Can Free Ever be Faaabulous?

Like many people, we at Kindle Castle are feeling the pinch. It seems nobody has any spare cash these days and buying books has become a bit of a luxury – whereas before, for avaricious readers like ourselves, a weekly book was as normal and as essential as washing up liquid.

There is, of course, the library – and certainly those institutions need supporting as much as possible. But here in England it’s raining… and hey, we own a Kindle!

One of the main complaints against e-readers, perpetuated by the bigger, older, traditional publishing houses, is that due to the ‘free-for-all’ ease of publishing, the quality of books are un-policed, meaning that Amazon has become a quagmire of sub-standard writing and illiterate ranting in which the ‘good’ books (ie the ones that the big publishers want to sell for £8 or £9 in electronic format) sink and are lost.

We see their point. But looking through the Top One Hundred in the UK Kindle downloads today, it was interesting to see a number of entirely free books making it into the charts. Furthermore, they all have excellent star ratings and their reviews suggest that they are as highly regarded by their fans as books by the big hitters.

So. It’s raining, we’re skint and we have a virtual library of free books in the palm of our hands. We don’t even have to take them back! We downloaded the following, and will give our thoughts next week. In the meantime, if you’ve checked out these titles and have anything to say about them, let us know - and if you know of any juicy little freebies we should be shouting about, get in touch.

Scary Mary - by S.A Hunter.

This looks like something of a cross between 'Ghost Whisperer' and the Stephen King's 'Carrie'. So far, not very original, but it has four and a half stars and many satisfied customers shouting about it. And it's free. Did we mention it's free? We'll let you know what we think about Mary as soon as we've all met her.

Never Buried - Edie Claire

Despite the slightly Nancy Drew feel to the cover, this again had mostly good reviews. Personally we're feeling a little bit dubious about this, as for a crime novel to work the plot needs to be really tight - but hey, that's what we're here for. Selflessly testing out books so that if they're bad, you don't have to. You never know, could be the next PD James. As ever, we'll let you know.

That's it, for now. We've got reading to do....