Vision In Blue

Renting isn't cheap these days and it's even worse when you don't want to compromise on location. What if you didn't have to? What if you just had to fill out a lengthy application form and agree to live by a very specific set of rules? The Girl Before has left me uncertain. I'm going to try and explain that, but having pondered it for some time I'm still not exactly sure how I feel about it. The books is split into short chapters from one of two points of view, Emma, the previous tenant and Jane, the new tenant. This works well although took me slightly longer to get used to, not because of the characters or the story line, but because of the writing itself. Something I noticed fairly quickly was that there are whole sections of this book where speech is basically ignored. It'll appear as you would expect it to in the writing but there are no speech marks to highlight it. At the time of reading it was horrendously annoying, having just flicked through a few...

Today should be described as "rain stopped play". A lot of rain, and some flashy stuff too. I woke up early to what I thought were the lights flickering but was in fact the small gap along the bottom of my curtains creating enough of a flash to brighten the room. Outside looked beautiful, despite what it meant for the day. The whole sky, still black at that time of the morning, was sporadically lit up from the lightning on the other side of the volcano. It was truly epic. I took a short video of it but it really doesn't do it justice... and it won't attach properly to this email post so I'm afraid if you want to see it you'll have to whizz over to Twitter. A lot of new arrivals were due in. It wasn't exactly the best welcome, especially as the journey from terminal to coach stop isn't entirely undercover. A bit of a freak occurrence, the hotel isn't really equip for constant all day rain, unsurprisingly. It's a bit like the British and snow. So...

Lanzarote-wise nothing exciting happened again. There was sun. There was napping in the sun. There was finishing another book. The usual. But in the evening I was feeling out of sorts so went straight back to my room after dinner. Food hadn't been a wise idea and the drink before hand hadn't either. My evening plans were either going to be read more of the new book or watch something I'd downloaded from Prime Video. The latter won out and boy do I wish it hadn't. Cut to me watching Ghost Shark 2: Urban Jaws. Ghost Shark was a glorious cinematic masterpiece of sharks. Ridiculous, yet serious. It really made me believe in the Ghost Shark phenomenon. Ghost Shark 2 on the other hand made me want to start a petition to have it completely erased from the face of the earth. I love shark films, but I guess there always has to be an exception to the rule... and there was me thinking that it would have been The Last Sharknado: Ot's About Time. I want to say that the beginning...

It's Tuesday... I think. Honestly at this point I've forgotten. One of the wonders of a holiday, the only way to really know what day it is is to find the activities board. "It was Guacamole Monday yesterday so today is Tequila Sunrise Tuesday." After getting unexpectedly (it was totally expected had I engaged my brain) sunburnt yesterday I decided to sit myself in the shade and enjoy my next discovered book. Someone had left a copy of Adam Hills' Best Foot Forward and so far it's very entertaining. (Note: it's now Wednesday morning and I'm nearly finished. I might have to go on a hunt for more books or I'm actually going to have to read one I brought with me! Absolutely nothing exciting happened today... nothing... nada... it was wonderful! I'm hoping for more of the same tomorrow. The one thing I did today was notice things about people... people in general. I always say to mum that if she's picking a hotel it has to have free WiFi. But t...

Note to self: must keep up to date with posts! Today marked the day that I could no longer pull the excuse that "it's the weekend, I don't do things at the weekend" when dad asked if I wanted to go on his morning walk with him. Mum and I would happily lay on a sun lounger (in or out of the sun) reading our books all day. Dad however does not and as such tends to constantly on the move. A couple we've been chatting with brought it up with me yesterday. "He doesn't like to sit still does he? Where does he go?" Their guess is as good as mine in all honesty. Sometimes he's gone for 5 minutes, sometimes an hour. This morning was an hour... yes, I was less than pleased! "Well you said you wanted to go to the shops!" I had meant the ones that are a five minute stroll away, but never mind. We wandered out the front of the hotel and off towards Playa Blanca, dad being tour guide as we went. "So if I'm going on a short walk I cut down th...

Audie Palmer has survived 9 years and 364 days in prison. In 24 hours he'll be free and clear. So why has he escaped and guaranteed himself even more time in prison when he's recaptured? Everyone is looking for him. But he isn't running, he's keeping a promise he made a long time ago. He doesn't know who to trust but he knows his instincts. Can his ex-prison mate, Moss, and FBI agent Desiree Furness get to him before the people who want him dead do? Sometimes the best books come to you unexpectedly. Life Or Death screamed at me from a table in my hotel. "Read me! Read me! I know you've got thirty other books but you'll love me I promise!" The book was right, always listen to the book! The blurb intrigued me then the first couple of chapters hooked me in and I had to keep reading. With Audie, Michael Robotham has managed to create a really likeable character even though for a significant amount of the book you're not really sure how to take him....

Or as it shall be forever known, the day of excessive food. To be fair most days on an all inclusive holiday involve an excess of some kind. The first time you ever do one the novelty of the ability to have whatever you want pretty much whenever you want is very exciting. Some places have 24 hour drinking, some 24 hour food. You can have breakfast, mid-morning snacks, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, midnight snacks or ice cream spread throughout the day so no one could possibly go hungry. Our hotel has a buffet restaurant, a pool bar and restaurant (the one that lets the rain in), an a la carte restaurant, a main bar, a disco bar, a private bar and a cafe... I don't think I missed anything. In a normal day at home I'll have a croissant or a bowl of cereal for breakfast, a sandwich or a box of something from the food market for lunch, and dinner ranges from nothing to maybe a pizza. On the weekends that dwindles to one random meal in the day dependent of other activities... I know...

To say that today was inactive would be a very large understatement. I did however walk up and down a few flights of stairs (intentionally this time) in a bid to find more books. I found this one... With this stellar review... I had considered leaving a review of the current one I'm reading inside it for the next person. Slightly more detailed than this so as to actually be useful to someone picking it up! Hey hotels? You spend so much time and money having branded toiletries printed, why not do bookmarks where people can write reviews on the back and leave them in the book? Cheap as, and I've never seen any hotels do this before, it would be a book lovers paradise. Apart from that I was pretty much sedentary for the whole day. I had told people this in advance. No I would not be walking to the shops. No I would not be playing mini golf. It is my weekend and I am going to treat it as such. The only variation to the day was eating in the fancy restaurant to belatedly celebrate m...

This post is brought to you by the wonders of auto-uploading via email. I have no idea how it's going to turn out so please bear with me! If only Blogger's app actually worked! ... After having explored the basics of the resort, both intentionally and unintentionally, I've got the lay of the land for the rest of my trip. It seems fitting to start with the unintentional exploring as that's where I began my holiday when we arrived. Firstly, this hotel is up the wrong way. You walk through reception to the terrace that presents you with a magnificent view over the pool and the fan of rooms below... but that means that the reception, and more importantly, the main bar are UP from your room. This, and the fact that the place is woefully lacking in signage, leads you to an exciting meander through the building until you can drill the new convention into your head. I found my room relatively quickly, tomorrow I'm going to time how long it takes to walk back to the main bui...

Summary Emily asks for one favour from her friend, Stephanie... Can she pick up her son Nicky from school... and she does, but Emily doesn't come to pick him up. As the search for her continues it becomes evident to Stephanie that her friend wasn't all she appeared to be. Review I'm going to make a sincere effort to save movie comparisons for later and just focus on the book for now. I will say that the reason I got the book was because I saw the film and was intrigued to read the source material. I also listened to this with Whispersync. The story is told from four perspectives in the book: Stephanie, Stephanie's blog, Emily and Sean. The first half being Stephanie, before switching to Emily and finishing with a mix of all of them. I enjoyed the mix of first person narratives and it worked particularly well with the audio version. As a whole the book was very simple, and by that I mean it was very easy to listen to. Lots of people are comparing the story ...