SPOTLIGHT ~ We Begin At The End by Chris Whitaker

Hi Everyone,


Today is my stop for the final day of the Blog Tour for We Begin At The End by Chris Whitaker where I was supposed to have a review but the way things went with the current situation with the Covid-19 I was unable to receive a copy of the book for review of his latest novel so instead I will shine a spotlight on it. I was thrilled to be asked by Tracy Fenton from Compulsive Reading in conjunction with  who organised this tour to take part along with some other fab book bloggers. You can find out who else has taken part in this fabulous Blog Tour at the end of this spotlight been shone on We Begin At The End but I really look forward to reading it once I receive a copy when things settle down so without further ado, here it is:

Thirty years ago, Vincent King became a killer. 

Now, he's been released from prison and is back in his hometown of Cape Haven, California. Not everyone is pleased to see him. Like Star Radley, his ex-girlfriend, and sister of the girl he killed.

Duchess Radley, Star's thirteen-year-old daughter, is part-carer, part-protector to her younger brother, Robin - and to her deeply troubled mother. But in trying to protect Star, Duchess inadvertently sets off a chain of events that will have tragic consequences not only for her family, but also the whole town. 

Murder, revenge, retribution.

'You can't save someone that doesn't want to be saved . . .'

'Contender for thriller of the year' SUNDAY EXPRESS

For fans of Jane Harper's The Dry comes a powerful novel about the lengths we will go to keep our family safe. This is a story about good and evil and how life is lived somewhere in between.

BLOG TOUR ~ The Cutting Place by Jane Casey

Hi Everyone,


Today is my stop for the final day of the Blog Tour for The Cutting Place by Jane Casey where I have a review from her latest novel. I was thrilled to be asked by Ciara Swift from Harper Collins Ireland who organised this tour to take part along with some other fab book bloggers. You can find out who else has taken part in this fabulous Blog Tour at the end of this review so without further ado, here it is:

TO BE A MEMBER OF THE CHIRON CLUB YOU MUST BE:

1. Filthy rich

2. Extremely powerful

3. Totally ruthless

4. Guilty

You've got to be in the club to know the truth.

Everyone's heard the rumors abour elite gentlemen's clubs, where the champagne flows freely, the parties are the height of decadence and the secrets arex darker than you could possibly imagine.

DS Maeve Kerrigan is back on the case but finds herself in an unfamiliar world of wealth, luxury and completely ruthless behavious as she investigates the murder of Paige Hargreaves, a young journalist. She was working on a story about the Chiron Club, a private society for the richest and most privileged men in London but then she disappeared.

It becomes clear to Maeve that the members of this club have many secrets. But even Maeve is hiding her own secrets, even from her partner DI Josh Derwent. Will she uncover the truth about Paige's death? Or will time run out for Maeve??

Well, I didn't like it.........I LOVED it. I was gripped from the first page and couldn't turn the pages fast enough to see how this all panned out for DS Maeve Kerrigan and DI Josh Derwent, it was brilliant. Full of action, secrets, lies and been led down the wrong paths on a few occasions. The story is told in two timelines, present day and 2 years ago which are intertwined and expertly tied up as you reach the end. Jane deals with a few themes throughout this storyline including domestic abuse which was researched and handled quite sensitively. I'd even go as far as saying that this is one of the best police procedurals novels that I've read in a long time.

This is Jane's 10th novel in the Maeve Kerrigan series and ashamedly this is the first one that I've read, you can jump in and read this without reading the others but in a way I wish I'd have read the others to get the stories and backgrounds of the characters, however before the world came to a lockdown I'd reserved the whole series in my local library so I'll have something to look forward to when life starts getting back to normal again.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

The Cutting Place is available in all good bookstores and I know many of them are able to deliver/post out books when ordered and it's also available on Kindle where it is currently £2.99 at the time of publication of this review.

BLOG TOUR ~ Two Kinds of Blood by Jane Ryan

Hi Everyone,


Today is my stop for the Blog Tour for Two Kinds of Blood by Jane Ryan where I have an extract from her latest novel. I was thrilled to be asked by Paula from Poolbeg Books who organised this to boost the spotlight on Jane's new release seeing as the difficult situation we're facing with the Coronavirus to take part along with some other fab book bloggers. You can find out who else has taken part in this fabulous Blog Tour at the end of this review so without further ado, here it is:


Chapter 6

The tartan blanket was stiff with black dirt, but filth never bothered Seán Flannery. It was one more type of disguise. He was sitting in the doorway of a ‘to let’ restaurant in Monkstown’s crescent, a once-busy grocer’s shop decades back. The cold October wind blew grit and the bitter tang of road tar into his face. The low winter sun had turned the roadworkers into a dayglo chain gang. Seán had watched their confused progression for two days, noting the local worthies were not pleased, holding their sharp noses a fraction higher as they walked by, too busy muttering about ‘slipshod builders’ and ‘corrupt councillors’ to drop a coin in Seán’s tatty paper cup. It suited him. The village was sleepy and quiet from the diverted traffic. A fear had gnawed at him since the abandoned Fuentes shipment and something like injustice at the stones on the DOCB for stealing his drugs and some Garda buffoon on television talking about teamwork and striking a blow at the heart of organised crime. It rankled. And they’d trashed the Farm. Gardaí had respect for nothing, tearing down a man’s legacy. He rammed an ancient deerstalker hat further down his head, the fleece matted with grease from someone else’s hair. He’d filched it from a charity shop as he walked through Blackrock. The invisible hobo. Insulated from the cold in an ancient parka, he watched the men working from his vantage point, lost in the beat of the steel rollers moving over the black-glitter glue of bitumen. The roadworkers folded in more gravel and rolled again, as though working toffee, the rhythm of their travails a meditation. It took Seán away, his eyes half-shut and a layer of white flocculent sleep all but descending on him. He put his hand into his boxers. Right under the jock cup was a concealed pocket. He touched the teeth of his house key, their jagged edges soothing him. Lorraine came to him. Not the shredded woman in the warehouse, too destroyed to recoil from the punches, but Lorraine as she lay frozen, the ice fogging and reshaping her into a serene Madonna. It was a peaceful scene until Seán remembered the baby girl he’d orphaned. She punctured his self-awareness, leaving it as pocked as the road surface. He should have killed the child – instead he left her to a motherless fate. Proof, if it was needed, that he was formed from original sin. It made sense of his cruelty and inability to feel remorse . . . but he had felt remorse about Lorraine’s child. He struck his head, wanting to smack down the unassailable questions mid-air. He shifted his thoughts away from that, to another girl walking around the backroom of his mind, so ripe at the age of nine. The soft downy skin on her arms and her dreams pulsing below the transparent skin of her eyelids. His desire was malevolent, dark as tar seeping into his pores, suffocating him. He blamed original sin. The nuns in the Home said not even Jesus could wash away his sin. Despite that, Jesus would try to love him. Without end. A millstone of forgiveness around his neck to wander through life with. Seán hadn’t believed the nuns’ fantastic stories of women turned to salt and oracle boys whose dreams came true – but original sin was different. St Augustine, who Seán knew about from his time in the boys’ home named after him, declared that original sin was passed down through the generations when people had sexual intercourse and conceived a child. If the offspring was of an unwed mother, even baptism couldn’t wash away the sin. Seán was doused in it. A Nissan van screeched to a halt. Seán’s head whipped up while his legs thrashed out of the tangled rug. Four men from the road gang ran towards him. Another man tarring the road looked at the melee, the quick movements of the men drawing his eye. Seán’s fingers scratched the pavement, struggling for purchase. The roadworker looked away from his terror. Those other men were unstoppable. Big, ugly conscripts with anabolic bodies. Fear bit into Seán and numbed his feet, turning them towards one another in his unlaced boots – he jerked his knees upwards to release his feet from them. A hand reached him. Grabbed the parka. Seán shrugged it off and ran. Past an empty pub in his bare feet, heading for the boiling tar of the new road surface. Four hands hiked him up before he reached it. His legs chopped the air, his left arm brought back to an unnatural angle and close to snapping. ‘Youuuu!’ Seán called out to the roadworker who had caught his eye, but the man shrugged and continued breastfeeding his shovel. This was not his fight.

‘We have you now, Seán,’ said one of the attackers. ‘There’s a good man and don’t make a scene. Or I’ll break your arm.’

‘Do youse scum know who you’re dealing with?’

‘We do, Seán – but maybe you not – Big Man,’ said another, the air of pack leader about him, despite his pinched features.

He had a cheerful, chilling tone of voice and a Slavic accent. He mangled his English into horror show bites and was soaked in Eau de Psycho. Here for the impersonal violence. Seán swallowed his pain and terror. His chances of surviving would collapse with a broken arm. Two of the men hog-tied him with plastic cable-ties and slung him into the back of the white van with a single yellow stripe, head first. The deerstalker took most of the impact, but there was a crunch and a warm line along his eyebrow. The abduction had taken less than two minutes. It happened so fast a bystander wouldn’t have realised what they were looking at. The van looked commonplace yet official. Fear and panic played on Seán so the van doors appeared to close in slow motion, peeling him back to the boy with his face pushed into ammonia-smelling black trousers.

BLOG TOUR ~ Mine by Clare Empson

Hi Everyone,

Today is my stop on the final day for the Blog Tour for Mine by Clare Empson where I have a review from her latest novel. I was thrilled to be asked by Tracy Fenton from Compulsive Readers who organised this tour in conjunction with Orion Books to take part along with some other fab book bloggers. You can find out who else has taken part in this fabulous Blog Tour at the end of this review so without further ado, here it is:

'Who am I? Why am I here? Why did my mother give me away?'

Meet Luke and his girlfriend Hannah, on the surface they seem to have a perfect life. He's an A&R man, she's an arts correspondent and they are completely devoted to their new-born son Samuel.

But beneath all this Luke has always felt like an outsider. So when he decides to search his birth mother Alice and finds her, the instant connection with her is a little like falling in love.

When Hannah goes back to work, Luke asks his mother Alice to look after their son. But Alice - fuelled with grief from when her baby was taken from her 27 years ago - starts to fall in love with Samuel. And Luke won't settle for his mother pushing him aside once again...

Well, what a read this was, I absolutely LOVED it. I wouldn't describe it as a psychological thriller more of a story of family, guilt, jealousy and relationships and at times was full of tension which are palpable on the pages. Told it a dual timeframe from both Alice's past to the lead up of Luke's birth and present. It also deals with the sensitive and hard-hitting issue of adoption which were dealt with perfectly and it was well researched and written in a very sensitive and compassionate manner. I don't want to say anymore incase I say something by accident but all I can say is go and get this to read over the Easter weekend, you won't regret it.

Mine is Clare's second novel, the first been Him which I will definitely read after reading this novel and they are both available in all good bookshops, libraries, on audio and on Kindle where they are both currently £1.99 and  at the time of the publication of this review but be quick as it's only for a limited time so grab it while you can but I can't wait to see what she produces next (no pressure, Clare).


HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

NEW RELEASE ~ The Secret of Eveline House by Sheila Forsey

In 1949 and into the 1950s the people of Ireland lived by a strict moral religious code. Little mercy was shown by the church, the state or indeed society on anyone who ignored this code. This is where this story begins.

The Secret of Eveline House is set in 1949 and the present day.

It’s 1949 in Draheen and playwright Violet Ward, her husband Henry a renowned jeweller, and their young daughter Sylvia have returned to Ireland from London to take up residence in Eveline House. 

But Violet has broken the rules. Her writing is banned in Ireland and labelled immoral. The people of Draheen are hostile to her. Her very being there outrages them.

In 2019 Emily O’Connor buys her dream house in Draheen. Eveline House is like a time capsule, locked up since 1950, still full of personal possessions and hauntingly beautiful photographs of the family that once lived there. A family that seems to have abruptly walked out of their lives and disappeared through the cracks of time.

Emily soon realises that Draheen is a town of cruel secrets – secrets which are about to impact on her life in ways she could never have imagined. 

Sheila Forsey is an honours graduate from Maynooth in Creative Writing. Her writing is inspired by Ireland’s complex and difficult past.

"A thrilling and beautifully written mystery, Sheila Forsey’s atmospheric page turner is alive with intrigue and mystery from first sentence to last." Niamh Boyce.

The Secret of Eveline House-Tangled-Secrets-ebook