Tag: thrillers

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Blog Tour: The Exiled – Sarah Daniels

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Trust no one.

It is six months since the Arcadia set sail for the first time in forty years. But this wasn’t the freedom the inhabitants were hoping for. Esther Crossland did what she had to do, but it has left a trail of destruction in her wake. Now the wrecked ship is abandoned. Its inhabitants are in exile, trapped in sprawling make-shift shelters made up of warehouse, tents, shipping containers.

Esther and Nik, architects of the rebellion, are on the run. Esther is in hiding, desperate to do something to help her people, and Nik seems to have abandoned all hope, on a journey taking him further and further from home. And neither of them want to face up to their true feelings about one another . . .

Not only that, there is a new villain in town. With the fall of Commander Hadley, it’s left to the ruthless Admiral Janek to deal with the traitors, and her own past is beginning to catch-up with her.

Then the shaky ceasefire negotiated by General Lall, Nik’s mum, falls apart. Nik and Esther find themselves in a world of betrayals and double crossings – a game of power, with no one to trust but themselves.

It’s time for the final showdown.

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Sarah Daniels is an ex-archaeologist who escaped academia and now writes stories from her home in rural Lincolnshire. Her work has been published in various online magazines and has been nominated for best British and Irish Flash Fiction and Best Small Fictions. 

If you want to contact her, you can do so at the following locations: Website Instagram TikTok Twitter

My thoughts: it’s been 6 months since Esther crashed the Arcadia into the Federated States and the ship’s residents are now housed in a hastily built fenced in refugee camp, complete with poor sanitation, disease and grim rations. Maine, not part of the Fed, has offered them refuge, but first they have to get there.

Nik’s escaped and is hiding out in Florida under an assumed name, except that someone knows where he is and is trying to kill him.

Esther and Corp are trying their best to help people with medical treatment, while staying off the radar as the Fed has branded them terrorists and wants to execute them, which doesn’t help the refugees’ plight at all. General Lall, Nik’s mum, is supposedly negotiating with the Fed’s government but Esther smells a rat. Could she really be planning to sell everyone into a form of slavery?

As events start to unravel, Esther and Nik are brought back together and after discovering what’s been negotiated, must work together to stop it and rescue the ship folk for good. If they can stop bickering for five minutes.

Another fast paced and skillful teen thriller, no teenagers should have this much responsibility dumped on them, but no one else seems to be trying.

*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: Code Red – Ian Loome

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Bob has sworn he’ll never kill again. But some promises are hard to keep.

Bob Singleton used to be a top CIA assassin. Now, scarred by his terrible past, he lives in a refrigerator box behind a dumpster in downtown Chicago.

He just wants to be left alone. But his past is coming back to haunt him, in the shape of a nurse and a teenage boy who desperately need his help.

They are being pursued by trained killers because they stumbled on a long-buried conspiracy, a secret that is tied to a failed mission in Bob’s military past.

 Now they need Bob to protect them. The old Bob, the one who fearlessly put his enemies in the ground.

Bob sees a chance to discover the truth about what happened all those years ago. Can he redeem himself, and honor the sacrifice of the men who died?

To do so, he must use the same deadly skills that made him a legend in his day. Skills he had sworn he would never use again….

Code Red — the first in a stunning new action thriller series. Perfect for fans of Jason Kasper, Jack Carr, and Lee Child.

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Ian Loome writes thrillers and mysteries. His books have been downloaded more than a half-million times on Amazon.com and have regularly featured on the Kindle best-seller lists for more than a decade. For 24 years, Ian was a multi-award-winning newspaper reporter, editor and columnist in Canada. When he’s not figuring out innovative ways to snuff his characters, he plays blues guitar and occasionally fronts bands. He lives in Sherwood Park, Alberta, with his partner Lori, a pugnacious bulldog named Ferdinand, a confused mostly Great Dane puppy named Ollie, and some cats for good measure.

This is his first action thriller with Inkubator Books.

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My thoughts: although I found it hard at first to take a hero called Bob seriously (I don’t really know why) this was a cracking thriller. A reluctant hero, Bob is dragged back into action after members of his old team are killed and a teenage boy comes looking for him. When a nurse is also put in the firing line, Bob drags all his old skills and knowledge to the surface. Life on the streets hasn’t let him get soft and he won’t allow any more innocents to die on his watch.

A blend of various action heroes, and a good dose of his own unique character, Bob is the only one who can fix this mess and put a stop to the deaths. He needs to identify the mole in the team, get some info from an old boss and sort out a few old vendettas, all while keeping teenager Nathan and nurse Dawn safe.

*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 Stranded – Sarah Daniels

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Welcome to the Arcadia.

Once a luxurious cruise ship, it became a refugee camp after being driven from Europe by an apocalyptic war. Now it floats near the coastline of the Federated States – a leftover piece of a fractured USA.

For forty years, residents of the Arcadia have been prohibited from making landfall. It is a world of extreme haves and have nots, gangs and make-shift shelters.

Esther is a loyal citizen, working flat-out to have the rare chance to live a normal life as a medic on dry land. Nik is a rebel, planning something big to liberate the Arcadia once and for all.

When events throw them both together, their lives, and the lives of everyone on the ship, will change forever . . .

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Sarah Daniels is an ex-archaeologist who escaped academia and now writes stories from her home in rural Lincolnshire. Her work has been published in various online magazines and has been nominated for best British and Irish Flash Fiction and Best Small Fictions. 

If you want to contact her, you can do so at the following locations:

Website Instagram TikTok Twitter

My thoughts: I’ve never really fancied a cruise, and now I really don’t. Cruise liner turned essentially a prison, Arcadia, holds far more people than it was designed for. Descendants of its original passengers and crew, these are desperate, angry and resourceful. Generations after the mysterious Virus that saw them marooned off the coast of the Federated States, the refugees are tired of rations and regulations. And a rebellion has begun.

With the cruel and dictatorial Hadley making life even tougher for the inhabitants, the rebels are bringing their plan closer to fruition. When Esther, a trainee medic, gets swept up in it, thanks to her sister May, she forgets all the brainwashing and signs up. There has to be something better out there, even if it is dangerous. Teaming up with rebel Nik, she prepares to take on the Fed, Hadley and their other enemies, she has to, there’s nothing else left.

A gripping action adventure set aboard a ship, where there’s only so many places to hide, a reminder of the cruise ships at the start of the pandemic, who weren’t allowed to dock anywhere, but were eventually rescued, this is a brutal and desperate world, one I’d rather not see become any kind of reality. Definitely no cruise holidays for me.

*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 Perfect Girlfriend – Hayley Smith

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He loves me. He trusts me. He shouldn’t.

Jay and I have only known each other a short while, but whenever I gaze into his deep green eyes I tell him he’s the one. His little house by the deep forest’s edge is perfect for the two of us – there’s no internet, no phone signal, and no neighbours. I’m about as far from my past as I could be. No one knows where we are, and I need to keep it that way.

He wants me to stay here where he can keep me safe from the outside world. I don’t question him, I won’t challenge him. I have him exactly where I want him. He has to think I’m the perfect girlfriend, far better than the one before. Because I know what he did.

All I have to do now is play my part and bide my time. So I tell myself Jay doesn’t have a clue who I really am. I’ve been so careful. Haven’t I?

A completely addictive psychological thriller packed with incredible twists you won’t see coming. Perfect for fans of The Housemaid, The Split, and The Serial Killer’s Wife.

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Hayley Smith is married with three children and lives in a north Derbyshire village. She has worked as a graphic designer, youth worker and musician, and has been involved for many years in organising music festivals and gigs. She studied English Language and Creative Writing with the Open University and is an avid reader of psychological fiction. Having a penchant for all things alternative, she often dips into the counter-culture scene for writing inspiration, producing quirky rough-edged characters and dark, unpredictable twists, turns and moral dilemmas.

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My thoughts: this was very clever, it took me a while to work out what was going on and which characters to be wary of. Lauren is an unreliable narrator, there are lost moments and she doesn’t explain everything, even to herself (and by extension, the reader) so it took me a little chunk of the book to trust her. And odd things would throw me, her relationship with her sister, her mentions of Martin, her parents. What had gone on there? Slowly it’s all revealed, why she happily moved in with Jay after only knowing him a few weeks, the strange interludes, the reason she’s so cautious around his friends.

This is a story with lots of layers, carefully peeled away as it goes on, as Lauren decorates the cottage and as she follows Jay around town, digging into his secrets.

It’s very well done, clever and compelling. There’s an air of menace, especially when Lauren provokes Jay and tries to get to the truth a bit too hard. The rustic cottage in the woods might not be a haven if she’s not careful.

*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: Arrietty – Abby Davies

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Our loved ones protect us. 

So what if you woke up one day to find yours gone? 

Your mum, your friends, your freedom – all gone. 

And the one person you trust may be hiding a terrible secret.  

Welcome to Arrietty’s life.

Abby Davies was born in Macclesfield in 1984. She grew up in Bedfordshire in a seventeenth century cottage near Flitton Moor and started writing ‘thrillers’ when she was seven years old.

After reading English Literature at Sheffield University and training to be an English teacher, she wrote novels in her free time.

She was shortlisted for the Mslexia Novel Competition in 2018 and longlisted for the Blue Pencil Agency First Novel Award in 2019. Her debut Mother Loves Me was published by HarperCollins in 2020. The Cult came out in 2021. Arrietty is her third novel. 

She lives in Wiltshire with her husband, daughter and two crazy cocker spaniels.

My thoughts: it takes a while to get into Arrietty’s world, things aren’t quite right. Her dad seems very angry, her mum’s missing and she doesn’t know why, she can’t remember things and her little brother is getting very upset.

As the story unfolds you won’t know who to trust, even Arrietty is questioning herself, can she be trusted when she can’t remember anything? What has happened to her family and why is her therapist Rose so friendly to her dad?

A strange and at times upsetting, disturbing story of mental health, reality, memory loss, grief and sadness. It becomes very hard to understand at times, like Arrietty we don’t know who to trust or what’s going on, I found myself as lost as she is, but it starts to come together before another shocking twist. Interesting and illustrated with Arrietty’s sketches.

*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: One – Eve Smith

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A catastrophic climate emergency has spawned a one-child policy in the UK, ruthlessly enforced by a totalitarian regime. Compulsory abortion of ‘excess’ pregnancies and mandatory contraceptive implants are now the norm, and families must adhere to strict consumption quotas as the world descends into chaos. Kai is a 25-year-old ‘baby reaper’, working for the Ministry of Population and Family Planning. If any of her assigned families attempts to exceed their child quota, she ensures they pay the price. Until, one morning, she discovers that an illegal sibling on her Ministry hitlist is hers. And to protect her parents from severe penalties, she must secretly investigate before anyone else finds out. Kai’s hunt for her forbidden sister unearths much more than a dark family secret. As she stumbles across a series of heinous crimes perpetrated by the people she trusted most, she makes a devastating discovery that could bring down the government … and tear her family apart.

Eve Smith writes speculative thrillers, mainly about the things that scare her. Longlisted for the Not the Booker Prize and described by Waterstones as ‘an exciting new voice in crime fiction’, Eve’s debut novel, The Waiting Rooms, set in the aftermath of an antibiotic resistance crisis, was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize First Novel Award and was a Book of the Month in the Guardian, who compared her writing to Michael Crichton’s. It was followed by Off-Target, about a world where genetic engineering of children is routine. Eve’s previous job at an environmental charity took her to research projects across Asia, Africa and the Americas, and she has an ongoing passion for wild creatures, wild science and far-flung places. She lives in Oxfordshire with her family.

My thoughts: oh this one is a doozy. Blending fact and fiction into a chilling potential future where women’s bodies are even more policed than they ever have been, where government agents will literally drag you off to an abortion if you’re exceeding the draconian one child policy. Your every move is monitored, every resource you consume – food, power, travel, is documented.

Kai believes in the system, she’s part of it. But when she discovers a family secret that could destroy everything she knows, and is then pulled into a huge conspiracy with far reaching consequences, will she do the right thing and help stop the government she works for or will she shut her eyes to the sinister truth?

Absolutely gripping and totally shocking, this is another powerhouse of speculative fiction that may just give you nightmares. Would the real UK government go this far in the face of the climate crisis? I don’t know, and I really hope Eve can’t predict the future.

*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: Squeeze Plays – Jeffrey Marshall

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Welcome to the tour for Squeeze Plays by Jeffrey Marshall. Read on for more details!

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Squeeze Plays

Genre: Financial Thriller

Publication Date: June 2022

A modern tableau about money and power set in New York and London.

Two powerful men, a bank chief executive and a New York tabloid publisher, are at odds over a loan that would keep the publisher afloat. Enter a ruthless Russian oligarch with an offer of a financial life raft to the publisher – a gambit uncovered by a dogged financial reporter who senses a big story.

In Squeeze Plays, Jeffrey Marshall whisks us into the paneled boardrooms and lavish penthouses of the New York elite and shows us their lifestyle, their desires and their foibles. Using his background as a financial journalist, he carefully details the reporter’s story, which ties the central characters together in what becomes a stunning front-page expose. Along the way, the reader visits New York, London, Nantucket and the English countryside and sees not just financial skullduggery but sexual blackmail, strong and principled female characters, and a brisk and often satirical take on the corrupting influences of wealth and power.

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About the Author

Jeffrey Marshall is a writer, novelist and poet from Scottsdale, AZ. He’s the author of five books, including the novels Squeeze Plays, Little Miss Sure Shot and Undetected; Undetected and Squeeze Plays were named ShelfUnbound Notable 100 Indie books in 2020 and 2022, respectively, and Squeeze Plays also was named a Book Excellence Award winner in 2023. A retired journalist and the former editor of two national business magazines, Marshall has freelanced to more than 30 publications as varied as The New York Times, High Country News and Tail Fly-Fishing Magazine, and his short fiction has appeared in online magazines like Bright Flash Literary Review, Ariel Chart and Vocal.com, among others. A short story he wrote took first place in the 2022 Arizona Authors competition.

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Blog Tour: The Genius Killer – Mark Robson

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“The Genius Killer” is, at its core, a confrontation of powerful characters. A psychological battle between DCI Theodore “Tex” Deacon and the purest psychopath he has encountered, Karl Jackson. Local journalist Debbie Pilkington rides shotgun with the Lake District DCI. Their lives intertwine as the hunt begins. The novel is set in the mountains of Cumbria/Lancashire.

Tex Deacon is a legendary hunter of serial killers, but, following the death of his wife, he’s hit a kind of “detective’s block”. Deacon is close to a breakdown. The Chief Constable, Barbara Bracewell, dilutes his duties. She wants Deacon to host a new venture, “The Sir Robert Peel Lecture”, and then to follow that up by helping with the cadet training programme. Deacon’s subject at the lecture is murder, and it’s titled, “How to Catch a Killer”. Deacon’s a humble local hero, and the lecture hall is packed.

At the lecture, Deacon encounters local chemistry teacher, and serial killer, Karl Jackson. The incognito Jackson asks a question from the floor, and the relationship begins. Deacon needs help though. He’s been instructed to step back from hard core police duties, and, of course, he has his “detective’s block”. A young journalist, Deborah Pilkington, wants to do Deacon’s life story for the local paper, as part of a series on “Great Lancastrians”. Deacon persuades Debbie to help him. Deacon can now work covertly. He draws on Debbie’s strong journalistic capabilities, and couples them with his own natural, but currently hampered talents.

Mark has been a journalist and broadcaster for over 30 years. Working almost exclusively in sport. Mark was employed for 15 years by SKY Sports, and 11 years by the BBC. Elsewhere he worked, on significant national contracts, for ITV, Eurosport and Premier Sport.Mark has been been involved in BAFTA and Sony award winning, and nominated, documentaries and programmes. Mark worked on these productions as a writer/reporter.  For the last 10 years Mark has focused on rugby commentary with SKY, as well as Premier Sport and Eirsport. Mark was working on the Six Nations Rugby when all sport stopped due to the pandemic, so he decided to write his first novel.

My thoughts: Karl Jackson thinks he’s a genius, he’s pretty sure he’ll never get caught, even when several of his victims are members of his own family. He doesn’t watch enough crime shows, only interested in the killers, you should pay more attention to how they get caught.

DCI “Tex” Deacon and journalist Debbie Pilkington put the pieces together, and with a little help from a surprising source, finally gather enough evidence to go to Deacon’s boss and get a warrant for the so-called genius’ arrest.

Written with a dark sense of humour and by a writer who clearly has studied the TV and literary classics (I spotted some lovely little references, including a “Mother of God” for all the Line of Duty fans out there), the characters are all intelligent but only one of them is using his brains for murder. And that last twist, ooh, nice. Highly enjoyable and clever writing. I hope there’s more in a similar vein 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.

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Blog Tour: The Piper’s Children – Iain Henn

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A baffling mystery sets an FBI agent on a dangerous path… Park rangers are puzzled when a child is found wandering alone in the a forest near Seattle. middle of Stranger still, he speaks a peculiar language that sounds a little like German, and is dressed in clothes people wore in the Middle Ages.

With no one having reported him missing, FBI Special Agent Will McCord assembles a dedicated unit to investigate the case, placing Detective Ilona Farris at its head. Their relationship is edgy. They used to be an item. But McCord knows Farris is the best person for the job. Especially when more children turn up in similar circumstances. Farris isn’t convinced that she is in fact the right person. Memories of a traumatic incident in her own childhood begin to emerge, and threaten to cloud her judgement. Can she bury her demons and solve the mystery of these children, seemingly lost in time?

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Born in Sydney, Australia, Iain worked for many years in print media production for newspapers, magazines, and direct marketing agencies, and as a writer for small business websites. He has written fiction from a young age. Somewhere in his framed copy of his first published story, a ‘5house, there is still a minute fiction’ tale in Woman’s Day. Since then, he has never looked back, having short stories published in various magazines worldwide, and now his suspenseful thrillers and mysteries . Commenting on what influenced his writing journey, he describes a moment that has stayed with him.

On his first day in his first job, as a teenage messenger boy, he left the office via a back exit into a narrow alleyway where he saw the body of a man crumpled on the ground. He had just jumped out of a window from the neighbouring building. The paramedics were already approaching. When Iain returned an hour or so later, the body and the surrounding activity were gone, there was just a chalk outline on the ground where the body had been. Ever since he has wondered who that man was, what led him to suicide, and what his future might have been had he lived. Decades later, that chalk outline is often on the writer’s mind when telling the stories of his characters’ lives. Authors who have inspired Iain include Daphne Du Maurier, Ken Follett, Michael Crichton, Tess Gerritsen, Michael Robotham, and Harlen Coben. He lives on the New South Wales coast with his wife.

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My thoughts: I really enjoyed this creepy and clever thriller. A lost child who appears dressed and speaking like he’s from medieval Germany in the middle of an American forest sparks the FBI’s interest. He’s clearly traumatised but they can’t work out what’s going on. He says he’s from Hamelin and followed a piper. The Pied Piper, but that was several hundred years ago, and is considered fiction. So where did he come from?

When more children appear with the same story, the investigators are intrigued and worried. Ilona also has her own private investigation, but could they be connected?

The mysterious figure of the Piper is spotted and the children disappear again. The tension builds and the team suspect each other. Will and Ilona’s past relationship adds to the tension and as she is put into danger by her personal case, could all be lost or will this all turn out to be more complicated and twenty-first century in origin than they thought?

Very clever, full of twists and turns, with characters that charm (I loved Zach and Zoe) and the folktale links were right up my alley thematically. I hope this becomes a series, each case more ingenious and fiendish than the last. There’s a lot of potential here.

*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: Our American Friend – Anna Pitoniak

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A mysterious First Lady. The intrepid journalist writing her biography. And the secret that could destroy them both. Tired of covering the grating dysfunction of Washington and the increasingly outrageous antics of President Henry Caine, White House correspondent Sofie Morse quits her job and plans to leave politics behind. But when she gets a call from the office of First Lady Lara Caine, inviting her to come in for a private meeting with Lara, Sofie’s curiosity is piqued.

Sofie, like the rest of the world, knows little about Lara – only that she was born in Soviet Russia, raised in Paris, and worked as a model before moving to America and marrying the notoriously brash future president. When Lara asks Sofie to write her official biography, and to finally fill in the gaps of her history, Sofie’s curiosity gets the better of her. She begins to spend more and more time in the White House, slowly developing a bond with Lara. As Lara’s story unfolds, Sofie can’t help but wonder why Lara is rehashing such sensitive information.Why tell Sofie? And why now? Suddenly Sofie is in the middle of a game of cat and mouse that could have explosive ramifications.

Anna Pitoniak is the author of The Futures, Necessary People, and Our American Friend. She graduated from Yale, where she majored in English and was an editor at the Yale Daily News. She worked for many years in book publishing, most recently as a Senior Editor at Random House. Anna grew up in Whistler, British Columbia, and now lives in New York City

My thoughts: this was so good, a mystery, a thriller, political and personal, all blended together. Why is Sofie hiding out in Croatia? What did she do that meant she and her husband had to flee America?

Slowly the story is revealed. And it isn’t Sofie’s alone, it’s also Lara’s. And a few other people’s too. Her mother, Irina, her lost love Alex, her sister, her father and Russia’s as well. What seems like an amazing opportunity, to get up close and personal with the First Lady, ends up being so much more and Sofie realises she’s a pawn in a much larger game.

Beautifully written, totally gripping and so clever it shocks you, this is a fantastic 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.