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Today is my stop on the blog tour for The Missed Kiss by Nicola Lowe, thank you to Anne at Random Things Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part and thank you to the author for my copy.

Pages: 288

Synopsis: Lily loves her life, her job and her two best friends, she does not need romance to come along and mess that up!
Nobody is more surprised than she is when after a blind date, she finds herself falling head over heels in love with Zack.

But Zack isn’t the only one with feelings for her. Lily’s heart and body are about to be torn between two very different men, as she tries to find a way to hold on to both of them. Lily hasn’t met “The One’, she has met ‘The Two’.

Can she have it all? Or will she be forced to make an impossible decision?

Get ready to fall in love…

This book contains love scenes and some language that readers may find offensive

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧

My Thoughts: This was a delightful, easy read & gave me exactly what I love in standalone romances!

After having her heartbroken in the worst way possible a few years ago Lily had given up on the thought of not just finding love again, but of ever wanting love again after al everything is easier when your single right?

But when her best friend sets her up on a blind date she agrees to go, just to keep her quiet and get her off her case, what she didn’t expect to find in that coffee shop was Zack, a man who made her feel at ease and comfortable straight away! He even gets her to agree to a ‘proper first date’ – what follows is the perfect whirlwind romance! – with some rather steamy scenes included!

Lily’s other best friend Luke is away travelling in a place where he is completely off the grid but Lily can’t wait to introduce him to Zack when he gets home, but when it happens Luke seems standoffish and warns Lily thatZack might not be all he claims, saying he’s just being a friend with Lily’s best interests at heart.

It some comes out that Luke is in love with her and had been for years which leaves Lily feeling like she’s been lied to and used by her best friend, but does she love him too?

This book was really hard to put down as Lily is torn between two men who love her which one will she choose? – I am personally all for Zack, I just didn’t like Luke, his character totally rubbed me up the wrong way 😂

I highly recommend this book of you’re a fan of romance.

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Today is my stop on the blog tour for Not A Happy Family by Shari Lapena, Thank you to Anne at Random Things Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part and thank you to the author for my copy.

Pages: 352

Synopsis: In this family, everyone is keeping secrets – even the dead.

In the quiet, wealthy enclave of Brecken Hill, an older couple is brutally murdered hours after a tense Easter dinner with their three adult children. Who, of course, are devastated.

Or are they? They each stand to inherit millions. They were never a happy family, thanks to their vindictive father and neglectful mother, but perhaps one of them is more disturbed than anyone knew. Did someone snap after that dreadful evening? Or did another person appear later that night with the worst of intentions? That must be what happened. After all, if one of the family were capable of something as gruesome as this, you’d know.

Wouldn’t you?

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧

My Thoughts: who can you trust in a family when every single one one of them tells lies and has something to hide?!

The night after telling their 3 grown up children that they are selling the house to downsize, therefor meaning that it won’t be anyone’s to inherit, both Fred and Shelia Morton are found not only dead but quite clearly murdered!

The direction the story took made it so that you literally suspected everyone at some point, was it one of the siblings? one of the partners? Or maybe even the cleaner? – they all stand to inherit something from the death which leaves us not knowing where to turn!

There ate some big reveals within the story, I couldn’t believe some of the secrets that had been kept, some of them for years.

There really isn’t a lot I can say about this book without giving the whole thing away and I’m definitely not down for that, but in true Shari Lapena style she kept me on the edge of my seat and wrote a book that I just devoured in one sitting.

And the bonus is that I didn’t work out the ending – it was a total shock but tied everything together perfectly!

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Today is my stop on the blogtour for Death at The Gates by Katie Gayle, thank you to Sarah Hardy from Bookouture for organising it and inviting me to take part and thank you to the author and the publisher for my copy.

Pages: 248

Synopsis: Hurlingham House school is a high-achiever’s heaven, full of happy, hard-working pupils. There’s just the small matter of the dead body on the field… Sounds like a case for Epiphany Bloom!

When Epiphany Bloom’s best friend’s sister Claire is accused of trading exam papers for money, Epiphany agrees to see Ms Peters, the headteacher of Claire’s fiercely competitive school, to provide moral support. Claire has always been a model student and is loudly protesting her innocence: surely it’s all just a misunderstanding.

But when Ms Peters hears about Epiphany’s previous sleuthing exploits, she enlists her help to track down the true culprit!

Taking a job as a PE teacher, Epiphany soon realises she has plenty of suspects for the exam scam mastermind. The broke young teacher with a shady past? The father willing to buy his daughter anything – including grades? The school governor desperate to keep Hurlingham House at the top of the ranks?

Then Epiphany finds one of them dead at the school fair, and it becomes clear someone is taking the cut-throat culture of the school too literally – and when mysterious accidents start happening around her too, it seems the killer knows she’s onto them.

Can Epiphany solve the murder as well as clearing Claire’s name, before she becomes the next victim? This is one test she can’t afford to fail…

A charming and totally addictive cozy mystery with a hilarious and warm-hearted heroine. A must-read for fans of M.C. Beaton, Lee Strauss and Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series.

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧.5

My Thoughts: I absolutely love the Epiphany Bloom series, this is book 3 and was just such a delight.

This one didn’t feel as intense or action packed as the others but part of me appreciated that because although it was the same premise as the others it made this feel different, it was slower paced and more easy going but with a very serious undertone like the other two!

There are small issues like cheating in exams and expulsion from school but soon escalates to hostage taking and murder? – poor Pip just can’t do things by halves, does trouble just follow her around?

With all the old favourites returning this was heartwarming and felt like I was back with old friends ❤️

I loved the flirtatious banter between Pip and a couple of the other characters, I won’t mention who just incase you haven’t read them, but let me just say that I wish she would just make up her mind 😂

I adore the covers of these books too, they’re colourful and eye catching and definitely just make me want to pick them up!

I cannot wait to see where the 4th book in this series takes us ☺️

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Today is my stop on the blog tour for Dog Rose Dirt by Jen Williams, 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: 400

Synopsis: A convicted murderer with a story to tell

Serial killer Michael Reave – known as The Red Wolf – has been locked in Belmarsh Prison for over 20 years for the brutal and ritualistic murders of countless women.

A grieving daughter with a secret to unearth

Ex-journalist Heather Evans returns to her childhood home after her mother’s inexplicable suicide and discovers something chilling – hundreds of letters between her mother and Reave, dating back decades.

A hunt for a killer ready to strike again

When the body of a woman is found decorated with flowers, just like his victims, Reave is the only person alive who could help. After years of silence, he will speak to Heather, and only Heather.

If she wants to unearth the truth and stop further bloodshed, she’ll have to confront a monster.

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧

My Thoughts: This book completely took over my life whilst I was reading it, Everything about it just instantly drew me in and made it impossible to focus on anything else!

I really felt that the topic of suicide was dealt with with compassion thought towards the victim and the reader, as someone who has lost friends to suicide it was appreciated and made think that maybe this was something the author herself had dealt with in the past.

We’re following Heather, who following the tragic death of her mother had returned to the family home to clear up some of her things and also maybe try and get some answers as to why her mum would end her own life, after all she’s known her her whole life and although their relationship wasn’t ideal or perfect in any way, she had no idea that her mum was feeling so low.

It’s whilst getting her mother’s things together that she stumbles upon some letters from a very well known convicted serial killer, Michael Reave. The correspondence goes back years and it seems they knew each other quite well, could her mum have been hiding a double life?

Not long after Heather returns, dead bodies are being found in ways very similar to the way Michael’s victims were found all those years ago, so Heather takes her newly discovered letters to the police in the hopes that it will help then with their investigation and maybe even help her get the answers she needs at the same time!

I’m not doing the best job of selling the story and for that I apologise but please trust me when I tell you that it was gripping, tense, haunting, full of twists and turns and something very different to any kind of thriller I have read before!

I didn’t see the ending coming at all, but once it’s revealed it all kind of falls into place and makes all the little niggles I had whilst reading make sense!

I can’t wait to see what Jen comes up with next, one thing is for sure, I will definitely be picking it up!

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Today is my stop on the blogtour for The Interview Chain by Lynn Farley-Rose, 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: Everyone has something interesting to say if you take the time to listen.
The Interview Chain is a series of conversations—each interviewee was asked to nominate someone they admire as the next link.

Starting from a casual conversation on a boat on the Thames, the chain wended its way for over 23,000 miles, alighting on three continents and gathering up personal perspectives on issues that really matter in the world today.

The interviewees include a theatre director, a rabbi, a philanthropist, a sculptor, a New York Mayoral candidate, a pioneering documentary maker, and a man who rescues giant trees.
Some have worked in challenging places—Kabul in the time of the Taliban, a Romanian orphanage, immigration detention centres, remote Indian villages—while others have found themselves caught up in extraordinary situations such as the Rwandan genocide, the Ferguson uprising, and the UN Climate Change Negotiations.

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧

My thoughts: this is going to be a really hard book to review because I can’t actually tell you anything about it without ruining the experience, but let me tell you that I loved it, I loved the idea of it, the way it was executed and the overall reading experience!

I was fascinated by the fact that everyone’s experience with life was totally different but somehow they were all linked, just by being recommended by the last person in the chain! – it opened my eyes to a lot of occupations that I never really give any thought to, you just know they exist but don’t really know what they do, they’re just always their, like priests or a nurse from the NHS.

It’s true what it says in the synopsis everyone has something interesting to say if you just take the time to listen or read!

I thoroughly enjoyed the book & actually read it in 2 sittings, it would have been one of work hadn’t got in the way!

I appreciate that this book isn’t for everyone and I won’t lie and say that all of the individual interviews interested me because they didn’t, but I still took the time to read them because they’d been kind enough to give their time and experiences for the book, and let’s be honest the chain would’ve been broken if I hadn’t!

I recommend this to all fans of non-fiction especially those who like to read about people’s life stories or experiences ☺️

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Today I’m on the blog tour for a invite me in by Emma Curtis, thank you to Anne at Random Things Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part & thank you to the author for my copy.

Pages: 410

Synopsis; To those who think they know her, Eliza Curran has it all: two healthy children, a stunning home and a wealthy, adoring husband. No one would guess the reality of her life: trapped in an unhappy marriage to a controlling man, she longs for a way out.

When she takes on a new tenant, her life changes unexpectedly. Dan Jones is charming and perceptive, and quickly becomes a close friend to the whole family.

But Dan’s arrival threatens to tip Eliza’s fragile world out of balance. And when someone has as many secrets as Eliza does, the smallest slip could destroy everything . . .

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧

My Thoughts; I love a thriller that grips you straight away and just doesn’t let go and this book did exactly that, the twists and turns just didn’t stop!

We’re following Eliza who is currently renovating their latest house ready to put on the market, with just 2 weeks to go until it’s ready a stranger turns up at the door claiming he was looking for somewhere to rebuild and could he be cheeky and have a quick look before it gets put on the open market, reluctantly Eliza agrees, knowing it will make her late, knowing that Martin won’t be happy and that she will pay for it when she gets home.

Martin is in wheelchair after a horrific accident a few years ago, which sometimes makes him feel inadequate as a person and a father so has to assert his dominance in other ways normally using his words and his fists, he like Eliza to be the perfect little wife and he likes to know where she is at all times even going as far as putting a tracker on her phone…

Things start falling apart when Dan moves into the apartment and both he and Eliza start having feelings for each other, but the snag is that Dan is also seeing Eliza’s au pair to “keep up appearances”

The secret about Dan and Eliza comes out at a family party after Eliza who is a recovering alcoholic has far too many drinks, kisses Dan in one of the rooms and gets caught by the Au Pair!

What follows is tense, gripping and a story that leaves you not knowing which way to turn but staying strapped in for the ride because you just need to know where it’s going!

There was so many layers to the story that every time we peel one away there’s another one to decipher!

This is the second book by Emma that I’ve read and the second 5 star read!

Well worth a read to any fans of a psychological thriller that is near impossible to put down!

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Today is my stop on the blog tour for Hope Nicely’s Lessons for life, thank you to Tracy at Compulsive Readers for organising it and inviting me to take part and thank you to the author and the publisher for my copy.

Pages: 464

Synopsis: I don’t have any friends, only dog ones, because they don’t make you do bad things. I don’t want any human friends, actually. It’s for the best.’

Hope Nicely hasn’t had an easy life.

But she’s happy enough living at 23 Station Close with her mum, Jenny Nicely, and she loves her job, walking other people’s dogs. She’s a bit different, but as Jenny always tells her, she’s a rainbow person, a special drop of light.

It’s just . . . there’s something she needs to know. Why did her birth mother abandon her in a cardboard box on a church step twenty-five years ago? And did she know that drinking while pregnant could lead to Hope being born with Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder?

In a bid to find her birth mother and the answers to these questions, Hope decides to write her autobiography. Despite having been bullied throughout school, Hope bravely joins an evening class where Hope will not only learn the lessons of writing, but will also begin to discover more about the world around her, about herself and even make some (human) friends.

But when Jenny suddenly falls ill, Hope realises there are many more lessons to come . . .

Hope Nicely’s Lessons for Life is a heartwarming, coming-of-age novel about loneliness, friendship, acceptance and, above all, hope.

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧

My Thoughts: well, this book was an absolute joy to read, it made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me cringe and it made me want to hold Hope right and never let her go.

When it comes to the writing style and Hopes voice although I totally understood why it was written the way it was, it did take a lot of getting used to, but once I was there it made the story feel more real and genuine.

The story deals with a lot of hard hitting topics, and there were times when I thought I’d have to put it down, but I kept on going and I am SO GLAD I did,

How do you deal with the worst days of your life when you take things literally and struggle to process your emotions in the way that everyone else is telling you too? – stick with Hope and she will show you how.

This has to be one of my favourite reads of the year and gave me serious Eleanor Oliphant vibes and I will be recommending it to anyone possible.

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Today I’m on the blog tour for Marrying The Heiress by Autumn Miller, thank you to Kelly at Love Books Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part and thank you to the author for my copy.

Pages: 267

Synopsis: Marrying The Heiress is a standalone, enemies-to-lovers romance featuring a smoking hot guy, steamy bedroom-scenes, and a happily ever after.

Kate
I didn’t expect to inherit a multi-million pound estate – especially under dubious circumstances – but I’ve only ever wanted to be financially secure.
For years I’ve been cast out from my family, desperately scraping together a living, trying to find some self-worth in the process.
But the rightful heir – Will Dawlish – hates my guts.
He wants his inheritance back.
A-Daw-rable Dawlish, the papers call him. Dee-Lish Dawlish.
But even though he’s distractingly handsome and adored by the country as a cricketing legend, he’s emotionally bankrupt.
The prenup demands that I sleep with him, and I just know that there will be sparks. That born from his hate will be a sizzling chemistry that will be impossible to ignore.

Will
I just want my grandfather’s inheritance back. I’ve got big plans to realise, and Kate Parsons has utterly derailed them.
After pursuing her through my lawyers, I’m left with one brazen plan.
Marrying her is the only option.
It makes good business sense; the divorce will be clean and tidy, my finances restored.
There will be nothing romantic between us because there’s absolutely nothing to like about Kate Parsons.
Not her lies, her mysteries, nor her blatant thievery.
And when she walks down the aisle towards me, I refuse to be moved by her graceful beauty.
I don’t want to notice her dazzling smile.
All I need to focus on is the next twelve months. Except, I also have to meet a stipulation of the prenup: consummating this marriage.

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧

My Thoughts: I absolutely adored this book, the writing style flowed easily but drew you in straight away, before I knew it I was 100 pages in!

I have to saw William Dawlish Senior was my favourite, as much as I knew he was going to die I was absolutely devastated when I’d happened, I don’t know if it’s because we’ve had a couple of bereavements in our family but it actually made me shed a tear!

Enemies to lovers is one of my favourite tropes within romance so I devoured this and loved every second of it!

I loved Will and Kate as separate characters, Will was cocky, entitled and selfish and as much as I wanted to hate him there was just something about him that made it impossible to hate him, so when he started showing his softer side, I knew I’d need right not to write him off straight away!

Kate was warm-hearted, caring and always put others before herself, so when we found out about her life and living arrangements my heart broke for her and I couldn’t help but feel that she deserved the inheritance 😂

I couldn’t help but feel that although they acted like they hated each other the attraction had been there for both of them from the start! I felt that Will was too embarrassed to admit, more worried about what his friends would think instead of what his words and actions were doing to Kate, whereas Kate felt that she wasn’t beautiful or deserving enough to be loved by someone like Will!

Experiencing them getting closer was frustrating in the best way possible, I just wanted to shake them both & sort them out, you could cut the tension with a knife.

The length of this book was perfect for me too, I prefer my romances to be short and snappy, although that being said I wouldn’t be opposed to a second book from their perspective 🤷🏻‍♀️😂

I would highly recommend this to all fans of a steamy romance.

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I’m on the blog tour today for The Lucky Eight by Shelia Bugler, for those eagle eyed among you, the poster isn’t wrong I’m posting a day late! – thank you to Kelly at Love Books Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part & thank you to the author and the publisher for my copy.

Pages: 277

Synopsis: When the plane crashed, 160 people perished. Now someone is killing off the survivors.
Five years ago, a horrific airline disaster made headlines around the world. On the anniversary of the fatal crash, a number of those who were spared gather to mark the occasion. By morning, Nick Gilbert, a celebrity chef and one of the party, lies dead. Detective Rachel Lewis leads the investigation and within days another survivor is stabbed to death. It seems certain that a killer is targeting the lucky eight.

Clodagh Kinsella recovered from the injuries she sustained in the crash, but lost her sister that day. The bereavement shared by Clodagh and her sister’s husband led them to a romance of their own. Yet lately, Clodagh knows something isn’t right. As the noose tightens on the group and Rachel comes across more questions than answers, it’s only a matter of time before Clodagh will have to face the consequences of a mistake she made before the plane went down…

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧

My Thoughts; the synopsis of this book drew me in straight away, it just really intrigued me!

The 8 survivors of a plane crash that killed 160 others meet up once a year on the anniversary of the plane crash to remember the ones who didn’t survive but also celebrate their survival – normally these get togethers go without a hitch, but this time one of them is found dead on the beach, did he fall off the edge, or was he murdered?

The story is told from 2 different perspectives, one from Clodagh who is one of the survivors and the one who found the victim and the other from Rachel who is the lead detective in the investigation, although I appreciated both sides, I did find myself getting lost in the story more within Clodaghs chapters!

I loved that Clodagh was convinced that she held the answer to what had happened that night and why, if only she could remember! She had problems with her memory which were caused by the crash, but she starts getting flashbacks of not only that night but of the day of the crash too, can she piece them all together before someone else gets hurt?

None of the survivors knew who they could trust or where to turn, they’re left constantly doubting eachother and the guests that some of the survivors brought with them – is the killer among them or is it someone else entirely?

At times I did find myself getting a little muddled with all the different characters, but I think that was more my issue than anything the author did wrong.

This was a good solid thriller, with short snappy chapters which are my fave, it’s one that I highly recommend although it may make you think twice about getting on a plane for a while 😂

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Today is my stop on the blog tour for Cyprus Kiss by Murray Bailey, The amazing prequel to the Ash Carter series, thank you to Murray for organising it and inviting me to take part.

Synopsis: Help Me!
Those were the words on the back of a woman’s photograph. And she vanished six months ago.
It’s 1948 and military investigator Ash Carter has arrived in Cyprus.
A gang has been operating for two years, leaving a mark known to police as the kiss of death. Is this something to do with them? And why ask him for help?
After a murder, Carter begins to realise this is personal. In a race against time, Carter must work out the connection between the gang, the missing woman and the murder before it’s too late.

Pages: 321

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧

My Thoughts: I adored this, I’ve loved the Ash Carter series so the thought of a series about how he became the Ash Carter we all know and loved was so exciting!

This had all the best bits of the Ash Carter series with added element of his youth and his inexperience which made him seem naive but almost cocky at times!

As always this book gripped me instantly and I was almost turning the pages quicker than I could read the words, I just needed to get to the bottom of the mystery, does the woman in the photo need help or so someone trying to test Ash?

He shows how clever and cunning he is, whilst trying his best to stick to the rules he’s been given, but when it looks like his girlfriend is being framed for the murder all the rules go out of the window!

I cannot wait to see where the story takes us next!

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