Thicker Than Water, by Brigid Kemmerer

Format: e-ARC, 432 pages

Publisher: Kensington Books

Published: 29 December 2015

ISBN: 9780758294418

Genre: Teens & YA

Back cover blurb: On his own.

Thomas Bellweather hasn’t been in town long. Just long enough for his newlywed mother to be murdered, and for his new stepdad’s cop colleagues to decide Thomas is the primary suspect.

Not that there’s any evidence. But before Thomas got to Garretts Mill there had just been one other murder in twenty years.

The only person who believes him is Charlotte Rooker, little sister to three cops and, with her soft hands and sweet curves, straight-up dangerous to Thomas. Her friend was the other murder vic. And she’d like a couple answers.

Answers that could get them both killed, and reveal a truth Thomas would die to keep hidden…

My review: I put off reading this for ages but once I started, I couldn’t put it down. The story took an unusual supernatural twist that I’m not sure I was expecting based on the blurb, and the resolution came quickly, leaving me wanting more. I could easily see this as the start of a series with these characters. They were all very well realised and interesting. I’d certainly love more of Nicole!

Kemmerer is a new author for me, and I will definitely be looking up her other work.

***Disclaimer: This e-ARC was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Huge thanks to them. ***

My rating: 4/5

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The Hidden Hours, by Sara Foster

Format: e-ARC, 384 pages

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Australia

Published: 1 April 2017

ISBN: 9781925184815

Genre: Mystery & Thrillers

Back cover blurb: Keeping her secret may save her family.

But telling it may save her life.

Arabella Lane, senior executive at a children’s publisher, is found dead in the Thames on a frosty winter’s morning after the office Christmas party. No one is sure whether she jumped or was pushed. The one person who may know the truth is the newest employee at Parker & Lane – the office temp, Eleanor.

Eleanor has travelled to London to escape the repercussions of her traumatic childhood in outback Australia, but now tragedy seems to follow her wherever she goes. To her horror, she has no memory of the crucial hours leading up to Arabella’s death – memory that will either incriminate or absolve her.

As Eleanor desperately tries to remember her missing hours and uncover the events of that fateful night, her own extended family is dragged further into the dark, terrifying terrain of blame, suspicion and guilt.

Caught in a crossfire of accusations, Eleanor fears she can’t even trust herself, let alone the people around her. And soon, she’ll find herself in a race against time to find out just what happened that night – and discover just how deadly some secrets can be.

My review: This was my second Sara Foster book, and I enjoyed it far more than the first. This story was twisty, with the dual storylines from the past and present adding to the tension as Eleanor tries to remember what happened in the hidden hours when she was drugged on the night of the office party and Arabella Lane was killed. I wasn’t sure who had done it until the reveal at the end, which is always the mark of a superior thriller. The story from Eleanor’s past, too, was gripping and heartbreaking.

***Disclaimer: This e-ARC was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Huge thanks to them. ***

My rating: 4/5

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The Never Have I Ever Club, by Mary Jayne Baker

Format: e-ARC, 326 pages

Publisher: Aria

Published: 18 June 2020

ISBN: 9781789546149

Genre: Romance, Women’s Fiction

Back cover blurb: Robyn Bloom thought Ash Barnes was the love of her life – until one day he announced he was leaving her to fly halfway across the world.

Months later, Robyn is struggling to move on – but then she has a brainwave: The Never Have I Ever Club. Her handsome next-door neighbour Will helps her bring their fellow Yorkshire villagers together for some carpe-diem-inspired fun.

From burlesque dancing to Swedish massages, everyone has plenty of bucket-list activities to try, but it doesn’t take long for Robyn to realise what – or who – her heart truly desires: Will.

There’s just one problem: he’s Ash’s twin brother.

Make that two problems: Ash is moving home… and he wants Robyn back.

My review: This was a wee delight, just what I needed as the weather grows darker and colder in my part of the world. Baker is a new author for me, but I will be seeking out her other work because she can write great characters, favours showing over telling, and the humour shines through. I started off thinking this might have been a bit of a light version of Marian Keyes’ “The Break”, but Ash running off to Australia to find himself was only really a minor subplot. I loved the club and all its characters, and Will was adorable. Any book that references the “My Lovely Horse” episode of Father Ted is okay by me.

***Disclaimer: This e-ARC was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Huge thanks to them. ***

My rating: 5/5

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The Greatest Zombie Movie Ever, by Jeff Strand

Format: e-ARC, 266 pages

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Published: 1 March 2016

ISBN: 9781492628149

Genre: Teens & YA

Back cover blurb: The Greatest Zombie Movie Ever is so bad, it could wake the dead…

After producing three horror films that went mostly ignored on YouTube, Justin and his filmmaking buddies decide it’s time to make something epic. In fact, they’re going to make The Greatest Zombie Movie Ever. They may not have money or a script, but they have passion. And, after a rash text message, they also have the beautiful Alicia Howtz as the lead.

Hemmed in by a one-month timeline and a cast of uncooperative extras, but aching to fulfill Alicia’s dreams, Justin must face the sad, sad truth: he may, in actuality, be producing The Worst Zombie Movie Ever.

My review: Really funny YA novel about a group of high schoolers who decide to make a zombie movie. I laughed out loud many times, and loved how a lot of the gags were shown rather than told. The end was just perfect. Great stuff.

***Disclaimer: This e-ARC was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Huge thanks to them. ***

My rating: 4/5

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The Bear and the Nightingale, by Katherine Arden

Format: e-ARC, 336 pages

Publisher: Random House UK, Ebury Publishing

Published: 12 January 20217

ISBN: 9781785031045

Genre: General Fiction (Adult), Sci Fi & Fantasy

Back cover blurb: ‘Frost-demons have no interest in mortal girls wed to mortal men. In the stories, they only come for the wild maiden.’

In a village at the edge of the wilderness of northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year, an elderly servant tells stories of sorcery, folklore and the Winter King to the children of the family, tales of old magic frowned upon by the church.

But for the young, wild Vasya these are far more than just stories. She alone can see the house spirits that guard her home, and sense the growing forces of dark magic in the woods…

My review: I think this is a case of “it’s not you, it’s me.” The book was beautifully written but I just didn’t feel any connection to it. I don’t think I’ll bother with the rest of the series.

***Disclaimer: This e-ARC was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Huge thanks to them. ***

My rating: 3/5

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Game of Cones, by Cynthia Baxter

Format: e-ARC, 304 pages

Publisher: Kensington Books

Published: 24 November 2020

ISBN: 9781496726827

Genre: Mystery & Thrillers

Back cover blurb: In Cynthia Baxter’s fourth Lickety Splits Mystery, ice cream shoppe owner and amateur sleuth Kate McKay doesn’t waffle around scooping up new clientele at a historic hotel, but her hopes of becoming the Hudson Valley’s reigning ice cream queen melt fast when murder checks-in!

From the moment Kate arrives at the imposing Mohawk Mountain Resort, not even luggage brimming with hot fudge can sweeten her stay. Instead of savoring alone time with her on-again boyfriend Jake and leading workshops on whipping together delectable frosty treats, she finds herself stranded at the isolated hotel with a small group of nutty characters–and a dead body.

When the corpse of wealthy cosmetics executive Bethany La Montaigne is suddenly found following a blackout, any of the five strangers trapped with Kate and Jake could be the killer. Chilled to the core, Kate vows to discover whether the victim’s mortal enemy was a smooth-talking playboy, bubbly millennial, mousy librarian, charming Englishman, or the Mohawk’s creepy general manager…

Bethany’s life was chock full of scandals and there’s little doubt that someone refused to endure another taste. With just a sprinkling of clues, it’s up to Kate to bring justice to a culprit who believes that revenge is a dish best served cold…

My review: I chose this book from Netgalley because of the punny title and the fact it was about ice cream. I was unaware it was the fourth book in a series, but I don’t think that mattered much. It soon became apparent, though, that this was very poorly written. The title and the ice cream were the best things about it.

The characters were unlikable stereotypes who didn’t seem to care that someone had been murdered in their midst and their body left somewhere in the hotel, never to be mentioned again. One even had a complete change of character, going from creepy to puppy dog in a matter of a few pages. The plot was ridiculously implausible. Police would have been on the spot, no matter what the weather, and it would not have been up to one of the guests to inform the family about the death. Mrs Moody’s backstory was extremely unlikely from a legal perspective. And what kind of ice cream business owner goes to a remote hotel without knowing if there are decent refrigeration facilities?

At once stage, Kate’s niece said Google was her friend, and it’s clearly the author’s friend also because she used it to provide unrelated facts about ice cream at the start of each chapter, even down to including the URL of the website the fact came from. There were pages describing what a cult was, like it was some novel concept, and even an explanation of foosball. One can only assume the author thinks she needs to spoon-feed her readers because they aren’t capable of looking up new words for themselves if they don’t know them. But would they really not have heard of them?

And then there was the actual writing. At one point, the word ‘suddenly’ was used three times in two short sentences. This could have benefited from a good editor, both for writing and content. Kate was written much older than she was meant to be, more Miss Marple than Nancy Drew.

Overall, then, not one I would recommend. Despite the ice cream, I won’t be reading the rest of the series or any other by Baxter.

***Disclaimer: This e-ARC was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Huge thanks to them. ***

My rating: 1/5

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Stuck with You, by Carla Burgess

Format: e-ARC, 384 pages

Publisher: HQ Digital

Published: 10 April 2017

ISBN: 9780008221553

Genre: Romance, Women’s Fiction

Back cover blurb: One lift. Two strangers. Anything could happen!

Elena thought that today would be just like any other day…until the supermarket lift jams and she realises she’s stuck.

And not just stuck in the lift. Stuck with her childhood crush, Daniel Moore, who unfortunately seems to be just as gorgeous as she remembered…

My review: A sweet wee romance with very little conflict, but when it ended I was bugged there were still some unresolved matters. The sample chapter from the next book didn’t seem to have the same characters, so that didn’t help me. When would they get to meet Patrick? Was he as sketchy as he sounded? I need to know! I liked the second-chance romance trope with Elena and Dan, but introducing Patrick and never resolving his storyline ignores the Chekhov’s gun rule. Can I petition Carla Burgess to consider a sequel?

***Disclaimer: This e-ARC was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Huge thanks to them. ***

My rating: 3/5

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Beneath the Keep (The Queen of the Tearling, #0), by Erika Johansen

Format: e-ARC, 420 pages

Publisher: Random House UK, Transworld Publishers

Published: 11 February 2021

ISBN: 9781787632356

Genre: General Fiction (Adult), Sci Fi and Fantasy, Teens and YA

Back cover blurb: In a world far in the future, society in the Tearling has reverted to feudalism.

Evil forces have converged to ensure that the rich and powerful stay in control while the poor are plunged into ever-greater depths of suffering. The only hope is a prophecy, whispered about among the poor, that a True Queen will rise up and save the kingdom from succumbing completely to despotism.

But, none of this affects the Mace. We meet the Mace in the beginning of his life, when he is enslaved as a paid fighter in the Creche, the clandestine and sinister underworld beneath the kingdom. The decrepit Creche is the only home Mace has ever known.

Meanwhile in the Keep and in the countryside, some of the same villains at play in the Mace’s world are inciting ever-escalating class conflict. Princess Elyssa must decide if she should align herself with her mother the Queen, or join the socialist rebellion group Blue Horizon, which has captured her heart. As the people rioting across the countryside decide Elyssa holds the key to the Kingdom’s future, she is running out of time to make her choice–and to outrun those who hope to make it for her.

When the Mace must leave the Creche for the first time in his life, his own fate intertwines with the prophecy of the princess and the battles of country peasants uniting in mutiny, and everything changes. The hope that Elyssa represented may be snuffed out by dark magic, and the Mace finds himself called into the service of something bigger than himself — a fight for a better world.

My review: I’ve always loved the Mace, and this new book from Erika Johansen – a prequel to her Tearling trilogy set in the period just before Queen Kelsea’s birth – gives us his origin story, from a childhood in the Creche to years in the ring as a child fighter and then his introduction to the Queen’s Guard. At the same time, we get to see Kelsea’s mother’s descent into madness, and all the evil machinations of the high-born classes and the desperation of those forced to live below them.

In her author’s note, Johansen makes it clear she is making a political statement about the haves and have-nots, and many times I appreciated when she made a sly dig at the recent US political turmoil.

As with the other books in the series, I must state that, although categorised as YA fiction, the subject matter really isn’t for children or for the fainthearted. Paedophilia and rape are ongoing themes, and there are some very gory, stomach-churning descriptions. Scenes in the Creche just broke my heart and I could picture them clearly because of Johansen’s amazing writing.

Many fans were upset at the ending of the third Tearling book, but with this prequel I see an exciting new beginning and very much hope we will see more from the time of Kelsea’s childhood.

***Disclaimer: This e-ARC was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Huge thanks to them. ***

My rating: 4/5

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The Switch, by Beth O’Leary

Format: Audiobook ARC, narrated by Alison Steadman and Daisy Edgar-Jones (e-book 333 pages)

Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Published: 18 August 2020

ISBN: 9781250751850

Genre: Women’s fiction

Back cover blurb: When overachiever Leena Cotton is ordered to take a two-month sabbatical after blowing a big presentation at work, she escapes to her grandmother Eileen’s house for some long-overdue rest.

Eileen is newly single and about to turn eighty. She’d like a second chance at love, but her tiny Yorkshire village doesn’t offer many eligible gentlemen.

So they decide to try a two-month swap.

Eileen will live in London and look for love. She’ll take Leena’s flat, and learn all about casual dating, swiping right, and city neighbors. Meanwhile Leena will look after everything in rural Yorkshire: Eileen’s sweet cottage and garden, her idyllic, quiet village, and her little neighborhood projects.

But stepping into one another’s shoes proves more difficult than either of them expected. Will swapping lives help Eileen and Leena find themselves…and maybe even find true love? In Beth O’Leary’s The Switch, it’s never too late to change everything….or to find yourself.

My review: This was such a fun story with an unusual pair of heroines, a burned-out Londoner grieving the death of her sister and her 79-year-old grandmother from a small village near Leeds. I really enjoyed how they were both looking for more out of life, and how much they embraced each other’s lifestyles as they initiated the swap where Leena took over her gran’s responsibilities in the village while Eileen got herself on Tinder and flatted with Leena’s friends in Shoreditch. There’s a wonderful cast of friends and neighbours, all of whom I could see clearly in my mind, and although Leena infuriated me near the end, the ending was very satisfying.

I listened to the Netgalley audiobook narrated by the wonderful Alison Steadman (Pride and Prejudice‘s Mrs Bennet) and Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People), and although I thought Steadman was probably a little young to play a 79-year-old, they were both fabulous. (The Netgalley app, though, is horrendous and I do not recommend. It kept losing my place and sending me back to the very beginning, or if I paused in the middle of a chapter it would restart from the beginning of the chapter before. Very frustrating! I hope they fix that soon.)

Beth O’Leary is an author I will now keep a keen eye out for. I’m eager to read her other work.

***Disclaimer: This e-ARC was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Huge thanks to them. ***

My rating: 5/5

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The Love Scam, by MaryJanice Davidson

Format: eARC, 320 pages

Publisher: St Martin’s Press

Published: 4 August 2020

ISBN: 9781250053169

Genre: Romance

Back cover blurb: Rake Tarbell is in trouble. When the fabulously wealthy and carefree bachelor wakes up horribly hungover in Venice, it’s not something that would normally be a problem…except he has no idea how he got there from California. Or who stole his wallet. Or who emptied his bank account of millions. Or who in the world is Lillith, the charming little girl claiming to be his long lost daughter. For the first time in his life, Rake is on his own and throwing Benjamins around aren’t going to solve his problem. Now if only the gorgeous, fun, and free-spirited woman who brought Lillith into his life was willing to help the situation…

Claire Delaney finds Rake’s problems hilarious and is not in the least bit sorry of adding to them by bringing Lillith into the mix. A pretty Midwestern girl with a streak for mischief, Claire isn’t the type to hang around with a guy like Rake. Even if he is drop-dead handsome and charming as all get-out. Even if he needs help and she has all the answers. But if this helps Lillith, she will go out of her way. And with a guy like Rake, she’s willing to bend her rules a bit for some fun.

But when adventure-filled days turn to romantic nights as they search for answers, and someone starts following them through the streets of Venice, Claire realizes she’s playing more than just a game. And maybe, just maybe, she isn’t willing to let go of Rake or Lillith just yet.

My review: I didn’t realise this was the second book in the series until after I had downloaded it from Netgalley. Although I haven’t read the first book about brother Blake, I don’t think it made much difference to my enjoyment of this book – which, sadly, was limited. It was merely okay. I enjoyed Davidson’s early Undead series books, but after a while they became a bit silly. That’s what I felt about this book. The author was trying hard to make it funny by including a whole lot of tropes, all of which are listed at the end, but I think she tried too hard and it all fell flat. I didn’t care enough about the characters, and the scenario was just too far-fetched for me to be interested.

***Disclaimer: This e-ARC was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Huge thanks to them. ***

My rating: 2/5

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