I’m delighted to welcome you to my stop on the blog tour for ‘What Child is This?’, the fifth book in Bonnie MacBird’s excellent Sherlock Holmes series.
Thanks to Random Things Tours and Collins Crime Club for my place on the tour and copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. As always, opinions are my own.
Thanks to Killer Reads for my copy of this book, published by Harper Collins in January 2022. As always, opinions are my own.
This is the story of Rachel Reeves who seems to have an enviable life – she lives in luxury, wants for nothing, has a wealthy husband and a daughter heading off for university. However, Rachel seeks fulfilment and begins to search for it in a new job and an ill-advised fling with an ex-flame. When sinister things begin to happen, Rachel is left trying to solve the mystery of who is trying to ruin her perfect life…
This book is told from Rachel’s first person perspective, so the reader is immediately thrown into her world and understanding of situations. This allows the tension to build as the reader is working alongside Rachel to try to make sense of the strange events, from mysterious text messages to nosy neighbours, from unwanted gifts to incriminating photos.
The tension is well managed throughout so that Rachel’s situation becomes more and more precarious and dangerous – it’s cleverly managed that one indiscretion then has so many consequences and I did race through the book to get to the bottom of the mystery.
The only niggle that I had was that Rachel is not always a sympathetic figure – although she seems to be paying a high price for her single transgressive action, it was difficult to relate to someone who otherwise seemed to have everything. In the (slightly misquoted) words of sitcom ‘Friends’, it did sometimes feel a bit ‘my diamond shoes are too tight and my wallet is too small for my fifties!’
That aside, this is an enjoyable thriller that has moments of real tension and some surprises along the way. I (as usual) fell for every red herring and accused pretty much the entire cast of this novel of being behind Rachel’s downfall. Wrong every time.
Read if you like fast-paced domestic thrillers that will keep you reading long into the night.
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Look at that tagline – ‘I am your maid. I know about your secrets. Your dirty laundry. But what do you know about me?’
Sounds fabulous, yes? I’ll admit I was intrigued and am grateful to NetGalley and Harper Collins for my copy in exchange for an honest review.
Continue reading Book Review: ‘The Maid’ by Nita ProseI’m a teacher. Mainly a secondary level one, although I do have primary-age children so the school world explored by brothers Lee and Adam Parkinson in this book is not entirely alien to me. I had also seen posts by Mr P on Twitter but hadn’t made the connection with this book – the @ICT_MrP account is (I think) run by Lee.
This book is an entertaining jaunt through life as a teacher. It covers all the parts of the school year that are part and parcel of teaching life – the parents’ evenings, the school play, assemblies…plus the primary school belief that a wet paper towel can cure all ills. Headache – wet paper towel. Bruised knee – wet paper towel. Major arterial bleeding – wet paper towel. True.
Continue reading Book Review: ‘Put a Wet Paper Towel on It: The Weird and Wonderful World of Primary Schools’ by Lee and Adam ParkinsonWelcome to my stop on the blog tour for this glorious middle grade fantasy novel. Thanks to The Write Reads for organising the tour and to Harper Collins for my copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
So…this one is a bit of a weird one for me.
Continue reading Blog Tour: ‘Fireborn’ by Aisling FowlerI’m usually more at home with police procedurals but when I was offered the chance to join the blog tour for Adele Parks’ new domestic thriller, I was keen to sign up. I’d heard great things about Parks’ books and this one sounded absolutely compelling.
The story is about two missing women. One, Leigh Fletcher, has left a husband and two adored stepsons in an average family home – the normal trials and stresses of raising children were present, but Leigh was happy and the family miss her very much. The second woman – Kai Janssen – has vanished from her wealthy Dutch businessman husband and glitzy penthouse apartment. Again, there was no discernible reason for her to leave. Two women, two devastated husbands, two very different lives – and it is down to DC Clements to work out where the women have gone any why.
I started this novel thinking it was a slow burner – the start of the novel gives us a lot of backstory about the two women and their domestic set-ups. However, this book soon had me in its grip and I raced through it because I was desperate to find out what had happened. In the process, I think I had pretty much everyone involved pinned as a likely culprit for the abductions – and was pretty much wrong on all counts.
This is definitely a book that will keep you guessing.
On top of the pacey plotting, I also found myself being caught up in the lives of the main characters – I particularly warmed to Leigh who seemed to be making a great job of the difficult role of stepmother to two boys whose mum had died when they were young. My heart actually hurt for the littlest boy who was desperate for news of the only mum he remembered. Much of Leigh’s domestic life seemed relatable and her husband a gentle giant who was lost without her. Kai and Daan (the Dutch husband) seemed much less engaging – but maybe that’s just my jealousy about not living their glamorous lives speaking there!
And that is pretty much all I can say without giving away some major plot elements,
I did enjoy this book a lot and was genuinely taken aback by the ending – again, I can’t say much more, but I really couldn’t see how it was going to end in a way that could tie up all the loose ends and resolve all problems. I do still have some questions and a few reservations – but nothing that detracted from my reading of the novel. I do wish that DC Clements had been a little more instrumental in the whole story – but that might be my love of detective fiction creeping in.
I’d recommend this to anyone who enjoys domestic thrillers – it is cleverly plotted, surprising and immersive. The characters are well-developed and interesting, even if a lot of them aren’t nice and certainly don’t play nice!
Thanks to Harper Collins, the HQ publicity team and NetGalley for my copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
