Tome Topple Readathon Wrap Up - August

  The whole point of this readathon is to read big books (over 500 pages). You don't even need to read a lot of them. You don't even need to finish one. The point is that we are all reading those big daunting books at the same time and supporting each other.  Tome Topple Readathon Goodread group. All books read need to be over 500 pages! That's the only "rule".

           It seems I have a real issue with Anna Karenina - I failed again and did not even opened the book. I do not know what motivation I need to just start the book. I know once started I will love it, but the problem is to start. I believe I have such a poor result because I was reading in parallel The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman and the experience from the book was heart breaking and I needed some tile to recover from each chapter.

     So first novel I finished is The Son by Jo Nesbø (p.527). I finished it within 2 days and rather enjoyed it, but not quite. It is a standalone novel. I liked it; but though the development was fast paced and captivating, I was disappointed with happy end. The characters were also a bit unrealistic, so it left an strange mixture of enjoyment and bitterness.
     The second novel was Blood Ties by Samantha Hayes (p.543). I have this book from a friend and was trying to read it for a couple of months now but it just did not grab me. This time I made a small effort and after 100 pages I started to like it, though it contains some triggers as child abuse and abduction. The ending was rather predictable from around the half of the book, but still it did not spoil the way the story was revealed to the reader.
      The 3rd and final book was The Cuckoo's Calling (p. 509) by Robert Galbraith. I was disappointed by this book and it seemed to drag forever. There were too many repetitions and unnecessary descriptions that were killing the pace for me. About in the middle of the book I guessed who was the killer and I was struggling through the rest of the book just to see the reasoning for the murder.

      So 3 out of 5 planned books are finished. There were none 5 stars read, but all of them were rather enjoyable and captivating. I am so looking forward to the next round of the Tome Topple Readathon.