An entertaining, if complicated read. There are many threads in this book, all of which have to come together by the end. I found it difficult to sort out the Rays from the Barrys and kept on forgetting who was which. Nevertheless, this is quite a satisfying plot, though maybe not up to Kate Atkinson's usual standard. ( )

These books all start like a shattered glass: tiny fragments with, seemingly, no connection. As the book proceeds, the shards all start to come together and, by the end, it all makes sense.

The one thing that I will say, is that these books are getting bleaker: the first one was rather amusing - I fear the next; Jackson may well be extinct by the end.

I shall be reading it, none the less! ( )

My first Kate Atkinson. My first mystery. Verdict is still out. ( )

UPDATED REVIEW:

After 24 hours, I've digested this book and come away realizing it really was not enjoyable. I had to get to the very last quarter of the book to even begin to find the story. And honestly, Tilly was just unnecessary to the whole plot. She could have appeared as a good samaritan to save Tracy and there was no need to delve into her whole psyche and the whole stairway to memory loss. There are just so many threads flapping in the wind and the last chapters do little to crochet them into a neat and appealing tea cozy.

OLD REVIEW: Started out not giving a toss about any of the characters and I was a little exhausted with the hundreds of smaller stories that were off-shoots from the action taking place:

Example:

Tracy was taking Courtney to the park. They had "fun" and so naturally I would want to read more about this but to get to the point of their outing I needed to read through an epic internal dialogue about Tracy's past and her trip with her parents and cold-boiled eggs which her father would swallow whole. I felt like a lot of the author's background stories were basically in parenthesis and I would have loved to just gloss over it and move on but that would have left me with about 20 or 30 pages of the actual book.

But, and there is a but. By the time I got to page 226, I was onboard for the rest of the story and I had already pieced together what had happened so there really wasn't a "Great Reveal" at the end for me. ( )

(43) I am not sure why I stopped reading the Jackson Brodie series. Atkinson is definitely one of my favorite writers. In this one Jackson is on the trail of missing young girls. Or maybe adults who were once missing trying to find out who they are? As usual there are multiple storylines and it is hard to see how they intersect. I also could not remember anything about Jackson's personal life, but it seems it will continue to be dysfunctional. No new love interest in this one - unless you count a little border terrier that Jackson steals from its rightful owner when he witnesses maltreatment. And there is the theme right there - is it right to take someone from a shitty parent in an extra-judicial fashion and give them a new life? The conclusions are ambiguous here.

I seem to recall liking 'One Good Turn', and 'When will there be Good News' a bit better than this installment. The same elements were present the humor, the seemingly separate but interwoven storylines. But in this one they were not all as equally compelling as I remember from the previous novels. For instance, I thought all the interludes with 'Silly Tilly,' and her unrelated backstory were unnecessary and not compelling.

But overall - I enjoy Jackson's wry and sardonic wit and his 'shit happens.' kind of approach to life. Definitely will think twice about eating sausages in a Bed and Breakfast... Even though I didn't like this one quite as much, I look forward to soon reading the newest installment. ( )