In the beginning, two people throw a person over the side of their boat, into Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong. Next, we find Thomas and his wife at home, living a happy life with few problems. Thomas is doing very well at work, and life is good. Until he gets a visit from his best friend's aunt, who tells him his friend's wife is cheating on him. She asks him to talk to his friend about this. But Thomas hesitates, and soon it's too late when he finds his friend dead.
Thomas ends up on the run from the police, while trying to figure out what is really going on. What is real and what is an illusion? Edmond Cheng weaves an intricate mystery in this 27,000 word novella, which appears with three other stories in
Unearthed: An Anthology of Suspense. It is a complex, and somewhat confusing story, with lots of twists and turns. I felt like I never really knew the whole story, even at the end. But it was an interesting mystery that kept me reading.
The story is written in English, which is not Cheng's first language. And this is very obvious throughout the story. As a professional editor, I thought this would bother me more than it did. I actually found it interesting to see his word choice and the way he described things. I think the story would be appealing to more Americans if it were edited by someone who does speak English as a first language. But it was still interesting to read.
If you're looking for something different, and enjoy mysteries, check it out.
My Rating: 3/5
This review was written based on a copy of Illusion that I received from the author.
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. To participate, you're supposed to share two teaser sentences from a random page in the book you're currently reading.
by Chaim Potok ~ My first book for the Birth Year Reading Challenge!
We started reading James and the Giant Peach
by Roald Dahl to C this week. I had wanted to get Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator because we just finished Charlie and the Chocolate Factory last week. But it was out so I decided to try a different Dahl book. The beginning of this one is pretty depressing, with poor James being sent to live with his cruel aunts when his parents are eaten by a rhinoceros. But we're up to the point where he's about to go into the peach, so hopefully things will be happier from here on out.
We also picked up a few more of the Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems. C really loves this series of early readers. And he's doing a great job actually reading them. When we were at the library, he sat and read one of them aloud to M while I was looking for some other books. And he got through the whole book on his own. I'm sure he missed a couple words, but overall, he can read these books independently. It's pretty amazing to see your kid reading so well! I'm going to write a full review of this series of books later this week.
M wanted another princess book ~ what else is new? I got My Best Friend is Cinderella
by Lisa Ann Marsoli. It turned out to be a cute book. It's about a little girl named Emma who lives in Cinderella's kingdom. One day, she goes to the palace and spends the day with Cinderella, learning what it's like to be a real princess. It's a nice message, because Cinderella actually spends a lot of time working with charities to help kids in need. M loves it, of course, since it's a princess book!
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