Tag: Book Review

Posted in Random Things Tours

The Transcendent Tide by Doug Johnstone 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

The Enceladons are back! We left them on the up, having destroyed the American facility that captured and tortured them with a tsunami wave. Lennox, Heather as well as Ava and her daughter Chloe were recovering from the torture they suffered and had to make a big decision, to leave for the Arctic as part of the Enceladon community or stay on land. Heather chose to leave with them. Now the remaining friends have established new lives. Lennox and his girlfriend Vonnie are studying together at university. Ava and Chloe are settled with Ava’s sister, but they all miss the group especially Heather, Sandy and Xander. It’s hard not to miss the extraordinary experiences they had, such as Lennox becoming part of Xander and flying off into space. It is Ava who brings everyone back together after Chloe appears to suffer a stroke, only to return back to normal, just as the friends did after first meeting Sandy. A follow-up MRI shows a brain tumour and Ava has a difficult decision to make: does she stay put and follow the medical route or does she try to find the Enceladons? She wonders whether the torture Chloe endured or her communications with the creatures could have caused this illness? She also remembers how Sandy cured Heather’s cancer and decides to take her daughter to Greenland. At the same time, Lennox and Vonnie are approached by an Norwegian tech billionaire who wants to meet the enceladons. Even the logo of his new company is a moon being held in giant tentacles. The couple are very unsure and inside I was screaming at them not to work with him, but when Ava contacts them about Chloe they both agree to work with him under certain conditions. Will those conditions be met and is this man as trustworthy as he seems? 

Niviaaq is our first new character, an Inuit woman who has lived in her small community on Greenland her whole life. The community still live like their ancestors with the principals of working with nature, not against it and they are feeling the effects of climate change. Glaciers are melting and species like polar bears are unable to hunt for food. Out on her boat, Niviaaq encounters another vessel, upturned and badly damaged. She also finds a man floating upside down in the water, hypothermic and barely alive. His coat has a symbol of a moon and octopus with the word ‘Sedna’, the name of an Inuit sea monster. She drags the man into her boat and takes him for medical help. The Inuit people have several legends of strange monsters  but lately the Northern Lights have been very active and people have seen strange glowing objects on the ice. Are these signals that something is going to happen? I loved this character throughout the book, mainly because she is so wholly and unselfconsciously her self. She is a strong woman, mentally and physically. She can take care of herself, taught from a young age how to use a rifle, to sail boats and fish on the ice floes. She doesn’t show off about this strength, it is simply part of her that can be used whenever it’s needed. She is used to long spells of time alone so she comes across as self-contained and very grounded. She is calm and gentle, not chatty but only speaking when necessary. I loved that she and Ava had an instant affinity and I could see how cozy and safe Ava would feel when with her, something she needs after her experiences with her violent husband. 

As always with Doug there are politics behind the actual story and setting it in Greenland, when it has been a constant topic in the media since Donald Trump came back into power had to be deliberate. It brought back to me how brash and ignorant the US Vice-President JD Vance appeared when he visited earlier this year. His first comment, that nobody had warned him how cold it was, just made me groan with embarrasment. It was no surprise that he was only welcome at the US Airforce Base. Their blatant and greedy desire for Greenland and parts of the Ukraine is all about mineral mining, taking what they need and further damaging the fragile ecosystem for its human and animal inhabitants. There are only two reasons a multi-billion dollar organisation would build a base there, either to exploit Greenland or the Enceladons. Probably both. Even though the business owner Karl Jensen initially impresses Lennox with his reaction to meeting the enceladons, while I was still very wary. He calls Sandy and Xander ‘they’ without prompting, because they don’t see themselves as individuals but as a collective. I loved this because it shows how easy it is to shift your perception and take care with other people’s feelings – it reminded me of the series of Taskmaster where I pointed out to my husband that Greg Davies had been using ‘they’ as Mae Martin’s pronoun for the whole series and he hadn’t even noticed. 

He seems to have a deep and profound experience on their first dive and when Sandy connects with him telepathically he suddenly understands everything that is wrong with the world. It’s the capitalism, the greed and simply exploiting every resource the earth has to give, without once considering whether it is ours to take. We don’t treat our fellow creatures as equals but as something we have dominion over and the right to kill for resources or for pleasure. We kill for yet more, when we already have so much. It’s an absolute tour de force of a speech and for a moment life is hopeful. However, as is pointed out by Vonnie, no one becomes a billionaire through philanthropy. Human nature intervenes suddenly and with finality, because it’s just so much easier to carry on as we are instead of making those personal and political changes. This is where Niviaaq is a brilliant contrast to mankind in general. When she and Ava have to take shelter in the hunting hut – one of several up and down the glacier, always ready for anyone to use – it made me realise how much the Inuit people have in common with the Enceladons. As she’s offered whale blubber to eat, Ava refuses it with a shudder. Niviaaq explains that the whale is suited to the environment they both live in and if they do hunt a whale, every single part of it is used. Eating two tiny chunks of it will give them the calories they need to survive the cold and the exertions of the journey ahead. To kill it, then refuse to use it for the purpose of staying alive is an insult. It made me realise that if people had stayed in their tribes and clans and used their original principles in this way – just like the Aboriginal and Māori people, and the Native Americans – we would have always lived in harmony with the earth. It’s possible certain animals wouldn’t be extinct and we might not have faced climate change. Their creation myths are so different too, not giving us dominion over the animals but being a harmonious whole. Or is human nature always determined to chase money and progress until we wipe ourselves out? 

I won’t divulge any more of the plot because that would ruin it for you. I get so excited about reading Doug’s books because reading them is a little like connecting with one of Sandy’s tentacles for a second. Ideas and light bulb moments appear in my brain and I have to write down all these weird notes and things to look up before I can review. Then I rabbit on about them to anyone who will listen for months to come! You can read these books on a surface level and they are still brilliant. The characters are full of heart and love for each other and their Enceladon friends. It’s also full of heart racing action sequences that would be amazing on screen – especially when all of the animals come along. You become so absorbed that you forget it’s all a bit weird, then you read a sentence like ‘Chloe was playing ball inside Sandy’ and it blows your mind. However, if you do delve under the surface it’s a profound comment on our times, our politics and capitalist lifestyles. Read the whole series and you’ll see how the author balances profundity, action, romance, sci-fi and humour like a magician. You’ll finish them, as I did, with a tear in your eye for these extraordinary creatures and a world with so much more variety and beauty than we’ll ever deserve. The Enceladons wake people up – yes I’m using that word ‘woke’ often thrown about as an insult these days, but why wouldn’t you want to shake an alien octopus’s tentacle and become enlightened, compassionate, open and perhaps your very best self? 

Out Now from Orenda Books

Meet the Author

Doug Johnstone is the author of 18 previous novels, most recently Living Is a Problem (2024) and The Collapsing Wave (2024). The Big Chill (2020) was longlisted for Theakston Crime Novel of the Year, and Black Hearts was shortlisted for the same award. Three of his books, A Dark Matter (2020), Breakers (2019) and The Jump (2015), have been shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year.

He’s taught creative writing and been writer in residence at various institutions over the last decade, and has been an arts journalist for over twenty years. Doug is a songwriter and musician with six albums and three EPs released, and he plays drums for the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers. He’s also co-founder of the Scotland Writers Football Club, and has a PhD in nuclear physics. He lives in Edinburgh.

Posted in Publisher Proof

The Forest Hideaway by Sharon Gosling

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Hidden away in Cumbria’s Gair Forest is the most romantic setting, a ruined castle. It’s a haven for local history lovers and a once in a lifetime project for architect Saskia Tilbury Martin. She’s finding it difficult to get a builder to take the project on so Owen is her last hope and she’s already running late to meet him. She knows that she’s overdressed for the great outdoors and she’s had to borrow her friend’s BMW sports car because her trusty Land Rover is in the garage. In a way this is Owen’s last chance too. Previously in the forces, he has been a builder for a number of years but the business is struggling and he knows he’s not pulling his weight with wife Tasha and their gorgeous little girl. They have debts and if he doesn’t take this job he’s looking at failure, but when Saskia turns up with her sports car, three inch heels and double-barrelled name he’s isn’t impressed. Especially since she’s an hour late. He dismisses her as a rich girl throwing her money around. However, when she gets the plans out he can’t help but be intrigued. Saskia assures him that she wants to preserve what’s here, to leave the ruin looking as it does now but create a number of platforms inside to house her living spaces. She even intends to leave the slightly dilapidated oak tree growing in the centre of the castle, with a glass roof that can open in good weather. She doesn’t tell him that she’s the architect because other builders have been unsure about working with an unproven architect before. Owen takes the night to think about it, but when she offers him ten grand up front to get started he knows he can’t turn her down. Saskia reflects that they don’t have to like each other, they just have to be a good professional team for the project and save this beautiful building that holds so many memories for her. 

Owen soon finds he has assumed a lot about Saskia. When he sees the cabin she tows onto the site with her Land Rover back on the road, he thinks it’s an affectation to need a whole kitted out living space for when she’s here in the day. The builders have to make do with bare sectional buildings with no comforts. When he’s there early one morning, he’s surprised to see her appear from the cabin in her old denim shirt and her hair tied back, all set to walk her dog. She’s living in the cabin when he’s assumed she had a boutique hotel booked for the duration of the build. I wouldn’t have blamed her, having half my house out of bounds for building work at the moment I’d give anything for a couple of nights in a nice hotel! The truth is Saskia doesn’t have many people or places she could say feel like home. Her inheritance is from a grandparent and she has no relationship with her mother, instead she has best friend Vivian. Owen isn’t doing any better on the family front, Tasha has put up with a lot and has decided that their relationship just isn’t working anymore and he’s bunking down with friend and fellow builder Stuart. I found Saskia interesting and loved that she had a dream she was seeing through. She seems very sure of her ability and has confidence in her design which I found inspirational because I’m not confident and I’m rubbish at finishing projects. I admired that perseverance because she isn’t just hanging around waiting for life to happen. Owen’s life path felt more passive, despite seeing different parts of the world his life hasn’t been his own, it belonged to the army. He’s also drifted in his relationship. It clearly hasn’t been right for some time and Tasha tells him that his long absences on detachment meant they never really built a life together. As soon as he left the army and was home full time, they could both see their differences. Neither of them have tried to address the decline and now it’s too late. Maybe he needs to spend some time with Saskia because her self-reliance and determination could inspire him. 

The setting is absolutely stunning. I love the Lakes, a love that was awakened again on a recent visit. I loved the idea of taking such a romantic ruin and making it into a home without taking away any of the decay that makes it so picturesque, the beauty being tied up with its imperfection. The isolation is fascinating too. I used to live in a large house in the middle of nowhere and friends would be aghast that I didn’t shut my curtains or check that all five doors were properly locked every night. Saskia isn’t afraid of the isolation either and I liked that about her. The history of the site is important too, both Saskia’s link to it but also the local history buff’s attachment to the building. So far they haven’t even given Saskia a chance, stating they want Gair preserved as it is without realising that’s exactly what she’s trying to do. I loved the idea that there are:

‘Two types of history here […] the castle ruins, the ancient oak tree. They both have worlds within them”.

This is so true because they hold the history of many people over centuries, enduring every new generation and what they bring. When we think about it like that it’s clear that making it a home again is exactly the right thing to do, reintroducing humans to the building and the nature surrounding it. I thought the added intrigue of Roman ruins under castle was fascinating and I was again impressed that Saskia had thought of this and ordered drone scans of the castle and underneath to see what the layers of soil revealed. I was hoping the local history lovers would give her a chance if she tried to her plans to them. 

There is a ‘will they, won’t they’ to this couple’s relationship and while a touch of romance is always nice it isn’t the main focus here. Owen slowly comes round to Saskia once he’s realised how much of his assessment of her was based on assumptions. She isn’t a rich girl playing at property development. Owen doesn’t know himself as well as Saskia does and part of that is because of his years in the army. It takes time after coming out, to get to know the person inside and decide what you want the rest of your life to look like. I imagined that if Tasha hadn’t been brave enough to say something that morning, Owen would have drifted along for years in an unfulfilling marriage never knowing any different. His growing inner world was very well written as he learns to read other people better and how to be a responsible co-parent with Tasha for the future. Whereas Saskia has worked on herself and needs Gair to be her home, somewhere to feel grounded. When she needs support she checks in with Vivian and I loved this idea of ‘found family’, the people you choose to support and sustain you in life when the family you’re born with can’t. They aren’t an obvious match and this is not one of those books that ends with a big fairytale wedding. We just have the sense that they’re gradually moving towards each other as the build progresses and they learn how to be a team. The oak tree felt like a metaphor for both these people, but also for life in general. It’s not the most beautiful tree, in fact part of it has been hit by lightning and someone had an abandoned attempt at pruning it once, very badly. Despite these setbacks the oak has kept growing, not in the most beautiful shape but still reaching for the sky. This is the perfect, cozy, autumnal read.

Out now from Simon & Schuster Uk

Meet the Author

I’ve been writing since I was a teenager, which is now a distressingly long time ago! I started out as an entertainment journalist – actually, my earliest published work was as a reviewer of science fiction and fantasy books. I went on to become a staff writer and then an editor for print magazines, before beginning to write non-fiction making-of books tied in to film and television, such as The Art and Making of Penny Dreadful and Wonder Woman: The Art and Making of the Film. 

I now write both children’s and adult fiction – my first novel was called The Diamond Thief, a Victorian-set steampunk adventure book for the middle grade age group. That won the Redbridge Children’s prize in 2014, and I went on to write two more books in the series before moving on to other adventure books including The Golden Butterfly, which was nominated for the Carnegie Award in 2017, The House of Hidden Wonders, and a YA horror called FIR, which was shortlisted for the Lancashire Book of the Year Award in 2018. My last children’s book (to date) is called The Extraordinary Voyage of Katy Willacott, and was published by Little Tiger in 2023. 

My debut adult novel, The House Beneath the Cliffs, was published by Simon & Schuster in August 2021. Since then I’ve written three more: The Lighthouse Bookshop, The Forgotten Garden, and The Secret Orchard, which is out in September 2024. My adult fiction tends to centre on small communities – feel-good tales about how we find where we belong in life and what it means when we do. Although I have also published full-on adult horror stories, which are less about community and more about terror and mayhem…

I was born in Kent but now live in a very small house in an equally small village in northern Cumbria with my husband, who owns a bookshop in the nearby market town of Penrith.

From Sharon’s Amazon Author Page 28th August 2023

Posted in Monthly Wrap Up

Best Reads August 2025

Posted on by thelotusreaders

It’s been a month of crime/thriller reads and historical fiction, plus a couple of crime and historical combinations which I really enjoy. It’s also been a month where I found it difficult to concentrate because finally, after five years of brown tiles, lime green walls and cupboards with no handles we have been able to afford to renovate the kitchen. So for two weeks we have had no ceiling, no floor and no hob. As of Monday, we will be cooking in the garden until everything is back together again. I am not good with chaos so if you can imagine me wedged into a corner on the sofa with the contents of every kitchen cupboard taking up the study and other end of the living room. Hopefully only two weeks left to go. It can’t come soon enough. The other half is building the seating area under the pergola at the bottom of the garden. It feels like a symphony of drills and hammers at times but it will be lovely to be able to go and sit outside and read with roses growing around me. So much to look forward to in September with some fantastic reads on the list too. ❤️ 📚

Unbelievably this is the third novel from Kate Foster and firmly puts her on my ‘must-buy’ authors list. They’ve all been worthy of a place on my best reads list but I think this is her best yet. Maggie is a young girl from Fisherrow whose father is a fisherman and her mother ons of the fishwives who help bring in the catch, clean it for market and then repair nets ready for the next day’s fishing. She, her parents and sister Joan live in a one bedroom cottage but Maggie dreams of a life so different to this, where there isn’t back breaking work and she’s not at the mercy of her father’s drunken temper. So when ambitious trader Patrick turns up at the door, looking for somewhere to keep goods for making perfume she senses a chance. She knows Joan is prettier but she would make a far better wife to help him in his business. Luckily he sees this in her and after a short courtship they become married and set up home in a cottage in the village. They are happy until suddenly Maggie gets the news that a press gang has been to the hotel and Patrick was one of the men taken for the navy. Somehow Maggie finds herself travelling to London, to build her new life. At a stopover in Kelso she takes a couple of weeks to stay and earn some money. She knows now she is pregnant and conceals it, to keep on working. So how does she come to be in Edinburgh a few months later, being sent to the gallows on charges of concealing a pregnancy and killing her baby. Yet miraculously she survives the hanging, how and what she chooses to do with her second chance at life are the main contents of this brilliant novel. I loved the history, the growing up that Maggie does on her journey and how brilliant an advocate Kate Foster is for these women she finds in historical documents, often in dire situations at that time for ‘crimes’ it’s hard to comprehend today. Most of all I loved the bold, feminist take on Maggie’s life and the links that could be made with modern day politics. Brilliant.

My second historical fiction read of the month was this mesmerising and clever thriller from Laura Shepherd-Robinson that’s jumped straight onto my books of the year list. The Art of A Lie begins in a confectioner’s shop called the Punchbowl and Pineapple, run by the newly widowed Hannah Cole. This is the late 18th Century and Hannah grew up in the shop that was started by her grandfather. Her husband Jonas had been her father’s apprentice and now she must keep their shop running for it to be handed to his cousin. Jonas was found down river, washed up by the Thames with head injuries and missing anything of value including a watch given to him by Hannah that used to belong to her grandfather. Novelist and magistrate Joseph Fielding visits Hannah to say he is investigating Jonah’s murder, for he doesn’t think it’s as cut and dried a case as it might seem. Thank goodness for the lovely William Devereux, a friend of Jonas’s who introduces himself ar the funeral. He calls on Hannah at the shop, hearing of Joseph Fielding’s interference in the case and hoping to be of help. He gives her his grandmother’s recipe for iced cream, thinking it may be a hit with her customers and could tied her over until the case is closed and Jonas’s estate is released. Laura tells this tale so cleverly, drifting between narrators and shocking us with an aspect of their characters or the case. Both are fascinating and not necessarily what they appear to be at first. With each revelation I became more and more intrigued with this cat and mouse game and the psychological make up of those involved. Hannah is an astute businesswoman, good at reading people quickly and usually accurately. It’s hard to tell at times who is scamming who and I was so utterly entranced I was still thinking about it a week later. Simply brilliant in its setting, historical background and the constant simmering tension.

A modern thriller this time from one of the Queens of the genre and this really was an up to the minute tale of secrets, lies and murder. Gwen is an older widow, living in a complex of smart apartments in a nice area. She has decent neighbours, some of whom she might call friends. When her nearest neighbour Alex is looking for a new lodger she meets one of the candidates, Pixie. They start chatting and she is pleased to hear when the Britpop one hit wonder decides to offer her the room. Pixie gets a job at the bakery and cafe that Gwen frequents and they get on very well, so Gwen is disturbed to hear what sound like arguments from across the hall. She also catches a phrase that sounds like ‘you knew the deal when you moved in. When she catches up with Pixie she’s disturbed to hear that the deal involves sex in lieu of rent. She confronts Alex and takes Pixie in, writing a complaint to the building’s governing board. Her neighbour Dee tells her that she talked to her daughter Stella about it and she’s been making a documentary news item about the growing ‘sex for rent’ scandal. Would Pixie like to be interviewed? Soon the story is out of control, Alex is angry and denying everything and Gwen is public enemy number one. I loved how ‘of the moment’ this was with Gwen at a loss when it comes to freelance investigative journalism, sex for rent, trad wives and influencers. As she starts to feel out of her depth, those around her continue to manoeuvre and manipulate until life will never be the same again. This was so tense and the eventual murders most unexpected indeed.

I had the luck to read two Mark Edwards novels in August. a throwback to last year and this, his brand new thriller. The Wasp Trap was the jokey name given to a side project. While trying to form an algorithm for one of the first ever online dating apps, a group of university students have another idea. Each one specifically chosen by their professor, Sebastian, they are the best in their fields and are spending their summer at his mansion in the country. Will tells our flashback story, the creative who is meant to be coming up with a name for their site he is also hopelessly un love with Sophie but too scared to make a move. Together they come up with ‘butterfly.net’ but it’s Lily who comes up with a side project – an algorithm that could identify psychopaths. Statistically one of them could be and since they’re serving as guinea pigs for the dating apps why not for this? Now decades later they are gathered again, this time at Theo and Georgina’s mansion – the couple got together that summer and are married with two daughters. Strangely, they announce that one of their daughters is missing so it seems an odd time to have a dinner party. They also have caterers which is unusual for them, so Will isn’t shocked when it turns out to be a cover. The fake chef is Callum and he gives them an ultimatum- he’s giving them an hour to think and when he returns he wants to know the secret from that summer. If the secret isn’t divulged then someone will die. The tension rises as the hour ticks down, who has a secret? How do they know which is the right one? As Callum comes back into the room they’re left in no doubt that he means business. The rising and falling of tension is pitch perfect and in between the action we get flashbacks to that summer where more than one person is holding a secret and we start to wonder who exactly was the psychopath that Lily was searching for.

My final recommendation for last month is this last novel in the historical fiction quartet about the agony aunt of the Women’s Friend, a magazine running during WW2. It was lovely to be back with the gang and particularly Emmy Lake as they enter the final and arguably most difficult stretch of WW2. After five years of war both the team and their readers are tired. As a way of boosting morale at the magazine Emmy suggests they all decamp to Bunty and Harold’s in the countryside. As Hitler’s V1 and V2 bombs start to hit, it will certainly be safer. Emmy strongly feels they all need a boost in order to keep supporting and inspiring the women who read their magazine. If they’re tired and the magazine suffers, how will their readership keep the fight going? Emmy throws herself into rural life and is soon organising games nights, competitive knitting and planning the very important wedding of their officer administrator Hester and her fiance Clarence. She also has a phone call from the ministry to travel abroad and report from the French field hospitals and even manages to mastermind a break into husband Charles’s barracks before they’re both deployed. Emmy has no idea how much she’s going to need those around her in the coming months as her hardest test is yet to come. On their return to London she receives a telegram to say that Charles is missing, presumed captured in enemy territory and she has the agonising wait for the confirmation letter. Then Hester receives a blow when Clarence calls to say he’s being deployed in three days, two days before their planned wedding. Hester is inconsolable and after catching Emmy in a moment of frustration, she disappears. However, Emmy isn’t one to dwell on her misfortunes for long and I wondered what schemes and plans she would hatch next. 

The author doesn’t let us forget the sacrifice and loss in people’s lives, but still manages to bring in humour and a defiantly upbeat, make do and mend attitude. This is the closest I’ve seen Emmy come to breaking point and it’s hard to when you’re the one whose role it is to buoy everybody else up. As she finds out though, those who she’s helped and supported are so happy to be able to return the favour and support her. This is a set of books I always recommend, to women of all ages, because it’s so easy to relate to one of the characters and absolutely root for them. The main impression I take away from them is that sense of female solidarity. The instinct we have to come together, share the load and make each other’s lives a little easier from taking on someone’s children all the way down to being there with a meal or a shoulder to cry on. Emmy uses her writing to do the same and triumphs in being exactly what the magazine promises – the Woman’s Friend. 

Here’s a hint of what I’ll be reading in September:

Posted in Squad Pod Collective

Watching You by Helen Fields

Posted on by thelotusreaders

A few of Helen Field’s characters come together in this gripping novel that starts with someone being stalked in Jupiter Artland, the park where Laura Ford’s ‘Weeping Girls’ statues are situated. They become the only witnesses to an unspeakable act. It’s a great setting for a murder with five sculptures, each one of a little girl weeping in different poses. I’m a lover of public art but these are genuinely creepy and have an uncanny quality to them. I can’t think of a more fitting place to be hit with a shovel and buried alive – one of my worst ever fears. It’s a bold beginning and we get three more murders like this, each with a narrator who sounds almost bored and melancholy. It’s as if they’re present, able to recount every detail, but detached at the same time. They’re the literary equivalent of the archetypal TV pathologist weighing a pair of lungs one moment and eating a sandwich the next. It’s clear that Lively, Salter and the MIT have a serial killer on their hands but with each murder so different, how will they build a case? Superintendent Overbeck engages Dr Connie Woolwine to profile the killer and run the investigation, but it does seem to the team that the crimes and potential suspect don’t fully fit. 

The story has several threads, each focusing on different characters. We go back a few years to a young artist named Molly who is being stalked and harassed with even parcels of rotting fruit and maggots turning up on her doorstep. She feels watched when outside and inside she is harassed by parcels and online rumours, or even worse deep fake videos. There’s the usual porn, but stranger and more sinister scenarios like her hurting an animal. It’s taken a toll on her mental health and her career. With the police unable to help she sinks further. We also have a character called Karl Smith, a carer for his father who had a stroke not long after his wife had a cardiac arrest. While surgeon Beth Waterfall tries everything to save her she dies on the operating table. So when his complaint against the hospital isn’t upheld Karl starts to see his mother. It’s mainly at home and she’s very unsettling. She’s clearly never been a nice woman to her son. She is a grotesque figure who Karl finds repellent. Not only is she unkempt and smelly, she likes to unsettle Karl by sitting very close and wafting her rotten breath into his face. She is cruel and determined that he keep up his campaign against Beth Waterfall. DI Sam Lively watches Beth try to save one of the victims, a homeless man with multiple stab wounds, and they strike up a friendship and a fledgling relationship. So when Sam receives a wound to his neck and it’s Beth that treats him, she takes him home afterwards to recover. It’s a gentle romance that works really well and he finds out Beth had a daughter, who took her own life after a campaign of stalking and harassment. The puzzle pieces are coming together, but I knew there would still be some surprises in store and I was gripped, waiting to find out if my suspicions were right. Desperately hoping they weren’t. 

Dr Connie Woolwine is an acquired taste, but is always fascinating. Here I could see how she could really get under the skin of both suspects and colleagues. Brodie accuses her of snobbery, but it’s not that simple. Connie seems to relish having her suspicions about someone, then having them confirmed. She often tells people what she thinks without considering their reaction and it’s this compulsion to see what makes someone tick that might come across as thinking she knows better. It’s not a class snobbery, it’s an intellectual snobbery. I just love working people out, because the complexities of our brains are simply amazing. I’ve recently been reading up on Functional Neurological Disorder where neurological symptoms are present in the patient, without any disease activity. It’s as if the brain simply forgets how to send and receive messages from certain parts of body but without any of the disease activity common to neurological diseases like MS or Parkinson’s Disease. Symptoms range from functional weakness in a limb, to dramatic paralysis and seizures. It’s amazing how powerful the brain is and how it can be doing something so disabling in the background without knowing why, although it’s thought that the brain processes might mental stress or trauma as physical pain. However, this is nothing compared to Connie’s findings about the brain producing a brilliant twist at the end. I’m always pulled in two directions with Connie, she’s utterly brilliant but more than a little odd (talking to corpses) and manipulative, particularly where Brodie is concerned. She knows the power she has over him, but isn’t honest about it. She seems to fully relax and be herself when she visits Midnight, who is living a bucolic existence in Devon with her sister Dawn who has CP. With Dawn, ‘Wooly’ can drop her ‘therapist’s demeanour’ and just be in the moment. Dawn has no guile and has never learned to hide her emotions.

There’s some heart-stopping action here, especially in the finale which is brilliant. Salter and Connie are quite the team, with Salter able to jump in and secure a suspect while Connie has them otherwise engaged. I love that Helen’s female characters are mothers, carers and wives, whilst also competent at work, even formidable. Overbeck is brilliant, always holding MIT to a high standard, ready with a stern talking to and wears three inch heels all day! She tells Connie she’ll give her the name of the her nail technician because her nails are disgusting and it did make me smile. It’s a novelty to see Connie on the back foot for a change. The murder scenes are genuinely scary or moving. I was especially affected by the murder of Mrs Singh who is a lonely older lady, the victim of her own success. She made the huge move from India to Scotland in the hope of her children having a better life and he does, but that means they’re usually far away from you. She describes a boy who grew up with a Scottish accent, as if he was already moving away from her. The many pictures of her grandchildren attest to the distant between them. Her death is brutal and desperately sad. I loved how Helen brought all the puzzle parts together, despite such disparate victims who had nothing in common, not even their deaths. I could see Karl Smith had a rage in him but it mainly seemed to be for his own parents, could he be murdering complete strangers? I became more addicted as the novel went on until last night when I couldn’t leave the last few chapters and stayed up till 2am. Now I keep falling asleep. This is such a psychologically fascinating thriller that’s given me lots of side reading to keep up with Connie’s final verdicts. I can’t wait to see where she and Brodie end up next. 

Out now from Avon Books

Meet the Author

A Sunday Times and million copy best-selling author, Helen is a former criminal and family law barrister. Every book in the Callanach series has claimed an Amazon #1 bestseller flag. ‘Perfect Kill’ was longlisted for the Crime Writers Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger in 2020, and others have been longlisted for the McIlvanney Prize, Scottish crime novel of the year. Helen also writes as HS Chandler, and has released legal thriller ‘Degrees of Guilt’. In 2020 Perfect Remains was shortlisted for the Bronze Bat, Dutch debut crime novel of the year. In 2022, Helen was nominated for Best Crime Novel and Best Author in the Netherlands. Now translated into more than 20 languages, and also selling in the USA, Canada & Australasia, Helen’s books have won global recognition. She has written standalone novels, The Institution, The Last Girl To Die, These Lost & Broken Things and The Shadow Man. She regularly commutes between West Sussex, USA and Scotland. Helen can be found on X @Helen_Fields

Posted in Netgalley

The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I loved this book. It drew me in immediately and two days after I finished it I can’t let go of it. I can’t start another book. It’s left me bereft. Our setting is 18th Century London and George II is on the throne. On St James’s Street is a confectioner’s shop called the Punchbowl and Pineapple and running it is the newly widowed Hannah Cole. This was her grandfather’s shop and has been handed down the family. Her father realised he needed an apprentice to pass on his skills and to work with Hannah, so he employed a young lad called Jonas Cole. Jonas and Hannah grew close and fell in love, with Hannah losing her father only a few days after they were married. So until a couple of days ago Hannah and Jonas ran the shop, with Hannah becoming quite an accomplished businesswoman. Jonas could be hard and ruthless in his business dealings and of recent years they had grown apart, with Jonas often spending evenings away from home. Then two nights ago he did not return and was found further down the Thames minus his money, his watch and several teeth. Hannah has had to borrow, especially to re-open after his death, something that caused a minor scandal so soon. She can’t afford to be closed and is waiting on their savings being released from the bank so she may pay her suppliers. Then Henry Fielding pays a call. In his role as magistrate rather than novelist, he explains that all money will remain frozen while he investigates Jonas’s death. He isn’t sure this is a simple robbery and wonders whether he should be looking into his business or personal dealings. He informs Hannah that Jonas had money in the bank, more than the £200 she knew about. Fielding explains he wants to be sure that the money was obtained legally and above board. Luckily, at Jonas’s funeral Hannah meets William Devereux. An acquaintance of Jonas, he has never met Hannah before but is very sympathetic to her plight. He promises to visit her shop and discuss how he may help her with Fielding and Jonas’s life outside the home – was he gambling, womanising or getting into shady business dealings? He also mentions a delicacy his Italian grandmother used to make called iced cream. It has all the ingredients of a custard, but flavoured with fruit or chocolate and is then frozen and eaten as a desert. Hannah resolves to let William help her and to master the art of ice cream, but are either of them being fully honest with each other about who they are and what their purpose is? 

As with all Laura’s books we become fully immersed in the setting straight away and it’s the little details that stand out and make us believe in this world. I loved the descriptions of Hannah’s various confections and the way she can tell what people will choose, not to mention what it says about them. 

“He paused to take a bite of his Piccadilly Puff, washing it down with a generous gulp of green walnut wine. It is a favourite choice of the sybarite: the silken sweetness of the custard, the crunching layers of puff paste, the dusky depths of the spices mingling with the sourness of lemon. I might have guessed that Mr Fielding was a man who struggled to keep his appetites in check.”

I believed in Hannah as a businesswoman and confectioner very quickly thanks to these details and as she narrates she tells us her hopes and dreams, including a joint dream of her and Jonas, to buy the empty premises next door and extend the shop so they could have more tables and chairs, especially when her iced cream starts to become popular. I think we always imagine that people from the 18th and 19th Century are very genteel and well behaved, this comes of too many Austen adaptations and strange hybrid historical settings like Bridgerton. While lovely to watch they give us little idea of what these centuries were like for those of the lower classes in society and women who worked. Real life 18th Century London was rather more colourful than Pride and Prejudice, as depicted in some of Fielding’s novels like Tom Jones and Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders. The author gives us the dirt and the bawdy side of London life when Hannah takes a trip to the theatre. 

“The playhouse crowd gave a wide berth to the nest of alleys around the back of the Theatre Royal, home to brothels and bath houses, gin shops and squalid taverns. The residents started drinking over breakfast and then kept going. Groups of ragged men stood about on corners. One lot were fighting, skidding in vomit. Half-naked women leaned from the upper windows shouting encouragement.” 

The King openly has a mistress and there are brothels and gaming rooms everywhere, operating just on the edge of the law. This is a book with every vice on display, even when if it is just cake. As Hannah points out when she’s evaluating Fielding, every man has his personal struggle. She is incredibly astute when it comes to assessing character and has Fielding’s own psychological make-up worked out through reading his novels. William Devereux appears to be equally astute, visiting Fielding’s rooms he notes the perfectly bound volumes of his own books and the wine glasses etched with the crest of Eton College, it’s students described beautifully as the “school of the most selfsatisfied fucksters in the kingdom.” I thought there were some brilliant choices in terms of the book’s structure and the way the story passed from Hannah to William was brilliant. Often when reading from NetGalley there are little mistakes or quirks to the format that can ruin the reading of the book, but here reading from NetGalley was a benefit because with no gaps or idea how far I was into the book, when the shocks came they were huge. The author has cleverly used aspects of modern thriller writing and applied them to her story, so there are twists and turns aplenty. She uses sudden unexpected confessions or statements that mean we know something no one else does. Other times a character suddenly changed their demeanour or had a different inner compared to their outer voice that made me go back a few pages in confusion. Then just as I become comfortable with my narrator, they switched back again.

This is definitely a cat and mouse game between three characters, a battle of wits where you’re never quite sure who is on the right side. Fielding appears to be pursuing this case to make his point to parliament that a national police force is needed to deal with crimes like murder. He also has a good point, Jonas’s watch had belonged to Hannah’s father and had a Russian Imperial Eagle on the case. If that had been stolen, every pawn shop and jewellers in London would have remembered someone trying to sell it. So where is it? Has the thief taken it to be sold elsewhere or is it still with a murderer rather closer to home? Devereaux seems like a gentleman, he introduces Hannah to friends who seem wealthy and of good status and they all vouch for his honesty and charity. He even seems to be thinking of making a young boy belonging to a distant relative his ward, in order to give him a better life. Hannah had a hard life at Jonas’s hands, especially when she found she was unable to have children something they both wanted. I loved the author’s detail of them both saving some urine to pour on a seedling and if the seedling grew they were believed to be fertile. Hannah’s didn’t grow and she felt her husband hardened his heart to her at that point and perhaps looked elsewhere. She has her head turned by the handsome gentleman who wants to find out where Jonas was going at night and intervening with Fielding on her behalf. He wants to help her keep her shop too and his iced cream idea is proving a huge hit, with even an impromptu visit from the King’s mistress who reassures Hannah that a hint of scandal is not necessarily a bad thing: “virtue matters rather less once you are rich.” Devereaux has some ideas in that area, that maybe rather than leave her money in the bank she might like to meet some of the people who’ve invested in a company of his called Arcadia, based in a place called Bentoo. Is he genuine or not? Does he have feelings for her, because Hannah’s starting to have stirring feelings she hasn’t had for years. Surely though Devereaux’s  interest wouldn’t lie in the direction of an older widow? 

I was utterly entranced in this novel from the first page to the last, especially as the tensions mounted in the final third when Fielding makes his move. However, just when you think you’ve worked everything out another twist will come along and surprise you. I was rooting for Hannah to come out on top, but was very scared for her in parts. For both her heart and her liberty! I wanted her to live out her days as the grand proprietress of the Punchbowl and Pineapple. I very much feared that Fielding had the desire to see her face the hangman’s noose. While I didn’t trust Devereaux at first I did wonder if he had feelings for Hannah or whether he was some sort of confidence trickster. There is certainly sexual chemistry by the bucketload. I was working out in my head who might play Hannah in a film or TV adaptation because it would be a brilliant period thriller with lots of raunchy scenes perfect for Netflix. I was honestly hypnotised by this story and Laura’s talent. Bravo on such a fantastic story that I’m still thinking about four days after finishing it. Go beg, steal or borrow a copy of this one, it’s a cracker. 

Out now from Mantle Books

Meet the Author

Laura Shepherd-Robinson is the award-winning, Sunday Times and USA Today bestselling author of three historical novels. Her books have been featured on BBC 2’s Between the Covers and Radio 4’s Front Row and Open Book. Her fourth novel, The Art of a Lie, will be published in Summer 2025. She lives in London with her husband, Adrian.

Posted in Netgalley

The Wasp Trap by Mark Edwards 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

It’s been so enjoyable to read two of Mark Edwards’s novels back to back. I found myself completely engrossed and The Wasp Trap was definitely an interesting premise. Will is travelling to his friends Theo and Georgina’s house for a reunion dinner. Years ago, at their elite university in the 1990’s, Will and his group of friends were selected by their professor to spend the summer at his house in the countryside and work with him on a project he’s developed. He wants to create the first online dating site, one that truly works by using psychology. He wants the group to create an algorithm based on personality types – such as the Myers-Briggs scale, often used in business more than psychology. He recruits a mix of coders, web designers, psychology graduates and creatives like Will, who has an ambition to write a book. Here, he is tasked by finding a name for the site and Sebastian wants it to be poetic. That shouldn’t be difficult for a man who’s falling in love, with fellow student Sophie and after seeing an unusual butterfly he chooses “butterfly.net”. A little creepy when we consider what happened to those butterflies once they were caught. Lily is definitely the lynchpin intellectually, the person trying to create an algorithm that works, but even she’s distracted. Within the research are papers on using certain tests to determine whether someone is a psychopath. Since the team are being used as guinea pigs for the dating questionnaires why not use them for this? No one’s going to turn out to be a psychopath are they? This side research becomes named as “The Wasp Trap”. Decades later, as the group converge for dinner, it’s clear there’s so much to talk about, not least the disappearance of Georgina and Theo’s daughter Olivia. Why are they still holding the reunion? Who are the strange couple doing the cooking for the night? As secrets begin to unravel about that summer it’s clear this isn’t going to your average reunion. 

I have to get it out first and foremost. I didn’t like any of these people, but Theo and Georgina are one of those couples I love to hate. The perfect home, perfect careers and plenty of money to throw around, not to mention those lovely teenage daughters too. How much was this reunion about rubbing other people’s noses into their success, especially Will who gets plenty of comments about his never finished book? They don’t seem like parents whose daughter is missing, because I’d be beside myself if it was one of my stepdaughters. I certainly wouldn’t be able to concentrate on a dinner for people I hadn’t seen for years. Make no mistake, these are the people who make me avoid school reunions like the plague. There’s so much nostalgia here and that element I did enjoy. I was a sixth former in the early nineties and I loved all that Manchester scene music and played my Stone Roses album so much it drove my mum and dad crazy. I was also a massive Pulp and Blur fan and still love those films of that decade from Tarantino and Danny Boyle through to Four Weddings and a Funeral. So I do reminisce, but I kept the most important friends and still see them, I don’t need to see the others thanks very much. My ‘now’ is much more interesting than my yesterday. Professor Sebastian certainly chose his students well because there are some incredibly intelligent people here, but I’m not sure about their emotional intelligence or morality. Will seems to have the most emotional intelligence but is hampered by his fear of failure when it comes to his career and love. In the past he’s clearly in love with Sophie, but fears telling her so much that he misses his chance. Will he do so again? It’s no surprise then that it’s Will who senses a weird atmosphere with the catering couple. I was so caught up with the emotional drama between these people that it was a shock when the chef and his assistant burst into the room with guns and give an ultimatum. They have a set amount of time to tell a secret they’ve been holding since that summer. When they come back into the room time is up; they either tell the secret or someone will be killed. Even though this is what they promise to do, I’m not sure I quite believed it. So when they come back in and the shooting starts it definitely concentrates the mind a bit, but the problem is they all have secrets. How do they know which secret the couple want to know? 

As usual with Mark Edwards, the tension is almost painful. Especially those last few minutes of time before Callum returns with his gun and he’s definitely not bluffing. There’s a body in the hall to prove his intent. Of course, being the people they are, they start wondering if they can somehow outwit their captors by causing a distraction and one of them getting out of the house. Will does wonder if there’s a third conspirator hidden upstairs though. Despite the tension, there’s also that incredibly awkward sense of having to expose your darkest secrets in front of people you were at college or university with. I’ve spent most of my life embarrassed by something, so I could feel their reluctance to be shamed in this way. It’s as if the tables have been turned and the unpopular or bullied kids have decided to get their revenge but Callum certainly wasn’t at university with them so how could he know their secrets? He definitely seems to be getting a kick out of terrifying people he sees as better off in life, they certainly don’t have the upper hand now. There is one person though who knows something terrible happened that weekend and who was involved in covering it up. They’ve kept it to themselves all these years. Was it linked to the psychopath tests Lily was running on her friends without them knowing? Maybe one of them did turn out to be a psychopath and if they did, are they in the room?

I was on tenterhooks as the body count started to rise and I found myself rooting for Sophie and Will against the odds. I loved the appearances of the family’s fat cat here and there throughout the action and that he’s the only one who knows someone is definitely upstairs. There are two people from that summer who aren’t here tonight. Local girl Eve was their age, employed by the Professor to clean and cook for everyone over the summer but often around in the group’s leisure time too. There was also Sebastian’s nephew, an extra when it came to socialising and chilling out at weekends that summer, but not really one of them. He was usually running errands for his uncle but when he did join them he was a divisive figure, in fact some found him a bit creepy. Will had conversations with Sophie about how strange it was for him to still be driving the classic car that his parents had been killed in. Their outsider status shows in the fact that neither of them are there tonight, but could they be the key to a secret? I was absolutely gripped in the final chapters and couldn’t wait to find out which secret Callum wanted and what was his link to the group? I was also interested in where Theo and Georgina’s daughter was. We do know by this point who is upstairs but would they intervene or remain hidden? One thing is for sure, as the secrets come out it’s quite clear that no one is going to come out of this well. This is definitely one reunion they’ll wish they lost the invitation to. Brilliantly twisty, full of complex and unpleasant characters and so tense my teeth hurt. 

Out now from Michael Joseph

Meet the Author

I write books in which scary things happen to ordinary people, the best known of which are Follow You Home, The Magpies, and Here To Stay. My novels have sold over 5 million copies and topped the bestseller lists numerous times. I pride myself on writing fast-paced page-turners with lots of twists and turns, relatable characters and dark humour. My next novel is The Wasp Trap, which will be published in July in the UK/Australia and September in the US/Canada. 

I live in the West Midlands, England, with my wife, our three children, two cats and a golden retriever.

Posted in Netgalley

The Mourning Necklace by Kate Foster

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Inspired by an infamous real-life case, The Mourning Necklace is the unforgettable feminist historical novel from the Women’s Prize-longlisted author of The Maiden, Kate Foster.

They said I would swing for the crime, and I did . . .

1724. In a tavern just outside Edinburgh, Maggie Dickson’s family drown their sorrows, mourning her death yet relieved she is gone. Shame haunts them. Hanged for the murder of her newborn child, passers-by avert their eyes from her cheap coffin on its rickety cart.

But as her family pray her soul rests in peace, a figure appears at the door.

It is Maggie. She is alive.

Bruised and dazed, Maggie has little time for her family’s questions. All that matters to her is answering this one: will they hang her twice?

What a brilliant advocate Kate Foster is for these women she finds in historical documents, often in dire situations in their time for ‘crimes’ it’s hard to comprehend today. Although, in our heroine Maggie’s case, this has novel does have some relevance to modern day America where politicians seemingly wish to revert to the Puritan values last seen when the first settlers arrived and James VI of Scotland was on the throne. In some states we have recently seen women arrested after stillbirths or miscarriages, something I find disturbing and is deeply traumatic for a bereaved woman in her most vulnerable state. This is the fate that awaits Maggie, but first Kate takes us back to how Maggie ended up in this terrible situation. Maggie and her younger sister Joan have grown up in a coastal village known for its fishing and the strong, hardworking women that mend the nets and clean the fish ready for market. It’s a hard life and not one that Maggie wants forever. She dreams of living in London and making her own life there. So, when Patrick Spencer walks into their cottage one evening, with his sparkling eyes and easy charm Maggie sees someone like her, who wants to make their own luck. He has come to ask father if he could store some items in their safe – something the family do from time to time for tea merchants. These are altogether different ingredients, they are ingredients for perfume. Patrick wants to open his own perfume shop and will occasionally be passing through with expensive ingredients, could they agree a price to store them? Maggie knows she isn’t the beauty of the family because anyone can see that’s Joan. She isn’t even the favourite, but she does know that if Patrick is looking for a wife to support and help him in business that she’s the best choice. When he takes her out walking one evening she hopes that perhaps he’s seen someone as ambitious and hardworking as he is. Their courtship and marriage are a whirlwind and they’re soon living in a bungalow closer to the centre of the village. Married life is not what Maggie expected, after all her only example is her mother and father and they’ve always come in third place after his drinking and his temper, but she’s in thrall to Patrick. So, it’s a terrible shock when she hears the news that a press gang has visited the hotel bar in town and they’ve taken Patrick into the navy. 

Maggie doesn’t have many choices. She’ll need income in a short while or she must return to her family. Maybe this is the only chance she has of getting herself to London and as the days go by she’s ever more sure that she’s having a baby, it must be now. Her mind is made up by a terrible betrayal and she sets off, reaching a a quiet market town where she picks up some work in the inn, concealing her pregnancy and living in an upstairs room. However, the truth always finds a way out and it’s not long before she finds herself standing in front of the justices to answer charges of concealing a pregnancy and infanticide. 

I was fascinated by Maggie’s story immediately, desperate to find out how she survived the gallows and whether she could advocate well enough for herself to avoid a second hanging. She’s a dreamer, but she’s also determined and incredibly intelligent. It’s this combination of qualities that Patrick sees in her and why he thinks she will be a good partner to him. Although his wandering libido destroys their chances all too quickly. Maggie’s ambition to carry on her plans after his disappearance has all the impetuosity and ignorance of youth. She would never be able to hide her pregnancy for long, if she’d been honest about being pregnant and her husband deserting her I had a feeling that the innkeeper might just have given her a chance anyway. There is curiosity about her though and an attempt at friendship teaches her that there are far worse ways to live than being a fishwife. It also puts her in the path of a local doctor who is so unpleasant that I wanted to wash my hands just reading about him. However, it’s the early arrival and sudden death of her daughter that has her transported to Edinburgh. This is a capital case and must be heard by the best justices in the land, although it’s common knowledge they drink at lunchtime. What’s amazing about Maggie is her ability to adapt and keep going. Despite being dealt a terrible hand, her will to survive and to appreciate the humble life she once had is admirable. She is a match for any man, whether it’s a hangman, the justices, her husband or even her violent and drunken father. She will make sure she has her dues from Patrick Spencer and that she will remove her mother and sister from the cottage where they’ve spent their lives fearing payday and her father’s visit to the inn. She is a better woman than me because I’d have left my sister there. Joan is one of those characters you want to slap, but I think that Maggie can see she was just another starry eyed girl being manipulated by a man used to getting his way. 

As always Kate’s novels are rich with description, placing us very firmly in Scotland and in very different establishments. Maggie’s family live in a one room cottage and all of them work incredibly hard, but they need the extra money they make from holding onto goods for those avoiding the law or the tax office. Despite a poor existence the family have a rich community around them and a long tradition of fishwives. When she’s in Kelso Maggie learns that the women of Fisherrrow are well thought of and known for their hard work. It’s the heritage she wants to escape that gets her first job. The cottage where she lives with Patrick is a step up but still a world away from the women who would buy his perfumes. The doctor in Kelso has a grand house, but once Maggie knows what takes place within its walls she could never envy it. All of is thrown into stark relief by the squalor of where she’s held awaiting trial. It’s filthy, filled with vermin and women willing to exchange sexual favors with the guards for extra privileges. Maggie would rather go hungry. Each of these worlds is beautifully rendered and I could see it all very clearly in my mind’s eye. 

I am amazed by the talent of Kate Foster that she is able to find these cases from Scottish history and breathe life into them. She takes them from a simple story in a news sheet of the time and like many of us who aspire to write she thinks ‘this would make a good novel’ and actually fleshes out these characters and places with what must be endless research. She creates women who feel like they could be one of us. Instead of being a distant newspaper headline they become real, with hopes and dreams and make incredibly relatable mistakes. Having lost my own babies I felt so much for Maggie at that moment and understood completely her need to say her own goodbye. For a long time it has been just the two of them and I could see that it would feel strange to involve others, they’d never known her anyway. I flew through the rest of the novel to find out how Maggie would move on from her moment on the gallows, should she be successful in arguing for her life first. Would she go back to her fishing village and the shared room with her parents? Would she make bold choices in order to remain independent? Or would she look for the man who set all this in motion and look for revenge or reparations? I loved the idea of the scar round her neck as a mourning necklace. There’s something about setting making inner wounds visible that resonates very strongly with humans. How many of us go on to have a tattoo after a traumatic or memorable event? Anyone who has gone through a profound experience has a sense of being stationary as the rest of the world keeps turning. When recently bereaved I wondered why people couldn’t see just how changed I was and I was frustrated by my inability to explain. Losing a baby is so hard because you are a mother, but because you don’t have a child no one ever sees you that way. Maggie could see her scar as a mark of shame, to be covered. However, she chooses to wear it with pride because it is proof that her little girl lived. I felt proud of Maggie, which might be a strange thing to say about a fictional character, but I was so happy that she took the path she did. Hardened by experience, she thinks of her fellow women first, but doesn’t allow that experience to completely rob her of a future. This is the best of her novels so far and that’s a high accolade considering how good they were. 

Meet the Author

Kate Foster worked as a national newspaper journalist for more than twenty years before becoming an author. Growing up in Edinburgh, she became fascinated by its history and often uses it as inspiration for her stories. Her previous novels include The Maiden, which won the Bloody Scotland Crime Debut of the Year and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and The King’s Witches. The Mourning Necklace is her third novel. She lives in Edinburgh with her two children.

Posted in Netgalley

Dear Miss Lake by A.J. Pearce

Posted on by thelotusreaders

It was lovely to be back with the gang at Woman’s Friend magazine and particularly with our narrator Emmy Lake as they enter the final and arguably most difficult stretch of WW2. After five years of war both the team and their readers are tired. As a way of boosting morale at the magazine Emmy suggests they all decamp to Bunty and Harold in the countryside. As Hitler’s V1 and V2 bombs start to hit, it will certainly be safer. Emmy strongly feels they all need a boost in order to keep supporting and inspiring the women who read their magazine. If they’re tired and the magazine suffers, how will their readership keep the fight going? Although they’ll still be working, the children, the animals and the beautiful countryside should have the desired effect. Plus, for Emmy, she’ll be closer to where her husband Charles is posted and she’ll be with her best friend Bunty. Emmy throws herself into rural life and is soon organising games nights, competitive knitting and planning the very important wedding of their officer administrator Hester and her fiance Clarence. She also has an important phone call from the ministry to travel abroad and report from the French field hospitals looking after the wounded. She even manages to mastermind a break into husband Charles’s barracks before they’re both deployed. Emmy has no idea how much she’s going to need those around her in the coming months as her hardest test is yet to come. On their return to London after the summer she receives a telegram to say that Charles is missing, presumed captured, in enemy territory and she has the agonising wait for the confirmation letter. Then Hester receives a blow when Clarence calls to say he’s being deployed in three days, two days before their planned wedding. Hester is inconsolable and after catching Emmy in a moment of frustration, she disappears. However, Emmy isn’t one to dwell on her misfortunes for long and I wondered what schemes and plans she would hatch next. 

This is a very fitting end to the Emmy Lake series, because it showed, no matter how Pollyanna our attitude is, it is okay to sometimes find we’ve run out of steam. It’s hard to imagine what five years of war must feel like when we take into consideration women having to work, look after children, support their husbands and face the fear of losing someone important to them or even their home if situated in London or other major cities. The nearest thing we have to such upheaval is the COVID pandemic and that meant two years of shielding for me. However, I still had tv to stream, books to read and could send myself little treats from Amazon or Betty’s tearooms. I can’t imagine how I’d have felt if I was exhausted from working, missing my husband, had the possibility of a bomb coming through the ceiling and had to find the tenth thing to do with a cabbage. Although the Lakes and friends are relatively okay financially, many were not and the author brings in these experiences through the magazine where some readers are infuriated with the magazine’s rather chirpy, optimistic tone or want to vent about the desperate situations they’re in. I loved the storylines about unexpected pregnancies as I could really understand getting carried away in the moment when someone you love is being deployed to fight, perhaps never to return. I could also imagine myself being swept off my feet by an American GI or one of the Polish airman posted only a few miles away from my village all those years ago. I could absolutely understand why some readers lost their faith in the magazine and whether it’s writers truly understood the predicaments some readers were in. I could also understand if Emmy did run out of patience, because sometimes the only answer is ‘talk to the people who love you’ no matter how angry or disappointed they might seem at first. It always gets easier.

 When news arrives that Charles’s secret mission was Arnhem and he’s been captured behind enemy lines, it takes a while for Emmy’s emotions to catch up with the news. She has all the information at her fingertips, having had years of finding out what to do for her readers. Practically she’s doing all she can, plus organising the Christmas Fair and making connections with other POW wives. She’s particularly proud of the piece she wrote for the ministry on the military hospitals so hopes for another mission. When she, the editor and publisher are pulled in for a chat the news isn’t good. It’s this that seems to bring her to a standstill. Returning to the magazine office she’s despondent and feels a deep sense of injustice, leading to a sudden and misdirected rant. Things go from bad to worse when the next morning, Hester has gone missing. Emmy knows she took her cancelled wedding plans hard, but surely that’s not the reason for her disappearance? Could it have been her own moment of anger and emotion that provoked this sudden reaction? Emmy realises how much of a lifeline they all are to each other and resolves to find her, whatever it may take. 

A.J. Pearce has written a triumph of a series in this quartet of books and in her main character too. We’ve experienced the ups and downs of different editors and publishers, the staff’s other responsibilities for their families and war jobs such as the fire service or driving ambulances, as well as terrible losses on the battlefield and in the Blitz. Through what seems on the surface to be a light-hearted and perhaps frivolous lens, I’ve learned so much about what it was like to be a young woman during WW2. It’s given me an insight into my grandparent’s generation – my Aunty Connie who was an unmarried mother and a subsequent marriage to my Uncle John who suffered from PTSD after his ship was attacked and his friend was blown up right next to him. My grandad went into the army just as war was ending and experienced the other side’s struggles – German cities destroyed by our bombardments and people living in the ruins of their homes. I don’t know if I’d have the strength and determination to contribute in the way people did, something brought into sharp focus when I had to discuss what the war in Ukraine could mean for those who’ve served in the forces but are still under reserve? Could I cope if he was called back in?

Strength is one of those things we find reserves of when the situation demands it of us and I have no doubt I could keep the ‘home fires burning” but I certainly don’t have the grit that some of the Ukrainian women are showing, having lost their husband then joining up to fight themselves. I feel the author doesn’t let us forget the sacrifice and loss in people’s lives at this time, but still manages to bring in humour and a defiantly upbeat make do and mend attitude. This is the closest I’ve seen Emmy come to breaking point and it’s hard to do when you’re the one whose role it is to buoy everybody else up. As she finds out though, those who she’s helped and supported are so happy to be able to return the favour and support her. This is a set of books I always recommend, to women of all ages, because it’s so easy to relate to one of the characters and absolutely root for them. The main impression I take away from them is that sense of female solidarity. The instinct we have to come together, share the load and make each other’s lives a little easier – from taking on someone’s children all the way down to being there with a meal or a shoulder to cry on. Emmy uses her writing to do the same and triumphs in being exactly what the magazine promises – the Woman’s Friend. 

Meet the Author

AJ Pearce was born in Hampshire, UK. Her favourite subjects at school were English and History, which now (finally!) makes sense.

Her debut novel Dear Mrs Bird was a Sunday Times Bestseller and Richard and Judy Bookclub Pick. It was shortlisted for Debut of the Year at The 2019 British Book Awards and has been published in the USA, Canada and Australia and in translation in over fifteen languages.

Dear Mrs Bird was the first in AJ’s series The Wartime Chronicles which now includes Yours Cheerfully and Mrs Porter Calling. Her books are funny, sometimes extremely sad, but always uplifting stories about a group of women standing together to face the challenges of World War II.

The fourth and final book in the series, Dear Miss Lake, will be published in the UK on 5 July 2025 (and on 3 August in the USA and Canada).

When not writing books, AJ enjoys being fairly rubbish at a variety of hobbies and has recently started to learn to paint, with so far messy although enthusiastic results.

Follow AJ on Instagram, Facebook and Threads: @ajpearcewrites.

Posted in Monthly Wrap Up

Best Books July 2025.

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I’ve had a lovely reading month because even the books I had for blog tours, turned out to be fantastic reads. Any of these could easily make my end of the year list and some are by authors I’ve never read before. Others were from series I’d lost touch with and one has an incredible back story of the struggle the author had to get it published. I feel very privileged, looking back and realising what an incredible month of reading I’ve had. I’m already looking forward to next month’s choices.

This was one of those unexpected joys, a book I’d heard very little about and chose to read with my Squad Pod just on a short synopsis. I had no idea whether I’d enjoy it or not, but it turned out to be fascinating and very apt, because I’d been reading about Functional Neurological Disorder. Havoc is a brilliant combination of school drama, mystery and dark comedy featuring a wonderful character called Ida who lives on a remote Scottish island with her mother and sister, after fleeing from her mother’s boyfriend Peter. What started as a lonely but safe place to live, became impossible when her mother did something unforgivable and the island’s inhabitants turned against them. Deciding she wants to leave, Ida looks for private boarding schools who provide scholarship places and discovers one, as far away from Scotland as she can find. St Anne’s sits on the south coast of England, so remote and underwhelming that the school are terribly surprised when their scholarship student actually turns up. No one ever has before, so they don’t have anywhere suitable to put her. The school is ramshackle and in danger of falling off the cliffs and the food is questionable and often tastes of fish, even when it isn’t. Ida is placed in a double room with school miscreant Louise and starts to settle in. However, things take a very strange turn when Head Girl Diane becomes unwell, starting with strange jerks of the arms and soon descending into full blown seizures. Soon after, Diane’s friend April is sick and then starts the familiar pattern of jerks. By the time a third girl has the same symptoms outside agencies such as environmental health, doctors and the police start to descend on the school. Is this illness a virus or is it environmental? Could it be something more sinister like poison? This was a fascinating and often amusing read, with an illness that shares the symptoms of FND – a syndrome where neurological symptoms are present and real, but are often somatic. Although it’s also possible some malign force is at work, especially when rat poison appears in an unexpected place. Louise and Ida are a dastardly duo and I also loved the friendship between the school’s geography teacher and her strident and rather cynical flatmate. Little surprises are everywhere and I would love to meet the characters again,

This book was the total opposite of the last in that I’ve heard nothing but praise for A.J.West’s newest novel. I’d loved The Spirit Engineer so much and I knew the struggle he’d had to get this published, but he believed in it and I’m so glad he was picked up by my favourite indie publisher Orenda Books. A match made in heaven. Having been supervised for my university dissertation by a lecturer who specialises in 18th Century Literature and secret sexualities, this was the perfect marriage of subject and style for me. I love when post-modern authors write back to a time in history to place people into their historical context. These are people who were erased from history due to their disability, sexuality or the colour of their skin. This has been done so well by authors like Sarah Waters who features 19th Century lesbians, Lila Cain whose main character were freed slaves in The Blackbirds of St Giles and Suzanne Collins, whose novel The Crimson Petal and the White is narrated by Sugar, a young prostitute with a disability.

Thomas True wears its vast amount of research lightly and definitely follows the style of the picaresque novel, where a young naive person makes their way into the big wide world with some humorous and rather risqué adventures. This young innocent travels to seek his fortune in London and is robbed on the highway, falling into the ‘wrong’ company – here this is the Molly House run by Mother Clap. A giant but gentlemanly man called Gabriel has brought him here and he is intrigued by the merriment, the wearing of women’s clothes and the safety of a place without scrutiny. This is above all a love story.  Thomas can’t possibly know how important this moment will be in his life, but it’s pivotal to his journey, his future and his heart. Far from the genteel worlds of Bridgerton and Jane Austen, the author creates a richly imaginative setting that brought all my senses to life – but not always in a good way. London is grim, overcrowded and disgusting. One scene where a body needs to be extracted from a ditch full of sewage is revolting. Even Mother Clap’s has a grotesque feel. These are not the preened and powdered men you might expect. Gabriel is huge, hairy and spends all day doing a heavy building job. He and Thomas have a complicated journey, one naive and optimistic and the other haunted by his past. You’ll be transfixed, hoping for their outcome to be a happy one but knowing this is a city that punishes ‘mollies’ by hanging and when the mysterious ‘rat’ betrays the men from Mother Clap’s the danger becomes very real. You can tell I loved it by the amount I write about it! It’s a definite must read.

I knew from the first page that this novel was going to be special and it is utterly brilliant and an unbelievably good debut from Florence Knapp. It’s 1987 and Cora is going to register the birth of her baby boy. His name has been settled on because Cora’s husband has chosen his own name for his son – Gordon. But it wouldn’t be Cora’s choice. Cora’s choice would be something that doesn’t tie him so obviously to his father. She thinks Julian would suit him. Little sister Maia looks in the pram at her brother and decides he looks like he should be called Bear. All of these options swirl around in Cora’s head. In this moment, Cora has the power to make a choice and it’s done. It can’t be changed. What would happen if she went with Julian or even Bear? In the short term Gordon would be furious. How bad would it be this time? Long term, would it change her baby’s character or path in life? This is exactly what Florence Knapp does with her story. The book splits into three narratives and we discover what happens to this whole family, depending on Cora’s choice for her baby boy’s name. 

We then move on seven years and meet Bear, a name that proves to be a catalyst for change. We also meet Cora’s choice, Julian – the choice she hoped would break him free from domineering generations of Gordons. Although, what if he is called Gordon? Brought up by a cruel father to continue in the same mould perhaps? Or he might just break free from the shackles of his name? Each life is sparked by this one decision but it isn’t just Cora’s son’s story. This is the life of the whole family with all its ups and downs. It’s about how trauma shapes lives and whether love brings healing and hope to every version of who we are. Even her minor characters absolutely shine. Grandmother Silbhe and her friend Cian are so wonderful, modelling healthy male/female relationships for Julian and Maia. Cian is also Julian’s mentor at work, bringing out a creative side that needs nurturing. Julian needs to work with his hands and meeting fellow creatives helps him find his tribe. Lily is lovely character and we get to know her best during Bear’s narrative. I loved how she has to find a balance between giving Bear the freedom he needs without breaking her own boundaries in the relationship. It’s an utterly compelling debut and zooms straight into the list of best books I’ve read so far this year. The author brings incredible psychological insight to a story about how our names shape our identity, our relationships and our life choices. Something we didn’t even choose. Can it influence us to a huge extent, or do we become the same person no matter what the choice? 

Rachel Joyce is a must-buy author for me and she gets better and better. This brilliant novel focuses on a bohemian family; Vic the father who is an artist and his four children – Netta, Susan, Iris and Goose (short for Gustav and the only boy). They’ve been parented by Vic and a series of au pairs after the sudden death not long after Iris was born. Their father’s art came first always and the conditions he needed in order to create were paramount so the oldest girls often played the mother role for Iris and Goose, especially when Vic inevitably slept with the au pairs. Vic was not an artist celebrated by the establishment. The description of his paintings brought Jack Vettriano to mind, criticised heavily by the art world, but very popular with the public. Now grown up, his children are stunned when Vic starts losing weight and drinking green, sludgy health drinks. His diet is being looked after by his new girlfriend, 27 year old Bella-Mae. None of his children have met her and she doesn’t seem keen to try. Within weeks Vic announces they’re engaged and Netta suggests that they all stand back and give this the space it needs to fizzle out. A couple of weeks later, Vic announces their marriage with a single photograph from the family home in Orta on Isola Son Guilio with Bella-Mae in such a heavy veil they can’t make out her face. They are staying at the house, situated on an island in the middle of a lake, but only two days later Netta is stunned by a phone call from a stranger called Laszlo, claiming to be Bella’s cousin. Vic has been dragged from the lake, drowned after a morning swim went wrong as the mist descended. Why would Vic go swimming in the mist? His children come together to travel to Orta, to finally meet their new stepmother and to find out whether she has killed their father. 

Bella isn’t what the siblings expect and nor is the villa, which has been changed in decor and atmosphere. She seems insubstantial and too fragile to have caused such an uproar. Especially when they’ve pictured her with an iron will, imposing her diet on their father and gaining their inheritance. She will prove to be a mirror through which each of them evaluate their lives. I love family sagas and this one is brilliant. It’s psychologically fascinating and I’m not going to ruin that for you by delving too deeply. I was absolutely transfixed! I couldn’t work out whether there was deliberate manipulation at play or if this was just a case of an outsider causing people to view everything through a different lens. Is Bella a destructive force or a helpful one? Whatever she is, the siblings will have to look at themselves, their choices and their relationship to their father. Some revelations will be explosive and take place in the open air- one particular meal is cataclysmic. Other revelations are quieter, insidious or internal but no less devastating. An utterly brilliant read for someone who loves complicated and tangled relationships. I LOVED it.

This book opened with a heart-stopping scene that set the pace for the rest of the story. Helen is relaxing after meeting her lover in a luxury hotel. While he has a shower, she is in her nightgown and robe enjoying the night time view over downtown Southampton. Movement suddenly catches her eye and she’s drawn to a woman who’s running down a darkened street towards a precinct of shops, pursued by two men. As they catch up, one of them pulls out a bicycle chain and starts to beat the woman. Helen doesn’t wait or think, tearing out of the hotel room and down several flights of stairs as she’s too impatient to wait for the lift. She tears down the dark street hoping that someone has called the police. Helen flies at one of the attackers, who is taken completely by surprise and she soon disables the second attacker before turning to the woman who has been badly beaten. She looks like she’s from the Middle East perhaps, with two very distinctive tattoos placed on her forehead and chin. Unfortunately, Helen has committed the cardinal sin of combat and has turned her back on her attackers. The next thing she feels is a huge bang to her head and then everything goes dark. This opening scene tells me this will be a gritty, modern thriller with a kick-ass heroine. 

This is the thirteenth novel in the DI Helen Grace series and I’m seriously out of touch with the character, having only read the first couple of novels after picking them up in a book swap. Helen is working on her own initiative after handing in her notice at the end of the last novel, with her protege Charlie being promoted in her place. Helen doesn’t know what the next step is, but she’s been enjoying the break. The only thing she misses is the camaraderie of a team and although she has enough money to really think about what’s next, she is anxious about it. Although life will bring it’s own answer soon enough and it might be the last thing she’s expecting. She starts to investigate alone, feeding into Charlie who is trying to target traffickers and their victims coming through the port in lorries and containers. The story is told mainly through Helen’s eyes, but also through the narratives of two other women. Viyan is another trafficked Kurdish Syrian woman and Emilia is a journalist whose father is dying in prison. At first we’re not sure how all of these narratives fit together but slowly they form a cohesive picture. Helen is formidable! You will hold your breath for the final showdown and all the women involved. Each short punchy chapter is action packed and will keep you reading ‘just the next chapter’ until it’s 2am. I now need to set aside time and read the ten novels between this and the last one I read. I’ll probably load up the kindle with them before I go on holiday so I can carry on without interruption. This was a belting, action-packed, female led, crime thriller and I recommend it highly. 

August TBR

Posted in Personal Purchase

A Neighbour’s Guide to Murder by Louise Candlish 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Gwen loves her home, finally settling into her apartment after a very difficult divorce. She loves the community feel in the building and is often part of the organisation of events as she’s now on the building’s resident association with her friend Dee. Everything changes when she meets a young girl called Pixie who is hoping to rent a room in the flat opposite Gwen’s. Gwen’s neighbour Alex is a Britpop one hit wonder and Pixie seems like one of life’s waifs and strays. As she moves in next door Gwen decides she will keep an eye on her, recommending she get a job in the local coffee shop. Slowly they are becoming friends. However, Gwen isn’t sure that all is well across the landing. She’s heard a few arguments already and she would hate to think that Alex is bullying Pixie or taking advantage. Yet Gwen isn’t always up to speed with life in the 21st Century or the modern battle of the sexes. When she fears a crime is being committed she’s soon up to her neck in both Pixie and Alex’s private life and a ‘sex for rent’ scandal. Sex for rent is a morally dubious, but not illegal practice that she soon learns is rife in London and other big cities. With social media, investigative podcasts and shifting ideas around morality, this could become the next #MeToo movement with Pixie as its poster child, but what does this all mean for Gwen?

I love Louise Candlish’s domestic thrillers and this has all her usual trademarks; a narrator we’re unsure about, push button issues that are ripe for rage baiting and on the verge of becoming the next moral panic. Shes always got her finger on the pulse of modern life. She’s also brilliant at letting the tension rise and rise, oh so slowly, until someone eventually snaps. I must admit I did have some sympathy with Gwen, probably because I’m nearer her age than the younger characters in the novel. Although I use social media all the time, I don’t always understand how best to use it or know the personalities and slang that my step-daughters take for granted. They talk about YouTubers like my age group did tv personalities. They’re more likely to watch TikTok or YouTube than tv and then use us to answer questions about the background or history behind issues, especially since we’re actively Anti-Fascist at home. Having lived in the country my whole life and only being lucky enough to own my home when I became a widow, the struggle to find a roof over your head in the bigger cities came as a shock to me about ten years ago. A friend told me she’d been living with five other people in London, all of them in their thirties and working in well paid jobs. I’d been on my own or living with a partner since I was 23.

This novel seemed to confirm something I’ve been feeling since COVID, like society as a whole is slipping backwards on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need and in our new found instability we’ve lost compassion for each other. Forty years ago we had Live Aid and the recent showing of the concert footage on BBC2 only added to my memories of the event. We were a country united in shock and a willingness to support. Now we want to shoot refugee boats in the channel. A combination of austerity, COVID, fear of terrorism after 9/11 and access to a social media that’s like the Wild West means we’re bombarded with so many terrible images and lied too so often we’ve become apathetic. This is the world this novel comes from: where people are struggling and making choices that seemed unthinkable, just to keep roof over their heads. Where people are finding new ways to make money. Where the lines of what’s legal, ethical or even true have become so blurred. Those who don’t keep up are simply left behind to flounder.

In this story, it was fascinating to see that young women seemed to be adapting quickly, taking advantage of new marketplaces and revenue streams. Gwen’s own daughter has gone from staunch feminist to a ‘trad wife’ and an Instagram sensation. She creates content daily for her audience of thousands by dressing in a modest but cutesy way, sharing mum hacks, videos of her beautiful home and ways to keep her man happy. All the while her followers are wishing to live like her, but even she doesn’t live like her. It’s a fiction, designed to illicit envy and send followers scurrying to her affiliate links. How much of her new life and views are real? Gwen isn’t sure that her daughter knows or recognises the difference between the image and reality. There’s manipulation of another sort too – the facade of being a decent middle class family, untouched by a scandal they are instrumental in creating. Gwen’s neighbour Dee is the unspoken Queen of the apartments and is always immaculately turned out. Her daughter Stella is an investigative journalist who would love to cover Pixie’s story. Gwen has Pixie living in her flat and relations with her neighbour have gone from frosty to downright hostile, pushed any further and things might explode. Stella manages to get television coverage, no doubt paid very well for her trouble, but is then unable to control the story leading social media content creators, pod casters and news outlets to their door, harassing residents as they come in and out. It isn’t long before they have Alex’s name and start exploiting the aging pop star angle.

I met someone like Pixie once and I learned the hard way that they are best avoided and ignored. They are usually life’s survivors, have learned how to get by in the world and will happily turn on those trying to help. I attended a meditation class and got on well with the teacher, so when she moved the class to her own home I didn’t hesitate. There was talk of working together and I wrote a course on authenticity that combined meditation with art and writing therapy. It started successfully, then one weekend she disappeared with the keys to the premises we were hiring and wouldn’t divulge where she was. We carried on, but she told everyone we had pushed her out and stolen her idea. I found out she’d run a class in another town that she claimed was taken away from her by an ex-partner so she was having to start again. She didn’t mention that she’d stolen his car while drunk and crashed it, losing her licence. She hadn’t mentioned being bi-polar either, something I’d have supported her with. The last I heard she was in a relationship with a man who was buying her a hotel that she could run as a recovery centre. I realised that this was a pattern of self-sabotage and lashing out. Pixie felt like a similar character, who landed herself in difficult situations then found people who would rescue her. I worried that Gwen was going to lose out in helping this young woman. That she might easily cause Gwen harm, if it meant she could move on to the next ‘mark’. 

I was absolutely gripped by this story and definitely recognised elements of it. I could see that some people would come out of this totally untouched while others could be left confused or even culpable. I don’t want to ruin the book by giving you any more details, but it is classic Candlish. Like her last novel that tackled the problem of second homes on the coast, she’s hit the zeitgeist with this one. We’ve all seen how social media has become lawless with so many different people, including authors, caught up in a public judge and jury situation. It’s hard to know how a targeted individual copes psychologically when they’re being exposed or made out to be something they’re not. How do they keep their self-image intact when the general public have a very different idea of who they are? Everyone in this story, apart from Gwen, has a very fluid set of morals. Even her own children. There’s a lot here that’s totally unfair and raises the blood pressure a little! It’s no wonder the atmosphere in the apartments becomes a pressure cooker. I devoured this in two sittings and I’m sure you will too. 

Meet the Author

Louise’s latest release, A NEIGHBOUR’S GUIDE TO MURDER, was published in July 2025 and her latest paperback is OUR HOLIDAY, a Sunday Times bestseller, WHSmith Richard & Judy Book Club pick and Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2025 nominee. It features love-to-hate characters Perry and Charlotte, second home owners in the idyllic English beach resort of Pine Ridge. It’s now in development for the screen.

Last year Louise celebrated her 20th anniversary as an author with the news of two prestigious awards for her 90s-set thriller THE ONLY SUSPECT: the Capital Crime Fingerprint Award for Thriller of the Year and the Ned Kelly Award for Best International Crime Fiction. Stay tuned for TV news on that one too.

OUR HOUSE is now a major four-part ITV drama starring Martin Compston and Tuppence Middleton (watch the full series free on ITVX). This is the novel that turned her career around, winning the 2019 British Book Awards Book of the Year – Crime & Thriller and shortlisted for the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award, the Capital Crime Amazon Publishing Best Crime Novel of the Year Award, and the Audible Sounds of Crime Award. It was also longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award and the Specsavers National Book Awards. A Waterstones Thriller of the Month, it recently received a Nielsen Bestseller Silver Award for 250,000 copies sold.

Louise lives in a South London neighbourhood with her husband, daughter and a fox-red Labrador called Bertie. Books, TV and long walks are her passions and she loves Tom Wolfe, Patricia Highsmith, Barbara Vine, Agatha Christie and Evelyn Waugh. Her favourite book is Madame Bovary.

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