The Stepmother – Claire Seeber

Psychological Thriller
5*s

Jeanie and Matthew King have just got married after knowing each other for just six months. Jeanie moves out of her small house on the seafront into Matthew’s large house, complete with creepers around the windows. Is this her fairy-tale castle? After all Jeanie has now been cast in the role of stepmother to twins, Scarlett and Luke who are fourteen. But that’s OK Jeanie has her son, Frankie who has just gone off to college so she knows all about teenagers.

This book has a terrific structure told as it is from Jeanie’s point of view but with interjections from her younger sister Marlena, comments that give a picture of what was going on with a good dollop of hindsight. Jeanie and Marlena had a tough start in life but they’ve both made it. Marlena is a journalist and Jeanie a teacher and now Jeanie has Matthew, a big house which contains a room with a locked door and a garden with a large patch of animal graves, oh and Mathew’s first wife, Kaye is glamorous and difficult.

The Stepmother takes the fairy tale of Snow White and retells it for the modern age. The young beautiful and somewhat stroppy Scarlett is Snow White who resents her stepmother Jeanie. As her mother Kaye is still alive at least the two get to have a break from each other but with Matthew working hard, remember he is only a King in name, he is stressed and quickly morphs from the laid-back version he presented in their courtship to a more difficult version who is rarely home and when there he is working or taking Scarlett and Luke out on trips to make it up to them. Jeanie is trying to get a new job, without one she is left in charge of the house complete with a large gilt mirror.

I often say when I read these psychological thrillers that the author has to get me hooked and then I am prepared to overlook some of the inconsistencies which are necessary to keep the book flowing. The Stepmother is no different, but I was hooked right from the beginning and once it became clear that Jeanie had a secret, I was not going to be easily parted from this book! New marriage, step-children and a harassed new husband plus dark secret; well we all know where that is going to lead!

The short chapters had me eagerly turning the pages as my view on Jeanie and Matthew were turned on their head and around half-way in I thought I had everything tied up and knew what the ‘and they all lived unhappily ever after’ was going to look like. Dear reader, I was wrong, Claire Seeber came up with something else, something which made me reassess much that I had written and assumed.

Don’t read this book if you want characters to love, Jeanie is a little bit on the soft side for my liking and although I did like Marlena’s no nonsense statements she’s not the most reliable of sisters on the planet. Matthew is so wrapped up in himself and morphs from loving Jeanie to at best ignoring her and at worst judging her and Scarlett is everything you’d not want to find in a step-daughter – when she’s not having a sulk she’s fluttering her eyes at Frankie… not what any stepmother needs.

This book has everything I love in this genre, a good premise, a real feeling of tension which mounts steadily throughout, plenty of action and twists and turns that had me reading with my mouth open as it worked its way towards a terrific ending. I was already a big fan of Claire Seeber’s writing and I think this is probably her best book yet.

 

First Published UK: 19 July 2016
Publisher: Bookouture
No of Pages: 360
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Amazon UK
Amazon US

This Week in Books (December 7)

Hosted by Lipsyy Lost & Found my Wednesday post gives you a taste of what I am reading this week. A similar meme is run by Taking on a World of Words

My current read is The Marriage Lie by Kimberly Belle a psychological thriller set in the US. When her husband Will dies in a plane crash that he wasn’t supposed to be on, his wife Iris questions everything that she thought she knew to be true from their seven years of marriage.

See the synopsis and a short extract in yesterday’s post

I have just finished The Stepmother by Claire Seeber. With its opening coming from Snow White we all know what this story holds, don’t we?

Blurb

The perfect wife. A fairytale family. Don’t believe your eyes…

Jeanie and Matthew are a happily married couple who both have teenage children from previous relationships.
No one said it would be easy to raise a blended family under one roof but Jeanie and Matthew are strong. They will make it work.
And whilst Jeanie’s step-daughter Scarlett rejects her, Jeanie will just have to try harder to win her over.
But Jeanie has a past. A terrible secret she thought she’d buried a long time ago. And now, it’s coming to the surface, threatening to destroy her new marriage.
Someone is playing a terrifying game on Jeanie and she must put a stop to it once and for all.
After all, a fairytale needs a happy ending … doesn’t it? NetGalley

Next I am going to finally read Standing in the Shadows by Jon Stasiak with a book set on the island of Jersey. Fortunately the author lives here so he shouldn’t make any errors with the setting in this novel with a murder at its heart.

Blurb

The discovery of a brutally murdered young woman has shocked a peaceful island community. Tom Nowak, photographer for the Jersey Evening Post, had been eagerly awaiting his best friend’s visit from the mainland, until accidentally capturing a series of ghostly silhouettes in his pictures. With few leads, and the impending trial of the island’s most notorious criminal, the local police force seems powerless to help. Are these ethereal shadows a way to identify and apprehend the murderer, or will Tom’s obsession in seeking justice cost him more than his career? Amazon

What are you reading this week? Do share your links and thoughts in the comments box below.

Weekly Wrap Up (June 26)

 

I returned from my holiday in Crete, a lovely place that I’d love to return to late last Sunday night with a notebook full of scribbled notes from the books that I’d read and so this week has been spent trying to decipher them and put them into something resembling proper reviews!

Last Week on the Blog

Monday’s review was for Watching Edie by Camilla Wray which arrived shortly before I went on holiday from lovereading; great, but they wanted the review sent the day after my holiday started so the bones of that one was at least pre-typed. Fortunately the book was superb, dark and disturbing, just the way I like them and so this review was a joy to share.

On Tuesday my post contained an extract from another psychological thriller, Intrusion by Mary McCluskey. I’m taking the first stop on publication day, 1 July, on the blog tour for this one so my review will be with you later this week and the guest post by this author is superb.

Wednesday saw me sharing my reads with you, sadly this week has been busy and I haven’t even opened Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain yet and so I’m considering a book shuffle but we will see!

I had another review on Thursday, this time from one of my 20 Books of Summer 2016 challenge reads; Pictures of Perfection by Reginald Hill was actually a re-read but it was a superb choice, if I say so myself. I’d forgotten quite how brilliant this book was and it kept me thoroughly entertained at the pool-side, sipping cocktails!

Friday’s review was for one of my kindle reads. I have been a huge fan of the author Tamar Cohen since reading her first book, but for some reason I’d never got around to reading The War of the Wives; I have now! If you’re from the UK you may have missed it because there was some big political news that day!

Yesterday I posted a review for my fourth read from 20 Books of Summer 2016 (yes I know, I’m behind schedule but I’m not panicking, much!) This was another book from a crime series I love which I took away because I knew it would be a sure fire winner, and it was – The title? That will be Buried Angels by Camilla Läckberg 

Stacking the Shelves

Well of course I’ve been away with no access to NetGalley at all (I can only access it from my laptop as I have no idea what my password is and I’m too frightened to try and change it in case future access is denied!) but some old requests came through… and I came home! Here’s what I have:

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware whose debut novel In a Dark, Dark Wood was set around a hen party – I’m trying to forget how spooked I felt by this book as I’ll be attending my daughter’s next month!

Blurb

This was meant to be the perfect trip.
The Northern Lights. A luxury press launch on a boutique cruise ship.
A chance for travel journalist Lo Blackwood to recover from a traumatic break-in that has left her on the verge of collapse, and to work out what she wants from her relationship.
Except things don’t go as planned.
Woken in the night by screams, Lo rushes to her window to see a body thrown overboard from the next door cabin. But the records show that no-one ever checked into that cabin, and no passengers are missing from the boat.
Exhausted, emotional and increasingly desperate, Lo has to face the fact that she may have made a terrible mistake. Or she is trapped on a boat with a murderer – and she is the sole witness… NetGalley

Yep, that sounds suitably unnerving! The Woman in Cabin 10 will be published on 30 June 2016.

I also was lucky enough to get a copy of The Museum of You by Carys Bray which was published on 16 June 2016. I’ve read lots of reviews about this one and I’m intrigued to read it for myself.

Blurb

Clover Quinn was a surprise. She used to imagine she was the good kind, now she’s not sure. She’d like to ask Dad about it, but growing up in the saddest chapter of someone else’s story is difficult. She tries not to skate on the thin ice of his memories.
Darren has done his best. He’s studied his daughter like a seismologist on the lookout for waves and surrounded her with everything she might want – everything he can think of, at least – to be happy.
What Clover wants is answers. This summer, she thinks she can find them in the second bedroom, which is full of her mother’s belongings. Volume isn’t important, what she is looking for is essence; the undiluted bits: a collection of things that will tell the full story of her mother, her father and who she is going to be.
But what you find depends on what you’re searching for. NetGalley

I also requested a copy of Claire Seeber’s The Stepmother as I have really enjoyed some of this author’s previous books. With a publication date of 15 July 2016 this is squeezing the reading schedule more than is remotely sensible so I’m swearing back of NG again; for real this time!

Blurb

The perfect wife. A fairytale family. Don’t believe your eyes…
Jeanie and Matthew are a happily married couple who both have teenage children from previous relationships.
No one said it would be easy to raise a blended family under one roof but Jeanie and Matthew are strong. They will make it work.
And whilst Jeanie’s step-daughter Scarlett rejects her, Jeanie will just have to try harder to win her over.
But Jeanie has a past. A terrible secret she thought she’d buried a long time ago. And now, it’s coming to the surface, threatening to destroy her new marriage.
Someone is playing a terrifying game on Jeanie and she must put a stop to it once and for all.
After all, a fairytale needs a happy ending … doesn’t it? NetGalley

And finally I received a mystery book through the post which is strictly under embargo until 11 July 2016 – so I can’t tell you anything about it but I am incredibly pleased to have received a copy as I’ve never had a top secret book before!!

TBR WATCH
We have progress!! Since my last post I have read 11 books, discarded 1 as DNF and only gained 4 so the total this week is now standing at 173 books!
89 physical books
66 e-books
18 books on NetGalley

What have you found to read this week?