Like True Things About Me I was a little swayed into reading this due to one of the reviews on the front page. This time I at least actually understood the source of the review; the Financial Times is a pretty reputable publication, although I never knew they reviewed books. This novel was described as 'The kind of book that reminds you why, as a child, you started reading the first place.' Admittedly that is a pretty sweeping statement, as most of us begin reading fairytales or books about cats in boxes: no witches or adventurous felines were present in this story (although actually both are referenced!)
So I wouldn't agree with the FT on this occasion. However, what I did find was a likeable enough novel, with manageable chapters, a decent enough story and reasonably well-written. The Amazon reviews mainly criticise this for having no punctuation, but this turns out to be a Kindle issue which has now been fixed. As I'm a Luddite and this book had actual paper pages and everything, this was not a problem for me.
Luke's mother dies and he and his father move miles away up some bleak hill: think Wuthering Heights or Heidi and you're getting there. On this hill, Luke meets Jon, a strange boy who wears old fashioned clothes and lives with his grandparents. The blurb set me up for something really dark, like Jon had murdered his absent parents (something I'm not ruling out of the other Williams book in my pile, How the trouble started). As I've established previously, I like a disturbing novel about murderous teenagers, so this one let me down a little. I'd have liked to know more about Jon's weirdo life and what had happened to his parents, but Williams seems to have been more interested in the relationship between the boys and Luke's dad. Fair enough.
It was a quick read and if you want something simple but not complete trash, this would probably do you.
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