Review: Murder at the Ponte Vecchio

Murder at the Ponte Vecchio by T.A. Williams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think this might be the best one yet.

Dan is riding high professionally, when he is called in to assist the Italian police talk to the family of an elderly jeweller found hanged from the Ponte Vecchio. His family are Dutch and speak fluent English but no Italian. Although initially thought to be suicide the post-mortem shows it was murder.

Meanwhile the Mayor, also a writer, has asked Dan to investigate his daughter's boyfriend. They've been dating for a while but, unlike her previous boyfriends, she hasn't introduced him to her parents or even divulged his name.

Finally, Dan old friend Virgilio is acting distracted, his wife Lina, Dan's assistant is concerned and asks Dan if he can winkle out what is troubling him.

I'd say there are lots of red herrings, but actually there is just speculation (as with any mystery) about various characters' possible motives which get discounted over time.

I loved it - my only gripe is that the food descriptions weren't quite as delectable as usual.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

View all my reviews

Review: Road-Tripped

Road-Tripped by Nicole Archer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Two and a half stars.

This (for me) was just a bit of too many tropes. Callie Murphy has moved to New York with just the clothes on her back after she caught her manipulative and mentally abusive ex-fiancé, who was also her boss, in bed with what she 'thought' was her best friend. Callie now works for her trust-fund friend writing advertising copy. Part of reinventing herself has involved a fierce hair cut, dying her blonde hair black and radiating attitude at full blast.

Walker Rhodes is an aspiring photographer, growing up in the South he was the small, goofy-looking kid with glasses and so his personality still remains that sweet, kind aspect even though he now looks like a Greek god and his Southern manners mean that he responds kindly when women fawn all over him.

Based entirely on adding two plus two and coming up with twenty-two, Callie decides that Walker has slept with every single woman at the agency and she is determined not to fall for his charms.

Then Callie's friend tells her the agency is on a knife's edge and he had arranged a great sponsorship deal with a RV manufacturer, a couple touring the US blogging and shooting adverts as they go, unfortunately the couple have had to pull out as the woman has terrible morning sickness and so he has asked Callie and Walker to take their places - if they don't the agency will fold!

So, we have enemies to love and road-trip. But Callie has a twin sister who is a drug addict, their parents cared nothing for them and were borderline abusive.

Throw in a dog, and a doting grandmother with cancer, and Walker's parents were also absentee, and a birthday, and a miscarriage, and a suspected pregnancy, and a nudist camping site, and a famous photographer and it all gets a bit much.

I could have lived with that, but Callie is the sort of FMC who holds strong to her beliefs no matter what evidence she receives to show her it is wrong - wonder where we've seen that recently? She assumes because Walker winks at a few women and sees a woman follow him into the men's bathroom that he is a womaniser. She spends months on the road with him 24/7 and still believes it. He explains her misunderstanding with another co-worker (yes I get there are a lot of coincidences) to her satisfaction and she still believes it. His grandmother says they are on love with each other and she still believes it. I just wanted to pick her up and shake her.

Similarly, Walker is all sweetness and light, he knows Callie's first instinct is always flight, but yet on more than one occasion he just storms off hence aggravating the situation.

Finally, the smexy scenes and dirty talk were more cringeworthy than hot.




View all my reviews

Review: The Burial Place

The Burial Place by Stig Abell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Jake is consulted by the local archaeological dig, they have been receiving flowery threats from someone who claims to be a local folk hero, quoting verses from the bible. The dig is being televised in a long-running series. Separately, close to the dig, four of the archaeologists were lucky enough to discover a treasure hoard worth millions whilst metal detecting, although their trove is subject to identifying the owner of the land (who would be entitled to half the proceeds). Coincidentally, Rose (the local weed dealer)'s sister is one of the students at the dig. No sooner does Jake get involved than one of the diggers dies after drinking poison from a water bottle. Now Jake must assist the local police in investigating the murder and uncovering the identity of their letter-writer.

This is the third book in the series about Jake Jackson, a former police detective, who inherits a remote house in the English countryside, full of mod-cons such as a purpose-built library with speakers in the ceiling but no indoor bathroom. Despite the tiny size of the village, which is (apparently) exclusively populated by knuckle-dragging yokels, a middle-aged shopkeeper who also runs an underground (literally) bar, and a beautiful single-mother vet, Livia, there seems to be a disproportionate amount of violent crime. I enjoyed the first book, despite the somewhat lurid descriptions of Livia's body and public hair. I missed the second book, but I am pleased to announce I saw no references to pubic hair in this book, although the first third had an unusually high number of references to peoples clothes FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON eg Jake weas wearing beige shorts and a white vest - then it goes on to something else - why? Again, luckily, this dissipated.

I enjoyed the mystery, although Jake's group of rag-tag super sleuths is beginning to look alarmingly like the cast of the excellent Slough House series - beware if Jake starts farting LOL. What let this down for me was that I suspected the murderer almost from the start, unfortunately I can't say why without spoilering it, so I was alert to the other clues and felt a bit like rolling my eyes as Jake and his team went round and round in circles.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

View all my reviews

Review: Edinburgh Murders

Edinburgh Murders by Catriona McPherson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Helen Crowther, a professional welfare officer for the newly formed National Health Service of Scotland, is at the public washhouse helping one of her patients to wash herself when there is a great commotion and it turns out that a corpse has been found in one of the men's changing rooms - he looks to have been boiled alive in his bath and left wearing a Tanner's apron!

What follows are a series of macabre murders. All the victims are well-fed men with no signs of hard work on their hands or bodies. Each is killed in a bizarre fashion and left dressed in some strange piece of clothing that seems to bear no relation to the place or manner of their deaths. One thing that unites the bodies is that they each have evidence that a pinkie ring has been removed from the body, and nobody has claimed them or reported them missing. By some strange chance, Helen is there when several of the bodies are found and she and her friend Billy who works at the morgue are trying to uncover both the identities of the victims and the murderer(s).

I really enjoyed this, my only gripe is that it ended very abruptly. Loving where this series is going, the glimpses into a forgotten world, the clash of the post-WW2 world meeting the pre-War beliefs. Honestly, I have pretty much loved everything Catriona McPherson has written.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

View all my reviews

Review: The Big Fix

The Big Fix by Holly James
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Penny Collins has devoted her life to getting tenure, no time for love, and it is just within her grasp if she makes one big push this summer. She has agreed to spend the summer with her big sister helping with the children while working on the final articles/chapters etc.

Her sister drags her to an estate sale at the house next door - its clearly a setup to get her to meet the new neighbour Anthony, who has inherited the house and all its contents from his recently deceased Uncle Lou. Unfortunately Anthony seems immune to Penny's charms, in fact openly hostile, which might be explained when Penny's nephew opens a closet door and a dead body falls out. Suddenly everyone seems to think Penny is Anthony's girlfriend and a mysterious man keeps turning up and making vaguely threatening comments.

The next thing she knows, Penny has been kidnapped by a ruthless billionaire's henchman as bait to trap Anthony.

The blurb says Katherine Center’s The Bodyguard meets The Fall Guy starring Ryan Gosling in a modern blend of screwball action and romantic attraction when a case of mistaken identity lands a college professor on the run with a mysterious—and dangerously hot—fixer . . ., but I would say its a bit more like the Goldie Hawn film Bird on a Wire, or the Jennifer Aniston film The Bounty Hunter, by which I mean a vaguely irritating FMC.

Also, I found it difficult to believe in either Penny or Anthony because they seemed to change personas. One minute Penny is a mild-mannered professor, the next she can hack city IT systems. Is Anthony a bad-a$$ fixer or an accountant - he looks like the former but everything he does he seems to run into like a headless chicken requiring Penny to save him more often that not!

Overall, it was an okay read but I didn't believe in the characters.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

View all my reviews

Review: Over the Sea to Skye

Over the Sea to Skye by Sue Moorcroft
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

And so we come to Valentina, oldest of the three adopted Wynter sisters. Her husband Gary has left her, gallingly for Valentina's twenty-five year old assistant Miranda! Not only that, Gary and Miranda have changed their mobile numbers and persist in withholding the number when Gary calls Valentina so she has no way of getting in touch with him about their seven year old son Barnaby. Unable to face the sympathy of her colleagues, Valentina has taken voluntary redundancy and decided to spend the Summer at her holiday cottage on Skye whilst renting out the former marital home in Inverness.

On the train north, Valentina and Barnaby are sat opposite an American man Xander and his seventeen year old nephew Macdonald, they get talking, and when Zander's hire car is not ready for them when they reach Skye, Valentina offers to drive them to their accommodation. Despite the ten year age difference Barnaby and Macdonald hit it off immediately, bonding over video games. After a prickly start, Xander and Valentina also hit it off, but can it be anything more than a Summer romance when Xander needs to return to his job in Pittsburg after his sabbatical?

This was pleasant enough, throw in unreasonable in-laws, a recalcitrant teen, an ex who's 'found her voice' and a tragic accident and you have all the ingredients for a cosy romance. I enjoyed it, but I felt it dragged a bit towards the end and then finished abruptly.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.



View all my reviews

Review: The Best Men

The Best Men by Sarina Bowen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Argh! Read it and forgot to review it!

Mark is a bisexual, recently divorced father of one. They got pregnant at college so Mark's experience with men is limited. Annoyingly I've recently read another book featuring a bisexual single father and now I'm not sure which is which. Still rather bitter about his divorce, when he discovers his little sister is pregnant and getting married to a (billionaire) guy she only met recently Mark over-indulges in a single malt and accidentally spills out all his concerns about the wedding, the groom and the 'super hot wingman' to the wedding group chat instead of his sister - awks! Mark loves a spreadsheet, organised could be his middle-name, so when his little sister suggest that his penance could be to use his mandatory annual leave to supervise all the minutiae of her wedding he's more than happy ... until he discovers that the super hot wingman is also involved.

Asher is a former French football player (soccer)/model turned photographer. When his best friend asks him to be his best man and make sure everything is perfect for the upcoming wedding in Florida Asher is all-in - the trouble is he has a reputation for missing appointments, forgetting the time and generally coasting - although being dumped by his last boyfriend for that sort of behaviour has been a bit of a wake-up call.

Imagine a m/m Lauren Layne in the sexy New Yorkers phase, witty banter, unbearably good looking people and this is it.

Loved it.

Read on My Kindle Unlimited subscription.

View all my reviews

Review: The Winds of Change

The Winds of Change by Lillian Marek
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

We've moved on a generation, Lady Alice Talmadge, her husband Stephen Bancroft, and her daughter Lady Clara Grammont, who is now twenty-two, travel to her former home at the invitation of the current Lord Talmadge. When they arrive they discover that the other guests may be, for the most part, from the Ton, but they are gamblers, excessive drinkers, wastrels and keep shocking company. The only exception is plain Mr John Smith, for whom (if they did but know it) the entire house party was arranged.

Mr Smith is extremely wealthy and is trying to get support to build a railway line which will revolutionise industry and travel. Unfortunately several aristocrats are opposing the railway and he desperately needs some support in the House of Lords. He hopes that Lady Alice and her husband might pave the way for an introduction to her brother, Lord Peter Ashleigh.

Clara and John are immediately drawn to each other, although they are not without their own misconceptions about how the other feels. However, there are numerous obstacles to overcome, not just their class differences, but also Peter's opposition and machinations from those who don't want the railway built.

As with the previous two books, the villains in this book are without a single redeeming feature, and this book just felt very familiar, maybe its just a common trope in historical romances.

On the plus side, the historical detail is good.

Read on my Kindle Unlimited subscription.

View all my reviews

Review: Mrs. Endicott's Splendid Adventure: A Novel

Mrs. Endicott's Splendid Adventure: A Novel by Rhys Bowen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Its 1938 and Ellie Endicott is shocked when her pernickety husband Lionel asks for a divorce to marry his pregnant (much) younger girlfriend who is expecting a baby. Refusing to roll over and obey his every command the way she has throughout their marriage, Ellie forces him into a decent financial settlement and decides its time to live a little. Lionel never wanted to go abroad, too many foreigners, so Ellie decides to go to the South of France. Much to her surprise, she has company, the caustic spinster who makes everyone's life a misery with her strictures about ironing the church altar cloth who has been given only months to live by her doctor, and Ellie's cleaner Mavis whose husband is a little too free with his fists after a few beers. In a fit of bravado, Ellie decides to take Lionel's beloved Bentley.

En route the ladies pick up Yvette, a young Frenchwoman who was thrown out by her father when he discovered she was pregnant. Initially the travelling companions are a motley crew, but gradually the ice thaws, until the Bentley breaks down in a small fishing village outside Marseilles called Saint Benet. After a few days in Saint Benet the ladies decide to make it home, especially when Ellie finds an abandoned villa on the cliff top which rumour says was given to a famous opera singer by her aristocratic lover.

But their idyllic life is soon to be overtaken by events on the world stage.

I've seen books by Rhys Bowen many times but this is my first read. I did enjoy it, but I felt it glossed over the war years in soft focus, everything was a bit like skimming stones on a pond, not much detail and the cursed insta-love. I enjoyed, and I think it would make a wonderful Sunday evening mini-series, but it could easily have been set without WW2.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

View all my reviews

Review: A Debt of Dishonor

A Debt of Dishonor by Lillian Marek
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

At first, when her mother died, Kate Russell was pleased that her older brother came to Yorkshire to bring her back to London with him, little did she know that he was as dissolute as their father and had effectively sold her to the Earl of Farnsworth to wipe out his debts. Luckily Kate gets wind of the plot and runs away, knowing the two men will chase her, she avoids Yorkshire and instead throws herself on the mercy of her aunt Franny Darling in Sussex, who was ostracised from the family when she married a merchant.

Kate first meets Peter, Duke of Ashleigh, when he visits her aunt, he mistakes her for a servant and she mistakes him for a farmer. When told Kate is Franny's niece he miscalls her Miss Darling and Kate accepts it, as further disguise in case her brother comes looking for her.

Peter is a very caring brother and landlord, he cares for his tenants and actively seeks new business opportunities to employ those that live on his lands. However, he is also very aware of his status in society and tends to take an overly-paternalistic approach to women. When aunt Franny and Kate come to dinner (to dilute the effects of his irritating cousins who have descended upon them), Peter is angered when Kate gives his cousin a set down (even though she was right and he was wrong) and initially suspects she is pretending to a better education than she has.

This has a very Pride and Prejudice vibe, Peter quickly falls for Kate, and vice versa, but he feels marriage to her is out of the question, her family having been in trade etc. On her part, Kate knows Peter would never want to be associated with people as disreputable as her late father and brother, men who haunted brothels and gaming hells.

There is also a sweet side story between Peter's sister, the widowed Lady Talmadge, and his steward (and remote cousin) Mr Bancroft.

If I have one criticism, it is that Lillian Merk writes her villains very villainous, there's no shade just out-and-out villains.

Read on my Kindle Unlimited subscription.

View all my reviews

Review: Featherbed

Featherbed by Annabeth Albert
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Harrison Phillip Fletcher, III has moved to Vermont to open an inclusive bookshop and wine bar with his mother. The epitome of wealthy New Yorker from his suits to his polished shoes, he's trying to make the bookshop a success for his mother because the men in his family don't live past forty-one, due to heart disease.

Finn Barnes is a chicken farmer, he's been burnt by city slickers in the past who can't cope with his 24/7 farming lifestyle and he's not looking to meet another one. In fact, he's resigned to never having a long-term relationship.

Then a box of rare chickens is delivered to the bookshop by accident and Finn and Harrison have a meet-cute.

This was a cute, small-town, opposites attract, younger guy romance.

Read on my Kindle Unlimited subscription.

View all my reviews