Tag: Marianne Holmes

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Emma's Anticipated Treasures Monthly Wrap Up

Monthly Wrap Up – October 2020

I can’t quite believe we’re in the start of November and in just a few weeks we’ll putting together our best books of the year! But the clocks have gone back, the weather is cold and wet and October is over. This means it’s time for another wrap-up.

October was a fantastic month for me. I read a total of 19 books and discovered some that will have a place in my favourites of 2020. I took part in twenty-one blog tours, three readalongs and managed to squeeze in some much-needed mood reading at the end of the month. The latter was so refreshing and reinforced my decision to take on less blog tours next year.

So, let’s look at what I read this month:

  1. The Meaning of Mariah Carey ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
  2. A Court of Frost and Starlight ⭐⭐⭐⭐
  3. The Ex-Boyfriend ⭐⭐⭐⭐
  4. Where The Edge Is ⭐⭐⭐⭐
  5. Betrayal ⭐⭐⭐⭐
  6. Watch Her Vanish ⭐⭐⭐⭐
  7. When Life Gives You Mangoes ⭐⭐⭐⭐
  8. The Book of Two Ways (unrated)
  9. All Your Little Lies ⭐⭐⭐⭐
  10. The Princess and the Prick ⭐⭐⭐
  11. Gone Before ⭐⭐⭐💫
  12. Dangerous To Know ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫
  13. The Exiles ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
  14. The Housewarming ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫
  15. Dead Perfect ⭐⭐⭐⭐
  16. The Nesting ⭐⭐⭐⭐
  17. The Illustrated Child ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
  18. The Shape of Darkness ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫
  19. The Burning Girls ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Choosing a favourite has been tricky as the last three books I read in October were each outstanding enough to take the title. In addition, The Meaning of Mariah Carey was a sensational memoir that I had thought was a shoe-in for my favourite book all month. After some thought I have decided to give two books the title of BOTM: The Illustrated Child and The Burning Girls. In the end I just couldn’t choose between the two.

Did we read any of the same books this month? What was your favourite read of October?

Categories
Blog Tours book reviews

All Your Little Lies by Marianne Holmes

Published: October 22nd, 2020
Publisher: Agora Books
Format: Kindle, Paperback
Genre: Mystery, Thriller

I’m thrilled to be one of the bloggers opening the tour for this wonderful novel. Thank you to Peyton at Agora Books for the invitation to take part and the gifted copy of the book.

SYNOPSIS:

When everything you say is a lie, can you even remember the truth?

Annie lives a quiet, contained, content life. She goes to work. She meets her friend. She’s kind of in a relationship. She’s happy. Not lonely at all.

If only more people could see how friendly she is — how eager to help and please. Then she could tick “Full Happy Life” off her list. But no one sees that side of Annie, and she can’t understand why.

That all changes the night Chloe Hills disappears. And Annie is the last person to see her.

This is her chance to prove to everybody that she’s worth something. That is, until she becomes a suspect.

Drenched in atmosphere and taut with tension, All Your Little Lies takes a hard look at why good people do bad things.

MY REVIEW:

When everything you say is a lie, can you even remember the truth?

Atmospheric, tense, unsettling and compulsive, this had me intrigued from the start, my mind blazing with questions I needed answered.

Our protagonist, Annie, is a strange character who I simultaneously liked and disliked. She’s awkward, judgemental, obsessive and reclusive. But she’s fantastic to read. We soon learn she has a big secret and that she lies about who she is to everyone, making her an unreliable narrator. I loved this as it added to the tension I felt as I tried to figure out what her secret was, and if she had anything to do with Chloe’s disappearance.

I was a big fan of the author’s debut novel, so I had high hopes before starting this one. Within a few pages I remembered why I had loved her first book so much; the prose is beautifully written, the plot intriguing, and she weaves a layered mystery for the reader to unravel. It is a character-driven story and relies on that, rather than tension or twists, to drive the story onwards.

Mysterious, dark, poignant and absorbing, this was hard to put down. I would highly recommend both this, and her debut, A Little Bird Told Me. I can’t wait to see what she writes next.

Rating: ✮✮✮✮✰

MEET THE AUTHOR:

Marianne Holmes is the author of A Little Bird Told Me, published by Agora Books in 2018. She was born in Cyprus and bounced around the UK, Germany, Kuwait and Belgium with her RAF parents as a child but is now firmly based in London with her own family. She has degrees in Classics (RHUL) and Linguistics (UCL), neither of which got much use while she worked in marketing.

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