Category: reviews

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Cold Grave – Jenny O’Brien

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It’s every parent’s worst nightmare…

Seventeen-year-old Bryony Lloyd’s father drops her off at a friend’s house to study – but when he returns to pick her up there’s no sign of her, and the woman who lives in the house swears she lives alone. Bryony has vanished into thin air, and her ‘friend’ doesn’t seem to exist.

DI Gaby Darin immediately sees similarities with another missing-persons case: seventeen-year-old Christy Taylor, who vanished without warning several months earlier. There’s nothing in the girls’ personal lives to suggest trouble at home – could someone have taken them both?

After a third case is linked, Gaby knows time is running out if she’s going to find Bryony and Christy alive. After going missing over a year ago, this girl’s just been found dead.

When a tragic accident means Gaby loses a vital member of her team, she distracts herself from her grief by throwing herself into finding the missing girls. Even if it means putting her whole career on the line…

A gripping and thrilling mystery for fans of Angela Marsons, Rachel McLean and Cara Hunter. Cold Grave will have you hooked!

My thoughts: this was another really good book featuring Gaby and her team. This time they’re looking for missing teenage girls – bookish, clever but not particularly striking girls. The last ones you’d expect to run away. But then that might just be the point. Working with Manchester police, who have a similar case, the team gradually draw the net closer on their suspect, but time isn’t on their side.

A shocking tragedy derails Gaby slightly, she’s so caught up in her own emotional spiral that she’s not as focused as she should be. But between DCI Sherlock and Rusty, she’s reminded of the vital role in finding the missing girls that she plays.

I really like these books and so it’s a shame that this is currently the last one planned. Hopefully the author has something good coming up next.

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

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Black Water Sister – Zen Cho

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This mischievous Malaysian-set novel is an adventure featuring family, ghosts and local gods – from Hugo Award winning novelist Zen Cho.

Her grandmother may be dead, but she’s not done with life . . . yet.

As Jessamyn packs for Malaysia, it’s not a good time to start hearing a bossy voice in her head. Broke, jobless and just graduated, she’s abandoning America to return ‘home’. But she last saw Malaysia as a toddler – and is completely unprepared for its ghosts, gods and her eccentric family’s shenanigans.

Jess soon learns her ‘voice’ belongs to Ah Ma, her late grandmother. She worshipped the Black Water Sister, a local deity. And when a business magnate dared to offend her goddess, Ah Ma swore revenge. Now she’s decided Jess will help, whether she wants to or not.

As Ah Ma blackmails Jess into compliance, Jess fights to retain control. But her irrepressible relative isn’t going to let a little thing like death stop her, when she can simply borrow Jess’s body to make mischief. As Jess is drawn ever deeper into a world of peril and family secrets, getting a job becomes the least of her worries.

My thoughts: this was a really fun, and funny, read. I have a few Malaysian friends but I don’t know a huge amount about the country. This really brought it to life, Jess is a great protagonist. Seeing Penang through her eyes, as a newcomer, was a great way to learn about the city and its people. I loved her perspective on her family, all the crazy things they did, the endless rounds of entertaining guests and visiting friends, the way her mum and dad just got dragged along behind her auntie.

I also really liked learning about the religious beliefs of many Malaysians – worshipping hundreds of gods, some with only a little power, based in one small area, like the Black Water Sister of the title. A vengeful god, who really doesn’t like men, understandable when you learn more about her, as Jess does. I also loved Jess’ opinionated grandmother – Ah Ma. Despite being dead, she’s got plenty to say, about everything. I’m glad my dead relatives are safely tucked up in the afterlife (whatever that is) and not hanging about.

The book was colourful and clever and made me really hungry (Malaysian food is delicious btw). I want a sequel, see what Jess does next with her life.

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

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: One Moonlit Night – Rachel Hore

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Loyalty and betrayal, hope and despair, One Moonlit Night tells the captivating story of a husband and wife separated by secrets as well as by war.

Accept it, he is dead.
No, it’s not true.
It is. Everyone thinks so except you.

Forced to leave their family home in London after it is bombed, Maddie and her two young daughters take refuge at Knyghton, the beautiful country house in Norfolk where Maddie’s husband Philip spent the summers of his childhood.

But Philip is gone, believed to have been killed in action in northern France. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Maddie refuses to give up hope that she and Philip will some day be reunited.

Arriving at Knyghton, Maddie feels closer to her missing husband, but she soon realises that there’s a reason Philip has never spoken to her about his past. Something happened at Knyghton one summer years before. Something that involved Philip, his cousin Lyle and a mysterious young woman named Flora.

Maddie’s curiosity turns to desperation as she tries to discover the truth, but no one will speak about what happened all those years ago, and no one will reassure her that Philip will ever return to Knyghton.

My thoughts: I really liked Maddie and found her story at Knyghton far more interesting than Philip’s escape through France, the mystery of what happened to Flora and the wedge driven between the men years ago was very intriguing.

Maddie herself was an interesting figure, with her sad and remote family history – seeking family and connection in Philip’s childhood home. His strange aunt Gussie, who lives in the past, and his angry cousin Lyle.

I also liked the two children – Sarah and Grace, rare for me as I’m not usually bothered but they seemed rather sweet and a little sad. Like Gussie with her collection of tiny dogs and growing forgetfulness. A rather sweet, melancholic book with a line of hope like a stick of rock.

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

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Summer Fair – Heidi Swain

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Beth loves her job working in a care home, looking after its elderly residents, but she doesn’t love the cramped and dirty house-share she currently lives in. So, when she gets the opportunity to move to Nightingale Square, sharing a house with the lovely Eli, she jumps at the chance.
 
The community at Nightingale Square welcomes Beth with open arms, and when she needs help to organise a fundraiser for the care home they rally round. Then she discovers The Arches, a local creative arts centre, has closed and the venture to replace it needs their help too – but this opens old wounds and past secrets for Beth.
 
Music was always an important part of her life, but now she has closed the door on all that. Will her friends at the care home and the people of Nightingale Square help her find a way to learn to love it once more…?

My thoughts: this was lovely and heartwarming and really hit the spot. I’ve been a bit down recently due to a bereavement and I didn’t realise how much I needed an uplifting book with a happy ending, but I really did.

Beth works at a care home and lives in a horrible house share. Her only real joy is the collection of house plants she tends, but when a resident at the home introduces her to the residents and delightful location of Nightingale Square, she realises she wants more. Becoming Activities Co-ordinator at work means she can afford to rent a room in Kate’s cottage and begin to build a happier life. And maybe fall in love…

Featuring some of the recurring Nightingale Square residents and introducing some new faces, this is a lovely, sunshine filled story about friendships, community and love in various guises. And it’s very cheering.

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

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Safe House – Louise Mumford

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She told you the house would keep you safe. She lied.

Esther is safe in the house. For sixteen years, she and her mother have lived off the grid, protected from the dangers of the outside world. For sixteen years, Esther has never seen another single soul.

Until today.

Today there’s a man outside the house. A man who knows Esther’s name, and who proves that her mother’s claims about the outside world are false. A man who is telling Esther that she’s been living a lie.

Is her mother keeping Esther safe – or keeping her prisoner?

My thoughts: as a lifelong asthmatic I do understand Hannah’s (Esther’s mum) fears a bit, yes the air can be dangerous – full of pollutants and allergens, but you can’t hide from the world forever. And her decision to lie to Esther about the outside is very OTT. Protecting your child is a normal parental instinct but she goes way too far.

I can completely understand Esther’s shock and horror at discovering the truth, and how upset she is. But then it all takes a dark and nasty turn and you see just how extreme Hannah has become.

Gripping, shocking, intense and rather sad at times, I was rooting for Esther every page. Louise Mudford grows as a writer with every book and this was excellent.

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

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Book Review: A Taste for Killing – Sarah Hawkswood

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Godfrey Bowyer, the best but least likeable bow maker in Worcester, dies of poisoning, though his wife Blanche survives. The number of people who could have administered the poison should mean a very short investigation for Bradecote and Catchpoll, but perhaps some was pulling the strings, and that widens the net considerably. Could it be the cast-out younger brother or perhaps Orderic the Bailiff, whose wife has been pressured into a relationship with Godfrey? Could it even be the wife herself?  With Bradecote eager to return to his manor and worried about his wife’s impending confinement, and Walkelin trying to get his mother to accept his choice of bride, there are distractions aplenty, though Serjeant Catchpoll will not let them get in the way of solving this case.

My thoughts: Bradecote & Catchpoll are back investigating another medieval murder in Worcester. But in some ways this is Walkelin’s book, he does a lot of the investigating and putting it all together and we get to learn a bit more about his home life – with his overprotective mother and the young woman he hopes to marry.

The murders are pretty grim and the motive as old as time. Catchpoll puts his long earned knowledge of people to use and Bradecote is distracted by Christina being about to give birth. They get there in the end as always, putting the little bits of information together as confidently as any modern detective, only with no technology to help them or speedy police cars to get them to the scene – just foot leather and horses. It’s very enjoyable and I liked the way Walkelin gathers his information with politeness and a genial air, unlike grumpy Catchpoll who mostly seems to intimidate it out of people with a look.

Thank you to Allison & Busby for my review copy via Netgalley. The book is out this week so get ordering, available at all the usual places.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Take My Hand – Dolen Perkins-Valdez

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HISTORY REPEATS WHAT WE DON’T REMEMBER . . .

Montgomery, Alabama. 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend has big plans to make a difference in her community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she intends to help women make their own choices for their lives and bodies.

But when her first week on the job takes her down a dusty country road to a tumbledown cabin, she’s surprised to find that her new patients are just eleven and thirteen years old. Neither of the Williams sisters has even kissed a boy, but they are poor and Black, and for those handling their welfare benefits, that’s reason enough to have the girls on birth control. As Civil grapples with her new responsibilities, she takes India and Erica into her heart and comes to care for their family as though they were her own. But one day she arrives at their door to discover the unthinkable has happened, and nothing will ever be the same.

Inspired by true events and a shocking chapter of American history, Take My Hand is a novel that will open your eyes and break your heart. An unforgettable story about love and courage, sisterhood and solidarity, it is also a timely and hopeful reminder that it only takes one person to change the world.

My thoughts: this is a very timely book, set in the year Roe v. Wade entered the statute books, it covers issues around reproductive rights, and especially the forced sterilisation of young African American girls – something that really happened. Indeed it’s inspired by the real case of two young sisters who were permanently sterilised without consent.

Newly qualified as a nurse, Civil Townsend is the middle class daughter of a doctor and an artist, raised in a well to do neighbourhood. She isn’t fully prepared for the shocking depths of poverty poor Black people are living in when she meets the Williams family. In a leaking shack with a dirt floor the family live in one room full of squalor. She wants to help them, but struggles against Mace Williams’ pride to do so.

Sent out to do a single job – give Erica and India their birth control injections, she is stunned by their young ages and the fact that India isn’t even menstruating yet. Neither are sexually active, or even know any boys, but that doesn’t matter to the clinic or its manager. Civil becomes deeply involved with the family, helping them find a new home, a job for Mace, schools for the girls. Far beyond the scope of her role.

What unfolds is a terrible tale of government abuse of poor and vulnerable people. With forms thrust at people who can’t read, women manipulated into agreeing to sterilisation during labour and other heinous miscarriages of medical justice. As the case goes to court, Civil worries that the Williams girls will be lost in amongst the growing horrors.

She relates this story to her adopted daughter while undertaking a return to Alabama, ostensibly to visit the grown Erica and India, but more like a farewell tour, revisiting her memories and the people she once knew. She wants to pass on all that she learnt, explain how her guilt and culpability influenced her later decisions – to adopt and to become a doctor.

The book is powerful and shocking, thousands of women, mainly from poor and ethnic minority backgrounds were mistreated and forcibly sterilised. Sadly there is evidence that this cruel policy hasn’t stopped. Many of the victims didn’t even know what was really being done to them. This book brings the reality of medical abuse to light. And as Roe v. Wade is under threat once again in the US, it feels like a book everyone should.

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

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Blog Tour: Cause of Death – Anna Legat

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All is not well in the village. The local meadows have been the pride of Bishops Well for hundreds of years, but now they are facing the sharp blades of developers. The landowner is a rich and reclusive author who is happy to see them destroyed, but the villagers – including Sam Dee and Maggie Kaye – are fighting back.
Until, that is, someone decides to silence one of their number permanently.
As Maggie and Sam soon discover, there is more than a quick buck to be made in the
developers’ plans. There are age-old secrets and personal vendettas that could have deadly repercussions in Bishops Well today.
With Sam’s legal expertise and Maggie’s… well, Maggie-ness, they delve into the past,
determined to unearth the truth. And, as sparks begin to fly, could there finally be something more between this sleuthing duo?

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Anna Legat is a Wiltshire-based author, best known for her DI Gillian Marsh murder mystery series.
Murder isn’t the only thing on her mind. She dabbles in a wide variety of genres, ranging from dark humorous comedy, through magic realism to dystopian. A globe-trotter and Jack-of-all-trades, Anna
has been an attorney, legal adviser, a silver-service waitress, a school teacher and a librarian. She has lived in far-flung places all over the world where she delighted in people-watching and collecting precious life experiences for her stories. Anna writes, reads, lives and breathes books and can no longer tell the difference between fact and fiction.

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My thoughts: on returning to Bishops Well, there’s a mass act of civil disobedience to start things off, before the first body drops. Because yes, Maggie and Sam have found another dead one, much to DI Gillian Marsh’s annoyance. But it takes them a while to solve this one, first they have to finally work out what happened to Sam’s wife Alice, so she can stop haunting him and as always with Maggie, she picks out a few wrong suspects first.

These books are a bit lighter in tone than the main DI Marsh series, a lot of village life is funny, and the villagers are all fairly eccentric, even with the high murder rate.

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

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Blog Tour: The Game – Scott Kershaw

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Across the globe, five strangers receive a horrifying message from an unknown number.

THE PERSON YOU LOVE MOST IS IN DANGER.

To save them, each must play The Game – a sinister unknown entity that has a single rule: there can only be one winner.

IF YOU LOSE, YOUR LOVED ONE WILL DIE.

But what is The Game – and why have they been chosen?

There’s only one thing each of them knows for sure: they’ll do anything to win…

WELCOME TO THE GAME. YOU’VE JUST STARTED PLAYING.

My thoughts: what would you do for the person you love the most? That’s essentially what the characters in this book have to decide, it might require going on the run, getting on a plane and avoiding leaving a paper trail, it might lead you to a remote location with a group of strangers, all of whom trust each other not at all. But you might have to work together to solve this thing and end The Game.

Twisted and sinister, the use of technology, the slightly insane risks (running across a motorway for example) that the “players” are made to take in order to save the people they value the most, this is gripping, stomach clenching read, with twists and chills all the way through.

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

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Blog Tour: Equinox – David Towsey

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In this world, two souls inhabit a single body, one by day, one by night. But though
they live alongside one another, their ends do not always align. For Special Inspector
Morden, whose hunt for a dangerous witch takes him far from home, this will be a problem…
Christophor Morden lives by night. His day-brother, Alexsander, knows only the sun. They are two souls in a single body, in a world where identities change with the rising and setting of the sun. Night-brother or day-sister, one never sees the light, the other knows nothing of the night.
Early one evening, Christophor is roused by a call to the city prison. A prisoner has torn his eyes out and cannot say why. Yet worse: in the sockets that once held his eyes, teeth are growing. The police suspect the supernatural, so Christophor, a member of the king’s special inspectorate, is charged with finding the witch responsible.
Night-by-night, Christophor’s investigation leads him ever further from home, toward a backwards village on the far edge of the kingdom. But the closer he gets to the truth, the more his day-brother’s actions frustrate him. Who is Alexsander protecting? What does he not want Christophor to discover?
And all the while, an ancient and apocalyptic ritual creeps closer to completion…

David Towsey is a graduate of the Creative Writing programmes at Bath Spa University and Aberystwyth University. Born in Dorset, he now lives in Cardiff with his girlfriend and their growing board game collection. Together, they write under the pseudonym of D.K. Fields
whose Tales of Fenest trilogy is also published by Head of Zeus.
David’s first novel, Your Brother’s Blood, was published by Quercus, and was the first in the Walkin’ Trilogy. He is also one half of the indie games company, Pill Bug Interactive, who have released three titles across PC and Nintendo Switch™.

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My thoughts: this book had a really intriguing premise that it isn’t worth thinking too hard about as it distracts from the mystery at the heart of the novel. The concept of two people sharing a body, one by night, one by day was interesting, you can’t trust your own body because it’s not always yours. But can you trust the other half of yourself? Christophor is the detective but Alexsander, a musician, is putting the information gathered by night together too.

As strange occurrences add up and as neither half of Christophor/Alexsander can remember the others’ wakeful time fully, things get more intense. What is going on in the Eber house, and how do Christophor’s visions fit in?

Clever, layered and sinister, this is a fascinating and involving book.

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