1. The Stand - Stephen King - 10/10
2. Red Snow - Will Dean - 7/10
3. The Seventh Perfection – Daniel Polansky - 6/10
4. The Midnight Library - Matt Haig - 6/10
5. Crowfall - Ed McDonald - 7/10
6. Force of Nature - Jane Harper - 8/10
7. The Wolf's Call: Book One of Raven's Blade - 7/10
8. The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman - 6/10
9. Tornado Down - John Peters and John Nichol - 9/10
10. The Black Song: Book Two of Raven's Blade - 6/10
11. Later - Stephen King - 8/10
12. Easily Distracted - Steve Coogan - 9/10
13. Accordion Crimes - Annie Proulx - 4/10
14. Night Train to Lisbon - Pascal Mercier - 8/10
15. Marina - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - 8/10
Second book I read on my recent holiday. I put off reading this book for a while because I thought that this would be the last ever new book that I’d read from Zafon (he died, aged 55, last year). Before he went on to write the four books in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, he wrote four standalone YA novels,
Marina being the most recent. Like his more well-known series, this is set in Barcelona except this time the year is 1980 and we follow the story of 15-year-old Oscar, who befriends a girl named Marina. Together they become embroiled in a mystery that sees them piecing together the story of inventors and actresses in post-war Barcelona. Whilst I found Zafon’s three previous YA stories a little lightweight,
Marina is the pick of the bunch and has a good depth to it, although I did see the final twist coming. You can see that he was improving as a writer and there’s no doubt that the seeds of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series were sown in this satisfying tale. His descriptions of a gothic Barcelona that no longer exists are wonderful and you do feel drawn into the story. Whilst not as accomplished or intricate as his later work, I’d still recommend it.
As noted above, I thought that this would be the last new Zafon book that I’d read. But only yesterday I Googled him again and found that there is a collection of short stories,
The City of Mist, due in November. Looks like it will be a short read, but it’s something to look forward to for the winter.