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All My Lies Are True by Dorothy Koomson (Ice Cream Girls 2)

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Published: July 9th, 2020
Publisher: Headline
Format: Hardcover, Kindle, Audio
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Crime Fiction

Trigger Warning: Domestic Abuse

Thank you to the Tandem Collective for the invitation to take part in this readalong and Headline for the gifted copy of the book.

SYNOPSIS:

From the bestselling author of Tell Me Your Secret and The Brighton Mermaid comes the breath-taking sequel to the iconic Sunday Times bestseller The Ice Cream Girls.

Verity is telling lies…
And that’s why she’s about to be arrested for attempted murder.

Serena has been lying for years. . .
And that may have driven her daughter, Verity, to do something unthinkable…

Poppy’s lies have come back to haunt her . . .
So will her quest for the truth hurt everyone she loves?

Everyone lies.
But whose lies are going to end in tragedy?

MY REVIEW:

After reading The Ice Cream Girls in May, I was excited to read the highly anticipated follow up, which takes place ten years after the first. This time the story focuses mostly on Verity, the daughter of one of the Ice Cream Girls, and examines the legacy of the Ice Cream Girls and how it has affected those around them. It also tells the story of someone who has been in an abusive relationship and discovers that someone close to them is in one but isn’t sure if they are the victim or abuser. 

I LOVED this book! It was utterly addictive and I couldn’t put it down. At almost 600 pages it isn’t a short book, but I devoured it quickly and wasn’t ready for it to end, wishing I could stay with the characters even longer. I loved getting to know Verity and seeing how different life was for Poppy and Serena ten years later. This was my second time reading a Dorothy Koomson book and she is now an auto-buy author for me. My only regret is waiting so long to read her work. Her writing is exquisite and she manages to cover emotional and thought-provoking topics with sensitivity while having you on the edge of your seat as tension radiates from the pages and I tried in vain to predict what would happen next. 

The Tandem Collective ran this readalong a little differently and it started with a IGTV Live with the author where she read from the beginning of the book and then talked with fans and answered questions. In that chat she said that she had returned to the Ice Cream Girls because she thought it would be easier than creating new characters to tell. The premise of not knowing if your loved one is the victim or abuser in a relationship is one nobody wants to think about. As someone who has been in an abusive relationship I know it would kill me if someone I loved became an abuser. In fact, trying to stop that happening is the very reason I took my four-year-old son and left his father. It was a fascinating journey to follow the characters on and I related to both sides as the heartbreaking truth was revealed. 

One of the things that stood out to me most of all was how authentic the journey of the character who is being abused was. Their initial disbelief, how they rationalised abusive behaviours and their devastation as the truth finally dawns were all reminiscent of my own journey. In fact, some of the things written in this book made me see things that had happened in my past in a new light and realise that the journey is not yet over even many years on. I also appreciated the fact that she shines a light on domestic abuse  towards men as well as women as this is something not talked about enough.

As much as I enjoyed The Ice Cream Girls, I loved this even more. This gripping book is the definition of unputdownable, keeping you guessing until the final page. An intense and jaw-dropping thriller that you don’t want to miss.

Rating: ✮✮✮✮✮

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MEET THE AUTHOR:

Dorothy Koomson is the award-winning author of 15 novels and has been making up stories since she was 13 when she used to share her stories with her convent school friends. Her published titles include: Tell Me Your Secret, The Brighton Mermaid, The Friend, When I Was Invisible, That Girl From Nowhere, The Flavours of Love, The Woman He Loved Before, Goodnight, Beautiful and The Chocolate Run.

Dorothy’s first novel, The Cupid Effect, was published in 2003 (when she was quite a bit older than 13). Her third book, My Best Friend’s Girl, was selected for the Richard & Judy Summer Reads of 2006 and went on to sell over 500,000 copies. While her fourth novel, Marshmallows For Breakfast, has sold in excess of 250,000 copies. Dorothy’s books, The Ice Cream Girls and The Rose Petal Beach were both shortlisted for the popular fiction category of the British Book Awards in 2010 and 2013, respectively.

Dorothy’s novels have been translated into over 30 languages, and a TV adaptation loosely based on The Ice Cream Girls was shown on ITV1 in 2013. After briefly living in Australia, Dorothy now lives in Brighton.

In 2019 Dorothy was awarded the Image Award by The Black British Business Awards to celebrate and honour her achievements.

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Nine Elms by Robert Bryndza

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Published: June 25th, 2020
Publisher: Sphere
Format: Paperback, Kindle, Audio
Genre: Psychological Thriller, Mystery, Police Procedural, Crime Series.

I read this as part of a readalong with Tandem Collective UK. Thank you to Tandem Collective for the invitation to take part and Sphere for the gifted copy of the book.

SYNOPSIS:

From the breakthrough international bestselling author of The Girl in the Ice, a breathtaking, page-turning novel about a disgraced female detective’s fight for redemption. And survival.

Kate Marshall was a promising young police detective when she caught the notorious Nine Elms serial killer. But her greatest victory suddenly became a nightmare.

Fifteen years after those catastrophic, career-ending events, a copycat killer has taken up the Nine Elms mantle, continuing the ghastly work of his idol.

Enlisting her brilliant research assistant, Tristan Harper, Kate draws on her prodigious and long-neglected skills as an investigator to catch a new monster. But there’s much more than her reputation on the line: Kate was the original killer’s intended fifth victim . . . and his successor means to finish the job.

MY REVIEW:

Kate Marshall was at the start of a promising career when she unmasked the identity of the Nine Elms serial killer. But solving the case costs the young detective her career and fifteen years later she is still haunted professionally and personally by the case. Now working as a Criminology lecturer, the case comes back to plague her when a copycat takes up the Nine Elms Cannibal’s mantle and continues his idol’s gruesome killings. With the help of her research assistant Tristan Harper, Kate finds herself once again hunting a monster. But will she catch him before he finishes what the Nine Elms Cannibal didn’t?

Wow! What a ride! Dark, sinister, tense and atmospheric, this is exactly the kind of gripping thriller I love. I had heard great things about Robert Bryndza, and as a fan of crime fiction and investigative thrillers, I always planned to read his books. So, when the opportunity to read the first book in his new crime series with Tandem Collective came along, a book that was on my first ever list of Emma’s Anticipated Treasures when the hardback was released in January, I jumped at the chance and am now an instant fan. Bryndza is a seasoned thriller writer, and it shines through. Filled with well developed, memorable and compelling characters and with foreboding and suspense dripping from every page, I was on the edge of my seat from beginning to end.

Kate is a great protagonist and I really like her as the focus for a crime series. I liked that she is an ex-police officer in a break from the norm and her personal connection to the Nine Elms killer gave her, and the story, a bit of an edge.  The dynamic between her and her assistant was interesting and I liked how they worked together as they investigated the case. I’m looking forward to seeing where the author takes them in book two and hopefully learning a bit more about Tristan’s background. 

The Nine Elms Cannibal and the Fan are both predatory, merciless and ruthless killers. I found their relationship interesting. I am a self-confessed true crime fan, but can not imagine idolising a killer or wanting to copy or continue his or her ‘work’. Getting an insight into someone who does was both fascinating and disturbing. But strangely enough, it wasn’t the killers I loathed most of all. It was Enid, the mother of the Nine Elms cannibal. I don’t want to go into why as it will ruin the book, but I will say she is a vile, sickening woman who was very well written. 

Sharp, succinct, twisty and addictive, Nine Elms is one of my top thrillers this year. Gritty, gruesome and not for the faint hearted, it is a strong start to a new series that I will certainly be following and I am counting down impatiently to book two in November. 

Rating: ✮✮✮✮✮

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MEET THE AUTHOR:

Robert Bryndza began his career training at the Guildford School of Acting. He spent six years as an actor, doing all kinds of strange jobs in between, which was the perfect training for being an author. He began to write during a long period of unemployment, first comedy sketches, a show which he took to the Edinburgh Festival, and then four romantic comedy novels which he self-published, and they became Amazon charts bestsellers selling over 250,000 copies.

His debut crime thriller The Girl in the Ice was the first book in his Detective Erika Foster series. It has sold over 1 million copies in the English language, and won the Dead Good Reader Award for best kick-ass female character at the 2016 Harrogate Crime Festival. Erika Foster has gone on to kick-ass in five further books; The Night Stalker, Dark Water, Last Breath, Cold Blood and Deadly Secrets. The series was twice nominated in Goodreads Choice Awards (Mystery and Thriller category) in 2016 for The Girl in the Ice, and in 2017 for Last Breath. Robert’s books have sold over 3 million copies in the English language, and have been translated into 29 languages.

Nine Elms, the first book| in his new Kate Marshall private detective series was published late in 2019 and was an instant Amazon USA no.1 bestseller, an Amazon UK top 10 bestseller and topped bestselling charts around the world. The second book in the series, Shadow Sands, will be published in November 2020. Robert is British and lives in Slovakia.

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Strangers by C.L. Taylor ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Published: April 2nd, 2020
Publisher: Avon Books
Format: Hardback, Kindle
Genre: Mystery, Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Noir Fiction, Urban Fiction

Thank you to Tandem Collective UK for the invitation to take part in the readalong and to Avon Books for the gifted copy.

SYNOPSIS:

Ursula, Gareth and Alice have never met before.

Ursula thinks she killed the love of her life.
Gareth’s been receiving strange postcards.
And Alice is being stalked.

None of them are used to relying on others – but when the three strangers’ lives unexpectedly collide, there’s only one thing for it: they have to stick together. Otherwise, one of them will die.

Three strangers, two secrets, one terrifying evening.

The million-copy bestseller returns with a gripping new novel that will keep you guessing until the end.

MY REVIEW:

I read Strangers as part of a readalong via Tandem Collective UK and was so hooked that I read it in one sitting instead of over six days. This book is the definition of unputdownable.  

The story packs a punch from the first chapter, opening with a dead body and our three narrators – Alice, Ursula and Gareth – all wondering what to do. With a sense of foreboding, we then go back to a week earlier, a time when they had never met and had no idea their lives were about to become entwined in such a dark way. 

Each of the narrators is facing their own challenges: Alice is trying to get back into the dating scene two years after the end of her marriage, Ursula finds herself homeless and then living with a weird man because of the cheap room, and Gareth is trying to keep his mother at home despite her dementia worsening, while also working full-time. All the characters leap from the page, even secondary ones we barely saw. To begin with I wasn’t a fan of Ursula but by the end she was my favourite character; a complex person full of compassion and strength. The secondary characters were sometimes even more interesting than the narrators. Ursula’s landlord, Edward, was an odd duck and had me intrigued from the start. There was something suspicious about him, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I loved the cat and mouse game that developed between them and was full of questions about what it meant and where it would end.

C.L Taylor is one of my auto-buy authors but this is only the second time I’ve actually read one of her books. In Strangers she combines magnificent storytelling, edge-of-your-seat tension, mystery and compelling drama to create the perfect thriller. She expertly weaves the seemingly unconnected threads together using clever twists and turns.

Strangers is a tightly plotted, jaw-dropping and utterly brilliant thriller that should be on everyone’s bookshelf. You need to read it now!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Cally Taylor was born in Worcester and spent her early years living in various army camps in the UK and Germany. She studied Psychology at the University of Northumbria and went on forge a career in instructional design and e-Learning before leaving to write full time in 2014.

She started writing short stories in 2005 and was published widely in literary and women’s magazines. She also won several short story competitions. In 2009 and 2011 her romantic comedy novels (as Cally Taylor) were published by Orion and translated into fourteen languages. HEAVEN CAN WAIT was a bestseller in Hungary and China and HOME FOR CHRISTMAS was made into a feature film by JumpStart Productions. Whilst on maternity leave with her son Cally had an idea for a psychological thriller and turned to crime.

C.L. Taylor lives in Bristol with her partner and young son.

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The Truants by Kate Weinberg ⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: (UK) August 8th, 2019
(US) January 28th, 2020
Format: Hardcover, Kindle.
Genre: Suspense, psychological fiction, coming of age fiction.

 SYNOPSIS:

People disappear when they most want to be seen. During the first year of university, a group of friends discover the true cost of an extraordinary life in this captivating debut novel about obsession, rivalry and coming of age. 

Jess Walker, middle child of a middle class family, has perfected the art of vanishing in plain sight. But when she arrives at a concrete university campus under flat, grey East Anglican skies, her world flares with colour. 

Drawn into a tightly-knit group of rule breakers – headed up by their maverick teacher Lorna Clay – Jess begins to experiment with a new version of herself. But the dynamic between the friends begins to darken as they share secrets, lovers and finally a tragedy. Jess is thrown up against the question she fears most: what is the true cost of the extraordinary?

MY REVIEW:

“A tiny, insignificant crime. It’s only now, looking back at all the choices I was about to make, that I detect the faintest of watermarks, the first of many lines I was about to cross.”

Jess Walker had always yearned for the extraordinary. After she reads a novel that changes her life she applies to the University where the author, Lorna Clay, is a tutor. When she’s accepted she thinks this could be the beginning of the life she’s longed for. But Jess’s dream is about to descend into a nightmare in this coming of age story of friendship, love, obsession and tragedy. 

The atmosphere is thick with foreboding from the start, like the wheels have been set in motion and they’re powerless to prevent disaster. Truths are slowly revealed, tragedy strikes and the lives of those involved will never be the same again. It is a stark reminder of the consequences of even the seemingly small, insignificant decisions we make in our lives, and how quickly life can change into something unrecognisable that can’t be put back together like it was before.

“Amazing how, with three little words, she’d relieved me if the mantle of my ordinariness, made me believe that I had done something brave and true.”

I liked Jess and found her to be a relatable protagonist. I think we can all recognise that feeling of wanting more out of life, longing for adventure and wanting to be seen. We’ve all been that young person who’s trying to figure out who they are and what their place is in the world. And we all remember the first time we fell in love. I understood her desire to reinvent herself after an unhappy life and why she was drawn to the outgoing, rule-breakers who are the centre of attention of any room rather than fading quietly into the shadows as she has always done. But she doesn’t see the darker side of these people, what they’re masking with  their extrovert personalities and lifestyle, how adept some of them are at manipulation and deceit.

Though Jess is our main character, Dr Lorna Clay feels like she’s at the centre of this book from the start. Her book has become a kind of manifesto for life for Jess and after meeting her, Jess’ reverence only increases and she truly thinks Lorna will change her life. I was increasingly worried she was heading to have her heart broken by this woman she had put on such a high pedestal and could do nothing to stop it. The friendship between Jess, Georgie, Alec and Nick is integral to the plot and it is the immediate, strong and loyal friendship between Jess and Georgie that starts it all. They are opposites, the yin to each other’s yang, but complement each other wonderfully. The exotic, alluring, charming, Alec someone I felt sure had another level to him, a deeper mystery shrouded between the life he chose to share. He seems to be the ringleader, the one who first suggests they play truant, the one suggesting taking shrooms and smoke by the riverbank, and the one who is dating Georgie but seeming to fan the sparks sizzling between him and Jess, who is dating Nick. I didn’t trust him but couldn’t put my finger on why. I liked the different elements each of the characters brought to the story through their different personalities.

The English Literature course Jess takes focuses on the work of Agatha Christie and both her work and the novel by Lorna Clay, also called The Truants, are referenced throughout. As the story progresses, we see parallels with Christie’s novel and what’s happening to Jess and her friends. I enjoyed this aspect and how literature and reading were such a big part of the storyline. I read The Truants as part of a buddy read and the author shared with us the reading list for Lorna’s course, which I now have added to my own tbr. 

The Truants is a well-written, intriguing and multilayered debut. The author combines rich, beautiful prose with dense, cloying apprehension to create a beguiling read that I thoroughly enjoyed. 

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