Helen Priest
Super quick read, I was hooked from the start, I love books that get straight into it and this one didn't disappoint.
The descriptions of the characters really made me picture them, without an overly long back story, there was still enough details - we all know people like them which made it really easy.
The ending was satisfying and there were some great kills.
There's so many things that I loved about this book.
Dual timelines
Multiple narrators
It got into the story really quickly
Believable
Satisfying outcome
I've been on a thriller kick recently and read it over two days.
It's the story of Merri and Dev who are struggling to make ends meet when, for their wedding anniversary, Dev buys Merri a ticket to a Dreamkey Prize draw, where the winning ticket wins a brand new luxury house in the Lake District and £250k - you know the sort of thing!
They win and their lives are uprooted from their rented house in Nottingham to a super modern glass mansion with views over Lake Windermere and the hills of the area.
They make some friends quickly, but not everyone is pleased to see the new arrivals that have had luxury handed to them when many in the village are struggling to live in an area being taken over by second homes and Air B&Bs.
When it appears that someone is less than happy for them, who is it? old friends? new friends? upset locals? or, another voice in the book, ‘The Watcher'. Someone from Merri's past who know the secret she's worked hard to keep from Dev.
This book doesn't stop the pacing is great, the characters are fleshed out as much as they need to and I can't wait to read more from KL Slater - there's so many to choose from!
I can see this book doing so well at a book club and really can't wait to read more about it
I should DNFd this. But I wanted to give it a go, it was a simple plot, simple setting and an easy read. this couple got together way too quickly - and that's coming from someone that met a guy, had him move in and got engaged within a month and got married within a year.
Any hint of drama or mystery was solved within a page or two. There was a group of supporting characters that I've heard the sequels are to do with, but I don't think I'm going to read them.
I've been on a witchy reading vibe recently and really wanted to love this. It might be I'm not the right audience, but it wasn't enough for me, it was too twee, which some people will love but didn't click for me. I loved Lucy's writing style, very descriptive, but the story was lacking the punch and peril for me
I wanted to love this, I really did. While Rose's little St Olaf stories were funny in the show, in this book there were just too many.
It got ridiculous.
I'm hoping that any future books won't have this as they will not focus on Rose and her extended family from St Olaf coming to Miami.
It hasn't put me off reading more when they come out, as I love the.girls, but it wasn't a strong start.
To get it out of the way up front, I loved this book. I read it over two days in two sittings.
I'm not a fan of reality TV and have never seen Love Island, so it was definitely words like Lord of the Flies, dark, thrilling and compound that attracted me to it.
From the very beginning when Lily wakes up in a room with multiple beds unaware of how she got there, where she is geographically and where anyone else is i was hooked. Over the first few chapters we're introduced to 10 women, and we learn that they're part of a Reality TV show and will be joined by 10 men shortly. During their time in the house, they'll complete both group tasks and personal tasks. They can't talk about their personal lives or there will be punishments, they'll couple up with the men and if anyone is in a bed alone they'll be gone by sunrise and some tasks will involve banishing people.
Banishing them where? Into the desert that surrounds the house - where the men will eventually come from.
One of the things I really love about the book is how it is all told from Lily's perspective and through her you learn more about the show, that the final people/person can stay in the house as long as they want, that the final 5 are pretty much guaranteed fame and fortune, that when you received a prize from a personal task you must thank the provider of the gift to camera, and the more gushing you are the more expensive the prizes will be and the more likely they are to sponsor you when you're out of the house.
Apart from the tasks displayed on giant screens and small devices for the personal ones, there is little to no interaction from the producers. And so the group are pretty much left to their own devices to get along (or not). And as time goes on the relationships change and develop tension ramps up.
Aisling's writing is amazing, I could picture every room, every area of the grounds and how everyone looked. It can be tough because there's around 20 people in the house, but as they leave or are banished you get to know a core group more and more.
I could not put this book down and I 100% recommend it to everyone, and can't wait to read future books from Aisling.
Such a difficult book to rate, the writing was so descriptive that sometimes it took a while to get through to what was actually being said around all the extra language, but at the same time that writing was so good.
It wasn't what I thought it would be, fin descriptions I was expecting Heathers x Stepford Wives type of vibe and it isn't like that at all. I was also struggling with the age of the characters, again, from reviews I thought they were high school age but were post college.
I think it was an interesting subject but I really struggled to get through it. I listened to it via Borrow Box on 3x speed, because I knew if I had to stop listening to it then I probably wouldn't pick it up again.
I don't know if I'd recommend this to someone looking for a casual read, it's something you really have to concentrate on and be into the genre.
I've never read anything like it before and don't think I will again.
2.5 stars.
I read one chapter late at night, and was too tired to continue. The next night I read the rest of the book and got to sleep at 4am.
I loved this.
The story was so nice and flowed really well, the first few chapters revolve around Ellie and Ash meeting while backpacking around Europe and after a few days together have to part ways but plan to meet up in a week. Even knowing that they wouldn't meet I was so hopeful they would!
There was then a time jump of six years, and I think it was done really, well there was enough exposition that we found out what Ellie had been up to for that time.
Although we all know what's going to happen after those six years I loved finding out how it would happen and then finding out more about Ellie and Ash and what had happened.
I really wish the book didn't end, I want to know more !
I don't think I've read one of Paige's books before although I've heard so many good things, and I can't believe it's taken me this long to get round to it! I'll definitely be reading more as love her style and writing.
I enjoyed this book, well, I enjoyed about 97.5%.
First off, I loved the premise, I loved the snippets of extra info between chapters. I love the characters, Willow's developments and insecurities made her so vulnerable, I loved her little gang with Dani and Kurt.
The writing was perfect and there were some points where I was genuinely scared while reading alone and I may have yelped when during a particularly tense scene my cat jumped on me in a silent attack! The kills are well written and descriptive I love how they're done. And I was definitely pointing fingers throughout until the reveal.
It was such a great story and I would 100% recommend.
But to address the 2.5% I didn't enjoy as much, I felt at the very end one twist was a little bit clunky and I'm still not sure how it would've happened and worked, and it seemed a bit out of nowhere.
I read this in one sitting, it was amazing. It got straight into it the story, which I really appreciate.
I was home alone for about an hour reading this and was genuinely scared at certain points, it's the first time in years a book has made me feel like that.
I loved the story and how all the in between chapters made sense at the end. I understand how others have said that they want to know more and feel the ending was abrupt but I loved that, that it was open to interpretation and for the reader to decide.
I really enjoyed this.
Even though this is YA and I'm in my late 40s I really connected with the main character, Suzy. My mum died 5 years ago and so the emotions that Suzy was feeling and that disconnect I could appreciate. Having that inner negative monologue is something I've lived with every day and has held me back.
I loved living vicariously through Suzy and the friendships she made along the way, with mysterious Rhiannon, and the people they pick up along the way. it was a quick read and but there was so much story behind it that it is one that will definitely stick with me
I truly think this is a great coming of age story, and I'd 100% recommend it.
I read Steve's last book Call Time last year and loved it so was so excited when I get an email from @netgalley saying that his new book was available.
I devoured it in one weekend.
I loved it!
There's something about Steve's writing that I really enjoy, it could be that we're around the same age (if Wiki is right I'm 9 months older), so a lot of references, situations or topics are more familiar to me. I'm not talking about time travel or vigilante killers, more the conversations that are had between characters.
In Terminally Kill a group of strangers have their Chemotherapy sessions at the same time and although to begin with have a fairly shallow relationship they learn more about each other, and I really loved the way that the past of these characters was revealed, there was just enough to give motivations and meat to them, but not so much that it became distracting and too much detail.
The main character Ray who is an ex soldier, ex detective, father and widower is so well written and I really felt his emotions and motivations for his journey through the book.
There were times when my heart was racing when characters got in sticky situations and there were times when I was in tears.
I keep seeing memes about how it's normal to love a book and then forget all about it instantly, but I haven't had that with these at all, and I think it's because they stand out as something different to what I've normally been reading.
I'm now eagerly awaiting book three!
This is my first BA Paris book and I listened to it on audio book. I was hooked from the start. I love that there's only a few main characters so you really get to know them.
It has one of my new favourite tropes but I can't say what it is as it's a spoiler!
The narrator was great and it really did feel like I was listening to Iris. The story focuses on Iris and Gabriel and the appearance of their French friend Laure who has left her husband Pierre after he confesses to a secret love child. Gabriel is on leave from his job as a GP after finding a dying local boy and having to live with his last words. But Iris is focussing on taking care of Laure and her reluctance to leave, as well as making herself too much at home, wear Iris' clothes and rearranging the kitchen. But soon Iris and Gabriel are wrapped up in an other drama that gets fingers pointing everywhere!
I didn't think it was going to be resolved until the epilogue came up and
I 100% recommend this book and can't wait to read more from BR Paris.
The Seventh Girl kicks off a new series by Andy Maslen about DS Kat Ballantyne. Kat joined the police after her best friend was murdered by a serial killer, and now, 15 years later, the killer is back.
The book goes through Kat's work to find the killer before he kills again, while dealing with the emotions that come back to her and also introduces her to her family, friends and colleagues. There's a twist early on in the book that really knocks Kat and changes everything, and this gives her an ethical/moral dilemma which was really interesting to think about the impact of it.
I enjoyed coming into a series with the first book, and seeing some threads pick up - including the twist - that I think will run through the books and I can't wait to see where they go.
The book is really well written, with characters and locations fleshed out and able to easily picture them. I've not read any books by this author before and I will definitely look out for more as I really like the writing style and plot
I can't wait to read book two - the downside of a new series is the wait for the next books!
4 stars
I read this while on holiday in a cabin in the woods in the autumn and all that was missing was the snow that would've made this a near perfect reading scenario.
This Christmas is the perfect cosy Christmas read.
The story of two people, Rose and Charlie - plus dogs Max and George - who want solitude at Christmas and to forget it's even happening as they both face the holiday season without something dear to them. Unfortunately they end up double booking the same 1 bedroom cottage and with Rose unable to leave due to car issues they end up having to make it work, while avoiding any contact communicating only by text and whiteboard messages.
But, of course, they start to warm to the season and each other.
I enjoyed this and loved Emily's writing and would definitely read others.
The ending felt a little rushed but didn't change my enjoyment as it was neatly wrapepd inn a bow.
I thought I was beginning to tire of romance books, but this one hooked me. It had one of my favourite styles with dual POV. I liked that there was history between the characters and how it was told in flashback when something in the present reminded one of them of it, graphite smudged fingertips or a bottom lip bite.
Emily Ann, is cast as the lead in the new season of her favourite dating show, thanks to her mum's appearance on national morning TV! Soon she's at a mansion with 30 men and her ex-boyfriend Jake, who turns out to be on the crew of the show. Jake left in the middle of the night 7 years ago in the summer before they were due to start college. Emily hasn't seen or heard from Jake in that time and what better way to reconnect than while she has to pick a man to marry.
The pacing was really good, considering there were 30 guys, we could easily have got so bogged down with the tales of their dates and descriptions, but it's almost as if the show was secondary and I loved that. It kept Emily and Jake front and centre, with just a handful of guys mentioned.
I'm so happy there's going to be a sequel and I'm so happy about who it will focus on, I'm really looking forward to reading more from Kay Marie and more in this series.
I don't know where to begin, I loved this, I loved the characters, the story, the writing, the film references, the Spotify playlist, everything about this is perfect.
Tinsel, our main character, hosts The Graveyard Shift an 11pm-6am radio show themed around horror. The book starts on Halloween when a caller is murdered while on air, and soon she's not the only one. As the bodies start piling up Tinsel's relationship with her boyfriend ends, she moves in with her true crime blog writing sister, Pandora, and she works closely with Detective James to avoid being the next victim.
This book is so well written, sometimes it felt like watching a movie, the deaths are described so well, there were a couple of times where I felt my heart quicken during the tension.
Tinsel is an amazing character and I'd love to read more about her and Pandora working on other crimes, mainly because it would mean more of Maria Lewis' writing, but also because I want to hear more about Tinsel. She's a character that I want to be friends with, not your typical final girl, she's less Laurie Strode 1979 and more Laurie Strode 2018.
Maria's love of horror really comes through, and that's another one of the things that makes this so enjoyable, the references span not just the classics that you'd expect but more obscure ones, especially so in the music choices.
This book has made me want to read more horror, I used to read Stephen King and James Herbert as an ansgty teen in the 90s and this book has brought me back.
I LOVED this!
A group of teens head off to a post graduation week away before heading off to different colleges after the summer.
All well of friends from the prestigious Marian school, apart from Isadora (Izzy) who works part time at a books tore and lives with her single mum (a teacher at the school) and her disabled sister. Kassidy is Izzy's best friend since childhood and surprises her with the weekend at a stately home on Sparrow Island which was the setting for their favourite whodunnit film set in the 20s. Kassidy wants to make it an immersive week so has provided period costumes for everyone and makes them send their clothes and phones back to the mainland.
We know from the very beginning that Izzy has a secret about Kassidy's boyfriend Blaine, and she's ready to do something about that secret with the knife that she's got hidden in her bag. But this whole week is a week of secrets and when they start to come out at a dinner, the week turns from the joyous one last hurrah that Kassidy planned, and when Blaine is murdered. It gets worse, especially when it turns out he was stabbed, and Izzy was seen leaving his room shortly before his body was found, did she manage to get even with Blaine or did someone else beat her to it?
The police come to the island and a storm prevents everyone from leaving, as the teens are interviewed and more secrets and lies come out, will the killer be found before they all leave?
As I said I loved this book, the ending reminded me of old shows like Murder She Wrote and Colombo, where everyone is gathered together, motives and alibis are discussed and the killer is unmasked.
The writing is great, I could picture everything, and there was enough backstory to get to know the characters without slowing down the book and going into too much detail. There's so many twists and turns and red herrings, that this YA novel will keep you hooked until the end.
A story of two couples who meet in Bali on the last day of their honeymoons and go out for dinner.
One couple, Sophia and Mark, are living in London confident, well off but with a paranoia about their safety. The other, Erin and Jamie, live in a secluded renovation project; Jamie is as outgoing as Erin is insecure.
On that night someone dies in suspicious circumstances, but that almost plays out as a subplot when the couples are back in the UK it becomes clear that they all have secrets.
The book is told from multiple perspectives, which I love, and at first it seems quite a cut and dry thriller, but as things go on which narrators can we trust?
I enjoyed this book, but found some of the situations were a bit too forced, the whole reason for the original accident seems an over reaction and I struggled to get that out of my mind. There were a lot of twists and to be honest I'm still not 100% sure what was real and what wasn't. The book seemed slow at times and then the last quarter was jam packed.
This was a debut novel from Kate Gray and I'm really looking forward to reading more.
This was a quick weekend read. I really appreciated that this wasn't a standard fluffy chick lit type of book, there were some extremely serious topics dealt with, fertility issues, abortion and the impact your parents have on you. I liked that it was the side of women over 30 that you don't often see talked about so openly.
I expected to enjoy this a bit more from the blurb, but did expect something a bit more light hearted! What I struggled with was the main plot point of the book, the speed at which they both agreed to do something after two very brief interactions and a text message. I had to reread the pages before in case I'd missed a more detailed conversation that they'd had.
I really enjoyed the writing style, all the characters were fleshed out and I could picture them all really easily. And I love a flash forward/epilogue at the end of a book, rather than trying to cram a few months of chapters when there's no need!
Despite my low rating I'm would definitely read more from the same author, I think I just didn't gel with this particular book.
Forget me Not is about wedding planner Ama, who normally works with couples on a budget to give them exactly what they want, but via a recommendation gets a chance to plan the wedding of influencer Hazel and her girlfriend Jackie. Complete with a massive budget, a film crew and a two faced ex boss and mentor looking to scupper her plans. But the biggest issue is having to work with her brooding ex and superstar florist Elliot.
This book is the style that I've come love with chapters from both Ama and Elliot's pov. So it won me over from the start. There's quite a few secondary characters, and most of them are step siblings of Ama due to her mum's many, many marriages. I really enjoyed the writing and found the descriptions of all the characters really detailed and so could easily picture them.
I found that the reason for the breakup of Ama and Elliot originally was a bit meh and would've made more sense if they'd been together longer and I really didn't understand why, after a couple of years, they both had such apprehension about seeing each other. Especially when their whole relationship seemed mainly to be about sex and there wasn't much details of them spending time together or dating.
But it didn't ruin the enjoyment of the book, it was a really light, bright, breezy and quick read with a peppering of spice throughout.
I loved this book, I've never read much thriller before but I definitely want to read more! I read this over a couple of days with only sleep getting in the way!
What I've realised as I start to read more and more books is that I really enjoy a multi narrator style. In The Silence the chapters are told by either Gail Reynolds, who in the first chapter of the book is sexually assaulted, DS Shona White, who is advised to talk Gail out of taking her complaint further due to the low solve rates of these crimes and the affect they'd have on the station's rating. Finally the the assailant tells his story of what turned him from an innocent boy to a rapist.
His chapters were so interesting, if the book had been told in a linear way there is always the risk that you might have felt sorry for him but by starting with the assault first and then straight to Gail's experience as she tries to report it to the police, you already feel so much anger towards him and the system that you never feel any sympathy towards him at all.
Gail's chapters are unusual in that she spends a lot of time talking to her attacker, wondering if he's watching her, is he someone she's seen in the seaside town that she lives in, is it someone she knows, a customer at one of the many jobs she drifts to and from as she struggles to cope following the attack. And although Shona has her chapters that talk about what she's doing, after being riddled with guilt from not taking Gail's initial complaint further, Gail's chapters talk about the investigation more and give more depth to it.
Very early on in the book there is a time jump of three years as Gail finds - through a support group of sexual assault survivors - someone with a story the same as hers, showing they were attacked by the same man. They form a friendship from this shared experience, and dig deeper into what could be the connection between them, that ultimately leads to revenge.
I genuinely loved this book and found it very easy to read and a page turner.
I would 100% recommend it to everyone I know, but do seek out content warnings.