Recipes for Melissa by Teresa Driscoll

Thanks to Bookouture and Netgalley I received a copy of this in exchange for an honest review.....

Is it ever too late for the gift of goodbye?

Meet Melissa Dancer, she's a 25 year old journalist who lost her Mother when she was 8 years old. Melissa never got to say goodbye to her and she has recently been given a diary that her Mum wrote over the years when she had discovered that she had cancer, now on her 25th birthday, the age her Mum had Melissa and the age that their story began.  The diary is full of tips and advice, yummy recipes and more importantly secrets that her Mum held so close over the years.   As she smooths open the pages and begins to read her mother’s words, she is instantly transported back to her childhood but returning to her past is painful and memories of her mother’s beautiful face are a cruel reminder to Melissa that she’ll never see her again.

This was a very bittersweet, emotional and heart-warming read, the story flows well throughout the book.  I really enjoyed Teresa's book which I read in a couple days, it kept me turning the pages until the very end. I loved how the story flicks between Melissa, her dad Max and her mum, Eleanor. Between the main characters stories you get to see how everyone is affected by such a horrible illness.  This story had it all a little bit of humor, love, family, loss, protectiveness to more sensitive and hard-hitting issues - I found I had a little tear in my eye at the end along with shedding a few along the way, so grab this book, curl up on the couch and prepare to have a few lump in your throat moments too.  It definitely didn't disappoint.  This is Teresa Driscoll's debut novel and is ideal for fans of Rowan Coleman, Lucy Dillon and JoJo Moyes.  I'm looking forward to reading more from Teresa, no pressure meant.

Now, I'm off to try make that Pavlova recipe as my mouths watering just thinking of it.

Recipes for Melissa is now available on Kindle for only 99p.

The Spider in the Corner of the Room by Nikki Owen

Thanks to LoveReading.Co.UK and Harlequin Mira, I received this in exchange for an honest review.....

The story opens with Plastic surgeon Dr Maria Martinez who is in Goldmouth Prison and has been convicted of killing a priest, she no memory of the murder but she has severe doubts about how credible her own memory is as she has lost chunks of time in her memory and has hazy memories of other events that she knows nothing about and she also has Asperger’s.  The DNA evidence places Maria at the scene of the crime, yet she claims she’s innocent. Then she starts to remember…...A strange room with strange people and she's being watched.

Has she committed this murder?  Is she taking the fall for a murder that she allegedly committed or is there something more sinister to this crime!?? As Maria gets closer to the truth she is drawn into a web of international intrigue and must fight not only to clear her name but to remain alive.

This book is the first part of a trilogy and it is the debut novel from Nikki Owen.  I will admit that I did find it confusing at times in the first half of the book, I also found myself getting bored at times and the story dipped alot of places and especially in the middle but the last 70 plus pages I couldn't read this fast enough to get to the end and see how it would all end. However, by the end of the book I still did not know who to trust. I feel like there is more to this story for the reader and Maria to uncover and I'm looking forward to the next installment of this trilogy.

This is available on Kindle and in all good bookstores from 4th June 2015.

Evil Games by Angela Marsons

Thanks to Bookouture and Netgalley, I received a copy of this in exchange for an honest review..............

DI Kim Stone is back with her investigating team and are once again, put on the case. The story opens where DI Stone and her side-kick DS Bryant are part of a child abuse case where two kids have been abused for a while by their father and are taken from their parents and into care by social workers.  Then, when a rapist is found mutilated in a brutal attack, Detective Kim Stone and her team are called in to bring a swift resolution but, as more vengeful killings are coming to light, it soon becomes clear that there is someone far more sinister at work.  As the investigation quickly gathers momentum, Kim finds herself exposed to great danger and in the sights of a lethal individual undertaking their own twisted experiment.

Up against a sociopath who seems to know her every weakness, for DI Stone, each move she makes could be deadly. As the body count starts to mount, Kim will have to dig deeper than ever before to stop the killing but this time - it’s personal.

WOW!!!  What a novel Evil Games was, I didn't think Angela Marsons could top her debut success with Silent Scream but how wrong was I, it was absolutely fantastic.  The sociopath character was brilliant, well written and cleverly constructed.  They were everything you'd expect with a sociopath - cold, calculating, manipulating and has no regard for anyone's feelings or who they hurt on their path of destruction.  As we discovered in the first book in the series, DI Stone has her own hidden past and her own demons and her own buried secrets to deal with which we do touch on again in Evil Games.  I will admit that I found parts of the story hard to read and in places it made my skin crawl but it definitely didn't disappoint.  I know that his book will stick in my memory longer than most because of the subject matter. I am really looking forward to Angela's next book already where I'm hoping it won't be too long until another DI Stone Novel is upon us.

Angela Marsons is definitely an author to watch.  I'd HIGHLY recommend BOTH of her novels if you're a fan of Rachel Abbott, Val McDermid and Mark Billingham and they're only £0.99 & £1.99 respectively on Kindle at the moment so grab it while you can, you won't be disappointed so don't say I never told you so!!!

Both Silent Scream and Evil Games are available on Kindle.