Review: Entertaining light reading that will leave you wanting more
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 16, 2014
An agreeable, light-hearted collection of tales that are great for holiday or bedtime reading, each one short and satisfying, and many of them made me smile. They're all highly accessible, taking inspiration from normal everyday life, and the characters are well drawn, despite the brevity of the tales. The stories also struck me as very British, so I felt I was on home turf here. Not quite sure why the author chose to call the stories "Wacky", which wasn't a word I'd choose to describe them, and I think that might mislead the reader into expecting something more bizarre or surreal. The down-to-earth reality of these stories was an important part of their charm - some of them might even pass for believable urban myths.Even though we know from the title of the book to expect a twist, I didn't guess any of the endings, which were clever, wry and fun. I also felt that every story was different and interesting in its own way.I see the author has written lots of similar collections and I'm sure they must be as fun to write as they are to read. My only criticism is that occasionally the prose seemed a tiny bit laboured, and I had to go back and reread a paragraph or two to make sure I hadn't lost the plot. Mind you, I was also reading this book while taking strong drugs to treat labyrinthitis, and I kept falling asleep, which probably didn't help my concentration!!I received a free review copy from the author, whom I do not know personally - he'd spotted online that I do a lot of reviews and that I write flash fiction myself, so thought I'd be interested. I'd definitely consider buying some of his other books after reading this one.