A Spot of Bother

I have to give it to Haddon. This book is just as hilarious and quirky as his previous book: Curious Incident of the Dog in Night-time.

A Spot of Bother is about a British dysfunctional family whose lives get shaken up in the weeks before the daughter's wedding. There is the father who is having a nervous breakdown, the mother who is having an affair with his husband's friend, the daughter who has doubt about the marriage while the son who has commitment issues. With any other writer, you might feel like you do not give a damn what happens to such wretched people but Haddon tackles each of the shallow, selfish characters with his quirky sense of humor which going to proved you wrong. You won't get enough of it.

Haddon wants you to know the character and identified with them which probably why the first 100 pages of the book is a bit of a slog. Then events events start to accelerate and they don't let up until the final explosion and the wedding reception at the end of the novel. The last few chapters are the highlight of the book for me because it was simply hilarious.

In the end I thoroughly enjoyed "A Spot of Bother" and its characters. And I really can't wait to see what Haddon comes up with next.

The Ragwitch

I am a fan of Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen. So I bought this book with some sort of expectations. However, it turned out to be a difficult reading for me because after I read the first few pages, my reaction was "Oh dear, I knew I should have bought his Keys to the Kingdom's books instead..."

Here how the story goes:

Paul and Julia are brother and sister. One day, Julia found a rag-doll which turned out to be the most evil thing ever, hence the name: Ragwitch. So the Ragwitch possessed Julia and brought Julia to her 'evil' world with Paul following without the ragwitch's knowledge. Naturally it was Paul's duty to save Julia. What he doesn't know though, he is also the chosen one who can destroy the evil Ragwitch, with the help of few friends he found along the way. Julia who was trapped in the Ragwitch mind, also found some help from an unexpected source.

Unlike the Abhorsen trilogy, this book isn't as textured and somehow it is somewhat too childish for my liking. Not the best book by Nix but I can't say it was bad. It just wasn't as gripping as his other books. It lacked something. But do not let my review discourage you from reading the rest of Nix's books otherwise you'll be missing a lot.