After Dark by Jayne Cowie #NetGalley #AfterDark @CowieJayne @penguinUKBooks @centurybooksuk

 

After Dark by Jayne Cowie

Published by Random House, Cornerstone

Publication Date: 1st April 2022

Genre: Womens Crime

My sincere thanks the publisher for allowing me access to this title prior to publication via NetGalley.

My opinions are my own and unbiased.

Book Description:

WELCOME TO A WORLD WHERE WOMEN HOLD THE POWER.

They dominate workplaces, public spaces and government.

They are no longer afraid to cross a dark car park, catch the last train, or walk home alone.

With the Curfew law in place, all men are electronically tagged and must stay at home after 7pm.

It changed things for the better. Until now.

A woman is murdered late at night and evidence suggests she knew her attacker.

It couldn't have been a man because a Curfew tag is a solid alibi... Isn't it?

My Thoughts:

Set in a female dominated dystopian world approximately 20 years in the future from publication I felt this had vibes of a plot similar to those John Marrs would pen. Following the murder of a female MP the laws have been changed radically, meaning that all men are tagged and are subject to a curfew between 7pm and 7am which should mean that women feel much safer on the streets after dark. Children are taught in school about Curfew and the reasons behind it. But not everyone is happy about the changes.

Cass's father was put in jail for having breached his Curfew, but the facts behind the situation aren't clear cut and Cass is angry at a system which she believes is just the feminists' way of controlling men. But she doesn't know a life other than the one she's living, what things were like before. She focuses her anger on her mum Sarah (who works at a tagging centre applying and checking the tags) and the other women at the Mother House where they live, a safe haven where men are not allowed access.

When a woman's body is found near where they live, the detectives on the case automatically assume that a woman must have committed the crime as it happened during Curfew hours; all except one, Pamela, who is older than the others on the team and remembers life before Curfew and knows how devious people can be when they have something to hide. Would she manage to persuade the other women on the team to consider all the options before a miscarriage of justice could possibly occur and put an innocent woman behind bars?

I enjoyed pondering the many and varied arguments which this book provokes. Could this scenario ever be brought into place in our society? Is it a fair system or does it penalise the masses for the actions of the few? How open to abuse would the tagging system be? There are so many angles to look at with this book and it certainly got my grey cells firing for a long while after I put it down.

I would definitely recommend this book - it is perfect for book clubs and there are even some useful questions for consideration at the end to kick start conversations.

About the Author:

An avid reader and life-long writer, Jayne Cowie also enjoys digging in her garden and makes an excellent devil's food cake. She lives near London with her family. You can find her on Instagram as @CowieJayne

My Best Friend's Secret by Emily Freud #libraryloan #paperbackbooks @MsEmilyFreud @QuercusBooks

 

My Best Friend's Secret by Emily Freud

Published by Quercus Books

Publication Date: 22nd July 2021

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Book Description:

Kate Sullivan has a beautiful home, a job she loves and a handsome fiancé: all she's ever dreamed of since getting sober and painstakingly piecing her life back together.

But a chance encounter with her old best friend, Becky, threatens Kate's newfound and fragile happiness. She remembers nothing of their last drunken night out, the night Becky broke off their friendship without warning or explanation.

With Becky back in her life, Kate is desperate to make amends for the past.  For the closure she craves, Kate needs to know what she did that ruined everything. But what if the truth is worse than Kate could have imagined?

My Thoughts:

I picked up this book at my local library while in search of Emily's more recent release entitled What She Left Behind. I have that on hold at the library and am even more keen to get my hands on it ASAP now I've read her previous work.

This is one book I wish I hadn't read the prologue as it unfortunately gave away the whole direction of the plot. We meet Kate Sullivan and her dad as they stand all dressed up but with nowhere to go as Kate's jilted on her wedding day. We then back track to how and why we end up there but personally I feel the book would have worked better without this scene.

Kate is a high school English teacher, her class of year 11 students in final preparation for their GCSE exams. It's a job she loves and which she's had to work hard to achieve. She's also an alcoholic, six years sober thanks to the AA 12 steps plan which helps people on their journey back to sobriety. The book takes us through Kate's 12 steps, explaining which of them she has been honest with herself with and which she's still in denial or studiously avoiding.  Then Becky, her best friend from her teenage years who she's not seen in a decade or so, suddenly arrives back in her life and everything starts to go off the rails.

I found this to be a very honest account of how hard getting sober (and staying so) must be, the self-doubt and paranoia which can easily ambush any and every situation. The temptation to have just one sip of alcohol is everywhere, trying to build a new social life while avoiding temptation is a steep hill to climb. My opinions of Becky kept swinging between whether she was being a genuine good friend or whether she was deliberately trying to wreck Kate's newly found happiness. All became clear on that one however the prologue had already influenced the general flow of events. We may have lacked the detail but we certainly knew where the endpoint would be.

That said, I did enjoy this book immensely, especially Kate's interactions with problem student Lily. If only there were more teachers made in her mould. Also, Kate's dad Johnny and his new partner Ronda are fabulous characters - I would have liked to have heard their voices more throughout the book too.

I would definitely recommend this book, although maybe skip the prologue for a better experience overall.

About the Author:

Emily Freud has worked on Emmy and BAFTA award winning television series including Educating Yorkshire and First Dates. Her debut novel My Best Friend's Secret publishes in 2021. Emily lives in North London, with her husband and two small children. She is currently working on her next novel.

Next of Kin by Kia Abdullah @HQstories @KiaAbdullah #paperback #bookreview #NextofKin #bookreview

 

Next Of Kin by Kia Abdullah

Published by HQ

Publication date: 2nd September 2021

Genre: Legal Thriller

Book Description:

Leila Syed receives a call that cleaves her life in two. Her brother-in-law’s voice is filled with panic. His son’s nursery has called to ask where little Max is.

Leila was supposed to drop Max off that morning. But she forgot.

Racing to the carpark, she grasps the horror of what she has done.

What follows is an explosive, high-profile trial that will tear the family apart. But as the case progresses it becomes clear there’s more to this incident than meets the eye…

My Thoughts:

I absolutely love Kia Abdullah's writing. This book about a successful businesswoman making the worst mistake you can imagine, causing the death of her nephew Max. It's heart breaking in parts yet has you questioning just how it could have come about.

Leila and her sister are close - they have had to be since the loss of their parents during their formative years. Leila adores little Max, especially as she's struggling to start her own family. She and her husband dote on him so how exactly could she forget he was in her car on the hottest day of the year? The story is made up of three threads: the day it happened, the trial itself and the aftermath. Kia has narrated the story brilliantly, picking up on the thought processes all readers must have gone through while reading the book and cleverly threading them into the plotline. The doubts and questions pop up right the way through the book but even so I didn't consider the final direction the story took.

If you want to nit-pick you could argue that Max was too old to be put into the car in the manner described and that it would be unusual for a child his age to be taking a nap at that time in the morning but this is fiction and sometimes you have to open your mind a little and let the little niggles pass for the sake of a good story.

I couldn't wait to get back to this book when I had to take a break (damn that day job!) and am waiting very impatiently for Kia to release her next book at the beginning of 2023. I simply cannot get enough of her work!

About the Author:

Kia Abdullah is an author and travel writer from London. She has written for The New York Times, the Guardian and the Telegraph, and is the author of Truth Be Told, which was shortlisted for The Diverse Book Awards, and Take It Back, named one of the best thrillers of the year by the Guardian and the Telegraph.

Kia frequently contributes to the BBC, commenting on a variety of issues affecting the British Asian community, and is the founder of Asian Booklist, a site that helps readers discover new books by British Asian authors. Kia also runs Atlas & Boots, a travel blog read by 250,000 people a month. For more information about Kia and her writing, visit her website at kiaabdullah.com, or follow her at @KiaAbdullah on Instagram and Twitter.

The People on Platform 5 by Clare Pooley #NetGalley #bookreview #ThePeopleonPlatform5 @cpooleywriter @TransworldBooks

 

The People on Platform 5 by Clare Pooley

Published by Random House UK, Transworld Publishers

Publication Date: 26th May 2022

Genre: Womens Fiction

My sincere thanks to the publishers Transworld for the opportunity to read an advance e-copy ahead of publication. The opinions expressed here are all my own and unbiased.

Book Description:

Nobody speaks to strangers on the train. But what would happen if they did?

Every day at 8:05, Iona Iverson boards the train to go to work. Every day, she sees the same people and makes assumptions about them, even giving them nicknames. But they never speak. Obviously.

Then, one morning, Smart-but-Sexist-Surbiton chokes on a grape right in front of Iona. Suspiciously-Nice-New Malden steps up to help and saves his life, and this one event sparks a chain reaction.

With nothing in common but their commute, an eclectic group of people learn that their assumptions about each other don't match reality. But when Iona's life begins to fall apart, will her new friends be there when she needs them most?

My Thoughts:

This book jumped out and gave me the biggest hug just when I needed it most. A huge fan of people watching, Clare Pooley has perfected the art and put it all into the most heart-warming novel I have read in a long time.
Iona Iverson and her canine companion Lulu take the same train across London every day, as it seems do a group of people who are all familiar to one another by sight but are unconnected in any other way. We all know that the First Rule of Commuting is that you do not interact with these people; you note the way they dress, the habits they have - even give them nicknames and dream up lives for them based on your observations of them. But you never interact. All that changed for Iona on The Day of The Grape.
The humble component of a fruit salad, chosen purely for its nutritional value following an unkind comment from his wife, causes one of the subjects of Iona's observations to require assistance and it is from thereon in that a select group of commuters find a bond with each other which none of them could ever have foreseen.
The story is told from each of the commuter's points of view at various points through the book; it seems that they all need advice and support far more than they each realise but gradually they all come to the same conclusion: the only person qualified to give the advice they need is Iona.
I absolutely adore this book! The easy writing style, the witty observations and a great sense of humour all come together to make this the triumph of a book that it is.  I think we can all imagine ourselves as one of the commuters on Iona's train - I for one would love to be one of the train gang in this book. I love how the characters evolve from the early pages into much happier souls at the end despite experiencing some of life's trip hazards along the way. I never imagined Smart-but-Sexist-Surbiton could have such hidden depths!
Iona herself is one of the most fabulous characters ever with her eccentric dress sense and tales of far more adventurous times in her youth before the daily commute pulled her into its clutches.

I simply cannot award this book sufficient sparkly stars. It's Fabulous darling!

About the Author:

Clare Pooley graduated from Newnham College, Cambridge with a degree in Economics, and joined the heady world of advertising.

By the age of thirty, Clare was on the board of JWT, one of the largest global advertising agencies, responsible for campaigns for brands like Kit Kat, Rolo, Persil, Shell, Barclays Bank, Rolex watches and many more household names.

A few years later Clare was made a Managing Partner and Group Head.

Then, when her third child was born, Clare quit the rat race to concentrate on being a Mum.

As well as making lots of cupcakes and homemade costumes for various dress up days, Clare drank an awful lot of wine.

By 2015 the wine was starting to mess up Clare’s life, so she quit and started a blog called Mummy was a Secret Drinker.

Within a year, the blog had over a million hits, and people kept asking Clare to turn her story into a memoir. Which she did, publishing The Sober Diaries with Hodder and Stoughton in December 2017. The book has had over 250 five star reviews on Amazon, and is described often as ‘Bridget Jones Dries Out.’ 

Clare then turned her hand to fiction, and her first novel, The Authenticity Project, was snapped up by Transworld (Penguin Random House), for a six-figure sum, after a heated six-way auction. It has subsequently sold to Penguin in the USA, and publishers in 28 other territories, from South Korea to Iceland.

The Authenticity Project was published in Spring 2020. The People on Platform 5 is her second novel.

Adult Assembly Required by Abbi Waxman #blogtour #NetGalley @amplecat @IsabelleHPG @headlinepg #AdultAssemblyRequired

 Adult Assembly Required by Abbi Waxman

Published by Headline

Publication Date: 17th May 2022

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

My thanks to Isabelle Wilson at Headline Publishing Group for the invitation to read and review this book as part of the blog tour. All views and opinions are my own and unbiased.

Book Description:

When Laura Costello arrives in downtown Los Angeles, her life has somewhat fallen apart.

Her apartment building has caught fire, her engagement to her high school sweetheart has been broken off, and she's just been caught in a rare LA downpour and has no dry clothes.

But when she seeks shelter in Nina Hill's local neighbourhood bookshop, she finds herself introduced to the people who will become her new family. And as Laura becomes friends with Nina, Polly and Impossibly Handsome Bob, things start to look up.

Proving that - even as adults - we all sometimes need a little help assembling and re-assembling our lives. . .

My Thoughts:

If you've not read The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by the same author, don't worry, neither have I. But I want to now! The two books share a few characters and while I think you would understand the dynamic between some of the group in Adult Assembly Required a little better, it's not vital to know the previous book as the author very gently feeds in any background info which is useful.

As the description above explains, Laura has arrived in LA and finds herself with very few personal belongings when a fire rages through the apartment block where she's staying. Fate steps in to ensure she's looked after when she tumbles into Nina's bookstore for shelter during a hefty rainstorm. The gregarious Polly swiftly takes her under her wing and introduces her to Maggie, the landlady of the house-share which then features strongly in the remainder of the book.

The residents are all exactly the type of people you'd want to house-share with - friendly, supportive, inclusive but without being overbearing. They're an eclectic mix of ages and backgrounds but the blend of personalities is an absolute triumph. It's easy to see why Laura has skedaddled her way to the other side of the country when her family deign to contact her - not to mention the obnoxious ex-fiancé who just can't seem to get the message that Laura has most definitely moved on with her life (or is desperately trying to if people will let her). 

This is a heart-warming story of how strangers can become your new family. There's the ongoing "will they/won't they" relationship between Laura and Impossibly Handsome Bob which has you willing them to be brave and honest with each other and there are some delightful animal residents at Maggie's mansion who threaten to steal the show however my favourite character in the whole book has to be the fabulously straight-talking Clare. Whilst still in her formative years she's happy to share her nuggets of worldly wisdom on just about any subject with anyone - whether they're factually correct is irrelevant. She just tells it how she sees it, which has some interesting results.

An ideal beach/poolside read, I thoroughly enjoyed this book which had me chuckling along in some chapters and wanting to slap a couple of the characters in others. 

Pop a copy in your hand luggage, you won't be disappointed.

About the Author:

Abbi Waxman is a chocolate-loving, dog-loving woman, who lives in Los Angeles and lies down as much as possible. She worked in advertising for many years, which is how she learned to write fiction. She has three daughters, three dogs, three cats, and one very patient husband.

The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean #NetGalley @willrdean @HodderBooks #LastThingtoBurn #bookreview

The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean

Published by Hodder & Stoughton

Publication Date: 7th January 2021

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Book Description:

He is her husband. She is his captive.

Her husband calls her Jane. That is not her name.

She lives in a small farm cottage, surrounded by vast, open fields. Everywhere she looks, there is space. But she is trapped. No one knows how she got to the UK: no one knows she is there. Visitors rarely come to the farm; if they do, she is never seen.

Her husband records her every movement during the day. If he doesn't like what he sees, she is punished.

For a long time, escape seemed impossible. But now, something has changed. She has a reason to live and a reason to fight. Now, she is watching him, and waiting ...

My Thoughts:

Why did I wait so long to read this book? Marian Keyes summed it up perfectly: I don't think I can describe it any more accurately: 

This book is brutal in its depiction of a young Vietnamese woman who, along with her sister, paid for the opportunity of a better life in the UK. They were promised work in the retail trade, safe accommodation and once they had paid the agreed fee, they would be able to choose whether they moved on to different jobs in other towns - basically a new life with a better future than they would have experienced if they stayed in their homeland. 

The reality is that they are trafficked and after their first job fruit-picking they are separated; one of the sisters is sold to Lenn, a farmer who changes her name to Jane and keeps her locked in the house under video surveillance so he can check whether she does her chores or tries to escape.  Her sister, Lenn tells her, is living in Manchester working as a technician in a nail bar. This may be true at the start, and it is what keeps Thanh Dao going during the living nightmare she is experiencing. Everything she does is in the hope that she will see Kim-Ly again soon. That she is not suffering as she herself is.

This is such an emotional read, your heart breaks for poor Thanh Dao; every opportunity that arises to either get word to the outside world that she's there and is desperate for help or to escape along the farm track to the nearest house or passer-by has you totally invested and willing her to succeed. The story had my heart racing in a comparable way to American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins, the suspense ratcheted up to maximum.

The title made heartbreaking sense as I worked my way through the chapters, and I could have happily disposed of Lenn and his cronies myself given half a chance!

Despite the upsetting nature of the story content, I would strongly recommend this as an essential addition to everyone's TBR shelf.

About the Author:

Will Dean grew up in the East Midlands, living in nine different villages before the age of eighteen. After studying law at the LSE, and working many varied jobs in London, he settled in rural Sweden with his wife. He built a wooden house in a boggy forest clearing and it's from this base that he compulsively reads and writes.

Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney #bookreview @HQstories @alicewriterland #RockPaperScissors

 

Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney

Published by HarperCollins, HQ

Publication Date: Paperback 19th August 2021

Genre: Psychological Thriller

Book Description:

Ten years of marriage.
Ten years of secrets.
An anniversary they’ll never forget.

Adam and Amelia are spending the weekend in the Scottish Highlands. The remote location is perfect for what they have planned.

But when their romantic trip takes a dark turn, they both start to wonder – can they trust the one they’re with?

My Thoughts:

Hmmm...now where to start with this book? It has had plenty of hype around it but despite this still has its fair quantity of mixed reviews. I try not to read too many reviews before I start, more a case of looking at overall "star ratings" rather than the details, just to get a vibe of how well the book has been received in general - after all, lots of spoilers can come tumbling out of reviews from certain quarters and we don't want that.

What's to know? Genre-wise we're looking at a domestic noir type novel. Amelia and Adam's marriage appears to be on a bit of a rocky footing and, as luck would have it, Amelia has won a weekend away in the highlands of Scotland which fits perfectly with the advice from their counsellor: take yourselves away from the everyday humdrum of life and rediscover what it was you first fell for with one another. Except it seems to be the very last thing either of them want to be doing especially as they are travelling through ever worsening weather conditions in a 1970s Morris Traveller which has seen better days.  They're the only ones around when they arrive at their remote destination - even the chapel doors are locked. Until they're not...

This is just the start of some extremely sinister goings on during the couple's stay at the chapel. We hear each of the character's points of view as they take a chapter each to explain exactly what they're thinking, together with the fact that they both appear to have their own ideas as to what happens should the weekend prove not to be the success planned for them by their counsellor. 

This is an extremely creepy, sinister read which definitely won't end up where you expect it to. Admittedly it is rather a slow burner but I do recommend you keep going right to the end because there are secrets and lies woven deep into the fabric of Blackwater Chapel and its history. All you have to do it work out what is the truth and what has been created by some very twisted minds.

About the Author:

Alice Feeney is a New York Times bestselling author and journalist. Her debut novel, Sometimes I Lie, was an international bestseller, has been translated into over twenty languages, and is being made into a TV series by Warner Bros. starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. His & Hers is also being adapted for screen by Jessica Chastain’s Freckle Films. Alice was a BBC Journalist for fifteen years, and now lives in the British countryside with her family. Rock Paper Scissors is her fourth novel and is being made into a TV series for Netflix by the producer of The Crown.