Long silence from me… Many things have happened during the last few weeks. First we’ve moved and are still unpacking things. We only moved around the corner, but it does not make it any easier. We love our new place, though. This is a penthouse style and has a huge outdoor terrace, perfect for plants and entertaining! Work has been hectic, and family stuff have added to the stress. Anyway, I am taking the opportunity of some down time to write this post.

I came across Rubbernecker, the latest book by Belinda Bauer, when reading Nikki-Ann’s blog – I trust her reviews and I immediately knew I had to read this book. It sounded just like the type of story I like. I’ve read Blacklands by Bauer and found it very good (I wrote a review of it here a while ago.) Bauer’s new book gets 5 stars from me. I like the fact that it is a standalone book for a start. Many crime novels and thrillers these days tend to be series – once an author finds a good formula, they stick to it. In Rubbernecker, three parallel stories take place and eventually all link together. You can sort of see the link from the start, but it’s hard to tell how it is really going to develop, and I loved that. The first story is about Patrick, a teen-ager with Asperger’s syndrome who wants to study anatomy to understand what happens when you die – an interesting premise. Bauer depicts the way Patrick feels, reacts and thinks in a most credible way, and she manages to skilfully develop the plot at the same time, not an easy task when your protagonist does not do the things “normal” people do (please note the quotes here, by normal I don’t mean people living with Asperger’s syndrome aren’t normal, I just mean they do things differently). Patrick is a very loveable character. The stress that his mother goes through feels very real. The second story is Tracy’s, a nurse who works in the coma ward of a hospital. And the third story is about Samuel Galen, a coma patient. Now, what Bauer does here is a real tour-de-force – Imagine telling the story from a coma patient’s perspective without being boring or flat… Loved it! The way Bauer describes Samuel coming out of his coma (opening his eyes) is fantastic. There are a few great moments in the book, like the initial depiction of an accident, line by line, and from the eyes of the person in the car. There’s also someone’s death (I’m not saying who it is not to spoil the fun) seen through his own eyes: this was very powerful. The beauty about the story is that although there is a clear conclusion, some of it is left to the imagination, but with just about enough information to make your mind about a number of things… I read the book in one sitting, of course, and now I find myself wishing I hadn’t read it so that I could read it again.