon afterwards the father convinces his daughter that her mother has died in an accident and a little later that the rest of the world has been destroyed leaving just the two of them behind.

The authors description of the forest and Die Hütte is masterful but it’s the description of the father/daughter relationship as he becomes more and more unstable that makes this book so good.

To start with we are seeing the new life as almost idyllic through a naive eight year old eyes – daddy even constructs a piano for her to learn to play. As she gets older and especially after they almost starve to death in their first Winter things become less perfect and her fathers mental instability becomes far more obvious.

The author foreshadowed the ‘twist’ ending from this point by introducing another character, Reuben, who only Peggy ever has contact with as well as changing the interaction between her and her father as she became a young woman and I easily guessed the twist which was a little annoying but I still enjoyed the book despite this.
The switching back and forth between the 9 years in the forest and the time after Peggy returns makes the story a lot less suspenseful and I can see that this would possibly ruin the book for many readers although I wouldn’t include myself in this. Nevertheless I do think that an alternative version where the ending is unknown would be interesting to read to see if it worked better or engaged the reader more.

I received a free kindle edition of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Nirvana by JR Stewart Revised Version Review

I received a free kindle edition of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The publisher then sent me a free copy of the new version after receiving feedback from myself and other reviewers.

An improvement on the original version.

Surprisingly removing most of the doubt about Andrew being alive or not actually improved the story as did getting rid of the flimsy love story between Kenders and Serge. The pace is a little swifter too but frustratingly I still couldn’t really enjoy this book.

Kenders is still annoying the hell out of me – she’s whiny (admittedly much, much less than before) and overly impressed with herself and her former career and activism – on one occasion bragging about her oh-so-cunning way of smuggling things that absolutely no one would ever think to check even though it’s the most obvious thing since the answer to the question “What colour is an orange?”

I very nearly DNF’d, if it had been a real book rather than my Kindle app I’d certainly have launched it across the room!

The ending at least leaves things in an interesting place to continue but my honest opinion is that the author should do so with a different principle character. They’ve already killed two of the more interesting ones prematurely though…

3/5

Nirvana by JR Stewart Update!

Hi Rich,

Thank you for your honest and constructive feedback on Nirvana by J.R. Stewart. Your review has been forwarded to the publisher and because they value the opinion of book advocates such as yourself, they recently contracted a high profile editor to work on the manuscript with the author to implement several improvements to this advance reader’s copy prior to publication.

As the publisher’s promotional partner, they have asked us to reach out to a small group of professional reviewers to read the updated version. Given you provided constructive feedback in the book’s former form but were supportive of the book’s concept, would you be willing to review the revised version if we sent you a custom widget? 🙂

Kind Regards,

Adam

Adam Mawer
Brand & Account Coordinator
DigiWriting Book Marketing Agency

First time I’ve been contacted in this way so of course I had to say yes although I felt some trepidation.

Re: Thank You for Your Review, Rich!

Surprised to hear from you as my review was a lot briefer than usual!  Yes, I’d be happy to review a revised version of the book as I do like the concept but felt utterly let down by the main character.

Cheers!

Rich

Hi Rich,

That’s completely understandable. The characterization of the protagonist was the #1 issue reviewers had with the first book. In the revised book, she has been completely re-worked and, so far, feedback has been very positive.

To download the revised book, please click the link below.

Happy reading! 🙂

Nirvana by JR Stewart

I received a free kindle edition of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted to enjoy this book. It has Dystopia, Environmental Issues and Virtual Reality which are all things I love but the story, and particularly the lead character, were boring and awful.

2/5