Review: Bad Publicity

Bad Publicity by Bianca Gillam
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Andie lands her dream job in publishing, then learns that her first job is to accompany best-selling author Jack Carlson on a book publicity tour of Europe. What Andie's boss doesn't know is that Andie and Jack were at Edinburgh university together, they share a past and Andie has never forgiven him. The idea of spending a month travelling with him is unbearable, but the only alternative is to tank her first assignment - ain't never gonna happen.

Jack tries to apologise and explain but Andie's righteous anger burns bright and she refuses to listen, in fact she take great delight in being as mean as she possibly can to him, until she realises how unprofessional her anger is making her. The trouble is, Jack's betrayal came just before her father's terminal cancer diagnosis and so the two events have become defining moments in her life, things she is desperate to push to the back of her mind.

I enjoyed this, but it wasn't anything I hadn't read before. Mortal enemies due to an 'event' in their past which is kept mysterious until near the end, forced proximity road trip, 'reasons'. TBH Andie wasn't a very likeable character, she wasn't a very good friend, she only called Sara to moan about her own problems, she was petty, and put her own feelings above everyone else's.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

View all my reviews

Review: The Comfort of Ghosts

The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

And so we come to Maisie Dobb's final outing, and I find I have read fewer of this series than I imagined, what delights await me when I go back , almost to the beginning to read books 2, 3, 4, 11, and 17 I wonder?

WW2 has ended and Britain is on the brink of bankruptcy with hordes of people made homeless by the Blitz and thousands of soldiers returning home, many with physical and mental injuries. Lord Julian Compton has died, but his Belgravia mansion is occupied by squatters and cannot therefore be sold to pay death duties. Maisie volunteers to fix the problem rather than bother Lord Julian's widow Lady Rowan. However, when she reaches the mansion she discovers the squatters are in fact four children, who seem terrified of the police, and a very sick man. Uncovering the truth about these children and what they saw forms the main mystery of this book.

But the mystery is really just an aside to the main thrust of the novel which canters through Maisie's past, touching on lost loves, friends, mentors, and secrets. Jacqueline Winspear also manages to deftly weave the birth of the NHS, the Burma death marches, the atomic bomb, the wanton destruction of many beautiful London properties by the London Council, the plight of orphans, the treatment of mental health issues, and the hypocrisy of the way society used to treat unmarried mothers, into the narrative without getting on a soap box or slowing the narrative. It's not without its flaws, there is at least one occasion where the reader is given a quick reminder of something that happened in the past, only for a very similar reminder to be given a few chapters later, and also I still can't really say I like Mark Scott he's all a bit 'I want, I want, I want'.

However, minor gripes aside, this is a superb finale to a wonderful series that has taken us from 1929 to 1945 but also with flashbacks to WW1 and Maisie's childhood.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

View all my reviews

Review: One of a Kind: A BRAND NEW utterly beautiful romantic read from AWARD-WINNING author Jane Lovering for 2024

One of a Kind: A BRAND NEW utterly beautiful romantic read from AWARD-WINNING author Jane Lovering for 2024 by Jane Lovering
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Cressida works at an animal rescue centre in Yorkshire, which less about nurturing sick bunnies and more about shovelling manure, being called at 3am to rescue animals that are perfectly fine, and being bitten ... a lot. She is in bed with a heavy cold when she is woken by her BFF Ivo calling her. Ivo is a journalist for a local newspaper and he needs her help. The police have found a dead body on the moors, they don't think it is a suspicious death, but the man randomly has a live squirrel in his pocket, and not just any old squirrel, a red squirrel when the nearest known family of red squirrels is hundreds of miles away.

Ivo has always been very intense, at college Cressida wondered if he took drugs, she definitely saw him palming some tablets once, and gets very focused on trivialities at times. He is convinced that there is a mystery to solve. Who is this man? How did he get on the moors? How did he get a squirrel to sit in his trouser pocket (and isn't that dangerous)? This is very much a case of cherchez l'écureuil (which is what I have just discovered is the French for squirrel).

Cressida has been in lust with aristocratic Ivo with his model looks and eclectic dress sense forever, so despite her better judgement she gets drawn into Ivo's quest to find where the squirrel came from.

I liked this but I didn't love it. Maybe it was too quirky?

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

View all my reviews

Review: Murder on the Train

Murder on the Train by Faith Martin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Retired Hillary Greene is recovering from surgery and decides to take a holiday to Hay-on-Wye in Wales where she can also tout her first novel which has just been published (Hay-on-Wye having a large number of book shops and an annual literary festival). Staying at a modest bed and breakfast establishment, her fellow guests are an unusual group.

When one of the guests announces that they are going to take a nearby scenic steam train journey up into the mountains, all the other guests decide it sounds delightful and decide to make it a group outing. Never the most gregarious of women, when the carriage isn't large enough to accommodate all of the guests, Hillary quickly volunteers to sit in another carriage. When they reach the end of the line, all the passengers except one get off the train, one of Hillary's fellow guests has been murdered but no-one else in the carriage saw anything!

As always, this was well written, however I can't help but feel that the identification of the murderer and their motive was a bit obscure. I prefer a mystery where the reader can either guess the murderer or at least think they saw all the clues but didn't put them together whereas with this mystery (in my opinion) the murderer/motive came out of nowhere.

I think/hope that this was an intellectual challenge for Faith Martin, along the 'can I write a locked room Agatha Christie style murder mystery?' and that normal service will be resumed.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Also available on Kindle Unlimited.

View all my reviews

Review: The Love of Her Lives

The Love of Her Lives by C.J. Connolly
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Millie has everything, a job she loves, a great BFF, a fabulous apartment. Unfortunately, she's in love with her very married work colleague, Stephen who she met at college and she often wonders what would have happened if she had chosen to join the astrological society at college with him instead of the a capella group. In fact, she and Stephen used to discuss the possibility of endless alternate realities.

Going to her best friend Bonnie's family home for the long weekend, Millie goes in through the basement door and finds herself in an alternate reality, one in which Bonnie no longer owns the house and Millie is married to a guy she briefly dated in college. Once Millie gets her head around the fact that she has somehow entered a parallel universe through the basement door in Bonnie's house she realises it could be possible to find a universe in which she and Stephen dated and got married. In each parallel universe Millie sees her life through fresh eyes and tries to help her other self, to escape addiction, or an abusive marriage, etc. Always, she checks to see if she and Bonnie are still friends, because Bonnie, her brother Ben, and their parents (Until their tragic deaths) are the closest thing to real family Millie has ever known.

This is told partly through flashbacks to key events in Millie's life, starting with when she first met Bonnie, and partly through each of Millie's alternate lives, although the blurb makes it sound like she steps straight into a world where she and Stephen are together. I liked all of this, because I'm a sucker for things like Sliders and Stargate and Quantum Leap. However, and trying not to be spoilery, it was immediately obvious to me who Millie would end up with and therefore some of the surprise was lost, it needed to be more subtle. So, at first I was going to give this three stars because of the lack of suspense about Millie's MMC but I really liked the rest of the plot and would otherwise have given it four stars, so we end up at three and a half stars.

So, if you ever wondered what would have happened if you took that job, caught that bus, accepted that invite, you'' love this.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

View all my reviews

Review: Unladylike Rules of Attraction: A Marleigh Sisters Novel

Unladylike Rules of Attraction: A Marleigh Sisters Novel by Amita Murray
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Anya Marleigh is a half-Indian talented musician and singer in the court of George III and Queen Charlotte. However, her illegitimacy and her darker colouring leave her teetering on the edges of society. Then one day one of her wealthy patronesses, Lady Budleigh, dies and, to spite her family, leaves all of her unentailed wealth to Anya, provided she is married before her twenty-fifth birthday, otherwise the money passes to her trustee, Lord Damian Ashton.

Lord Ashton is no stranger to being on the outskirts of society, he only inherited his title as a result of a series of unfortunate accidents and rumours have followed him that he may have contributed to some of them. His only passion is his campaigning against slavery in the British colonies, such as the Caribbean island where he spent his youth until he was sent to school in England.

Lady Budleigh's children do their best to overturn their mother's will, then resort to trying to marry Anya off, either to the single son, or any old relative they can rustle up. Meanwhile, Anya has two admirers at court, both of whom have already offered her marriage before her inheritance, so why is she dithering and dreaming about the infuriating Lord Ashton?

I was really enjoying this until near the end when it just seemed to drag on a bit. But otherwise a good novel and I look forward to reading the other books in the series.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

View all my reviews

Review: Murder at Land's End

Murder at Land's End by Sally Rigby
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The third outing for DI Lauren Pengelly and DS Matt Price. It felt like I had missed out a book but GR reliably informs me that I have read the second book. One of the things I didn't like about the second book was that Lauren was quite a prickly character and in contrast Matt was a bit too perfect - always the voice of reason. Luckily in this book that has been toned down, the team are working together better and Lauren has relaxed somewhat.

A young woman's body is fond on the rocks at Land's End, her body staged, with a piece of fishing line wrapped around her neck, and a line from a poem typed on a piece of paper found in her mouth. AS they investigate the death they uncover a secret job, and a cheating boyfriend. Then a second woman, a former friend of the first woman is found dead in identical circumstances - could there be a serial killer?

I enjoyed reading this, although I question whether the police would just randomly arrest people for murder without more than just vague circumstantial evidence. However, the ending fell a little bit flat for me, maybe too abrupt?

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Available on Kindle Unlimited.

View all my reviews

Review: When Grumpy Met Sunshine

When Grumpy Met Sunshine by Charlotte Stein
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Grumpy hardman ex-footballer Alfie Harding has a contract to write his memoir but after a foreword he wrote for a friend was universally panned, his publishers decide he needs a ghost-writer. Perpetually misunderstood, he doesn't want to share anything about his life, or his thoughts.

Mabel Willicker is Alfie's opposite (and maybe one of his biggest fans), small, curvaceous, and with a sunny disposition this would be a dream if Alfie hadn't been so rude about her, while she was in the room.

But as Mabel tries to tease anything personal out of Alfie she discovers that they have a lot in common and her snarkiness seems to amuse him. Then a fan posts a grainy photo of the two of them and to cover up the fact that Alfie has hired a ghost-writer they pretend to be dating.

I really enjoyed the banter between Mabel and Alfie, but (and I know I'll be in the minority) it felt like a third of the book was just the two of them having sex, or talking about it, or doing sex-adjacent things and it sort of got boring?

Anyway, otherwise it would have been a four star rating. Reminiscent of The Wall of Winnipeg and Me and The Game Plan in some ways - by which I mean reminiscent of the feels they gave rather than the plot.

View all my reviews

Review: Locked in Pursuit

Locked in Pursuit by Ashley Weaver
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Since the Major was shot and nearly killed in Sunderland (and they shared that kiss), he and Electra have barely spoken a word. But when former safecracker Electra reads a newspaper article about a society robbery which doesn't feel right she decides to visit him to lay out her suspicions. The Major corroborates her unease, there have been a series of robberies recently where the thieves have stolen an odd selection of items (eg ignoring clearly high value items and taking almost worthless trinkets instead), none of which Electra or her uncle have heard anything about from their less reputable contacts. After some digging the Major discovers that all the victims had something in common, they were on the same flight to London from Lisbon in Portugal. It becomes clear that one of the passengers was smuggling something out of Portugal and the Germans wills top at nothing to retrieve it. Can Electra and Major Ramsay uncover what has been smuggled out and find it before the Germans?

Meanwhile, the simmering tension between Electra and Major Ramsay continues, she receives a proposal of marriage, her cousin is still MIA, and she uncovers more information about her father's murder.

I enjoyed this, the slooooow burn romance is dragging a bit, although the ending of this book suggests we may be coming to a crossroads. Similarly, the discovery of why her father was murdered is moving with glacier-like slowness (is that a word?). Nevertheless, I enjoy that Electra is a proper 1940s miss, allowing a bit of a kiss and cuddle on the sofa, but no more.

Looking forward to the next in the series.

View all my reviews

Review: Winter Lost

Winter Lost by Patricia Briggs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mercy hasn't recovered from what the artefact known as the Soul Taker did to her, although she is trying to conceal it from her friends and mate. In addition, the vampire Bonafrata is stalking her and torturing innocents while he forces Mercy to listen on the phone.

To top it all, Mercy's half-brother Gary arrives on the pack's doorstep, incoherent and malnourished. Mercy calls Zee and Zee calls local frost giant Ymir who concludes it is a curse, but only his brother Hrimnir can release Gary because it is his magic.

In a quest to find Hrimnir, Adam and Mercy travel to Montana in Winter, to the ranch where Gary was working where they learn that Gary stole a precious artefact from Hrimnir and left it in a local resort which is guarded by a water spirit and Hrimnir cannot enter. In retaliation, Hrimnir has brought a snow storm on the mountain and vowed no-one can leave the resort until his stolen artefact is returned.

So now Mercy and Adam have to battle a blizzard, find an artefact AND persuade an angry frost giant to release his spell on Gary. Throw in a whole host of fae and other creatures and a ritual that must be performed on a certain day and its just business-as-usual for the pair of them LOL. Oh, and some of Adam's men have been attacked in South America and the three other dominant males in Adam's pack are struggling to find a way of working together.

As always, I looooooved this. But (also as always) I have questions, why was he(view spoiler)[Hugo (hide spoiler)] him(view spoiler)[Garmr (hide spoiler)]? Why did he(view spoiler)[Coyote (hide spoiler)] do it in the first place? And why did the other he(view spoiler)[Hrimnir (hide spoiler)]do that(view spoiler)[make Hugo (hide spoiler)]?

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

View all my reviews

Review: Under a Summer Skye

Under a Summer Skye by Sue Moorcroft
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The first in a new series featuring adopted sisters Valentina, Esmeralda and Altheadora Wynter. This first one features Thea, the youngest.

Thea was a gardener at a venue which was part of a reality TV show when she was involved in a car accident which had life-changing consequences for Fredek Kowski, the cyclist who was hit by her car, even though he was totally at fault by texting in the middle of the road just around a blind bend. Although Thea initially did everything she could to help him, including appearing in his road-safety videos, the dissection of her life by social media trolls and trial by the internet forced her to withdraw entirely and she ended up as gardener at Rothach Hall on the isle of Skye where her sister Ezz is HR manager for a wealthy Norwegian couple who have restored the Hall and gardens. But Thea's life is about to be overturned, Fredek is gathering a social media following as an influencer and he wants Thea to help boost his numbers, with or without her help.

Deveron Dowie had been co-proprietor of a sports news business until his business partner over-extended them, crashed the business and ran off with Dev's girlfriend. In an attempt to claw his life back from the brink, Dev accepts a commission piece for a clickbait celebrity website which is running a 'Where Are They Now' series. His job is to write about Thea, who is also the adoptive daughter of two relatively well-known musicians who died tragically when she was only a teenager. Dev travels to Skye and gets a seasonal job working as under gardener for Thea, but soon realises he wants nothing to do with the article. If only it were that simple.

I've said this before, I love Sue Moorcroft's Middledip series but when she leaves there I struggle. Unfortunately, this book fell into that camp too. I can't quite put my finger on what I don't love, maybe I found Thea a bit 'wet' for a forty-something year old woman, I could better understand her actions and behaviour if she were twenty-something. Also I found Dev's reasoning for not coming clean to be even weaker than it usually is in such circumstances - again something more forgivable in a twenty year old than a forty year old.

Overall, this was a pleasant enough, fade-to-black, romance set on the beautiful isle of Skye.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

View all my reviews

Review: Last to Die: A totally gripping Scottish crime thriller

Last to Die: A totally gripping Scottish crime thriller by Doug Sinclair
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The second outing for DS Malkie McCulloch.

On a cold Edinburgh night Malkie is called out to a fatal stabbing in a park, following a trail of blood drops he is led to a house, but after calling for back-up he hears an altercation inside and sees a burly man creeping up behind an elderly woman, he calls out to warn her but gets knocked out for his pains. When he awakes the house is empty.

The elderly woman, Lilibeth Crosbie, was a retired police officer. Worried for her safety the police set out to find her, only to find that two missing persons reports had already been filed for her, 45 years ago by someone called Ben Hutchison. Digging further back into the archives, it appears that Crosbie's career had effectively been terminated after she realised a female prisoner from custody on New Year's Eve 1977 on her cognisance and the girl apparently got lost and froze to death.

Something, or someone, has stirred up memories of that night and one by one the officers who were on duty at that police station that night are being hunted down and killed.

I really enjoyed this book, less graphically gory than the first book (my taste tends more towards police procedural and cosy than thrillers), I recognised the link between the way in which the victims were killed. However, sitting here writing my review a scant five minutes after finishing reading I have lots of questions - some of the 'what came first, the chicken or the egg?' variety. (view spoiler)[Why/how did Crosbie disappear? Presumably Megan was totally corrupt from the start, but why would Ben work for the woman who tortured him? And how did Ben work for her when he was in the Waverley Church Mission for 45 years? Why did Megan order Crosbie murdered now? Why did Crosbie send the 'gifts' after all these years? Was Ferguson's knitting a red herring? (hide spoiler)]

Read my spoilers in my Goodreads review, here.

So overall, really enjoyed it but I now have questions and I'm not sure if I didn't read it properly or if the plot doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Also available on Kindle Unlimited.

View all my reviews

Review: Six Motives for Murder

Six Motives for Murder by Frances Brody
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

This is the second in a series although it can easily be read as a standalone.

Its 1969, Amanda Chapin, daughter of local landowner Lancelot Chapin, is getting married at the lcoal church with the reception at the family home Brackerley Manor. The women from Brackerley Open Prison have been invited to cater the wedding breakfast and the whole village is invited. Amanda's mother died when she was only six years old and her father remarried a much younger woman, Penny, who has been more of a sister than a mother to Amanda. Indeed, it is a local woman, Gloria Thwaite, who looked after Amanda when she was a child, and as a result she and her husband are given the honorary titles of auntie and uncle.

But at the wedding reception one of the inmates, Linda, goes out looking for another who has been on break for too long and finds Mr Chapin slumped on a bench, stabbed through the heart.

it seems as though there is no shortage of potential suspects, with rumours of infidelity, money problems, secret babies, unpopular property development plans, fortune hunters, and suicides which could all be motives for murder (and there's six of them). Added to which, three residents of the local old people's home, also part-owned by Mr Chapin, appear to doing their own version of The Thursday Murder Club and have dragged Nell Lewis, newly appointed governor of the prison, into their investigations.

it is down to DS Angela Ambrose to piece together the witness statements, wedding photos, and other evidence and uncover the murderer.

I haven't read the first book in the series (although I did recently take advantage of a 99p offer and will be reading it shortly) and so i was expecting Nell to be the 'detective' in this series but while her personal and professional life do feature strongly, she was definitely on the periphery of the investigation.

I did enjoy this, once the murder happened. Prior to that there seemed a lot of explaining, presumably to set up each of the potential murderers. It kept me guessing to the end.

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

View all my reviews

Review: Love in Provence

Love in Provence by Jo Thomas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you ever wondered what happened to Del and Fabien and their lavender farm in Provence, wait no longer because here it is.

Things are going pretty well, Henri and Rhi are travelling the world together while Del manages their restaurant Henri's, she and Fabien are busy, although his brocant is not as busy as they would like. Then the infamous mistral descends leaving behind it a literal trail of destruction and some tragic news. Afraid she might be holding Fabien too close, Del encourages him to go on tour with his old band when one of the band members injures himself, but that leaves her alone to manage the lavender harvest and the itinerant pickers at a time when her brain feels totally foggy.

AS Del lurches from one crisis to another her livelihood and her romance appear to be at risk, can she, her friends, and a bunch of misfits here for the lavender picking make everything right?

I enjoyed this, but I felt some of the drama was a bit manufactured, I would have enjoyed seeing Del and Fabien again without the angst.

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

View all my reviews

Review: Not Another Love Song

Not Another Love Song by Julie Soto
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Gwen Jackson plays violin for the Manhattan Pops orchestra and plays at weddings to supplement her meagre earnings. One day a last minute wedding at a huge mansion creates a drama - the bride wanted a cellist, Gwen has played cello (a very little) but wouldn't call herself proficient, and her music is for the violin. To add to the disaster, one of the guests, Alex, lends her his cello - Alex is none other than Xander Thorne, first cello in the same orchestra and member of the hugely successful electric strings band Thorne and Roses, who Gwen may have had a crush on, until he joined the Pops orchestra where his contempt for the other musicians and the musical arrangements made his look like a jerk. But here he is, watching her butcher the music on his cello.

Xander can't believe his eyes and ears, this woman admits to not being a cellist but is sight translating the violin music into cello music, and doing a pretty good job, when he hears that she is also in the Pops orchestra he can't believe he hasn't noticed her before.

After the wedding Gwen seems to see Alex/Xander everywhere, she can only think he is mocking her, trying to get her to embarrass herself so that he can expose her somehow. But the truth is, Alex is mesmerised by someone who is truly a musical prodigy, not just the product of intense training since he was three years old. Dominated by controlling father figures, Xander has lost interest in composing, until the day he met Gwen, since then there's a melody running through his head which he can't get rid of. But when professional rivalries spill over and lines are blurred will their burgeoning romance be able to withstand the truth?

I loved Forget Me Not so when I saw this cover and realised it was by the same author I jumped at the chance to read it. Whilst being a totally different story it had the same vibe, or maybe its just the FMC struggling while the MMC is hugely successful. Anyway Ama and Elliot also make an appearance, they are involved in the wedding where Alex meets Gwen properly.

Loved it, loved it, loved it. Rock star meets pop orchestra, meets poor little rich boy meets poor musical genius.

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

View all my reviews

Review: Summer Romance

Summer Romance by Annabel Monaghan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ali Morris isn't coping well after the death of her beloved mother and the collapse of her marriage, showering, washing her hair, trousers with a zip, emptying the dishwasher etc are all beyond her most days. The irony is that she is a professional organiser (like those two women who scream a lot on that TV show).

Then whilst walking her dog in the park he introduces her to this gorgeous guy, by peeing on his foot! Nevertheless he seems interested in Ali and asks her on a date, which seems to be going swimmingly, until he suddenly becomes a bit 'off' and seems to lose interest.

Despite the unhappy ending to their date, Ali is bubbling over with new feelings. Until she discovers that her date, Ethan, is none other than her best friend's irritating little brother Scooter. Scooter lives a three hour drive away and is very clear that he never wants to return to his home town, his parents still think he's unreliable and his big sister thinks he's a loser whereas he has created a new life for himself upstate where he is a valued member of the community. Ali can't leave town, all her memories are here and she needs to be close to her ex-husband for when he deigns to take their three children (if he isn't busy doing something else).

But with those clear parameters set, there's no harm in a summer romance is there? The trouble is, Ethan makes himself indispensable to Ali and when the summer ends will she be able to let him go?

I love Annabel Monaghan, I love her heroines and they truly deserve the wonderful heroes she gives them and this was no different. Loved it, loved it, loved it.

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

View all my reviews