Stacking the Shelves (16th December 2017)

Stacking The Shelves is a weekly meme hosted by Tynga’s Reviews & Reading Reality, and is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may it be physical or virtual. So in my case it’s all the e-books I’ve received from NetGalley, as a request from an author, from Amazon, or as a physical copy from the library or bookshop. Thanks again to Tynga’s Reviews & Reading Reality, and also to Hayley at Rather Too Fond Of Books, as this is where I’d originally become a fan of the stacking the shelves meme:)

Now. So to start off just to let you know that all cover images leads to a universal Amazon buy link for the book, and the ones that I bought all have the price at time of putting up this post, but obviously they’re subject to change. Some of the others, the ones from Netgalley, are pricier, so make sure to check the price before you ‘one-click!’

You think you know her . . .

Meet Holly.

Social media sensation. The face of clean eating.

Everyone loves her. Everyone wants to be her.

Or do they?

When Holly is attacked by a man she’s only just met, her life starts to spiral out of control.

Was she targeted because of her online wellness empire, or is there a darker reason behind the attack?

He seemed to know her – but she doesn’t know him.

Or does she?

What if Holly isn’t who she seems to be? What if Holly’s living a lie?

But surely we all lie a bit online, don’t we . . .?

FRIEND REQUEST meets THE GIRL BEFORE in this psychological thriller that will keep you guessing.

(How excellent does this sound?!)

What did she see?

It’s been ten long months since Anna Fox last left her home. Ten months during which she has haunted the rooms of her old New York house like a ghost, lost in her memories, too terrified to step outside.

Anna’s lifeline to the real world is her window, where she sits day after day, watching her neighbours. When the Russells move in, Anna is instantly drawn to them. A picture-perfect family of three, they are an echo of the life that was once hers.

But one evening, a frenzied scream rips across the silence, and Anna witnesses something no one was supposed to see. Now she must do everything she can to uncover the truth about what really happened. But even if she does, will anyone believe her? And can she even trust herself?

This sounds right up by street and the second I saw it I jumped. I’ve heard people talk recently about cover design, and how the big publishers make a lot of their thrillers look similar, but personally these are the covers that grab me, so I say if it ain’t broken …;)

When you read this book, you will make many assumptions.
You will assume you are reading about a jealous ex-wife.
You will assume she is obsessed with her replacement – a beautiful, younger woman who is about to marry the man they both love.
You will assume you know the anatomy of this tangled love triangle.
Assume nothing.

Twisted and deliciously chilling, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen’s The Wife Between Us exposes the secret complexities of an enviable marriage – and the dangerous truths we ignore in the name of love.

I have heard of this absolutely everywhere, and all reviews have been glowing. (Jumps about excitedly!)

 

Till death us do part.

On a bright January morning in the London suburbs, a family moves into the house they’ve just bought in Trinity Avenue.
Nothing strange about that. Except it is your house. And you didn’t sell it.

For better, for worse.

When Fi arrives home to find a removals van outside her house, she is completely blind-sided. Trinity Avenue has been her family’s home for years. Where are all her belongings? How could this have happened? Desperately calling her ex-husband, Bram, who owns the house with her, Fi discovers he has disappeared.

For richer, for poorer.

The more Fi uncovers, the more she realises their lives have been turned upside by a nightmare of their own making.  A devastating crime has been committed, but who exactly is the guilty party? What has Bram hidden from her – and what has she hidden from him?

Wow. wow, wow, wow. I jumped for this one, out mid 2018, and actually physically jumped about the place when I was approved!!!! Cannot WAIT to read!:)

 

And what I bought …

(Free on Amazon at time of posting!)

A secret kept for more than twenty years. A daughter intent on finding the truth…

In 1994, twenty-one-year-old Evelyn Taylor left England to backpack around Australia. When she stopped off in the dusty outback town of Kununurra, she never expected to fall in love with the place – and the people. But Joe Sullivan captured her heart, and when her fun-filled year in Australia came to an end, saying goodbye to him was the hardest thing she’d ever done.

In 2017, Evelyn’s daughter, Libby, embarks on her own Australian adventure. Grief-stricken following her mother’s death, she’s determined to find the father she never met.
Little does she know that digging up the past will be more complicated than she ever imagined.

You all know my now how much I heart Hannah Ellis’ books, with a nice mix or warmth and humour. This is more romance than any of her books before, and I’m looking forward to it.

(Only £0.99 at time of posting)

In this 12K short story, Los Angeles jazz club owner Dan Allport has been flirting with Tanya Diaz via text for months, ever since he met her that one day she was in town last fall. But she had to fly back to New Orleans, where she runs a center for troubled teens, and it seems so unlikely that they’ll ever get to see one another again. But then on Christmas Eve, Tanya gets the chance to go see Dan. If she can make it through a storm up from the gulf, an unexpected adventure with two teenagers, and the unpredictable calamities of flaming rum punch, she just might get to do more than texting with Dan this Christmas.

I’ve read this already as I really want to get through the small amount of Christmas books I have by Christmas instead of letting the guilt of having them languish idly on my Kindle throughout the year. This is a gorgeous romance, with a smattering of craziness and comedy thrown in, done, as always, bexpertly by the lovely and brilliant Ms. Corcillo and I devoured it within a very enjoyable late night reading session by the fire.

(Free on Amazon at the moment!)

It’s 1985, and eighteen-year-old Coco Pinchard is home in London for Christmas after her first term at Aberystwyth University.

She has started to write, and fallen hopelessly in love with Daniel Pinchard, a devilishly handsome musician from the wrong side of the river. But Coco’s overbearing mother has other plans and resumes her campaign for Coco to meet and marry the ‘right sort of man’, preferably Kenneth, son of her best friends Adrian and Yvonne Rosebury, who will be joining them for Christmas.

As snow falls softly over the city, and Coco tries to juggle a series of hilarious events, the stage is set for a Christmas lunch like no other.

A Very Coco Christmas is a delicious, stand-alone prequel short story to Robert Bryndza’s smash-hit Coco Pinchard series, with a glorious cast of characters including Daniel’s mother Ethel, sister Meryl – and a turkey called Jean Paul Belmondo…

I’ve already started this and it’s excellent! I had said before I had to get back to Mr Brydza’s chick lit and I’ve smiled through his gorgeous descriptions, excellent (excellent humour and of course, the lovely Coco!)

(Only £0.99 at time of press by the by!)

Bo Luxton has it all – a loving family, a beautiful home in the Lake District, and a clutch of bestselling books to her name. Enter Alice Dark, an aspiring writer who is drifting through life, with a series of dead-end jobs and a freeloading boyfriend. When they meet at a writers’ retreat, the chemistry is instant, and a sinister relationship develops … Or does it? Breathlessly pacey, taut and terrifying, Exquisite is a startlingly original and unbalancing psychological thriller that will keep you guessing until the very last page.

I found this here, in the excellent #R3COMM3ND3D2017 series by the brilliant Emma from Damp Pebbles via Tracy Fenton at Compulsive Readers and I got so excited! Cannot WAIT to read! (By the way go check both blogs out, and definitely take a night to mull over some of the amazing picks from different bloggers and authors that Emma’s collated. Epic stuff.

(This was £1.76 at time of posting)

I just can’t understand how someone like him could do something like that.

Amid the worst drought to ravage Australia in a century, it hasn’t rained in small country town Kiewarra for two years. Tensions in the community become unbearable when three members of the Hadler family are brutally murdered. Everyone thinks Luke Hadler, who committed suicide after slaughtering his wife and six-year-old son, is guilty.

Policeman Aaron Falk returns to the town of his youth for the funeral of his childhood best friend, and is unwillingly drawn into the investigation. As questions mount and suspicion spreads through the town, Falk is forced to confront the community that rejected him twenty years earlier. Because Falk and Luke Hadler shared a secret, one which Luke’s death threatens to unearth. And as Falk probes deeper into the killings, secrets from his past and why he left home bubble to the surface as he questions the truth of his friend’s crime.

Another read I found on the superb #R3COMM3ND3D2017 series by the brilliant Emma from Damp Pebbles (I now have a list!). This time here at the amazing Cathy Ryan from the inspiring Between The Lines ‘ blog turn. Although when I went looking I realised I was probably the only  person in the world who hadn’t read this book, and embarrassed, shuffled over to Amazon to add to my wish list, then buy!

Anyhoo, that’s me! I’m thinking you might not find me ‘stacking my shelves’ for a while, although there’s more I’ve requested from Netgalley, so if they c ome through, you might even see me again! Thanks again to Tynga’s Reviews & Reading Reality, for this epic meme!:)

 

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The Not So Secret Emails of Coco Pinchard by Robert Bryndza

Length: 310 pages

Please note that the cover image leads to a universal Amazon buy link for the book

What they say: Coco Pinchard always dreamed of being a successful writer, but then life got in the way. She married young, had a son, and put her dreams on hold… But now she’s forty, and her first novel is about to be published! Her husband Daniel has greyed nicely into a silver fox, and her son Rosencrantz is all grown up. Shouldn’t it be time to enjoy life?

That is, until the annual family Christmas when her hideous in-laws come to stay, and Coco opens her gift from Daniel. It’s not the jewellery she chose, but an iPhone. This marks the start of Daniel’s mid-life crisis and Coco catches him in bed with a younger woman.

The iPhone becomes a confessional, and as Coco’s life unravels, she documents her seemingly endless (and often entertaining) run of bad luck through emails to loyal friends Christopher, an ageing trustafarian, and Marika, a slightly alcoholic schoolteacher.

Then Coco meets the hunky Adam and she’s back in the world of dating as a single forty-something. Read the emails that tell the heart warming and often hilarious tale of Coco picking up the pieces, in this fun, feel-good Romantic Comedy.

The Review: I had heard so much about this series of books from Robert Bryndza, in the first instance from  Facebook posts Bookaholic Holly from Bookaholic Confessions (excellent blog-check it out) and, always being in search for chick lit I was very tempted but then I Read The Girl in the Ice and The Night Stalker and Mr Bryndza was somehow cemented in my brain as a thriller writer and so that was it. Then one day I began to see different parts of the series on special offer and started to buy them up. One of the first books that jumped out at me when I signed up to Kindle Unlimited was this book and  I saw it as a sign that I had to cop on and get moving (yes I do put this much thought into books!).

So, I’ve always loved reading books where you find out what’s happening through emails or a diary and this was no exception. We begin with a description of Coco’s  christmas that had me ready for a great book from the get go-“Rosencrantz” ( that’s Coco’s son) “picked up his nan, Ethel, from her nursing home, and she began with the usual, ‘This might be my last Christmas’ before inviting herself for Christmas next year, and Easter, and Mother’s Day … ”

The book sees Coco, author (yay!) of Chasing Diana Spencer, an, um, alternative look at the royals, who is doing some book promo and hoping her book will hit it big. After a perceived too frank interview, Coco is shunned from the book world and has to try to figure things out. Throw into the mix some issues with her husband Daniel and her son, a struggling actor and you get pacing and a story that keeps your eyes glued to the screen. The characters were exellent, I’m not going to mention  too many but Ethel was epic (and I don’t use that word lightly), in particular there was a gorgeous  letter that she wrote to Rosencrantz (who I also really enjoyed) that I re-read after,  and Chris was so lovely, and of course Coco was such a legend, strong and inspiring. The most excellent thing about this book was how brave it was, it didn’t just make you smile, it made you giggle, titter, and snigger too! It was very much in the ‘Carry On’ style in places, and yet the perfect balance of seriously over the top inappropriateness was equaled with good old fashioned ‘it’s the way you tell em’ humour. I loved it all and can’t wait to get to number 2.
Rating:5/5

“Mammy, we’ve found you some ‘free’ books”

Okay. So. A while ago I tweeted that I had got an email from Amazon stating my Kindle Unlimited membership had started, thanking me and telling me that I was going to be able to enjoy countless great titles that would go straight to my Kindle. Great. Sorry, actually, what was that now?

A little detective work later culminated in my six year old and eight year old jumping around the room and telling me that they had ‘robbed Daddy’s laptop’ and ‘found a way to get me free books’ and I pretty much had an idea what had happened. Cue freak outs on the fact that our kids knew how to get past passwords and into Amazon and then a deep breath and an ‘I have to go email and get them to cancel it’ from me. But this didn’t happen. Why? Because I was left alone with the laptop that I use for writing and blogging. There was no way in hell I was going to email someone when I could get a blog post out.

Weeks on and the €8.99 has now come out of our account. So I took this as an opportunity to go online and star reading  up on Kindle Unlimited (KU). The FAQs told me it was easy to cancel and that I could use the service to take out ten books of an arsenal of up to one million titles (swoon) until the next billing date, when, obviously, if I’ve cancelled, the book disappears. So I said, well, if I’ve been billed I may as well get my money’s worth. I logged on and my first idea was to look up all those books, usually from what I call the headliner publishers, that on Kindle would cost that bit more than I’m willing to spend, would have a waiting list attached at our local library and would have prices in the bookshop are borderline crackers (sorry, but a quarter of a hundred euro for a book that’ll be read just once doesn’t sit great with me). The problem, obviously, is that all of these titles are more likely to be multiple platforms, and not exclusive to Amazon, which is what is required for a book to be eligible for KU, but, then I had a light bulb moment, went to my wish list on Amazon and began to work my way through the list to see which were on KU. As a result I grabbed the following books that I’ve been meaning to read for ever and now, with a time limit on me I have the perfect excuse!

 

I’m going to leave it at four, as I’ve some review copies to read, and, well, you know, a pretty full Kindle. As for my membership? I will be cancelling … although maybe not this month … Ahem. Anyhoo, I’ll keep you posted. Happy reading all!:)

The Girl In The Ice by Robert Bryndza

What they say: Her eyes are wide open. Her lips parted as if to speak. Her dead body frozen in the ice…She is not the only one.

When a young boy discovers the body of a woman beneath a thick sheet of ice in a South London park, Detective Erika Foster is called in to lead the murder investigation.

The victim, a beautiful young socialite, appeared to have the perfect life. Yet when Erika begins to dig deeper, she starts to connect the dots between the murder and the killings of three prostitutes, all found strangled, hands bound and dumped in water around London.

What dark secrets is the girl in the ice hiding?

As Erika inches closer to uncovering the truth, the killer is closing in on Erika.

The last investigation Erika led went badly wrong… resulting in the death of her husband. With her career hanging by a thread, Erika must now battle her own personal demons as well as a killer more deadly than any she’s faced before. But will she get to him before he strikes again?

A page-turning thriller packed with suspense. If you like Angela Marsons, Rachel Abbott and Karin Slaughter, discover Rob Bryndza’s new series today – at a special launch price.

Watch out for more from DCI Erika Foster

She’s fearless. Respected. Unstoppable. Detective Erika Foster will catch a killer, whatever it takes.

The Review: You know the phrase ‘you had me at “hello”?’ Well this book most certainly did:

“The pavement glittered in the moonlight as Andrea Douglas-Brown hurried up the deserted high street.”

(Note: I’m afraid to quote more as it could be labelled a spoiler, though to be honest if I could I’d actually quote the whole prologue, so maybe you’re lucky!)

So you’ve guessed it, this is going to be one of those gushy reviews where I’m going to be a bit all over the place because I just want to FORCE you to read this book! It’s apity because it’s a book I’d love to do justice to, but, well, I’ll try my best.

As Andrea moves along we are given hints of how affluent Andrea was as she struggles to decide on whether she should call her father’s driver and then we are hit with some action that made me want to lock the door and suck in the whole book there and then.

Actually our introduction to the characters were extremely well done, brought about purely through events they were involved in, and I was nervy fairly on in the book and soon quite nervous. Detective Erica Foster was a very strong character, albeit one with her own issues and I took to her straight away, her ‘nothing to lose and so willing to lose everything’ demeanor that was essential in order to solve the cases that came before her were really well done, as were the scrapes she got into and I was reminded of why Robert Bryndza’s books are so popular and why he has made the move from chick lit to thriller so flawlessly.

There were multiple points of view in this book, however most of the job of telling us what happened descended on Erica, although it was told in third person which I have to admit, I generally enjoy more. The characters were so alive from the very first words and the descriptions of the locations, some so decadent, others dank and filthy, were amazing. The book was gripping from start to finish, with a humdinger of an ending, although I have to admit I found myself to be slightly disappointed with the identity of the killer, I could missed something but I’m not sure I could have guessed it was them, which I think is always half of the fun of thrillers.

A great great book, and one that readers of most contemporary genres will fly through, very satisfied, as I was, after they reach the end (where they are greeted by a brilliant letter from the author himself.) After this book I have to admit, I dove straight in and signed up for his newsletter (something I don’t do a lot), and went to check out his back catalogue of books (which seem to be right up my street, by the by so yay!) and his new one ‘The Night Stalker,’ the second book of this series, which I will without doubt be reading soon. As for ‘The Girl In The Ice?’ Most definitely one to read asap.  Thanks to Netgalley for the book in exchange for an honest review and as always the image links to a universal buy link for the book. Go get.

Rating: 4.5/5