Every so often we like to do a book swap. Kate likes YA mainly and Becca enjoys thrillers. It’s good to try something different, so we came up with a book swap where we each give each other one of our reads and see what the other thinks.
This month we did ‘The Single Girl’s To Do List’ by Lindsey Kelk (being Kate’s chic lit choice) and ‘Pretty Girls’ by Karin Slaughter (being Becca’s thriller choice). Here’s what we each thought of our respective swaps!
The single girl’s to do list – Lindsey Kelk
Ok, I read Thrillers. Mysteries. Crime. I do not read girly chic-lit.
So, for the bookswap with bezzie (…even using the girly lingo now) I was given ‘The Single Girls To-Do List’. After giving her my biggest ‘I hate you’ glare, I put it in my bag, and waited to build up the strength to start reading it.
Well, it wasn’t too painful. And I actually started to laugh at some bits.
The narrator is funny, she’s the type of girl I would be friends with. Her two best friends are also really likeable.
Rachel is dumped by her boyfriend, so her two best buds write her a single girls to-do list which includes such things as get a tattoo and break the law.
Basically the book tells how she does each of the things on her list. I don’t do lovey dovey romance, and this wasn’t that, so I am thankful for that. However, there wasn’t really much of a plot- other than the obvious… not a lot of depth.
All being said, I enjoyed reading it. But I won’t be reading any more ‘girly books’ for a good while, not until Christmas at least, when I let myself have a sparkly girl book to go with the fluffy Christmas feelings!
Pretty Girls – Karin Slaughter
When Becca and I first came up with the book swap idea I jumped at the chance to get Becca to read something other than her normal diet of murder and psychological thrillers then realised that I would have to give up my normal fare of light hearted romantic comedies and fantasy based young adult fiction, this turned out to be a lot harder for me than I thought it would be.
Becca’s choice for me is one of her favourite Karin Slaughter books, Pretty Girls. I deliberately didn’t give Becca one of my favourite books as I knew I wouldn’t be able to bear it if Becca wrote a scathing review of one of my beloved Sarra Manning’s or Sarah J Maas books, so with the knowledge that its one of Becca’s favourites and therefore to be prepared I bucked up the courage to get started.
Pretty Girls revolves around two sisters – Lydia and Claire who’s older sister Julia went missing years back and while Claire grew up to become the stereotypical rice bored housewife Lydia has not had such an easy time of it and is now estranged from her family and an ex-junkie raising her teenage daughter alone. The catalyst for the two sisters reunion is the murder of Claire’s husband, Paul, in a seemingly random back alley mugging and the disappearance of another teenage girl bringing back all the memories of when Julia went missing. After Claire’s house is burgled during her husbands funeral she realises that there might have been more to Paul than she knew and realises that Lydia is perhaps the only person she can trust to help her unravel what has been going on.
In terms of plot line I was into this book, I enjoyed the twists and turns and how the disappearance of Julia was linked to Paul’s murder, however I really really really didn’t enjoy the descriptions of what was going on as it was just too far and to be honest too ‘eeeeewwww’ for me. Becca’s good reads review for this book does say “This is a very disturbing story that gets uncovered, and one which some readers may find a bit too much” – and that is exactly how I felt about it as I soon realised that I was only reading this book during the day as no doubt if I read it before bed I would have had nightmares.
So, overall:
K : In terms of our book swap it hasn’t put me off doing another one with Becca as I currently have her next pick for me in my TBR pile – I think she was just trying to gross me out on purpose but I won’t be picking up a Karin Slaughter book next time I go book shopping.
B : I was definitely trying to gross Kate out, and it worked! Excited for the next one. 🙂 Nice to have a change every now and again.
Happy Reading! x
(see Becca’s full review for Pretty Girls here).
The Beautiful Book Break 