Lisa Hall – Grab This Book

The Mysterious Double Death of Honey Black – Lisa Hall

You know she has been murdered. Can you stop it happening twice?

Two very different lives…

It is 2019 and Lily Jones is living her dream in LA. Sort of. It hasn’t quite turned out as she planned and instead of working as a movie producer, she is cleaning at the prestigious Beverly Hills Hotel. At least she gets to work in the renowned Paul Williams suite, site of the brutal murder of Honey Black 70 years ago, shrouded in rumour and dark glamour.

It is 1949 and Honey Black is about to hit the big time. She may have started out a country girl from Hicksville but now she is a star. And Hollywood had better watch out – nothing can stop her now!

One Hollywood murder…

After an accidental bump to the head, Lily finds herself in Hollywood, 1949. Like a dream come true, she is rubbing shoulders with the great and good of Tinseltown. Including Honey Black… Horrified, Lily realises that the actress has only two weeks left to live before she will be murdered.

Could this be why she has found herself in 1949?

To find the killer and stop them in their tracks?

I received a review copy from the publishers via Netgalley

A time-travel adventure which will catapault Lily from Hollywood in 2019 back to to the golden era of filmmaking in 1949. It gives The Mysterious Double Death of Honey Black an utterly fabulous setting, Lily is one of the most likeable lead characters I’ve encountered this year and I constantly had the feeling I was reading a book which the author loved to write.

Where to start?

Lily is a girl displaced. English born and a lifelong fan of classic movies, she has travelled to Hollywood with the hope of finding a successful career in the industry she loves. She is working in one of the hotels in Holywood, a staff member who’s keen to help her colleagues and is a good friend to them too. She dreams of getting a break and being offered the opportunity to work on a movie but as the story begins she’s offering to help clean one of the suites in the hotel – the room where upcoming starlet Honey Black was found murdered 70 years earlier.

Lily takes a knock to the head while cleaning what had been the room occupied by Honey Black. When she recovers her senses Lily finds she has been transported back in time. It’s 1949. Lily has no money, nowhere to stay, no idea what’s happened and she’s a very modern girl in a very old fashioned world. None of these things are going to make life easy.

But it’s not all bad news for Lily. She is given an amazing opportunity to work as an assistant to an upcoming new starlet…Honey Black. Yes, Lily has arrived in 1949 in the days before Honey is due to be murdered. Has she been sent to the past to avert a murder? Should she try to intervene and change history? Or is it just coincidence and, if so, how on earth is Lily going to get home?

Watching Lily navigate her way around movie sets, Hollywood stars and handle the attitudes and behaviours from 70 years ago is a huge amount of fun. She’s a no-nonsense sort by nature so there’s no hope of Lily accepting the misogynistic culture on film sets or of adopting a demure and deferential persona so she fits in. We are going to enjoy a feisty and independent woman shaking up the world around her.

I loved reading about life in the late 1940s, there are several cameos to enjoy from huge Hollywood stars (no spoilers) and Lisa Hall makes the whole period come alive around the reader. Lily gets to contrast clubs and hotels with the LA she knows so well. She makes friends along the way but ruffles more than a few feathers as she leaps to the defence of her new employer, Honey Black.

As for Honey herself, she’s a small town girl who’s been given a huge opporunity to become the “next big thing”. But if Honey is to succeed she will need to be better than her rivals, behave impeccably, defer to the big bosses and be squeaky clean. Unfortunately it seems soneone wants Honey to fail and temptations, challenges and physical attacks will all need to be dealt with (often by Lily) if she is to finish filming the movie which should propel her to the brightest of spotlights.

There’s so much to love about The Mysterious Double Death of Honey Black and it’s all to easy to forget Honey is due to be murdered and Lily is trying to prevent that from happening. I got far too caught up in the world of films, producers and directors, bickering actresses and the social lives of a long-forgotten generation. The writing and scene setting is joyous, the characters are glamourous, whimsical and deeply posessive of their own celebrity. I don’t know if it would be possible to revisit that world given how events pan out (again no spoilers) but I am sure Lisa Hall would find a way to make it happen if we were all to cross our fingers, wish really, really hard and all buy a copy of The Mysterious Double Death of Honey Black…there’s a handy wee link just below this paragraph to help you get your copy.

The Mysterious Double Death of Honey Black is published by Hera Books and is available in paperback and digital format. You can order a copy here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-mysterious-double-death-of-honey-black/lisa-hall/9781804365946

Category: 5* Reviews, From The Bookshelf | Comments Off

April 23

Have You Seen Her – Lisa Hall (Audiobook)

Bonfire Night. A missing girl.

Anna only takes her eyes off Laurel for a second. She thought Laurel was following her mum through the crowds. But in a heartbeat, Laurel is gone.

Laurel’s parents are frantic. As is Anna, their nanny. But as the hours pass, and Laurel isn’t found, suspicion grows.

Someone knows what happened to Laurel. And they’re not telling.

My thanks to Joe Thomas at Harper Collins for the chance to join an audiobook blog tour.

I love to juggle my reading material, paperbacks, hardback books, Kindle reads, books on my phone through the Kindle or Kobo apps – even the odd Word document for very early review copies. However, over the last year or two I have become hooked on audiobooks and is a thrill to share today’s review as this is my first chance to participate in an Audiobook Blog Tour.

The most important question which any audiobook review needs to address is “Does the audio experience work for this story?”

Yes! It really, really does.

But what do I mean by “the audio experience”? Simply put – some books are not enjoyable when they transfer to audio. The narrator(s) may not be to the listener’s liking, particularly if there is a need to cover a number of regional accents. Footnotes and annotations are lost. Overly wordy and complex explanations need to be endured and cannot be skipped (although maybe that is only something I do).

Have You Seen Her plays out wonderfully in audio. This is entirely down to the slick storytelling of Lisa Hall and the excellent work of narrator Kristen Atherton. This was the first time I have heard Kristen read and I would very much like to listen to more of her work as she brought this book to life.

The book opens with a sickening premise. At a community bonfire evening young Laurel disappears into the crowd to catch up with her mother. Laurel’s nanny (Anna) watches her go but this is the last time anyone sees Laurel. She never caught up with her mother and when Anna becomes aware Laurel is unsupervised in the park it is too late – the little girl is nowhere to be found.

Thus begins a tense and unpredictable domestic drama. Events are told from Anna’s viewpoint. It is clear she and Laurel’s parents are not close…Anna is made very aware she is not Laurel’s mother and she is kept firmly in her place as an employee – not a friend.

Laurel’s parents are not likeable characters. Despite the distress they are enduring, the strain of their daughter disappearing, they come across as two unpleasant people. It was hard to empathise with their situation, particularly as Anna seems to care more about what has happened to Laurel than her parents do.

In this cracking domestic thriller you can be assured that secrets are being kept. The fun in Have You Seen Her is trying to figure out who to trust and identify which characters are lying. On this front I failed miserably and thoroughly enjoyed my failure. I don’t think I could describe an audiobook as a page-turner but what I did get was a story I didn’t want to stop listening to.

Have You Seen Her is published by Harper Collins and you can order a copy here: https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/9780008215019/have-you-seen-her/

Category: Audiobook, Blog Tours, From The Bookshelf | Comments Off

January 22

Catching Up: Hall/Tudor/Foley

I won’t bore you with the details but the last few weeks have been a bit manic Chez Grab and I fell behind with my reviews. I still managed to grab reading time but now I have a bit of catching up to do.

I have taken the executive decision to do some rapid reviews and aim for two or three titles per post. So without further ado here is a flavour of what I have been reading:

The Party – Lisa Hall

It was just a party. But it turned into a nightmare.

When Rachel wakes up in a strange room, the morning after a neighbour’s party, she has no memory of what happened the night before. Why did her husband leave her alone at the party? Did they row? Why are Rachel’s arms so bruised? And why are her neighbours and friends so vague about what really happened?

Little by little, Rachel pieces together the devastating events that took place in a friend’s house, at a party where she should have been safe. Everyone remembers what happened that night differently, and everyone has something to hide. But someone knows the truth about what happened to Rachel. And she’s determined to find them.

A story set at New Year but not a party that Rachel will ever forget. She awakes in her friends house with little memory of what occurred the previous night. However Rachel quickly realises that she was raped and cannot identify her attacker.

Lisa Hall builds a cracking, suspense-filled tale around this deeply upsetting incident. Rachel doesn’t know who she can trust and the lack of support she feels she is receiving really isolates her amongst her family and friends. When Rachel begins to fear she may still be in danger that isolation really hits home.

This was the first Lisa Hall novel I have read but I was well aware of her reputation for writing clever and engaging thrillers. The Party did not disappoint and I will add my voice to the ranks of bloggers who strongly recommend reading Lisa’s books.

Order The Party here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Party-gripping-psychological-thriller-bestseller-ebook/dp/B06W5RT7JD/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1548189986&sr=1-1&keywords=the+party+lisa

The Chalk Man – C.J. Tudor

It was only meant to be a game . . .

None of us ever agreed on the exact beginning.

Was it when we started drawing the chalk figures, or when they started to appear on their own?

Was it the terrible accident?

Or when they found the first body?

A delightfully dark debut from CJ Tudor. I have had The Chalk Man in my “TBR” pile for longer than I intended (her second novel is just a few weeks away).

I enjoyed The Chalk Man – the story zipped along at cracking pace and happily I was totally wrong in my predictions as to how the story was going to pan out. Through a nice series of then/now narratives I felt that the reader got a comprehensive look at the key characters in the story from their formative years to present day.

The formative years are important as it is in the past that the seeds of horror are sewn. A tragic event at a funfair has lasting consequences for a young girl. A group of young friends are on the cusp of their teen years – they will face fears, family turmoil and experience tragedy before the book draws to a conclusion.

The key character is Ed. As an adult he is a 40-something single man and he has a few significant character flaws. As a child Ed was a troubled 12 year old, member of a gang of 5 pals from very different backgrounds. His parents were causing him embarrassment (and his mother’s job brought unwelcome attention). Also Ed is right on hand at the funfair incident – a day which may shape how Ed’s life will pan out.

The Chalk Man delivered surprises and twists and, as I indicated above, I enjoyed the story as it kept me reading to see how it would pan out. Well worth picking this one up.

Order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chalk-Man-Sunday-bestseller-chilling-ebook/dp/B06XXSVQ9T/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1548189938&sr=1-1&keywords=the+chalk+man

The Hunting Party – Lucy Foley

In a remote hunting lodge, deep in the Scottish wilderness, old friends gather for New Year.

The beautiful one
The golden couple
The volatile one
The new parents
The quiet one
The city boy
The outsider

The victim.

Not an accident – a murder among friends.

A remote lodge in the Scottish Highlands is the setting for this unusual murder story.

Unusual because the reader learns very early that someone is dead but the identity of the victim (and of the killer) is not revealed until the endgame plays out. This is clever writing from the author as she has introduced a large cast of characters in which both victim and murderer will be hidden in plain sight for the duration of the story. Readers have to try and work out who will be vulnerable and also the potential aggressors.

Our likely suspects appear to be members of a party of friends who have left the city behind to celebrate New Year in the remotest cabin in The Highlands. A resident housekeeper and the Gameskeeper are virtually the only locals they will encounter. There are two other guests (who the friends will try to avoid) and just to keep readers in their toes there is a murder investigation being conducted by local police – have our friends placed themselves at the mercy of a murderous stranger?

Of all the books I read over Christmas this one caused me the most frustration. I enjoyed the story, it is a clever premise and the tension is maintained throughout the story. There are clues and red herrings as to the identity of murderer and victim so it should have been a joy to read. Sadly I found all the city friends to be extremely irritating – which I am sure is intentional as their flaws are clearly flagged and they behave in an abhorrent manner for much of the story.

At points I would have been happy for ALL the friends to have been bumped off and my irritation with most of the cast made me reluctant to keep reading. But perseverance was rewarded and the great premise and ongoing thrills won out in the end.

I have seen lots of praise heaped upon The Hunting Party so I have no doubt it will do well. It is cleverly done and I think would make a great book-group read.

Order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07FK6L3T1?pf_rd_p=71cb17e9-f468-4d3f-94d5-a0de44c50a7e&pf_rd_r=HY9JYDZHZ9AJC10APTN1

Category: From The Bookshelf | Comments Off