I posted a promo for this book a while ago but wasn’t able to find time sadly to read and review it then so here are my thoughts today.
Wendy is a bright spark who wants to find love and travel the world, but she questions how her dreams can become a reality as her world changes around her.When Wendy arrives at her beloved grandmother’s house to collect a box of keepsakes, she picks up more than she bargained for – a green-eyed tabby cat with amazing qualities. This is just the start of a high-speed adventure, leading Wendy towards bright new horizons… if only she’ll give the cat a chance…
My thoughts: this was a sweet story about a girl, a cat and coming to terms with loss. Both the loss of Wendy’s grandmother and that of her hearing. I have partial hearing loss in my right ear so I could appreciate how Wendy felt, the slow loss of one of your senses, especially when you’re a music lover like Wendy, is very hard to deal with.
But the cat she inherits might just be part of the solution – she’s a pretty special little tabby cat. And Wendy’s awful parents have no idea what they’ve passed on. And then there’s Simon, the sweet man Wendy meets who works at the animal shelter, could there be more to their meet cute?
Complete with sweet illustrations by the author, this a charming and heartwarming.
Hope rescues intensive farming animals from slaughter among many others in her growing animal sanctuary, but finds herself struggling to make ends meet. Compounded by frequent flooding, a constant drain on her resources, as well as the risk it poses to her animals, Hope puts out a desperate plea on national television for help.
Grant Marshall comes to her rescue, but there’s a catch. He’s a farmer – and Hope loathes farmers.
Grant offers Hope everything she could ever desire for her sanctuary, leaving her with a dilemma – does she go against her morals and beliefs to accept his charity or will she accept his challenge that he can convince her that he is a compassionate man – in more ways than one?
Neet has been a big fan of romance novels since she was a teen, borrowing books from her mother’s bookcase. Her love of reading laid the foundation for an interest in writing short stories, poems, songs, screenplays, stage plays and novels. Her background in nursing, lecturing and research has been invaluable when establishing a sound knowledge base for her writing, while her emotions are the driving force behind her work. Her love for animals is her greatest passion.
My thoughts: I love animals and one day would like to have enough space to house lots of rescue animals, but at the moment we just have one cat, who was abandoned as a kitten. So I really liked Hope and her sanctuary. Rescuing animals and giving them a safe and happy home to live out their natural lives in is a great thing to do.
I can also understand her ambivalence with Grant – I have family members who farm. But Hope’s passion and commitment to her animals help to change Grant’s mind about livestock farming, it helps that he falls in love and lust hard from the first moment. And that his sister Fi is on board too, since she co-owns the farm and their ready meals business.
But the path of true love doesn’t run smoothly and both Grant and Hope get things wrong and misread situations – they just need to sit down and properly talk to each other. Instead they just keep falling apart. Thankfully Fi is straight talking and gets them to sort themselves out. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a happy ending and the cats and dogs would be very confused after all the moving back and forth that goes on!
The royalties from sales of Hope and Sanctuary are being donated to Glendrick Roost Animal Welfare Centre.
Click on the image for more information and links to other stops on the tour.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own
In this thrilling historical fantasy, time-traveling Librarian spy Irene will need to delve deep into a tangled web of loyalty and power to keep her friends safe.
Irene is trying to learn the truth about Alberich-and the possibility that he’s her father. But when the Library orders her to kill him, and then Alberich himself offers to sign a truce, she has to discover why he originally betrayed the Library.
With her allies endangered and her strongest loyalties under threat, she’ll have to trace his past across multiple worlds and into the depths of mythology and folklore, to find the truth at the heart of the Library, and why the Library was first created.
My thoughts: I have thoroughly enjoyed this series and as this is the last book before the author takes a pause to work on another project (which sounds excellent fyi) I relished every page. Irene and her friends are tested to the extreme and in the end she has to confront the secrets hidden at the heart of the library.
When I worked as a librarian our library’s secrets were in the office, which no borrower was permitted into, but I saw them and took the oath, so I can’t tell you what lies at the heart of a library.
The truce agreement between the dragons, fae and Library are stretched thin, the Librarians themselves are under siege and it feels like the end for the book swiping adventures that Irene has been on. Who built the Library and why?
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
Excerpt On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me… four migraine headaches, three massive ulcers, two aching ear drums, and a hole where my heart ought to be,” Maggie sang quietly to herself as though Max wasn’t sitting right there. She cracked herself up and switched off the unmarked Suburban’s FM radio with a flourish, and Max could swear he caught a whiff of cinnamon. “Maggie Kyle, your Christmas spirit confounds me,” he told his partner. He was pretending to watch a Buick creep down the street a little too slowly so she wouldn’t guess how attuned he was to the earnest timbre of her voice or the wry quirk of her lips. She was trying too hard to act casual with him, and he couldn’t figure out why. Maggie forced another laugh. “Christmas spirit,” she repeated, skimming the crossword puzzle in her lap before glancing back across the street at the rundown residence of Bobby King. Its peeling paint, once white, was now a weathered gray, and of the four green shutters meant to frame the front windows, two were broken and one was missing altogether. “What is a six-letter word for ‘lack thereof,’ Alex?” “Jeopardy’s not a crossword puzzle,” she said, making sure he saw her eye roll. “Dispatch, we need to put out an APB on Officer Kyle’s missing Christmas spirit." “You going to call in that Buick?” she changed the subject. “I wrote down the plates,” he lied, squinting to make them out so he could record the vehicle in his logbook. Maggie picked up the radio. “51-19?” “51-19, go ahead,” another officer responded from his own unmarked vehicle around the corner. “10-15 headed your way. Tan Buick, early 2000s model, traveling east. Manitoba plate: Yankee Lima Echo seven seven eight.” “Copy,” 51-19 replied. Maggie replaced the radio and turned her attention back to the crossword. “Frankie wants to enter that gingerbread contest, and her mom’s been playing Christmas carols since before Halloween. I’m not sure how much more I can take.” “Got it. No Christmas carols.” Max drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. When exactly had she lost her Christmas spirit? He could picture her as a little girl—in his mind she wore two long braids and was constantly shaking her bangs out of her eyes—staring up at the sky waiting for Santa to ride out of the stars like a meteor with the same patience she now bestowed on their stakeout. “But peppermint lattes are okay?” She grinned. “I’ll allow it.” “So you only hate Christmas a little bit then?” Maggie snorted. Time was, Max didn’t mind the odd stakeout. It beat writing parking tickets or chasing shoplifters through the snow. Play some tunes, shoot the shit, pee in a bottle if things got urgent. With the right partner it could seem like a day off. But everything was like eggshells with Maggie lately, and he couldn’t figure out when exactly things had changed. Today he felt a special kind of twitchy, the kind that made you want to peel off your own skin. Max loved the city—sometimes he hated how much he loved it—but sitting still all week, downtown where the Toronto high-rises blocked out the sky, he was starting to feel caged, like the buildings were closing in from every direction. Maybe he was psyching himself out after the whole ancestry test situation. The dichotomy of an Indigenous urbanite was turning his brain against itself. Maybe he just needed a vacation. “Do you believe in nature versus nurture?” he asked. “What, you mean like, mama tried but Bobby King was born rotten and no amount of church or cuddles or bedtime stories could have stopped him growing up to be a cop-killing gun runner?” “Something like that.” Maggie shrugged at him. “You missed a button.” She pointed at his shirt. “Girlfriend didn't catch that?” She was obsessed with the idea that he and Selina from next door shared more than a wall. It had only happened once—okay a handful of times. But it was five years ago, and there was no way Maggie could have known, except somehow she did. Even back then there’d been something, in his gait as he walked to the patrol car or a half-guilty look in his eyes; she had known, and if he protested now she’d take it as some kind of proof. Not that it should even matter. They were partners, not lovers, and he’d certainly been her shoulder to cry on when the asshat from college dumped her and split back to Edmonton. Max should have made a move on Maggie then, but he was still her TO and besides, he’d been a rebound before. He didn’t want to be one for Maggie, and she didn’t want him anyway. She’d been singularly focused on making detective since her first day at Fifty-One Division. Until, somewhere along the lines, she hadn't. And she was right about the button. His black undershirt was peeking through. Did he bother to look in the mirror this morning? After a dozen years on the job, he knew what he’d see. Not his father, not even his grandfather—just a sad imitation, like a kid who got the wrong size costume at Halloween. Her phone began to vibrate then, and she, too, silenced it without answering. “Your mom again?” he asked. She didn’t respond, which meant yes. “She giving you a hard time about staying here for the holidays?” “I’ll take ‘Does the earth orbit the sun?’ for a thousand, Alex.” “Weren’t you going to invite your folks out here for Christmas?” “That was last year.” An uncomfortable mixture of lust and shame surged through Max, from the tips of his ears to his belly, at the thought of last Christmas. He tried to remember her parents being in town, but all that came to mind was the department holiday party and sweaty fumbling in a dark interrogation room. And cinnamon. She had smelled like cinnamon then, too.
Rose Prendeville is a librarian and honorary Canadian with a passion for stories about found families and flawed people doing their best.
She’s been devising such tales for as long as she can remember, including secretly in the back of her tenth grade French class (Pardon, Madame Gonzales), and she went on to double-major in screenwriting and creative writing.
Hydrangeas are her lifeblood, hot baths and hiking are her solace. She adores baking (and mostly eating) macarons, and she can’t wait to share this and future books with you.
For your chance to win a $50 Amazon e-Gift Card, click the link below!Rafflecopter
My thoughts: this was a lovely story about family, friendship and crime at Christmas. Police officers Maggie and Max are after someone who sets off a fake bomb in a bus station locker, when they find a little boy hidden inside another locker. His older brother runs from them and Max pursues him across Canada, hoping to reunite the two boys.
Meanwhile Maggie hunts for the hoaxer, could it be connected to the case being built against local criminal Bobby King? And how does the stolen Robox kit from the local library fit in?
While investigating, both Maggie and Max are also wrestling with their feelings for each other, ten years working together and a year after an awkward hook up at the Christmas party, will they finally admit how they feel?
The way that Max is determined to reunite Henri and Oliver, chasing Oliver across the province to bring him back to Toronto and his little brother, while wrestling with the fact he’s adopted and doesn’t know whether he had a brother, is so powerful. Almost as though by bringing the two boys back together he can fix his own memories. Maggie is determined too, but she wants to catch the hoax bomber, and then King, but she’s also got little Henri to look after and is being hassled to apply for her detective’s exam.
They’re interesting and multifaceted characters, and they’re dealing with a lot of issues, both personal and professional. I also really liked the boys, the rookie, Hector, and Maggie’s detective friend Frankie. They keep the plot moving along at a nice pace in this quirky, hopeful Christmas story.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
The gruesome execution of a notorious thief and an assassination attempt on a high-finance executive turned whistle-blower throw former QC Nancy Wu and Inspector Jonathan Pole into a race to defuse the threat of a new terror group. The stakes are considerable and they need help…
Can Henry Crowne, disgraced financier and past IRA operative find redemption in lending his expertise to the case or will he have to give much more…his life perhaps?
NO TURNING BACK is a political and espionage thriller, the third book in the ‘Henry Crowne: Paying the Price’ series. If you liked Dance with the Enemy by Rob Sinclair , Deep State by L.T. Ryan or the TV series Informer, and McMafia you will enjoy the twists and turns of Freddie P. Peters’ latest fast-paced thriller. Discover it now…
The most wanted INTERPOL fugitive,
The most destructive Terror Group in the world,
The most impossible British Intelligence Services’ mission…
Henry Crowne, disgraced financier and former IRA operative has escaped London’s top high-security prison with the unexpected help of MI6.
His mission…infiltrate an emerging terror group that has already claimed many lives in the West and threatens to destabilise the Middle East further. Henry’s perilous journey leads him to the group’s centre of power in Syria and Iraq. His aim, to meet the elusive man who runs a merciless war against those who oppose him.
But Henry decides to help Mattie Colmore, a war reporter hostage. Can he still hide in plain sight, bring back the information the West desperately need to defeat Islamic State and save Mattie at the same time?
SHY SHADOWS is an political and espionage thriller, the fourth in the “Henry Crowne, Paying The Price” series. If you liked Rob Sinclair’s SLEEPER 13, L.T Ryan’s NOBLE BEGINNINGS or the TV series MacMafia or Spooks, you will enjoy the twists and turns of Freddie P Peters’ latest fierce-paced thriller.
Read my review of the first two books in this series here.
My thoughts: Henry Crowne is an interesting character, a former IRA operative, a high flying financier and now a prisoner in Britain’s most secure prison. But the his expertise is needed again. This time to bring down a terrorist organisation using the banking system to fund itself. MI6 are very keen to get Henry involved, much to the concern of his friend and lawyer Nancy Wu.
Assisting in a case for the Serious Fraud Office and the Met, he’s suddenly freed from prison and on his way to the Middle East, leaving Nancy completely lost and worried about her friend.
Then in book 4, Spy Shadows, we jump forward several months, and now Henry and his handler Wasim are in Syria, working undercover with ISIL, offering Henry’s know how to help the organisation funnel its money and trade enough to be self sustaining, right under the noses of various international agencies. But it’s highly dangerous and full of risks.
Can Henry convince these murderous men that he’s one of them, a true believer and willing to aid in their crimes or will they continue to see him as a kafir – a foreigner? And when he decides to rescue a hostage, journalist Mattie, he puts his life, and the mission on the line.
Spy Shadows is very differently in tone from the previous books, not only do we lose Nancy and Inspector Pole, but it’s a lot more action packed and less focused on financial crimes, for obvious reasons. Spending time with terrorists currently trying to gain more land and waging jihad, is going to be a lot riskier than working out where people are hiding their money. Henry has had to step up and get his hands dirty, something he avoided doing while with the IRA.
There’s also a lot of behind the scenes intrigue and negotiating at MI6, not least because Mattie’s estranged father is an MP and starts throwing his weight around.
It’s an interesting new direction for the series and will certainly open it up in terms of what Henry can do and where he can go now he’s an MI6 asset. I just hope he lets his friends back in London know he’s OK.
1911: After the violent murder of three policemen in the line of duty, tensions between London constabulary and Whitechapel anarchists simmer. Meanwhile accusations and counter accusations of espionage further weaken relations between Germany and Britain. Can Margaret Demeray and Fox find out which potential enemy is behind a threat to the capital before it’s too late?
In the shadow of violence in the East End, just as Dr Margaret Demeray starts to gain recognition for her pathology work, a personal decision puts her career at the hospital under threat. Needing to explore alternative options, she tries working with another female doctor in Glassmakers Lane. But in that genteel street, a new moving-picture studio is the only thing of any interest, and Margaret’s boredom and frustration lead to an obsessive interest in the natural death of a young woman in a town far away.
Meanwhile intelligence agent Fox is trying to establish whether rumours of a major threat to London are linked to known anarchist gangs or someone outside Britain with a different agenda. When another mission fails and he asks Margaret to help find out who provided the false intelligence that led him in the wrong direction, she can’t wait to assist.
But enquiries in wealthy Hampstead and then assaults in poverty-stricken Whitechapel lead unexpectedly back to Glassmakers Lane. How can such a quiet place be important? And is the dead young woman Margaret a critical link or a coincidental irrelevance?
Margaret and Fox need to work together; but both of them are independent, private and stubborn, and have yet to negotiate the terms of their relationship.
How can Margaret persuade Fox to stop protecting her so that she can ask the questions he can’t? And even if she does, how can they discover is behind the threat to London when it’s not entirely clear what the threat actually is?
Paula Harmon was born in North London to parents of English, Scottish and Irish descent. Perhaps feeling the need to add a Welsh connection, her father relocated the family every two years from country town to country town moving slowly westwards until they settled in South Wales when Paula was eight. She later graduated from Chichester University before making her home in Gloucestershire and then Dorset where she has lived since 2005. She is a civil servant, married with two adult children. Paula has several writing projects underway and wonders where the housework fairies are, because the house is a mess and she can’t think why.
My thoughts: I really enjoyed this book, Margaret and Fox’s relationship is strong and their bickering made me laugh. Both are determined to solve the mysteries around them – from Norah’s terrible death to the yellow wrapped book and the dead men in Whitechapel.
Fox is also after anarchists or possibly German spies, there’s a few red herrings along the way, and Margaret is deeply suspicious of the rather unfeeling Dr Fernsby, and the couple who own the film company across the street.
But it’s all connected and it’s only by piecing it together carefully that they’ll get the answers to all of the terrible events and the evil plot being hatched in Soho.
The book was well written and the characters felt true to their time but also quite modern, not like the fusty Edwardians you might imagine. Margaret is forging her own path as a doctor, despite all the miserable old men looking down their noses at her. Fox doesn’t expect her to stay home and do nothing, but he would rather she was out of the line of fire. And I really liked Elinor – aka Miss Hedgehog!
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
Young baronet Robin Blyth thought he was taking up a minor governmental post. However, he’s actually been appointed parliamentary liaison to a secret magical society. If it weren’t for this administrative error, he’d never have discovered the incredible magic underlying his world.
Cursed by mysterious attackers and plagued by visions, Robin becomes determined to drag answers from his missing predecessor – but he’ll need the help of Edwin Courcey, his hostile magical-society counterpart. Unwillingly thrown together, Robin and Edwin will discover a plot that threatens every magician in the British Isles.
The Binding meets Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in debut author Freya Marske’s A Marvellous Light.
My thoughts: does anyone else get crushes on books? I have a crush on this book.
Magic exists and a department at the Home Office keeps an eye on it, it’s undercover in some ways, those with abilities keep them quiet and the general populace hasn’t a clue. Robin, Sir Robert Blyth if we’re being fancy, ends up in a job he’s not exactly equipped for, gets cursed and ends up on a quest for magical artefacts along with the rather lovely Edwin Courcy.
I’m not sure if magic is a metaphor for homosexuality in some way, both Robin and Edwin are gay, and it’s illegal and they mention Oscar Wilde’s trial. But despite this, and the secrecy needed, they fall in love. The descriptions of the way they observe each other are beautiful, the sex hot and the passion between them moving and tender.
As Edwin draws Robin further into the world of magic and they almost get murdered by a hedge, searching for magical artefacts, to keep them from the wrong hands, he realises that the arrogant toff he thought he’d need to get rid of swiftly is actually a kind, noble and brave person, who’d happily sacrifice himself for those he cares about.
When they discover their enemy and Edwin faces up to betrayal, it’s the bond they’ve slowly built that sustains him, the fact that Robin is by his side that convinces him to fight on and stop the rest of the Contract from falling into the wrong hands. I can’t wait for book two.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
My second stop on the 12 Days of Clink Street celebration tour. Check out my first post here and see the tour poster below for more reviews from other bloggers.
The discovery of the Achilles gene by Ahmad Sharif at the Middle East Centre for Cancer and AIDS Research (MECCAR), recently opened in Jordan’s remote Wadi Rum desert, had stunned Western scientists. Each gene having the potential to destroy its own cell should it ever become cancerous, the discovery had promised a universal cure for the disease. But there was a hitch. Although every one of our cells has the gene, only those of a unique Bedouin tribe have the extra piece of DNA needed to turn it on. Dr Stephen Salomon of the US National Cancer Institute claims to have invented such a switch, for which he will soon receive the Nobel Prize. But maverick Oxford don Giles Butterfield suspects his American friend’s invention might be fraudulent. After a sleepless night in his office in Magdalen College, he sets off for Heathrow in search of the truth. When his young assistant Fiona Cameron unexpectedly joins him in Washington, it is the start of a globetrotting adventure the outcome of which exceeds their wildest expectations, presenting Giles with a dilemma of epic proportions.
My thoughts: overall this was an interesting book, I was really intrigued by the Bedouin tribe with the interesting DNA strand, and the whole Achilles gene, secretive lab in the desert stuff as well, proper conspiracy thriller territory but I wasn’t too bothered about the dodgy American scientist scamming the Nobel committee – they’ve been mired in controversy for some time now.
I found Giles a bit pompous and annoying, his obsession with Liverpool, but a Liverpool that doesn’t exist anymore as it’s a modern city, not the fantasy one he romanticises endlessly, Dark & Stormy cocktails (rum, ginger beer, lime – not that amazing tbh), and old fashioned traditional English stodge cooking were all a bit of an affectation too far at times and verged on parody. Especially once his brother has been introduced and it’s so obviously put on. I wanted more of Fiona, whose main problem was being in love with Giles, who walks all over her.
She figures out the thing with the file dates, and he sends her off to teach his students while he goes off to be lauded as a hero by the Nobel people for preventing a fraud winning their top prize.
What started off as quite a tense scientific thriller confused me at first with the non-linear timeline and then lost me a bit with the endless section on the name of a file on a computer that went on a bit too long, but pulled it together in the final act. I got that the fact that the scientist had lied and his computer proved it but it was a bit fiddly and I wanted more on the dead man drowned in a swimming pool, there was definitely something fishy about his death, although that looks like it might be a case for book two.
I hope Fiona gets her own back in the next book and that Giles gets his arrogance brought down to earth, especially if he’s going up against governments this time, one’s who might have murdered an inconvenient scientist who said too much.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
Born centuries apart. Bound by a love that defied time. She couldn’t believe her eyes. The runes were normally so reliable and she had never doubted them before. Madison Berger is visiting Dublin with her family for a Viking re-enactment festival, when she chances upon a small knife embedded in the banks of the Liffey. Maddie recognises what the runes on the knife’s handle signify: the chance to have her own adventures in the past. Maddie only intends to travel back in time briefly, but a skirmish in 9th century Dublin results in her waking up on a ship bound for Iceland, with the man who saved her from attack. Geir Eskilsson has left his family in Sweden to boldly carve out a life of his own. He is immediately drawn to Maddie, but when he learns of her connection to his sisters-in-law, he begins to believe that Fate has played a part in bringing them together. Amidst the perils that await on their journey to a new land, the truest battle will be to win Maddie’s heart and convince her that the runes never lie…
Christina Courtenay writes historical romance, time slip and time travel stories, and lives in Herefordshire (near the Welsh border) in the UK. Although born in England, she has a Swedish mother and was brought up in Sweden – hence her abiding interest in the Vikings. Christina is a former chairman of the UK’s Romantic Novelists’ Association and has won several awards, including the RoNA for Best Historical Romantic Novel twice with Highland Storms (2012) and The Gilded Fan (2014), and the RNA Fantasy Romantic Novel of the year 2021 with Echoes of the Runes. Tempted by the Runes (time travel published by Headline 9th December 2021) is her latest novel. Christina is a keen amateur genealogist and loves history and archaeology (the armchair variety).
Giveaway to Win a signed paperback copy of Tempted By The Runes, a pair of silver Thor’s hammer earrings and a Thor’s hammer Christmas tree bauble (Open INT)
My thoughts: oh yes, the time travelling Viking romance series is back, following on from Tempted by the Runes and Whisper of the Runes , this time it’s Linnea’s younger half-sister Maddie who finds herself in the Ninth Century with a handsome (and infuriating) Viking to deal with. Geir rescues her from harm on the banks of the Liffey in Dublin and spirits her away to his planned new settlement in what’s now Iceland.
Bickering all the way, the pair fall hard for one another as they build a new community in sparsely populated land north of Reykjavik. Maddie has to reconcile her twenty-first century thinking with the realities of living in the past. And Geir has to understand that a thousand years from his time, women are very different. Luckily both his brothers are married to time travellers (Linnea and Sara).
I really enjoy this series and was delighted by this book as it joins the series, I love seeing the way each couple combines their knowledge and learns to live together in the past, with the odd trip to the present.
*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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It’s all fun and games, until someone gets killed.
Meet Jax Diamond, a sharp, sophisticated, skilled, no-nonsense private detective. Or is he? Glued to his side is his canine partner, Ace, a fierce and unrelenting German Shepherd whose mere presence terrorizes criminals into submission. Well, maybe not.
But the two of them are a whole lot smarter than they look. And they have their hands full when a playwright’s death is declared natural causes, and his new manuscript worth a million bucks is missing.
Laura Graystone, a beautiful rising Broadway star, is dragged into the heart of their investigation, and she’s none too happy about it. Especially when danger first strikes, and she needs to rely on her own ingenuity to save their hides.
Join Jax, Laura and Ace on a fun yet deadly ride during the Roaring Twenties that takes twists and turns, and a race against time to find the real murderer before he/she/they stop them permanently.
Award-winning author Gail Meath writes historical romance novels that will whisk you away to another time and place in history where you will meet fascinating characters, both fictional and real, who will capture your heart and soul. Meath loves writing about little or unknown people, places and events in history, rather than relying on the typical stories and settings.
My thoughts: if you’ve watched the TV series Hudson & Rex (based on a German series called Kommissioner Rex) you’ll know that having a German shepherd in a partnership makes crime solving so much better, and that’s the case here as detective Jax Diamond has a canine partner of his own called Ace.
In this case they’re investigating some suspicious deaths and keeping the titular songbird, actress Laura Greystone, safe from a particularly keen stalker. Ace is key in rescuing innocent parties and defending his preferred humans from harm.
Set during the Roaring Twenties, this was a fun and charming read, Laura is perfectly capable of looking after herself, but Jax’s instincts as a detective help them track down the dastardly duo behind a series of shocking murders rocking the theatre world. I’m hoping there will be more of these fun and enjoyable stories to come.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 