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Today I’m on the blog tour for Christmas at Fox Farm by Helen Pollard, thank you to Sarah at Bookouture for organising it and inviting me to take part & thank you to the author and the publisher for my copy.

Pages: 306

Synopsis:Daisy is preparing to spend her first Christmas in the only place she’s ever really felt at home: beautiful Fox Farm. But when tragedy strikes, she will need all her festive cheer, and all the mulled wine, to keep Christmas from being cancelled…

Living at Fox Farm, with its cosy café and charming pottery workshop, is a dream come true for thirty-one-year-old Daisy. The kindly owner, Jean, and the close-knit village feel like the family Daisy has never had. She’s been looking forward to finally having people to buy gifts for and to share cookies with in front of the fire after too much Christmas dinner.

When Jean suddenly falls ill, Daisy is the first to lend a hand in organising the holiday celebrations. She ropes in Alex – Jean’s handsome Scrooge of a nephew – to help her. From the get-go Daisy and Alex cannot agree on anything, butting heads through decorating disasters and tripping over each other at the holiday barn dance. Alex hates Christmas, and Daisy is feeling so festive she might as well be the fairy on top of the ten-foot tree. Can Daisy melt Alex’s icy exterior and prove to him just how magical Christmas can be?

But then Alex discovers Fox Farm is almost bankrupt, and suddenly its whole future is in jeopardy. They need a plan, and quickly, if Jean is to have a place to come back to this Christmas. Will Daisy be able to save the only real home she’s ever had? And might this Christmas be the beginning of something special?

My Rating 🐧🐧🐧🐧

My Thoughts: now I’ll going to be 100% honest here and admit that I haven’t actually finished the book yet, life has got ahead of me and I’ve struggled 😬

That being said though I’m 75% of the way through and didn’t want to miss my spot so I’ll review what I’ve read so far.

This is such a cosy heartwarming story that on the surface reads like a romance but once you delve a bit deeper you see that there is so much more to the story!

Fox farm has always been Alex’s home, although it’s owned by his Aunt Jean a lot of his happiest memories as a child were experienced here! – all school holidays (except Christmas) were spent here with his Aunt and uncle and we doing learn that he’s there to escape a turbulent home life.

He loved it so much that he’s opened his own business just down the road!

Daisy is currently the resident artist at Fox Farm and for the first time feels like she’s found where she belongs, she feels at home and although the living quarters are small, it’s perfect for her!

The book opens with all the members of the fox farm team carving pumpkins getting ready for their Halloween event and it’s decided that in the morning Daisy will go round to Jeans and help lay the pumpkin trail, unfortunately things don’t quite go to plan as when Daisy turns up she finds Jean slumped in a chair looking like she hasn’t moved all night! – with Jean is hospital and it being unknown when she’ll be home again can they all pull together to make Christmas at fox farm run smoothly without her?

There was an absolute pick’n’mix of characters in this story, some that pulled at your heartstrings like Jean, some like Daisy and Alex who went completely out of their way to make everything perfect. But then you got characters like Sebastian who just rubbed me up the wrong way from the beginning – he was just out for what he could get!

But then characters like Mr Giles are weird, wacky and just absolutely hilarious, he had me laughing on more than one occasion!

I cannot wait to see how this story wraps up, in fact I’ll probably finish it before I go to bed tonight. but this is definitely a read that needs adding to your TBR.

It’s Christmassy enough to get you feeling all warm and fuzzy and looking forward to the festive season but not too Christmassy for an October read.

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Today is my stop on the book tour for Her Wolves by G. Bailey, 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: 352

Synopsis: I knew nothing about mates until the alpha rejected me…

Growing up in one of the biggest packs in the world, my life is planned out from the second I turn eighteen and find my true mate in the moon ceremony.

Finding your true mate gives you the power to share the shifter energy they have, given to the males of the pack by the moon goddess herself. The power to shift into a wolf.

But for the first time in the history of our pack, the new alpha is mated with a nobody. A foster kid living in the packs orphanage with no ancestors or power to claim.

Me.

After being brutally rejected by my alpha mate, publicly humiliated and thrown away into the sea, the dark wolves of the Fall Mountain Pack find me.

They save me. The four alphas. The ones the world fears because of the darkness they live in.

In their world? Being rejected is the only way to join their pack. The only way their lost and forbidden god gives them the power to shift without a mate.

I spent my life worshipping the moon goddess when it turns out my life always belonged to another..

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧

My Thoughts: this was a good opener to a new fantasy RH series! The writing gripped me straight away.

We following Irin, who is a foster kid within one of the biggest wolf packs in the world, but then she’s a nobody, living in the orphanage because it is pack law that females don’t get killed, they’re too rare!

Irin knows roughly how her life will pan out, once she turns 18 she will take part in the moon ceremony and will be mated to another member of the pack, unfortunately when that day arrives it doesn’t go as planned, the moon goddess has spoken and Irins fates mate is the Alpha of the pack, he can’t be seen with a nobody so he rejects her, his inner wolf won’t let him kill her though so he throws her over the edge of the cliff and let’s the sea do the job for him… or so he thought!

Irin is found on the beach by one of the 5 alphas of the Fall Mountain pack close to death he makes the decision to make her one of their pack (a decision that should be made by all 5 of them together)

You soon get the feeling that there is more to the story, like maybe the Alpha knows who she is even though she doesn’t really know herself?

What follows is a story of acceptance and learning to adapt to new surroundings, there wasn’t really a lot to this story (not a criticism) it was more introduction of characters and world building!

There was a definite mystery element to it and I can’t wait to learn more about Mai and her past, as well as joining her in the discovery of all these alpha males and what they might be to her in the future!

There was a lot of hinted at sexual tension although there was no smut in this book – I’m sure that will appear in the next one!

I can’t wait to see where the next book takes us because this one ended on one hell of a cliff hanger!

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T

Pages: 368

Synopsis: What if the Lift driver who finds your cheating boyfriend’s phone holds the directions to true love?

‘Who are you and why do you have my boyfriend’s phone?’

‘He left it in my car. You must be the blonde in the red dress? I’m the Lift driver who dropped you two off earlier.’

And with these words, the life of the brunette and t-shirt wearing Maya Maas is turned upside down. Having planned to surprise her boyfriend, she finds herself single and stranded in an unknown city on her birthday.

So when the mystery driver rescues Maya with the suggestion that she cheers herself up at a nearby beach town, she jumps at the chance to get things back on track. She wasn’t expecting a personalised itinerary or the easy companionship that comes from opening up to a stranger via text, let alone the possibility it might grow into something more..

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧

My Thoughts: Having not actually read the synopsis for this book I didn’t really know what to expect, I got the gist of it being a love story but I didn’t know that poor Maya was going to have her heart broken in the beginning! – but once we met Max I was here for the whole thing!

My favourite part of the book was the interaction between Maya and ‘max’ solely through text, the fact that he was trying his best to make her birthday special when he didn’t even know her made my heart feel all warm and fuzzy! & Maya’s too, has she really found the love of her life on the same day she found out her boyfriend has been cheating on her?

Obviously there’s a spanner in the works when her boyfriend Davis turns up claiming that he hadn’t cheated on her and the guy she’s be be texting all day was just having a laugh so she goes back home with him!

A year later she’s back in Carmel by the Sea, having finally leaving David because someone here has written a book about that very day she spent here the year before & she’s always wondered who ‘Max’ really was – could this be her chance to find out?

This book was SO MUCH FUN and one of those I wish I could experience for the first time all over again.

I did work out who Max was quite early on, but got me that added to the enjoyment of it, almost like I knew something Maya didn’t 🤣

If you’re a fan of romance that takes a little time and work to get there I promise this one won’t disappoint.

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Today is my stop on the blog tour for The Family Man by Kimberley Chambers, 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: 486

Synopsis: Kenny Bond. A murderer. A gangster. A good family man.
Meet the Bonds

Kenny Bond is finally out of prison after doing a long stretch for killing a copper, and is determined to get back to life on the straight and narrow.

A family like no other

Kenny’s son Donny might lack his father’s edge but his twin grandsons, Beau and Brett – well, they are Bonds through and through. Like him, they won’t let anyone stand in their way.

But they’re about to meet their match

Family comes before everything else for Kenny, but there’s a feud brewing that could cause murder, and a new family on Dark Lane might bring the Bonds to their knees. Kenny’s determined that nothing, and no one, will threaten his family. But can the Bonds stick together when someone’s out to take them down?

Meet THE BONDS.
You don’t want to be on the wrong side of this family.
A brand-new series from the queen of gangland crime

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧

My Thoughts: this is the first book of Kimberleys that I’ve picked up and bloody hell did I pick a good one to start with!

When I’d finished it my boyfriend asked if I’d enjoyed it and I said “it was brilliant, it was shocking and brutal but it was SO good!” And that pretty much sums it up.

We’re following Kenny Bond who is the top dog in the Bond family along with his wife Sharon, his children and even his grandchildren and a few other family friends along the way we’re really thrown into the world of gang land crime! I don’t want to give too much away because part of the enjoyment of the story for me was the shock factor, I lost count of the amount of times I gasped or said “no way!!” whilst reading this I was totally hooked and at times scared to put the book down for fear of missing out on the next twist!

I will warn you though, aspects of this story were not an easy read, there’s drugs, sexual assault, rape of a child (although not too much detail, it happens and you’re made very aware of the fact!) I didn’t want it to end but at the same time couldn’t wait to finish it to see how it wrapped up. I was definitely happy with the ending although felt that not all of the “loose ends” had been tied up so I can’t wait to see what happens in the next instalment of this totally gripping series!

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Today I’m on the book tour for The Younglings by Helena M Craggs, thank you to Kelly at Love Books Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part & thank you to the author for my copy.

Pages: 393

Synopsis: Humans have no idea what lurks in the shadows.

Mortals don’t expect to see supernaturals. Their minds rarely consider the possibility, even when it’s staring them right in the face. I was one such person … until I met my estranged father.

Let me introduce myself. The name is Carter. Quinn Carter. A witty, laid-back, regular guy, who just happens to be half-demon.

Finding out Dad is a demon king was like a sucker punch to the gut. Seriously, I’m a total biological freak. Meeting him was the catalyst for my life tail-spinning into a new world—a world where things of legend are real.

The one positive about this whole situation is the friends I have made. Good friends. But they too have secrets … big secrets. They’re not exactly your average individuals. Turns out demons aren’t the only paranormal creatures out there.

I also need to mention a Vampire Ministry, evil stab-worthy demons, and troubled spirits stranded on the spectral plane. As a consequence, life for my friends and me became a tad problematic.

Being heroes in the mortal realm hadn’t been on anybody’s to-do list, but we had no choice in the matter, and things were about to get very interesting.

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧

My Thoughts: I’m a real fantasy geek, and fantasy set in the real world is a real favourite of mine so I LOVED this!

Poor Quinn has just learnt he’s a half demon & if that wasn’t enough his best friend Eve is half angel.. there goes his chance at love, he can’t possibly tell her how he feels now, can he?

I loved the introduction of the rest of the ‘team’ I was slightly worried that it would get overwhelming at some point with so many names to remember, but there were all introduced at just the right time and it all seemed quite seamless!

Obviously they are thrown into their new roles quite quickly & I was so impressed with how well they worked together as a team! – it made it so easy for me to get behind them and support them!

Quinn’s inner dialogue made me laugh on several occasions, he was just such a typical 16 year old 😂

The book gave me real feels for Charmed (my favourite show ever) & not just because Millies book of spells was called the Book of Shadows, but the fact that all of these fantastical creatures (demons, angels, witches, angels, ghosts, mortals) all came together for the greater good!

I was totally invested in this story and really struggled to put it down. I cannot wait to see what happens in the next instalment!

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Today I’m on the blogtour for Safe At Home by Lauren North, 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: What if you left your child alone, and something terrible happened?

Anna James is an anxious mother. So when she has to leave eleven-year-old Harrie home alone one evening, she can’t stop worrying about her daughter. But nothing bad ever happens in the sleepy village of Barton St Martin.

Except something goes wrong that night, and Anna returns to find Harrie with bruises she won’t explain. The next morning a local businessman is reported missing and the village is sparking with gossip.

Anna is convinced there’s a connection and that Harrie is in trouble. But how can she protect her daughter if she doesn’t know where the danger is coming from?

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧

My Thoughts: this is the first book I’ve read my Lauren North but I can promise you it won’t be the last, I devoured this in one sitting, it was incredible, fast paced, full of twists and turns, and the creepiest thriller I’ve read in a long time!

This is a really hard one to review because I don’t want to give anything away, part of the enjoyment was not knowing ANYTHING that was going to happen!

We’re following Anna, a mother of 3 girls 11 year old twins Harrie and Elise and 7 year old Molly. She’s not a single mum, but she might as well be because her husband works away for 3 months at a time!

Anna leave her daughter Harrie alone for the first time whilst she goes to pick Elise up from her club, she’ll only be 20 minutes, nothing could go wrong. right?

Unfortunately it doesn’t quite work like that and Harrie ends up being left alone for 3 hours, but when Anna checks on her she’s asleep so all is good…

Until it’s not, Harrie isn’t herself the next day, she’s quiet and withdrawn and won’t talk to anyone not even Elise!

I loved this so much, I loved the use of mixed media, the way nothing was straight forward and you found yourself being tied in knots trying to work out what’s happened, who to and why!

The worst part about thrillers is that they are predominantly stand alone and after that ending I NEED to know at happened next 😂😭

Go and pick it up, then come back and share your thoughts with me. I need to discuss this book with people!

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Today I’m on the Blog Tour for Starstruck by Beth Miller, 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 304

Synopsis: Sally Marshall is just your ordinary suburban woman, who gets by performing as a tribute act to a pop star (Epiphanie, even more famous than Beyonce). She, along with dozens of others.

Until one day she is asked by the real Epiphanie to do a life swap for a couple of weeks. Epiphanie trades Madison Square Garden for doing gigs in pubs. Sally is catapulted from suburban semi life to double for a mega-star, her life turned upside down.

But which life will they each choose in the end? Laugh-out-loud and unputdownable, Starstruck will leave you feeling warmer about all the different lives we choose.

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧

My Thoughts: this was a story that grew on me the more I read, to start with I didn’t like Sally at all, I didn’t find her humour funny, she was more annoying, but I powered through and I’m so glad I did!

Sally is a tribute act for Epiphanie ( the worlds biggest superstar singer) she loves what she does but she’s always wanted more, she wants to hear her own songs being sung rather than singing someone else’s!

Imagine her shock when she gets home from her latest gig and finds THE Epiphanie sitting in her kitchen, sat on a second hand chair talking to her fiancé!

She soon finds out that the reason she’s here is because Epiphanie needs a break, and considers Sally to be the best tribute act she’s in, she wants to swap places with her for 2 weeks, is offering to pay her a lot of money for the privilege! – that will help her and her fiancé achieve a dream that has so far not been possible!

Sally jumps at the chance and is thrown into the spotlight and no matter what she expected NOTHING could’ve prepared her for this, will she be able to last the full 2 weeks?

I ended up absolutely loving this even though it took me a while to be invested, a whole host of characters that I loved all for different reasons, although my favourites were Leo, Abraham and Indigo, they were the ones that made me smile the most and even made me laugh out loud whilst reading a couple of times.

This was a really fun read that shows you that the high life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and maybe sometimes on the way to realising your dreams you might find that it’s not actually what you want after all.

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Today I’m here to reveal the stunning cover for this book.. BUT I’m going to leave you all hanging a little longer whilst I tell you a little about the book and the author first 😉

Synopsis: When struggling college student and aspiring music teacher Sharleen Vega lands a seasonal position with a local Parks and Recreation Department, she’s not expecting to find her destiny and true love. Assigned to direct a holiday variety show at an elementary school the city has given up on (the same school she once attended as a child), Sharleen must come to terms with the grief of her past while bringing hope to a community she feels compelled to fight for.

About the Author: David-Matthew Barnes is the bestselling author of fifteen novels, three collections of poetry, seven short stories, and more than sixty stage plays that have been performed in three languages in twelve countries. He writes in multiple genres, primarily young adult, romance, thriller, and horror. His literary work has appeared in over one hundred publications including The Best Stage Scenes, The Best Women’s Stage Monologues, The Best Men’s Stage Monologues, The Best 10-Minute Plays, 105 Five-Minute Plays for Study and Performance, and several collections in the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series. He graduated with honors from Oglethorpe University in Atlanta with a Bachelor of Arts in Communications and English. He earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Queens University of Charlotte in North Carolina. He is a graduate of the Professional Program in Screenwriting at UCLA. To date, he has written five produced screenplays, including the award-winning Dutch film Wagon.

Are you ready to see the cover now?!

Isn’t it stunning?! it’s making me feel all Christmassy!

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Today is my stop on the blog tour for How To Be An Olympian by Harry Reardon and o have an extract for you, thank you to Anne at Random Things Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part.

Before I post the extract let me tell you a little about the book and the author! 😍

Synopsis: Hannah Dines and Jess Leyden are two perfectly normal, brilliant women. One, a world record-holding athlete and a Paralympian on the trike. The other, a multiple age-group world champion and one of the most promising rowers Great Britain has to offer.

In the five years (yes, that’s right) between Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020, they will face cancer scares, crushing defeats, and the biggest global health crisis in a century. They will get dropped, they will get injured, and they will win medals. They will spend the best years of their lives knowing that at any moment, it could all come crashing down. That all the training, all the sacrifice could be in vain, wasted effort as a pandemic raged. That maybe these could be the years that will shape their finest hour – or that maybe, after everything that they’ve been through, it could all still be snatched away at the last…

About the Author: Harry Reardon is a qualified lawyer who, at the age of thirty-one, left the law completely to train as a sports journalist. He now works in the civil service. He lives in a small village outside Winchester with his wife and their two young children.

Extract: If you ever find yourself booking a room at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Reading – and the Rough Guide to Berkshire this isn’t, but one never knows when the urge may take hold – make sure you ask for one round the back.
This is important. Otherwise, when your alarm goes off too early of a morning, and you lever yourself out of bed, grumble your way to the kettle and then potter across to the window to open the curtains and take in the day, if you’re lucky there’s going to be a tree in your face. If not, reading from right to left, it’s petrol station, greasy spoon, redbrick office, roundabout. A greasy spoon with a solid set of TripAdvisor reviews it may be, and doubtless plenty of the employees of the Reading branch of Peter Brett Associates are more than content with their life choices, but none of that changes the fact that this is not the view they advertise on the hotel website.
So drink your tea. Head downstairs, pick your way past the spreadsheet printouts and meal time notices pinned to the whiteboard in the foyer, and press on through the café, because once you make it out of the glass doors at the back and onto the terrace, suddenly there is late summer sunlight twinkling off the Thames. The birds are singing, the sky is an impudent blue, and it’s a different world.
It’s all so serene, so far removed from the hammering heart of built-up Britain that’s beating no more than a hundred yards away, so gently perfect, that if this weren’t August 2016, you’d expect Jess Leyden to be feeling pretty well-disposed towards it. But it is, and so she isn’t.
She perches uncomfortably on a rickety metal chair, her knees hunched up to her chest. “You look at some of them,” she says. “And you say, well, why can’t I do that?”

Jess has been watching a lot of telly recently. Team mates, room mates, former crew mates, friends and rivals have been out in Rio de Janeiro over the last couple of weeks, competing at an Olympic Games. They’ve been breaking records and they’ve been winning medals, and she could have been there too.
She’s got the talent. Everyone at British Rowing knows that, and has done for a few years now, since she won the country’s first ever international gold medal in the women’s single scull[1], at the 2013 World Junior Championships out in Lithuania. But the quadruple scull she’s been in for her two seasons in the senior squad missed out on Olympic qualification, and so here she is. Everyone else, it seems, is over in Brazil, and she’s sitting outside a hotel in the Home Counties and reliving the moment, three months earlier at the final qualification regatta, when a crew made up of her, Holly Nixon, Ro Bradbury and Tina Stiller finished behind China, Ukraine and New Zealand and fell five seconds short of Rio.
“After we missed out, I didn’t know what to do,” she says. “I knew we would have to do something quite special at that regatta, but in that moment I really believed we could. We had a good platform, we knew the way we were going to get faster, and it was slowly getting there. But if you’re a crew like we were, who were really fighting for the places, you’re affected more. You change your tactics more than an established crew would. Maybe that’s wrong.”
There was one thing for certain – she wasn’t going to leave the sport. She might still be so new to the national team set-up that she doesn’t even think of herself as a rower – “I don’t really feel like I’ve grown up. I feel like I’m still doing my hobby” – and she might only have turned down a place at Newcastle University two years ago because she’d just made it into the Great Britain senior squad, and it’s easier for an international rower to become an engineer than it is for an engineer to become a rower. But unlike in 2012, when Jess was still splashing about in the junior ranks and the team that dominated at Dorney was becoming the stuff of legend – now, she knows she’s good enough. She’s got the numbers on the rowing machines, and she’s proving herself on the water. Now, she needs to keep sharpening up her technique, she needs to stay fit, and she needs to find the boat that will take her to Tokyo, because she’s not going to miss out again.

If you love the kind of this as much as I do then it can be bought here…. How To Be An Olympian

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Today I’m on the blog tour for A Perfect Harvest by Bill Fitzhugh and I’m coming at you with a spotlight, thank you to Anne at Random Things Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part.

Synopsis: Given a terminal diagnosis (actually two of them) thirty-five year old Miguel Padilla decides he must accomplish something meaningful before death. He seizes on the idea of donating a kidney to save someone’s life.

Then he decides: why stop there? Why not donate… everything? 

Why not indeed?

About the author: Bill Fitzhugh is the author of eleven satiric novels, including Pest Control which has been translated into half a dozen languages, produced as a stage musical, and a German radio show; Warner Brothers owns the film rights. He lives in Los Angeles.

You can buy the book here – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1788423305/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_QMA7JTAE3EGMDDA1H7SD

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