Category: books

There’s no such thing as happy families.

In the space of a morning, Vicky’s life changed. She started the day happily married, with a wonderful infant son and a doting husband. By lunchtime, her husband was dead and her child missing.

DI Jennifer Stone knows time is critical. She and her team need to find nine-month-old Harry quickly – but the case has reopened old wounds for her, reigniting a pain that had only just started to heal.

However, when people close to Vicky are hurt and her late husband’s estranged mother turns up, DI Stone suspects something may be going on behind the family’s closed doors. If she can’t figure out what, and soon, more people will die.

It begs the question; how well do you really know your family?

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Scott Englefield grew up on the Isle of Wight. Despite being surrounded by
idyllic beaches and woodland walks, he was often to be found with his
head buried in a book.

His love of reading endured into adulthood and now he spends his free
time writing crime and psychological thrillers, often having to stop to fend
off his cat James who believes his keyboard is the perfect place to sleep.

He is in his mid-forties (and feels it) and lives with his wife, son and cat in
the East of England.

He grew a beard once – his wife hated it.

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My thoughts: Poor Vicky, her husband has a shocking heart attack in the supermarket car park and then someone abducts her infant son from his car seat. That’s truly awful. The police quickly start looking for little Harry, they know the longer he’s missing, the worse the outcome.

But things get worse for Vicky after that, her sister-in-law is knocked down by a car, then her lovely old neighbour John, who has been so kind and supportive, dies in a suspected murder. What on earth is happening and why to this poor woman?

But the police know there must be something in Vicky’s past – some clue as to what’s going on. Her mother-in-law might be in the frame for one, maybe two, of the incidents, but is in the clear for the rest. Especially once the toxicology report on Tom comes back. Things are very weird.

The twists in this, the killer’s reasoning, so many gasp out loud moments. Poor Harry will never remember his dad, and Vicky will have to live with the memories and trauma. But it’s very enjoyable and I was totally hooked.

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

Mistletoe, mince pies… and murder

When Jude Gray inherited Malvern Farm, she never thought she’d become so used to farm life, let alone be good at it!

But now a beloved national TV show is coming to film their Christmas special on her land, celebrating the charm of rural living and all Jude’s achieved so far.

At least, that’s the plan… until one of the crew is found dead in suspicious circumstances.

At first, it looks like a tragic accident, but when alibis start to crack, it seems like anything but. With a growing list of suspects and enough behind-the-scenes drama to rival anything the cameras are capturing, Jude must dig deep to uncover the truth.

Because someone on her farm is hiding a deadly secret – and this year, the season of goodwill may come with a killer twist…

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Kate Wells is the author of a number of well-reviewed books for children, and is now writing cosy crime set in the Malvern hills, inspired by the farm where she grew up.

Facebook: @KateWellsPoels
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My thoughts: I really like this series and while reading a book set at Christmas at the end of summer does feel a bit silly, hard to imagine needing a big coat yet, once December arrives, this book will be perfect.

Jude has agreed to let a TV show film on her land – it’s a bit like Countryfile I think or Springwatch. It’s also paying her, so she can afford to keep the farm going. However it’s the run up to Christmas, there’s always a lot to do on a farm and she’s also helping her sister organise her wedding, to be hosted just after Christmas on the farm.

The director is an egotistical nightmare who seems to think Jude works for him, and doesn’t understand animals at all. He drives her a bit crazy with his demands and orders. The rest seem OK, but there’s tensions and secrets among them.

Then the camera operator is killed, in what could be a horrible accident but the police investigation reveals it’s murder. Again. Jude seems to attract them.

When it looks like the presenter of the show has been having an affair with the dead woman, and his co-presenter wife knows, but could that be a reason to kill? As Jude and her police friends investigate the TV crew and try to uncover who might have wanted the camerawoman dead, another member of the crew is found dead, pointing in a different direction. What is going on?

A clever, twisty-turny crime, with lots of festive goings on around the chaos on the campsite. And it ends with a wedding!

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

Don’t speak. Don’t move. Don’t even breathe.

After a whirlwind romance, widow Lisa thinks she’s found her perfect match in senior policeman Alex. He’s everything she needs—a devoted husband and caring stepfather to her daughter Bella.
And, like Lisa, he knows what it is to lose someone precious. Alex suffered his own bereavement when his previous partner, Polly, passed away.

But is he really Mr. Right?

As Alex’s charm gradually morphs into rigid control, Lisa realises that he has a dark side, that she has married a man she doesn’t really know.
When she discovers a note left by his deceased wife Polly which seems to imply that Alex may have been responsible for her death, Lisa fears that she and Bella may be in mortal danger.
But escaping a man who wears a badge and knows how to hunt isn’t just difficult—it could be deadly.

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Elena enjoys psychological thrillers and crime fiction of all kinds, from the cosiest of cosies to the blackest of noirs.
She lives in East Lothian, Scotland, with her husband, three kids, and a fat black pug. Born in a colliery village in the North East of England, she cut her literary teeth on the great storytellers of the 70’s – Wilbur Smith, Frank Yerby, and Mary Renault. She began her writing career as an advertising copywriter and has since had novels published by Random House and HarperCollins. She’s had an original audio series produced by Audible UK, and also writes for TV.

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My thoughts: The domestic abuse statistics for police officers are pretty grim and the last few years have shown us that not everyone who works for the service is a good person. That’s certainly what Lisa comes to realise as she discovers that her new husband Alex is not the person he pretends to be.

There are cameras inside the house “for security”, he tracks her phone, checks her emails, follows her to her friend’s digs in Bath, demanding they go home right away. She catches him attempting to drown their dog. None of this is normal behaviour. Then she learns a bit more about his previous marriage, and the fact that he might have been poisoning his late wife.

So she plans to escape him, taking her young daughter with her, scared for her safety. He’s dangerous and she can’t go to the police – he’s one of them and she doesn’t trust that they’ll listen to her.

Then things turn really nasty. It seems there’s nowhere she can go that he won’t find them, nothing she can do to escape him. Faking her suicide might hold him off long enough to get away, but it might also put people she loves in danger, as he will go to any lengths to hold onto his family.

Gripping, tense and grounded in reality, this is a stay-up-all-night, rooting for the protagonist read.

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