Review: Playing It Tough

Playing It Tough by Amy Andrews
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ronan Dempsey is an American rugby player who has joined the Sydney Smoke to hopefully get more experience and get selected for the US Olympic team. However, his partying hasn't gone unnoticed and could jeopardise his career, so he makes a bet with his teammates that he can remain celibate for the rest of the season. When his apartment block develops subsidence problems one of his mum's friends offers the use of her (luxurious) pool house as a temporary home.

Orla Stewart used to be a big party girl, then a cancer scare pushed her the other way. Now she's a walking talking celibate advert for clean living in all its forms and she uses her skills as a cosmetic tattoo artist to cover up scars. She is house-sitting for a wealthy Sydney resident while they are travelling.

When Ronan and Orla first meet he doesn't make a good impression, especially because Orla didn't know the pool house had been lent out. But the chemistry was palpable, if it wasn't for those pesky celibacy vows. Orla gets quite creative about her definition of celibacy (move over Bill Clinton you have a new contender), but can she let herself out of the box she has put herself in?

Amy Andrews and I have a love-hate relationship, and I'm afraid this one tipped the wrong way. I know Amy is all about the steamy smexy times, but I feel she may have over-compensated for the serious topic under discussion by throwing more sex scenes at it. For me, it just felt like the balance between plot and steam was off. Others will no doubt love it.

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

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Review: Blood and Money

Blood and Money by Rachel McLean
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A new series featuring DI Jade Tanner who has been tasked with managing a new investing team Scotland's Complex Crimes Unit. Alongside her are Dr Petra McBride (who we know from previous Rachel McLean series) and DS Mo Uddin (ditto).

Jade is a single mother whose husband died recently - I suspect there is more to uncover in future books on this point. Petra has a girlfriend in America but fears for her it is out of sight and out of mind, is she capable of a relationship? She is also receiving silent phone calls and believes someone is stalking her. Mo has trepidations about working for a new superior officer, he got on so well with Zoe, and moving to the countryside when he's used to be a city detective.

Their first case is a doozy. An American internet billionaire is shot and left to bleed to death on his remote country estate in Scotland which he visits once a year for his detox from devices. There are striking similarities to the murder of a millionaire property developer, another of Jade's cases which remains unsolved.

Obviously with a new series there is a fair amount of scene-setting and laying the foundations for what could be overarching story arcs (I really must find a better way of describing them I hate the 'arching' 'arc' proximity). However, I have to say I was left with a curious sense that not all the loose ends had been tied up, more importantly the breakthrough only occurred because one of the detectives overheard someone making an incriminating phone call. It felt like the crime was solved without actually understanding the motives until later - maybe that's the case in real life but it felt off.

Anyway, first in a new series and I'm keen to see where it goes.

Read on my Kindle Unlimited subscription.

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Review: Kiss Hard

Kiss Hard by Nalini Singh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Danny Esera and Catie Rivers have been frenemies practically all their lives. Danny's older half-brother is married to Catie's older half-sister and so they are practically family, especially since Catie's father is an unreliable gambler and her mother is a cold career woman without a maternal bone in her body.

Danny is a star rugby player from a dynasty of New Zealand rugby players, Catie is a paralympic sprinter. The two of them are forever snarking on each other's social media, although never in a mean way.

When Catie sees Danny clearly under the influence at a bar in Auckland she knows something is wrong, Danny wouldn't drink that much he's very conscious of his public image and maintaining his personal fitness. It turns out that someone at the bar has slipped drugs into Danny's drink and Catie has to get him to the hospital with the help of one of his teammates. In order to misdirect people, particularly the press, Danny's friend pretends that Danny and Catie went off on their own to hook up, which normally wouldn't be a problem but with Danny being rugby's golden boy, if the two of them are thought to have had a one-night stand it would reflect badly on Catie and could cost her some of her sponsorships (double standards are still alive and well). Also, Danny has an ultra-conservative sponsor who might not view a one-night stand favourably. So the two of them agree to a fake relationship for six months, be seen publicly, attend a few events, post a few pictures on the socials, job done. Very close friends and family are told that its fake.

But of course, what they intend isn't what happens and soon the fakery becomes real. But can they make it all the way and how will love impact their career ambitions?

Loved it. Intelligent characters with integrity. None of the rinse-and-repeat angst of other authors. Going back to read the other books featuring the Esera brothers.

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Review: Going Dark

Going Dark by Neil Lancaster
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Tom Novak is a former Royal Marine, and member of the elite Special Reconnaissance Regiment turned police officer. Originally from Bosnia, he and his mother fled the country when he was a child after his father's death in the Yugoslav wars. After his mother's death he was brought up by a foster family in the Cairngorns of Scotland. Tom is finding piloting a desk unfulfilling so when he gets approached to go undercover to infiltrate a gang of Bosnian Serb people smugglers he is delighted. His role is to collect evidence to convict the people smugglers themselves, the Branko family, who bring girls over from Sarajevo promising them good jobs in the UK then force them into working in their brothels and the corrupt solicitor Michael Adebayo who gives them fake Slovenian passports and then forces them to marry men who want to stay in the EU (this is pre-Brexit) to falsely obtain visas.

Things are going well until he is compelled to break cover to prevent the solicitor from raping a young woman, luckily he gets it all on camera but mysteriously both his written report and the camera footage disappear in police hands, when the girl is too scared to testify it looks like the case is dead in the water. Tom had saved another copy of the footage to his phone, but there is obviously at least one person in the police who is in the pay of Adebayo and/or the Brankos and he doesn't know who to trust on the taskforce. On the run with a CIA freelancer supplied by an old friend Tom must uncover the traitors before they succeed in having him killed.

I don't normally like the Jack Reacher type of character or the SAS style hero, all stunted emotionally and skilled in every known way to kill a person. But, I do like Neil Lancaster's police novels and this was available as part of my Prime Reading (and also now available on Kindle Unlimited) so I thought I'd give it a try. I really enjoyed it, obviously there were a few cliches/lucky coincidences such as the fact that Tom had saved the life of a man who had since gone on to be a senior person in the CIA with the ability to furnish Tom with guns and surveillance equipment, a freelance operative, and a plane at short notice. My only negative was that I thought the identity of the traitor was too obvious.

I have already downloaded the second book in the series - let's see whether Tom is more than a one-trick pony.

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Review: Murder in the Parish

Murder in the Parish by Faith Martin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

DI Hillary Greene is retired but has returned to the police to help solve cold cases. She has a remarkable solve rate. Her latest case is the thirty-year old murder of the Reverend Keith Coltrane in his own church in the Oxfordshire village of Lower Barton.

There were two suspects at the time, a businessman who was in dispute with the Reverend over a plot of land which the Reverend wanted to use as a cemetery and the businessman wanted to use as a glamping site, and the husband of a woman who was known to be chasing after the good-looking Reverend. Someone seems to think these two know more than they are letting on.

Was he a ladies man? Was he too friendly with the village youths? Was he hiding a secret?

This is the twentieth book in the series but the first one I have read. I found it easy enough to get into, Hillary's past was alluded to but you don't need to have read the other books to enjoy this police procedural. Having said that, the plot seemed quite familiar, but then there are only a few real motives for murder.

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

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