Review: Things I Remember

Things I Remember by Kelsey Humphreys
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the sixth book in a series which follows five sisters and their cousin each getting their HEA. Some of the introduction to this book comes at the end of the last book. I'm pretty sure you could read this as a standalone although you might find all the sisters and their spouses a bit bewildering.

Anyway, Susan, the eldest Canton sister has been happily married for years to Adam Bell, they have three sons. She is the CEO of Canton Corporation (a greeting card company) and he is the CEO of Bell Corporation (a construction company). What none of the rest of the sisters know is that Susan and Adam were an arranged marriage a quid pro quo to prop up Canton Corporation after their uncle made some very unwise business decisions which affected Bell Corporation. It was either do this or Canton would go into receivership. After they get over their shock at that, Susan drops the bombshell that they are separated and she is getting a divorce.

Cue a substantial flashback to when Susan's parents first approached her about an arranged marriage and how she and Adam courted/married. Then we see how their marriage started to dissolve. Susan is madly in love with Adam, has been since before they were married if she's honest, but Adam has never told her he loves her - well maybe once under duress when she was heavily pregnant and hormonal and basically forced him to say it. Every year Adam gets grumpier and grumpier, he seems to hate all the things he used to like and laugh about, like Susan's hyper-organisation and list making. They seem to be ships that pass in the night, too busy to talk to each other about anything except the boys.

But when Susan announces to her sisters that she wants to start dating, Adam and his brothers-in-law bring on Operation Win-her-back, but is it too late?

I read this in one day, devoured it. Should have been working. Cried more than once. Loved it.

Read on my Kindle Unlimited subscription.

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Review: Dead Man's Shoes

Dead Man's Shoes by Marion Todd
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don't know how I missed the previous book in this series, especially when Marion Todd is (for me) such a recognisable name. Anyway, we are where we are (I think I bought it for 99p so I just need to read it), and this series is far more about police procedural than the private lives of the characters.

DI Clare Mackay is hauled into the big boss' office to hear some disturbing news, a serial killer based in the North of England who rapes and murders gay men by choking them with a chain of some description (nicknamed the Choker by the tabloids) is thought to be in the St Andrews area, or arriving soon, based on some intel gleaned from the Dark Web. Evidence from the previous murders suggests he might be a typical white van man, possibly a painter and decorator, who typically strikes on a Friday or Saturday night, but with nothing else to go on a low-key approach is critical to prevent him from getting spooked.

A young man's body is found by a dog walker in woodlands, the circumstances are similar enough that Clare's bosses are convinced its the work of the Choker, but Clare isn't convinced. Has the Choker changed his MO? Is there a copycat? Or is his murder a coincidence? The murder victim is the youngest son of a woman who runs a local nightclub, one which local support groups claim is dealing drugs. Could this be the start of a turf war?

This was excellent. Loved it. Not cosy but not gruesome. Enough leg work and bureaucracy and small details to make it feel 'real'.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

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Review: Other People's Houses: The gripping, twisty new thriller

Other People's Houses: The gripping, twisty new thriller by Clare Mackintosh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

DC Ffion Morgan is called in when a trainee from the outdoor sports centre finds a missing kayak, together with a dead body. The body is that of a young estate agent who was spending the weekend with three colleagues 'team building'.

Meanwhile, Ffion's boyfriend DS Leo Brady is investigating series of break-ins at some of the big prestigious houses on The Hill, which just happens to be round the corner from where his ex-wife Allie, their son Harris, and Allie's new husband Dominic live. The robberies are unusual in that none of the house alarms went off, all of the residents were elsewhere when the robberies occurred and the thief only took small items - often overlooking valuable items in plain sight.

As a backdrop, everyone is obsessing over a true crime podcast which has chosen to focus on the murder of a husband and wife, police originally charged and convicted a man, but subsequent evidence proved his innocence and he was given a post-humous pardon. Now the podcasters have uncovered new evidence and it seems this cold case may intersect with Ffion and/or Leo's current cases.

Its strange, I was only thinking about this series the other day, wondering if we could expect more, then a week or two later this came up on NetGalley. I love this, a good story. lots of twists and turns, some stuff I saw coming and some stuff that came out of left field. Possibly the best so far.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

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Review: Other People's Houses: The gripping, twisty new thriller

Other People's Houses: The gripping, twisty new thriller by Clare Mackintosh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

DC Ffion Morgan is called in when a trainee from the outdoor sports centre finds a missing kayak, together with a dead body. The body is that of a young estate agent who was spending the weekend with three colleagues 'team building'.

Meanwhile, Ffion's boyfriend DS Leo Brady is investigating series of break-ins at some of the big prestigious houses on The Hill, which just happens to be round the corner from where his ex-wife Allie, their son Harris, and Allie's new husband Dominic live. The robberies are unusual in that none of the house alarms went off, all of the residents were elsewhere when the robberies occurred and the thief only took small items - often overlooking valuable items in plain sight.

As a backdrop, everyone is obsessing over a true crime podcast which has chosen to focus on the murder of a husband and wife, police originally charged and convicted a man, but subsequent evidence proved his innocence and he was given a post-humous pardon. Now the podcasters have uncovered new evidence and it seems this cold case may intersect with Ffion and/or Leo's current cases.

Its strange, I was only thinking about this series the other day, wondering if we could expect more, then a week or two later this came up on NetGalley. I love this, a good story. lots of twists and turns, some stuff I saw coming and some stuff that came out of left field. Possibly the best so far.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

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Review: The Favourites

The Favourites by Layne Fargo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ten years after the Olympic games where their passionate and tempestuous partnership imploded an unauthorised biography of Katerina Shaw and Heath Rocha is being written, speaking to friends, ex-partners, rivals, judges, and coaches to discover what really happened.

Katerina Shaw and Heath Rocha were the kids from the wrong side of town who dreamed of representing the USA as Olympic ice dancers, well Kat did, Heath just wanted to do anything Kat did. The two of them do anything they can to stay at the prestigious ice dance school, run by former Olympic gold medal figure skater Sheila Lin. Sheila is hoping to create an Olympic skating dynasty with her twins Bella and Garrett, Kat and Heath's biggest rivals.

I requested this book because The Cutting Edge is one of my favourite films of all time and this made me think of that film. I was not disappointed.

This has a great soap opera feel, in the blurb at the back Layne Fargo thanks Taylor Jenkins Reid and although I haven't read any of her books I did see the mini-series and this gives off a similar vibe. There's backstabbing, sabotage, mind games, sacrifice, love, betrayal - basically everything!

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

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Review: From London With Love

From London With Love by Katie Fforde
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Felicity comes to London to stay with her mother (Felicity is Alexandra from A Wedding in Provence's step-daughter) in Cheyne Walk (a very expensive part of London). She intends to be an artist and study in Paris but has agreed to spend a year in London getting to know her mother, improving her English, and attending secretarial school.

The woman who lives in a flat in the attic of Felicity's mother's house has persuaded her niece Violet to come to London and arranged a job for her at a nearby bookshop. Violet's father has suddenly (and unexpectedly) come into a title and money which has led to him being inundated with women hoping he'll 'put a ring on it', one woman has even gone so far as to persuade him to let her move into a wing of the house and Violet very much dreads that she could be her new stepmother.

Despite their age differences, Violet is in her thirties while Felicity is barely twenty, the two of them strike up a friendship, partly because Felicity's mother is one of those wealthy society divorcees with a lot of rules about what Felicity can and cannot do, and partly because they are both country mouses in the big city.

Whilst out walking one day Felicity bumps into a young man, Oliver, and they strike up a friendship, under Violet's watchful eye. Oliver is the black sheep of his family who are all military men. Oliver wants to make jewellery but his father refuses to hear of it and so instead Oliver scrapes a living with a multitude of low-paying jobs in bars and restaurants whilst also doing a bit of mudlarking (looking for treasure along the banks of the Thames when the tide is out).

But the course of true love never did run smooth and there's an added complication wheen Felicity's mother and Oliver's father become involved.

This is classic Katie Fforde and classic me. I moan about her signature motifs and then not only buy/request them every time but also devour them eagerly. There's insta-lurve, aristos, people who can live in London with practically no money, cranky old ladies with a heart of gold, etc. I loved it, sure I wish both Felicity and Violet knew their respective love interests for more than thirty seconds before they fell in love but hey-ho they did things differently in the 1960s ;)

You know I'll be back for the next one - they're like catnip.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.



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Review: City of Destruction

City of Destruction by Vaseem Khan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Persis Wadia is Bombay's first female police detective, albeit stationed at the Malabar House station (equivalent to Slough House in Mick Herron's excellent Slow Horses series). This is the fifth book in the series, I hadn't read the others but it was fairly easy to read as a standalone.

Its 1951, only a few short years since India was partitioned and the new state of Pakistan was formed. The bloodshed and the religious unrest is still very fresh. Persis and Scotland Yard criminalist Archie Blackfinch are patrolling a political rally held by the defence minister Azad who is advocating the taking back of Pakistan, against the wishes of Prime Minister Nehru. Persis spots a young man in the crowd who doesn't seem to be as enthused as the other people around him, she loses track of him for a moment and then spot shim again, just as he attempts to assassinate Azad, with only split seconds to react, Persis kills the young man, but not before he shoots Archie in the head. As the boy lies dying he presses an amulet into Persis' hand and whispers City of Destruction.

Unsure of whether the young man was working alone, was from Pakistan, was a fifth columnist etc, the Delhi Investigation Board call in MI6 for assistance. Persis is hauled off the case, which is given to two incompetent (male) detectives while she is given the body of a man found on a beach, assumed to have immolated himself.

Despite being taken off the case, Persis cannot leave it alone, she hopes that the amulet and the dying man's words will give her some clues as to his identity and his motivation.

I enjoyed this, I have read a few books set in India, including some which give some detail of the horrific violence that surrounded Partition, but this book gave some additional colour and flavour as the backdrop to the investigations. I was also interested in how much of the plot (as opposed to the history of partition) was based on historical facts.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

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Review: The Mid-life Trials of Annabeth Hope

The Mid-life Trials of Annabeth Hope by Alice G. May
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Annabeth Hope has been left by her husband to look after his three teenage children from his first marriage and their young daughter in a ramshackle farmhouse in the New Forest, with no job and no child support she has been quietly selling off shares left to her by her parents to pay the mortgage and keep them fed, along with the menagerie of animals her family have gathered. However, her stepchildren are hostile, she doesn't really have any friends in the village, and life is getting on top of her.

Rick Mahon is an over-worked and harassed London GP. A walk-in patient to whom Rick prescribed medication mixed it with recreational drugs and is in a coma, he is a semi-famous Tik-Tok gamer with a high social media profile. There is no evidence that Rick warned the patient not to take any other drugs with his medication and the patient's mother is all over social media declaiming Rick. She is threatening to sue which could ruin Rick and destroy his career. Counselled by his partners to leave London and let the furore die down (paparazzi are trying to force their way into the surgery), Rick decides to decamp to the property his uncle left him in the New Forest.

Rick first meets Beth when he gets lost in the New Forest and comes across her trying to change a flat tyre. Later they discover that they are neighbours. Despite the immediate attraction neither of them has the bandwidth for a relationship, yet they keep getting thrust into each other's paths.

I loved this, but yet again I felt the ending was too abrupt and if I'm being really picky everything miraculously resolved itself a little too easily, but it was a fun read, reminiscent of Katie Fforde.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

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Review: Book People

Book People by Jackie Ashenden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After escaping a controlling relationship, former book editor Kate returns to the small town where her mother grew up to open a bookshop in the building she inherited, apparently her great grandmother ran a tea shop in the building. She and her single mother led a peripatetic life during her childhood but bookshops always represented comfort and an escape. Kate's bookshop embraces genres, manga, romance, sci-fi, cosy mysteries - you name it. The only fly in the ointment is Sebastian who owns the highbrow bookshop directly opposite Kate's. She's tried to be friendly, but he refuses to even speak to her, he's even petty enough to rearrange his window displays deliberately to outdo Kate's.

Sebastian keeps himself to himself, his family has had the bookshop for several generations but his father and his grandfather's addictions have left the family bookshop deep in debt, and Kate opening a rival bookshop opposite him has only exacerbated the problem. Sebastian's family is unlucky in love, both his great-grandmother and grandmother left their husbands, and his own mother died when he was still young, which is why Sebastian knows he is destined to be alone. Sebastian is trying to revive the town's literary festival to (hopefully) bring some much-needed revenue to his shop. But when disaster strikes and his keynote author pulls out a week before the festival only Kate can help him save the day.

Kate is on good terms with a popular author from her editing days, a woman whose bestseller appealed to both populist and highbrow readers, if they can find a lure to encourage her to attend their small festival it will make it a winner and Sebastian has just the thing, a bunch of love letters between his great grandfather and an unknown woman.

I really enjoyed this romance because well books! However, I felt the mystery was a bit obvious to the reader, and the ending felt a bit rushed (like I'm 95% through the book and they haven't made up yet), which is odd because I've complained about the last few books by Lucy Score where the couple seem to get together about 35% into the book and then there's a lot of filler until the inevitable 'misunderstanding'.

Other than that, I will definitely look out for more books By Jackie Ashenden.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

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Review: Not Part of the Plan

Not Part of the Plan by Lucy Score
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Emma is Gia's middle sister and now runs the Pierce brothers' bar and restaurant. Having been burned by a player when younger she now has a plan: only sensible, reliable men who have the same goals, love is fleeting but a 401K is forever. After her mother abandoned her husband and children when Emma was a child she has had a fear of abandonment.

Nikolai is a famous fashion photographer who could grace a magazine cover himself (Summer Pierce's BFF from New York), but he's lost his mojo and has decamped to Blue Moon. When Nikolai runs into Emma at the restaurant she clocks him as a player and makes it clear that she wants none of what he's selling. Intrigued, and stimulated by Emma's quick wit and failure to fall at his feet, NIkolai suggests he proves his intentions are good - by being her friend, no strings attached. Guess how long that lasts ...

As with the previous books in this series, I was enjoying it until about halfway but then the pursuit ended, there was a whole lot of smexy filler, then a rather overblown 'conflict'. Nevertheless, I continue reading because this is catnip for me LOL/

Read on my Kindle Unlimited subscription - I would post a review on Amazon but my reviewing rights have been suspended for 'repeatedly posting content that violates our Community Guidelines ... or Conditions of Use', although helpfully Amazon won't actually tell me what guideline(s) have been breached or in what review(s). LOL. I'm trying to decide if I'm petty and delusional enough to stop buying things from Amazon until they left the ban.

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Review: Fall into Temptation

Fall into Temptation by Lucy Score
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Beautification Committee turns its eye to Beckett Pierce, town mayor and lawyer.

Gia is a yoga teacher, she has recently moved to Blue Moon to be closer to her father (who happens to be dating Beckett's mother) after divorcing her charming but feckless husband. She brings with her her stepson Evan and her daughter Aurora.

Beckett and Gia have a bit of a meet-cute where he doesn't realise she is his new tenant for the summerhouse at the end of his garden and he insists on walking her home.

Although they both try to resist their attraction, because children and landlord (that's two separate reasons), they can't resist for long.

I liked this opposites attract small-town romance, but I didn't love it. I had to skim too many smexy scenes (just bored) and the inevitable misunderstanding felt too manufactured. I'm not going to read Jax and Joey's story but I've already started the fourth book which features Gia's sister Emma and Summer's BFF the photographer Nikolai.

Read on my Kindle Unlimited subscription.

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