Weekly Wrap Up (September 18)

This week I got some great news from the publishers Bonnier Zaffre
Dear Cleo,

I hope all is well with you. Just getting in touch to tell you something that I hope you might like.
As you may know, My Husband’s Son by Deborah O’Connor is coming out in paperback on 6th October and I’ve just received copies of this stunning book. I wanted to let you know that a quote from your review has been included in the first page of the book!

I hope this makes your day! 

Many thanks and best wishes,
C

Did it make my day? Hell yes! It also guarantees that some of my dear friends will receive this book as a gift!

Last Week on the Blog

Well I managed to celebrate two author’s birthdays on the blog this week:

First up was the wonderful Roald Dahl who I met as a child as he lived fairly close to where we lived in Buckinghamshire and he did a talk at our local library. Roald Dahl would have been 100 on 13 September 2016 and Audible had a promotional post of his audio books – including one the great man read himself.

I then too part in the Agatha Christie Blogathon timed to coincide with Agatha Christie’s 126th birthday, my choice was to revisit Miss Marple after over thirty years of shunning her for not being anywhere as delightful as Hercule Poirot – you can read my thoughts on The Murder at the Vicarage here

I was also extremely lucky to receive an ARC of The Trespasser by Tana French, the sixth in the Dublin Murder Squad series which I reviewed on Monday.

The Kill Fee by Fiona Veitch Smith got plenty of coverage this week featuring in my First Chapter, First Paragraph post on Tuesday and later in the week I reviewed the book.

Wednesday highlighted my reads for the week, including The Woman on the Orient Express by Lyndsay Jayne Ashford; another entry for Agatha Christie, this time in a book inspired by the Queen of Crime.

On Friday my post was a book tag, this one about all things NetGalley – you can read my responses here

This Time Last Year…

I reviewed the psychological thriller, Can Anybody Help Me by Sinéad Crowley, a real tale of our time that involves an internet site for mothers – remind you of anything? This book is swiftly paced to say the least and proved to make for some compulsive reading!

 

It was crazy really, she had never met the woman, had no idea of her real name but she thought of her as a friend. Or, at least, the closest thing she had to a friend in Dublin.

Struggling with a new baby, Yvonne turns to netmammy, an online forum for mothers, for support. Drawn into a world of new friends, she spends increasing amounts of time online and volunteers more and more information about herself.

When one of her new friends goes offline, Yvonne thinks something is wrong, but dismisses her fears. After all, does she really know this woman?

But when the body of a young woman with striking similarities to Yvonne’s missing friend is found, Yvonne realises that they’re all in terrifying danger. Can she persuade Sergeant Claire Boyle, herself about to go on maternity leave, to take her fears seriously? Amazon

Stacking the Shelves

There were just two books added to my shelves this week – I know, I can hear those gasps of amazement and awe at my self-restraint.

First is Rush of Blood by Mark Billingham which has a publication date on NetGalley of 7 February 2017 but actually this book is already available to buy here in the UK, having originally been published in 2012.

Blurb

In the standalone novel Rush of Blood, internationally bestselling author Mark Billingham puts a sinister twist on a deceptively innocent topic: the beach vacation.

Three British couples meet around the pool on their Florida holiday and become fast friends. But on Easter Sunday, the last day of their vacation, tragedy strikes: the fourteen-year-old daughter of an American vacationer goes missing, and her body is later found floating in the mangroves. When the shocked couples return home to the U.K., they remain in contact, and over the course of three increasingly fraught dinner parties they come to know one another better. But they don’t always like what they find. Buried beneath these apparently normal exteriors are some unusual kinks and unpleasant vices. Then, a second girl goes missing, in Kent—not far from where any of the couples lives. Could it be that one of these six has a secret far darker than anybody can imagine?

Ambitiously plotted and laced with dark humour, Rush of Blood is a first-rate suspense novel about the danger of making new friends in seemingly sunny places. NetGalley

I was also delighted to be approved to read The Trophy Child by Paula Daly, an author that has entertained and delighted me with each of her three previous novels Just What Kind of Mother Are You?, Keep Your Friends Close and The Mistake I Made The Trophy Child will be published on 7 March 2017 by Grove Press.

Blurb

Karen Bloom is not the coddling mother type. She believes in raising her children for success. Some in the neighbourhood call her assertive, others say she’s driven, but in gossiping circles she’s known as: the tiger mother. Karen believes that tough discipline is the true art of parenting and that achievement leads to ultimate happiness. She expects her husband and her children to perform at 200 percent—no matter the cost. But in an unending quest for excellence, her seemingly flawless family start to rebel against her.

Her husband Noel is a handsome doctor with a proclivity for alcohol and women. Their prodigy daughter, Bronte, is excelling at school, music lessons, dance classes, and yet she longs to run away. Verity, Noel’s teenage daughter from his first marriage, is starting to display aggressive behaviour. And Karen’s son from a previous relationship falls deeper into drug use. When tragedy strikes the Blooms, Karen’s carefully constructed facade begins to fall apart—and once the deadly cracks appear, they are impossible to stop.

A thrilling tale of ambition and murder, Daly’s richly imagined world of suburban striving and motherly love is an absorbing page-turner about the illusions of perfection and the power games between husband and wife, parent and child. NetGalley

TBR WATCH

Since my last post I have read 5 books, and gained 2 and had I located a read book left on the spreadsheet so the total is now a fairly respectable 172 books!

82 physical books
70 e-books
20 books on NetGalley

What have you found to read this week?