book reviews , different studio guests each week. Join us every Thursday between 12 and 1pm on Radio Scilly 107.9fm or log on to radioscilly.com.

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Thursday 31 May 2012

Sophie Hannah - Kind of Cruel

review live on show by Malcolm Martland 31st May 2012
My Review:
This is the third Sophie Hannah book I’ve read, previously “A Room Swept White” and “Lasting Damage”. I enjoyed the latter. Now this “Kind of Cruel” with a plot so tediously devious I find it hard to summarise.

Amber Hewerdine is suffering from insomnia and decides to visit hypnotherapist, Ginny Saxon, to see if she can help. When she arrives at Ginny’s house she meets another “patient”, Charlie sitting in her car outside, apparently considering hypnotism to help her give up smoking. Charlie is writing in a notebook, she is in fact a policewoman, and tells Amber that Ginny is running an hour late with her sessions. Amber worries she will not be away in time to meet her adopted children from school but Charlie offers to swap so Amber goes in almost straight away.

Under reluctant hypnosis Amber recalls a strange Christmas with relatives at a rented house Little Orchard. During the visit the relatives vanish for 24 hours and then reappear as if nothing has happened and offer no explanations. Still under hypnosis Ginny ask her what she remembers and Amber says “Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel”. She is woken up and then accuses Ginny of saying the words. Amber walks out in a temper refusing to pay but obsessed with the words “Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel”. Ouside she runs into Charlie just going in. Remembering that Charlie was writing in a notebook Amber wonders if she read the words on the notebook and gets in the car to look through it. Charlie comes back and finds her in the car. Amber is now convinced she saw the words in the notebook. She rants on about the words then goes home to collect the children, not her children but those of a friend who was murdered in an arson attack.

We meet the relatives, solid middle class yuppies! Then Amber is arrested in connection with another murder, that of Katherin Allen, a woman she claims never to heard of.

One of the most tenuous and tedious books I have read. Awful! An unnecessarily complex and layered plot, neither of which add to the story. Sorry Sophie, I doubt if I shall be reading another.

Malcolm Martland, broadcast on Radio Scilly 107.9FM, 31 May 2012.

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