The Angel Maker

 Tell me a story... where the future may be written by a killer

The Angel Maker by Alex North

Publication date: February 28, 2023

Date read: November 16, 2024

Audiobook read by Rosalie Craig

Growing up in a beautiful house in the English countryside, Katie Shaw lived a charmed life, until the day a violent stranger changed the fate of her family forever. Years later, still unable to live down the guilt surrounding what happened to her brother, Chris, and now with a child of her own to protect, Katie struggles to separate the real threats from the imagined. Then she gets the phone call: Chris has gone missing and needs his big sister once more. Meanwhile, Detective Laurence Page is facing a particularly gruesome crime. A distinguished professor of fate and free will has been brutally murdered just hours after firing his staff. All the leads point back to two old cases: the gruesome attack on teenager Christopher Shaw, and the despicable crimes of a notorious serial killer who, legend had it, could see the future.

This is my first mystery by Alex North; I've heard mixed reviews of his books, and while I can see where the reviews are coming from, I really enjoyed this one.

The one difficulty of this book is that there are a lot of characters to keep in order. The book jumps around from present day with Katie and the Detective to a past storyline with the serial killer. They do all tie together quite well, but I did find that keeping track of some of the characters did get a little tricky. Particularly, one storyline involving two babies, I found slightly hard to follow, although by the end I did know what was going on. I do, however, want to add the disclaimer that I did read this in audiobook format, and that some of the slightly confusing bits may have been easier to follow if I had been reading it on the page. 

I also really enjoyed the slightly open-ended nature of the ending. While all of the major plot points are tied up and explained, the question about whether or not the killer could actually know the future is a little more vague. I wish I could elaborate here, but that would lead to spoilers, and I think it's more fun to follow along blind. 

The characters were sometimes frustrating in this book, but in the way that many mystery book characters are: making stupid choices and keeping stupid secrets. Katie in particular did a lot of things that annoyed me, but I liked her more than I disliked her. And I thought the secondary character were all quite interesting. 

Overall, this is a slightly heavy but fun mystery/thriller that I do recommend to fans of this genre. The large number of characters and storylines to follow do make it a slightly slower read than many in the thriller genre, but I thought the payoff was worth it. I'll definitely be reading more by this author soon.

Content warning: child murder, suicide, drug addiction, child abduction

Rating: 4/5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book.

Strange Folk

 Tell me a story... about the dark side of magic

Strange Folk by Alli Dyer

Publication date: August 6, 2024

Date read: November 10, 2024

Audiobook read by Megan Tusing, Suehyla El Attar-Young, and Kitty Hendrix

Lee left Craw Valley at eighteen without a backward glance. She wanted no part of the generations of her family who tapped into the power of the land to heal and help their community. But when she abandons her new life in California and has nowhere else to go, Lee returns to Craw Valley with her children in tow to live with her grandmother, Belva. Lee vows to stay far away from Belva’s world of magic, but when the target of one of her grandmother’s spells is discovered dead, Lee fears that Belva’s magic may have summoned something dark.

Another tough one for me to rate. I actually had this as an ebook, and found it to be very slow going. I kept putting it down to read something else, but I was intrigued enough by the plot that I wasn't about to DNF. I wanted to know what happened. In the end, I switched to audiobook and found that a much easier go and am glad I finished it. 

This book is full of unlikable characters, including our narrators, which I think is why I had such a hard time at the beginning. The majority of the book is from Lee's POV, and she just honestly wasn't that fun to read. The plot, however, kept me coming back. 

I liked the question about whether or not Belva's magic was real, as well as the mystery of why people kept ending up dead. I obviously won't give anything away, but I liked the way it ended. 

This book is hard for me to recommend, because I did enjoy it and thought the ending was worth the slow start. But at the same time, it's hard to recommend a book to someone and say that the last 25% is great, but the first 75% is kind of a slog. So I do recommend it to someone who's looking for a slow burn mystery with a good payout, but definitely not to those who want their mysteries action packed. 

Content warning: animal death, pedophilia (adult with teenager), drug use/overdose, alcoholism, murder, child physical abuse

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book.

Fire Weather

 Tell me a story... about how climate change is affecting forest fires

Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World by John Vaillant

Publication date: June 6, 2023

Date read: November 6, 2024

Audiobook read by Alan Carlson

In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry and America’s biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration—the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina—John Vaillant warns that this was not a unique event but a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world.

Reading this book just a few months before the recent California wildfires started, it definitely gives me a different outlook on what we're going through right now as a country. 

This is a difficult book to rate and review, because it's not an easy read; it is a heavily researched, dense book. I can't say that I was enjoying myself while reading it, but what I can say is that I learned a lot and it left me with a lot to think about. This is the kind of book that can get away with being a little long-winded, because it's research-heavy and not supposed to be about plot or characters.

I really liked that the book dealt with not just fires, but with climate change in general. I think that most people could stand to read this book, especially those who question whether climate change is real. (I'm not going to get political in this - or any - review, but there is no question that there are those who don't believe that climate change is a problem.) This book is scary because of what it implies that we will be seeing in the years to come. 

I definitely recommend the audiobook for this one, simply due to the dense research and heavy subject. Vaillant doesn't talk over the reader's head and you don't need an advanced degree to understand what he's talking about, but I can just say that, in my personal experience as a reader, this is the kind of book that I usually get more out of in audio form. 

I do recommend this book to all readers, simply because the topic is so prescient. It's not an easy read, but it is an important one. 

Content warning: forest fires, death

Rating: 4/5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book.