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Ruth Ball – Rebellious Spirits | Review

March 2, 2019 danecobain

Title: Rebellious Spirits

Author: Ruth Ball

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 262

Rating 4/5

Disclaimer: While I aim to be unbiased, I received a copy of this for free to review.

If I have one piece of advice going into this book, it’s for you to stick with it. That’s because I wasn’t too convinced by the first twenty pages and so I switched it out and made it my “bedtime book”, which means I decided to get through it bit by bit before going to sleep. Then I actually picked it up and enjoyed it so much that I switched it out as my main book and ended up reading it in a day.

It’s basically just what it claims to be: the true story of smugglers, illegal brewers and other “audacious tales of drinking on the wrong side of the law”. It’s well-written and well-researched and while I did spot a couple of typos, I could live with them. In fact, I thought the overall editing was pretty tight apart from that, and it certainly didn’t make it any less of a book. Even the cover is excellent.

So all in all, whether you’re a drinker or not, I’d definitely suggest giving this one a go. I particularly liked the way that it took us through British history, making it easy to understand the different laws and taxes and the effect that they had on the average man on the street. Ball also includes the true stories of literally hundreds of different people from both sides of the law, and she stays neutral throughout, which is what you need from non-fiction. Good stuff!

Click here to buy Rebellious Spirits.

Daphne du Maurier – My Cousin Rachel | Review

October 31, 2018 danecobain

Authors A-E (By Surname)Fiction

Title: My Cousin Rachel

Author: Daphne du Maurier

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 322

Rating: 2/5

Daphne du Maurier – My Cousin Rachel

I had high hopes for this after enjoying Rebecca, but I can’t help but feel as though du Maurier is a one trick pony after reading this. It was pretty much the same book, but without the successful execution, and that made it a bit of a slog from start to finish. With Rebecca, I couldn’t put it down. With this, I had to read 20 pages a night just to make sure that I picked it up, and even then it helped to put me to sleep.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with the writing style. It’s more that the pacing is way off, to the point at which it’s hard to get interested in any of the characters because nothing seems to happen to them. There were a few great bits of prose, but they were interspersed with so much unnecessary drivel that instead of being the jewels in a crown, they were more like scraping up the crumbs from the bottom of a bag of crisps.

I wanted to love this one, and I went into it just assuming that I would do. After reading it, I’m hesitant to give du Maurier another go, although I do have Frenchman’s Creek and I enjoyed some of her short stories. This one, though, was a big disappointment, and it felt a bit like going to see a one hit wonder in concert and discovering that other than their one hit, they just play covers and sound like a pub band. Maybe my expectations were too high.

All in all, I say skip this one, especially if you’ve read du Maurier before and you weren’t too keen on her. I just hope this wasn’t her at her best because if it is, it doesn’t bode well for her others.