Tag: June Books

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Blog Tours book reviews

The Lies I Tell by Joel Hames

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Published: June 9th, 2020
Publisher: FFS Publishing
Format: Kindle, Paperback
Genre: Psychological Thriller

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour and Happy Publication Day Joel Hames. Thank you to Tracy at Compulsive Readers for the invitation to take part and FFS Publishing for the ebook ARC.

SYNOPSIS:

SHE’S WATCHING YOU
BUT WHO’S WATCHING HER?

From the bestselling author of Dead North, a tense, claustrophobic psychological thriller perfect for fans of Lucy Foley, Claire McGowan and Clare Mackintosh.

Meet Polly. Meet Emily. Meet Belinda.

They’re all me. My name is Lisa and I’m an identity thief. If I’m not inside your system stealing your money, I’ve probably already stolen it. I’m your friend. I’m a thief. I’m gone.
I’m in control.

Only now, the tables have been turned. I’m in danger. My son is in danger. And I don’t know where that danger’s coming from.

Any friend.
Any enemy.
Any stranger.

Anyone from the past I’ve been trying to outrun for years.

NOBODY CAN BE TRUSTED.

MY REVIEW:

When she fled her tragic childhood home at the age of fifteen,  Lisa Atkins shed her first identity and became someone else. Ever since she has invented new identities in order to outrun her past and to scam her targets.

But now the tables have turned and she is the target. Realising that she and her son, Simon, are in danger, Lisa frantically tries to find the source of the danger. But they remain illusive. Will the past she’s been trying to outrun for two decades finally catch up with her?

This readable and intriguing thriller captured my attention quickly. The story is told in chapters that alternate between the past and present with flashbacks revealing the terrible homelife she endured and the trauma that has cast a shadow over her whole life. In the present day we watch her keep track of her various identities and scams while also being a doting mother to four-year-old Simon. It provides a shocking and thought-provoking reminder of how our modern-day love of technology and social media can be used against us by those with the knowledge to do so. Personally, I could only think how being so many different people must be exhausting. Just reading all she had to do to keep on top of her many identities left me feeling like I needed a nap!

One of the things I liked most about this book was Lisa’s nuanced and layered character. Lisa isn’t supposed to be someone we like. She’s a con artist and a thief who takes pride in what she does, but she is also a loving mother and someone with a tragic past. There is something about her that was endearing to me from the start and I couldn’t help but like and root for her. The flashbacks to her childhood were certainly a contributing factor to this as the story went on as it was impossible not to be moved by what she had gone through.  

Another thing I enjoyed about this novel is that I found it hard to predict. I had no idea who was targeting Lisa or what turns the story would take next. My only issue with this book, and the reason I have given it 3.5 stars instead of 4, is that about a fifth of the way in the tension wanes and doesn’t pick back up for quite some time. But overall this was a fascinating, twisty, and enjoyable thriller. 

Rating: ✮✮✮.5

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MEET THE AUTHOR:

Joel Hames lives in rural Lancashire, England, with his wife and two daughters, where he works hard at looking serious and pretending to be a proper novelist.

After a varied career in London which involved City law firms, a picture frame warehouse, an investment bank and a number of market stalls (he has been known to cry out “Belgian chocolates going cheap over ‘ere” in his sleep), Joel relocated from the Big Smoke to be his own boss. As a result, he now writes what he wants, when he wants to (which by coincidence is when the rest of the family chose to let him).

Joel’s first novel, Bankers Town, was published in 2014, and The Art of Staying Dead followed in 2015. The novellas Brexecution (written and published in the space of ten days following the UK’s Brexit referendum, with half the profits going to charity) and Victims were published in 2016 and 2017 respectively.

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Blog Tours book reviews

The Split by Sharon Bolton

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Published: May 28th, 2020
Publisher: Orion
Format: Hardcover, Kindle, Audio
Genre: Mystery, Suspense

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for this riveting thriller. Thank you to Alex at Orion for the invitation to take part and the gifted eBooks ARC.

SYNOPSIS:

SHE’S GOT NOWHERE LEFT TO HIDE.

A year ago, in desperation, Felicity Lloyd signed up for a lengthy research trip to the remote island of South Georgia.

It was her only way to escape.

AND NOW HE’S COMING FOR HER.

Freddie Lloyd has served time for murder. Out at last, he’s on her trail.

And this time, he won’t stop until he finds her.

BECAUSE NO MATTER HOW FAR YOU RUN, SOME SECRETS WILL ALWAYS CATCH UP WITH YOU…

Tense, gripping and with a twist you won’t see coming, Sharon Bolton is back in an explosive new thriller about a woman on the run…

MY REVIEW:

“The ends of the Earth. That’s how far she ran this time.

Not far enough.”

Felicity Lloyd is a Glaciologist taking part in the research trip of a lifetime in South Georgia. But her career isn’t the only reason she signed up for the two-year expedition. She is also a woman on the run. But even running to the ends of the Earth wasn’t enough to stop the man she lives in fear of from finding her. He is on the island and won’t stop until he finds her.

Wow! I am still trying to catch my breath after reading this exciting and twisty thriller. A rip-roaring and wild ride that had me holding on for dear life, this was as impossible to predict as it was to put down. Packed with heart-stopping tension and gripping cliffhangers, there is much more to this layered thriller, and its characters, than first meets the eye.

“The last ship of the season. One more and she’s safe. She thinks of the fear inside her like cancer, eating away at muscles, organs, bone, growing all the time, until there is nothing left of her but a rotten, stinking mass in skin stretched like an overfilled balloon. How will the terror burst out, she wonders, when it inevitably does. A scream? A petrified wimper?“

Sharon Bolton is the Queen of the complex and chilling thriller. I’ve been a fan ever since reading Blood Harvest two years ago but was unprepared for the twisted web she would weave on these pages. The story is cleverly written and plotted, taking me in unexpected directions every time I thought I had it figured out. And even though one wild theory of mine was ultimately proven true, her clever red herrings had me convinced I was wrong right until the reveal.

One of the things I loved most about this book is its setting in the beautiful, bleak and icy Antarctic. The author breathes life into the surroundings with evocative imagery that is so transportive that I almost forgot I was sitting in the summer sun whilst reading. The author had clearly done her research and I found myself getting an education about glaciers and the Antarctic whilst reading.

Atmospheric, unexpected and riveting, The Split has ticks every box needed for a sensational thriller. Sharon Bolton is definitely on my list of auto-buy authors after this novel and I can’t recommend it highly enough to anyone who enjoys a well-written thriller that keeps you on your toes.

Rating: ✮✮✮✮✮

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MEETTHE AUTHOR:

Sharon J Bolton was born and brought up in Lancashire, the eldest of three daughters. As a child, she dreamed of becoming an actress and a dancer, studying ballet, tap and jazz from a young age and reading drama at Loughborough University.

She spent her early career in marketing and PR before returning to full-time education to study for a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) at Warwick University, where she met her husband, Andrew. They moved to London and Sharon held a number of PR posts in the City. She left the City to work freelance, to start a family and to write.

She and Andrew now live in a village in the Chiltern Hills, not far from Oxford, with their son and the latest addition to the family: Lupe, the lop-eared lurcher. Her daily life revolves around the school run, walking the dog and those ever-looming publishing deadlines.

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Blog Tours book reviews

A Theatre For Dreamers by Polly Sampson

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Published: April 2nd, 2020
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Format: Hardcover, Kindle, Audio
Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for A Theatre For Dreamers. Thank you to Anne at Random Things Tours for the invitation to take part and Bloomsbury for the eBook ARC.

SYNOPSIS:

1960. The world is dancing on the edge of revolution, and nowhere more so than on the Greek island of Hydra, where a circle of poets, painters and musicians live tangled lives, ruled by the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, troubled king and queen of bohemia. Forming within this circle is a triangle: its points the magnetic, destructive writer Axel Jensen, his dazzling wife Marianne Ihlen, and a young Canadian poet named Leonard Cohen.

Into their midst arrives teenage Erica, with little more than a bundle of blank notebooks and her grief for her mother. Settling on the periphery of this circle, she watches, entranced and disquieted, as a paradise unravels.

Burning with the heat and light of Greece, A Theatre for Dreamers is a spellbinding novel about utopian dreams and innocence lost – and the wars waged between men and women on the battlegrounds of genius.

MY REVIEW:

When she was eighteen-years-old Erica followed her first love to Hydra, an island inhabited by dreamers: writers, poets, painters and musicians who all came to create under the heat of the Greek sun. The novel tells the story of their lives on the island that summer; the trials and tribulations, romance, heartache and self-discovery, all through Erica’s eyes.

This captivating and evocative novel was pure escapism. Beautifully and elegantly written, the rich, vivid imagery transported me to the Greek Island of Hydra and the heady summer of 1960 so clearly that I could feel the sun on my skin and taste the salt on my tongue. The author brings to life a time of freedom, innocence and discovery when everything seemed so much simpler. After finishing I was left with a longing for that summer like I myself had lived it. 

The fantastic cast of characters leap from the page and it was only after reading the author’s notes that I realised that these are real people and the story is based in fact. It is clear that the author has extensively researched her characters and I found myself heading to google to learn more about them. I loved Erica. When she arrives on the island she is fleeing from the sadness of her mother’s death and her father’s tyranny and is in the throes of passionate first love. In this bohemian society she finds a home like she has never experienced before and I enjoyed watching her journey of self-discovery. Erica’s pain at her mother’s death and longing for her is a theme that runs throughout the book. She is searching for that mother figure she’s lost in Charmian but doesn’t really get back what she hoped for in return and it made me want to put my arms around her and mother her myself. 

A Theatre For Dreamers is an atmospheric, immersive and delightful novel. It offers an escape and enables you to visit the shores of a Greek Island during a time when we are all unable to go much further than our back gardens. 

Rating: ✮✮✮✮✫

Polly Samson Author pic

MEET THE AUTHOR:

Polly Samson is an English novelist, lyricist and journalist. She is married to musician David Gilmour, and has written the lyrics to many of Gilmour’s works, both as a solo artist and with the group Pink Floyd.

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Emma’s Anticipated Treasures – June 2020

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It seems impossible that we’re almost half way through the year already. Will lockdown continuing, books are providing a much needed escape for so many of us right now. Here are the books out in June that I’m most excited about escaping into.


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The House Guest by Mark Edwards
Published: June 3rd, 2020
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Genre: Psychological Thriller

One of my fave authors. I’m lucky to be one of Mark’s early readers and have already read this gripping thriller.

SYNOPSIS:
A perfect summer. A perfect stranger. A perfect nightmare.

When British twenty-somethings Ruth and Adam are offered the chance to spend the summer housesitting in New York, they can’t say no. Young, in love and on the cusp of professional success, they feel as if luck is finally on their side.

So the moment that Eden turns up on the doorstep, drenched from a summer storm, it seems only right to share a bit of that good fortune. Beautiful and charismatic, Eden claims to be a friend of the homeowners, who told her she could stay whenever she was in New York.

They know you’re not supposed to talk to strangers—let alone invite them into your home—but after all, Eden’s only a stranger until they get to know her.

As suspicions creep in that Eden may not be who she claims to be, they begin to wonder if they’ve made a terrible mistake…

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The Cat and the City by Nick Bradley
Published: June 4th, 2020
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Genre: Urban Fiction

I’m a big cat lover and this book sounds like a quirky read that’s right up my street.

SYNOPSIS:
In Tokyo – one of the world’s largest megacities – a stray cat is wending her way through the back alleys. And, with each detour, she brushes up against the seemingly disparate lives of the city-dwellers, connecting them in unexpected ways.

But the city is changing. As it does, it pushes her to the margins where she chances upon a series of apparent strangers – from a homeless man squatting in an abandoned hotel, to a shut-in hermit afraid to leave his house, to a convenience store worker searching for love. The cat orbits Tokyo’s denizens, drawing them ever closer.


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All Fall Down by M. J. Arlidge (D.I. Helen Grace Series 9)
Published: June 11th, 2020
Publisher: Orion
Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Suspense, Young Adult Ficiton

M.J Arlidge is one of my favourite authors and the Helen Grace series is my favourite crime series. love it’s set near where I used to live and evokes so many memories too. Excited to be on the blog tour for this on July 3rd.

SYNOPSIS:
“You have one hour to live.”

Those are the only words on the phone call. Then they hang up. Surely, a prank? A mistake? A wrong number? Anything but the chilling truth… That someone is watching, waiting, working to take your life in one hour.

But why?

The job of finding out falls to DI Helen Grace: a woman with a track record in hunting killers. However, this is A case where the killer seems to always be one step ahead of the police and the victims.

With no motive, no leads, no clues – nothing but pure fear – an hour can last a lifetime…


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Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore
Published: June 11th, 2020
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Genre: Historical Fiction, Southern Fiction, Youth Novel

I’m really enjoying historical fiction at the moment and this one sounds brilliant.

SYNOPSIS:
With the haunting emotional power of American Dirt and the atmospheric suspense of Where the Crawdads Sing: a compulsive debut novel that explores the aftershock of a brutal crime on the women of a small Texas oil town.

Mercy is hard in a place like this. I wished him dead before I ever saw his face…

Mary Rose Whitehead isn’t looking for trouble – but when it shows up at her front door, she finds she can’t turn away.

Corinne Shepherd, newly widowed, wants nothing more than to mind her own business, and for everyone else to mind theirs. But when the town she has spent years rebelling against closes ranks she realises she is going to have to take a side.

Debra Ann is motherless and lonely and in need of a friend. But in a place like Odessa, Texas, choosing who to trust can be a dangerous game.

Gloria Ramírez, fourteen years old and out of her depth, survives the brutality of one man only to face the indifference and prejudices of many.

When justice is as slippery as oil, and kindness becomes a hazardous act, sometimes courage is all we have to keep us alive.

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The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Published: June 11th, 2020
Publisher: Dialogue Books
Genre: Mystery, Youth Novel

I’ve read some great reviews for this one and it is now one of my most anticipated reads of the month.

SYNOPSIS:
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters’ story lines intersect?

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person’s decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

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The Phone Box at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina
Published: June 25th, 2020
Publisher: Manilla Press
Genre: Literary Fiction, Psychological Fiction

I feel very lucky to have an ARC of this debut and am doing a buddy read with my book friend Beth in early June.

SYNOPSIS:
The most moving and powerful novel of our times, inspired by true events.

We all have something to tell those we have lost . . .

When Yui loses her mother and daughter in the tsunami, she wonders how she will ever carry on. Yet, in the face of this unthinkable loss, life must somehow continue.

Then one day she hears about a man who has an old disused telephone box in his garden. There, those who have lost loved ones find the strength to speak to them and begin to come to terms with their grief. As news of the phone box spreads, people will travel to it from miles around.

Soon Yui will make her own pilgrimage to the phone box, too. But once there she cannot bring herself to speak into the receiver. Then she finds Takeshi, a bereaved husband whose own daughter has stopped talking in the wake of their loss.

What happens next will warm your heart, even when it feels as though it is breaking.

For when you’ve lost everything – what can you find . . ?

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The Silent Wife by Karin Slaughter (Will Trent Series 17)
Published: June 25th, 2020
Publisher: HarperCollinsUK
Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Suspense, Crime Fiction, Books Series

Karin is one of my fave crime writers and I will pick up anything she writes. I’m excited to take part in the blog tour for this one on June 29th.

SYNOPSIS:
He watches.
A woman runs alone in the woods. She convinces herself she has no reason to be afraid, but she’s wrong. A predator is stalking the women of Grant County. He lingers in the shadows, until the time is just right to snatch his victim.

He waits.
A decade later, the case has been closed. The killer is behind bars. But then another young woman is brutally attacked and left for dead, and the MO is identical.

He takes.
Although the original trail has gone cold – memories have faded, witnesses have disappeared – agent Will Trent and forensic pathologist Sara Linton must re-open the cold case. But the clock is ticking, and the killer is determined to find his perfect silent wife….

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The Heatwave by Katerina Diamond
Published: June 25th, 2020
Publisher: Avon Books
Genre: Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Mystery, Police Procedural, Adventure Fiction

I’ve heard a lot of good things about this author and this sounds like a perfect summer read.

SYNOPSIS:
One summer. One stranger. One killer…

Two bad things happened that summer:
A stranger arrived. And the first girl disappeared.

In the wake of the crime that rocked her community, Felicity fled, knowing more than she let on.

But sixteen years later, her new life is shattered by the news that a second girl has gone missing in her hometown.

Now Felicity must go back, to face the truth about what happened all those years ago.

Only she holds the answers – and they’re more shocking than anyone could imagine.

The heatwave is back. And so is the killer.

Monstrous Souls

Monstrous Souls by Rebecca Kelly
Published: June 25th, 2020
Publisher: Agora Books
Genre: Mystery, Thriller

I’m taking part in the blog tour for this fascinating thriller and my review will be posted in June 23rd.

SYNOPSIS:
What if you knew the truth but couldn’t remember?

Over a decade ago, Heidi was the victim of a brutal attack that left her hospitalised, her younger sister missing, and her best friend dead. But Heidi doesn’t remember any of that. She’s lived her life since then with little memory of her friends and family and no recollection of the crime.

Now, it’s all starting to come back.

As Heidi begins retracing the events that lead to the assault, she is forced to confront the pain and guilt she’s long kept buried. But Heidi isn’t the only one digging up the past, and the closer she gets to remembering the truth, the more danger she’s in.

When the truth is worse than fiction, is the past worth reliving?

An addictive thriller about a case gone cold and the dangers lurking on our doorsteps, Monstrous Souls will have you gripped to the very end.

The Weekend

The Weekend by Charlotte Wood
Published: June 25th, 2020
Publisher: W&N
Genre: Literary Fiction

I love stories about friendship and have been really enjoying books with senior protagonists lately so I’m excited to check this one out.

SYNOPSIS:
Sylvie, Jude, Wendy and Adele have a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three.

These women couldn’t be more different: Jude, a once-famous restaurateur with a spotless life and a long-standing affair with a married man; Wendy, an acclaimed feminist intellectual; Adele, a former star of the stage, now practically homeless.

Struggling to recall exactly why they’ve remained close all these years, the grieving women gather for one last weekend at Sylvie’s old beach house – not for a celebration of her life, but to clean the place out before it is sold.

But fraying tempers, an elderly dog, unwelcome guests and too much wine collide in a storm that brings long-buried hurts to the surface – a storm that will either remind them of the bond they share, or sweep away their friendship for good.