Tag: thrillers

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Never Tell a Secret – Miranda Rijks

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Having secrets is dangerous. Confessing them can be fatal.

Emma’s family is coming apart at the seams. Her marriage to Hayden is
crumbling. Their 21-year-old daughter Willow is unraveling after a breakup.
Their teenage son Fred is isolated and unhappy.

So when they are offered the chance to test ClarityU—a revolutionary AI therapist built by Marcel, their widowed friend—it feels like a potential lifeline. And at first, it really does seem to help.

But there’s a hidden catch. ClarityU is dangerously addictive and Marcelcan see everything they share with it. Every confession. Every fear. Every secret.

As their most private thoughts are weaponized against them, sending
everyone Emma loves into a terrifying downward spiral, she realizes something is horribly wrong.

Suspecting Marcel is not the friend she thought, she begins to investigate.
And the deeper she digs, the clearer it becomes: she is locked in a life-and-
death battle with a man who understands exactly what she fears most.

Leaving Emma with one terrifying question—how far will she go to save
her family?

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Miranda Rijks is a writer of fast-paced, twisty psychological thrillers many of which have been Amazon
bestsellers. She has an eclectic background ranging from law to running a garden centre. After surviving bone
cancer, Miranda turned to writing and is now living the dream, writing suspense novels full time. She lives in
West Sussex, England with her Dutch husband and two black Labradors and spends as much time as she can
in the Swiss Alps.

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My thoughts:As AI becomes increasingly common and more and more people rely on it, I think books like this will also be more common – where AI is the villain. Although, it turns out that the real issue is the person using AI to manipulate others.

Emma and her family aren’t perfect but they are pretty normal. Her marriage to Hayden is struggling a bit, teenage son Fred is retreating into his own world and student daughter Willow is trying to move on from a break up.

Friend and AI developer Marcel offers his new therapeutic tool ClarityU to them to see if it helps. But what they can’t know is that Marcel can open the back end of the app and see everything they share. And he can re-code the app to control them. Which is super creepy. 

As things spin out of control and the family becomes increasingly fragmented, can Emma with son Fred’s help, stop Marcel and his dangerous program from wrecking more havoc on their lives and others?  

Clever, tense and with an out of control villain who tries to “fix” things by becoming more unhinged, this is both a scarily up to date thriller and a warning about who we trust with our data.

*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: I Was Watching You – Chris Westlake

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I WAS WATCHING YOU is a fast-paced psychological suspense thriller that will have you turning the pages well into the night.

When city girls Faye, Zara and Heidi book a weekend away at a remote cottage in rural Wales, it is intended to be the perfect detox from their hectic lives. But they let a stranger into the cottage…and they return home with a dark secret they don’t want exposed.

Five months later and their lives have returned to normal. They think they have gotten away with it.

And then a hand-delivered photograph drops through each of their letterboxes.
They were watched.

But who watched them?
What do they want?

And how far are the friends prepared to go to keep their secret?

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Chris Westlake is a psychological suspense thriller writer from Wales. I WAS WATCHING YOU is his 6th novel. I DID IT FOR US will be published in early 2027.

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IG – @chriswestlakeauthor

My thoughts: A girls’ weekend away turns into a nightmare, and then, having hoped no one has any idea about what happened, Faye, Zara and Heidi receive photographs that show someone saw everything.

But things get far stranger and more twisted than they could ever imagine, someone is willing to completely destroy them unless they do the unthinkable.

Pushed to breaking point and with their supposedly happy lives in free fall, the friends decide to do whatever it takes to survive, but will they all come out the other side unscathed?

Dark and full of malicious and controlling people, this isn’t a happy friendship, it’s full of nightmares and monsters with smiling faces. Some people hold onto grudges for way too long and it makes them very messed up inside.

There’s a real, will they? can they? no way! feel to this, as the friends face serious threat from a twisted blackmailer, who expects them to be willing to commit murder to stay free. It forces them to face up to a few things too – from Zara’s controlling husband to Faye’s messy past. It’s clever and gripping but also really shocking. You will not see the twists and turns this story takes coming. 

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

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Blog Tour: Pretty Bird – Hilary Faktor

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Maeve Whitman has come a long way. As a teenage mom who’d escaped an artists’ cult by sacrificing her best friend, she’s created a safe and perfect suburban life.

But when the former cult leader, who is now a renowned photographer and father of her daughter, tracks her down and threatens to force her child back to the farm she escaped from, Maeve is faced with a choice: take her children and flee or stay and fight for the life she’s built for her family.

With her daughter facing the chaotic and slippery monsters who almost destroyed Maeve, she’s pulled back into a web of destruction she thought she’d escaped for good.

By confronting her past, she’ll need to find the strength to take back her future and change the path her mother once set for them. Just how far will the colony go to get her back in their clutches?

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Hilary Faktor is a writer shaped by the boreal forest and the rhythms of a northern mining town. Her work explores family relationships, hidden histories, remote landscapes, and the tensions that simmer beneath them.

Her essays and journalism have appeared in Canada’s History, The Globe and Mail, HuffPost Canada, and Maclean’s, among other publications. She is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in English at the University of Calgary. “Pretty Bird” is her first novel.

She lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with her husband, daughters, and black lab.

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My thoughts: Maeve has fled a violent and tragic past, building a new life with her husband Mark and their children. But the past has a way of catching up with us and hers is about to come crashing into her life.

Now her daughter is in danger and Maeve must find the strength to stand up to the person she fled from as a teenager. With the help of her grandmother, and for her daughter, she will do whatever it takes.

Gripping and intense, with flashbacks that show the increasing horror of the supposed artists commune that was Paradise, I rooted for Maeve, even if it meant her killing someone, to save her family from the monster she once ran from.

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

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Blog Tour: Good Twin Bad Twin – Renita D’Silva

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I’m shaking as I turn the postcard over. A picture of a pretty Cotswold village. And a message: Bitter Honey, here I come.

It’s in my twin sister’s handwriting. She’s the only person who ever called me that. Except that can’t be true. Because, if it is, then whose body is buried under the patio?

She was the golden one. I was the shy, bookish one. Living in her shadow. Now I have everything I ever wanted. A stunning home on the Dorset cliffs. A handsome husband. A beautiful teenage daughter.

But my husband disappears at night. Our dog is the only member of the family that really loves me. And if my twin sister is alive, then everything I believed about my life is a lie.

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Renita D’Silva loves stories both reading and creating them. Her books have been translated into several languages. Her short stories have been published in The View from Here, Bartleby Snopes, this zine, Platinum Page, Paragraph Planet, Verve among others, have been nominated for the Pushcart prize, the Best of the Net anthology, shortlisted for the LoveReading Very Short Story award and The Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize and longlisted for the BBC National Short Story award. Her first psychological thriller, The Neighbours, won the Joffe Books Prize 2023.

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My thoughts: This was a good twist filled read. Twin sisters Ash and Nish do everything together. Nish is the driving force, the golden girl, Ash is the quiet one, desperate to escape her sister’s shadow.

As adults they are no longer in contact, until a postcard appears. But if her sister is alive, who did she bury under the patio?

As the narrator moves through her life, we try to work out which twin she is, it seems like she’s Ash, but the diary entries and flashbacks suggest something far stranger is going on. When the final reveal takes place – you will gasp.

This is clever, filled with unreliable characters, with people who change their names, their whole lives. With sisters who should have been allowed to be themselves not half of a whole.

*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: Hunted by Darkness – Kyla Rose

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When she inherits her grandmother’s vast gothic mansion, Alyssa expects dust and family secrets—not the dangerously magnetic neighbor, Detective Nathan Hale, who watches her a little too closely. He’s possessive, protective, and her every instinct tells her to run…

Yet she keeps being pulled back to him. The town surrounding the mansion is steeped in fear. Women are disappearing, rumors of a serial killer spread like rot, and the clues uncovered inside the mansion’s forgotten rooms suggest her new home is tangled in something far more sinister.

Caught between desire and danger, Alyssa must decide whether Nathan’s her greatest threat or the only one who can save her.

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Kyla Rose is the penname for Louise Mullins, the international best-selling thriller author. Check out her other titles sold by Amazon, Waterstones, and Blackwell’s.

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My thoughts: Alyssa moves into her grandparents’ old house, but almost immediately local cop Nathan is warning her not to stay there. There’s been a series of abductions recently and a young woman alone in a remote place is at risk. But she doesn’t believe him, until it becomes clear someone else is living in her house. 

Nathan moves her out, and into his own house, while the police investigate. Problem is sparks are flying and he could lose his job if he gives into how Alyssa makes him feel, she’s a victim of crime and he’s the lead detective.

This isn’t a very long read, but it gets very spicy very quickly. Which in a crime thriller dealing with human trafficking is a lot. Just try to separate the plots. One is romantic/sexy stuff and the other is the crime thriller detective/potential victim one.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, just more of a heads up if you’re not comfortable with that mix. The characters are mostly fantasising about each other until it’s appropriate for them to act on their feelings, her house has been made safe and the creep who was watching her is under arrest.

I liked the ending, where “natural justice” deals with the bad guys and Alyssa and Nathan can relax and enjoy getting to know one another….in all ways!

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

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Blog Tour: The Home Swap – A.A.  Chaudhuri

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We swap homes for a week with another couple. A luxury mini-break to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. But they are hiding a terrible secret . . . and so am I.

It seemed like a good idea. Our marriage has been under strain, and my husband has done something I’m finding hard to forgive. As soon as we arrive, something seems wrong. It’s little things at first: the hot water suddenly turns cold; the lights flicker out. It feels like we’re being watched.

The next day, a stranger knocks at the door. He seems desperate, and it’s freezing outside. So I let him in. Big mistake. This house swap isn’t a romantic escape. It’s a trap.

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A.A. Chaudhuri is the Amazon bestselling author of five psychological thrillers and the Kramer & Carver legal thriller series. Her highly acclaimed debut psych thriller, She’s Mine, was the LJ Ross Book Club April book of the month in 2022, and has reached No. 2 on Top Paid Crime and Thrillers behind CL Taylor and two spots ahead of Richard Osman on the Apple Books charts. Italian and Spanish rights for her fourth psych thriller, THE FINAL PARTY, have been sold to Newton Compton Editori, with publication set for some time in 2026. Alex is a History graduate and a former City lawyer. She lives in Surrey with her family.

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My thoughts: I don’t really get the appeal of a house swap, I don’t want strangers rummaging through my life, sleeping in my bed. But Fallon is convinced by her daughter Rose, that this could be just what she and her husband need.

They trade their Devon farmhouse for a Maida Vale mansion and at first it all seems quite nice, and then it all gets very dark and nasty. Someone has it in for Fallon and her family, and quite possibly the couple they’ve swapped houses with.

Fallon does a secret, but she’s not done anything wrong, she was a victim, and she didn’t tell her husband because she was worried about how he’d react, but now she has to, as she realises who might be behind all the blackmail, the strange things happening in the house and the threats.

When the police arrive, things shift and Fallon might finally get some answers, if she can convince them she’s not the person they should be questioning.

Tense and full of twists, this is a smart modern thriller about our pasts and how easy it is to misread a situation when you don’t have all the information.

*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: Dead Man’s Run – Murray Bailey

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The war may have ended, but the cover-ups never did.

Israel 1950. SIB Captain Ash Carter is called into the British ’embassy’ to report on the death-in-service of a consular officer. Despite assurances that there is nothing suspicious, Carter begins a challenging investigation – one that the authorities disprove of. And the deeper he digs, the more complex it appears.

Meeting an Israeli private detective, investigating a linked crime, Carter forms an uneasy alliance. Together, they uncover something too shocking to be believed without hard proof. With the highest of political stakes, distrust at every turn, deceit, kidnapping and murder, Carter must find a balance between the law, justice and revenge.

Dead Man’s Run is the fifth historical crime novel in the Ash Carter Near East series but can be read as a stand-alone.

Murray Bailey is the author of the Ash Carter thrillers, inspired by his father’s experience in the Royal Military Police in Singapore in the early 1950s. From the prequel series, based in Cyprus and Israel, The Prisoner of Acre won the 2025 Page Turner Award. A post-Singapore series is based in the Philippines. The Heretic Cypher is the first book of a trilogy featuring a young Robert Langdon-type character decrypting secret messages written by an ancient Egyptian.

Murray is well traveled, having worked in the US, South America and a number of European countries throughout his career as a management consultant. However he also managed to find the time to edit books, contribute to articles and act as a part-time magazine editor.

Murray was born in Manchester and now lives on the south coast of England with his family and two dogs, Teddy and Muffin.

My thoughts: Ash Carter is at a bit of a loose end in the early days of the state of Israel, Britain is about to recognise the fledgling country and establish a proper embassy, but for now a handful of people staff the consulate and Ash is called in when one of them is found dead.

What first looks like a bad heart coupled with over-work, becomes more serious when the post mortem exam reveals a blow to the head and traces of cyanide. Then the dead man’s assistant goes missing. 

As Ash digs into the life and work of Morton, he meets an Israeli private detective who is also looking for the missing woman, and has bad news for him about his detective friend Rosen.

Uncovering a secret web of smugglers and forgery, Ash gets a glimpse into the darkness beneath the new state, one that has its beginnings in the terrible events of the Third Reich, and stretches across oceans.

With the blend of action and conspiracy the Ash Carter books are known for, there’s something for everyone here, even a touch of romance that Ash never really manages to hang on to. It’s a clever, tense thriller, weaving together several disparate threads into an entertaining and gripping read. What will happen to Ash now as he appears to have yet again burned too many bridges? I can’t wait to find out.

*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: Dark Ugly Places – Ashley Mansour

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Welcome to the ARC tour for psychological thriller, Dark Ugly Places by Ashley Mansour!

Available in all formats at your favorite retailer on September 15th!

Dark Ugly Places

Expected Release Date: September 15, 2026

Genre: Psychological Thriller

Some wounds don’t heal. They fester. They whisper. They take over.

In Dark Ugly Places, trauma isn’t something you survive — it’s something that survives you.

Thirty-four-year-old Nicola Holiday loses everything in a hit-and-run: her husband dead, her body broken, her fourteen-year-old daughter Emmy forever changed. With no one held accountable, she spirals into grief, panic attacks, and financial ruin — awakening a hereditary darkness she’s spent her life trying to outrun.

That darkness has a voice now. Her name is Martha, and she aches for revenge.

As Nicola’s grip on reality loosens, Martha slips into another life — one of wealth, glamour, and moral rot. When she crosses paths with the wife of a famous actor, Nicola’s suspicions ignite.

Pulled between vengeance and annihilation, Nicola and Martha collide with a woman whose secrets may be the key to everything — or the thing that destroys them both.

Dark, provocative, and deeply unsettling — a haunting psychological portrait of female rage, obsession, and the terrifying lengths the mind will go to survive unbearable pain.

Because sometimes the most dangerous place isn’t the past. It’s inside your own head.

Dark Ugly Places is a psychological thriller of identity, grief, and revenge — a haunting domestic suspense for readers of Verity, Behind Her Eyes, and The Silent Patient.

CONTENT WARNINGS:

Violence (hit-and-run accident), grief and loss, panic attacks, mental health themes (dissociative identity), revenge, and mild language.

 

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Book Blitz: Vengeance is Mine – John Macrae

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The Vengeance Man is back from the dead. For one last mission.

Former intelligence operative Mike Farrah thought he was done with spies, assassins and secret wars.
Then his old handler comes calling.
A ruthless enemy cell is operating on British soil.
The government needs bait.

Mike must become The Vengeance Man. A black-ops legend. A vanished assassin. A ghost everyone believes is buried.

Then Mike learns the truth about Dawn. The woman he loved didn’t die by
accident. She was murdered.
And the people who killed her are the same people now hunting him.

This isn’t just a mission. It’s revenge.

Because Mike Farrah has one chance to expose the killers.

One chance to avenge Dawn.

And one chance to survive being the most wanted ghost in Britain.

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John MacRae is the cover name of a former senior Intelligence Officer with a Special Forces background. He has written extensively on intelligence and military history, and has worked for BBC television and other TV companies as an advisor on military and intelligence subjects. He saw active service in the Falkland Islands, Cyprus, Arabia, and Northern Ireland.

My thoughts: Told he just has to be the mysterious Fritz, the Vengeance Man, a voice on the end of the phone for the various government spooks involved in what becomes Operation Ajax, Mike Farrah agrees, although he still isn’t happy with the last job he did for the intelligence services, ending as it did with two dead women, and a plate in his head.

But of course, it doesn’t go to plan, and he’s up to his neck in rogue Israeli agents, dodgy documents, gun fights, questions about his finances, several guns that he has supposedly been officially given, suspected of killing a mugger, his flat being ransacked and other nonsense.

But he is sort of enjoying it, helped by his developing relationship with Anna, a woman who also knew Dawn, and wouldn’t mind getting some revenge on her killers too. Anna has her own money, her own flat and is far too savvy to fob off with his cover story, so she’s soon drawn into the plot.

There’s a lot of meetings both in Whitehall and various London pubs, dinners out and a dodgy but on paper stunningly clean Irish gangster/businessman who might have some work for Mike down the line. Seems like the Vengeance Man can retire but keep his hand in with the intelligence crowd, just in case.

At moments funny, then action packed, I really liked Mike and Anna, and was pleased nothing horrible happened to either of them. The whole case hinges on passing off some fake documents as the real thing and following the money to see who is so keen to get their hands on what they think is solid gold blackmail material.

It’s a clever premise and I think that Mike will continue to prove to be an asset as the series goes on, and possibly Anna as well, as she’s clever and well connected.

*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: The Hiding Season – Ava Glass

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After a painful divorce, Maya Landry is in desperate need of a fresh start, which she finds deep in the Rocky Mountains of Montana. Maya’s relieved when she’s hired as a summer keeper of billionaire-owned ski lodges left empty after snow season ends, and her new life of peace and isolation is going exactly as hoped . . . until she stumbles across a dead body on the living room floor of one of the lodges. There’s no cell service on the resort, and by the time she’s able to find a signal and call the police, the body is gone. In fact, there’s no evidence a body was ever there at all.

The police think Maya is unstable, and she’s not convinced they are wrong. But later that night, a stranger walks up to her and tells her that someone knows she was up on the mountain that day, someone willing to kill to keep their secrets. She’s not sure whether to believe him . . . until the killers come for her in the dead of night. Maya narrowly escapes, only to find that same mysterious man waiting to rush her away. But can she trust him? Can she trust anyone?

Only one thing is certain: The people who committed the murder are coming for her. Maya is the only person alive who might reveal what happened up on the mountain. And they want her gone.

Dubbed ‘The new queen of spy fiction’ by The Guardian, ‘The real thing’ by the Washington Post and ‘A worthy heir to the James Bond mantle’ by James Patterson and shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger, Ava Glass is the UK’s leading female spy fiction writer and has sold over 2 million copies worldwide.

 The Hiding Season follows Ava Glass’ successful Emma Makepeace series, which included The Chase, The Trap, and her critically acclaimed 2023 thriller The Traitor, which wasa Grazia Book of the Month, a Washington Post Book of the Year, a Cosmopolitan Book of the Year and a Richard and Judy Book Club pick. Film rights to The Chase and The Traitor serieshave been acquired.

 Ava Glass’ spy novels are based on first-hand experience working with spies for the British government alongside several years working as an investigative journalist and crime reporter in America. One of vanishingly few female authors writing spy fiction, Ava Glass is breaking down the door to the most male-dominated genre in fiction.

 Ava Glass is an experienced broadcaster and a go-to talking head when something’s going on in the world of spies, and frequently appears on Sky News, BBC News and BBC Radio 4. She has also co-presented a true crime documentary TV series for Channel 4 and is a regular guest expert on current affairs podcasts.

My thoughts: This was a bit different from the other Ava Glass books which are about professional spies, instead the protagonist here is Maya Landry, whose job cleaning the holiday homes of very wealthy people in a private ski resort brings her into the orbit of a terrifying criminal mastermind who even the FBI can’t seem to bring down.

Maya sees something she very much shouldn’t have, and it means she has to run. FBI agent Riley appears at the local bar and tells her she needs to run, and he’ll help her.

A year later, having successfully laid low in Texas, some dangerous people turn up and she calls Riley for help. Now they’re on the run with both the FBI and the crime boss on their trail. Can things get any worse? Can Maya really trust Riley?

Gripping and full of moments of surprise, there are still questions Maya needs answers to, but first of all, she needs to stay alive and one step ahead of law enforcement and criminals.

I really liked Maya, she was genuinely in the wrong place at the wrong time – she doesn’t know who the victim was, or the killer. But that’s not enough it seems, and she has to go on the run, despite her innocence and ignorance. It’s only a mistake that puts her back into the sights of the people who want her dead. She has no choice but to trust Riley, and by extension his friend Amber, to help her, and they have their own agendas.

I enjoy Ava’s books, they’re fast paced and intelligent with interesting characters and compelling plots, and while this was very different from her Emma Makepeace books, it was very readable and I couldn’t put it down.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review but all opinions remain my own.