Blog tour: 31 January to 11 February 2020

Synopsis

Ever wondered what it’s like to be a juror in a high-profile celebrity trial?
Well … now you don’t have to.

Step inside the jury room to deliberate one of the most talked-about court cases of the decade.

SHE SAID
… all three men got her drunk, led her to a hotel room and took advantage of her.

THREE SAID
… she was a willing participant and consented to sex with each of them.

After five weeks of listening to all of the evidence and all of the arguments in a celebrity rape trial that has gripped an entire nation, the jury sit down to begin their deliberations.

But they don’t know who to believe …
… will you?

My review

Set in Dublin, She Said, Three Said tells the story of three men, one of whom is a famous footballer, who are accused of raping a woman they meet on a night out, and the jury, who are tasked with deciding whether they are guilty or not.

The three men are childhood friends, red-haired footballer Jason Kenny (who has played for Everton and Sunderland and internationally for Ireland), Zach Brophy and Li Xiang, all aged 35, and the woman, a former model, is called Sabrina Doyle, aged 25. While on a night out, the men happen to meet up with Sabrina, who is actually working that evening, and a chain of events occurs that ends up with the four of them together in the penthouse suite of a nearby hotel, and the men are accused of rape.

After five long weeks, the trial has just ended and the story begins at the point where the jury are deliberating and considering their verdict in the jury rooms in Dublin’s Criminal Courts. Over the course of a few hours, we learn a bit more about the 12 jurors and their thought processes as they consider all the evidence and testimonies they’ve heard. Li didn’t take to the stand during the trial, similar to most defendants when faced with a rape charge, but both Jason and Zach opted to give evidence.

In flashbacks, from the viewpoints of the three men and Sabrina, we find out about the events leading up to the incident on the evening in question, from 7pm (when they first met) till gone midnight (when the alleged rape occurred).

It’s really interesting to see the thought processes of the jury and how they deliberate the evidence, witness statements and testimonies from experts. They need to be sure, beyond reasonable doubt, that the three men raped Sabrina, and it’s so difficult for them all to remain objective and consider what has happened without letting their own emotions get in the way.

It’s also fascinating to read about events from the viewpoints of the main protagonists, especially as they’re all hiding secrets and not being honest with each other. It’s frustrating to hear their inner thoughts and wonder what might have happened if they had actually voiced them to each other rather than just assuming things and misinterpreting each others’ actions!

I really enjoyed this well-plotted, compelling and engaging story. It felt frighteningly real and I could imagine events actually happening the way they did. The four main protagonists were well written and I liked the way we slowly learnt more about their characters over the course of the novel. They all had an interesting back story, which went someone to explaining their actions. I liked learning more about the jurors too, who were initially described as ‘Number One’ to ‘Number Twelve’, but we gradually discovered the people behind the number. As expected, the jurors were from all walks of life and a range of different ages, and made up of seven women and five men.

Overall, this was a really thought-provoking book, which really made me think about a lot of things – the pressures juries are under, the dangers women face while on a night out, how complicated people are, and the fact that events can conspire to create an awful situation, which couldn’t have been predicted at the start of a normal night out involving three men who have been friends since primary school. Shocking and disturbing stuff, and a rather tense and uncomfortable read at times! I definitely wouldn’t have liked to have been on that jury deciding the fate of the men.

I’m looking forward to reading more from the author and will be checking out his other books, Midday, which I already have on my Kindle, and Whatever Happened to Betsy Blake? and The Suicide Pact.

Buy the book

She Said, Three Said by David B. Lyons can be purchased from Amazon on Kindle and in paperback now.

About the author

David B. Lyons is an international bestselling author – a writer of psychological thrillers. He has reached number one in charts in Ireland, UK, Canada and Australia.

David grew up in Dublin – the city in which his novels are set – but currently spends his time between Birmingham in the UK and the Irish capital. David is married to a Brummie, Kerry, and they have one daughter, Lola.

He has lectured in creative writing in colleges and universities in both Ireland and in the UK and coaches people how to write with free tutorials at TheOpenAuthor.com.

Twitter: @TheOpenAuthor
Facebook: @AuthorDavidBLyons
Website: http://theopenauthor.com

Blog tour

Thanks to Emma Welton at damppebbles blog tours for my digital copy of She Said, Three Said and for my place on the blog tour.

See the banner below for more stops on the #blogtour.

Blog tour: 27 January to 8 February 2020

Synopsis

A group of motorists become stranded on a lonely stretch of highway during a Christmas Eve blizzard and fight for survival against an unnatural force in the storm. The gathered survivors realize a tenuous connection among them means it may not be a coincidence that they all ended up on this highway …

An attempt to seek help leads a few of the travelers to a house in the woods where a twisted toymaker with a mystical snow globe is hell bent on playing deadly games with a group of people just trying to get home for the holidays.

Extract

I’m delighted to share an extract of Chapter 1 of Snowball with you today.

[…] Toby knew approximately which mile marker he was at on the turnpike, which meant it was a few miles between exits, one of the more desolate stretches on the highway, with nothing but woods lining both sides. No easy way to get off. Nobody should even be on it on a night like this.

He unlatched the shovel attached to the side of the truck.

With the wind howling like a freight train, he could barely hear himself think. But another sound joined the night.

Someone calling for help.

He turned toward the front of the truck, the direction the sound was coming from.

It had to be his imagination. The wind screeched too loud to hear anything else. But it came again, a low moan. Someone hurt? Out here?

No. It was a trick of the wind. It just sounded like a person’s cry.

But it compelled him enough to walk toward the front of his truck and around the wide plow blades. Ignoring the snow pelting his now-numbed cheeks, he stared out to where the headlight beams ended, cut off by the swirling snow and dark night.

A figure stood in the road.

Motionless.

Wet snow stuck to his eyelashes and he wiped it away with one gloved hand, the other still gripping the shovel. It was still there. A tall, stout figure.

“Hello?” Toby called, his voice sucked away so that he couldn’t be sure the person had heard him.

He climbed into the snow on the road in front of him, sinking up to his thighs. He struggled to lift each leg and plant it in front of him. When he got a few feet closer, he realized what he was looking at.

A snowman.

What the hell? he thought. Is this some kind of joke? Who the hell would build a snowman in the middle of the turnpike?

There was no mistaking it. Three round balls of snow piled on top of each other. Branches for arms stuck out of the sides of the middle section. A black top hat perched on the head, tilted forward so Toby couldn’t see the face. A red-and-white scarf wrapped around the neck, its ends flapping in the wind.

With everything he’d been through this miserable night, this senseless act irked Toby the most, and he felt like smashing the damn thing with his shovel.

He gripped the handle and took a step forward.

Then the snowman’s head rose, tilting back as its face came into view. Beneath the coal-black eyes and long crooked carrot nose was a black mouth grinning with two rows of sharp teeth.

Toby froze in his tracks, bringing the shovel up against his body defensively, his heart thudding in his chest.

He turned to run, but his feet were stuck. He pulled at his legs until the snow finally released its grip. Toby stumbled through the snow, like wading through wet cement. He didn’t dare look behind him, because he knew if he did, he’d see that deranged snowman lurching after him.

What the hell?!

The snowplow was only a few feet away, but the snow made his efforts so slow, he didn’t think he’d be able to reach it. He tossed the shovel aside, as if losing the excess weight would help. His arms swung wildly, trying to propel him forward through the thick snow. Cold air sucked deep into his lungs, preventing him from screaming. He could hear a swooshing sound from behind.

He slipped and fell into the road beside his front tire. Scrambling, he got up and grabbed the handle of the driver’s side door. It was at that moment when he finally glanced behind him.

Toby saw nothing but the swirling snow.

He opened the door and climbed up into his seat. He slumped back, releasing an exhausted breath, only to continue panting. He removed his gloves and saw his hands were shaking.

A mirage? he wondered. Toby knew tired drivers sometimes hallucinated. Highway hypnosis they called it. Was that what had happened to him? He had been plowing for nearly twenty hours straight, and at his age—

Crack!

A branch smacked against the driver’s side window, causing him to jump. The long branch split into three thinner ones, like fingers on a misshapen hand. It scraped down the glass, etching narrow cracks, as if trying to claw its way in.

No, Toby thought. This can’t be.

He punched down on the door lock and moved to the middle of the bench seat. He shut the headlights off. Maybe it won’t see me, he hoped.

Crack!

The branch came down again, this time on the windshield before him. The three twiglike fingers bent, digging at the glass.

It can’t get in, Toby told himself. The glass is too strong. It won’t break.

The branch pulled away from the windshield. Toby peered out the glass, looking around all three sides of his cab. He didn’t see anything.

A strange sound came, faintly.

Toby turned off the truck’s engine and listened. It sounded like it was coming from under the truck’s hood. A scraping sound. It was getting closer.

Then he realized it was coming from the vents in the dashboard.

Buy the book

Snowball by Gregory Bastianelli can be purchased from Amazon on Kindle and in paperback, and as an eBook from Kobo and iBooks.

About the author

Gregory Bastianelli is the author of the novels Loonies and Jokers Club. His stories have appeared in the magazines Black Ink Horror, Sinister Tales and Beyond Centauri; the anthologies Night Terrors II, Cover of Darkness and Encounters; and the online magazines Absent Willow Review and Down in the Cellar. His novella, The Lair of the Mole People, appeared in the pulp anthology, Men & Women of Mystery Vol. II.

He graduated from the University of New Hampshire, where he studied writing under instructors Mark Smith, Thomas Williams and Theodore Weesner. He worked for nearly two decades at a small daily newspaper where the highlights of his career were interviewing shock rocker Alice Cooper and B-movie icon Bruce Campbell.

He became enchanted with the stories of Ray Bradbury as a young child, and his love of horror grew with the likes of Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, Stephen King and Ramsey Campbell.

He lives in Dover, New Hampshire, in a Colonial home built in the 1700s. He enjoys kayaking, hiking and bicycling in the summer and snowshoeing and racquetball in the winter. Along with spending time with family, he enjoys travelling, especially to Italy where he has visited his ancestral home and relatives residing there and hiked the Path of the Gods on the Amalfi Coast and to the top of Mt. Vesuvius.

Twitter: @gregorybastiane
Website: https://www.gregorybastianelli.com

Blog tour

Thanks to Flame Tree Press and Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for my copy of Snowball and for my place on the blog tour.

See the banner below for more stops on the #blogtour.

Blog tour: 27 to 31 January 2020

Synopsis

Gordon Bemrose, a shady local businessman who lives in a large house on an island in the River Welland, decides he can make easy money from the property by using it for Country House murder weekends. For the first, introductory, weekend he recruits ten people from very different backgrounds: Ava and Reggie Dack and Lizzie and Jackson Fox, two self-made couples from Essex; Sonia and Richard Renwick, respectively a successful beautician and her husband, who is a failed writer; Dora Westerman, a lady of indeterminate age and obviously very slender means; Amelia Baker, an English literature student; and Margarett and Colin Franklin, a mixed-race couple of modest origins whom all the others look down upon. Reluctantly assisting with the festivities are Patti Gardner, Gordon’s niece, who has been roped in to speak about the work of a SOCO, and Anton Greenweal, his nephew, who has achieved instant fame on a TV reality show and will be the lead actor in a short play to be performed during the weekend. The play is central to Gordon’s plans: he intends it to be based on a popular farce, but with a macabre twist as its finale.

Events take an unexpected turn when a real murder takes place; and DI Yates, investigating, discovers that each of the guests had an ulterior motive for participating in the crime weekend. Everyone on the island becomes a suspect, including Patti, his former girlfriend. Meanwhile, an epidemic of hare coursing is sweeping the county. This illegal and cruel ‘sport’ is pursued by cynical gamblers who bet high stakes on whose dog will catch the hare. On her way back to Spalding police station from a meeting in Bourne, DS Juliet Armstrong discovers a badly-wounded Saluki that has been abandoned by hare coursers and is determined to bring them to justice.

The eighth DI Yates novel is a modern take on the country house murder story; it also explores the crime of hare coursing, which is currently top of the agenda for police forces in Lincolnshire.

Article

I’m delighted to be hosting an interesting article about Spalding, where the DI Yates series is set, written by Christina James.

The geography and history of belonging

Spalding is the town of my birth and the place where I grew up. I left to go to university, and I have not been resident there since I graduated three years later. For many years, I was only an occasional visitor to the town. The reasons are complex, but at their heart was my parents’ very acrimonious 1970s divorce. Both were born in London, although both moved to Spalding as very small children.

My parents, therefore, were of the town but did not belong to it in the same way as if they had been natives. My mother certainly believed that somehow her life would have been more exciting, fuller of promise and opportunity if she’d been able to stay in London. My father slotted into life in the town more easily, but his childhood was overshadowed by his many domineering petit-bourgeois relatives, aspects of some of whom appear in the first Yates novel, In the Family.

At home, I heard about what a dull place Spalding was: lacking in charm, devoid of cultural interest, a grim compendium of mud, fog, ignorance, tulips, sugar beet and potatoes. I didn’t quite see it like that myself: my childhood was a happy one, and it was happy because of Spalding, not despite it. I attended excellent schools, had some nice friends, and was able to make the most of the huge amount of freedom children routinely enjoyed at the time by exploring South Lincolnshire on my bike, usually accompanied by one of my friends.

What I didn’t manage to do was join up the dots. It was assumed as soon as I went to the high school that one day I would leave the town. Both my parents were ambitious for me, my mother because she had the ingrained snobbery of the daughter of an upper domestic servant, and my father, I think, because by agreeing to educate a girl he was thumbing his nose at the inverted snobbery and male chauvinism of his austere yet slightly disreputable bunch of elderly relatives.

I took a sporadic interest in the town myself, but I never really got under Spalding’s skin. I’d like to dodge some of the blame for this by laying it also at the door my primary school, good though it was, because when we started to learn geography, we began by carrying out a textbook-based project on Romney Marsh, in Kent. I have no idea why this area was selected, but I suspect it was simply because the teacher had the relevant set of activity books and children’s maps. It suggested to me that geography was the study of mysterious, semi-mythical places that I did not know. The logical extension to this line of reasoning was that Spalding was neither mysterious nor interesting: it wasn’t worthy of study by the children who lived there.

When later I studied archaeology, I was invited to the Spalding Gentleman’s Society to help classify the many boxes of stone age flints that were kept there. This proved to be an impossible task, especially for an archaeological novice, because the stalwart gentlemen who had collected these flints over the previous two centuries had kept no record of where or when they had found them, how deeply they had been buried, or preserved any evidence that might have indicated their provenance. Consequently, although I liked working in the dusty, richly-furnished and very quiet book-lined room at the Society, I suspected – I’m sure, quite correctly – that the work I was doing was worthless and that I didn’t really belong in such a place. That feeling was compounded by the very ‘gentlemanly’ nature of the whole enterprise. I was a girl, allowed into this gentlemen’s holy of holies on sufferance, as a benign favour. I could never hope truly to be a part of it myself.

All these things contributed to the notion that although Spalding was a pleasant enough place and had given me quite a privileged childhood, I was just passing through. I certainly didn’t expect to experience the deep fascination with and love for Spalding that I feel now.

Here are a few things that make Spalding special.

It is very old – older than its name, which derives from that of a seventh-century tribe. The first settlement probably pre-dated the Romans. Spalding and the surrounding countryside supplied meat, wool and produce to the richest and most important East Anglian towns and cities of the Middle Ages, at a time when the eastern side of the country was politically, economically and socially more significant than the west. In early modern times, its marshy lands and frequent floods attracted the best Dutch engineers of the age. Their stories are colourful and inspiring. The town itself is one of a handful of English towns whose layout hasn’t changed since the eighteenth century, dominated as it is by the majestically deep River Welland and two massive market squares.

I knew from a young age how Spalding’s prosperity derived from agriculture, but not until much later that it had a rich maritime tradition as well. I can just remember the cargo ships that used to ride the Welland to Birch’s cattle feed warehouse, at the lower end of High Street; but I didn’t know how Commercial Road, the road that connected with the High Street further down the river, came by its name. I didn’t know that the rows of tiny late-eighteenth century cottages that then still standing in Commercial Road and Marine Road were the homes of local sailors who regularly sailed down the river and out to sea; and when on dry land kept within their own small, tight community.

I know much more about the people who have in the past lived in South Lincolnshire now, and I’ve realised that it’s had more than its fair share of famous – or notorious – former residents. One of the triggers that inspired Sausage Hall was the discovery that as a young man Cecil Rhodes was for several months a patient at a TB sanatorium near Sleaford. I’ve long known that Captain James Cook came from Yorkshire, but I now know he had strong links with Bourne.  

A phenomenon that interests me is that when you start thinking about a particular thing, however arcane it may be, it keeps on cropping up and hitting you in the face at unexpected moments. The best name for this is probably ‘happenstance’. On a recent visit to London, killing time in the British Museum, I wandered into the room dedicated to the early antiquaries. A case of bronze age swords contained four particularly impressive specimens, all virtually intact. I bent to scrutinise the showcard. It was inscribed with the words ‘on loan from Spalding Gentleman’s Society’.  

Then there is coincidence. ‘Coincidence’ can be even stranger than happenstance. In 2019 I visited Canada for the first time and spent most of the second week at a place called Arowhon Pines, an adventure lodge in the Algonquin National Park. The people who ran the lodge had a pontoon boat. The skipper took 15 guests out on the boat at dusk and I managed to get a seat on my last evening. I was quickly mesmerised by the skipper’s narrative: he had named the various islands, streams and waterways himself. He was saying ‘ … and this is Peterborough … and this is the Welland …. And this is Deeping St Nicholas.’ Deeping St Nicholas! Who would ever think of christening a wild, remote place in Northern Canada after that village unless they knew it? Afterwards I learned that his name was Jeff Brown, that he had been born in Deeping St James in 1955; that his mother was born in Spalding; and they’d emigrated to Canada while he was still a young child. The geography had stayed with him. (Chasing Hares begins in Deeping St Nicholas – and the first chapter was written at least a year before I met Jeff Brown.)

So there it is. Spalding is now to me a magical place, a place steeped in geography and history, a place forged by the exploits of farmers, soldiers, sailors, explorers, engineers and some ordinary people, like my own ancestors, the shop-keepers and domestic servants. It is a place that sends out its ripples around the world. They fetch up in unexpected locations, from the British Museum to Canada. It is a place that I will continue to study; I know I’ll always enjoy the richness of its secrets as it yields them up.

Buy the book

Chasing Hares by Christina James can be purchased from Amazon on Kindle and in paperback, as an eBook from Kobo and iBooks, and as a paperback from Salt Publishing.

About the author

Christina James is the author of a crime thriller series set in the Fenlands of South Lincolnshire. Her first crime novel, In the Family, finds Detective Inspector Yates investigating a cold case that leads deep into the secrets of a dysfunctional family. Almost Love, the second of the series, published in June 2013, concerns the mysterious disappearance of a veteran archaeologist. Sausage Hall, published in November 2014, deals with the exploitation of women in both Victorian England and the present day. Christina James is the pseudonym of an established non-fiction writer.

Twitter: @CAJamesWriter
Facebook: @Christina-James
Website: https://christinajamesblog.com

Blog tour

Thanks to Emma Dowson at Salt Publishing for my copy of Chasing Hares and for my place on the blog tour.

See the banner below for more stops on the #blogtour.

Blog tour: 1 to 31 January 2020

Synopsis

After an unexpected death, three generations of women take over the family funeral-home and PI businesses in the first book of a brilliant, page-turning and darkly funny new series.

The Skelfs are a well-known Edinburgh family, proprietors of a long-established funeral-home business, and private investigators. When patriarch Jim dies, it’s left to his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah to take charge of both businesses, kicking off an unexpected series of events.

Dorothy discovers mysterious payments to another women, suggesting that Jim wasn’t the husband she thought he was. Hannah’s best friend Mel has vanished from university, and the simple adultery case that Jenny takes on leads to something stranger and far darker than any of them could have imagined.

As the women struggle to come to terms with their grief, and the demands of the business threaten to overwhelm them, secrets from the past emerge, which change everything … It’s a compelling and tense thriller and a darkly funny, warm portrait of a family in turmoil.

My review

In A Dark Matter, in Edinburgh, we meet three generations of the Skelf family, at a time when they have experienced the awful event of the death of patriarch, Jim, aged 70, from a sudden heart attack. His wife, Dorothy, also 70, daughter, Jenny, aged 45, and granddaughter, Hannah, 20, are all struggling to cope with the death of such a big character and must work together and take over the reins of the family funeral business and private investigator firm.

While they each try to be strong and come to terms with Jim’s death in their own way and cope with the relentless pressures of the funeral business, other events occur and secrets are revealed that shake their very foundations and make them question everything they know about life and death.

Hannah is a physics student at the local university and when her friend and flatmate, Mel, goes missing and doesn’t meet her parents for a celebratory birthday meal for her mum, no one seems to take her disappearance seriously, including the local police force, so Hannah investigates herself and gets in a few scrapes while trying to uncover the truth.

After being made unemployed from her freelance work, divorced Jenny decides to give notice on her flat in Portobello to stay and help her mum with the business and ends up investigating the husband of someone whose sister committed suicide as his wife believes he is having an affair.

Drum-playing Dorothy has questions of her own about her husband of 50 years, Jim, after a startling financial discovery, and she asks an old police friend, Thomas Olsson, to look into things for her.

We also learn about the general workings of both businesses and meet the families and friends of several people who have died or who require the private investigation services.

I really enjoyed this dark, engrossing book! I liked the fact it was something a bit different from usual – whoever heard of a funeral director company that also specialises in private investigation work?! The main characters, Dorothy, Jenny and Hannah, were all rather strong women and I admired their persistence and courage at a difficult time. Hannah’s girlfriend, Indy, is also really brave, caring and thoughtful, despite experiencing some hard times in her life too.

There were some lovely descriptions of Edinburgh and its various sights, as well as the local bars and restaurants, and it was also fascinating to learn more about the procedures involved in preparing bodies for funerals and cremations.

Overall an intriguing book with several layers and strands of stories and I enjoyed getting to know all three generations of the Skelf family. The book was well plotted and very entertaining and I was gripped by events and keen to find out how everything was resolved. I like police procedural-type books rather than cosy crime reads and, although the women’s investigations were carried out in a rather unusual fashion with some rather bizarre decisions and actions at times, I liked the way the story unfolded and facts were revealed, coming to a dramatic conclusion as the various cases were solved. A rather dark story line with some unpleasant scenes but never morbid and there were some amusing and touching moments too.

I’m looking forward to reading more about the Skelfs and their escapades in the next book in the series and will be checking out the author’s other books like Fault Lines and Breakers, which I already have on my Kindle.

Buy the book

A Dark Matter by Doug Johnstone can be purchased from Amazon on Kindle and in paperback, and as an eBook from Kobo and iBooks.

About the author

Doug Johnstone is the author of 10 novels, most recently Breakers (2018), which has been shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year. Several of his books have been bestsellers and award winners, and his work has been praised by the likes of Val McDermid, Irvine Welsh and Ian Rankin. He’s taught creative writing and been writer in residence at various institutions – including a funeral home – and has been an arts journalist for 20 years.

Doug is a songwriter and musician with five albums and three EPs released, and he plays drums for the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, a band of crime writers. He’s also player-manager of the Scotland Writers Football Club. He lives in Edinburgh.

Twitter: @doug_johnstone
Website: https://dougjohnstone.com

Blog tour

Thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for my digital copy of A Dark Matter and for my place on the blog tour.

See the banner below for more stops on the #blogtour.

Blog tour: 20 to 29 January 2020

Synopsis

A life has been taken. But whose life is it?

On a stifling hot day, former journalist Dee Doran finds the crumpled body of her friend at the roadside. Katie and her little boy, Jake, have been a light in Dee’s otherwise desolate life – now a woman is dead and her son is missing.

Katie has been keeping secrets for a long time. Years earlier, she fell for the wrong person. But he was in love with someone else; who he couldn’t have but couldn’t keep away from. When jealousy and desire spilled over into murder Katie hid the truth, and has been pretending ever since.

As Dee assists the police with their enquiries, she’s compelled to investigate too. She realises Katie wasn’t who she claimed to be. Lies are catching up. Stories are becoming unravelled. Revenge is demanded and someone must pay the price. The question is: who?

My review

Dee Doran is in her early fifties and a bit of a recluse. She’s moved back to Eastbourne after the breakdown of her marriage and death of her mother. She was an investigative journalist at the Daily Post in London but is now unemployed, after a career break to look after her dying mum, and lives alone in the house that belonged to her parents.

One sweltering afternoon, on her way to the shops at the harbour, a hungover Dee discovers the body of a woman lying in the road. She’s been run over in a hit-and-run incident and her body is badly damaged. Straightaway, she recognises the victim as her friend, neighbour and tenant, Katie Hope, who is a piano teacher and 27-year-old single mum of Jake, aged two. Shopping is strewn across the path and there’s a twisted pushchair with two wheels missing but no sign of Jake. Dee hunts for him, searching the beach, surrounding areas and the mobile home where him and Katie live, desperately calling his name.

Detective Inspector Ed Mitchell, a former school friend, interviews Dee about what has happened and the police get the story about the hit and run and missing child out to the general public and ask anyone with information about Katie or Jake to contact them immediately. Intriguingly, we discover that all is not as it seems and that Katie isn’t who she says she is.

As Dee helps the police with their enquiries, she also uses her investigative skills to try and work out exactly what has happened to Katie and hunt for Jake. As she searches for the truth, she draws upon her 20-plus years of experience and the help of useful contacts that she’s made, including old colleagues and her cousin and editor-in-chief of the Recorder, Louise, and she even speaks to her alcoholic ex-husband, Billy Morrison, who is also a journalist and desperate to try and scoop a story.

I quite liked Dee. She was lonely and drank too much but had had a tough time and seemed a bit beaten after her divorce and her mum’s death. She still seems to have feelings for her ex, who she was with for 16 years, despite his failings and the fact he is a ‘complete and utter waste of space’. She regrets never having children but has built up a nice friendship with Katie and adores little Jake. She was brave and foolish at times as she went all out to discover the truth.

In this well-plotted, dark and twisty book, we learn more about Katie’s past in flashbacks. She had a rather sad, lonely childhood; her dad ran the Railway Tavern pub in Hither Green in London but he didn’t spend much time with Katie. She wasn’t allowed to work behind the bar and he didn’t like her socialising with anyone. She makes some friends but the relationships are rather unhealthy and they treat her badly.

As Dee visits various places in her quest, we start to uncover the truth and the back story to recent awful events. There was some clever misdirection and we weren’t totally sure who was who in the book. Several of the characters were rather flawed and unlikable and I enjoyed trying to work out the motives for Katie’s murder and guess who was involved. There were a few suspects and clues as the story progressed.

I Could Be You is intriguing and suspenseful, and I was gripped and keen to find out exactly who Katie was and whether her son was still alive or not. Overall, I enjoyed this book and will definitely be checking out the author’s other novels and looking out for her future work.

Buy the book

I Could Be You by Sheila Bugler can be purchased from Amazon on Kindle and in paperback now, and as an eBook from Kobo and iBooks.

About the author

Sheila Bugler grew up in a small town in the west of Ireland. After studying Psychology at University College Galway, she left Ireland and worked in Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland and Argentina before finally settling in Eastbourne, where she now lives with her husband, Sean, and their two children.

Twitter: @sheilab10
Facebook: @SheilaBuglerauthorpage
Website: http://sheilabugler.co.uk

Blog tour

Thanks to Tracy Fenton at Compulsive Readers for my digital copy of I Could Be You and for my place on the blog tour.

See the banner below for more stops on the #blogtour.

Blog tour: 21 to 25 January 2020

Synopsis

She’s everything he dreamed of. Isn’t she?

Ben can’t believe his luck when Bella walks into his life, just when he needs her most. Sexy, impulsive and intelligent, Bella is everything he ever wanted. And Bella wants him. All to herself.

In fact, Bella decides that everything is better when it is just the two of them, making it harder for Ben’s friends and family to stay in touch. And then a sudden tragedy triggers a chain of events which throws Ben headlong into a nightmare.

Secrets, lies, vengeance and betrayal are at the heart of this utterly twisted story about a family that is destroyed when SHE becomes part of it …

My review

SHE tells the story of 30-year-old advertising executive, Ben, who is still devastated by the fairly recent split from his girlfriend of 12 years, Charlotte. While having a drink after work one evening with his oldest and closest friend, Matt, he meets the gorgeous, stunning and perfect Bella and though he doesn’t realise it, it’s the start of a nightmare for Ben, his family and friends!

Ben finds Bella irresistible – she is beautiful, head turning, intelligent and he is completely mesmerised by her. He is immediately smitten and he is surprised and pleased that she seems to feel the same way. Bella moves in with him straightaway and their relationship progresses at a whirlwind pace.

Told in several parts, we first learn about events of the past few months from Ben’s point of view, then we get Bella’s take on things and it’s intriguing – and chilling in Bella’s case – to see how they both interpret events and what they’re each thinking. It’s a little bit repetitive but helps us to understand Bella’s behaviour.

Bella is an amazing character – she’s awful, horrible and nasty but strangely compelling! She treats Ben so badly but he can’t resist her despite her controlling and manipulative behaviour. She regularly lies to Ben, is possessive and domineering and punishes him in all sorts of ways whenever she considers he’s done something wrong. She’s so selfish and passive aggressive and everything is about her and she can be quite woe as me and hard done by too. Bella wants Ben all to herself and alienates him from everyone else. This is such a chilling story of the worst relationship you can imagine!

I don’t want to say too much about the plot but the consequences of their relationship and Bella’s actions have far-reaching consequences for all connected with Ben and she has a devastating affect on his whole family and closest friends.

I was completely enthralled and horrified by this twisted and twisty book and found it really engaging and gripping. I thought it was well written and cleverly plotted and the characters are well drawn. It was terrible how beaten Ben became – a shadow of his former self – as he was unable or unwilling to stand up to Bella’s abuse for various reasons.

I really enjoyed this dark, tense, suspenseful psychological thriller and raced through it in a few hours! I couldn’t put it down and was frantically turning the pages to see if Bella got her comeuppance or if she was going to destroy everyone! I definitely recommend SHE, the author’s first psychological thriller, and look forward to reading more of her books.

Buy the book

SHE by H.C. Warner can be purchased from Amazon on Kindle now and in paperback on 23 January, and as an eBook from Kobo and iBooks.

About the author

H.C. Warner is a former Head of Daytime at both ITV and Channel 4, where she was responsible for a variety of TV shows including Come Dine With Me, Loose Women, Good Morning Britain and Judge Rinder.

Helen writes her novels on the train to work in London from her home in Essex, which she shares with her husband and their two children.

Twitter: @HCWarnerauthor
Facebook: @HelenWarnerOfficial
Website: https://www.helenwarner.com

Blog tour

Thanks to Jessica Lee at HQ Stories for my copy of SHE and for my place on the blog tour.

See the banner below for more stops on the #blogtour.

Blog tour: 13 to 19 January 2020

Synopsis

It’s June 2008 and 21-year-old Adam Lattimer vanishes, presumed dead. The strain of his disappearance breaks his already fragile family.

Ten years later, with his mother deceased and siblings scattered across the globe, Adam turns up unannounced at the family home. His siblings return reluctantly to Spanish Cove, but Adam’s reappearance poses more questions than answers. The past is a tangled web of deceit.

And, as tension builds, it’s apparent somebody has planned murderous revenge for the events of 10 years ago.

My review

Six Wicked Reasons tells the torrid tale of the dysfunctional Lattimer family who are split apart by the sudden disappearance of brother and son, Adam, then reunited when he turns up unexpectedly 10 years later. A celebratory party on a yacht organised by the patriarch of the family comes to a horrific end when he’s found dead in the water with a nasty head wound. Was it an accident or has someone taken revenge after suffering from years of his mental and emotional abuse?

The family consists of father, Frazer Lattimer, mother, Kathleen, and six children, Adam, Clio, Ellen, James, Kate and Ryan. They live in a ‘beautiful house on the hill’ in Spanish Cove in County Wexford, Ireland. They are a wealthy family, as a result of Kathleen’s parent’s portfolio of investments. They should all be perfectly happy but problems run deep in this family and some are extremely well hidden.

In 2008, in his final year of college, Adam goes missing after failing his exams and Kathleen is devastated and desperately hopes that he’ll be found. Despite numerous searches, there’s no trace of him and she dies a year or so later, aged 51, believing Adam is dead. The family splinters apart and most of the children leave the family home to head abroad, ending up in Dublin, Limone in Italy and New York.

When Adam returns 10 years later, the whole family are shocked and struggle to understand where he’s been all this time and why he hasn’t been in touch. Frazer orders everyone to return to the family home and there are fraught conversations as they are all reunited and discuss what has happened over the years and they relive bad memories and try to prevent their darkest secrets being revealed. They’re all carrying feelings of regret and guilt but still aren’t being honest with each other. There are accusations and recriminations as they dredge up the past and all the anger comes to a head.

Frazer arranges a party on board a yacht hired from old family friend, Danny McHugh, who also captains the vessel, and they all continue to argue amongst each other, with two of them throwing punches before the dramatic conclusion to the evening.

Detective Sergeant Rob Downes of the county police force ends up being in charge of the case, despite being a local and having a personal connection to the family, as there are two other major incidents happening in the area that night. He spends over four hours questioning all the eight people who were on board the yacht several times each. Everyone seems to be lying and he struggles to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

This is a cleverly plotted book and I enjoyed the way that we slowly learnt more about all the characters and their actions and stories as the novel progressed. There were multiple revelations and shocking secrets were revealed at various points, which went some way to explain why the family were so damaged and upset with each other. Each of the characters is well drawn and we build up an interesting picture of their relationships with each other: who clashed and who got on better than others.

Frazer is a rather harsh father and very cruel and horrible to each of his children at times. He seems to be keen on tough love and making them stand on their own two feet, rather than helping them out in their times of need.

Everyone seems to have a motive for his murder – they’re all hiding things – and it was interesting to watch all the layers being peeled away and the truth revealed. An ending I didn’t see coming!

Overall, an enjoyable, twisted story with some rather unpleasant protagonists! I’m looking forward to reading some of the author’s other books now – I already have Dirty Little Secrets and The Confession waiting to be read, as well as the first in the Inspector Tom Reynolds series, With Our Blessing.

Buy the book

Six Wicked Reasons by Jo Spain can be purchased from Amazon on Kindle and in hardback now, and as an eBook from Kobo and iBooks.

About the author

Jo Spain is the author of seven bestselling novels including the DCI Tom Reynolds series and her standalone thrillers Dirty Little Secrets and No. 1 bestseller The Confession (Quercus London). Shortlisted in the first Richard & Judy Search for a Bestseller, Jo’s books are now published in 15 territories and have received starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus Review, The Sunday Times, The Independent and The Guardian.

Jo created and co-wrote the critically acclaimed, ground-breaking Irish hit drama Taken Down and is currently attached to several European dramas.

A politics graduate of Trinity College Dublin, Jo formerly worked as a parliamentary advisor on the economy and as vice-chair of the business body Intertrade Ireland. She resides in Dublin with her husband and four children.

Twitter: @SpainJoanne
Facebook: @JoSpainAuthor

Blog tour

Thanks to Milly Reid at Quercus Books for my digital copy of Six Wicked Reasons and for my place on the blog tour.

See the banner below for more stops on the #blogtour.

Blog tour: 20 January to 16 February 2020

Synopsis

Welcome to the café that never sleeps.

Day and night Stella’s Café opens its doors for the lonely and the lost, the morning people and the night owls. It is many things to many people but most of all it is a place where life can wait at the door. A place of small kindnesses. A place where anyone can be whoever they want, where everyone is always welcome.

Meet Hannah and Mona: best friends, waitresses, dreamers. They work at Stella’s but they dream of more, of leaving the café behind and making their own way in life.

Come inside and spend 24 hours at Stella’s Café; a day when Hannah and Mona’s friendship will be tested, when the community will come together and when lives will be changed …

The 24-Hour Café is about community, friendship, belonging and never giving up on your dreams.

My review

Hannah and Mona work as waitresses at Stella’s Café, a diner opposite Liverpool Street station, which is open 24 hours a day. The pair met at a party and became housemates in a house share then quickly became best friends and now share a small flat. They’re each waiting for their big break – Mona aspires to be a famous dancer while Hannah is a singer looking for gigs – and they attend regular auditions and castings and wait for callbacks but, more often than not, are faced with disappointment.

The book is set over a period of 24 hours in the café and each chapter is an hour from 12.00 am round to 11.00 pm. As the hours pass, we learn more about Hannah and Mona, with flashbacks to key moments in their lives, and are introduced to various characters who visit the café for different reasons: to pass the time, meet friends, escape from life, etc. There’s also John the Big Issue seller who works outside the café in all weathers and has been there a few years.

Hannah is 30 and from a small village in south Wales originally and she studied for a performing arts degree in Cardiff. After graduating, she moved to London and has now lived there nine years. Her parents are recently retired. Mona is nearly 30 and grew up in Singapore and attended an international school. Her mother is German and her father is Argentinian but they divorced when she was 14 and her father returned to Argentina and remarried and, three years later, had a son called Matiás. Mona left Singapore for London when she was 18 and studied for a degree in dance.

I loved the descriptions of the diner in the book with its retro, worn decor, 1950s Kellogg’s advert clock, a huge, painted Union Jack and gaudy pictures on the walls, and a rather random and large stuffed bear on a mount called Ernest! I could really envisage how everything looked and smell the greasy fried food aromas. I’d love to try the tasty sounding pancakes made by chefs Aleksander and Pablo.

Hannah, Mona and the other waitresses, Eleanor and Sofia, have a great rapport with the customers and they keep an eye on people and know when to talk to them and when to leave them alone, especially if they’re distressed. It was fascinating to hear everyone’s stories, both cheerful and sad, and get to know Hannah and Mona and their hopes, dreams, ambitions and aspirations, and learn about their pasts and how they ended up where they are now.

We learn that Hannah has recently split up from her boyfriend, Jaheim, and this has really affected her relationship with Mona, who feels lonely and is disappointed by how Hannah treated her when she was seeing him. She was rather selfish and excluded her and didn’t think about Mona’s feelings, and they’re now struggling to get their friendship back on track.

This is a really simple concept but works very well and is a lovely idea for a book. There were some sad moments though as Mona and Hannah struggle to work out where they’re heading in life. They love working in the café but are struggling for money and finding the regular singing/dancing rejections tough to take and are wondering if their lucky breaks will ever come, especially as they’re getting older and are up against much younger performers in auditions. What happens if they give up on their dreams?

I really enjoyed this insightful, thought-provoking book and it was lovely to read about all the unique and different characters who visited Stella’s Café throughout the day and night. It was intriguing to read the descriptions of people and then learn why they were there, and see the range of emotions they were experiencing. Overall, a well-written and entertaining read with relatable characters and I was really invested in their heartwarming stories and was hoping that everyone would have a happy ending.

I’m looking forward to reading the author’s other book, The Lido, now as I’ve had it on my Kindle for a while but haven’t got round to it yet.

Buy the book

The 24-Hour Café by Libby Page can be purchased from Amazon on Kindle and in hardback on 23 January, and as an eBook from Kobo and iBooks.

About the author

Libby Page is the author of The Sunday Times bestseller and runaway success of 2018, The Lido, which has sold in over 20 territories around the world and film rights have been sold to Catalyst Global Media.

After writing, Libby’s second passion is outdoor swimming. Libby lives in London where she enjoys finding new swimming spots and pockets of community within the city. She and her sister run a blog and Instagram account @theswimmingsisters, documenting their swims and the benefits of outdoor exercise for mental health.

Twitter: @LibbyPageWrites
Facebook: @libbypagewrites
Website: https://libbypage.co.uk

Blog tour

Thanks to Tracy Fenton at Compulsive Readers for my digital copy of The 24-Hour Café and for my place on the blog tour.

See the banners below for more stops on the #blogtour.