Tag: contemporary fiction

Danielle MacKinnon’s nearly thirty and still hasn’t got her life sorted. She’s broke, hates her job as PA to the blithely privileged Jeannie, and now a break-up has left her with nowhere to live.

It comes as a surprise when Jeannie suggests that Danielle stay at Westerley, the sprawling Yorkshire estate where she grew up. They need someone to look after the place anyway.

At Westerley, Danielle luxuriates in her idyllic, borrowed life as lady of the manor – but the house is strange, uneasy. that started in London has followed her there.

Then Jeannie arrives unannounced. Working for Jeannie, serving her, living in her house, the razor-thin boundaries between Danielle and her boss begin to dissolve. Soon their relationship slides into one that is older, stranger and harder to name.

Something is happening at Westerley. Things where they shouldn’t be. The shadow of a maid sweeping in the dawn light. But is the house really haunted? Or is Danielle?

Lauren Mooney is a writer from the East Midlands. She works in theatre and audio drama, and has co-run Kandinsky Theatre Company since 2015, making award-winning shows across the UK and Europe. She is a graduate of UEA’s Creative Writing Prose MA, where she held the David Higham Scholarship. She lives in south London with her husband Stewart and their tortoise, Sacher Tort. Service is her first novel.

My thoughts: Danielle is coasting through life, she’s stuck in an assistant’s job at a charity that doesn’t seem to really do anything, working for Jeannie, who treats her like a dogsbody, sending her to do the weekly shop and her errands.

When Danielle’s best friend tells her she can’t sleep on the sofa in her house share anymore (her ex is in their flat), she’s suddenly homeless. When Jeannie suggests she stay at her family’s moldering house Westerley and look after it, she accepts. 

But the night terrors and sleep paralysis that have been plaguing her seem to be worse in Yorkshire than they were in London and she’s even starting to see things in the daytime. Bowls of peaches seem to appear, a maid in the corridor when she’s the only person in the house. 

Then Jeannie and her son pitch up, the roof of their London home having caved in, and suddenly Danielle is cooking and cleaning for them and sleeping in the old servants’ quarters in the attic, and her strange visions are getting even more real. 

I liked Danielle, I’ve been a PA, although thankfully not for anyone as entitled as Jeannie, and I have an ancestor who was a housemaid (my great-grandmother) so I recognised that in her.

She’s clearly struggling with her life, her relationship has ended and she’s stuck in a rut with her job, her strange experience at the house, the visions and the increasingly real haunting seem like warning signals that she needs to change things, to start over and stop letting life happen to her.

A really interesting and enjoyable 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.

Morecambe Bay, Lancashire: After his father’s death, a son clears out his parents’ house. When he finds a series of haunting photographs of Morecambe Bay, taken by his father towards the end of his life, it sparks a journey through the scattered memories and broken connections of five generations of family history.

Flowing from the vibrant post-war Jewish community of London’s east end, to the quiet suburban streets of Stanmore, and back to the Lancashire coast, the story cascades down through each generation’s shifting perspective. A wife appeases her charismatic yet destructive husband; a son
reimagines the jigsaw of his mother’s life; a granddaughter tries to heal the traumas of the past.

What Fools We Have Been is an exploration of memory, identity, and the trail of damage left in the wake of wartime trauma. It asks: What is it that makes us who we are? Is it possible to repair the
wreckage of the past?

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Hank Williams started his career as a stage director in the mid ’70s. He then worked as a community artist and community development worker before becoming a management development consultant. For the past fifteen years he has worked in the Higher Education sector, mentoring senior
leaders in UK universities as well as leading change programmes in Afghanistan and Bangladesh. He retired in 2026.

Hank wrote a screenplay in the 80s that won a commendation in a Sunday Times/BFI national competition. He has published three books relating to management development. His first novel – WHAT FOOLS WE HAVE BEEN – was published by Chiselbury Press in March 2026, just before his 70th birthday. Hank lives on the edge of Morecambe Bay. He has two step-sons and three granddaughters.

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@chiselbury. Main platforms used are Instagram, X, Threads and Facebook.

My thoughts: I really liked this history of a family, connected through photographs, told backwards, from the East End to North London’s Stanmore and up to Morecombe Bay, rolling back the generations to the end of the Second World War and the deep wounds it left in at least two generations.

The characters are fascinating, I especially liked the women, mostly Ruth, whose life provides the main narrative. Having lost her mother during the war, while she was evacuated out to the countryside, she stays close to her beloved father, Morris, and her uncles in the East End.

Eventually she marries Charlie and they move, as many Jewish families have done, to North West London. I actually live in Stanmore, which is much more lively these days than it was then, with a diverse community. I don’t think Ruth would be as lonely now as she is in the book. And perhaps things would have been different.

It’s her son, David, whose house in Morecombe Bay is where this both begins and ends. He has compiled a book of photos he’s taken, with his daily thoughts jotted below. His son Simon adds pictures of their ancestors – his grandparents, aunt, father, to the book and shares it with his own children.

Inspired, his daughter builds a family tree, and goes looking for the missing story – that of her great-aunt. The only person left who can tell her about the people she comes from. If she is to be the bearer of her family’s stories, she needs to fill in the gaps.

Moving and deftly written, this is a gentle and bittersweet story about family, the messy relationships we have with our nearest and dearest, and the healing that comes in the form of new generations who have none of the weight of those troubled times on their shoulders.

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

Looking out at the crystal clear waters of Sorrento, my heart aches at the loss of the future I’d allowed myself to dream. But Tom’s lie is bigger than I could have imagined. How can we survive it? My decision will shatter more than just my own heart. Am I really ready to say the words that will change everything?

It was supposed to be a week of bliss leading to our dream wedding on the Italian coast. But it’s obvious our families are against it. My mother questions why Tom has controlled so much of the planning, twisting his generous surprise into something sinister. Tom’s daughter, Lily, makes it known she’ll never see me as her mother.

Trying to focus on our dream day, I can’t help but notice a woman who spends every day at the pool, alone. She seems fascinated by Lily in a way that worries me. When Tom finally locks eyes with her, he immediately pales.

This week should have been the best time of our lives but before our future can begin, Tom will confess a secret that could destroy everything. But he’s not the only one who kept a past lie hidden for the sake of happily-ever-after. By the end of the week with both our secrets laid bare, will we really say, ‘I do’?

A totally addictive novel about family secrets which will have you turning the pages long into the night. Perfect for fans of Jodi Picoult, Liane Moriarty and Diane Chamberlain.

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Emma Robinson is a USA Today Bestseller with a passion for stories which explore the power of family and friendship in the most challenging circumstances. Focusing on emotional themes, her novels are both heart-breaking and life affirming.

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My thoughts: Carrie has been whisked off to Sorrento by her fiancé Tom along with her mother and his daughter, to get married. They’ve only known each other eighteen months, and been a couple for eleven, but surely that’s long enough to know what you want?

However, it appears Tom hasn’t been a hundred percent honest, with either Carrie or Lily, and now, in the brilliant sunshine and with days before they tie the knot, the truth is about to come out.

Carrie has to make a lot of decisions in a short space of time  – and not just about her future spouse, as it turns out her overprotective mum might also have a few things to come clean about.

I felt for Carrie, she’s struggling a bit with everything, part of her things have gone a bit fast, and she wants to be a good step-mum to Lily, who at twelve, is pushing back. When she finds out the secrets the people she trusted so much were keeping – she’s furious and has to stand up for herself.

The secrets aren’t life threatening, but they do change things for Carrie, and make her decide to take charge for a change. A really interesting and enjoyable 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.

They’ve changed. He hasn’t. And that’s the problem.

Alan Hope has spent his entire working life as a reporter for the local newspaper. Now in his early sixties, he’s the newsroom dinosaur, firmly out of touch with the TikTok generation. So when his editor insists he starts an online blog, Alan treats it like free therapy. It’s not like anyone is actually going to read it… right?

Wrong! Because the more Alan’s life unravels – both personally and professionally – the more his brutally honest posts explode in popularity. Suddenly, the tight-knit town of Bashford is reading Alan’s innermost thoughts…

His wife announces she no longer wants to grow old with him. His two grown children
are more like strangers. His colleagues are mortified at the oversharing. Then he’s forced to work with fellow reporter Lisa – young, ambitious and the epitomise of modern life.

Everything Alan is not.

But can someone from a completely different generation help Alan reconnect with his own family? And can Alan – a newspaper relic who now actually hates newspapers – help Lisa uncover the truth about her father?

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Rob Harris grew up in the Forest of Dean but now lives in Oxfordshire with his wife
and daughter. For more than 15 years he worked on regional newspapers as a
journalist, sports editor and sub-editor and he is a former editor of The Forester
newspaper. He’s also been named Gloucestershire Media Sports Writer of the Year.

Rob’s first novel, The Absurd Life of Barry White, was published July 2024 by
Bloodhound Books. The sequel, Barry White is Still Absurd, came out in June 2025.

Rob previously wrote a memoir about the rare highs and frequent lows of being a
committed but ultimately frustrated village cricketer – called Won’t You Dance for Virat Kohli?, which was published in 2021 by Pitch.

He still knocks around on village cricket grounds, allegedly ‘for fun’.

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My thoughts: This had quite a few funny moments as Alan, a formerly good reporter slowly loses the will to write for the local paper and starts writing a blog, that ends up derailing everything. He doesn’t think anyone is reading his thoughts, but really he has thousands of dedicated fans, especially in India, where the papers owners are based. 

His editor is horrified at the airing of the papers secrets, the way Alan is so rude about their ultimate bosses, and tries to rein him in, but Alan won’t do as he’s told and as his personal life collapses and he moves into his shed, things go from bad to worse.

A bit silly, but very entertaining, this is one man’s breakdown that will take everyone with it. Even being assigned to teach new reporter Lisa how newspapers work won’t stop Alan unleashing his real opinions on his blog and bringing chaos to the quiet town of Bashford. 

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

It is a truism, frequently invoked by the members of the Meryton Women’s Guild, that one is only ever as happy as one’s unhappiest child. So, with five daughters and four grandchildren, it was a miracle Mrs Hester Bennet ever raised a smile. At best, she was only ever tentatively pleased, and even then understood that her contentment rested on the edge of a gaping precipice into which she would inevitably tumble the second Kitty or Lydia (it was almost always those two) messaged in the clutches of yet another existential crisis…

Lydia, home from Paris on New Year’s Day in a welter of hangover and humiliation, finds herself swearing off drink, drugs and sex for the next 12 months. Through her unfamiliar sobriety, she’ll see a landmark year for all the Bennet sisters, including a disruptive 40th birthday, an engagement and a funeral: and, maybe, coming to terms with the results of a run-of-the-mill run-in with a jackknifed lorry on a wet stretch of the M1…

A sharply funny and unexpectedly tender modern sequel to Pride & Prejudice, this is a story of sisterhood, survival, and second chances. For fans of Marian Keyes, Dolly Alderton, and anyone who’s ever wondered what the Bennet sisters would be like in the age of therapy, WhatsApp, and wellness trends gone rogue.

Joanna Nadin is a former broadcast journalist, political speechwriter and special adviser to the Prime Minister. Since leaving politics she has written numerous books for children and adults, including an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility for younger readers, the Carnegie Medal-nominated Joe All Alone, which is now a BAFTA-winning and Emmy-nominated BBC drama, andthe Flying Fergus series with Sir Chris Hoy. Originally from Essex, she now lives in Bath, and is Associate Professor in Creative Writing at University of Bristol.

My thoughts: this modern day update to the sisters of Pride & Prejudice is fantastic, funny, sad, thoughtful, entertaining and hugely enjoyable. The Bennet sisters are up to date with dating apps, WhatsApp chats and a very different take on the 18th Century.

Lizzy is a doctor with twins who never stop asking questions, juggling a demanding job with parenthood, Jane is contemplating her future and that of Netherfield, Mary is still figuring things out, Kitty might be about to wreck her love life and Lydia is, well, a total mess.

While Mr Bennet takes refuge in his newspaper, Mrs Bennet is still meddling in her daughters’ lives, some things never change.

As the sisters’ year begins, there’s heart break, misunderstandings, arguments, gossip and a trip to Paris which might derail the close knit bond between the five for good.

So much fun, very cleverly done and with real heart, this is a terrific book.

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