Tag: Thriller

Posted in Squad Pod Collective

The Girl With Seven Lives by Vikas Swarup

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Devi is a fighter. Growing up in the slums of Delhi, she has learnt that survival comes at a cost – and naturally, that means she’s made a few enemies along the way. 

Now she’s being held captive, her life up for sale in an online auction, where the highest bidder will determine her fate.

With her existence hanging in the balance, Devi proceeds to give her captor ‘a confession to beat all confessions’ – as over the course of a single night, Devi unveils the secrets of her seven extraordinary lives.

Devi is the ultimate survivor – a girl from the gutters who dares to rewrite her own destiny. But will she survive the longest night of her life?

Vikas Swarup’s heroine Devi grabs hold of you the minute she starts to tell her own story in this episodic novel set in Delhi. The opening brings Devi to the lair of an unknown assailant who tells her he has seven people on the phone line who want to bid for her destiny. This auction will take one night and seven stories, stories she thought were secrets. As Devi tells each tale her kidnapper will take a bid on her life and he hopes to reach seven figures. However, Devi’s circumstances have not been easy and the fact she is alive is down to her cunning and experience. Has the kidnapper underestimated his prisoner or are Devi’s lives finally running out?

I was hooked from the first story as Devi explains how she started in a family home in the slum area known as Rail Basti, because the train tracks ran straight through the centre of the huts. This was Devi’s early childhood and despite the poverty she has happy times. She tells us about her annoying brothers, the eldest a maths prodigy and the youngest a terrible bedwetter, the daily sequence of trains that seem to rattle the ground under their hut and depth of water that rises indoors in monsoon season. Change comes when her parents choose an unorthodox plan to make an almost life-changing sum of money and fortune seems to turn almost immediately. Devi is an intelligent, funny and excitable nine year old and sometimes it’s hard to read about her daily life, never mind the more perilous and painful circumstances she finds herself in. She learns through necessity, takes chances where she sees them, soon inured to the fact that the only constant in her life is change.

The author’s visceral descriptions of the slums, the crime and violence and particularly the treatment of young girls of her caste are a hard read. He conjures up a picture of her family home perfectly with deftly layered descriptions of their space and the surrounding crowded alley ways:

“Sanitation in the slum was non-existent. The open surface drains looked like a river of green, clogged with garbage and plastic trash. For toilet the men would go with their lotas to the railway track. Mercifully for the women and girls there were a few communal latrines at the southern end of the slum that afforded a degree of privacy, though the long lines in the morning meant waits up to an hour.”

Once the family’s circumstances improve a little there are small improvements to daily life, like the arrival of a television that keeps Devi rapt for hours and helps her learn more than she ever has before. Her father decides they need to move, into a better area of the slum with the luxury of two rooms and its own toilet. It was more solid and didn’t let the rain in. However, the monthly payment was crippling financially and soon there was nothing left, they couldn’t ‘freeboot’ the electricity so television was strictly rationed and they were back living hand to mouth. Devi is the best storyteller, drawing you into their lives and then destroying you when disaster befalls them. I felt she was a very lonely person, aside from her early alliance with ‘German Sheffered’ dog Sheru. Each time she trusts someone, her parents, the police, authority figures, they all let her down. She has never known what it is to have someone absolutely in your corner.

The author captures the noise and colour of New Delhi so perfectly it’s almost a sensory overload as you read. The combination of this and the terrible ordeals that Devi faces are overwhelming sometimes and definitely left me feeling privileged in life. Devi’s narration keeps us constantly alert because that’s how she lives her life, constantly in the moment and ever alert to what’s going on around her. Her intelligence and experience mean she can sense when something’s wrong, such as noticing some girls in her dormitory at Muskan juvenile facility are more moody and unpredictable than normal. These young women are utterly powerless, so not only are they preyed upon by bullies and evil men but the system is so corrupt there is never any justice. No one is listening. I realised with surprise that the conversations she has on this one night with her kidnapper are perhaps the most intimate she has ever had. She gets to bare her soul and disclose secrets she has never told anyone. To be this vulnerable and knowing a terrible fate might await you at the end is both cathartic and terrifying.

The pacing is perfect as at the end of each story the phone call is made and the offer increases. She knows who must be on the end of the line and understands their capacity for revenge, she’s wanted it for herself enough times. It’s such a compelling read that I read this in a day, feeling like I’d visited Punjab, Goa, Kerala and finally Mumbai with Devi. The feel of each place is captured beautifully and the contrasts of her rollercoaster life kept me glued to the page. We know how red in tooth and claw the world is but what I found most hard to comprehend is how people could blind themselves from the suffering going on around them. It’s as if the British immigrants and millionaires living in Sector 1 of the city see those in the slums as ants, something they simply tread on as they get on with their vastly superior lives. We see the contrast when Devi lives with a woman who is a banker and wants to use Devi as her muse. On her daughter’s birthday there’s an orgy of gift giving with designer scarves, sunglasses, bracelets and a laptop are unwrapped, with her main present being a vintage Cartier watch. By contrast on Devi’s birthday there’s no party, just a cake and one present – a brand new Sony Handycam. Devi is overwhelmed and when the banker tells her to film the slums she does. She films people she knew, other kids dancing and play fighting, imitating famous people and having fun. Her benefactors are unsatisfied, they don’t want kids enjoying themselves they want to see the dirt and degradation, the alcohol, the drugs and the domestic violence. They want slum porn and she certainly delivers it, raw and unedited, but she knows that no film can truly capture what it’s like to live there.

There’s so much energy in this novel. It leaps off the page and its biggest achievement is its mix of addictive suspense and emotional insight. I came away from it feeling a little bit battered by the force of the story and it might take a few days to fully sink in. I liked Devi as a child, but as time and experience move her forward she becomes more morally questionable, complex and deeply conflicting. Although even if I didn’t always like her I could understand why she makes the choices she does and how she’s come to each terrible conclusion, every time wondering if this present adventure will be her last. It’s easy to forget when you’re deeply embedded in one of her stories that this is where it’s brought her, tied to a chair and listening as each person bids on her life. If you like to kept in suspense and to experience an extraordinary life lived in destitute and dangerous circumstances this is definitely for you.

Out 13th August from Head of Zeus

Posted in Random Things Tours

The Mermaid’s Cry by Kate Rhodes 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I’ve been catching up on Kate Rhodes’s series of Ben Kitto novels and I’ve jumped a couple to read this for the blog tour, now I have to go back and read frantically to work out how he and Noah have ended up in Penzance. However that didn’t ruin the novel for me because it’s jam packed full of atmospheric settings, Cornish folklore and a cast of characters that left me suspecting absolutely everyone! Ben is living in Penzance, taking a break from his home island of Bryhir in the Scilly Isles after the events of the previous novel. He’s taking a break from police work and instead has found a job at a joiner and cabinetmakers, using the skills he learned building boats with his Uncle. It’s settled and therapeutic work as Ben slowly creates beautiful pieces of furniture and starts to deal with his grief and loss. Noah is a little confused to be away from everything he knows, but he’s enrolled at a kindergarten near Ben’s work so life has some routine and peace. He is starting to be brought into the community too, with an arts festival on the horizon he’s bound to be pulled into the planning, even just as a steward he’s happy to do his bit. Then life takes a sinister turn as he’s on the beach and sees a young mother with a baby in a pram. One moment of distraction and a black figure jumps out of the shadows and racing towards the pram it grabs the baby and throws it into the sea. Ben and Shadow are running before they’ve even thought and he dives into the sea to rescue the baby. He’s now a local hero, but the disturbing and traumatic event plays on his mind. How could someone do such a thing and will they do it again? 

The author weaves her story around the local myth of the Zennor Mermaid, a figured carved into one of the pews in Zennor church. A beautiful woman called Morveren was said to attend the local church from time to time and listen to the choir. She had a wonderful singing voice and many suitors were interested in her, but she came to listen to Matthew Trewella who had the best singing voice. One day after church he decided to follow her and was never seen again. Years later a captain dropped anchor near the beach and was surprised to hear melodious singing. When he looked out he saw a mermaid sitting on the rocks nearby and she asked if he would raise his anchor as it was blocking the entrance to her house, where she lived with her husband Matthew. There are many mermaid figures in Cornwall and the upcoming festival will be based around music and singing in Penzance and then a sky-watching from the remote location of Zennor’s beach. However, the myth takes a more sinister turn when mermaid emblems and notes are sent to people with small children, warning that the mermaid is watching for those who don’t deserve them. The police are immediately involved and new DCI Carnforth approaches Ben for his take on the original crime, could this person strike again? In sinister short sections we are taken into the mind of this person who themself as a mercy killer, where parents are neglectful or harming their children, the attacker will offer them to the Zennor mermaid who waits under the sea to claim them. Ben isn’t keen on becoming involved but Carnforth is keen to have his input and suggests he works more like a consultant than actually making a return to the force. For those lucky readers who know Ben and his dog Shadow, it’s impossible to imagine him sitting back and not taking part. Both of them seem to have an innate instinct when something is wrong and when Ben finds a mermaid talisman in his own garden he knows that he must find this person before anyone else faces the devastation of losing their child. 

 It was strange to get used to Ben in a new environment because he’s always seemed so at home in the wildness of Bryhir. Penzance is a huge difference being on the mainland and being a town, although Shadow seems to get used to the geography of his new home very quickly. I enjoyed the way the author presents Cornwall, giving it a split atmosphere between the town itself and the wilder places beyond, echoed in the two sites of the festival. She also gives us a realistic view of Penzance beyond the tourist trail, as both picturesque and a working fishing port. There are hints at the port’s arty history too with the Tate being a few miles away in St Ives and the attached village of Newlyn associated with Barbara Hepworth and many other artists. There’s a mix of tourism or seasonal visitors, then the long term residents trying to survive, especially during the quieter months when seasonal work isn’t as available and every empty property is listed on Air BnB rather than let to locals who need a home. Young people are priced out of the market and have no hope of owning a home of their own where they were born. Social housing is just as poor and overcrowded as it is anywhere else and perhaps has more demand, in fact the mother of the first victim is living on an estate that miles away from our usual depictions of Cornwall and a big contrast to Ben’s usual working area. The town’s foodbank is busy showing that residents are struggling with the cost of living, but on the other hand Ben’s chosen nursery for Noah has the rather middle-class sign of being run on Steiner principles. There are definitely haves and have nots here and Ben is definitely pulled into the lives of people who’ve had very difficult upbringings in circumstances of poverty, neglect and abuse. However, recovery and rebuilding are also big themes here with Ben playing a huge part in helping those in difficult circumstances while struggling to handle his own grief. 

It’s sad to meet Ben at such a crossroads in his life and I was pleased to see how our regular characters rallied around him, very carefully while letting him think they’re close by for other reasons. He thinks his Uncle is visiting Penzance because he has a secret woman and when his best friend Zoe appears he thinks she’s just there to headline the festival. Yet they are around at a crucial time for Ben and Noah and possibly know our hero more than he realises. I was hoping he’d start to see the benefit of grieving alongside his friends and fellow islanders, rather than removing himself from the situation. His relationship with Zoe is as close as always and her support means the world. She’s also bringing music back into his and Noah’s lives, something that his nursery teacher seems very keen for Noah to pursue. She approaches Ben to tell him that Noah is very talented for his age, a skill that is probably from his mother Nina. She’s very intense and insists that not to nurture Noah’s skill would be tantamount to neglect. The author drops little clues like this one throughout the book until I had about six suspects in mind! The tension as the festival approaches is nail-biting as Ben works with the police to make plans for security so that parents can attend with their children safely. Ben is a natural investigator with an innate skill for trouble that’s almost prophetic. He knows when there’s a pattern in a criminal’s behaviour, his brain detects a clue but can’t quite get there yet. There are some uniformed officers in the local station who begrudge Ben working with them and are resistant to the changes their new female chief wants to make. I started to wonder whether our attacker could be closer than they realise, especially when the DCI also has a warning from the mermaid about leaving her child with a nanny. Crimes against children are so emotive and that’s very clear here as the inner voice of the attacker becomes even more disturbing with a strange circular logic that hard to understand – ‘I see unworthy mothers and fathers everywhere I look, they don’t deserve any more chances […] they think the world is safe and that chaos doesn’t exist. None of them understand the price their children could pay, laughing distracted or staring at their phones. Negligence is a sickness”. 

By the time the festival arrives everyone has done all they can to keep families safe, with a security perimeter at the park that can’t be broken, of course that assumes the attacker isn’t one of the stewards. I was still suspecting the nursery nurse, the festival organiser, a police officer, a young man who is abused by his older brother and even the DCI’s nanny. The author has created short, urgent chapters here. They ramp up the tension as we flip between Ben’s inner world and the attacker’s, following them and their newest victim to the dark, wildness of the festival’s other site at Zennor. We can sense the mystical feeling of Cornwall and how it’s become warped in this person’s mind. It’s pitch black and rough terrain, plus with miles and miles of coastline can they be sure to find the right place in time. I defy anyone to put the book down at this point and I devoured it in one sitting. Ben still knows he’s missing a part of the puzzle and we have to trust that his intuition will click in before it’s too late. This is a great thriller and taking Ben out of his natural habitat does bring a different feel to the series, though I hope he does eventually return to island because he belongs there. We can see in the aftermath that he needs his found family and just like Zoe he will always return to the island and each other. 

Meet the Author

Kate Rhodes is an acclaimed crime novelist and an award-winning poet, selected for Val McDermid’s New Blood panel at Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival for her debut, Crossbones Yard. She has been nominated twice for the prestigious. CWA Dagger in the Library award, and is one of the founders of the Killer Women writing group. She lives in Cambridge with her husband, the writer and film-maker Dave Pescod, and visited the Scilly Isles every year as a child, which gave her the idea for the critically acclaimed Isles of Scilly Mysteries series.

Posted in Monthly Wrap Up

Best Reads June 2026

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I’m writing this from a puddle of my own sweat and with a fan roaring in the background. Every animal has spread their body as far as possible across the wooden floor trying to keep cool. It’s been a stay at home month for sure as my neurological symptoms worsen when it’s hot, within a couple of days I had the texture of a wet noodle. So it’s been a month with lots of reading. I’m organised though, fans in both rooms I use a lot, ice cold water, lollies and ice chips, a neck fan and a handheld motorised fan that’s a god send. Nothing tells you that you’re middle aged more than a neck fan for Christmas. Especially when you’re pleased with it. I’ve been reading for the Squad POD Collective this month, then mainly NetGalley reads in between. There’s a huge range in these favourites as we go to Ireland, Liverpool, Norway, Italy and the US, from the aftermath of WW1 to the present day. There are family sagas, an incredible forbidden love story, a great start to a new crime series, the most talked about book on social media and finally a slice of whimsical joy from Matson Taylor. See you next month 📚

Look at that fantastic gothic cover! This is the dark and dangerous side to my favourite city as disgraced detective Mark Fletcher wakes up disoriented in the Castle Street Hotel. He’s horrified to find he’s in bed with a corpse, a man with a bullet hole in his head. How can he explain this when he has no memory of what happened last night? His finger prints and DNA will be everywhere, so will his disillusioned colleagues believe him if he calls it in? He can take his chances with his old team or he can run. This is the man who caught the Butcher of Bootle, only to watch his life rapidly fall apart nine months ago. Luca Veste takes us on a breathless chase through Liverpool while the crime team are playing catch up. We follow his old colleagues Kirkham and Abs as they investigate a body discovered in a garden in Kirby, making Brookside jokes along the way. Could these two deaths be linked? We’re also introduced to the Bonucci family, patriarch Salvatore and his second in command Gino and Frankie. Everyone knows the Bonucci family, they have legitimate business interests but underlying that is a criminal enterprise that’s seeped into every area of the city. They also blame Mark for the death of Salvatore’s youngest daughter Sofia, a huge lapse of judgement that went terribly wrong. Now Mark is trying to investigate who killed his bedfellow, Kirkham and Abs are 24 hours behind him, but could the Bonucci’s be closer? This is a nail-biting and action packed crime thriller that had me rooting for Mark from the moment he woke up. I loved the Scouse humour and the settings the author used as Mark jumps out of windows and even into the Mersey. The ending is such a shock and very clever indeed. I’m already waiting for the next book.

I’ve not written my full review on this but I can’t stop thinking about it and I’m dying to talk to other people for their opinion. We are introduced to Natalie, a trad wife influencer in the US with a hugely successful social media business and merchandising from their ranch Yesteryear. Natalie espouses the traditional life where the man is the head of the household and the woman looks after the home and their ever growing family. Her husband Caleb works the farm, while she runs the business with the help of two nannies and a producer. The monetisation paradox is clear to see, she’s making a living by preaching values that she doesn’t live by. Natalie wants her followers to embrace her trad view on family life, but has turned her ideology into a successful business run by a woman. Followers can watch her baking bread or collecting eggs from the chickens, but they don’t see her childcare or the producer who live on the isolated ranch with the family. Thanks to some clever remodelling of the house they also have all mod cons, but hidden from view with clever screening. Natalie tells women they should submit to their husbands, while agreeing privately that her own is an idiot. Without her this family would be lost. At university Natalie kept herself to herself, noting her roommate’s promiscuity and feminist viewpoint knowing she would become one of the ‘angry women’. Women who think they can have it all – the career, the marriage, the home, the children – end up doing it all and no wonder they’re angry. She still criticises the angry woman; seemingly never realising that’s exactly who she is and that her life is unsustainable. One morning she wakes up when it’s still dark, she can hear children having breakfast in the kitchen. Why hasn’t anyone put a light on? As she makes her way into the kitchen she realises that it’s very basic and her children are eating by candlelight. Except they’re not her children. The oldest girl is looking after them, but she doesn’t know her. Then she sees Caleb, but there’s nothing behind his eyes. They seem to living a real pioneer life, with everything done by hand, no hidden gadgets or shortcuts, no staff, no filming. Is this a nightmare? Has she been imprisoned here? Has she time travelled? You will ask all these questions alongside Natalie as the author takes you back and forth from the internet friendly lifestyle she created and the real thing. The author has managed to make an unlikeable character incredibly compelling, asks questions of this strange world where everyone has a real life and an Instagram ready life, and challenges ideals that current US politicians are advocating for women. The minute you finish this book you will want to find someone else who’s finished it so you can talk.

It was lovely to spend some time this month in one of Faith Hogan’s warm and welcoming worlds, this time on an isolated Irish island called Pin Hill. In this small community, sisters Blythe and Rae grew up with their grandparents at the family hotel in Hope Square after the death of their parents. Blythe’s ambition in life was to train in hospitality at university and follow her grandad into the family’s hotel business. Rae on the other hand was more of ‘go with the flow’ girl, spending her time with friends rather than learning the family trade. Yet, when we meet the grown up sisters, life hasn’t turned out as planned. Blythe lives in her own guest house at Still Water House with handyman husband Kip and daughter Siggy. Rae’s husband Marcus has died and she’s living alone in the Hope Street Hotel, where she’s run the family business with her husband for many years. What happened to place these sisters at odds with their expectations, especially Blythe who lived and breathed the hotel. As always Faith has created some great characters here in the rather strident and opinionated Blythe and her quieter, less confident sister. Blythe’s actually a bit much in parts and I found her very hard to like. We’re taken back and forth to the women’s teenage years where the explanations lie and uncover the secrets and events that set them on the wrong paths. While in the present day, Rae is struggling to maintain the hotel alone and has discovered financial problems her husband covered up. Unfortunately they aren’t the only secrets about her marriage. She has the help and support of niece Siggy and refugee Danial who’s just moved to the island with his grandmother. Blythe is suspicious of both of them and becomes obsessed with Rae’s potential plans for the hotel, setting herself on a path to disaster. This was a lovely, warm novel with great moments of humour in between the sister’s broken relationship. This is the perfect summer holiday read.

First of all I have to mention that gorgeous Art Nouveau cover on this novel, matching perfectly with the time period which is post WW1. This is one of my favourite periods for historical novels because I’m fascinated with the pace of societal change that ranged across class, gender and sexuality. It’s also a period where mental health issues and disability became much more prominent. Many men came home from the war with amputations and facial disfigurements, changing their lives forever. Of course many men didn’t return and every family was touched by loss either on the battlefield or in the waves of Spanish Flu that broke out after Armistice Day. Into this period of seismic change, Rue Baldry has written a beautiful story of forbidden love that touches the heart. Our two narrators are Albert and Edgar, who are both at a boarding school but for different reasons, despite being close in age. Albert was demobbed and needed a job, so is working at the school as a gardener. He has been through so much, yet is only 19 years old. Edgar is 18, a schoolboy from the middle classes who has just missed active service and longs to train as a doctor despite his dad’s wishes. When they meet there’s an instant affinity between them and we’re drawn into their fledgling love. This is a book that’s so evocative of the era whether it’s the old-fashioned British private school or in hell of the trenches. I thought the exploration of a class divide between the two men was very well done too and represented the societal changes in post-WW1 England. It’s impossible not to be drawn in by this love story, especially poignant considering these men were paved the way for the more permissive society we have today. There is no better representation of love is love,

In Ireland, Maggie has grown up hearing her mother tell her the bedtime story of The Glass Key. It’s a Nordic fairytale passed down by Maggie’s grandmother Anna Swan, who mysteriously left her home one stormy night years ago, never to return. Now Maggie’s grandfather has died and going through his things, Maggie is shocked to discover a faded wartime letter, asking him to take in a baby. In that moment she realises that Anna Swan was a woman of many secrets.

Only by travelling to Norway and discovering the story of four brave young women whose lives were forever changed by the occupation of their tiny islands, can Maggie uncover the shocking truth about her family – and finally unlock the mystery of the glass key…

I’ve still to write my review for this one, but I enjoyed it immensely particularly the WW2 timeline in the Norwegian islands that I knew nothing about. People displaced and lost during WW2 is close to my heart as my late husband was Polish and both of his parents were displaced during the war. I loved how the author showed how far the war reached and how it was only on one tiny uninhabited island that the young women could let go of it for just one afternoon. Amanda’s novels are real favourites of mine and this had everything – family secrets, hidden letters, forbidden relationships, espionage and some incredibly brave women. This should be on every historical fiction fan’s summer list.

Last, but definitely not least we come to Matson Taylor, not only a great writer but an all round good egg. His knowledge of art. architecture, and ancient Rome gives us a fabulous summer setting for this standalone novel about found family in the eternal city. A wobble on a new Vespa has Clemmie and Monty literally bumping into each other on a bridge flanked with angels as the novel opens. Monty’s injuries aren’t too severe but mean he can’t work on the renovation job he has in Rome. Now without a roof over his head and needing to recover from concussion (at least he hopes that’s why he can hear Octavian the cat talking to him) Clemmie and her friend Floss offer their palazzo. In their very unique home he finds the rest, relaxation and the care he has needed for a long time. You’ll fall in love with Monty who really is one of life’s innocents or what me and my mum call ‘new people’ who are on their first incarnation in the world. What he does have are secrets and a private grief that he’s never shared. Matson brings him together with the caring aspiring writer Clemmie and her friend, the flamboyant retired actress Floss. Add to these eccentrics a pair of food smuggling nuns, a man who lives in a converted ice cream van and a little twinkle of magic too. I never want Matson to stop writing because where else would I find scenes of nuns going to a gay disco? Set in the 1970s where the height of fashion is Floss’s new avocado en-suite, dazzling Rome is brought beautifully to life and as always there are deep emotions at its core. This is a wonderful comfort read for the summer, especially for those of us who are staycationing.

Here’s next months tbr, if I don’t get distracted of course!

Posted in Squad Pod Collective

Liar Liar by Luca Veste

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Even good people do bad things…

Once hailed as Liverpool’s finest detective, Mark Fletcher brought a serial killer to justice and earned the city’s admiration. But when he’s accused of working with Liverpool’s most notorious crime family, his legacy is shattered – and so is his life.

Now disgraced and spiralling, Fletcher wakes up in a hotel room with no memory of the last 24 hours… and a dead body beside him.

The evidence says he did it. His instincts say otherwise.

Hunted by the force he once served, Fletcher must uncover the truth – not just to clear his name, but to survive. Because someone wants him silenced, and they’ll stop at nothing to finish what they started…

Wow! What an opener to a new series from Luca Veste, set in his hometown of Liverpool which just happens to be my mum’s hometown too. I’ve spent time in Liverpool since I was a little girl, visiting family in Rainhill, going to mass at the the cathedral and visiting art exhibitions as a teenager when the Tate opened up on the Albert Dock. It was the first trip my husband and I took with his daughters visiting the museums and going vintage shopping on Bold Street. They loved it so much that my eldest stepdaughter and her boyfriend have been living there for the last three years for university and are making the city their home. Mostly I love the people and their attitude on life, their resilience, their determination to fight injustice and the way they stick together. It’s a great city with so much diversity, both in its residents and its buildings something the author really captures in this novel. He uses different areas of the city for different moods, showing that there’s a reason Liverpool is often used as a film set for shows like Peaky Blinders, This City Is Ours and The Responder, capturing the grandeur of the Georgian quarter, the more run down areas and where industrial buildings from it’s heyday as a port city have been revamped for new projects. It’s no surprise it’s often used in feature films to represent New York, because Liverpool’s energy made NYC feel strangely familiar when I first visited. It also has a darker, criminal underbelly that the author delves into here.

The incredible cover for the book features the iconic Liver Birds, one looking towards the city and the other looking out over the Mersey. They bring a gothic feel to the cover and this is definitely a very dark tale, highlighting the criminal underworld that visitors don’t get to see. While the Liver Birds and grand riverfront buildings have grandeur they never lose their sense of humour, the Cunard Building’s distinctive brickwork mean its known as the Streaky Bacon building, the grand grey stone buildings in the administrative district have pride coloured pigeons on the eaves reminding us it’s also the gay quarter and there are also Superlambananas – yes they are exactly what they sound like. Even the huge Queen Victoria statue at the end of Castle Street has its own name – Victoria’s Knob – because her sceptre looks very phallic from a certain angle. It’s Castle Street where the book opens as suspended police detective, Mark Fletcher, wakes up in a hotel room bed with a dead man. From that point we follow Mark’s every decision as he tries to save his career, but also his life. He has two choices: to call it in and hope he has enough goodwill left that his colleagues will listen or to leave the hotel and try to investigate. Who wants him implicated in a murder? Do they want to give him a taste of his own medicine and see him jailed or are they playing a game that ends with his death? In between the action packed present day, we’re taken back to nine months ago when Mark was riding high, the detective responsible for catching the Butcher of Bootle. What could possibly have happened to start the fall from grace he’s had in such a short time? The answer to that question lies with one woman, Sofia Bonnuci and her gangster family. The minute he tried to help by hiding Sofia from her violent boyfriend everything changed. Today, from the moment Mark wakes up, the plot is action packed as he jumps out of windows and into the Mersey, dodges suspects and bullets at breathless speed. We tear across Liverpool from the very grand Castle Street to the docks, Rainhill and into the Wirral. I loved the dialogue too, full of Scouse humour with references to ‘the bizzies’ and Brookside as Mark’s old colleagues Kirkham and Abs investigate a body found buried in someone’s back garden in Kirby- their boss asking whether anyone called Sinbad lived there. They find out that the landlord of the houses is an agent who works for the Bonucci family. Could these events be linked in some way or is it just a coincidence? 

Mark really does grab you as a central character and I was on his side immediately. We’re privy to all his thoughts and deductions, as well as his changing emotions as the day progresses. This is a deliberate choice by the author who wants us to bond with the central character in this new series. I trusted him too because he feels like a good man who’s made some poor choices, possibly due to being one of life’s ‘rescuers’. He can’t resist helping, even if it has meant stretching the rules a little. Stepping outside the rules only works when nothing goes wrong, but when it does the situation runs away from him and here he is living alone, drinking a little too much and potentially losing the job he loves. It’s a case of poor judgement, something that plays into his decisions now, involving other people in what could be a doomed situation. His colleagues Kirkham and Abs will soon start investigating the body in the hotel. Would they even believe Mark if he did contact them? The discussions between them show the impact of Mark’s previous actions on his team, with Abs pointing out that they were close and now nobody even talks about him. It’s hard to know what to think, especially when they see CCTV from the hotel. Did Mark made one mistake that went drastically wrong or has he been completely rogue all along? We are let into their world of the Bonucci family too, where legitimate business interests across the city seem to be a cover for more illegal activities. This family are like a liquid that’s seeped into every area of Liverpool and the author cleverly sets them up for future novels with a potential interest in a new Italian restaurant that sounds very like a favourite of mine in Bold Street. A power struggle seems to be emerging, with Salvatore Bonucci now becoming older, his seconds in command Gino and Frankie, are jostling for position and both have very different approaches to business. 

The tension is absolutely nail-biting as Mark ends up cornered but escapes again and again. However, constantly looking over your shoulder is wearing and Mark is getting colder, dirtier and more tired all the time. There’s also his mental state, as his conscience is battered again and again will he simply run out of self-belief? Every time he escapes, his choices narrow. A show down is coming, but will it be with his old colleagues or will the Bonucci family find him first? The ending of this book, when it comes, was so unexpected my jaw dropped. The forbidding setting of Toxteth Reservoir is a brilliant choice, with derelict buildings full of dark, damp labyrinth of endless corridors and hiding places. It brings us full circle back to the gothic Liver Birds:

‘Their wings weren’t spread in triumph, but half open as if caught in the moment before deciding whether to strike”. 

They’re a metaphor for the whole book, constantly on edge and potentially dangerous, leaving the reader trailing behind unsure what’s going to happen next. It’s clear Luca Veste values his readers by giving his previous Liverpool Detectives a cameo, with Murphy as Kirkham and Abs’s boss and Rossi helping her parents set up their (very familiar) new restaurant. He’s setting them firmly into the future of this series, something fans will love. This has definitely whet my appetite for more from this team, thanks to the author’s love for his city and his ability to surprise the hell out of his readers.

Out now from Harper Collins

 

Meet the Author

Luca Veste is a writer of Italian and Liverpudlian heritage, married with two young daughters, and one of nine children. He studied psychology and criminology at university in Liverpool. He is the author of the Murphy and Rossi series, which includes DEAD GONE, THE DYING PLACE, BLOODSTREAM, and THEN SHE WAS GONE.

Part psychological thriller, part police procedural, his books follow the detective pairing of DI David Murphy and DS Laura Rossi. The novels are set in Liverpool, bringing the city to life in a dark and terrifying manner…with just a splash of Scouse humour. Liar Liar is the first in a new crime series set in Liverpool.

Posted in Squad Pod Collective

Dark Is The Morning by Rupert Thomson 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Sometimes love isn’t where you belong

In a mountain village in the Abruzzo region of Italy, Gino, a troubled young man, realises that his childhood sweetheart Franca can give his life the happiness and stability he needs. They seem made for each other, and move to a remote house in the countryside – but there is something in Franca’s past that haunts Gino.

Descending into pathological jealousy and resentment towards a married man who had been Franca’s lover, Gino is unable to stop himself imagining the worst, and embarks on a violent path that has catastrophic consequences.

There couldn’t be a better book for a counsellor to read than this one, following the life of Gino who lives in a small Italian town on the Adriatic Sea. The setting isn’t a bucolic, sun drenched and charming little town, despite Gino’s upbringing on his father’s smallholding where he mainly grows tomatoes. This is a grittier Italy, perfectly suited to the story and Gino himself. Although there is a sense that there’s a different existence within reach, perhaps the life his father has living off the land or whatever brings his father’s friend Harry back every few months. Whatever contentment is, Gino doesn’t know how to find it or accept it once he has it. Gino was born here and makes the comment that he’ll die here if he isn’t careful. He doesn’t want to live the life his parents have, he has bigger and better things to do. However, it could also be the foreshadowing of what’s to come when he meets Franca again. Franca was at school with Gino and in some senses he feels they’re both outsiders: ‘She was a strange little stringy thing, with a thin face and brown hair’. Franca was nicknamed The Rat by other girls, but then Gino was called Dopey after the dwarf in Snow White. She’s very bold, walking up to Gino and telling him that she’s going to marry him one day something both of them were teased about for years. Now, when his father mentions her, he seems irritated but they do have something in common, an inability to live up to their heroic parents. Gino confided in her when they were thirteen, saying all he seems to do is disappoint his father. Franca seems to get this, after all Gino’s father is known for something heroic he did in WW2 and her father is the local ambulance man. Maybe, she suggests, they could be something different to each other? She’s a realist, saying her father could have wanted a beautiful daughter and she’s aware she isn’t. How can they compare to heroes? They are only human. Gino gets into trouble in his teens and spent time in a psychiatric unit and he admits he’d forgotten his old friend, but the conversation with his father lights up his memory and he questions his choices. With a new view on life he searches Franca out and asks to take her to dinner and they are married in a whirlwind and given the chance to make a home in her aunt’s house in the countryside. Is it possible that Gino has learned from his mistakes and now sees what is important in life? 

If I had a trainee who wanted to understand the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy concept of negative automatic thoughts I’d get them to read this book. Everything Gino experiences is filtered through a faulty lens. Whether this is innate or a result of constantly feeling like a disappointment is hard to tell. At the moment he has it all, but in his mind it’s already unravelling. The house needs a lot of work, but could be a secluded haven for a family. Gino hears that something strange happened to Franca’s aunt here during the war and starts to wonder about it, could an event like that leave something in the house like a mood or a feeling? Is the house unlucky in some way? To be transparent about her past Franca tells him about an affair she had with one of her father’s friends. Although outwardly he seems to accept this confession, inwardly it becomes a nagging concern he can’t shake off. He asks others about man who has a concrete business, telling them he has a friend who’s putting in a pool. He tells himself he just wants to look at him, but can he resist speaking to him or perhaps even warning him off? At the end of her working day Franca goes to a cafe in town to wait for Gino to pick her up after work. He notices that she’s chatting to a man, laughing and passing the time of day and he knows he’s been trying to pick her up. His strangest obsession comes when his son Elio is born, a beautiful baby with amazing violet eyes. Everyone who sees him comments on what a beautiful boy he is and he genuinely seems hypnotic for some people, almost holy. All Gino can see is a boy who looks nothing like him. Neither he nor Franca are beauties so how can Elio be his and inspire such reverence in complete strangers? Being in his mind is exhausting and worrying, the author leaves us unsure what he might do next. Pressure mounts with every page and Harry is the only person who seems to get through to Gino, telling him that perhaps the boy embodies the beauty inside them both. 

Everything about Gino screams of a paranoid personality disorder, his mistrust of others and ability to twist innocent encounters into personal slights and grudges are classic symptoms. He has stopped listening to others and his behaviours become more extreme, including hallucinations that his baby son is talking to him. Franca is disturbed to come home and find Elio screaming in the house alone, while Gino is zoned out in the garden. As readers we’re inside his mind and see his motivations, the wrong patterns of thinking and the way he broods and cultivates grudges that are simply not there. Instead of facing these painful thoughts he directs his anger and obsession outward. If Elio is nothing like him, then someone else must be the father. I genuinely believe that Pierozzi would have carried on his life rarely thinking of Franca and her new husband, but Gino’s places himself in harm’s way. Pierozzi is a dangerous man. He’s described as someone things happened to and that resonated with my idea of Gino. Is this something people would eventually say about him? The way the author builds this difficult inner world is so clever and I was anxious, mainly for Franca and Elio. They are living in the middle of nowhere, with a husband and father who is no longer rational. I was mentally screaming at her to make sure she had somewhere safe to go. 

Franca is very sure of her own emotions and choices. When Gino asks her if she’d still marry him she tells him calmly that her feelings have never changed. However she does have “something of the fox about her. That sudden, absolute stillness, that pricking of the ears, that readiness to flee.” Will Franca be just as resolute if she does sense danger? I felt so sad for her, because Gino’s obsession with her past harms her, even though it has nothing to do with him. Why can’t he see that she has only ever loved him? Despite him leaving and never making her any promises when they’re younger, her love never dies. That shows loyalty, but it’s never appreciated or rewarded. Even the beautiful son they have isn’t enough and I wondered if it was partly about his fears of her infidelity but mainly about his relationship with his own father. They were so different in character and distant emotionally, did he ever wonder about his own paternity? The author bookends this story with Harry as the narrator and honestly I had an emotional reaction to being back in Harry’s steady hands at the end. Being in his world felt safer and the way he frames Gino’s story gives it some closure and structure too. I found myself wondering how I’d work with a client like Gino and whether he could ever be satisfied with his life. This book has emotional depth and complexity, tension and action alongside some incredibly surreal moments too. I would definitely read this author again. 

Out now from Head of Zeus

Meet the Author

Rupert Thomson is the author of fifteen critically acclaimed novels, including ‘The Insult’, which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize, and chosen by David Bowie as one of the 100 Must-Read Books of All Time, ‘The Book of Revelation’, which was made into a feature film by the Australian writer/director, Ana Kokkinos, and ‘Death of a Murderer’, which was shortlisted for the Costa Prize.

His latest novel, ‘Dark is the Morning’, was published on May 7th 2026. Praised in advance by the likes of Chloe Aridjis, Claire-Louise Bennet, Sarah Waters, Julie Myerson, and Philip Pullman, LoveReading subsequently made it one of their Star Books of the Year, saying “Thomson’s writing casts an almost other-worldly spell…Teeming with tension, ‘Dark is the Morning’ represents literary fiction at its most page-turningly thrilling and poignant.” According to the Financial Times, which admired Thomson’s “stunned, post-traumatic prose”, it’s “the ideal holiday read: frictionless at the level of the sentence; stealthy, romantic, and utterly unpredictable in every other way.”

Rupert Thomson is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has contributed to the Financial Times, Granta, the Guardian, the Independent, and the London Review of Books. He has lived in many cities around the world, including Athens, Berlin, Amsterdam, New York, Sydney, Rome, and most recently Barcelona. He currently lives in London.

Posted in Netgalley

A Twist in the River by Stig Abell 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

A beautiful summer day

When young nurse Claire Davidson goes missing on the riverbank, the only clues left behind are her phone and shoes.

A mystery that sweeps the nation

People disappear all the time, but this case sparks an online frenzy. Amateur investigators descend on the rural idyll. Is Claire Davidson just the story of a swim that went wrong, or could there be truth to the conspiracies?

A killer growing bolder

Then another woman is discovered dead in the river. Jake Jackson, a former detective who came to the countryside searching for peace, must investigate before more lives are lost.

It’s lovely to be back at Jake’s home Little Sky, even if it does have a worrying proximity to serial killers. Jake is drawn into the search for a woman who was last seen going for a run by the river. When a body is eventually found it turns out to be a different woman. Jake is asked to consult with DI McAllister because even though it could still be a case of nature becoming dangerous, anxiety is raised in the community who have been working in groups to find the first missing woman. The possibility of a killer brings out the true crime influencers who start to stalk the river and the village’s inhabitants, including Jake who has gained a reputation as an investigator. The author brings in aspects of the manosphere and militant feminism to the case, highlighting new residents and groups we’ve not met before. Alongside his usual team of Martha, Aletheia and partner Livia, Jake is very keen to find the answers to this case before the birth of his first child. Little Sky is a quirky place to live, with no road and total peace from the outside world, a world that did encroach on Jake and Livia a little bit this time. I felt like he was at Little Sky less than before and this distance from his peaceful haven had an effect emotionally. Has the role he’s been pulled into opened him up to more danger than before when he was a police officer? Is what he does making Livia a target? 

At heart Jake is a book fiend, something all readers relish in a character and we find him perusing the shelves of his nearest second hand bookshop for additions to the crime fiction library at Little Sky. I felt like there was a build up in the tension of this novel. Jake has hardly had a break since his last case and since he originally came to this corner of the world as a sanctuary I feel like he needs some down time. He’s also becoming more well known which is problematic and does cause some tension between him and Livia. The online world encroaches more and more into our worlds and this crime is no exception. The village becomes besieged by true crime enthusiasts, filming content and in one case trying to find their way into Jake’s investigation. The fact that this is a woman doesn’t help, because Dani is clearly flirting to get the information she wants and even uses the couple’s secret signal to get Jake to meet her. This is an intrusion too far and Livia is furious. As always, the ethical questions of using someone’s violent death as entertainment come to mind, not missing the irony that the book hinges on the very same prurient interest. However, there’s also danger for these online sleuths. They don’t have the police back up that Jake does, or the experience of his years as a detective and they’re working entirely alone. Another theme is the manosphere and misogyny, embodied by a group of men who come and join the search in its first twenty four hours. These are men who spend many hours together in the gym, with all the banter and macho competition common in men who exercise together. I didn’t like the vibe of this group, particularly when they invite Jake to join them at the gym. Jake is no stranger to exercise and is very strong, but it’s always solo and involves long walks and runs, swimming in the lake and working in the garden. I felt he was being manipulated and coerced into competition, but the conversation is eye opening and worth every pull up. They bemoan the fact that women don’t act like they used to: 

“I think women should be pretty like they used to be. Delicate you know. They should look the right way to please a man.” 

They’re angry at being seen as toxic males and their views collide strongly with a couple who run a pottery studio by the river. Livia would like to take one of their classes so she and Jake go to meet the women and take the opportunity to ask if they’ve seen anything. Both women are feminists but it’s Emma who is clearly very angry at the way men treat women and at this killer who she believes has an issue with modern women. One of the stranger aspects of this killer’s modus operandi is the time they take to paint the victim’s nails. Jake wonders if Emma is angry enough to kill to make her point. In the background Aletheia and Martha do their usual sterling work, with Aletheia liaising with her police contacts and Martha managing to gain access to a worrying amount of information online from official sources that should be unhackable. Martha is by far my favourite and I loved that the author included Jake’s preparations to have her stay at Little Sky. As a wheelchair user I get irate when books and TV series have people with disabilities seemingly able to live in houses with stairs or work independently in a way that would be impossible. Martha is brilliant because the author includes the physical barriers that leave her at a disadvantage, such as Jake’s ramps all over Little Sky showing how much he wants to include her in this space. It’s great that she’s included and the author lets us know what it takes to include her. Someone knows their social model of disability. Martha is forthright, driven and has creative ways of treating her chronic pain. Despite some limitations she’s super intelligent and often ahead of the rest of the team.

This series is always a slow burn, but the action packed final chapters are nail-bitingly tense and violent. This killer knows exactly where to hurt Jake. As usual Jake finds a way to catch them off guard – a wet hairy naked man leaping out of the darkness is always terrifying and this definitely raised a smile. I felt there was more tension between him and Livia, probably down to hormones and the very real prospect that they are bringing a child into this rather uncertain existence. Livia is usually so relaxed and brings calm to the chaos but here she seemed unsettled and insecure. However, Jake is aware and his decision about their lives moving forward will go a long way towards reassuring her and Diana. On Livia’s behalf I’d like to ask the author if this couple can have the holiday they desperately need before more adventures and a new baby comes their way. 

Meet the Author

Stig Abell believes that discovering a crime fiction series to enjoy is one of the great pleasures in life. His first novel, Death Under A Little Sky, introduced Jake Jackson and his attempt to get away from his former life in the beautiful area around Little Sky, followed by Death in a Lonely Place and The Burial Place. Stig is absolutely delighted that there are more on the way. Away from books, he presents the breakfast show on Times Radio, a station he helped to launch in 2020. Before that he was a regular presenter on Radio 4’s Front Row and was the editor and publisher of the Times Literary Supplement. He lives in London with his wife, three children and two independent-minded cats called Boo and Ninja (his children named them, obviously).

Out Now from Hemlock Press

Posted in Squad Pod

Last One Out by Jane Harper 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Carrolan Ridge is a dying town. Ever since the Lentzer mining company decided to expand into the area everything has changed. Some people fought to keep the community together but as offers went out for homes and land surrounding the area of the new quarries, it was only a matter of time. At first they offered silly money and the people who took it were seen as traitors, then as the money dwindled more people took the hint. Now it’s a ghost town, only a few people left and a constant vibrating hum of mining activity. Ro left a while ago but she’s back for a few days, staying with her estranged husband Griff. He lives in the house they used to own while he works as Lentzer’s fire officer. It’s the annual memorial for their son Sam, who disappeared five years ago at the three houses where people held out as long as possible. The bungalow once belonged to his Uncle Warren, but Ro and Griff have no more idea why Sam was here than they did five years ago. Sam was researching the effect of industry on the town he was born in, interviewing the people who still lived there. He left his hire car half way up the drive and disappeared into thin air. It had been a tough time, Ro’s father was killed by a car and ten days later Griff’s brother Warren committed suicide in the quarry. The family were engulfed in grief and the worry over Sam, who wasn’t found. Ro only left when the medical centre closed. She was the GP for these people, now she’s an infrequent visitor, no longer able to stay in the place where they were a happy family. Griff can’t leave till he finds his son. When daughter Della arrives they’ll follow the same yearly ritual, but as ever Ro and Griff find their feet take them to where their son disappeared. Still looking for clues as to what went wrong. 

The author creates such a heavy atmosphere around this small town, driven home by the constant vibrations and the sound of trucks thundering up and down the road. When Ro visits the three houses at the quarry’s edge, a woman is there maintaining the biggest house unable to watch it become derelict. Ro observes it would have been better to demolish them all. There’s constant dust, in the houses, on their cars and in the air. It feels as if the quarry is pressing down on residents and it’s emotionally draining. There’s the claustrophobia that comes from being oppressed and the empty parts of town feel ghostly with Ro hearing a weird clanging noise when she ventures in. The longer people have stayed the worse their lifestyle has become: there’s nothing for children to do; people have to travel for medical help and essentials; the pub only opens once in a while. The author has created an atmosphere where people no longer trust each other. Those who tried to save the town are resentful of those who left early and made good money. Now their houses are worthless and there’s nothing to look forward to, as soon as they can teenagers leave for better prospects. One shrine stands to the old town and that belongs to Bernie, the father of Griff’s friend Noah. It’s a shack that he built with his son and it is full of keepsakes people have brought from places closed down. Even this is rundown and full of dust. It feels like the last gasp of a town on its knees and the repository for all its sadness. 

Ro is intelligent, resilient and a survivor. She knew she had to leave in order to live, not to forget Sam but to have a life without reminders at every turn. We can see this happen as she catches up with friends and they gather at the pub. While having a drink Ro slips into nostalgia, remembering their wedding day and dancing in this very bar. I could see why she left as the days passed, the frostiness between leavers and stayers is so evident and everyone wants to remember Sam, which is lovely but Ro almost wants to have him to herself. Everyone grieves in their own way and I could feel the tension building at the memorial which has become a public event and Ro doesn’t enjoy that part of it. Her walk with Griff, along the path where it’s believed Sam must have got into trouble, is much more private. Each of them thinking their own private thoughts and respecting each other’s need for silence. She’s a natural investigator, which possibly comes from her medical training. She looks around with suspicion, knowing that someone must know something. She reads his notebook again, looking for clues in the last interviews he did and noting anything of interest. Sam is a very real character in the book, although he isn’t present. The sunflower seeds Ro finds in the house that he carefully saved for her garden, the respectful way he treated everyone he interviewed and his emotional intelligence shine out. Sam, Darcy and Jacob were always a three, but after Sam has been away at university he realises that he’s changed and they’ve become closer to each other. He’s invested in what happened at Carrolan Ridge but he knows it’s not his future. However, I could see from his research that he’s asking dangerous questions. He may be a gentle interviewer but he’s still asking people to face their choices and question the decisions they’ve made. Some of his subjects might have found that very difficult to do. 

I felt like Ro still loved her husband. In fact they have a lot of respect for each other and make quite a formidable team. There is a section about her garden at the house, where she’d grown vegetables in containers and loved pottering at weekends. She can barely go and look at what it’s become and it’s almost become entwined in her mind with the town, something that’s broken and dying; ‘what she wanted didn’t exist anymore, she knew, and the sad, pale husk of it’s memory would only make things worse.” She’s surprised to find it flourishing and full of flowers when she goes to plant her sunflower seeds. It made me quite emotional to think of Griff doing that, almost as if he’s tending the garden since he can’t work on his marriage. Ro needs to have the realisation that just because Griff stayed doesn’t mean he loved Sam more or loved her less, it was just the only choice he could make in his grief. This is a slow burn novel but it needs to be so the author can properly explore the complexities of the town’s relationships, the different perspectives between generations and who, if anyone, wanted to harm Sam. As the pressure built towards the end I was desperate for Sam’s family to find him, and for Ro and Griff to reach an understanding too. Clues start to appear and I couldn’t put the book down till I knew. The story didn’t end how I expected but it was so good to finally have a flashback, to follow Sam on that day and discover what happened. It was a satisfying ending and made absolute sense, even though I hadn’t expected it at all. This is an excellent slow burn thriller in an incredibly atmospheric setting, exactly what I’d expected from this brilliant author. 

Out 23rd April 2026 from MacMillan

Meet the Author

Jane Harper is the author of The Dry, winner of various awards including the 2015 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, the 2017 Indie Award Book of the Year, the 2017 Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year Award and the CWA Gold Dagger Award for the best crime novel of 2017. Rights have been sold in 27 territories worldwide, and film rights optioned to Reese Witherspoon and Bruna Papandrea. Jane worked as a print journalist for thirteen years both in Australia and the UK and lives in Melbourne.

Posted in Netgalley

The Family Friend by Claire Douglas 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

This is a cleverly plotted thriller by the author, designed to grab your attention and keep the questions coming. Imogen has lived with her boyfriend Josh since they were teenagers. She doesn’t have a big family because of a terrible incident in her past, her father was convicted of killing her mother after a Halloween party. With her father in prison, Imogen is lucky to have older sister Alison who put her life on hold to come back and look after Imogen until she went to university. We meet Imogen at a crossroads after a difficult time at work, she’s on indefinite leave from her job as an investigative journalist after a story led her into danger. She’s shocked to receive a phone call from a solicitor who asks her to come into their offices the next day. It would seem that her mother’s old friend Dorothea has died. Imogen remembers Dorothea very fondly after she took them in when her mum left her dad after years of abuse. Dorothea was a rather unconventional woman, an artist who worked with women who’ve suffered domestic violence using art therapy. Imogen has very fond memories of Dorothea’s large Victorian villa, complete with its own wood and studio. Imogen felt safe there, but it is still a shock to learn that this beautiful villa now belongs to her. As Imogen tries to come to terms with this legacy, questions start to form about Dorothea’s intentions. Was her death an accident? Who is the secretive author writing a book about her? What is contained in the underground bunker found in the wood? Imogen thinks all of this has something to do with her past and her investigative brain starts working. 

This author knows exactly how to grab a reader and keep you asking questions. She drip feeds the answers by taking us into Dorothea’s past and the reasons she worked with women affected by domestic violence. We go into her own marriage, her meeting with fellow survivors Annette and Rosemary and founding the charity that helped Imogen and her mum. I kept reading, waiting for the flashbacks to that night – the terrible night Imogen and Alison’s mum died. Although with her dad asking to see her from prison, maybe she will have to weigh up different versions of the truth. The author constantly drops little clues and hints such as the items hanging off one of Dorothy’s final sculptures hidden in the bunker. Imogen also finds a piece of expensive cloth torn and caught on a small opening created in the perimeter fence. Is someone watching Imogen or was Dorothea the target? There are also emotional clues in the present with a little red flag popping up around Josh, Imogen’s boyfriend. They’ve been together forever, so it seemed strange that she needed time away from him to process and explore her new home. He also seemed to assume some things, like wanting to take over Dorothea’s office without realising that Imogen is grieving and it’s a space very personal to Dorothea. I didn’t like the sulking and withdrawing when he didn’t get what he wanted. I wondered if the inheritance had made him feel insecure, after all it does belong to Imogen and not him. 

The character I enjoyed most was Dorothea who casts a long shadow over the book, despite being dead. I felt like she becomes Imogen’s saviour again, in many different ways. She has been such a creative woman, something I always admire, but also formidable. Learning some of her history makes us realise why she’s so self-reliant. As for Imogen, she didn’t grab me in the same way and I had a really hard time imagining her as an investigative journalist. I had to wonder whether she was a very different character at work and if so, why does she change at home. If we factor in the trauma of observing domestic violence in the home, it could be that the dynamic has conditioned her to avoid conflict and appear subservient. I felt the longer she was in Dorothea’s house the stronger she became and I hoped she was up to making some very hard choices. Her relationship with her sister Alison is interesting, because she had left home before the home environment worsened. When their father was arrested for their mother’s death, Dorothea offered to have Imogen but Alison wanted to keep her close. Was this a sister’s guilt, a need to keep them together, or was there something in Dorothea that Alison didn’t trust? As a result Alison does have a mum’s vibe with Imogen and it’s interesting to see that relationship develop over the course of the book. It’s very hard for Imogen to accept that Alison has visited their father, who still protests his innocence. This could definitely put a wedge between them. What I missed most was the perspective of Imogen’s mum and I would have loved a flashback into how she felt. 

I loved the feel of the house and it reminded me so much of a family friend’s house that we visited a lot as children. They had a horse and lots of other animals, so the house wasn’t spotless but they had art, books and so many beautiful things that I think it influenced my love of interiors and weird objects. It also gave me a yearning to learn and understand art and literature. This is what the summer at Dorothea’s does for Immy, it opens her up to ideas and ambitions she might not have had otherwise. I loved how the sisters come together to try and solve the puzzle of Dorothea’s art and how that closeness allows Imogen to confide in her sister about her concerns; how do we tell the difference between caring too much and control? There’s something about them becoming more open with each other that gives Imogen more strength and purpose. I did not expect to go where the author takes us at the end and I think  it was a brilliant idea. Anyone in our lives can be controlling and we must trust our good when it tells us something isn’t right. This was a great thriller, full of unusual twists and clues, plus some red herrings. I thoroughly enjoyed delving into the past with Imogen’s story and particularly the strengthening of the sister’s relationship. 

Out now from Penguin.

Meet the Author

Claire Douglas is the Sunday Times number one bestselling author of eight stand alone novels: The Sisters (2015), Local Girl Missing (2016), Last Seen Alive (2017), Do Not Disturb (2018), Then She Vanishes (2019) and Just Like The Other Girls (2020). Her seventh, The Couple At No 9 (2021) was an Amazon number one bestseller, a number three Sunday Times bestseller and most recently hit number one on Germany’s Der Spiegel paperback bestsellers chart. The Girls Who Disappeared was a Richard and Judy book club pick for Autumn 2022 and was an instant number one Sunday Times bestseller. Her books have sold over a million copies in the UK and have been published worldwide.

Posted in Monthly Wrap Up, Uncategorized

Best Reads March 2026

Posted on by thelotusreaders

So it turns out that March is the month of mysteries and thrillers, suspense, plot twists and secrets aplenty! These are my favourites from the month and although I haven’t managed full reviews for some of them, these are my favourites. Wishing you all a Happy Easter weekend, hope you get some good reading and relaxation time with some treats. ❤️📚 🐇

St Monans, Fife, Scotland 1790. Two women are forced to publicly repent in church, one for adultery the other for breaching the sabbath. Wealthy housewife, Florrie, and salt serf, Eliza, form a quick and unusual bond over their mutual humiliation. So when Florrie’s husband decides she must accompany him on a trade venture to Iceland, she insists Eliza comes as her maid.

Far from home, isolated and fearful, the two women grow ever closer. Then Florrie’s husband reveals his sinister plan: he will leave her in Iceland, banished for the shame she has cast upon him. Florrie must escape, but when she turns to Eliza for help she realizes nothing is quite as it seems . . .

Based on the true story of the British Empire trying to annex Iceland as a penal colony, this books tells us about subjugation and control of women by husbands, serf owners, and ministers. Kate Foster always has strong female characters and Florrie, Eliza and Hallgerd are no exception. This was a historical thriller, full of suspense and with a few plot twists too. It’s about what happens when women reject the shame men and society say they should feel and embrace their transgressions, using them as a stepping stone to true freedom. My full review is coming up soon.

Twelve years ago, Carrie married Johan on a beach in Thailand. But as the sun set on their perfect day, armed men swarmed the island and her husband was taken, never to be seen again.

Carrie is now happily remarried; a mother of two. The past is firmly behind her – until she stumbles across Johan by accident online. He is alive and well.

As the memories of their passionate relationship flood back, Carrie is compelled to find out what happened on that beach, and why Johan never got in contact.

The man who promised her a lifetime of love is now a mystery she must solve. But are the answers worth risking her marriage, her family, and the life she fought so hard to rebuild?

The truth, it turns out, is more shocking than any lie . . .

I read this novel on my weekend away and became absolutely absorbed in the story, a love story that’s also a mystery. It’s heartbreaking, romantic but also sinister and unsettling. Our main character, Carrie Cole, has been a brilliant surgeon but gave up when she had very premature twins and felt the need to be at home with them. She lives with her husband Robin in an old cottage with a holiday let in the old piggery next door that they let through the Roof app. It’s there that she sees Johan again for the first time since his arrest in Thailand. Her urge to see him is part emotional but also a desperate need to know what happened and how he ended up back home in Sweden when he should still be in prison. I loved how the author played with our expectations of who to trust and whether Carrie should think with her heart or head. She’s safe, she’s happily married, she’s a mother about to return to work so we know the right choice to make. Right? Full review coming later in the month.

Famed children’s author Dame Eleanor Kingman has summoned her family and friends to her exquisite manor house on the cliffs. They’re celebrating her birthday – and her latest number one bestseller in her series of books based on a mother fox and her cubs.

But the night before the party, Eleanor receives an email: an email that threatens to expose the lie she’s kept up for over half a century.

Someone knows her secret. Is it her estranged literary agent? Is it her ex-husband, to whom she no longer speaks? Is it the nanny she fired all those years ago, who always did have a knack for storytelling? Or is it one of her three daughters, all of whom have a stake in the publishing empire she has built…

With a TV crew arriving to film a documentary of her life, Eleanor needs to find out who sent the email – and preserve her multimillion-pound career.

But when push comes to shove, and it’s time to tell the truth – will anyone actually believe her?

This was a brilliant thriller from Sarah Vaughan, based around a wealthy and respected children’s author and her birthday party. There’s enough tension in the air already with an event so big, but Eleanor’s three daughters each have secrets, her illustrator has turned up early for a confrontation about her percentage, there’s an odd man hanging around the grounds who approached her grandchildren and dog, plus an old couple who have apparently lost their way from their caravan park into the gardens. Told in the tense two days before the celebrations, we also get flashbacks to key moments in Eleanor’s past that might give us the answers. You’ll absolutely devour this book like I did.

When 18-year-old Christian Shaw is found dead in an Edinburgh park, the city reels – and the shock only deepens when police charge her best friends, Eliza Lawson and Isobel Smyth, with her murder.

As their trial begins and headlines scream for justice, rumours of bullying spiral into something darker: whispers of rituals, obsession, and a teenage pact gone wrong.

But then the girls take the stand – revealing a chilling defence no one saw coming – and the jury must question everything: the motives, the evidence, even their own judgement.

Who’s telling the truth? Who can be trusted?
And what really happened to Christian Shaw?

Let the Witch Trial begin . . .

Harriet Tyce’s brain works differently to other people’s! We follow the trial of two teenage girls through the eyes of a juror called Matthew who is a surgeon. He’s everything a good juror should be – reliable, intelligent, rational, objective, pillar of the community – but he seems strangely excited about this trial, having been told several times he could have been excused because of his job. As the trial moves on he seems to deteriorate: he stops wearing a shirt and tie, has a rash that spreads and irritates him, starts to drink and eat junk food. The story of witchcraft and teenage girls is intriguing, but does it constitute murder? Who is the blonde woman that catches Matthew’s eye and seems to follow him to the flat? There are so many layers to this story that your mind will be blown in the final chapters!

Ten years ago, Hope left Somerset with a fatal secret and a broken heart. She has spent a decade in the shadows, living a quiet life of penance to protect the man she once loved – the world-famous author Ambrose Glencourt.

YOUR LIFE IS NOT YOUR OWN.

Then, she opens his latest bestseller. To the world, it’s a brilliant work of fiction. To Hope, it’s a betrayal. Every private moment, every dark truth, and every ‘fatal disaster’ from that summer is laid bare on the page.

YOUR TRUTH IS A LIE.

But Ambrose has changed the ending. In his version of the story, Hope isn’t the victim. She’s the villain.

Now, Hope must step out of the shadows to reclaim her narrative. But in a world of glamorous elites and whispered secrets, who will believe the word of an unreliable woman against the word of a literary icon?

Two narrators. One truth. And a secret worth killing for.

This novel is another triumph for this incredible writer, with so many layers and very timely themes around rich white men and their assumption of their own genius and their right to exploit those around them. Hope is a compelling character whose one summer with Ambrose and his wife Delia sets her life on a different course. To find the events of that summer in a book, prompts her to go to the police and tell her story to detective Nat. Is this the ramblings of a mad, middle aged woman or is something very wrong at Shadowlands, the Glencourt’s mansion. Hall beautifully shows us young love and how a girl who loves books can be manipulated by someone who believes young, naive lower class girls who worship writers are theirs for the taking. I love how Hall weaves in the concept of playing with reality, how we construct stories and who has the right to tell them.

There’s something out there in the darkness.
By morning, bones lie in the snow, picked clean.

Zach knows the moods of the mountains – his mother taught him before she was gone. His father and the other men on the ski weekend think they know better though.

Drinking and boasting, they laugh in the face of the icy conditions.

But Zach understands what danger looks like. Can he survive the wilderness, and all the monsters within it?

This is a stunning new novel from Tracy Sierra, whose debut novel NightWatching was one of my favourite books of 2024. This is just as good as that thrilling debut, if not better. Set in one weekend in the mountains, this is no ordinary trip or boy’s own adventure. Everyone who is coming is there to be impressed by Zach’s dad and his latest business venture. Everything has to go right. Everything is told through Zach’s eyes and we can see him slowly lose his innocence as he notices that his dad doesn’t have half the knowledge about the outdoors that his mother had, everyone else can see that all his gear is new, flash and not what a regular skier or hiker would use. Zach can also see they dislike him. Russ is the only other kid on the trip and he knows that these men are going to lead them into danger, simply because they’re selfish and full of bravado. They must get to do exactly what they want and damn the consequences. Tracy Sierra gets inside this little boy’s mind perfectly and I was desperate for him to survive, but with a strange monster on the prowl outside and the terrible weather it’s hard to know what he can do to escape. Unless the real danger is on the inside. This author shows shades of Stephen King and The Shining in this brilliant story, bristling with menace and childhood fears.

Here are a few of next months reads:

Posted in Netgalley

Based On A True Story by Sarah Vaughan 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

A lavish 70th birthday party. A body found on a storm-lashed beach. And a secret that someone is dying to tell… 

Famed children’s author Dame Eleanor Kingman has summoned her family and friends to her exquisite manor house on the cliffs. They’re celebrating her birthday – and her latest number one bestseller in her series of books based on a mother fox and her cubs. But the night before the party, Eleanor receives an email: an email that threatens to expose the lie she’s kept up for over half a century.

Someone knows her secret. Is it her estranged literary agent? Is it her ex-husband, to whom she no longer speaks? Is it the nanny she fired all those years ago, who always did have a knack for storytelling? Or is it one of her three daughters, all of whom have a stake in the publishing empire she has built…

With a TV crew arriving to film a documentary of her life, Eleanor needs to find out who sent the email – and preserve her multimillion-pound career.

But when push comes to shove, and it’s time to tell the truth – will anyone actually believe her?

Eleanor Kingman is holding a huge 70th birthday party at her Cornish house that sits on the cliffs overlooking the sea. It’s a massive undertaking, even without the addition of a TV film crew who are filming the run up to the big day and interviewing Eleanor and her daughters. Her eldest two daughters have working roles alongside their mother. Gilly is her assistant, co-ordinating both the celebration and the TV crew. Rachel is her accountant, keeping track of the royalties and the spending. Her youngest, Delia will no doubt arrive early or late, she is a lifestyle influencer documenting her travels and the journey she’s taken as an addict. However, each daughter has her own secrets and the resentments between them and their mother threaten to boil over. There are hints of menace, such as the strange man who approaches Eleanor’s much loved spaniel Edith as she’s being walked by Rachel’s children. Then an older couple are seen trespassing on Eleanor’s land, claiming to have taken the wrong route while on a caravan holiday close by. There’s also the early arrival of her illustrator Ayisha, who has steeled herself to talk about her cut of the profits. Alone these things mean nothing, but Eleanor is jittery as the interview approaches and only she knows why. She has been receiving blackmail threats making it clear that they know her secret and are more than willing to expose her. Who are they coming from? What do they know? Eleanor doesn’t know if this is personal or about her work. However, she isn’t the only one in the family to have secrets. Each sister has something they’re hiding from their mother and each other. This night is really going to go off with a bang! 

Eleanor is an interesting character and has a distinct style and way she presents herself. As she’s retiring to her room on the afternoon of the party she knows she needs to rest but thinks about what she needs to do ‘to reassemble herself with hair, make-up, fine jewellery, exquisite clothes. To reconstruct Dame Eleanor Kingham.’ It’s as if she is an actress with a role or that over the years people have developed an expectation of how a popular children’s author should appear. The party will be lavish but Rachel can testify that in other ways her mother does count the cost, even making sure food is used past it’s sell by date. There’s also the fact that she pays her daughters below market rate, in fact it could be said that she’s lavish with herself but not so much with others. This could go back to years of frugality as a young woman at university, then as wife of an author whose own ambitions have taken a back seat to his genius. The author gives us flashbacks to show Eleanor’s earlier life, including her writing at the kitchen table late at night, exhausted and wondering if her writing will ever be noticed. There’s a certain ruthlessness in her and a steely determination, in fact her first book had the vixen killing and eating a weak cub for her and other cubs survival. Her agent decided it was too grim a detail for a children’s story, no matter how accurate it might be in nature. This also tells us she is willing to bend or alter a narrative, if it allows her to succeed. 

I felt particularly sorry for Gilly who is really working hard to keep things running well in the last few days, with very little credit or thanks. I was really glad there was a flirtation for her. With an attractive camera crew around and Ned the director being particularly handsome there’s certainly opportunity. Gilly is the little overlooked dormouse who scurries everywhere, quietly making everything happen. Rachel is in a world of trouble when her husband Tom finally tells her a secret he’s been keeping and she’s furious. He needs money, fast. Will Rachel be pushed into something unthinkable? I found Delia incredibly irritating! One of those influencers who always appears picture perfect, on a picturesque beach with pearls of wisdom for her thousands of followers. None of it is original and it’s borderline dishonest. She is sober at the moment, but has a gatecrasher coming for the party. Will the tension tip the balance for her? None of these people are particularly likeable, with Rachel’s husband being a candidate for a good slap at the very least – he made me furious. All of this will come crashing to a head on the big night and I was constantly second-guessing which would bring the author’s world crashing down or whether she’d manage to solve it all in her own inimitable style. This is a book that you won’t put down in those final chapters. Vaughan really is a master at drip feeding clues and reveals, keeping me hooked. It’s brilliantly paced, the characters and their dynamics are so complex. There’s also a cleverly created gap between professional personas and the real life person, whether it is a children’s author or an influencer. Honestly these characters are hard to like but there’s nothing like the schadenfreude of seeing some of them meeting their fate. 

Out on 26th March from Simon and Schuster UK

Meet the Author

Sarah Vaughan read English at Oxford and spent eleven years at the Guardian as a news reporter and political correspondent, before leaving to write fiction. Her first two novels were followed by her first psychological thriller, Anatomy of a Scandal: a Sunday Times top five bestseller, Richard & Judy pick of the decade, and global number one Netflix adaptation starring Sienna Miller, Michelle Dockery and Rupert Friend. Her fourth novel, Little Disasters, was a Waterstones thriller of the month and developed as a number one Paramount Plus show. Her fifth novel, Reputation, was a Sunday Times thriller of the month and is currently in development by the team who made Anatomy of a Scandal. Based on a True Story is her sixth novel.

A million-copy international bestselling author, her books have been published in twenty-seven countries.