Better Than You'd Expect ! (Catherine Cookson in general)

Member Name: karenuk

Product:	Catherine Cookson in general
Date:	28/12/00 (56 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: varied, well written, believable characters you care about

Disadvantages: a bit hit and miss at times

I had always been proud of NOT reading a Catherine Cookson novel, putting them in the "trash novels" section along with Jackie Collins and Jilly Cooper.

I expected her books to be sleazy, sexy, slushy and instantly forgettable, especially as she wrote so many - it seemed to me to be a case of quantity over quality.

But then one day, I was browsing in the local library and read the blurb on the back of a novel called The Thursday Friend. It sounded interesting and turning it over, I was suprised to find it was written by Catherine Cookson !

I thought I would give it a try and began reading. I was pleasantly surprised ! It was not slushy in the slightest, it was very real with believable characters and an interesting plot. It was actually very well written.

The Thursday Friend is not what I would call a typical Catherine Cookson novel, as it is not historical as many of her most famous books are.

After finishing that book, I read Hamilton. I was not impressed with this one - a story about a woman with an imaginary horse as a friend ! - but to give her credit, it was again something quite different.

Catherine Cookson does write historical novels and indeed romances, but they are not trashy, but are well researched, well written and a very good read.

In 1999, I read four of her novels - besides the two mentioned above, I also read The Tinker's Girl (an excellent historical novel) and The Rag Nymph.

This year, I have read A House Divided (which I rated 7 out of 10) and Kate Hannigan's Girl (8 out of 10), but I have now began to collect her novels and hope to read and rate more of her work soon.

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