Category: blog tour

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Stranger’s Guide to Talliston – John Tarrow*

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Abandoned and alone, thirteen-year-old Joe’s world is shattered when he enters a deserted council house and becomes trapped within a labyrinth protecting the last magical places on earth. There, Joe discovers a book charting this immense no-man’sland, without time or place, its thirteen doors each leading to a different realm.

Hunted by sinister foes, the boy is forced ever deeper into both the maze and the mystery of his missing parents. What will he find at the labyrinth’s centre, and can it reunite him with the family he so desperately needs?

Crossing through diverse landscapes from Victorian Britain to fifties New Orleans, The Stranger’s Guide to Talliston is inspired by the internationally famous house and gardens dubbed ‘Britain’s Most Extraordinary Home’ by the Sunday Times. It is a classic YA tale of adventure that introduces readers to another world hiding in plain sight, cloaked in magic and steeped in imagined history. Yet beyond its fearsome huntsmen and battling magicians dwells the secret that lies within all of us – the power to live extraordinary lives.

John Tarrow is a novelist, poet, storyteller and award-winning writer. His fascination with folk and faerie tales has taken him around the world, gathering threads of story and legend to weave into his own mythologies: his extensive studies in Lakota Sioux and Druidic traditions offer readers stories resonant with magic, folklore and the wonders of the natural world. He spent twenty-five years transforming a three-bedroom, semi-detached, ex council house in Essex into the world-famous Talliston House and Gardens.

My thoughts:

Ok, so this book is inspired by a real place, that you can actually visit, in Great Dunmow, Essex. So I’ve added that to my list of places to go to asap.

A really accessible, clever, funny fantasy novel, full of little references to other fantasy books (and at one point Disney’s Pocahontas – at least to me!)

Joe is the relatable, every kid hero, who encounters magical birds, strange and powerful mystics, travelling through time and space via a mysterious house and its labyrinth.

I really enjoyed reading this, it’s a romp and so well written that it pulls you into the story swiftly, with its use of different myths and legends, locations, time periods and cast of unique characters.


*I was kindly gifted this book in return for taking part in the blog tour.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Fragility of Bodies – Sergei Oluguin*

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The first in a series of novels by Olguín starring the journalist Veronica Rosenthal. It is set in Buenos-Aires and has been made into a TV series currently showing in Argentina.

Veronica is a successful young journalist, beautiful, unmarried, with a healthy appetite for bourbon and men. She is a fascinating and complicated heroine, driven by a sense of justice but also by lust and ambition.

Sensual and terse, the novel is also fiercely critical of a system that tolerates the powerful and wealthy of Buenos Aires putting the lives of young boys at risk for their entertainment.

When she hears about the suicide of a local train driver who has jumped off the roof of a block of flats, leaving a suicide note confessing to four mortal ‘accidents’ on the train tracks, she decides to investigate.

For the police the case is closed (suicide is suicide), for Veronica it is the beginning of a journey that takes her into an unfamiliar world of grinding poverty, junkie infested neighborhoods, and train drivers on commuter lines haunted by the memory of bodies hit at speed by their locomotives in the middle of the night.

Aided by a train driver informant, a junkie in rehab and two street kids willing to risk everything for a can of Coke, she uncovers a group of men involved in betting on working-class youngsters convinced to play Russian roulette by standing in front of fast-coming trains to see who endures the longest.

With bodies of children crushed under tons of steel, those of adults yielding to relentless desire, the resolution of the investigation reveals the deep bonds which unite desire and death.

Sergio Olguín was born in Buenos Aires in 1967 and was a journalist before turning to fiction. Olguín has won a number of awards, among others the Premio Tusquets 2009 for his novel Oscura monótona sangre (“Dark Monotonous Blood“)

His books have been translated into German, French and Italian. The Fragility of Bodies is his first novel to be translated into English.

The translator Miranda France is the author of two acclaimed volumes of travel writing: Don Quixote’s Delusions and Bad Times in Buenos Aires.

She has also written the novels Hill Farm and The Day Before the Fire and translated much Latin American fiction, including Claudia Piñeiro’s novels for Bitter Lemon Press.

My thoughts:

I really enjoyed this, it reminded me of the Millennium novels,but without sexual violence.

The crimes Veronica investigates are seemingly accidental but turn out to involve powerful and corrupt men.

The writing is compelling and well paced, drawing you into the knotty investigation and Veronica’s own complicated life.

This is definitely a thriller for fans of Scandi noir – only hotter and with more South American. I hope there are translations of the author’s books in the pipeline.


*I was gifted this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Last Stage – Louise Voss*

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At the peak of her career as lead singer of a legendary 1980s indie band, Meredith Vincent was driven off the international stage by a horrific incident. Now she lives incognito in a cottage on the grounds of Minstead House, an old stately home, whilst working in the gift shop. Her past is behind her and she enjoys her new life. But a series of inexplicable and unsettling incidents have started to happen around her – broken china, vandalised gardens… And when a body is found in the gardens of Minstead House, Meredith realises that someone is watching, someone who knows who she is and who wants to destroy her…

A dark, riveting and chilling psychological thriller, The Final Stage is a study of secrets and obsessions, where innocent acts can have the most terrifying consequences.

Over her eighteen-year writing career, Louise Voss has had eleven novels published – five solo and six co-written with Mark Edwards: a combination of psychological thrillers, police procedurals and contemporary fiction – and sold over 350,000 books. Her most recent book, The Old You, was a number one bestseller in eBook.

Louise has an MA (Dist) in Creative Writing and also works as a literary consultant and mentor for writers at http://www.thewritingcoach.co.uk.

She lives in South-West London and is a proud member of two female crimewriting collectives, The Slice Girls and Killer Women.

My thoughts:

This was such a good book I read it twice. Having read some of Voss’ previous work I knew I was in for a treat and I was not wrong.

Having read so many thrillers and watched so many crime shows (thanks dad for getting me into all this!) I am usually pretty good at figuring out whodunnit, but I was genuinely scuppered by this one. I had no idea who it was that was stalking Meredith and the final twist had me shouting “no way!!”

The writing is so sharp, the characters strong and well drawn. Honestly it was a treat to read.

*I was gifted a copy of this book in order to take part in this blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: J SS Bach – Martin Goodman*

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J SS Bach is the story of three generations of women from either side of Germany’s 20th Century horror story – one side, a Jewish family from Vienna, the other linked to a ranking Nazi official at Dachau concentration camp – who suffer the consequences of what men do. Fast forward to 1990s California, and two survivors from the families meet. Rosa is a young Australian musicologist; Otto is a world-famous composer and cellist. Music and history link them. A novel of music, the Holocaust, love, and a dog. The author’s writing is a wonderland, captivating and drawing the reader in to the presented world. Time becomes no object as a literary universe unfolds and carries the reader through eighty years, where emotions are real and raw and beautifully given.

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Martin Goodman was born in Leicester, and has lived and worked in China, Qatar, the USA, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy and France. Travel forms a large part of his writing: both for strictly travel-related books and also for novels and biographies. His first novel ON BENDED KNEES was shortlisted for the Whitbread prize, and his most recent biography SUFFER AND SURVIVE won 1st Prize, Basis of Medicine in the BMA Book Awards 2008. He is the Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Hull. He lives in Hull, London and the French Pyrenees. ‘Such narrow, narrow confines we live in. Every so often, one of us primates escapes these dimensions, as Martin Goodman did. All we can do is rattle the bars and look after him as he runs into the hills. We wait for his letters home.’ ~ The Los Angeles Times

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My thoughts:

I struggled to get into this book, which opens with the character of Katja in Australia after the war. She’s unrepentant about her role, her husband was the adjutant of Dachau concentration camp. I really didn’t find her likeable.

Once Otto enters the narrative I found it easier to read. He’s clearly the more sympathetic figure – a Jewish teenager, a talented cellist. The plot follows him to Dachau, to meeting Katja and then to Canada as a refugee.

Years later Rosa tracks him down in his California isolation, a famous composer, and interviews him with the intention of writing a biography. Or perhaps to learn about her own family past.

This is incredibly well written and very moving at times. Highlighting a single story of one person’s survival of the horrors of the Holocaust and the deep emotional damage done to him.

*this book was gifted to me in exchange in taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Our Little Secrets – Peter Ritchie*

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This is the fifth book in the Grace Macallan series, but the first one I’ve read.

Written by a retired senior police officer with an extensive career, this book delves deep into the gangs and criminal conspiracies in Scotland’s underworld.

Grace Macallan is working in Counter Corruption, investigating dodgy officers like DI Janet Hadden who is running her own schemes involving some dangerous men.

I found this book really enjoyable and well written; the plot is well paced and draws you into the narrative.

The characters are well drawn, you even end up feeling sorry for one of the criminals; I don’t think he deserved what he got!

*I was gifted a copy of this book in order to take part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: One Way Out – A.A. Dhand*

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A bomb detonates in Bradford’s City Park.

When the alert sounds, DC I Harry Virdee has just enough time to get his son and his mother to safety before the bomb blows. But this is merely a stunt.

The worst is yet to come.

A new and aggressive nationalist group, the Patriots, have hidden a second device under one of the city’s one hundred and five mosques. In exchange for the safe release of those at Friday prayers, the Patriots want custody of the leaders of radical Islamist group Almukhtareen – the chosen ones.

The government does not negotiate with terrorists. Even when thousands of lives are at risk.

There is only one way out.

But Harry’s wife is in one of those mosques. Left with no choice, Harry must find the Almukhtareen, to offer the Patriots his own deal.

A.A. Dhand was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired his Harry Virdee novels.

My thoughts:

I enjoyed this novel, it’s a compelling, well paced thriller that has several unexpected twists. The characters of Harry and his wife Saima are brave, resilient people. Dhand mixes the traditional terrorist thriller with modern themes and worries – the friction between Muslims and the wider community being one of them.

I haven’t read any of the other books in this series but I will be looking out for them in my local library when I next want a thriller to read.

*I was gifted this book in return for taking part in the blog tour. However, all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Devil’s Equinox – John Everson

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Austin secretly wishes his wife would drop dead. He even te ls a stranger in a bar, who turns out to be his new neighbor, Regina. One night he comes to find his wife dead. Soon he’s entranced with Regina, who introduces him to a world of bloodletting and magic. Can he save his daughter, and himself, before the planets align for the Devil’s Equinox?


John Everson is a staunch advocate for the culinary joys of the jalapeno and an unabashed fan of 1970s European horror cinema. He is also the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Covenant and its two sequels, Sacrifice and Redemption, as we l as six other novels, including the erotic horror tour de force and Bram Stoker Award finalist NightWhere and the seductive backwoods tale of The Family Tree. Other novels include The Pumpkin Man, Siren, The 13th and the spider-driven Violet Eyes. Over the past 25 years, his short fiction has appeared in more than 75 magazines and anthologies and received a number of critical accolades, including frequent Honorable Mentions in the Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror anthology series. His story “Letting Go” was a Bram Stoker Award finalist in 2007 and “The Pumpkin Man” was included in the anthology A l American Horror: The Best of the First Decade of the 21st Century. In addition to his own twisted worlds, he has also written stories in shared universes, including The Vampire Diaries and Jonathan Maberry’s V-Wars series, as we l as for Kolchak: The Night Stalker and The Green Hornet.

My thoughts:

I originally thought this would be a straightforward thriller, with an obvious murder and a search for justice. But it’s a much weirder, darker story. Aidan gets completely out of his depth with a Satanic cult, and loses his wife and almost his baby daughter. It’s a twisted plot, and definitely for adult readers.

Despite my ambivalence over some of the sex scenes the plot zips along and the short chapters make it an easy read.

*I was gifted this book in order to take part in this blog tour, however all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Horizontal Collaboration – Navie & Carole Maurel*

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“Horizontal Collaboration” is a term used to describe the sexual and romantic relationships that some French women had with members of the occupying German forces during World War II. In this poignant, female-centered graphic novel created by writer/artist duo Carole Maurel and Mademoiselle Navie, the taboo of “sleeping with the enemy” is explored through the story of a passionate, and forbidden, affair. In June 1942, married Rose (whose husband is a prisoner of war) intervenes in the detainment of her Jewish friend and then accidentally embarks on a secret relationship with the investigating German officer, Mark. There is only one step between heroism and treason, and it’s often a dangerous one. Inside an apartment building on Paris’s 11th arrondissement, little escapes the notice of the blind husband of the concierge. Through his sightless but all-knowing eyes, we learn of Rose and Mark’s hidden relationship, and also of the intertwined stories and problems of the other tenants, largely women and children, who face such complex issues as domestic violence, incest, and prostitution. This fascinating graphic novel tackles the still-sensitive topic of who it is acceptable to love, and how, and the story’s drama is brought vividly to life by intimate and atmospheric illustrations.

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Carole Maurel cut her teeth on animated films before devoting herself to illustration, in particular, graphic novels. Her 2017 book The Apocalypse According to Magda was awarded the Artémisia Avenir award, which celebrates women in comics.

Navie is a screenwriter for press, cinema and television. She has a degree in history from The Sorbonne in Paris, where she specialized in the history of fascism – making Horizontal Collaboration an excellent fit for her first graphic novel

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This is a beautifully drawn story, translated into English by Margaret Morrison from the original French. The beating heart of the book is the love affair between Rose and Nazi officer Mark. But there are other stories in every apartment, of hiding Jews, and resistance, of love and loss, art and pain.

I loved this, told through the lives of women; a period where so often much of the focus is on men at war and not those left behind or under siege.

Part of my family originally came from France and I was raised by Francophile parents so I have a deep affection for the country and its people, as well as a fascination with its history, so linked are Britain and France. This year I want to read more French writers (especially women) and so this book slots beautifully into that aim.

*I was kindly gifted this book to take part on the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

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Blog Tour: Tulip Taylor – Anna Mainwaring*

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Challenged to go on a `survival’ reality TV show, fifteen-year-old make-up vlogger Tulip only accepts to escape her mother’s money-making schemes and protect her younger brother and sister. Set up to fail, can she prove to the TV show, to Harvey – the cute but annoying boy who got her on there – and most importantly to herself, that she’s more than just a pretty face? As Tulip puts down her phone and heads for the hills, she finds she has both the courage and insight to take on each new challenge. But as ‘reality’ gets ever more crazy, will either teen escape their families and their time in the spotlight unscathed?

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Anna Mainwaring read ‘The Lord of the Rings’ at the age of seven and hasn’t stop reading since. After studying English at university, she took the bizarre decision to follow a career in corporate banking. This made her sad so she left, went travelling and trained to be a teacher. When not teaching, writing or hiding from her children in the study, Anna can be found in bookshops, cafes or walking slowly up big hills.

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My thoughts:

This was a funny, wry contemporary YA novel through the lens of one teen’s determination to be more than just what she posts on social media.

Tulip is every 16 year old girl I’ve ever met; they are so much more than the stereotype (I used to work with children and young people). She’s funny, loyal, smart and brave. Her family are all over the place and she’s often driven to parenting her parents.

She’s also much more resourceful than she’s given credit for. And yes, she makes mistakes but so do we all. Anyone who says they have it all together at 16 is lying.

I am going to recommend this book to some of the teens I know (and their parents) to remind them how it’s ok to love Instagram and also learning, how it’s ok to make mistakes and not know everything. Tulip has a big heart and is a fantastic protagonist.

*I was gifted this book to review but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Missing Years – Lexie Elliott*

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She thought she would never go back…

Ailsa Calder has inherited half of a house. The other half belongs to a man who disappeared without a trace twenty-seven years ago. Her father.

Leaving London behind to settle her mother’s estate, Ailsa returns to her childhood home nestled amongst the craggy peaks of the Scottish Highlands, accompanied by the half-sister she’s never taken the time to get to know.

With the past threatening to swallow her whole, she can’t escape the claustrophobic feeling that the house itself is watching her. And when Ailsa confronts the first nighttime intruder, she sees that the manor’s careless rugged beauty could cost her everything…

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Lexie Elliott has been writing for as long as she can remember, but she began to focus on it more seriously after she lost her banking job in 2009 due to the Global Financial Crisis. After some success in short story competitions, she began planning a novel. With two kids and a (new) job, it took some time for that novel to move from her head to the page, but the result was The French Girl, which will be published by Berkley in February 2018 – available to pre-order on Amazon now!

When she’s not writing, Lexie can be found running, swimming or cycling whilst thinking about writing. In 2007 she swam the English Channel solo. She won’t be doing that again. In 2015 she ran 100km, raising money for Alzheimer Scotland. She won’t be doing that again either. But the odd triathlon or marathon isn’t out of the question.

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My thoughts:

There are a few things I really enjoy in a book; creepy houses, families full of mysteries, legends and myths that vary depending on the teller.

The Missing Years have all this.

This book was just the right amount of sinister and weird for a thriller, there is something about the more remote regions of Scotland that is made for twisted narratives.

The ending’s twist I definitely didn’t see coming and I’m usually pretty good at spotting them.

This is the author’s second book and I think if she keeps writing like this, there’s a great career headed her way.

* I was kindly gifted the book to review but all opinions remain my own.