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Blog Tour and my review for The Old You by Louise Voss. Today I am part of the buzzing blog tour for the fab twistiness that is the latest thriller from Louise Voss. My Review “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive” … There is a whole load of deception within these pages and to find out who is deceiving who and why, you’ll have to read it. I just read it and it blew my socks clean off. If you like your books to mess with your mind then this will fit the bill. The Old You begins quite gently with a dreadfully sad subject, the early onset of dementia and as we watch Lynn come to terms with her husbands sudden and rapid decline into senility it seems as though this is going to be a heart-breaking family drama, which it is …. in a way, however it is also Domestic Noir with a capital N, at its very darkest, filled with secrets and lies and OMG moments. Psychologically it’s mind blowing and so damned cunning it’s a joy to read. Lynn married Ed ten years ago when t...

Today I'm part of the #blogtour for the newly released debut novel by Caroline England entitled Beneath the skin. Beneath the Skin is a stunning debut psychological Domestic Noir drama about a life-changing lie. Caroline England’s,  Beneath The Skin  is a tense and compelling read, exploring truth, friendships and betrayal. Description: No-one remembers your past. But you do. ‘Antonia, Antonia. My name is Antonia.’ It’s been her name for many years. But sometimes, like tonight, she forgets. Antonia has a secret. A secret so dark and so deep that she can barely admit it to herself. Instead, she treats herself to Friday night sessions of self-harm while her husband David is at the pub, and her best friend Sophie is drinking too much wine a few doors down. Nobody close to her knows the truth about what the teenage Antonia saw all those years ago. No-one, that is, except her mother. But Candy is in a care home now, her mind too addled to remember the truth. Antonia is safe. Isn’t ...

Can you keep a Secret by Karen Perry My Review: Can you keep a secret? is the latest psychological twisty school re-union gone wrong, chiller by Karen Perry, which is  is the pen name of Dublin-based authors Paul Perry and Karen Gillece. It's a conundrum of a thriller with lots of mystery about, unsurprisingly, secrets and lies. A group of ex-school chums get back together 20 years after they previously congregated for a tragedy laden 18th birthday party at Thornbury Manor, the family pile of 2 of their peers, brother and sister Rachel and Patrick. Lindsey is our main protagonist, she was at the original event and is about to be included in this one too. The Manor house is now run down and rather ramshackle and Patrick can no longer find the upkeep, so he gets in touch with Lindsey then decides that he will hold a final bash before he sells off the hall. As the small group of friends who attended his 18th gather together for the first time in two decades, old scores to be settled a...

#FriendRequest - Laura Marshall @laurajm8 #Bookreview My Review: Friend Request is a term most of us will take for granted, you use Social Media you connect with people you know and sometmes you get a friend request from someone you haven't seen in a while. It's happened to me .... Usually it's a pleasant surprise .... But not for single Mum Louise Williams it isn't! The friend request she receives is a bit of a shock - it's from her old classmate Maria Weston. She hasn't heard a thing from Maria since leaving school, unsurprisingly, because Maria died, 25 years ago, didn't she? Louise can't resist having a little peek at her profile though, because Maria has never strayed very far from Louise's thoughts. Not when she was married to Sam who subsequently left her for another woman, even throughout her struggle to conceive her only child Henry, now 4 years old and the centre of Louise's universe, Maria was there in her deepest thoughts and fears. B...

My review of He Said, She Said by Erin Kelly Wow - wonderful twisty read, blew my socks off.  It's not often that I finish a book and can't really find words to write a review straight away. But I loved this book so much I had to take a step back and examine what I thought or just babble away senselessly.  Its delightfully different and darkly convoluted. It actually took me a little while to get into it at the beginning as it's deliberately written in several voices from different viewpoints and jumps back and forth several years and it does take a while to get into the rhythm, but when you do boy does it grab you and just won't let go! We begin our tortuous journey by being introduced to a young couple, Laura who is pregnant and her partner Kit who is heading off across the seas to witness an eclipse. For that is what this young couple do as a hobby, they are eclipse chasers and travel all over the world joing festivals and celebrations and watching eclipses. They...

Today I'm thrilled to welcome Author Anne Goodwin to Beadyjans books for a return visit. Her latest novel Underneath, is out on 25th May. I read and reviewed Sugar and Snails her moving and original debut novel which you can read about on my blog. "Underneath" is Anne's breakthrough into writing thrillers and psychological chillers for those who like to genrify books (I think I just invented that term) and Anne has kindly written this article about changing genres, I hope you'll find it as fascinating as I did. Over to you Anne: On genre hopping – or not My second novel began with an image of an unhappy little boy, seated at the bottom of a carpeted staircase, who popped into my head at the end of the country walk. At the time, I was struggling with what was to become my debut novel, Sugar and Snails , but this little boy had no place there. So I pushed him out of my mind, until he reappeared as the child version of the narrator of what has now become my second n...

My Review A thoroughly entertaining and gripping psychological suspense story by the wonderful CL Taylor, author of  The Accident   The Lie  and  The Missing  all taut, suspense filled Domestic Noir/ psychological thrillers. In The Escape we follow the life of Jo, our main protagonist, who is the Mother of a little girl Elise, and is married to an investigative journalist Max. Jo is suddenly approached and threatened, by a stranger, a woman called Paula who warns Jo that she needs to keep a closer eye on her daughter and that her husband has taken something that belongs to Paula. Now if Jo's reactions to this encounter seem a touch extreme this is explained when we realise that she is agoraphobic, in fact as we immerse ourselves deeper in her story it is revealed that she has several mental health issues, is somewhat unstable and doubts begin to creep in. My empathy for her began to waver slightly as she becomes the atypical unreliable narrator around which many...

My Review Everything but the truth is about relationships and secrets a taut Domestic Noir thriller/ romance. Rachel and Jack are like any young couple, they are very much of the Social media generation, they haven't been together long enough to really deeply know each other inside out, but what they do know is they are in love, they are in it for the long haul, which is just as well as Rachel is expecting Jacks baby. Perhaps they should have waited a while, but Things are what they are and they both very much want this baby, after all they have the rest of their lives to get to know the little quirks of each others lives. But although Rachel is certain that Jacks the man for her to spend the rest of her life with, a judder of deja vu runs through her when, following a glimpse of an email he tries to conceal, she suddenly begins to suspect he may be hiding something from her, after all this has happened to her recently in a previous relationship which crashed when she had cause to ...

Bad Little Girl – Frances Vick My review An absolute corker of a psychological thriller, with a deprived and abused little girl at the heart of it – prepare to be moved – prepare to be terrified. Take an inner city school. Meet Claire, a harassed, very compassionate and caring, middle aged teacher who sometimes feels like a bit of dinosaur as she juggles the responsibilities of her dull private life, her irascible Mother, her non-existent social life, with her beloved career. Her path meets that of neglected 5 year old Lorna from a feckless family with a bad reputation on a run-down housing estate and both their lives are about to be affected by the meeting. Warning bells ring when Claire uncovers a heinous crime – Lorna, with the stick like limbs, the dirty clothes and the badly worn shoes, in a bid to be accepted by her peers, has stolen some collectable kids erasers and thus Rubbergate is unleashed! Far from bringing her friendship and admiration it makes her despised and scorned. I...