Today I’m on the tour for Killer Casting by Simon Maltman, thank you to Zoé at Zooloos Book Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part and thank you to the author and the publisher for my copy.
Pages: 313
Synopsis: ‘A Docu-drama about a murder. And the killer’s in the cast.’
Jessica, an up-and-coming young director is helming her first full documentary.
It focuses on the story of a young girl, murdered fifteen years before in New York.
The girl’s father was convicted and has been in prison ever since.
But he’s innocent.
Joe killed her.
Joe’s killed a lot of people.
When Joe sees the call for amateur actors to join the cast, he has an idea.
Joe gets lots of ideas. That’s how he’s survived this long.
But this time, has he gone too far?
My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧
My Thoughts: anyone who knows me knows that I love a crime docu-series, I’ve been known to binge them on Netflix for hours 🤣 so reading about one was just up my street!
I do love a thriller that already outlines who the bad guy is for the reader, it adds an extra element to the story.. like it’s letting you in on its secrets.. but it takes a special kind of thriller that can do that and still keep you hooked on the story..
Simons ability to do just that was incredible.. this was yet again another one sitting read for me because I was so invested that everything else in my life was put on hold.
I found myself cringing at some parts of the story whilst also being in awe of Joes audacity in others.
The only thing I didn’t get was why Joe was killing people, there’s normally a reason or something that the culprit thinks they are gaining from the murders but this time they felt random and for no reason which left me feeling more than a little uncomfortable 😂
This might sound daft to say but the book actually read like a tv show 😅 I could picture what was happening so easily!
Will definitely be making sure I pick up more books from Simon in the future.
Today I’m on the tour for In Too Deep by Rose McClelland, thank you to Zoé at Zooloos Book Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part and thank you to the author and the publisher for my copy.
Pages: 277
Synopsis: Lucy, stunning lead singer of a local band, is found dead on a beach.
Everyone assumes it’s suicide or accidental death. However, band member Tony thinks his sister Olivia might be involved. Not only was she insanely jealous of Lucy, but her husband Barry died in suspicious circumstances too.
Detective Sergeant Kerry Lawlor isn’t convinced its suicide either. The more she looks into the case, the more ‘accidental’ deaths she discovers. As she digs deeper, she finds motive and intrigue at every turn.
Following in Lucy’s footsteps is drop-dead gorgeous Roxie. Will Olivia’s jealousy strike again? Tony fears Roxie could be next.
Detectives Simon and Kerry are on the case. Will they intercept in the nick of time?
Or is Olivia in too deep?
My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧
My Thoughts: this one really kept me on my toes!
First Lucy, the lead singer of the band is found dead on the beach with all the other members saying she disappeared at dinner the night before, she went to the loo and never came back.. now I thought this would be the main crux of the story but boy was I wrong.. In fact it very quickly seemed to be forgotten which threw me for a while 😂
DS Kerry Lawlor isn’t happy with the verdict of suicide, so with the help of the person you’d probably least expect she decides to dig a little deeper!
Every single person is hiding something and people keep turning up dead..
The short snappy chapters and the fact that this story was told from multiple perspectives meant that you got a full well rounded story.. some chapters even recapping the same scene from a different characters view.. this is something I didn’t know I needed but really helped when following the story along!
I was so engrossed in the book and the lives of the characters that this book was read in one sitting, I absolutely loved it.. it took what I thought would be the outcome and totally flipped it on it’s head, it’s not often that happens when you read as many books as I do and I was here for it!
Definitely feel like I should go back and read the first 2 in the series now, but this one read absolutely fine as a stand alone & I would definitely add it to your list, it’s worth the read!
Today I’m on the tour for The Sleepwalker by L C George, thank you to Zoé at Zooloos Book Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part and thank you to the author and the publisher for my copy.
Pages: 398
Synopsis: Our dreams can be forgotten. But our nightmares will haunt us forever.
Sam Fulford is living a perfectly normal life, except for one little thing: a strange sleep condition that causes him to roam in the night and occasionally become violent.
So when Sam wakes one devastating morning to discover his wife dead beside him and his baby daughter missing, his whole world implodes. Did he accidentally kill his wife during a night time episode? If so, where is his baby?
Just as Sam begins to accept the possibility that he is guilty, he finds a photograph that makes him realise someone else may be involved, that he may be innocent and might yet find his missing daughter.
But there’s a complication. Sam has a dark secret that he just can’t allow to surface. And it’s soon made clear to him that if he presses on with his quest to find out what happened that terrible night, his secret will be revealed to the world.
Leaving Sam wondering whether it might be better to confess to a crime he’s not even certain he committed. Faced with an unimaginable dilemma, Sam begins to wonder: would it be better for everyone if he was guilty?
My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧
My Thoughts: this book was definitely one hell of a ride! A ride that I didn’t want to get off, at almost 400 pages this is quite a long thriller for me, but yet I still read it in 2 sittings.. if I didn’t need to sleep it would have definitely been a one sitting read for me!
It’s told from different perspectives across different timelines, but yet never got confusing because the timeline and the lead character from each chapter was made clear, with there being a definite change in the writing for each character.
This was eerily dark at times and constantly building the tension.. I didn’t guess the twists either which is a nice bonus for me.
There is a moment near the end of the book that actually made me about ‘nooo!’ at my kindle 🤣
another one to be added to the top of your list, it’s fantastic!!
Today I’m on the tour for Waters Edge by T. J. Shepherd, thank you to Zoé at Zooloos Book Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part and thank you to the author and the publisher for my copy.
Pages: 492
Synopsis: David Green suffers a dramatic breakdown at work. Since his first visit at sixteen, Venice has come to symbolise for him a time before starting the long decline into being lived by life rather than living it. Forced by the breakdown to take action, he decides to return, hoping its influence will begin the process of healing. As Venice and the people he meets there, begin to bring about the changes he seeks, he is faced with a new and urgent dilemma.
My Thoughts: David is doing a presentation at work when he has a breakdown, unsure of what to do he thinks that returning to Venice will help, he went when he was younger and thinks that the answer to all his problems is there.
With his wife unable to join him straight away they agree that he will go that day and she will join him a week later, after all they like different things, he’s a fan of sight seeing and she prefers to relax in the sun.
When he gets there, he feels like a huge weight has been lifted and spends his time getting to know the local area and the people there.
This was quite a heavy book to read, not only is it a long book, but the chapters were long and felt like they were over descriptive at times, which meant that I kept having to put it down.
David isn’t a very likeable character but I did feel for him throughout the book and the difficult choices he had to make – his whole life will change no matter which way he decides to go so which one is best?
The story wasn’t what I thought it would be at all, but it did keep me interested throughout and I definitely needed to know how it ended!
Today I’m on the tour for Within You, Without You by Sara O’Donovan, thank you to Anne at Random Things Tours for organising this and inviting me to take part and thank you to the author and the publisher for my copy.
Pages: 336
Synopsis: Kathryn Johnson’s life is at a standstill. Stuck in a lacklustre marriage, the spark that once burned so brightly within her has since been snuffed out by the monotony of the everyday.
Returning to England after many years of living in Ireland, she is shocked to discover a familiar face on the side of the road one dark and stormy night. But a person can’t just reappear like that. Not when they’ve been dead for twenty years.
Uncovering long-buried memories of first love and its devastating loss, Kathryn returns to the past to see if she can rewrite her present. But love divided by time is a complicated equation to solve.
My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧
My Thoughts: for a debut novel this was bloody brilliant, it hooked me from the beginning.. I was invested in Kathryn’s life.
The story is told spamming 2 different timelines 1992 and 2012.
The earlier chapters had me turning the pages so fast I’m surprised I didn’t get friction burn from my kindle.. I absolutely adored the relationship between Kathryn and Ed and although we are aware quite early on that they don’t get their happy ending due to some tragic circumstances I enjoyed their journey.
The smaller characters in the story were all equally important as they helped to tie the bigger picture together, out of all of them I think Paul was my favourite because he always just said what was on his mind!
Just as you’re getting to a place in the book where you’re preparing to have your heart broken something happens to turn the whole story on its head & although looking back I can see that the author was setting you up for it, not to expect it, but to WANT it, I wasn’t expecting it and it left me a little confused.. I’m not sure I’ve fully managed to work it out yet 🤣
Today I’m on the tour for Agnes’s Broken Dreams by Judy King, thank you to Anne at Random Things Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part and thank you to the author and the publisher for my copy.
Pages: 456
Synopsis: It has been thirty years since Agnes last visited the country of her birth and upbringing. While it is at the request of her aging, narcissistic mother, she has her own reasons for making the journey to Australia from her home on Mallorca.
Something has blighted her life since childhood. Something has cast such a long shadow over her existence that her ability to grasp at life fully, to appreciate her own sense of self-worth, to attain any semblance of happiness, to trust without reservation, has been damaged. Those whom she chooses, and who choose her, seem to want only to exploit her.
Having undergone a long period of psychotherapy, Agnes can now return to re-experience the places that featured in her youth in the hope that burning questions will be answered, haunting mysteries solved, and buried memories let out into the light…
This is the vibrant, heartening, and often amusing tale of a buoyant and irrepressible woman whose natural energy and determination continue to drive her forward. Having reached middle age, she is determined to grapple with – and heal – the ills that have beset her.
My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧
My Thoughts: this was such a difficult read all the way through, it really took a toll on your emotions. I felt for Agnes.. where she found the strength to carry on from I’ll never know!
I know this was fiction, but it honestly felt like a memoir/biography. it took you through Agnes’s whole life, her family life was heartbreaking you could feel the hatred and anger that her parents had for her dropping off the page, the only highlight she had throughout were school friends whose houses she was able to escape to & even that didn’t last.
As she got older the pressure she feels from both herself and family members just keeps mounting.
Watching her come into her own and confront her past was such an amazing feeling like she was almost sticking her middle finger up to everyone who was against her.
I couldn’t read this on one go as the subject matter was heavy, but my word was it worth it!
Today I’m on the tour for Love In The Spotlight by Julia Sutton, thank you to Zoé at Zooloos Book Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part and thank you to the author and the publisher for my copy.
Pages: 333
Synopsis: When Elizabeth Ryan is demoted on Christmas Eve, she resigns herself to a dismal future: selling kitchen utensils in a large department store.
The New Year looks bleak, but a chance encounter on a karaoke evening at her local pub introduces her to the glittering world of showbiz. The Rebels are an up-and-coming pop band who are preparing for a whirlwind tour of the UK. After some persuasion, Elizabeth auditions and is astonished when she is taken on as their backing singer.
Leaving her sleepy Cornish fishing village behind, Elizabeth moves to the manic noise of London. Catapulted into a world of fame, will she succeed in the dazzling world of music and open her heart once more to the possibility of love?
My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧.5
My Thoughts: this was a lovely story about learning to live your life again after a loss and also realising that a complete change might be just what you need!
Elizabeth has worked in the same department store for 30 years when she is given the awful news on Christmas Eve that she is being demoted, moved to another department and ‘replaced’ by a younger staff member.
She goes out with her friends to drown her sorrows and performs a Whitney Houston song in karaoke that has the whole place in awe.. little did she know that that performance would change her whole life forever.
I really enjoyed this, having lost my dad last year I resonated with a lot of the emotions that Lizzie was feeling at various points in the book, watching her come out of her shell and discover her true calling was like a breath of fresh air.
I also appreciated the fact that she experienced a few wobbles along the way.. it grounded the story and made it feel more authentic.
I will definitely be looking out for the next book in the series 🙂
Today I’m on the tour for Mothers Day by Abigail Burdess, thank you to Anne at Random Things Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part and thank you to the author and the publisher for my copy.
Pages: 375
Synopsis: The last thing Anna needs is a baby. Abandoned, adopted and living hand to mouth, she never dreamt of having a real family.
But when she meets her birth mother, everything changes – because the same day, she learns she’s going to be a mother too.
Marlene is eccentric, generous with her considerable fortune and overjoyed to become a grandmother. Anna’s living the dream. But is it her dream, or someone else’s?
Now she will have to decide what she’s willing to sacrifice for a real family – her future, her freedom, even her unborn child.
My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧.5
My Thoughts: this was a slow burn thriller, being completely honest this didn’t feel like a thriller until the last 100 pages which were incredibly fast paced.
The rest of the story read like a dark contemporary, family drama story.
The writing was eerily addictive, I kept thinking I’ll put it down at the end of the chapter but always had to keep reading.
Full of characters that were weird but oddly real, most of them felt ‘normal’ Dermot was by far my favourite, he felt like a friend but someone who needed protecting from the things that were unfolding!
Anna was meek and just went along with what everyone else wanted from her even though she knew it was wrong or just not what she wanted.. so many times I wanted to shake some sense into her.
The story wasn’t what I expected at all and I couldn’t help but feel the ending was a little rushed, but I had a good time reading it and would recommend it, it’s definitely worth a read.
I have a cover reveal for you today for Living Proof by A.H. Martin thank you to Hannah at Hygge book tours for organising this and inviting me along… but before we get to that let me tell you a little about the book!
Synopsis: A shipwreck in the Caribbean.. a global drugs and sex trafficking cartel… an American Presidential candidate… and a survivor who holds a secret that could blow apart the entire western world with her revelations. What is Julia Anderson’s secret and why does a woman named Rachael Rodgers cause Julia’s friends to turn to sinister and frightening measures to silence her? But how far will they go to ensure that Julia’s secret is never revealed?
Living Proof is the debut novel of author A.H. Martin; set in the lush Caribbean resort of Royal Tradewinds, the book explores the lengths people will go to in order to keep a secret. But will it include murder? And do they succeed? Find out in this fast paced thriller with a hint of romance.
No buy link available for this yet but it sounds brilliant!
This cover definitely leaves me intrigued and wanting to read it!
Today I’m on the tour for Syndrome by Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli, thank you to Zoé at Zooloos Book Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part.
I have an extract for you today.. but first let me tell you about the book and the author 🙂
Pages: 276
Synopsis: What is the difference between dedication and obsession?
While investigating the murder of two known offenders with connections to a notorious, recently escaped London drug trafficker, the Scotland Yard forensic team headed by DCI Eric Shaw becomes involved in a child abuse case. A nurse had accused a mother of a series of violent, feverish attacks on her ten-year-old son, Jimmy. The woman would exasperate the condition of her child to draw the attention and compassion of health workers at the hospital. Eric learned of this accusation by chance because he is dating Catherine Foulger, the paediatrician looking after the child. She is an old flame, and he is seeing her again in the hope of putting some order back in his life after discovering the identity of the serial killer nicknamed Black Death. But this is a relationship his former partner Adele Pennington, still working as an investigator in Forensic Services, has not really accepted.
About the Author:
Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli is an Italian science fiction and thriller author. She has lived in Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy) since 1993, earning a degree in biology and working as a writer, scientific and literary translator, and freelance web copywriter. In the past she also worked as researcher, tutor and professor’s assistant in the field of ecology at ‘Dipartimento di Biologia Animale ed Ecologia’ of the University of Cagliari. She has written original fiction since 2009. In 2012-2013 she wrote and published a hard science fiction series set on Mars and titled Deserto rosso. The whole Deserto rosso series was also published as omnibus in December 2013 and hit No. 1 on the Italian Kindle Store in November 2014. Deserto rosso was published in English, with the title Red Desert, between 2014 and 2015. It includes the following books: Red Desert – Point of No Return, Red Desert – People of Mars, Red Desert – Invisible Enemy, and Red Desert – Back Home. She also authored three crime thrillers in the Detective Eric Shaw Trilogy – The Mentor (Il mentore, 2014), Syndrome (Sindrome, 2016), and Beyond the Limit (Oltre il limite, 2017) –, an action thriller titled Kindred Intentions (Affinità d’intenti, 2015), five more science fiction novels – L’isola di Gaia (2014), Per caso (2015), Ophir. Codice vivente (2016), Sirius. In caduta libera (2018), and Nave stellare Aurora (2020) – and a non-fiction book titled Self-publishing lab. Il mestiere dell’autoeditore (2020). Her crime thriller The Mentor was first published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2015 and became an international bestseller hitting No. 1 on the Kindle Store in USA, UK, and Australia in October 2015. This is a new edition of The Mentor (published in November 2022). The other two books in the trilogy, Syndrome and Beyond the Limit, are expected in 2023. She’s also a podcaster at FantascientifiCast, an Italian podcast about science fiction, an Italian Representative of Mars Initiative, and a member of the International Thriller Writers organization. She’s often a guest both in Italy and abroad during book fairs, including Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino (Turin Book Fair) and Frankfurter Buchmesse (Frankfurt Book Fair), local publishing events as well as university conferences, where she gives speeches about self-publishing and genre fiction writing. She has also taught a class on self-publishing at the University of Insubria (Varese, Italy) since 2016. Her books have been reviewed or recommended by national magazines and newspapers such as Wired Italia, Tom’s Hardware Italia, La Repubblica, Tiscali News and Global Science (magazine of the Italian Space Agency). As a science fiction and Star Wars fan, she is known in the Italian online community by her nickname, Anakina, which has become the name of her imprint.
Now for the extract…
Extract: We haven’t even started working yesterday’s case.’ Miriam placed her mobile phone in front of his eyes. ‘But, apparently, it’s the same case.’
A photograph of a corpse appeared on the screen. Eric took the device and looked at it, then he turned his attention to the dead body before him and again to the image. Except for the clothes and the shade of the parquet flooring, everything else matched.
He heard a camera shutter click.
‘Here too there are gravitational drops.’ Adele had already opened her kit, put on the gloves, placed the first tag and started taking pictures.
With a finger, Eric scrolled the screen on the mobile phone. ‘I haven’t really had a chance to check yesterday’s forensics; you’ll have to update me.’ More details, besides the corpse, made the two scenes very similar. In both of them, the flats were vacant and unfurnished. Everything looked perfectly clean.
‘Look.’ Another click, this time towards the window. A sheet was attached to the pane, but unreadable from the inside. Adele opened the frame, so that she turned the sign towards them. ‘Am I wrong or is it the same estate agency?’ She took another picture.
‘Sutton Estates.’ Miriam grabbed the mobile phone out of Eric’s hands. ‘Sorry, I want to call Dawson to see how much longer he expects us to wait. Two victims in less than twenty-four hours makes me nervous.’
He watched her enter one of the adjoining rooms. A moment later she was muttering at the phone. So he resumed observing the corpse. Two dead in vacant flats, killed with the same exact modus operandi.
Better get to work.
He put down his case and camera and donned a pair of gloves. There were no visible footmarks on the floor, but the victim’s shoes were dirty. ‘It doesn’t look like he came here on his own two feet. Unless someone cleaned up the place.’
He turned his eyes to the door and visualised a man walking in and stopping where his feet were now. The silhouette of another person appeared behind the man. The newcomer was brandishing a firearm. As they fired, hitting the victim at the back of the head, the latter fell forward, while high-velocity impact spatters ended on his clothes, perhaps also the murderer’s and the floor all about.
He took the luminol bottle and sprayed a bit of it around the corpse, steering clear of the bloodstains already tagged by Adele. Then he wore his safety glasses and pointed the UV lamp to the moistened areas. ‘I don’t see anything. This isn’t the primary crime scene.’
‘As in the other one …’ Adele commented in an absent-minded tone. She was kneeling at the opposite side of the victim, by his shoulders, and leaning forward, staring at his back, but keeping her arms folded to avoid touching it. She’d left her camera beside the wall. ‘Do you think they may be fingermarks?’ Now she was pointing at an undefined spot on the dead man’s shirt.
He placed his lamp and glasses on the floor and walked way around to come beside her. He crouched down on one knee to take a close look. There was an evident dark stain where the shirt had been pulled enough to expose the shoulders, and was still crumpled. ‘This must be one of the points from which he was dragged.’
‘He was lifted right after being killed.’
Eric pointed to an area. ‘Look at this space.’ No blood was there.
‘Before!’ Adele closed her hand in a fist, mimicking a jerk. ‘He was grabbed from behind with one hand, while they shot at him with the other. There’s no blood, because this flap of fabric ended up inside, and the hand prevented it being reached by the spatters.’
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