WWW Wednesday (April 23)

Hosted by Miz B at Should be Reading
To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

I am currently reading Quiet Dell by Jayne Anne Phillips who created this labour of love based upon the true life tale of a man who preyed on American ladies in the early 1930’s using the personal columns as a way of making contact.  This is a book of two halves, the first where we meet Asta Eichner and her family, the second where we follow the investigation from the point of view of Emily Thornhill a reporter on The Tribune.

I have just finished Before You Die by Samantha Hayes where DI Lorraine Fisher returns to her home town for a break with her sister only to get involved in what at first sight, appears to be a new spate of suicides.

Click on the book cover to read my review

Next I am going to be reading Keep Your Friends Close by Paula Daly which I’m really looking forward to, after all what would you do if your friend stole your life?

Blurb

Natty and Sean Wainwright are happily married. Rock solid in fact. So when Natty’s oldest friend, Eve Dalladay, appears – just as their daughter collapses on a school trip in France – Natty has no qualms about leaving Eve with Sean to help out at home.
Two weeks later and Natty finds Eve has slotted into family life too well. Natty’s husband has fallen in love with Eve. He’s sorry, he tells her, but their marriage is over.
With no option but to put a brave face on things for the sake of the children, Natty embarks on building a new life for herself.
And then she receives the note.
Eve has done this before, more than once, and with fatal consequences…

What are you reading this week?

Before You Die – Samantha Hayes

Psychological Thriller
3*’s

D.I. Lorraine Fisher, one of the characters from the excellent Until You’re Mine, returns to her home town, Radcote, to visit her recently separated sister Jo and her nephew Freddie. What happens next means that the policewoman isn’t in for much of a holiday. The town had been shocked by a spate of teenage suicides eighteen months previously and so when a young homeless man, Dean complete with suicide note is found dead after a motorcycle crash the tension rises as the community closes in on itself not wanting a repeat of the past.

Lorraine and her youngest daughter, Stella are transported to a household on the edge, Freddie is depressed and distant from his mother, even the delectable Lana not enough to make him venture outside his bedroom and Lorraine is at a loss on how to help, especially as her sister’s reckless affair with a local man, has in her opinion, created some of the outcome.

At the centre of the tale is the Hope Homeless Shelter where Sonia Hawkeswell, mother to Lana and whose son Simon had been found hanged during that dreadful time where the town lost so many of its young, helps to run while simultaneously urging her daughter on to become a doctor. Living with them in a converted barn is her autistic Brother-in-Law Gil who is a gifted artist. When Lorraine meets Gil who shows her a picture she begins to realise that the local Police may not have carried out a diligent investigation into the bike crash and with the help of her husband Adam, she is keen to show them the errors of their ways.

So the cast are assembled, the clues numerous and sometimes misleading and the grief unending which for me was one of the elements that made this book harder to read than some of Samantha Hayes previous books. Grief-stricken characters when realistically portrayed are hard to reach and I just didn’t connect with some of the main characters which caused less tension than I would have liked, although there are plenty of other themes that are explored including; on-line bullying, homelessness, relationships of all kinds and secrets.

I received an advance review copy of this book in return for my honest opinion from the publishers, Random House UK ahead of publication on 24 April 2014.

Samantha Hayes has written five previous books which cover a wide range of domestic and emotional topics which often feed into every mother’s worst fears.

Previous Books by Samantha Hayes

Blood Ties – January 1992. A baby girl is left alone for a moment. Long enough for a mother to dash into a shop. Long enough for a child to be taken.

Unspoken – Mary has a past Julia knows nothing about, and it’s come back to haunt her.

Someone Else’s Son – What would you do if your teenage son was stabbed to death in the school playground?

Tell-Tale – story of three women bound together by a shocking secret…

Until You’re Mine – You’re alone. You’re vulnerable. And you have something that someone else wants. At any cost …

Read a synopsis of these books here

WWW Wednesday (April 16)

Hosted by Miz B at Should be Reading
To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

I am currently reading The Telling Error by Sophie Hannah this is the ninth book in the Culver Valley Series.

Blurb

Stuck in a traffic jam, Nicki Clements sees a face she hoped never to see again. It’s definitely him, the same police officer, stopping each car on Elmhirst Road. Keen to avoid him, Nicki does a U-turn and makes a panicky escape.
Or so she thinks. The next day, Nicki is pulled in for questioning in connection with the murder of Damon Blundy, controversial newspaper columnist and resident of Elmhirst Road.
Nicki can’t answer any of the questions detectives fire at her. She has no idea why the killer used a knife in such a peculiar way, or why ‘HE IS NO LESS DEAD’ was painted on Blundy’s study wall. And she can’t explain why she avoided Elmhirst Road that day without revealing the secret that could ruin her life.
Because although Nicki is not guilty of murder, she is far from innocent . . . Amazon

I have recently finished The Last Boat Home by Dea Brøvig

Click on the book cover to read my review

 

Next I am going to read Before You Die by Samantha Hayes

Blurb

Oh God, please don’t let me die.
It has taken nearly two years for the Warwickshire village of Radcote to put a spate of teenage suicides behind it.
Then a young man is killed in a freak motorbike accident, and a suicide note is found among his belongings. A second homeless boy takes his own life, this time on the railway tracks.
Is history about to repeat itself?
DI Lorraine Fisher has just arrived for a relaxing summer break with her sister. Soon she finds herself caught up in the resulting police enquiry. And when her nephew disappears she knows she must act quickly.
Are the recent deaths suicide – or murder?
And is the nightmare beginning again? NetGalley

What are you reading this week?

Friday Finds (March 14)

Hosted by Should be Reading

FRIDAY FINDS showcases the books you ‘found’ and added to your To Be Read (TBR) list… whether you found them online, or in a bookstore, or in the library — wherever! (they aren’t necessarily books you purchased).

So, come on — share with us your FRIDAY FINDS!

This week I have just one addition from NetGalley, this is a book I’d dismissed as although I liked the author’s first two books, Getting Rid of Matthew and its sequel Got You Back I didn’t enjoy the next two…. then I saw a review and it sounded so good I couldn’t resist seeing if Jane Fallon could weave her magic once more with Skeletons.

Blurb

It’s not hers to share, but is it hers to keep?
If she tells her husband Jason, he might get over the shock but will he forgive her for telling the truth? She might drive a wedge through their marriage.
If she tells someone else in Jason’s family – the family she’s come to love more than her own – she’d not only tear them apart but could also find herself on the outside: she’s never really been one of them, after all.
But if she keeps this dirty little secret to herself, how long can she pretend nothing is wrong? How long can she live a lie?
Jen knows the truth – but is she ready for the consequences? Amazon

Only one physical book made its way into my home this week, and I won it from Goodreads! So I am now the proud owner of The Boy That Never Was by Karen Perry

Blurb

Five years ago, three-year-old Dillon disappeared. For his father Harry – who left him alone for ten crucial minutes – it was an unforgivable lapse. Yet Dillon’s mother Robyn has never blamed her husband: her own secret guilt is burden enough.
Now they’re trying to move on, returning home to Dublin to make a fresh start.
But their lives are turned upside down the day Harry sees an eight-year-old boy in the crowd. A boy Harry is convinced is Dillon. But the boy vanishes before he can do anything about it.
What Harry thought he saw quickly plunges their marriage into a spiral of crazed obsession and broken trust, uncovering deceits and shameful secrets. Everything Robyn and Harry ever believed in one another is cast into doubt.
And at the centre of it all is the boy that never was . .

The Writes of Woman wrote a fantastic review of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
which has been put on my TBR.
Click on the cover to read the review

Blurb

Meet the Cooke family. Our narrator is Rosemary Cooke. As a child, she never stopped talking; as a young woman, she has wrapped herself in silence: the silence of intentional forgetting, of protective cover. Something happened, something so awful she has buried it in the recesses of her mind.
Now her adored older brother is a fugitive, wanted by the FBI for domestic terrorism. And her once lively mother is a shell of her former self, her clever and imperious father now a distant, brooding man.
And Fern, Rosemary’s beloved sister, her accomplice in all their childhood mischief? Fern’s is a fate the family, in all their innocence, could never have imagined. Goodreads

I’ve also added a yet to be released book, Before You Die by Samantha Hayes as I really enjoyed this author’s last book Until You’re Mine Before You Die is due to be published on 24 April 2014.

Blurb

Oh God, please don’t let me die.
It has taken nearly two years for the Warwickshire village of Radcote to put a spate of teenage suicides behind it.
Then a young man is killed in a freak motorbike accident, and a suicide note is found among his belongings. A second homeless boy takes his own life, this time on the railway tracks.
Is history about to repeat itself?
DI Lorraine Fisher has just arrived for a relaxing summer break with her sister. Soon she finds herself caught up in the resulting police enquiry. And when her nephew disappears she knows she must act quickly.
Are the recent deaths suicide – or murder?
And is the nightmare beginning again? Goodreads

My last find is By Blood by Ellen Ullman which sounds just so intriguing I have a feeling I might own a copy before long!

Blurb

A professor is on leave from his post a leave that may have been forced upon him. He may or may not be of sound mind. To steady himself, he rents an office in San Francisco. It is 1974, a time when free love and psychedelic ecstasy have given way to drug violence and serial killings. Through the thin office walls, the professor overhears the sessions of a therapist and a patient, and without knowing the patient s name or face he comes to know the details of her life, her family, her lovers. He inserts himself into her search for her “mysterious origins”: a deeply troubling journey through displaced-persons camps, stolen children, and hidden pasts. Goodreads

I’d love to hear what you have found this week.