Category: reviews

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Keeper – Jessica Moor*

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An addictive literary thriller about a crime as shocking as it is commonplace.

When Katie Straw’s body is pulled from the waters of the local suicide spot, the police are ready to write it off as a standard-issue female suicide. But the residents of the domestic violence shelter where Katie worked disagree. These women have spent weeks or even years waiting for the men they’re running from to catch up with them.

They know immediately: This was murder.
Still, Detective Dan Whitworth and his team expect an open-and-shut case–until they discover evidence that suggests Katie wasn’t who she appeared.

Weaving together the investigation with Katie’s final months as it barrels toward the truth, Keeper is a riveting mystery and a searing examination of violence against women and the structures that allow it to continue, marking the debut of an incredible new voice in crime fiction.

My thoughts:

Years ago I worked for an organisation that supported victims of domestic violence, I saw how hard the IDVA (Independent Domestic Violence Advocates) and ISVA (same but for sexual violence) teams worked to support women and children living with the effects of this particularly insidious crime, an often ongoing, sometimes non-physical abuse.

Refuges are few and far between, they’re poorly funded and despite attempts at keeping them secret, not always as safe as they want to be.

The refuge Katie works at in Keeper, has some of these problems, and unfortunately the paranoia, totally understandable as it is, often means reports of a man hanging about outside aren’t taken very seriously.

Katie has secrets, but as her story is revealed to the reader, they too are completely understandable.

The police do cursory investigation, never taking the women’s claims that Katie was murdered seriously, and once the twist at the end is revealed (no spoilers) you’ll see an entire new narrative.

Powerful, shocking and sadly still necessary, this puts human faces to the terrible things that some people go 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.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Revenge of the Sluts – Natalie Walton*

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Double standards are about to get singled out.

In this stunning debut, author Natalie Walton tackles privacy and relationships in the digital age.

As lead reporter for The Warrior Weekly, Eden has covered her fair share of stories at St. Joseph Secondary. And when intimate pictures of six female students are anonymously emailed to the entire school, Eden is determined to get to the bottom of it.

In tracking down leads, Eden is shocked to discover not everyone agrees the students are victims. Some people feel the girls “brought it on themselves.” Even worse, the school’s administration seems more concerned about protecting its reputation than its students.

With the anonymous sender threatening more emails, Eden finds an unlikely ally: the six young women themselves. Banding together to find the perpetrator, the tables are about to be turned. The Slut Squad is fighting back!

Natalie Walton has been writing for as long as she can remember, completing her first ‘book’ in second grade. She began posting her stories on Wattpad at the age of fourteen and has since amassed over 18 million reads on her works. Natalie is a Delaware resident and wrote Revenge of the Sluts while being a full-time student at the University of Delaware, working toward her degree in sociology and criminal justice.

My thoughts:

This is a powerful, thought provoking and timely novel about revenge porn, the rights of victims and taking a stand.

Eden is a high school senior working on the school paper, when an email sharing personal photos of seven of her schoolmates is sent out to the entire student body.

The school’s response is lacklustre to say the least and the young women involved are infuriated by the double standards, slut shaming and general disinterest they’re shown in trying to bring “Eros” to justice.

All over the world young women are mistreated for being sexual beings, for having sex, wanting sex, sending nudes (which they’re often pressured into doing by boys) and it is endlessly frustrating how little is done. Laws take years to come into play, and women suffer. Once it’s on the internet, it’s there forever.

The stance Sloane and the other girls take, the support Eden and the newspaper team give them, the way they decide to claim back their narrative, is so powerful and striking and hopefully empowers readers, of whatever gender, to realise that they too don’t have to be OK with the attitude that anyone “deserves what they get”.

It’s a brilliantly written, honest, enjoyable book too, I’m stunned it’s a debut as it’s so confident and assured and I for one can’t wait to see what Natalie Walton does next if this is where she’s starting from.

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Blog Tour: Tripping the Multiverse – Alison Lyke*

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As a science journalist, Jade has seen more than her fair share of peculiar oddities—none weirder than her socially inept fellow reporter Antigone. When the test of a teleporter using an electron collider goes awry, the two women find their world changed in subtle ways, with anomalies breaking out in their personal lives. Their increasingly unstable dimension gives Jade the ability to shapeshift while Antigone can see portals into other worlds.

When the test of a teleporter using an electron collider goes awry, the two women find their world changed in subtle ways, with anomalies breaking out in their personal lives. Their increasingly unstable dimension gives Jade the ability to shapeshift while Antigone can see portals into other worlds.

A fellow journalist who attended the experiment is trapped in another dimension and Jade and Antigone hold the key to saving him. Of course, their task is not just a simple rescue mission. Realizing they will continue to drift into increasingly stranger worlds until they straighten out the paradox, the women reluctantly agree to travel through the multiverse in search of a solution.

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Chapter 2: “Bluebird”

When Jade peered into the mirror, she saw her sister’s face reflected in place of her own. Jade reached toward her sister’s face and watched as her sister’s hand reached forward, all framed by the mirror’s fading, pink roses. She pulled her hand back and touched her face. The mirror Amber touched her own face. Jade tapped the mirror again, and her reflection reached out toward the surface in unison.

After a few more moments of introspection, Jade closed the closet and reached for her smartphone. She had never used the “selfie” function before, so it took some finagling before the front-facing camera turned on. Jade saw her sister’s face on the phone, just like she had in the vanity.

I’ve turned into Amber, she thought, then assumed she was dreaming, since turning into her sister was not possible. Jade slapped her own arm, which had turned into Amber’s silky, hairless arm. She hit herself softly at first, then harder. She slapped her face, even harder, and watched as a red hand mark stained her sister’s beautiful face in the phone’s camera.

This isn’t a dream; this is a nightmare. When Jade was little, and she had nightmares, she would wake herself up by jumping from something high off the ground. She might climb a bookshelf or ladder, then jump off and wake up. If there was nothing nearby to climb, or if jumping from a mundane object didn’t work, Jade would wake herself up by jumping out of a window.

Dreams can read your mind, she knew, so she had to work quickly and with little thought. If she gave the nightmare too much time, it might figure out what she was up to, and try to stop her. Jade raced across her room, flung open her window and climbed onto the windowsill, and then she jumped. A nanosecond too late, she realized that she was not dreaming.

As she fell, a sudden instinct overtook her. She felt movement under her skin again, and she sensed she was lighter and smaller than before. I am a bird, she thought, I can fly; I am a bright bluebird. She pictured a bluebird in her head.

Not an actual bluebird, because she’d never seen one, but the drawing of one she’d seen in an ornithology book. She repeated the idea of a bird and its image over and over in her mind.

Blue feathers burst from her arms, her face elongated, and she was no longer falling—she was flying. As a bluebird, Jade landed on her windowsill. She perched there, thinking in a mix of Jade thoughts and bird thoughts. Jade investigated her bedroom, her bluebird eyes resting on Amber’s dress, which was now an abandoned lump of green cloth on the floor.

She heard someone approaching her door, so she flew inside, transforming back into Jade as she landed on the floor.

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I’m an author and an English and Communications professor from Rochester, NY. I’m an insatiable reader and a dedicated writer. I’ve spent many years honing my skills and I now enjoy helping others find and explore their own voices. I write fantasy and science fiction and I aim to captivate and inspire. I’ve written two published novels: a modern mythology titled Honey, which came out in 2013 and Forever People, a cyberpunk science fiction slated to come out in the spring of 2019. I also regularly contribute poetry and short stories to literary magazines.

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My thoughts:

This was a really fun sci-fi adventure, with Jade and Antigone travelling through multiple worlds trying to get back home and repair the strange anomalies that the dimensional shift has created.

Funny, engaging and clever, I really enjoyed reading this and as Jade comes out of her shell and starts to develop more, she grew on me, although I liked Antigone, she was probably a bit too much for her quieter friend. Their new found powers could be very useful or very dangerous, I just hope in their next adventure they make good decisions!

*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: No Good Deed – Ewan Lawrie*

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Moffat the Magniloquent returns. Events at Gibbous House are over a decade in the past. Penniless, he heads south to St Louis. On murdering one Anson Northrup, Moffat assumes his identity and becomes involved with an Underground Railroad scheme to free slaves and rob the New Orleans Mint. Moffat meets another cast of grotesques and occasional real-life characters, including Marie Laveau, when he gets to New Orleans.

The scheme is complex and involves two riverboats and hiding both the silver and slaves from the authorities and a traitor in the ranks. Moffat learns more of the truth behind his origins, his past and what happened at Gibbous House. Moffat encounters the redoubtable and attractive Miss Pardoner – a woman seemingly unaffected by the passage of time – once again.

Until recently Ewan lived in the south of Spain, inland from the Costa Del Sol, where he used to enjoy an occasional beer in bars where no-one spoke English, at least not to him, in case they ended up in his notebook or somewhere worse. When not doing that he used to write, but occasionally he taught English to Andalucians and other hispanophones.

Having spent 9 months renting in Manchester’s hipster equivalent of Shoreditch, West Didsbury, , Ewan is now living in Elland in the Calder Valley, where the scenery is as inspiring in its way as that of Spain and the beer is cheaper than in Manchester.

My thoughts:

After spending ten years roaming the globe, Moffat arrives in America and immediately gets in way over his head. Having stolen yet another identity, he gets involved with the Underground Railroad and several small scams on the Mississippi river boats. He runs into a few old friends, and makes some new enemies.

Gibbous House was a weird Gothic nightmare and this is equally strange and surreal. Moffat appears to just blunder into things and somehow survive, despite some dodgy situations. He even almost becomes a hero in this one, having tried to help some slaves flee the South.

I have absolutely no idea what he’ll end up doing next – founding a colony on a South Pacific island probably, trying to outrun the past and avoid another meeting with Miss Pardoner.

*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: Crow Court – Andy Charman*

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Spring, 1840. In the Dorset market town of Wimborne Minster, a young choirboy drowns himself. Soon after, the choirmaster—a belligerent man with a vicious reputation—is found murdered, in a discovery tainted as much by relief as it is by suspicion. The gaze of the magistrates falls on four local men, whose decisions will reverberate through the community for years to come.

So begins the chronicle of Crow Court, unravelling over fourteen delicately interwoven episodes, the town of Wimborne their backdrop: a young gentleman and his groom run off to join the army; a sleepwalking cordwainer wakes on his wife’s grave; desperate farmhands emigrate.

We meet the composer with writer’s block; the smuggler; a troupe of actors down from London; and old Art Pugh, whose impoverished life has made him hard to amuse. Meanwhile, justice waits…

Andy Charman was born in Dorset and grew up near Wimborne Minster, where Crow Court is set. His short stories have appeared in various anthologies and magazines, including Pangea and Cadenza. Crow Court is his first novel, which he worked on at the Arvon course at The Hurst in Shropshire in 2018. Andy lives in Surrey and is available for interview, comment and events.

My thoughts:

This was a really interesting piece of historical fiction that follows the residents of a small Dorset town after the suicide of a young boy and the murder of the choirmaster who mistreated him.

Each chapter follows a different person, from the four men who are thought to be involved in the murder, to interested and nosy neighbours.

I really enjoyed the use of the local dialect, as someone who loves hearing people’s accents and local phrases it was a treat, I find it brings books to life as it gives you a real feel for place and time.

Moving, powerful and slightly magical at times, this is an extraordinary debut novel and promises much more to come from the author.

*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 Conspiracy – Jack Probyn*

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Candice Strachan can’t breathe.

A small jewellers is raided in Guildford High Street and leaves police chasing their tails. Reports suggest that it’s The Crimsons, an organised crime group the police have been hunting for years.

The device wrapped around her neck is suffocating her, crushing her chest.

But for rookie detective, Jake Tanner, something doesn’t seem right. The heist doesn’t fit any of their previous patterns. And the last time Jake met them, he was staring down the barrel of their gun, bargaining for his life.

The men who put it there have left her to die.

When the shop owner is kidnapped and a collar bomb is attached to her neck, Jake learns one of his own is involved – a police officer.

Her life now rests in Jake Tanner’s hands.

As Jake follows the group on a wild goose chase, he questions everything he knows about his team. Who can he trust? And is he prepared to find out?

The Conspiracy by Jack Probyn is a tense crime thriller full of hooks and twists that will leave you guessing to the end. If you like Luther and Line Of Duty, you’ll love this series that combines tension, gripping plots, and police corruption.

(Warning: This book is intended for mature audiences and contains disturbing and potentially offensive material.)

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Jack Probyn is the author of the DC Jake Tanner series. He hasn’t spent much time on the planet, but he knows what he wants: to entertain and enthral readers across the globe with his stories. Growing up as an only child and never owning a pet – something he reminds his parents of constantly – Jack spent a lot of time reading and writing.

After just about completing an English degree, he decided to turn his passion from a hobby into a career. When he’s not writing, he’s usually enjoying a sudoku or a true crime drama on Netflix. He lives in Surrey with his partner – who also one day dreams of owning a pet. Preferably a dog.

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My thoughts:

This was a really good read, gripping and fast-paced, racing from Guildford town centre to the docks of Southampton, on the trail of a murderous gang of brothers with bags loaded with diamonds and cash.

The Crimsons have never used violence in their heists before and DC Tanner has spotted the aberration, something else is going on here. Racing against the clock to save Candice from the bomb around her neck and to stop the three men before they leave the country, can Jake make it in time?

Whizzing along on a deadline from the gang, the plot takes no prisoners and keeps the reader hooked from page one.

*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 Shape of Darkness – Laura Purcell*

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As the age of the photograph dawns in Victorian Bath, silhouette artist Agnes is struggling to keep her business afloat. Still recovering from a serious illness herself, making enough money to support her elderly mother and her orphaned nephew Cedric has never been easy, but then one of her clients is murdered shortly after sitting for Agnes, and then another, and another…

Why is the killer seemingly targeting her business?
Desperately seeking an answer, Agnes approaches Pearl, a child spirit medium lodging in Bath with her older half-sister and her ailing father, hoping that if Pearl can make contact with those who died, they might reveal who killed them. But Agnes and Pearl quickly discover that instead they may have opened the door to something that they can never put back...

Laura Purcell is a former bookseller and lives in Colchester with her husband and pet guinea pigs. Her first novel for Raven Books, The Silent Companions, was a Radio 2 and Zoe Ball ITV Book Club pick and was the winner of the WHSmith Thumping Good Read Award, while her subsequent books – The Corset and Bone China – established Laura as the queen of the sophisticated, and spooky, page-turner.

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My thoughts:

I’m a big fan of Laura Purcell’s work so I leapt at the chance to read her newest Gothic horror. And I was not disappointed.

Taking in mesmerism and séances, the creation of silhouette art and the idea of being haunted by your losses, she weaves a sinister and macabre tale of Agnes Darken, a woman trying to make sense of a string of brutal murders that seem to be connected to her and a young girl, Pearl, who might just be able to channel the dead.

It also explores the place of women, as both Agnes and Pearl’s sister, Myrtle, are trying to make a living in a man’s world, where few professions are open to them, as opposed to Agnes’ friend Simon, a busy doctor, who doesn’t fret over every penny and often tries to help her out.

There’s also a little greedy pug called Morpheus, which hints nicely at some of the elements of Agnes’ situation.

It is truly excellent, part crime thriller mystery, part horror with its ghosts and grim killings. The ending was very satisfying.

*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 Mask of Mirrors – M.A. Carrick*

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Darkly magical and beautifully imagined, The Mask of Mirrors is the unmissable start to the Rook & Rose trilogy, a rich and dazzling fantasy adventure in which a con artist, a vigilante, and a crime lord must unite to save their city.

Nightmares are creeping through the city of dreams . . .
Renata Virdaux is a con artist who has come to the sparkling city of Nadezra — the city of dreams — with one goal: to trick her way into a noble house and secure her fortune and her sister’s future.
But as she’s drawn into the aristocratic world of House Traementis, she realises her masquerade is just one of many surrounding her. And as corrupted magic begins to weave its way through Nadezra, the poisonous feuds of its aristocrats and the shadowy dangers of its impoverished underbelly become tangled — with Ren at their heart.

My thoughts:

I collect Venetian carnival masks, they’re hanging on my wall right now so the gorgeous front cover of this book called to me.

But we should never judge a book by its cover although it is very eye catching, the book inside is so, so, good.

A magical, intricate fantasy, a con artist running a scam gets dragged into a terrible conspiracy that could leave thousands dead.

Ren has returned to the city she was born in to run a long con on a noble family, but all sorts of intrigue abound and she finds herself at the heart of it all.

Tess is probably my favourite character, she’s resourceful and fiercely loyal to Ren, with a core of steel running through her.

I don’t want to just spout superlatives about this book but I think it’s one of the best fantasy books I’ve read in a while and I’m already hungry 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.

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Blog Tour: To The Dark – Chris Nickson*

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Winter is about to take a chilling twist…

Thief-taker Simon Westow is drawn into a deadly puzzle when the melting snow reveals a dark secret in this gripping historical mystery, perfect for fans of Anne Perry and Charles Finch.

Leeds, 1822. The city is in the grip of winter, but the chill deepens for thief-taker Simon Westow and his young assistant, Jane, when the body of Laurence Poole, a petty local thief, emerges from the melting snow by the river at Flay Cross Mill.

A coded notebook found in Laurence’s room mentions Charlie Harker, the most notorious fence in Leeds who’s now running for his life, and the mysterious words: To the dark. What was Laurence hiding that caused his death? Simon’s hunt for the truth pits him against some dangerous, powerful enemies who’ll happily kill him in a heartbeat – if they can.

Chris Nickson has published 28 novels, all historical crime, most of them set in Leeds, whose people and history are his passion. The Richard Nottingham series began things, taking place in the 1730s, followed by the Tom Harper novels, which begin in 1890 and have now moved to the 20th century. Between them, Lottie Armstrong, Urban Raven and Dan Markham cover Leeds from the 1920s to the 1950s.

The three books featuring thief-taker Simon Westow explore a changing Leeds, growing rapidly in the 1820s as industry – the factories and mills and belching chimneys – comes to dominate the town. The Hocus Girl, the second in the series, received starred reviews from Kirkus, which called it a “tour de force,” and Publishers Weekly, which declared “historical mysteries don’t get much better than this.’

Chris grew up in Leeds, but lived in the US for many years, making his living as a music journalist. He still reviews occasional releases, but his focus these days is fiction.

My thoughts:

This was a really good historical crime thriller that went to some interesting places and made me want to know more about the characters.

There’s several strands to the plot and all of them filled with danger and intrigue. There’s the murder case that leads to some evil soldiers and put Simon in serious harm’s way, Jane’s own shadow and the threat of Big Tom on her tail.

Filled with historical details and strong relationships (I loved Simon’s wife Rosie, she’s brilliant) as well as gripping moments and some shocking events, this was a really enjoyable and interesting read.

*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: Who is Vera Kelly? – Rosalie Knecht*

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New York City, 1962. Vera Kelly is struggling to make rent and blend into the underground gay scene in Greenwich Village. She’s working night shifts at a radio station when her quick wits, sharp tongue, and technical skills get her noticed by a recruiter for the CIA.
Next thing she knows she’s in Argentina, tasked with wiretapping a congressman and infiltrating a group of student activists in Buenos Aires. As Vera becomes more and more enmeshed with the young radicals, the fragile local government begins to split at the seams. When a betrayal leaves her stranded in the wake of a coup, Vera learns war makes for strange and unexpected bedfellows, and she’s forced to take extreme measures to save herself.
An exhilarating page turner and perceptive coming-of-age story, Who is Vera Kelly? introduces an original, wry and whip-smart female spy for the twenty-first century.
Rosalie Knecht is the author of Who Is Vera Kelly?, Vera Kelly Is Not A Mystery and Relief Map. She is also the translator of César Aira’s The Seamstress and the Wind (New Directions). She lives in New Jersey.

My thoughts:

This was a really good, enjoyable read. Vera is a young woman still dealing with her childhood and teen years, the loss of her father and the deeply estranged relationship with her mother, when, living in New York and working for a radio station, she’s recruited by the CIA and sent off to Argentina, on the brink of a coup, to spy on some potential Russian influenced politicians and agitators.

She’s out of her depth and trying to keep her cover intact (as a Canadian student at the university), but events are starting to get ahead of her and Gerry back in the US isn’t much use.

Vera is a smart person but not exactly equipped for revolution and the chaos that it brings, she is at risk of arrest and interrogation as a foreigner in a suddenly hostile country.

Moving back and forth between her time in Buenos Aires and the years leading up to her recruitment, we see how Vera became the person she is and what secrets she’s carrying.

I liked Vera a lot and was rooting for her all the way through, the plot was engaging and entertaining and the world building meant I could really picture the buildings and people described. I want to know what Vera does 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.