Review: You Are Here

You Are Here by David Nicholls
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Michael is a geography teacher. Eighteen months ago his wife Natasha left him and moved back in with her parents. Since then he has become a bit of a hermit, only happy in his own company, and he spends evenings and weekends walking alone. One of his oldest friends, and now boss, is Cleo who constantly nags him to go out, to meet people, to try dating, but despite being lonely, Michael still isn't over his marriage. When Michael tells Cleo he intends to do the 190 mile coast-to-coast walk devised by Alfred Wainwright she persuades him that it would be fun to have some company, at least for the first couple of days, Cleo and her husband and teenage son, a couple of other people etc.

Marnie is a divorced copy-editor. Self-employed, since her divorce she has noticed that friends have drifted away as they start families so that now she rarely sees anyone or goes anywhere. After a depressing collage of her photos for the year reveals no social activity whatsoever, Marnie admits to herself that she is lonely and resolves to agree to any opportunity to socialise when it next occurs. So when Cleo invites her to join her, her husband, and Marnie's godson on a three day walk she agrees.

Things go wrong right from the start. Cleo's husband and one of the other guests can't make it. The weather is foul, and Cleo's godson decides he would rather stay in his hotel room and play video games. One of the other guests decides he'll just take a taxi to the next hotel on their walk and take advantage of the bar. Eventually, all the other guests make their excuses and leave early, but Marnie, perhaps because she can't afford to change her ticket, decides she'll continue for the rest of the three days.

Despite having very little in common, Michael and Marnie do share a wry sense of humour, and as they walk they find it easy to confide in each other big feelings about love, having children, death, etc.

I was going to say I've never read a David Nicholls book (although I've seen a few films of his books) but GR reliably tells me I've read One Day and I'm pretty sure I've also read Starter for Ten, but this book is very different to both of them. For a start it features a couple firnly in middle age (thirty-eight and forty-two I believe). It also goes into a great deal of detail about the coast-to-coast walk which made me (a dedicated couch potato) dream of making the journey, even the bits where it rained like Armageddon and Marnie couldn't stop swearing at Michael as she crawled up hills.

My lasting impression is that this book has something of the Alan Bennett about it - couldn't say why, but I do.

Gentle, sad, witty, funny, grim, touching it's got everything. Loved it.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review,

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Review: The Library of Borrowed Hearts

The Library of Borrowed Hearts by Lucy Gilmore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Chloe Sampson works at the local library in her small town in northern Washington. After her mother left Chloe's three younger siblings alone and never returned and a neighbour called social services Chloe had to leave college to look after them. They are living hand-to-mouth on her pitiful salary and she tries to make a little extra by selling unwanted library books.

One day while clearing out a basement storage unit she finds what she thinks could be a very valuable copy of Tropic of Cancer only to discover that the copy has been defaced by readers writing in the margins, but not just comments on the writing, two people appear to have been conducting a romance. More intriguing, when her cranky elderly neighbour Jasper Holmes catches a glimpse of the book in her possession he offers her a blank cheque for the book, it seems he may have been one of the people writing in the book. Assisted by her BFF and a young man called Zach who runs wilderness/survival courses, Chloe starts a literary scavenger hunt for other library books which have been similarly defaced. The head librarian (whose wife is a believer of tall tales) tells Chloe that rumour has it Jasper killed a young woman (or maybe several) and buried them in his garden, which is why his flowers are so beautiful.

Intertwined with this modern story is the romance between a nineteen year old Jasper and Catherine Martin, the daughter of the Major who runs the 760th Radar Base in Colville. Like all good romances, Jasper is dirt poor, sending half his wages home to his mother and younger siblings, while Catherine lives in a big house and is expected to marry an officer (and a gentleman). Despite her father's authoritarian attitude and her mother's acquiescence, Catherine is a free spirit and a rebel. She alone seems to be able to goad the normally taciturn Jacob into expressing his feelings.

This story is broken into five sections. At the end of each section is some kind of revelation, some of which were more of a shock than others. Its a romance, but maybe also women's fiction, and a mystery.

(view spoiler)[This didn't go the way I wanted it to, but what it did do was make me finally understand that film The Way We Were and why it has to end that way.(view spoiler)[

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review. (hide spoiler)] (hide spoiler)]

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Review: Dr. Off Limits

Dr. Off Limits by Louise Bay
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Does what it says on the tin.

Sutton is a hairdresser who studied at night and has one a trainee doctor place at the Royal Free. To take her mind off her new job, her BFF sets her up on a blind date with Beau Cove, he's perfect because he's just about to leave the UK to work in Africa for Doctors without Borders or something similar. What Sutton doesn't know is that Beau had an accident and bashed his face up so he gets his older brother Jacob to substitute so as not to let her down. Jacob is also a doctor, at the Royal Free and duh, duh, duh happens to be one of the consultants on her training scheme.

After a wonderful night of unbridled passion Sutton ignores Beau/Jacob's requests for another date, but is totally blindsided when she sees him on the first day of her training. Even worse, she is assigned to his rotation first. Sutton has worked hard to overcome her less than stellar childhood and she can't bear that anyone will think she is trying to sleep her way to the top. For his part, Jacob wants to run the training scheme and having an affair with one of his trainees would not look good. So they agree to pretend it never happened and keep their eyes on their respective prizes, which goes just about as well as you would imagine :)

I've got to admit Louise Bay is my guilty pleasure, nothing too taxing, straightforward plots, and this is no different. Very easy reading.

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Review: My Favourite Mistake

My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

This is a follow-up to Anybody Out There?, 18 years later. Anna Walsh was widowed at a very young age, but she managed to find a new life in New York as a beauty PR maven. Now, in her late 40s, post-lockdown her relationship with her boyfriend Angelo has amicably come to an end, she no longer cares about her job and *gasp* she's fallen out of love with New York.

So Anna returns home to Dublin where she realises it may not be as easy as she imagined to get a new job, until her mammy gets her to help out family who are in the process of building a spa retreat on the west coast of Ireland which has turned into a PR disaster, culminating in locals defacing some of the partly constructed cabins. The only snag, the money man behind the venture is Joey, a friend of her sister Rachel's partner, a man she has been avoiding for many, many years.

This is pure Marian Keyes, complete with quirky villagers, and flashbacks to when Anna first moved to New York.

I really enjoyed this, and then partway through it seemed to get a bit bogged down in rehashing Anna's relationship with her former best friend and with Joey, it felt sort of obvious to me what had happened but it felt a bit laboured and could just as easily have been explained up front.

Otherwise, this was sexy, funny, cute, everything I want from the Walsh girls.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.


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Review: Simply the Best

Simply the Best by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Rory Garrett is not having the best life. Her younger brother got all the love from her father and step-mother and turned out to be a famous footballer. She wants to be a chocolatier but the closest she's got is operating a candy truck with her friend, who has just vanished with the entire contents of the truck leaving her with a $2,000 fine from the city and no way to pay it. She also has a guilty secret about why Client's last girlfriend dumped him, which may or may not have something to do with some whopping lies she told about him. Attending her brother's birthday party under protest, she gets a bit drunk and has a one-night stand with some sharp suited guy only to be humiliated when she finds he's left $500 on the night stand thinking she's a professional!

Brett Rivers is committed to being the best sports agent he can, he's 100% dedicated to his clients and doing everything he can for them. After he foolishly warned his best client Clint (Rory's step-brother) that his girlfriend was a gold-digger the two of them have been on the outs, especially when she dumped him and is now dating a basketball player who earns far less. When he realises that he has slept with his client's sister and implied she's a hooker he knows he has to do some serious damage limitation.

When Brett and Rory arrive separately at Clint's mansion the next day to apologise/explain he's gone, but they do find the body of his ex-girlfriend lying murdered on the patio. Now Rory and Brett both need to find Clint, before the police arrest him for murder!

This is peak SEP, despite being a recent publication (2024) it could easily have been written 30 years ago (eek) when book one in this series was published, the characters as just as sassy, the guys are just as sleek and driven.

This is a funny, opposites attract romance.

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Review: Finding Hope in Starshine Cove

Finding Hope in Starshine Cove by Debbie Johnson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lucy Brown lives a very small life with her teenage daughter Rose. She has a run-down little cottage in Ireland, a job in a call centre, and a small circle of friends. By and large that's the way she likes it after escaping her abusive ex-husband Robert. Sitting in the airport bar one day, waiting for a delayed flight to London to collect Rose from a visit with her father and his new family before they go on to Dorset for a friend's wedding, Lucy is dreaming up stories about the other passengers when a gorgeous man asks if the seat next to her is taken. Maybe because she has just been wondering what the other passengers would dream up about her, Lucy fibs to this stranger, telling him her name is Amelia and making up a glamourous sounding career.

Lucy's friend Ella is marrying Jake, the man she met at Starshine Cove, a charming village which doesn't appear to exist on any maps and has a Brigadoon-like quality. Ella and Jake were the protagonists in the first book in this series Escape to Starshine Cove. They are having a great time until Jake's brother Josh turns up, who turns out to be none other than the handsome man Lucy met at the airport!

Many apologies later, Lucy and Josh have made peace and found that there is still a chemistry between them, they almost kiss at Ella's wedding ceilidh when Rose interrupts them, Robert's second wife has called asking for Lucy's help.

I enjoyed this, it was classical Debbie Johnson. Lucy needs to learn to trust herself and let go of her fears from the past before she can trust herself to love again. Josh is just the perfect man, kind, generous, caring, supportive. If I had any complaint it would be that maybe there wasn't enough tension, if a book containing an abusive ex-husband can be called 'safe' then this is it.

But generally a lovely heart-warming feel-good romance. Definitely Hallmark movie material.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.



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Review: Death in the Spires

Death in the Spires by K.J. Charles
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Its 1905 and Jeremy (Jem) Kite is a lowly clerk. However, ten years ago his future looked promising, he had won a maths scholarship to St Anselm's college at Oxford and rather than being ostracised and looked down for his humble Midlands upbringing and his club foot, he became part of an eclectic group of seven friends led by Toby Feynsham. Collectively the friends were known as the Seven Wonders. There was Toby, heir apparent to the Marquess of Grevesham, beautiful and charismatic, his twin sister Ella, a brilliant chemist in her own right, Nicky Rook, jaded beyond his years studying English, Hugo Morley-Adams son of a wealthy shipbuilder studying history, Aaron Oyede a black man studying medicine with a wickedly dry sense of humour, and Prudence Lenster, Ella's roommate also studying maths. Collectively they were extremely clever, dominated at several sports, took the leads in a Shakespeare play and were generally the best and brightest of their year.

Everything started to go wrong the term they put on a production of Cymbeline, there seemed to be tensions between different factions, love triangles, spite, and jealousy. Then one terrible night, after the seven of them argued viciously, Toby was murdered with his letter opener in a locked room. The murderer was never found but the finger of suspicion cast its shadow on all of the remaining six, friendships shattered. Jem had a nervous breakdown, failed his exams and left Oxford, his future in ruins.

When someone sends an anonymous letter to Jem's employer accusing him of Toby's murder, Jem realises that he will never be free of the suspicion until the murderer is uncovered. He knows that he and his friends didn't tell the police everything about that night, and he suspects at least one person lied to give another an alibi. What the police don't know is that the door to Toby's rooms had a trick lock that you could lock from the outside, only the seven of them knew that and therefore Jem concludes that one of the remaining six must have been the murderer.

With some flashbacks to 1895, we follow Jem as he meets with his old friends, all of them have secrets, and none of them want him to pursue the truth. But Jem feels he has led a half-life for the last decade, afraid of being identified as one of the seven, afraid of being accused yet again of murder, having to leave one job after another, never making friends and he is determined to uncover the truth.

I really enjoyed this, about halfway through I started to feel that any of them could have been the murderer and perversely that I didn't want any of them to have done it. Given that, I thought the uncovering of the murderer was done very well.

Overall, I am fairly new to KJ Charles but have loved absolutely everything I have read so far.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.

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Review: The Devil You Know

The Devil You Know by Neil Lancaster
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Six years ago Beata, a young Polish woman, was murdered after her married lover called in a favour from a crime boss he had in his pocket. Now the crime boss is dead, one of his sons is missing presumed dead and the other two are in prison. The youngest, Davie Hardie, offers to show the police where Beata's body was dumped and, in return for immunity, a move to a nicer prison, and cutting his sentence, he will also name a very important person who ordered the murder. His only condition, Max Craigie and his team have nothing to do with it.

When Max finds out about the deal from his hush-hush friend the team are of the view that once a Hardie always a Hardie and Davie would never help the police, they suspect its more likely to be an escape attempt. However, the new Deputy Chief Constable has a point to prove and she dislikes the team so they are ordered to back off and forced to take a week's leave.

Of course it all goes spectacularly wrong, Barney's (ex-MI5) van has been evicted from the car park by the DCC and 'coincidentally' he has chosen to park his van close to the lake in which Davie says Beata's body was dumped, luckily a friend has given him a new drone to test and so Barney captures everything in high definition film.

Separately, those men who actually murdered Beata are being quietly killed off. It seems that Beata's married lover, who is now someone of great importance, is getting rid of any links between him and Beata's disappearance.

Yet again, a great detective story. For me there were three main suspects and I was right on one of them. I'm really enjoying this series.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.

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Review: Expiration Dates

Expiration Dates by Rebecca Serle
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

DNF at 50%.

Daphne gets an anonymous note every time she starts dating a guy, letting her know how long the relationship will last: one day; four weeks; five months, and its always accurate, even if she has no initial interest in a guy. Until one day she gets a note with a name and no expiry date.

I loved the premise of this novel, unfortunately the story just didn't grab me. There seemed to be continuous descriptions of what she was wearing, what she ate, what her dates ate, what they were wearing. The story seemed disjointed flipping between dates and place randomly, one minute she's on a date, then she's working in Paris, then she's back in the US. Also, I quickly lost sight of which name had no expiry date and then I was floundering with all these dates trying to work out who he was.

I stopped reading at about 30%, then gave it another good try but at 50% in I don't really care about Daphne or who the mysterious date with no expiry date is, or what secret could torpedo their romance, sorry.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.

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Review: The Witching Hour

The Witching Hour by Catriona McPherson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So here we are, fifteen books and 16 years later from the first book featuring intrepid amateur sleuth Dandy Gilver and her platonic younger neighbour Alec Osbourne. When the first book started in the early 1920s at an Armistice Ball, England is now on the brink of WW2 in late Spring 1939 and Dandy is terrified for her sons who are both eager to enlist.

Dandy and her husband Hugh are hosting a dinner party for several of his friends and their wives, Dandy’s friend Daisy (who hosted the Armistice Ball in the first book with her husband Silas) is attending alone as the party clashes with her husband’s regimental dinner, or so she thinks until one of the other guests mentions the dinner was a few weeks ago. Silas is a notorious philanderer and daisy is suitably enraged and proceeds to get paralytic drunk.

Early the next morning, the household is awoken to the news that Silas has been found dead in the small Scottish village of Dirleton, and Dandy is informed that Daisy is missing from her bed and Dandy’s car is missing from the garage. Fearing the worst, Dandy and Alec set off to find Daisy, only to discover her unconscious in a ditch. The police are convinced Daisy must have killed Silas in a fit of rage, so Dandy and Alec must travel on to Dirleton to clear Daisy’s name.

Dirleton is a strange ancient Scottish village, on arrival many of the inhabitants they run into mistake them for a pair of researchers who have booked in at the local pub, taking advantage of the confusion Alec and Dandy try to decipher why Silas would have been in the village in the first place, did he have a lover, and if so who?

Things are odd right from the start, there's very much a 'I saw something nasty in the woodshed' vibe with people acting oddly and speaking in, well not riddles precisely but incomplete sentences. I also got a whiff of Village of the Damned. None of the clues make any sense. First a witness saw a woman kill Silas, then others say it was a tall man. Initially the death was said to be at midnight, 'the witching hour' but then the villagers tell Dandy that means three o'clock in the morning. What is the significance of the church ledgers? Silas' body was found on an ancient stone, which apparently had a dark history, was his death some kind of ritual?

I think I was well ahead of Dandy and Alec on some points, but I didn't identify the murderer. As always, the historical detail feels very authentic, although I am sorry that we couldn't stay in the 1920s for longer.

Another brilliant mystery, I love this duo so much, and darling Hugh with his stiff upper lip.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.


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Review: Jenny James Is Not a Disaster

Jenny James Is Not a Disaster by Debbie Johnson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jenny James and her son Charlie might not have a lot of money but they have each other, she has a respectable job as office manager for a carpet showroom in Norfolk and he is about to go off to university. Then Jenny is hit by one disaster after another: her job is in jeopardy; her ancient banger refuses to start; its been raining for weeks on end; and the cliff on which her rented cottage sits has been so weakened by the continuous rain and high winds that it collapses taking her cottage with it. Now, in the space of one day, she is homeless, probably jobless, and without transport with approximately £20 in her purse, oh and she's 67p overdrawn.

While trying to rescue precious photographs which are fluttering close to the cliff edge Jenny nearly goes over as well, until the unfriendly motorhome owner who set up in a neighbouring field rescues her. He, Luke, actually doesn't seem that bad, he offers the two of them towels, tea, and brandy while they wait for emergency services and the council representative.

Faced with the prospect of having to live in emergency accommodation (again), with no job to keep her tied to Norfolk, Jenny wonders whether she and Charlie should also buy an RV and live in it like Luke, so Luke suggest they spend a few weeks in his luxurious motorhome that can sleep six people with him, like a holiday, to see if they enjoy the lifestyle.

Now I'm a creature comforts kind of gal, give me a mini bar and a spa over the horrors of teeny weeny showers, chemical toilets (or hooking up sewage pipes), and fold down beds, but this sounded idyllic. Choosing destinations based on a whim, visiting ancient sites, swimming in rivers and lakes, pottering round villages and small towns sounds lovely, although in reality I suspect it would be difficult to find a berth in high summer without a lot of searching.

As companions on the road Jenny and Luke open up about their pasts, why Jenny is no longer in contact with her family, why Luke gave up a high paying career and large house to aimlessly tour the British countryside.

I have to say I loved this, although I would say I don't think the title really does the book justice, it sat on my TBR pile for over two months because the title didn't call to me, before I picked it up last night and then devoured it.

Anyway, gorgeous countryside, a handsome companion, a cute dachshund, a teenage boy, and British sunshine, what's not to love?

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.

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Review: For Real

For Real by Alexis Hall
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've never really enjoyed reading BDSM books, they always feel too much about a power trip for the Dom, but clearly I have just been reading the wrong books.

Laurie Dalziel is a 37 year old emergency hospital consultant, the sort they send to major incidents. He's feeling very lost, tired of the BDSM scene and heart-sick at seeing his ex with his new boyfriend at every turn. He's got a severe case of ennui, been there, done him, and everything feels fake. Then one night his long-suffering friends drag him to a club where he meets a young man, Toby Finch. Whilst Toby might be short, skinny and only 19 years old, he isn't a submissive, he wants to be a Dom, of course the sad thing is that everyone expects a Dom to be big and strong, possibly blindingly handsome, and a lot older.

At first Laurie is trying to help Toby, trying to stop him from being hurt in a club full of jaded middle-aged players, but soon he realises that Toby doesn't need saving.

This is a touching, heart-wrenching love story, about finding love in the strangest of places, about banishing pre-conceptions, about surrendering to love. It also taught me a lot about BDSM, I don't know how much is real, but it felt more truthful than all those m/f romances where the hero is 100% kink all the time, like there's never any spooning or snuggling or even plain old vanilla sex.

I just loved this, Alexi writes such different characters in each of his books, great to see a glimpse of Edwin, although I didn't recognise him at the time, and Marius was as much of an a-hole as I expected him to be.

On to the fourth book and I can't wait.

*edited for reread of ARC in 2024*

I echo all my previous thoughts about this book. The BDSM is very full-on, and yet is so much more real-life than FSoG and that ilk. There's laughter, and cuddling, and not being able to tie knots, and being taught how to use a flogger. There's tears, and an age-gap romance and best of all, no easy solutions.

BTW, Marius isn't as much of a a-hole as I recall, maybe because he has his own HEA now.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.



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Review: Sunset at Embthwaite Farm

Sunset at Embthwaite Farm by Kate Hewitt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The third book in what I now know will be a four book series.

Nearly twenty years ago Anne Mowbray walked out on her farmer husband and two teenage daughters, she's kept in touch with the oldest Rachel through desultory periodic lunches but her youngest daughter Harriet refused to speak to her. But when Rachel calls to let Anne know that her husband is dying she feels compel to return to Yorkshire to support her daughters, even if they don't seem to want her help.

The last thing Anne expects to find when she returns to Yorkshire to care for her dying husband is to find love, but as two fifty-somethings life is never straightforward, and is it even appropriate to be dating someone new while your estranged husband is slowly dying?

I liked this book the best of the three so far, perhaps because Anne is my age and beyond the childish histrionics of Rachel and Harriet, also the two male love interests Ben and Quinn from the previous books (who in my opinion are drawn with a very broad brush and therefore slightly two dimensional) are less evident.

I received an ARC from the publisher Tule for an honest review.

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Review: Just for the Summer

Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Justin and Emma seem to have a similar problem, each person they date goes on to find their one true love with the next person they date. When Justin's predicament is publicised on Reddit Emma contacts him to commiserate and they cook up a plan to fake date (at least four dates; text, call or snap every day; ne open mouthed kiss initiated by Justin) over the course of one month which will hopefully break their 'curses' and allow each of them to find their soulmates.

This sounded like a run-of-the-mill sweet romantic comedy, however both Justin and Emma come with a trunk load of angst. Justin's father is dead and his mother is about to be sent to prison for six years for embezzlement, leaving him to bring up his three younger siblings. Emma never knew her father and her mother Amber has some mental health issues which often manifested in her abandoning Emma when she was a child, consequently Emma has spent a lot of time in and out of foster homes. At her final foster home she met her BFF Maddy and the two of them have been living and working together ever since, they are traveling nurses, picking assignments based on location and were due to spend three months working in Hawaii until Emma persuades Maddy to spend six weeks in Minnesota instead.

Justin can't forgive his mother for the terrible thing she did which is going to have massive repercussions for all her children. But Emma is the opposite, she loves her mother and worries about her desperately when she hasn't heard from her for months at a time, she forgives her mother for leaving her alone so often as a child and all of the selfish thoughtless things she continues to do.

This book features some of the characters from Yours Truly, like that book this doesn't hesitate to tackle some difficult issues. However, while I felt Yours Truly went lightly over the angst this books just seems to drip it on every page and boy did it feel like every one of those 432 pages. I kept thinking we must be coming to a conclusion and discovering I was only 35%/ 42%/ 58% into the book.

Overall, this was okay but too long and angsty for my tastes. Also Justin was a bit of a cardboard cut-out figure, he was all-in almost right from the start and therefore all the focus was on Emma.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.

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Review: The Body in the Dales

The Body in the Dales by J.R. Ellis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

DS Andrew Carter has just moved to Harrogate, Yorkshire from London. His first case, with veteran DCI Jim Oldroyd is the murder of Dave Atkins. Mr Atkins body was found two and a half hours into a cave system, dressed in normal everyday clothes. Even more surprising, his body appears to have been in the caves for at least ten days, yet several of the cavers who found the body swear that it wasn't there three days ago when they made the same journey.

As they investigate it seems Mr Atkins was almost universally disliked, he was a womaniser who specialised in married women, he was involved in various financial scams, he refused to pay tradesmen for work performed, and was generally a shady individual. Soon there is a plethora of suspects.

The third member of the team is DS Steph Johnson.

Set against the backdrop of the Yorkshire Dales and with an in-depth discussion of caving this was an interesting start to a new (to me) detective series. The romance was a bit clunky, they seemed to go from having a sandwich at lunchtime to having serious feelings about each other but I can overlook that. I thought the 'mystery' of how Mr Atkins' body got so far into the cave system was quite obvious (maybe I'd read something similar before) but I didn't have a clue as to the murderer(s)' identity, although the 'evidence' was a bit of a deus ex machina moment for me.

Nevertheless, I am interested and have already downloaded the second book.

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Review: In Lieu of You: A British Time Travel Adventure

In Lieu of You: A British Time Travel Adventure by Keith A. Pearson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Gary Kirk has been married to Clare for over twenty-five years. Over time their marriage has evolved into two people living almost entirely separate lives, including separate bedrooms. Gary spends all his time and effort building his used car business and Clare spends all her time building her non-profit shamanistic wellness centre. Gary realises that they should probably separate and make it official but hasn't summoned the energy.

Then, on what should have been one of the happiest days of his life, Clare makes a big scene, causing him embarrassment. So when Clare asks him for some space, and then requests a divorce, Gary isn't surprised. However, when Clare demands half of everything, including half of the business he built from scratch Gary can't believe it. During their marriage he has paid for everything, bought their house outright, amassed decent savings, and subsidised Clare's shamanistic wellness centre, asking for half of the business strikes deeply at Gary's core. So when he is offered the chance to go back in time and prevent the two of them meeting, despite his scepticism, he jumps at the chance.

However, things don't go as he expected. When he returns to the present, having delayed Clare on her journey to the pub where they met, so that she and Gary never meet, Gary discovers his life has radically altered, and not for the better.

Gary is faced with a stark choice, try to build a life in the new present, or risk his life by travelling back in time again to correct his mistake.

This is the second book I have read by Keith Pearson and both of them have been cracking reads. Time travel, but not the usual way. A middle-aged man as the unlikely protagonist. A mundane British setting. Really unusual take and both of them have been very different. Definitely going to look for another book by this author.

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