July 24

One White Lie – Leah Konen

Imagine you’ve finally escaped the worst relationship of your life, running away with only a suitcase and a black eye.

Imagine your new next-door neighbours are the friends you so desperately needed – fun, kind, empathetic, very much in love.

Imagine they’re in trouble. That someone is telling lies about them, threatening their livelihoods – and even their lives.

Imagine your ex is coming for you.

If your new best friends needed you to tell one small lie, and all of these problems would disappear, you’d do it . . . wouldn’t you?

It’s only one small lie, until someone turns up dead . . .

 

My thanks to Sryia at Penguin RandomHouse for my review copy and the opportunity to join the tour.

 

Ooft.

Psychological thrillers sometimes aren’t quite what they are billed as. No real thrills, a bit predicable, never a sense of peril – essentially some books just don’t quite hit the mark for me.  But One White Lie didn’t just hit the mark, it smashed it…maybe with the hammer that protagonist Lucy King carries around with her.

Ooft.

This story got me hooked – started reading in a hot bath, looked up 2 hours and 250 pages later in a decidedly cold bath. As a reader there is nothing better than finding a book which just keep you turning pages – One Little Lie did that for me. Always that nagging worry, doubt that what Lucy was experiencing was all it seemed, questions around why her new friends were shunned by the townsfolk where they lived. But I get ahead of myself.

We first meet Lucy as she is moving in to a new cottage in a small town on the outskirts of the city.  She is clearly terrified and on the run from a controlling and aggressive partner and she needs a safe haven to sort out what to do.

Lucy meets her new neighbours, John and Vera. They are a few years older than Lucy but a strong friendship bond soon forms as the couple show her a kindness and compassion which she has been missing from her life for so long. For John and Vera Lucy represents a new friend in a town where they are deeply unpopular with the locals. For a long time Lucy tries to piece together snippets of gossip to determine why her friends are being held as outcasts. A nice layer of mystery for the reader as we only get snippets and rumour too.

Just as Lucy begins to relax in her new surroundings two shocking twists will threaten to destroy the sanctuary she has created. One way to ensure her continued safety is to tell One Little Lie to help John and Vera. That shouldn’t be too difficult a task should it?  Unfortunately for Lucy one lie will lead to another and fate will play her a cruel hand further threatening her safety.

During all these issues Lucy is ever aware her ex is out there somewhere and he will be looking for her. So it is paranoia that Lucy believes someone has been in her home or has her ex finally caught up with her?

Stories build on the need to lie and sustain that lie places the protagonist under extreme stress and Leah Konen delivers that tension brilliantly. I really enjoyed One Little Lie – it ticked all the right boxes and I’d definitely recommend it.

 

One White Lie is published by Penguin and is available in physical, digital and audiobook format.  You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07YTHYLC6/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

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February 5

Two Nights – Kathy Reichs

Meet Sunnie Night a woman with physical and psychological scars, and a killer instinct . . .

Sunnie has spent years running from her past, burying secrets and building a life in which she needs no one and feels nothing.

But a girl has gone missing, lost in the chaos of a bomb explosion, and the family needs Sunnie’s help.

Is the girl dead?

Did someone take her?

If she is out there, why doesn’t she want to be found?

It’s time for Sunnie to face her own demons – because they might just lead her to the truth about what really happened all those years ago.

 

My thanks to Random House, Cornerstone for my review copy which I received through Netgalley

A stand alone thriller from Kathy Reichs, a break from the Tempe Brennan thrillers which I have enjoyed for many years now. As a fan of recurring characters and getting caught up in an ongoing series, I should be vexed when an author breaks from the familiar to introduce new heroes to follow. However, there is always that fascination to find out what they may come up with when “unshackled” and able to cause havoc on new characters with no responsibility to keep them all alive so they can appear in the next book.

I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised with Two Nights, it felt totally different from from a Brennan thriller (which I guess was the point). Sunnie Night is a complex character who is living a reclusive lifestyle until she is sought out and her services requested by a well-to-do client for whom money is no real object when it comes to tracing a missing member of her family.

A bomb explosion has robbed a family of precious lives, however, there remains some doubt that a teenage girl (related to Sunnie’s client) actually died in the blast.  Sunnie is engaged to find out if the girl may still be alive.  If she is to be successful Sunnie will need to understand why the girl may not have made herself known to her remaining family after surviving such an ordeal.

But Sunnie’s investigations will mean looking into why the bomb was placed and at those responsible. These are not people who will welcome snooping and Sunnie has put herself in the firing line – good job she is more than adept at outfoxing the tw0-bit thugs.

Something very different from Kathy Reichs but she knows how tell a good story and Two Nights is well worth hunting down.

 

Two Nights is currently available in Hardback and digital format with the paperback released scheduled for April 2018. You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Two-Nights-Kathy-Reichs-ebook/dp/B019CGXMCK/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1517871460&sr=1-1

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May 10

Untouchable – Ava Marsh

UntouchableIf you start feeling anything for a client – and it does happen – count the money. That always brings you back down to earth.’

Stella is an escort, immersed in a world of desire, betrayal and secrets. It’s exactly where she wants to be. Stella used to be someone else: respectable, loved, safe. But one mistake changed all that.

When a fellow call girl is murdered, Stella has a choice: forget what she’s seen, or risk everything to get justice for her friend. In her line of work, she’s never far from the edge, but pursuing the truth could take her past the point of no return.

Nothing is off limits. Not for her – and not for them.

But no one is truly untouchable.

 

My thanks to Random House/Transworld for my Netgalley Review copy

 

I am trying to think of a novel I have read which I can compare to Ava Marsh’s Untouchable. Nothing is springing to mind and this may be one of the reasons that I found Untouchable such a brilliant read.

The lead character is Stella – she is an escort who seems to have been working for several years as one of London’s high class call girls. No street corners or violent pimp’s in play here as Stella works from home, liaises with her clients through discrete internet communications and can command several hundred pounds for a few hours of her time.

It needs to made clear very early on in this review that Ava Marsh is not drawing a discrete veil over Stella’s work. Untouchable is frequently graphic and quite explicit, nothing too extreme but it may not be ideal for the more prudish. That said, it is fascinating and frank without being crude or seedy for the sake of shock value. I was also amused to see SJI Holliday (author of the brilliant Black Wood) asking the same question I had – how did the author do her research?

Stella is shocked to learn that one of her friends, a fellow call girl, has been murdered. The police are assuming that she was killed by a client but Stella has her suspicions and starts to question the official story. She takes her suspicions to the police and discusses her concerns with friends but it is not long before her curiosity starts to place her life in danger.

Throughout the book we are made aware that there are demons in Stella’s past which have helped shape her life bringing her to her current situation. Over the course of the story there are reveals and snippets of Stella’s back story which I found made the character even more remarkable than I had first expected.

Untouchable comes highly recommended – a memorable lead character who is embroiled in an affair that has far reaching consequences. I can only score Untouchable a full 5/5 as it was so well written and quite unlike anything I have encountered: a must read!

 

Ava Marsh is on Twitter: @MsAvaMarsh

And online at:  http://www.avamarsh.co.uk/

 

 

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