blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Back for Good – Jay Jacobs

ramblingmads

Sasha Denning doesn’t ask for anything—ever. Feeling unappreciated and stuck in a
crumbling marriage with her husband, Mark, she’s suddenly given a dramatic escape: a near-death experience. Returning to life with a mission to help others, Sasha is thrust into a series of challenges that range from comical to heart-wrenching.

Zinnia, her determined but rule-bound trainee spirit guide, wants to help Sasha mend her life and marriage. But with The Spirit Guidance Rule Book restricting her every move, Zinnia faces her own struggles to prove she’s ready to qualify. When disaster looms, Zinnia must decide what matters most—her mission, her career, or Sasha and Mark’s future.

Goodreads
Purchase

Jay Jacobs, a writer and mother of two, was inspired to write after her sister shared the account of a little boy’s near-death experience. Exploring a wealth of similar stories, uncovering a fascinating and life-affirming perspective, this journey ignited her creativity, resulting in an uplifting novel intended to inspire and resonate with readers seeking hope and transformation.

Facebook Instagram

My thoughts: This was a bit different from my usual fare, narrated by trainee spirit guide Zinnia, who is watching over Sasha, a mother of three who is rather fed up with her husband Mark, who never helps out at home. After a horrible car accident, Sasha has a near death experience, and the spirit of her Gran takes her on a quick tour of her life and some people who need her help.

Recuperating in hospital, Sasha discovers she’s a bit psychic now and keeps reliving her strange experience. Recovering in record time, she’s determined to at least try to help the people she saw in her vision.

But her marriage is still in decline and her refusal to ask for help is stopping her from putting anything right in her own life. How can she help others but not herself? Zinnia is getting frustrated as she’s not supposed to directly intervene but when something threatens to completely destroy Sasha’s marriage, she can’t help herself. But has she made things or worse?

A quirky and at times very funny book about trying to do the right thing, even when it makes you seem crazy and learning that it’s ok to ask for help and not always put everyone else first.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Lost Detective – Elspeth Latimer

ramblingmads

On a summer’s day, a baby vanishes. The mystery is never solved, leaving a young
mother lost in grief.

Twenty-one years later, ex-police detective Dan Hennessy is struggling with his own
tragic loss, and when a neighbour disappears and a body turns up at the solar farm, he is desperate for answers.
The haunted landscape is keeping secrets, and there are dangers lurking in the Brecks.

Dan must find the truth.

Can he offer hope to the grieving mother, and also save himself?

Goodreads Purchase

Elspeth Latimer is an associate tutor on the prestigious  University of East Anglia MA in Creative Writing Crime Fiction, and also the author of Writing the Detectives, an academic study of the protagonist in the contemporary crime fiction series, published by Cambridge University Press.

Facebook Instagram Threads

My thoughts: Dan is a former police detective who quit after his fiancée was killed in a horrible accident, he’s still struggling. Having moved to a caravan park where he’s supposedly in charge of security in exchange for a place to live, he becomes involved in the murder of a man on the solar farm next door. His landlady also asks him to look into the cold case of her missing son, who vanished as an infant over twenty years ago.

His former colleagues aren’t happy with his involvement with the murder case, and he keeps his PI activities a secret from them, knowing it won’t go well if anyone finds out he’s digging in a case the police never closed.

His grief is causing him to do strange things, and he’s losing time. But by focusing on the cases he’s able to give his days a little more meaning. He still needs to sell the house he and Beth bought before she died, and decide what to do with her ashes. But it all seems too much, instead he’d rather hunt for a missing caravan renter and the long lost baby Felix, wading into a past some would prefer to forget.

Clever and intriguing, the cases that are helping Dan somehow, weave around each other in his head and in the story, there’s some strange things that he sees and his friend Cassie, now in his old job, gets frustrated with him a fair bit. He hasn’t lost his instincts as a detective, and digs away at things, even when officially told not to. He’s an interesting character, the reluctant detective, who wants to shut out the world but can’t resist a mystery.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Tombstoning – Doug Johnstone

ramblingmads

Your best mate just fell off a cliff in mysterious circumstances. You were the last person to see him alive. What do you do? If you’re David Lindsay from Arbroath, you leg it – and don’t go back.

Not for fifteen years. Then Nicola Cruickshank – yes, that Nicola, the girl you always fancied but never had the guts to speak to – gets in touch. She wants you back for a school reunion. At the very place it happened. Of course you say yes. Not to lay ghosts to rest, but because you still fancy Nicola.

The thing is, if you are David Lindsay, then returning to Arbroath isn’t going to bring closure. Because when someone else tumbles off the cliffs – an act the locals now call tombstoning – David has a choice: run away again, or finally find out why people around him keep dying…

Doug Johnstone is the author of nineteen novels, many of which have been bestsellers. The Space Between Us was chosen for BBC Two’s Between the Covers, while six of his books have been shortlisted or longlisted for the Theakston Crime Novel of the Year or the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year.

Doug has taught creative writing or been writer in residence at universities, schools, writing retreats, festivals, prisons and a funeral directors. He’s also been an arts journalist for twenty-five years. He is a songwriter and musician with ten albums released, and drummer for the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers. He’s also co-founder of the Scotland Writers Football Club.

My thoughts: I love Doug’s books (#skelfaholic) so I was excited to read this, the re-issue of his very first book. And I wasn’t disappointed. It doesn’t read like a debut, it’s as assured and clever as his most recent, this is an author who knows what he’s doing.

The story is full of twists and gets pretty dark at one point, but had me completely gripped. I could not put it down.

David and Nicola are very ordinary people, but when things get nasty, they’re also brave and resourceful. Tracing the last steps of David’s old friends before their shocking deaths, he comes to the conclusion that it doesn’t add up. It never has.

The police are looking at him, but they haven’t thought of the last member of their foursome – Neil. If David can track him down, maybe he might get some answers, or at least an idea for why two of his old pals, fifteen years apart, appear to have chucked themselves off the cliffs. When they had plenty to live for.

So begins David and Nicola’s quest. Find Neil, get some answers, hopefully lay this to rest. But of course, it’s not straightforward. And chaos ensues.

Absolutely brilliant stuff, you should get a copy and enjoy.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Stolen Sister – Jan Baynham

ramblingmads

Lost letters. A secret Greek love affair. A daughter’s search for the truth.

Crete, 1963. Young artist Greta Ellis arrives at the sun-soaked port of Fáros Limáni,
ready to paint and explore the beautiful Greek island.
When she meets passionate local Andreas Papadakis, she is swept up in a world of
colour, freedom and forbidden love. But when tragedy strikes, Greta is forced to make an impossible choice that will echo for decades.

Wales, 1984. After her mother Greta’s death, silversmith Zoë Carter receives a sealed letter that upends everything she thought she knew. Greta’s dying wish is for her ashes to be scattered in Crete, a place precious to her . . . but somewhere she had never spoken of.

Searching through her mother’s belongings, Zoë uncovers a series of letters. Written in Greek and dated the year before she was born, they reveal a passionate love affair. And a tragedy that tore it apart.

Determined to know the truth, Zoë travels to Crete to follow the trail left behind in her mother’s letters. Through the olive groves and whitewashed villages of Crete, she begins to piece together a story of love, betrayal and loss — and discovers that her
family was never what it seemed.

Goodreads
Purchase 

Fascinated by family secrets and ‘skeletons lurking in cupboards’, Jan’s dual narrative,
dual timeline novels explore how decisions and actions made by family members from one generation impact on the lives of the next. Her first three novels look at the bond between mothers and daughters as well as forbidden love.

Setting and a sense of place plays an important part in all Jan’s stories and as well as her native mid-Wales, there is
always a contrasting location – Greece, Sicily and northern France. Her next books will involve secrets and sibling relationships; the first set in 1943 and 1968 takes the reader back to beautiful Sicily where two sisters work together to prove their father’s innocence of a wrongdoing.

Facebook Instagram Twitter Website

My thoughts: Have the tissues handy! This is a bittersweet story of family, loss and love that takes us from green Wales to sunny Crete and back in time to the 1960s, when young artist Greta found love and heartbreak on the island.

Twenty odd years later, her daughter Zoë follows in her footsteps to honour Greta’s last request and scatter her mother’s ashes on the island. Why? Zoë has no idea. Her mum never spoke of the place.

What Zoë uncovers will change everything she thought she knew about her parentage, her family and her life.

I really enjoyed this book, which tugs on the heartstrings and is truly one of those books where the sad parts and the happy parts co-exist and blend together beautifully.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

books

Book Blitz: Dance of the Asuras – N. Patel Baxi

ramblingmads

Happy release day to N. Patel Baxi and congratulations on the release of Dance of the Asuras!

Dance of the Asuras

Release Date: February 24, 2026

Genre: Romantasy

  • Forced Proximity
  • Morally Grey
  • Karmic Retribution
  • Gods & Anti Gods
  • Hidden Powers
  • He Falls First
  • Tension, Banter & Spice

Freedom was her final dance, until the devil stepped onto her stage.

Niya is the most famous dancer in Khoya, bound by a contract to a kingdom that has stolen her independence. With her servitude nearly over, she is closer than ever to gaining safe passage to the revered city of Varnasi—and a life of her choosing.

But when Zehan, the Prince of Hell, witnesses her final performance, he claims her as his Chosen and drags her to the realm of demons.

Now, to gain her freedom, Niya strikes a new bargain: serve in Zehan’s court and use her magic to help him uncover who is stealing the souls of his subjects. The culprit proves elusive, and the more time Niya spends in Zehan’s world, the more her heart betrays her vow to leave.

Whirling between deceitful anti-gods and an unraveling prophecy, Niya finds a surprising source of power as she steps into an unexpected destiny…and an inescapable love.

AMAZON

 

TW:

Off-page sexual assault (not to the main character) and is only alluded to

 

BOOK BLITZ ORGANIZED BY:

R&R BOOK TOURS

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Overkill – Colin Garrow

ramblingmads


Edinburgh, Christmas Eve, 1936. A gruesome double murder. A white-faced killer. A mysterious stranger…

Still haunted by his recent past, Professor Finlay MacBeth is called in to assist the police following an horrific double murder. Traces of greasepaint and white cotton lead MacBeth and Inspector
Callaghan to the Christmas Circus, but while they search for clues, someone else is watching them.

Meanwhile, bent cop Kilmartin still has MacBeth in his sights…

In this thriller series set in Edinburgh, Overkill is book #2 in the Finlay MacBeth series.

Amazon  Draf2Digital


Colin Garrow grew up in a former mining town in Northumberland. He has worked in a plethora of professions including taxi driver, antiques dealer, drama facilitator, theatre director and fish processor, and has occasionally masqueraded as a pirate.

He has published more than thirty books, and his short stories have appeared in several literary mags, most recently in Witcraft, and Flash Fiction North. Colin lives in a humble cottage in Northeast
Scotland where he writes novels, stories, poems and the occasional song.
He plays several musical instruments and makes rather nice vegan cakes.

Website Twitter/X Bluesky Facebook Instagram Bookbub

My thoughts: Professor MacBeth is settling in for Christmas Eve, when Inspector Callaghan calls, a couple called McDuff have been murdered (which made me grin, any other survivors of reading The Scottish Play at school will know why).

They’ve been savagely butchered and some of their organs are missing, and the police are at a loss. As MacBeth and the inspector hunt for the killer, they find themselves directed towards the circus, in town for the festive season.

There a performer mentions being scared by a man with a strangely pale face – and striking blue eyes. Could he be their killer? The traces of greasepaint at the scene suggest a link.

More bodies turn up as the police work, also brutally slaughtered. But there’s another killer lingering in the wings with his own plans and a personal vendetta against the professor.

Absolutely gripping and sinister, I really enjoyed (if that’s the right word for a book about a murder) this book. I like MacBeth, Rhona and Johnnie, his little found family. Looking forward to seeing where this series goes next, the ending is a bit of a cliffhanger.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Other Moctezuma Girls –  Sofia Robleda

ramblingmads

Tenochtitlan, 1551. Thirty years after the Spanish Conquest destroyed everything she loved, the last Aztec empress has passed and left behind a pristine yet tenuous legacy for her children. As her last will and testament is read out, her daughter Isabel suspects that another account of her mother’s life may exist, hidden away, chapter by chapter, in the Valley of Mexico. Following each clue, Isabel is determined to find out who her mother really was and to discover the secrets she buried in order to survive.

Joined by her siblings and a handsome young cook named Juan, Isabel embarks on a perilous journey to piece together the past–a journey that will force the party to brave the brutal viceroyal court, face fearsome legends in mystical chinampas, and trek through desert, fire, and snow. As Isabel’s feelings for Juan grow, she confronts everything she thought she knew about her Spanish father, her empress mother, and herself. Facing everything from the tunnels of ancient pyramids to the summit of an active volcano, Isabel will meet every challenge to fulfill an epic quest for the truth.

Sofia Robleda is a Mexican writer and author of Daughter of Fire. She spent her childhood and adolescence in Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore, and completed her undergraduate and doctorate degrees in psychology at the University of Queensland, Australia. She currently lives in the UK with her husband and son, and splits her time between writing, raising her son, and working as a psychologist, supporting people with brain injuries and neurological conditions. For more information, visit sofiarobleda.com or follow @sofiarobleda on Instagram.

My thoughts: This was a really interesting and enjoyable book. The only things I know about Mexican history have been filtered through a European lens, so to read something written by someone determined to preserve pre-Conquest history and culture was really good.

Plus it’s a terrific story. The daughters of the last Mexica empress, Isabel and Catina, go on an epic quest across the country seeking out the chapters of their late mother’s memoir, revealing the events of the Spanish conquest, of the terrible slaughter, plague and destruction that followed, which killed thousands of innocent natives and allowed the Spanish to seize control of the country.

Although the girls are pledged to become nuns and stay out of men’s hands, they are putting off that destiny to uncover their mother’s story, and their true inheritance. Pursued by their own older, cruel, brothers and facing danger at every turn, they are brave and resourceful.

I genuinely really enjoyed reading this book, I loved Isabel and Catina, the rebellious girl and the gentle girl, who adore each other but still fight as all sisters sometimes do. Their personalities are very different but they need each other to survive. They take along a young cook, Juan, who is himself of noble birth as the viceroy’s illegitimate son, and for a time, their brother. But this is the girls’ story, and that of their mother. Stories that get lost in a world ruled by men.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books

Blog Tour: Only the Small Bones – C.P. Harris

ramblingmads

We’re celebrating the release of dark, slow-burn romance, Only the Small Bones this week!

Only the Small Bones (Slow Burns & Tragic Beginings #1)
Release Date: February 24, 2026
Genre: Dark MM Romance

• Non-verbal MC
• MC With Touch Aversion
• Human Trafficking Survivor
• Broken Boys
• Mental Health Rep
• Interracial Couple
• Slow Burn
• Delicious Tension
• Text Exchanges
• Hurt/Comfort
• Cameos from Infidelity cast members

𝙋𝙚𝙧𝙛𝙚𝙘𝙩 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙛𝙖𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙙𝙖𝙧𝙠, 𝙨𝙡𝙤𝙬-𝙗𝙪𝙧𝙣 𝙧𝙤𝙢𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚, 𝙖 𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙮 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝙨𝙚𝙘𝙧𝙚𝙩 𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝙨𝙘𝙖𝙧 𝙩𝙚𝙡𝙡𝙨 𝙖 𝙩𝙖𝙡𝙚…

“What makes him so special?”

“He reminds me of someone I once knew…”

As the founder of Freedom Fighters, famed music composer, William Mayes, is often the first port of call when the FBI needs assistance with human trafficking victims.

After receiving such a call one night, William abandons everything to catch the next flight home. Arriving at Manhattan Memorial, he finds a beautiful young man restrained to a gurney. His eyes are wild with fear, and blood stains his skin. No one has been successful in getting him to speak.

When even he can’t get the young man to cooperate, William does something he may later come to regret—he extends an invite to his home.
The young man is non-verbal, angry, and at times openly hateful. All of which gives him control over William’s emotions.

William slowly begins to spiral from his own struggles with his tormented past. His nightmares return, sleep becomes a lost cause, and the dark voices in his head are out for blood.

Amid their co-dependent isolation, William’s feelings evolve. Lines are blurred and then crossed altogether as they start down a path riddled with secrets and lies of omission.

The only thing that can set them both free is the truth. But maybe some things are better left buried. Because if the ugliest parts of William are ever unearthed, no one will be spared.

Only the Small Bones is an MM romance, and book 1 in the standalone series Slow Burns & Tragic Beginnings. This story features a non-verbal MC with touch aversion, and mental health representation.

AVAILABLE HERE

 

Author’s Note:

Only the Small Bones is book 1 in the Slow Burns & Tragic Beginnings series. See below for a list of what to expect. As always, I encourage readers to put their safety above their curiosity.

• Non-verbal main character
• Main character with touch aversion
• Interracial couple
• Human trafficking of adults and children.
• Flashbacks involving the abuse they face at the hands of their traffickers (i.e. being drugged, bound, and transported).
• Discussions involving cutting, sexual assault, physical and emotional abuse.
• Depression representation
• Off-page death of a parent, grandparents, and trafficking victims.
• Survivor’s guilt.
• Cameos from Infidelity cast members

 

 

BOOK TOUR ORGANIZED BY:

R&R BOOK TOURS

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Of Blood and Fire – Ryan Cahill

ramblingmads

Epheria is a land divided by war and mistrust. The High Lords of the South squabble and fight, only kept in check by the Dragonguard, traitors of a time long past, who serve the empire of the North.

In the remote villages of southern Epheria, still reeling from thetragic loss of his brother, Calen Bryer prepares for The Proving – a test of courage and skill that not all survive.

But when three strangers arrive in the village of Milltown, with a secret they are willing to die for, Calen’s world is ripped from under him and he is thrust headfirst into a war that has been raging for centuries.

There is no prophecy. His coming was not foretold.

He bleeds like any man, and bleed he will.

Ryan Cahill is the award-winning author of the bestselling epic fantasy series, The Bound and The Broken.

Born and raised in Ireland, Ryan now resides amongst the rolling hills and hobbit holes of Middle-Earth, New Zealand. He does not own enough swords, would sell his left kidney for a dragon egg, and despises mushrooms in all their eldritch forms.

There are three things Ryan has always told himself about writing. Write the books you want to read. Write the books that your younger self would be proud of you for reading. Make sure they have dragons.

My thoughts: This is the first book in an epic new fantasy series, complete with dragons. I really like dragons.

Calen and his friends have been sent to drop off an order by his father, when they get involved in a fight with some imperial soldiers and find themselves in an adventure that will change their lives and their world.

Joining a struggle four hundred years old, and meeting the first dragon hatched since then. Calen and that dragon bond and become part of something he can’t fully understand yet. He will lose people he loves, but find allies amongst the dwarves, giants, elves and humans who want to fight back against the empire’s attempts to control the world.

I loved this, I have wanted some new epic fantasy, and dragons. Did I mention I like dragons? The dragon Calen bonds with is not quite what he expects, small and greedy, but brave and their bond helps keep him alive. I can’t wait to read the next book, which I think is out later this year.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Other Mother – Heidi Field

ramblingmads

Suzannah is pregnant with her third child. The first is in prison.
The second is dead. How far will she go to keep her unborn baby safe?

When Suzannah learns she is pregnant, she feels like safety and happiness are finally within reach. Her handsome, successful fiancé, Alec, is over the moon about the baby. He proposes and pampers her. He thinks this is Suzannah’s first marriage and first child, but she’s keeping a few secrets.
Actually, a lot of secrets.

And they are dangerous…putting Suzannah in a position where she must
choose who and what she’s willing to sacrifice to keep her baby and her
freedom.

Drowning in her lies, Suzannah is desperate to bury her past, but her ex-
husband, who abandoned her years ago, returns, stalking her and demanding to know what really happened to their daughter.

When the imprisoned serial killer who lured and groomed her son, threatens to sell his story to the press, Suzannah feels like the life she’d built and the precious one she’s growing, teeter on a precipice. Now the two children she’s hidden from Alec may be the least of her worries.

Goodreads
Purchase

Heidi Field was raised in the beautiful countryside of the South of England with her parents and her two sisters. In her twenties she was a freelance Sports Massage Therapist. She achieved a Degree in Zoology at the age of thirty and then went on to raise two boys and became the stepmother of three more young children. She still lives near her family home with her partner, their Great Dane and the children that have yet to fly the nest.

In her early forties Heidi completed a Masters in Creative Writing at Winchester University. She entered the course hoping she would become a children’s fantasy writer and left with a burning desire to write contemporary mysteries and thrillers.

Heidi wanted to put relatable people in extraordinary situations, challenge
them, push them to their limits and watch them fight for their sanity. The Other Boy is her first novel.

Bluesky Instagram Facebook X Website

My thoughts: Suzannah’s whole relationship with her fiancé is about to fall apart because of the many, many secrets she’s been keeping. She hasn’t told him about her previous marriage, her children,  their fathers, or where she goes every few weeks.

She’s hoping she won’t have to, until an unwelcome blast from the past forces her to. Now things are falling apart completely, because she just can’t seem to tell the whole truth, and Alec’s patience is getting short, he’s worried about her mental state and whether their baby’s safe.

Suzannah’s an unreliable narrator, even to herself she keeps up the pretence and doesn’t share the full truth.

There are plenty of shocking things that come out and more that happen as Suzannah scrambles to stop some of the secrets from spilling out and destroying her life.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.