An Almost Perfect Holiday by Lucy Diamond @panmacmillan @LDiamondAuthor #AnAlmostPerfectHoliday #bookreview

 

An Almost Perfect Holiday by Lucy Diamond

Published by Pan MacMillan

Publication Date 28th May 2020 (paperback)

Book Description:

It was supposed to be the perfect summer escape . . .

Down in Cornwall, the sun is shining and a row of three holiday cottages are fully booked. Em’s in the first one, with her blended family – fingers crossed they’re still together by the end of the fortnight. Maggie’s in the second cottage with her bolshie teenage daughter, hoping that some sea air and sunshine will reunite them. And then Olivia arrives in need of sanctuary, and perhaps the chance to work through the secret that has weighed on her for so long.

As the lives of the three women become tangled together, it’s not long before everyone’s wondering – will this holiday turn out to be a scorcher . . . or simply too hot to handle?

My Thoughts:

This book was my lucky charity shop find for the summer.  I was using a short cut through a local shopping mall when I spotted this one in the basket of books outside. Suffice to say it didn't stay there long and was soon on its way home with me!

Meet Em, Olivia and Maggie; three mums who are all having their own struggles with life and all it chooses to throw at them. They all feel they are failing at parenting in their own way yet by the end of a fortnight in Cornwall around the pool they might just be re-evaluating things.

Single mum Em is just putting a toe back into the dating scene and has met George, dishy single dad to 7 year old Seren. Olivia has 3 year old twins and is wondering whether life will ever get any easier as husband Mack spends so little time at home she's struggling to cope without a network of close family to lean on. Maggie has brought up teenager Amelia single handedly since her husband walked out years ago and whereas the two of them were close during Amelia's childhood, the teenage years are proving a bit more of a challenge.

The three women find themselves bonding around the pool at the holiday cottages they are staying at in the south-west of England.  The setting sounds idyllic - especially as they are lucky with the British summer weather most of the time they are there - but is a drive down the A-roads of Devon and Cornwall enough to get away from the stresses of everyday life?

I enjoyed this book immensely, reading about other parents having issues with their kids and trying to blend families together who know very little about each other. Life's never easy and no two families are the same so there are always going to be bumps along the way. However, despite differences in people's circumstances, there are common denominators across the board: as mums we often feel like we're not parenting as well as the next person. This story takes a look into the imperfect world of every family and shows that quite often we are all just winging it - or as Izzie finds out, you just have to "fake it till you make it".

Lucy Diamond has me craving a gorgeous staycation in the south-west although that's probably because my kids are young adults and far less likely to cause me the stresses that Em, Olivia and Maggie are experiencing! This one is a great holiday read so if you do get chance, pop a copy in your suitcase.

About the Author:

Lucy Diamond grew up in Nottingham and went to university in Leeds where she studied English Literature. After graduating, she lived in Oxford, London and Brighton, working in publishing and at the BBC. She now lives in beautiful Bath where she writes full-time.

As a Sunday Times bestselling author with sixteen novels, two digital novellas and a Quick Read under her belt, Lucy writes with warmth and honesty about the joy and surprises, as well as the complications, that love, family and friendships can bring. Her seventeenth novel, Anything Could Happen, was released as an ebook in December last year and published in hardback January 2022.

Lucy's website is www.lucydiamond.co.uk She is on Twitter @LDiamondAuthor, has a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/LucyDiamondAuthor and is on instagram @lucydiamondwrites.

One of the Girls by Lucy Clarke #Netgalley @lucyclarkebooks @HarperCollinsUK #OneOfTheGirls

One of the Girls by Lucy Clarke

Published by Harper Collins 

Publication Date: 26th May 2022

Genre: Womens Fiction

My thanks to publisher Harper Collins for giving me access to this book. The opinions I give here are my own and unbiased.

Book Description:

WE WERE DYING FOR A HOLIDAY

The six of us arrived on that beautiful Greek island dreaming of sun-drenched beaches and blood orange sunsets, ready to lose ourselves in the wild freedom of a weekend away with friends.

On the first night we swam under a blanket of stars.

On the second night the games began on our clifftop terrace.

On the third night the idyll cracked, secrets and lies whispering on the breeze.

And by the final night there was a body on the rocks below . . .

WHO WOULD KILL FOR IT?

My Thoughts:

Ever since I read Lucy Clarke's early book 'The Blue' (recently rebranded as 'No Escape') I have followed her work avidly. This latest book 'One of the Girls' was an auto buy for me, I didn't even need to read the "blurb" to know I would love it.  With both wedding and holiday seasons in full flow right now this is a book you need to have packed ready for your down time.

Lexi and Ed are getting married. The perfect excuse for Lexi's best friend Bella to leap into action and arrange the best hen event in history. Unfortunately for Bella things start to go off course right from the airport terminal as she and partner Fen bump into one of Bella's former colleagues who blurts out information about Bella which she's been keeping close to her chest. This is the first of the cracks to appear over the holiday, each getting bigger and more traumatic to the group. 

Every one of the girls in the friendship group is battling with some kind of secret or life event which they haven't shared with the others, whether it's recent or historical. Gregarious Bella goes headlong into situations without thinking through how her reaction will affect anyone else, then goes into a period of self-loathing which she reflects onto other people which just makes things even worse. The revelations just keep coming right the way through the book and the reader is kept in the dark as to who will become the victim of the story as described in the synopsis. 

Lucy has described the scenery and overall atmosphere of the Greek island villa and local town beautifully, so if you don't want to take a trip to the area by the end of the book I would be amazed. Just maybe don't choose it as the destination for your hen event!

About the Author:

Lucy Clarke has a first class degree in English Literature, and is a passionate traveller and diarist. She has worked as a presenter of social enterprise events, a creative writing workshop leader, and she is now a full-time novelist. Lucy is married to James Cox, a professional windsurfer, and together they spend their winters travelling and their summers at their home on the south coast of England.

One Good Thing by Alexandra Potter #bloggersborrowbooks #hardback #libraryloan @40somethingfkup @panmacmillan #OneGoodThing

 

One Good Thing by Alexandra Potter

Published by Pan

Publication Date: 9th December 2021

Genre: Womens Fiction, Humour

Book Description:

In life, nothing is certain. Just when you think you have it all figured out, something can happen to change the course of everything . . .

Liv Brooks is still in shock. Newly-divorced and facing an uncertain future, she impulsively swaps her London Life for the sweeping hills of the Yorkshire Dales, determined to make a fresh start. But fresh starts are harder than they look and feeling lost and lonely she decides to adopt Harry, an old dog from the local shelter, to keep her company.

But Liv soon discovers she isn’t the only one in need of a new beginning. On their daily walks around the village, they meet Valentine, an old man who suffers from loneliness who sits by the window and Stanley, a little boy who is scared of everyone, hides behind the garden gate and Maya, a teenager who is angry at everyone and everything. But slowly things start to change…

Utterly relatable, hilarious and heart-breakingly honest, this is a novel about friendship, finding happiness and living the life unexpected. And how when everything falls apart, all you need is one good thing to turn your life around and make it worth living again.

My Thoughts:

My first thought about this book is that it is a big hug on paper. Yes it is perhaps a little predictable: middle aged woman gets dumped by her husband in favour of the younger, more glamorous model, moves to a new town and makes a new life for herself. Can't argue there, but that would be a harsh summary as there is SO much more to this book which had me cheering Liv, the said middle aged former teacher, on to the new improved version of herself. Liv is such a lovely lady, she really deserved better than all that life in London had dealt her. 

The introduction of delightful Stanley, the little boy whose view is that everything in life is scary unless he can categorise it somehow on to his list of things to expect and in what order, is just the start of Liv's new friendship group. Valentine keeps himself to himself, another character struggling with the challenges life has thrown his way until a homemade bird feeder causes him and Liv to strike up an unlikely friendship. The common denominator which ties these three characters together is Liv's decision to adopt the oldest dog at the rescue centre, Harry. After a throw away comment from her friend back in London about her getting a dog as a loyal companion instead of a new man in her life, Liv decides that maybe it's not such a bad idea; an opinion she has second thoughts about when Harry decides to wreck her living room while she attempts to get her social life back on track.

This is a story which will have you chuckling, cheering and crying at depending on which page you're on. The characters are as diverse in personality as they are in age groups but I can guarantee you will have fallen in love with them all by the final page. Well, maybe with the exception of Liv's ex-husband. He's still a rat. But given that it was down to him that Liv rediscovered who she really was, maybe I might just forgive him.

About the Author:

Alexandra Potter is the bestselling author of romantic comedy fiction novels in the UK, including Me and Mr Darcy. These titles have sold in twenty-two territories and achieved worldwide sales of more than one million copies (making the bestseller charts in the UK, US, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Serbia).

Yorkshire born and raised, Alex currently lives in South-West London with Mr California and their Bosnian rescue dog and when she’s not spending time writing or travelling, she’s spending far too much time on Instagram being reminded that she should be exercising regularly, drinking enough water, practising mindfulness and feeling blessed.

A Beginner's Guide to Murder by Rosalind Stopps @HQstories @RosalindStopps #BeginnersGuideToMurder #book #review #libraryloans

 A Beginner's Guide to Murder by Rosalind Stopps

Published by HQ

Publication Date 22nd July 2021

Book Description:

Grace, Meg and Daphne, all in their seventies, are minding their own business while enjoying a cup of tea in a café, when seventeen-year-old Nina stumbles in. She’s clearly distraught and running from someone, so the three women think nothing of hiding her when a suspicious-looking man starts asking if they’ve seen her.

Once alone, Nina tells the women a little of what she’s running from. The need to protect her is immediate, and Grace, Meg and Daphne vow to do just this. But how? They soon realise there really is only one answer: murder.

And so begins the tale of the three most unlikely murderers-in-the-making, and may hell protect anyone who underestimates them.

My Thoughts:

I must start my review by saying that this book was really not what I expected. Not in a bad way, it just gave a completely different vibe to what I was expecting when I chose it from the library shelf. It's along the lines of Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club in that it's very character driven and more in the cosy crime genre. That's not to say that it doesn't tackle some gritty issues, far from it. Although most of the characters are "of a certain age" the issues they face are very much of our times.

Three retired ladies are enjoying a post yoga class cuppa together in a local cafe when a clearly distressed young woman bursts into the establishment. By some sixth sense the ladies know that it is their mission to protect this young woman and there begins their adventure and the start of a close-knit group.

As I said before this book is very character-driven, and we get to know quite a lot about the 3 older ladies' lives before they turned into invisible pensioners who nobody expects to ever have had anything interesting happen to them. It turns out these 3 ladies all have very diverse backgrounds and still have plenty to offer a young girl who made one wrong decision which changed her life completely.

Among the horrific events which Nina is subjected to and some sad situations which the older ladies relate, there are some comical moments and I found myself warming to each of the 4 ladies in different ways. This book certainly makes you realise how our society makes it easy for traffickers to target people from certain backgrounds and just how little support and guidance there is for them to recognise potential dangers from the unscrupulous gangs who operate across the world, not just in the UK. We never imagine it's happening on our doorstep.

I found this to be a fairly quick read and was cheering the women on in their quest for justice - even if it needed some decidedly illegal actions in order to achieve the desired result! The moral of the story: Never underestimate a pensioner!

About the Author:

Rosalind Stopps has always wanted to tell the stories of the less heard.  For many years she worked with children with disabilities and their families.

She has five grown up children, three grandchildren and an MA in creative writing from Lancaster University.  Rosalind’s short stories have been published in five anthologies and read at live literature events in London, Leeds, Hong Kong and New York.

She lives is South East London with large numbers of humans and dogs.  When she is not writing fiction she is, mostly, reading it or working as a host at London’s South Bank Arts Centre.

The Road Trip by Beth O'Leary @QuercusBooks #TheRoadTrip #book #review #paperbackbook #bloggersbuybooks

The Road Trip by Beth O'Leary

Published by Quercus

Publication Date 17th April 2022

Book Description:

Addie and her sister are about to embark on an epic road trip to a friend's wedding in rural Scotland. The playlist is all planned and the snacks are packed.

But not long after setting off, a car slams into the back of theirs. The driver is none other than Addie's ex, Dylan, who she's avoided since their traumatic break-up two years earlier.

Dylan and his best mate are heading to the wedding too, and they've totalled their car, so Addie has no choice but to offer them a ride. The car is soon jam-packed full of luggage and secrets, and with four-hundred miles ahead of them, Dylan and Addie can't avoid confronting the very messy history of their relationship...

Will they make it to the wedding on time? And, more importantly, is this really the end of the road for Addie and Dylan?

My Thoughts:

Beth O'Leary's first novel The Flat Share is one of my favourite books of recent years so I had high hopes for her two further novels, The Switch and this one, The Road Trip.  I have yet to read The Switch but eventually managed to slot this one into the reading schedule when I swapped to "mood reading" rather than reading by deadline. It didn't take long to slot into Beth's comfortable writing style and within just a couple of chapters I was hooked into Addie and Dylan's story. 

The story is told in two timelines: the NOW and the THEN. We meet four of the main characters straightaway: Dylan and Marcus, friends since their schooldays, are setting off on their way to a friend's wedding. Unknown to them, the car in front of them is going to the same place; Addie and her sister Deb have also set off early to make the trek from Chichester to Scotland. The four of them have history - a history which ended very messily and with many unresolved issues so when Dylan distractedly crashes their car into the back of Addie's Mini things don't look good. Somehow they all end up in Addie's Mini, together with a random addition named Rodney, who nobody knows, continuing their hours-long journey to Cherry's wedding.

The next 350 plus pages relate the story of how the four of them survive the mammoth journey - mainly down to the addition of a great character, Kevin the lorry driver, who manages to save the day as well as everyone's sanity by being in the right place at the right time. The THEN chapters explain how the four of them have ended up not speaking to each other for the best part of two years, and there are chapters where each character is trying to work out how they are feeling about everything, past and present - and whether there can be a future which features the others. 

It turns out there are far more layers to explore than any of them realised, and maybe Cherry's wedding was destined to bring more people together than just the bride and groom? I love the diverse cast of characters who are all slightly flawed in their own way. The story itself is a proper journey of discovery which I found to be an easy read with funny parts and a whole dose of soul searching among the gang. It turns out that all you need is a bit of communication and less jumping to conclusions for everything to fall into place.

A great read for the beach or poolside.

About the Author:

Beth O'Leary is a Sunday Times bestselling author whose novels have been translated into more than thirty languages. Her debut, THE FLATSHARE, sold over half a million copies and changed her life completely. Her second novel, THE SWITCH, has been optioned for film by Amblin Partners, Steven Spielberg's production company. Beth writes her books in the Hampshire countryside with a very badly behaved golden retriever for company. If she's not at her desk, you'll usually find her curled up somewhere with a book, a cup of tea and several woolly jumpers (whatever the weather).

The Girl She Was Before by Jess Kitching @kitching_jess @kingsleypublis1 #TheGirlSheWasBefore #bookreview

The Girl She Was Before by Jess Kitching

Published by Kingsley Publishers

Publication Date 31st October 2021

First of all, I wish to express my thanks to Cindy Lapa of Kingsley Publishers for the review copy of this book which was offered through the Book Connectors group. All opinions here are my own and unbiased.

Book Description:

Nat lives a picture-perfect life, but it wasn’t always this way. A victim of horrific bullying when she was a teenager, Nat will do anything to keep distance between the girl she was before and the woman she is now.

But when her best friend is murdered and people begin to point their finger at her, Nat’s new life quickly unravels.

To Nat, it’s no surprise the crime happened at the same time as the return of her biggest tormentor, Chrissy Summers. A woman with a violent streak who destroyed lives when she was younger and isn’t afraid to do it again.

Face to face with the past she so firmly keeps behind her, Nat’s sanity wavers as her determination to reveal Chrissy as the monster she knows her as rises to dangerous heights.

The question is, can Nat prove Chrissy is a killer, or will Chrissy get to Nat and her family before she has the chance?

My Thoughts:

My first thought on starting this book was of surprise that this one had previously escaped my radar; it's exactly my kind of read. The author takes us straight into the action with two women being forced off the road in their car, the driver intimidated into what turns out to be a fatal error of judgment and her passenger left with life changing injuries. It turns out that this will be just the first of some pretty unnerving and unpleasant events in the coastal town of Coral Bay.

The action then flips back to the local high school a couple of decades earlier. A young girl is struggling to fit in, her home life and lack of support there leading to her being singled out by the school bullies. The name calling and physical intimidation happen on a daily basis to the point where she seeks solitude in the school library during breaks. It seems that Coral Bay is a haven for bullying and nastiness, and one name keeps cropping up as the ringleader: Chrissy Summers.

Back to the present, we find Nat and husband Lucas living their best life in Coral Bay. Nat is an artist and online influencer, Lucas a teacher at the local school. Their lifestyle is the envy of many, even employing a live-in nanny. Nat's world is shaken when she discovers that her friends Hallie and Bree have been involved in a car crash leaving one of them dead and the other fighting for her life. The police endeavour to investigate the goings-on in the town but in Nat's mind there is only one person they need to be questioning: Chrissy Summers. Everything was fine until she returned to town. 

Anyone who has experienced bullying in any form will be able to relate to the feelings Nat is going through so perhaps this book should come with a trigger warning. The way Chrissy and her supporters get away with so much and have everyone on their side and in their pockets will feel oh so familiar. It is understandable how Nat fixates on Chrissy and how she feels that even after all this time nobody is listening to her, but there is also a logic to Lucas's argument that nobody cares about what happened during high school days anymore. One of them will be proven right by the end of the book. 

I took a dislike to both detectives in this story, and I didn't particularly like any of Nat's friends either. All of them seem two faced and unreliable. The person I did feel for was Sunaina who was clearly all out on Nat's side but got the messy end of the stick despite standing by her. I was also disappointed that Lucas seemed to revert to his teenage self and failed to support his wife when the going got tough. I would expect more from my spouse than he was prepared to give.

Overall a pretty accurate representation of small-town mentality where someone always wants to be top dog and the rest of them just want to be part of the popular gang. Well-written but whether I could say I enjoyed it due to the content I'm not quite sure so it's hard to rate this one.

About the Author:

Jess Kitching is an avid reader, writer and binge-watcher. Originally from Bradford, England, she currently lives in Sydney with her fiancé Jack. Her two goals in life were to move to Australia and have a book published. To be able to say she has done both is something she still can’t wrap her head around.

The Second Wife by Rebecca Fleet #paperback #TheSecondWife @RebeccaLFleet @TransworldBooks #bloggersborrowbooks

 

The Second Wife by Rebecca Fleet

Published by Transworld, Black Swan

Publication Date 20th August 2020

Genre: Psychological Thriller

Book Description:

Everyone brings baggage to a new relationship.

When Alex met Natalie she changed his life. After the tragic death of his first wife, which left him a single parent to teenage daughter Jade, he’s determined to build a happy family.

But his new-found happiness is shattered when the family home is gutted by fire and his loyalties are unexpectedly tested. Jade insists she saw a man in the house on the night of the fire; Natalie denies any knowledge of such an intruder.

Alex is faced with an impossible choice: to believe his wife or his daughter? And as Natalie’s story unravels, Alex realises that his wife has a past he had no idea about, a past that might yet catch up with her.

But this time, the past could be deadly . . .

My Thoughts:

This book starts with a man returning from a night out with work colleagues to find the fire brigade at his home, his wife standing outside the property and no sign of his daughter. The lady in question is not Alex's first wife nor the mother of said child but it's not until later that we get the first hint that maybe this was not the accident that Alex's wife initially makes out. Then when his daughter states that she saw a man in the house just prior to the fire taking hold he really does start facing the horrible reality that his wife is not the loyal life partner he had assumed her to be.

The story then flicks back some two decades or so, back to when Alex's wife was young and throwing herself into situations she had no idea would change her life forever. Her obsession with the dark, mysterious Kaspar, owner of the club she frequented would take her into a world she had never considered she could be involved in - and not in the happy ever after way she was hoping.

The book is quite twisty and a sure-fire lesson in never taking anyone at face value. There are several characters within the pages who could have learned something from taking a step back and evaulating people before rushing in to making their acquaintance. I'm not sure any of the characters are particularly likeable or even reliable narrators but they do make for an interesting read which kept my attention as I tried to work out exactly what was going on.

This is my first read from this author and I am now keen to go back and read her debut novel The House Swap as I do enjoy a tale with slippery characters, which is what its synopsis suggests.

About the Author:

Rebecca Fleet lives in London and works in Windsor. Her debut thriller, The House Swap, was published in 2018 to great acclaim. The Second Wife is her eagerly anticipated second thriller.