Tag: Psychological

Posted in Random Things Tours

Black as Death by Lilja Sigurdardóttir  

Posted on by thelotusreaders

The haunting final chapter to an award-winning series…

And a final reckoning…

With the fate of her missing sister, Ísafold, finally uncovered, Áróra feels a fragile relief as the search that consumed her life draws to a close. But when Ísafold’s boyfriend – the prime suspect in her disappearance – is found dead at the same site where Ísafold’s body was discovered, Áróra’s grip on reality starts to unravel … and the mystery remains far from solved. To distract herself, she dives headfirst into a money-laundering case that her friend Daníel is investigating. But she soon finds that there is more than meets the eye and, once again, all leads point towards Engihjalli, the street where Ísafold lived and died, and a series of shocking secrets that could both explain and endanger everything…

I’ve been hooked on the story of Áróra and the case of her missing sister Ísafold for a few years now and the tension has slowly gripped me ever tighter as each novel has brought its revelations. With her disappearance being the reason Àrora is in Iceland, it’s always been the over-arching narrative, with other cases running alongside. The combination of Áróra’s skills as a financial investigator plus the skills and powers of Daniel and Helena who are detectives, means complex cases are profiled and attacked from different directions, making them a formidable team. We’re back with everyone after the discovery of Ísafold’s body in a suitcase deep within a fissure in a lava field. They were directed to it by an unusual little girl who claimed to be the reincarnation of Ísafold, something that was difficult for Daniel to accept. As Áróra’s boyfriend, his hackles were raised particularly with her parents who he suspected of feeding ideas and information to their daughter with the aim of deceiving them. But what possible motive could they have? As we meet our characters again, Áróra occasionally has the urge to go back and visit the family, but there’s been nothing new from her reincarnated sister for some time as if the thread that bound them has broken or the little girl’s age means the channel that was open between this life and the next has now closed. With Bjorn found in the same fissure as Ísafold many new questions are thrown up. Not least the one aspect of Ísafold’s death has remained a secret up till now. Daniel doesn’t know how to tell Áróra that her sister’s body was found without a heart. 

There’s so much to understand here and we get the narrative through different viewpoints, not just from Áróra, Daniel and his colleague Helena. One narrator named Felix has fallen into working for a local dealer and we see his fear as the bag he was sent to collect disappears from the car while he’s getting some food. This theft draws his ties to this man ever closer, with no real chance of escape. There are also flashbacks to the last few months Ìsafold was alive and we finally hear the story in her own voice, which I loved. There’s a lot of crossover between these two narratives in terms of control and manipulation. The means used to tie Felix to the drugs gang are diabolical, making sure he ‘owes’ the boss and keeping him firmly onside. On one hand the boss demands total loyalty from its operatives but on the other he uses treachery to keep everyone in their place. Bjorn’s treatment of Ísafold feels even worse, because this is someone is supposed to love her. We have always known that Ísafold’s partner was violent, in fact Áróra’s guilt about her sister is based around their last phone call when for the first time Áróra decided not to run to her sister’s aid. The downstairs neighbour Grimur had also testified to the violence his neighbour suffered, but hearing it from the victim adds another layer to the narrative. We can feel how vulnerable Ísafold is and the tenderness Bjorn treats her with from time to time, that glimmer of a meaningful connection he drip feeds to her guarantees her forgiveness again and again. Almost more than the violence I hated that he took away her only bit of independence by making her leave the job she loved, to work with elderly people. At first it’s a suggestion, then he flatters her by saying how good she would be in a caring role, but the truth is he wants to coerce her into stealing their drugs. There’s a realisation that Bjorn is a low level dealer, just doing enough to get by but slowly coming to the attention of the bigger players who feel their territory has been encroached upon. Could this be the beginning of the end for the couple?

The tense and twisty parts narrative also follows Daniel’s investigation into a local coffee chain, where every barista seems to tell customers that their other sites are busier. What he finds is a company with a large turnover but no real evidence of where that money is coming from. None of their shops are in tourist areas and they seem to take a large amount in cash, an unusual thing these days. He also finds a couple of complaints from the director’s home of criminal damage, that they later chose not to pursue. This seems like a case where Áróra’s financial skills could be utilised and she throws herself into it, with dangerous consequences. This is where the couple work so well together, although there’s a recklessness to Áróra that Daniel finds difficult. He would never get in her way, she’s tough and quite capable of looking after herself physically but it’s in his nature to worry about those he cares for. He knows that her weight training and work are her ways of sublimating her frustration that she still doesn’t have all the answers about her sister. With Helena currently working the case he has a choice to make, if answers come does he let Helena break the truth to her, or does he choose to do that himself? Although he could have the chance to comfort and support her as he’s wanted, will she let him? Or will he always be the man who told her the harshest and most painful truth she will ever hear? 

We’ve always had suspicions but have never known who killed Ísafold. The novel is gripping and of course we want this mystery resolved, but I didn’t feel any of that racing tension or triumph that I often get from thrillers when the killer’s revealed. This was just so desperately sad. I found myself taking a moment for this under confident woman who was so far out of her depth. A woman whose emotions dictated her life decisions. I was horrified and had that strange empty feeling of loss. A loss I knew Áróra would feel. The question is, if she does get all the answers she needs, what will Áróra do next? Unlike her sister Áróra has a clear sense of what she wants and needs in order to be happy and fulfilled. She makes decisions based on self-knowledge and it remains to be seen whether Daniel is a part of that eventual happiness. This has been an incredible series from the author, combining a good mystery with real intelligence and depth of emotion played out on a bleak and forbidding landscape.

Out now from Orenda Books

Meet the Author

Icelandic crime writer Lilja Sigurðardóttir was born in the town of Akranes in 1972 and raised in Mexico, Sweden, Spain and Iceland. An award-winning playwright, Lilja has written eleven crime novels, including Snare, Trap and Cage, making up the Reykjavík Noir trilogy, and her standalone thriller Betrayal, all of which have hit bestseller lists worldwide. Snare was longlisted for the CWA International Dagger, Cage won Best Icelandic Crime Novel of the Year and was a Guardian Book of the Year, and Betrayal was shortlisted for the prestigious Glass Key Award and won Icelandic Crime Novel of the Year. The film rights for the Reykjavík Noir trilogy have been bought by Glassriver. Cold as Hell, the first book in the An Áróra Investigation series, was published in the UK in 2021 and was followed by Red as Blood, White as Snow and Dark as Night. TV rights to theseries have been bought by Studio Zentral in Germany. Lilja lives in Reykjavík with her partner and a brood of chickens.

Posted in Netgalley

Victorian Psycho by Virginia Fenton

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect Victorian governess. She’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But the longer Winifred spends within the estate’s dreary confines and the more she learns of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family, the more trouble she has sticking to her plan.

Whether creeping across the moonlit lawns in her undergarments or gently tormenting the house staff, Winifred struggles at every turn to stifle the horrid compulsions of her past until her chillingly dark imagination breaches the feeble boundary of reality on Christmas morning.

Having seen this billed as a Victorian horror comedy and having a taste for the macabre I thought this would be my perfect read and it definitely was. If you ever wondered whether the governess was the psychopath in The Turn of the Screw, then this is the book for you. Here our young governess Winifred arrives at Ensor House to take charge of Drusilla and Andrew Pound, however she isn’t just teaching them French, instilling a Christian faith and charitable nature, along with their etiquette. Winifred has instead set herself a very different and unexpected agenda. 

“It is early fall, the cold is beginning to descend, and in three months everyone in this house will be dead.”

So, alongside her everyday duties to the children she slinks around the house unnoticed by the rest of the family – cutting the eyes out of the ancestral portraits, stealing the children and bloodthirstily stalking the servants. Miss Natty is the perfect killer because of her position. I love reading about governesses in fiction because of their liminal position in a household, not as elevated as the family of the house and certainly not in the ranks of the servants. Too educated to fit in downstairs but as someone who earns a living, she’s definitely below the family. In one sense this could make her lonely at Ensor, but it also gives her an incredible amount of freedom. Governesses have bedrooms near the children, but the nanny will be on night duty. She’s free to roam with impunity, carrying out her horrible deeds. By day she’s teaching good manners and Christian values but by night she’s free to follow her darkest obsessions. 

“It fascinates me, the fact that humans have the capacity to mortally wound one another at will, but for the most part, choose not to.”

Disturbingly I found this character rather amusing, there’s a certain quirkiness about her that’s appealing and in places I found myself laughing. She is our narrator so we have her inner monologue as well as the havoc she creates. Miss Natty notices everything in the house with the skill of a psychotherapist: observing the servants, the family and their visitors closely to decide who will be murdered next. She’s weighing up their behaviour and those who are unkind and treat others badly will be in the firing line first. As she becomes increasingly murderous, with plenty of gore flying around, she is most definitely enjoying herself and so are we. What has turned this young woman into a potential psychopath? The author has written this book with the staid politeness of a Victorian novel, contrasting sharply with the mayhem being described. It added to the humour and my enjoyment. Of course there’s a feminist slant to this, the men in the house know it all, explaining away any anger and displeasure from their wives as hysteria. Meanwhile their particular shortcomings go unacknowledged. I think we’re still told a lot about how to behave as women and books like these with a female protagonist who commits terrible acts with total abandon and enjoyment is like a release valve. Her tongue can be as sharp as her scalpel, bringing them rapidly down to size. She is breaking every convention, particularly that of the Victorian ‘angel in the house.’ I felt like the author had taken the two Mrs Rochesters from Thornfield Hall and put them in one woman; the quiet and unassuming governess and the murderous madwoman in the attic. She is so incredibly clever and likes her revenge to come, not cold, but sharply, precisely and decorated with liberal amounts of blood. 

Out now from Fourth Estate Books

Meet the Author

A native of Spain, Virginia Feito was raised in Madrid and Paris, and studied English and drama at Queen Mary University of London. She lives in Madrid, where she writes her fiction in English. Victorian Psycho is being adapted for a feature film.

Posted in Personal Purchase

Don’t Let Him In by Lisa Jewell

Posted on by thelotusreaders

There was a pivotal moment in this book that made me go cold. It sent me back twelve years when I was trying to understand how someone could treat others so badly, in what seemed like a deliberately cruel way. I remembered something my counsellor said at the time; I was spending all my time trying to work out someone’s motivation and what had happened in life to make them behave that way, instead of considering the impact on me and how unacceptable the behaviour was. Some people just don’t think like others. Nick is a tall silver fox with a lot of charm and a knack with the ladies. He seems to know exactly what will please someone. Exactly the right gift to soften someone. To get under their defences. It’s almost as if he has empathy,  but don’t be fooled. He’s just wearing a human suit. 

Nina and her daughter Ash live in the bougie seaside town of Whitstable in Kent. They are grieving for husband and father Paddy, who was killed when a man having a mental health crisis pushed him into an oncoming train. Ash has been living at home since her own mental health deteriorated. She was living in a house in London with two other girls but she developed a crush on her boss, that turned into an obsession. She claimed to have letters from him, but it turned out she’d written them herself and she was eventually diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. She’d just come home to recover when Paddy was killed. When her mum receives a parcel in the post Ash is intrigued. It’s beautifully wrapped, with a note inside from a man who has heard about Paddy’s death. He used to work with him in the 1990s when Paddy was just starting out. The gift wrapped box contains a Zippo lighter he borrowed but never returned. Since then Paddy has built a restaurant empire, with his flagship restaurant in Whitstable and two others down the coast. He benefitted greatly from the area’s development into the weekend getaway spot for Londoners. Nick’s note explains he is now a troubleshooter, brought into eateries and hotels to assess what’s not working and put it right. There is of course a number, should Nina wish to thank him for his thoughtfulness. Over the next few months Nick and Nina start to WhatsApp each other and then go out for a drink. Ash is glad to see her mum with a glow, but there’s something about Nick that’s just ‘off’. She can’t be sure and maybe she’s viewing this situation through her own grief or her personality disorder, but something isn’t right. She needs to find out more about him before he becomes a permanent fixture. 

It’s so hard to review Lisa’s books without letting things slip, but I’ll try my best. Most authors might have written a thriller based purely on the scenario above – is it the mentally ill daughter or the mum’s new boyfriend that’s the problem? Slowly drawing out the tension of whether she’s right or so unwell that she’s dreadfully mistaken. Lisa Jewell isn’t most authors so she takes that premise and builds an absolutely labyrinthine mystery that’s absolutely spellbinding. In multiple narratives and timelines we meet various women who are struggling in their relationships, all of which are linked by strange or abusive behaviour. There are different behaviours: gaslighting, manipulation, financial embezzlement and even disappearances. In some cases these women are married and have children, in others they’re older and widowed. There were so many conundrums, not least how these men are affording the lifestyle they’re living. Meanwhile, Ash has decided to take help from ‘Mad’ Jane Trevally, her dad’s old girlfriend from the 1990s. Surely if Nick was around for a while, Jane would remember him. Jane did have some obsessive qualities of her own back in the day, so maybe she’s not the best person for Ash to be hanging out with. She knows her mum would be furious. However, when they do meet, Jane tells Ash that Paddy categorically did not have a lighter. He was always taking the matches from the kitchen or cadging a light from other people, so much so that it was an ‘in’ joke with friends and customers. So whose lighter was in that parcel and why did he send it? 

I galloped through this book as we went backwards and forwards in time, every time learning a little more and inching towards the truth. I loved the fragile Ash who is at that stage of recovery where she doesn’t fully trust her own mind. Is she making too much of this? Is she just paranoid? Worst of all, if she finds something questionable, will her Mum even believe her? She’s so lonely at this point, she doesn’t have many friends to talk to and feels bad she’s had to bounce back home at her age. Her mum deserves to be happy and she might ruin it all. Just when you think you have all the answers, the author takes it to the next level! There were twists here that I wasn’t expecting and I felt very relieved that I got away from my own situation relatively easily, if not unscathed. This book is like a twisted knot in a necklace. It takes a long time to loosen it, but suddenly the whole thing unravels before your eyes. This is masterful thriller that absolutely begs to be devoured in a couple of sittings, from an author who gets better and better. 

Meet the Author

LISA JEWELL was born in London in 1968.

Her first novel, Ralph’s Party, was the best- selling debut novel of 1999. Since then she has written another twenty novels, most recently a number of dark psychological thrillers, including The Girls, Then She Was Gone, The Family Upstairs, The Family Remains and The Night She Disappeared, all of which were Richard & Judy Book Club picks.

Lisa is a New York Times and Sunday Times number one bestselling author who has been published worldwide in over thirty languages. She lives in north London with her husband and two daughters.

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 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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Posted in Throwback Thursday

The Darkest Water by Mark Edwards

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Calvin owns Therapy, the bakery of his dreams in an idyllic village in the Lake District, but business is a little quiet. He’s reluctant when wife Vicky suggests social media but it’s not long before assistant Tara has filmed and posted a reel of him making brownies. Suddenly he’s a local celebrity. It seems everyone wants a piece of Chef Calvin and creepy little DMs start to arrive, including some from a stranger claiming to be his biggest fan. At the same time a local recluse has been found dead on a nearby beach, buried up to the neck in sand and left for the tide to come in. Detective Imogen Edwards is under pressure to solve the case, but who would plan such a long, drawn out murder and did they stay to watch the man’s fate? Calvin’s admirer turns up at Therapy, just as Tara is injured and unable to work. Much to his wife Vicky’s horror, new girl Mel ends up standing in and Calvin offers her a job. At least until Tara returns. Then events seem to start spiralling out of control and Calvin doesn’t know who to trust or what to do. Perhaps these wheels were put in motion a long time before, putting those Calvin loves in terrible danger. 

This is such a page turning thriller that I swept through it in an afternoon and evening. Seemingly unrelated events start to make potentially intriguing patterns. Mark Edwards has a way of sending your mind down a dozen different paths before getting to the truth. He also has the skill of leaving horrifying images in your head. This time it was the sight of Leo James’s head sticking out of the sand as the tide went out. I have a fascination with Anthony Gormley’s Another Place also known as the Iron Men of Crosby Beach in Liverpool. There is something slightly macabre and even profound about watching the tide come in, slowly submerging some figures underwater completely. This was a terrible human version and I couldn’t help musing on how it must have felt to be left waiting for the tide and what sort of man could watch it unfold. I enjoyed the internet element of the story and how reluctant Calvin is to put himself and his bakery out there – something which makes more sense later in the novel. I could understand his reticence. While Book Twitter was once a benign space, there are now arguments and attempts to police what other people are reading. It seems it’s no longer acceptable to separate art and the artist and I definitely spend less time there. When Tara creates her video, the baker starts to gain customers very quickly and this is definitely welcome. However, it comes with a side order of relative fame and that means teenagers want to take a look as well as a certain amount of women. Mel is one of these and the timing of her arrival in the bakery seems very suspect. Both Tara and Vicky are suspicious and my radar for emotionally damaged women was definitely going off. She seems to establish herself as someone who needs to be rescued, something that is Calvin’s kryptonite. She drops hints about a group of teenagers making a nuisance of themselves on the beach near her cottage and trying to intimidate or frighten her. 

It soon becomes clear that Calvin is a rescuer. He has lived in the Lakes all his life and has an experience when he was a teenager that makes him susceptible to women needing him to be the hero. His teenage sister died in a car accident and in flashbacks we go back to that summer and the lead up to this awful event, it’s clear that Calvin carries a lot of guilt around her death but this is only half the story. Our other narrative is that of the murder and the police investigation. Imogen’s first port of call is the dead man’s home which isn’t easy to find, tucked away in the woods and completely off grid. Inside they find the most hideous paintings, possibly created by Leo himself. They show visions of torment and retribution in hell and seem to be inspired by Heironymus Bosch. The house is spartan and gloomy, suggesting that Leo leads a lonely and possibly depressed lifestyle. The paintings point towards his state of mind, but does he believe someone else should receive this punishments or himself? If himself, it seems like at least one other person agreed with him. When Imogen finds a young local girl called Billie lurking nearby she’s determined to find her link to this unusual man. In fact Imogen and Calvin’s wife Vicky seem the most level-headed of the characters. Imogen is a good police officer, methodical and not easily swayed by one thread of the investigation. She lets it reveal itself, but is still only minutes behind the culprit at times. Everything is linked and she just has to find that one person who holds the key. She does come under pressure from above but stays focused.

Vicky is perceptive and there were times I was mentally screaming at Calvin to listen to his wife. She senses someone has been in their house early on and is adamant she didn’t close their bedroom door and shut their cat Jarvis inside. She also wants rid of Mel, not specifically because she has feelings for Calvin, but because she simply doesn’t trust her. Where has she sprung from and why does she seem so keen to please? She thinks the story about teenagers is a deliberate ploy. The tension in each of the narratives is heightened and when Vicky disappears, Imogen has to work out whether this a choice to take time for herself after a row, or something more serious. Although when she speaks to Calvin and finds out that Vicky owns an animal rescue centre, it does seem unlikely for her to leave without warning leaving everything to her assistant Louise. As Imogen starts to join the dots I was praying she wouldn’t be too late for Vicky. How would Calvin cope if he lost Vicky after losing his sister, especially if Mel is involved? As Mel lures him into accompanying her home I was on tenterhooks over whether she would proposition him or whether something more disturbing was going on? The author takes us through some serious twists and turns, just when I thought my suspicions about a character were mistaken they were back on the hook again. I didn’t get to the truth before Imogen though and I managed to do that really annoying thing of rushing through to the end, then wishing I’d taken it slower. This is a first class thriller and has whetted my appetite beautifully for his latest book, The Wasp Trap. 

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 Squad Pod Collective

Havoc by Rebecca Wait

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Havoc is one of the Squad POD Collective’s featured books this month and is a brilliant combination of school drama, mystery and dark comedy featuring a wonderful character called Ida. Ida and her family live on a remote Scottish island after fleeing from her mother’s controlling boyfriend Peter. What started as a lonely but safe place to live, has become impossible since her mother did something unforgivable and the island’s inhabitants turn against them. Deciding she wants to leave, Ida looks for private boarding schools who provide scholarship places. She finds a school as far away from Scotland as she can find. St Anne’s sits on the south coast of England, so remote that the only diversion is a bus ride to a small town with a choice of two tea rooms. The school are terribly surprised when their scholarship student 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 a 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? Or could it be something more sinister like poison?

Not only is this a fascinating mystery, the characters are so endearing and I loved the deliciously dark sense of humour. We follow Ida’s story but also that of geography teacher Eleanor. Both are characters are quiet and unassuming but with hidden depths. Eleanor is coping with a change of living arrangements rather like Ida. She was all set to marry boyfriend Anthony, but it was suddenly called off. She’s been used to living in a solo room at the school, but a space in one of the sought after flats has come available. The problem is it means sharing with fellow teacher Vera and they’re not exactly friends, but she’ll gain a sitting room and a kitchen and surely they can get on? Then the first ever male teacher arrives and it’s clear that he’s quiet and ill equipped to deal with the dreamy and rather nosy English teachers. He and Eleanor get along well though, often lunching together at school and sharing the bus into town on their rare day off. However, he does seem to lack a back story and after what happened with Anthony, she’s very wary.

Despite some serious subject matter and St Anne’s having a rather 1980’s morbid fascination with the nuclear holocaust, there is a lot of humour and witty exchanges, even if they are rather black (my favourite kind of comedy). Both Eleanor and Ida have to accommodate their rather forthright and eccentric roommates. Louise comes with many warnings from the school mistress, but their meeting is hilariously slapstick after a mishap with a trapdoor. Louise seems to sense Ida’s intriguing hidden depths and they definitely share an affinity for causing mayhem. As their friendship developed I did worry for the rest of the school’s pupils. Eleanor’s roommate Vera is a comic delight and I imagined her as a young Miriam Margoyles – abrupt to the point of rudeness and very definite in her opinions. On a visit to the tearoom in town she berates the poor waitress for not having Battenberg cake. When she suggests their Victoria Sponge, Vera exclaims loudly that it’s usually dry. Then as she eats it, loudly confirms to the other patrons that is just as dry as she expected. She has no filter, volume control or embarrassment. In between the main narrative, are faxes from the neurologist treating the girls and his previous colleague and even these take a turn you won’t expect. He writes of his concern about Diane, the first girl who fell ill and his confusion at the symptoms displayed by the others. He is the first to notice strange anomalies in the seizures but has a hard time convincing his colleagues, the police and the environmental health of his eventual diagnosis.

I enjoyed the medical mystery at the heart of this novel, just as interesting as a crime novel with plenty of twists and turns along the way. Having had a rather unusual neurological condition myself this was an accurate representation of how our bodies can surprise and betray us. Of course this has the added intrigue of multiple patients at once and the cause being very difficult pin down — is it poison, environmental or the rather unusual and fishy meals from the school kitchens? There are other mini mysteries too such as why Eleanor didn’t get married and what made new teacher Matthew move to an isolated all girls school? Once the press are on the trail of the mystery illness many more secrets could come to light, including why Ida arrived in the first place. Ida is such an interesting teenager and her growing friendship with roommate Louise is both touching and unexpected. The author has captured the inner world of Ida so authentically that you feel connected to her and the interactions between the students is a familiar combination of funny, bitchy and a little bit guarded. So when the guard drops and real emotions spill out it is all the more surprising and touching. This was an absolute treat to read and I have no hesitation in recommending it.

Meet the Author

Rebecca Wait is the author of four novels, the most recent of which, I’m Sorry You Feel That Way, was a book of the year for The Times, Guardian, Express, Good Housekeeping and BBC Culture, and was shortlisted for the Nota Bene Prize.

Her previous novel, Our Fathers, received widespread acclaim and was a Guardian book of the year and a thriller of the month for Waterstones.