We Have Books

WEST by Carys Davies - my review This book was, for me a very fast read, it's a short book with a big punch. It tells the story of Cy Bellmann, a pioneering Brit who has previously emigrated to Pennsylvania to farm mules and horses, this act alone tells us he is man not averse to taking a great risk to achieve what he wants in life even if it is to the cost of those dear to him, you'd think he'd be satisfied with what he has! Now widowed and left alone with just his young daughter Bess who is now 10, for company, like many of us, he knows there must be something greater than his humdrum life. He's only 35 but boy does this guy have a sudden mid life crisis. He hears news of a momentous discovery far away in Kentucky, a pile of colossal animal bones. He is convinced this skeleton reveals the presence of a yet undiscovered wondrous living creature and it ignites a fire in him he hasn't felt since before his wife died, he burns to be the one to find this huge animal. T...

Home - by Amanda Berriman How fabulous it is to be the penultimate blogger on this blog tour, sharing my thoughts about the awesome new book by Amanda Berriman - entitled Home . Published on 8th February it's available now. My Review Home is where the heart is and in this book the heart belongs to Jesika, who at 4 and ½ has a warm heart as well as a lively and enquiring mind. Home will inevitably draw comparisons to Room by Emma Donoghue both books being narrated in the unique cadences of a very young child. In this case the narrators voice is that of Jesika who lives with her Mum and baby brother Toby in an apartment where the landlord is a nasty angry man who shouts a lot and comes demanding money. Jesika is a real sweetheart and I connected with her character easily and smoothly. Throughout my time immersed in this book I was 4 and a half and felt everything this little girl felt. I saw the world through her eyes and lived her life. She has left a little bit of herself in my sou...

The Stolen marriage by Diane Chamberlain: I've read many of the books by this author and am never disappointed. The stolen marriage is just the perfect romantic read to curl up with. It take us back to the 1940s in Southern America, where we meet Tess DeMello an Italian American girl who has her life all mapped out, engaged to be married to the lover of her life boy next door Vincent, bound by their family ties, background and plans to work together in a medical practise as he is a fledgling doctor and she a trainee nurse. But Vincent is called away to work in far away Chicago where he is needed to help treat victims of the outbreak of polio. Tess's best friend Gina tries to take her mind off his absence and stop her moping and the 2 girls head off for the bright lights of Washington, where Gina's aunt owns a staid and well chaperoned boarding house, for a girly weekend together. But Gina is a tad more flighty than Tess and the girls plans go badly awry and end up changing ...

Lost in the Lake – A J Waines - review and Blog Tour It’s great to be part of the blog tour for this new title, the second book in the Samantha Willerby series of psychological thrillers. For readers who have read the first in the series “Inside the Whispers” this will be a welcome return to the life of Dr Samantha Willerby, an engaging and professional clinical psychologist. If you haven’t yet read that you can read my review here although it will make great reading as a stand-alone I highly recommend reading them in order. My Review The story begins when Dr Sam Willerby meets her new client Rosie Chandler, who seeks out Samantha to help her remember the events surrounding an accident she was involved in where the vehicle she was travelling in plummeted into a lake. Narrowly escaping with her life has left Rosie, a Viola player in a quartet shaken, traumatised and with amnesia about the accident. Sam has the skills and experience to help Rosie piece together the missing memories and ...

Review - the Upstairs Room - Kate Murray-Browne A macabre, chilling and unsettling debut novel, The Upstairs Room is a contemporary take on the classic "young couple move into a new home that turns out to have something sinister lurking upstairs". Eleanor and husband Richard have found their new family home for themselves and their 2 young daughters. They know it will be a struggle financially to buy in a desirable area of London so they settle for an older property that "needs a bit doing" well frankly it needs quite a lot of renovation and redecoration but they're young and enthusiastic and it can be a project for them to enjoy together. Bit it becomes more of a money pit than they imagined, and in order to keep their heads above water they rather reluctantly sub-let the basement to a young woman lodger and into the periphery of their lives comes Zoe. However living in this gloomy and outdated home soon makes Eleanor in particular begin to feel distinctly une...

BLOG TOUR - The Lucky Ones by Mark Edwards I'm thrilled to kick start the blog tour for this brilliant book with my review. I'm fairly certain that if I start my review by saying Mark Edwards has a truly warped mind, he would take this as the huge compliment it is intended to be! How he dreamt up this twisty thriller I can't imagine. He gets deep inside the malformed psyche of a devilish serial killer to take the reader on a vivid and skin crawling journey of terror. Let me briefly introduce you to the authors work, whose page you can find here . He writes brilliantly different and terrifyingly unorthodox psychological thrillers, which have included Because She loves me , Follow you home and The Devils work . You can follow the links to read each of my reviews of his previous work and you just might come away with the idea that I'm already a big fan of this talented writer and you wouldn't be far wrong. So its always with a sense of worried anticipation that I open...

My Review Another terrific twisty tale from the writer who is becoming my go to author when I want to be certain of a damn good chilling read and a guaranteed shiver down my spine. A different take on the psychological thriller with two unique viewpoints and so many smokescreens to blind me to the truth I could smell the smoke on my clothes. Melanie waves goodbye to her young teenage daughter Beth one evening as she heads to her best friends house, little knowing that a living nightmare is about to begin and the next time she holds her daughters hand she will be in a coma, following a brutal attack which left Beth for dead lying in the dark and lonely fenland of Lincolnshire. Why on earth was she even there at the dead of night?  There are so many mysteries surrounding this crime its almost difficult to keep track of them but the authors skill makes the story flow so deliciously you hardly notice you’re being sucked deep into the story until you’re so wrapped up in it, it feels as ...

Leopard at the Door by Jennifer McVeigh Blog Tour. Today is my stop on the blog tour for Leopard at the door a gritty historical novel about life in Kenya in the 1950s. The blurb Stepping off the boat in Mombasa, eighteen-year-old Rachel Fullsmith stands on Kenyan soil for the first time in six years. She has come home. But when Rachel reaches the family farm at the end of the dusty Rift Valley Road, she finds so much has changed. Her beloved father has moved his new partner and her son into the family home. She hears menacing rumours of Mau Mau violence, and witnesses cruel reprisals by British soldiers. Even Michael, the handsome Kikuyu boy from her childhood, has started to look at her differently. Isolated and conflicted, Rachel fears for her future. But when home is no longer a place of safety and belonging, where do you go, and who do you turn to? My Review: Leopard at the door is not your average historical romantic fiction, it is a dark and powerful look at a time and place whe...