Today I’m on the blog tour for The Big Chill by Doug Johnstone, thank you to Anne at Random Things Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part & thank you to Orenda books for my copy.
Pages: 318
Synopsis: Haunted by their past, the Skelf women are hoping for a quieter life. But running both a funeral directors’ and a private investigation business means trouble is never far away, and when a car crashes into the open grave at a funeral that matriarch Dorothy is conducting, she can’t help looking into the dead driver’s shadowy life.
While Dorothy uncovers a dark truth at the heart of Edinburgh society, her daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah have their own struggles. Jenny’s ex-husband Craig is making plans that could shatter the Skelf women’s lives, and the increasingly obsessive Hannah has formed a friendship with an elderly professor that is fast turning deadly.
But something even more sinister emerges when a drumming student of Dorothy’s disappears and suspicion falls on her parents. The Skelf women find themselves sucked into an unbearable darkness but could the real threat be to themselves?
Following three women as they deal with the dead, help the living and find out who they are in the process, The Big Chill follows A Dark Matter, book one in the Skelfs series, which reboots the classic PI novel while asking the big existential questions, all with a big dose of pitch-black humour.
My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧
My Thoughts: I absolutely loved this, but being completely honest, I didn’t realise this was book 2 in a series until Wednesday as I was about to pick it up 😂 cue me panicking and reading book 1 first, which luckily for me I did already own! – and although yes this would work as a stand alone you would miss ALL of the back story about Craig & all the intricate details that Doug puts into A Dark Matter when introducing us to the women who make up the amazing group of main characters.
This story follows on 6 months from the events of the first book, Dorothy, Jenny and Hannah are all starting to come to terms with what happened & maybe start to move on too, but is it really over?
The Skelfs are back to running both sides of their business, they are inundated with funerals to organise, but it also seems that they have a lot of private investigating to conduct too! (I LOVE how they manage both sides at the same time, but manage to keep it all separate when needed)
This story is full of so much to keep you gripped, but without getting overwhelming. – we have a death at a funeral, a suicide, a missing dad, maybe? A one eyed dog and so much more, but in true Skelf style nothing is that straight forward!
I can’t actually tell you anything about it because part of the joy of reading it was discovering it all for yourself.
But what I can tell you is that there is so much character development within the book, especially for Indy and Jenny in my opinion & I particularly enjoyed seeing a vulnerable side to Archie that we didn’t really get to see in book 1.
I cannot recommend this book enough. It was so good!
If you click the cover photo it will take you to amazon where you can buy your own copy.
🐧❤️
prdgreads 