In this, the third book of the trilogy, I was a little disappointed. I felt that the writing was very simplistic, as it has been throughout the trilogy, but this book didn’t counteract it with the suspense of the other books. I didn’t like Callie Rose and Sephy’s happy ending; thought that was a bit sugary. Jude was beyond a caricature. All that said, I did think the earlier tension between Sephy and her teenage daughter was quite realistic.

This book is beautifully written. I can’t believe that this was written by the same person who wrote Started Early, Took My Dog, which I read recently. KA has a gift for writing from women’s perspectives, no matter what time period they are in.

Aside from the quality of the writing, what kept me reading was wondering whether Ursula would fare any better in the next perumtation. I was utterly gripped. I also loved how the Snow period is revisited and bulked out gradually through the book e.g. we know that Sylvie is given a snowdrop in a vase on her breakfast tray, then later we see how it came to be there.

There are so many characters and permutations that I feel compelled to make some kind of chart to make sense of it all but it looks like someone has analysed it already with an accompanying flow chart:

I think the flow chart is a bit too simplistic though so I’ll be going through the book again, making my own notes.

This is a wonderful book with a well-told story (or should I say stories?). The characters feel very real and the are tragedies enormous and poetic. Ultimately I found this to be quite a sad book but I loved it. I would go so far as to say that it’s the best book I’ve read all year.

This was a book group choice. I’ll be concise.

1) It has so many characters that I got confused.

2) I found it very difficult to believe that a woman who spent 30 years working for the police would buy a child.

3) I didn’t like the rambling thoughts of characters in this book. It was difficult to glean what was relevant. I didn’t feel like I connected to any of the characters and got fed up of Jackson going on and on about his dead sister. He’s done it throughout the series and it’s getting boring.

In its defence, it’s fairly ‘readable’, just disappointing as I liked the first Jackson Brodie novel (Case Histories).

A crazy book. Just when you think things can’t get any more insane, they do. I raced through it while sunbathing in Cyprus. It was a perfect holiday read: easy, very original and ultimately uplifting.

Interesting to read points of view of different old people. Humourous in parts with a slightly farcical ending.

I didn’t think I was enjoying this book as I was reading it but it turned out that I galloped through it at quite a pace. It’s good, dramatic and tender and has a real sense of the time it was set in – the 40’s. The parts are in reverse chronological order which allow the story to unfold in an interesting way. It makes for compulsive reading as blanks are filled in all the way to the end. There are lots of characters; I had to make a list to help me remember as read.

I applied Sarah’s Rule and read 100 pages of this. There is a very funny bit: Renton and his colleagues have a regular competition to see who can do the biggest poos (on newspaper, for measuring). This time their boss is on his way to the toilet so they have to ‘pick up the papers, open the windaes and fling oor bombs oantae the flat roof’ before the boss catches them.

But there isn’t anything noteworthy about the rest. I’ve read 105 pages – the whole first part – and there isn’t anything pushing me to read on. The stuff that is good has been done before; if I’d never met Begbie in Trainspotting I might have found him more amusing/shocking, but I have already met him before. I first read Trainspotting when I was about 18 and I was totally blown away by it. I remember enjoying it just as much the second time I read it but, on reading it again some years later, I’d had enough of it. Perhaps that’s why I’m not interested enough in Skagboys.

Like Noughts and Crosses, this is a real page-turner. There’s a lot more hate and less love in this one though. There are more good observations of how black/white people are represented in the media, treated by police etc. It’s written in the same style: very simple, almost like a script. The ending is a cliffhanger but, because I’ve read the third book’s blurb I know what the outcome is. I agree with a book reviewer who condemned it as a lazy ending; I would have preferred a decisive and devastating ending like that of Noughts and Crosses. Still, this is a complusive read and I can’t wait read to the next one.

I read this book for my library book club. It’s a beautifully written and extremely perceptive book. While it isn’t a comfortable read – I found it a bit incestuous in parts – it is throughly engaging and reminded me of The Sense of an Ending because it is a gorgeously crafted tale leading to a shocking climax. I would recommend it.