About the Book

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me … one romantic Christmas you won’t forget.

When helping to clear out her beloved grandmother’s home, Lucy Jackson discovers twelve beautiful Christmas decorations hidden in the loft. As she discovers their heartbreaking story, a touching romance develops with the handsome gardener next door.

My Thoughts

The Present is about Lucy, who is in the middle of trying to clear her beloved Grandmother Olive’s house to ready it for sale. Olive has had a fall and is in hospital so Lucy wants to move her in with her and her partner. It’s close to Christmas and Lucy is busy with planning for the holidays and really struggling with going through Olive’s belongings as it’s bringing up so many memories of her own childhood.

This novel is everything I want in a Christmas story, it really is a beautiful read. I felt so moved by Lucy having to sort her Gran’s things out, and not having support from her partner. I know what it’s like to have to clear out a loved one’s home and it’s so hard to let their things go. The antique Christmas ornaments that she finds in a dark corner of the attic are described in such a way that I could really envisage them and was excited to follow Lucy’s journey to work out what meaning they held for her Gran.

Olive’s handyman Jack is busy fixing up the house and he ends up helping Lucy empty the attic and gets drawn into the mystery of the ornaments. It was so lovely that Lucy found someone who wanted to help her and took an interest in what she’d found as her boyfriend just seemed so cold and disinterested. I was rooting for Lucy to find happiness throughout this novel and really hoping she would find a way to hold on to her Gran’s house.

Both Jack and Lucy begin to feel more reflective about their own lives as they discover more about Olive’s past. They each carry sadness about the people they’ve lost and gradually seem to help each other by sharing memories as the novel goes on. I loved this aspect of the novel because it is how grief is, it catches up with you eventually and when you find someone who really understands it eventually helps ease some of the pain you carry. There is a real message in this book about remembering and finding a way to carry lost loved ones with you, it’s so beautiful.

This is a gorgeous novel is set in the lead up to Christmas and all the nostalgia of the ornaments and then the back story of Olive’s life makes for a lovely, heart-warming read at this time of year. I definitely recommend this book!

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts are my own.

The Present is out now and available here.

About the Author

Writer of funny, sassy, sexy stories for Harlequin KISS/Mills & BOON ModernTempted and HarperImpulse.

Also mum to three kids and a mad dachshund and terrible housewife to a heroic husband who doesn’t notice he is living in a hovel. Loves her sofa, her SkyPlus, her Apple TV and her pyjamas.

About the Book

How can you speak up for someone accused of a savage murder? Or sway a jury? Or get a judge to drop a case?

In this memoir, murder case lawyer William Clegg revisits his most intriguing trials, from the acquittal of Colin Stagg to the shooting of Jill Dando, to the man given life because of an earprint.

All the while he lays bare the secrets of his profession, from the rivalry among barristers to the nervous moments before a verdict comes back, and how our right to a fair trial is now at risk.

Under the Wig is for anyone who wants to know the reality of a murder trial.

My Thoughts

I really enjoy reading books about the law so when I spotted Under the Wig in the Read Now section of NetGalley recently I immediately downloaded it.

Under the Wig is the memoir of William Clegg QC and makes for a fascinating read. The book is told in alternating chapters where one chapter is about a famous case he has worked on and the other gradually tells his story of how he came to be a barrister.

William Clegg has worked on some very high profile cases and it was really interesting to hear about them from a defence barrister’s perspective. He gives his opinion on the outcome of each particular case in the course of a chapter and I really appreciated that. He covers cases such as the murder of Jill Dando, where he worked on Barry George’s appeal. We also get to see how it is for a barrister to work for a man who has confessed to manslaughter such as in the case of Vincent Tabak (who was convicted of murdering Joanna Yeates at Christmas 2010).

I was particularly interested in the chapter about legal aid. I was well aware of cuts in legal aid as it’s often been in the news but I didn’t know the impact it was having in real terms. It’s shocking to see how much funding has been cut and the potential this has for preventing people from accessing a good defence team.

I’ve definitely come away from this book with a little more understanding of some aspects of the law than I had before. It makes more sense to me now how some points of a case get dropped early on, and how different points are argued during a trial.

This is a gripping book – one that once you start reading you just don’t want to put down. The writing flows and it reads like a fiction book in the sense that it’s very accessible and holds your interest from start to finish. I really enjoyed Under the Wig and definitely recommend it!

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts are my own.

Under the Wig is out now and available here.

About the Book

The Vanity Fair Diaries is the story of an Englishwoman barely out of her twenties who arrives in Manhattan on a mission. Summoned from London in hopes that she can save Condé Nast’s troubled new flagship Vanity Fair, Tina Brown is immediately plunged into the maelstrom of the competitive New York media world and the backstabbing rivalries at the court of the planet’s slickest, most glamour-focused magazine company. She survives the politics, the intrigue and the attempts to derail her by a simple stratagem: succeeding. In the face of rampant scepticism, she triumphantly reinvents a failing magazine.

Here are the inside stories of Vanity Fair scoops and covers that sold millions: the Reagan kiss, the meltdown of Princess Diana’s marriage to Prince Charles, the sensational Annie Leibovitz cover of a gloriously pregnant, naked Demi Moore. In the diary’s cinematic pages, the drama, comedy and struggle of running an ‘it’ magazine come to life. Brown’s Vanity Fair Diaries is also a woman’s journey, of making a home in a new country and of the deep bonds with her husband, their prematurely born son and their daughter.

My Thoughts

I grabbed The Vanity Fair Diaries from NetGalley when it was on read now almost a year ago but somehow I haven’t got around to reading it until now. I picked it up for non-fiction November  last week and it was an enjoyable read.

The book is Tina Brown’s personal diaries from 1983 when she got the job as editor of Vanity Fair magazine until she moved on in 1992.

There are parts of this book that I really enjoyed. I loved finding out more about what it’s like to edit a magazine and how difficult it can be getting the right cover image that represents the pieces inside the magazine.

Tina Brown movingly captures what it must have been like living in New York in the 1980s at the height of the AIDS crisis. She doesn’t write at length about it but the frequent mentions of people she knows who have been diagnosed, or who have died is really shocking. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to have lost so many people to one disease and in such a short amount of time.

The references to Donald Trump made for rueful reading, to know how he was thought of at various points during the 80s and now he’s president of the United States makes for interesting reading. There are other political figures referenced within the book that also make for interesting asides.

I also really enjoyed finding out more about how Brown juggled her work and her home life after she had her first child. She genuinely struggled to find balance and you can see her being pulled in two directions during her son’s early years. There is real honesty in these moments and it gave some balance to a book that is heavy on the celebrities and the gossip.

I think where I struggled a little with my enjoyment of the book is that, particularly in the earlier parts of the diary, I didn’t know who half of the people mentioned were. I kept putting the book down to look them up online. Once the book got to the later 80s and early 90s it was more my era and I knew who most of the people were and it became a much more fascinating read. This is down to my age though and not a fault of the book.

Overall I found this a really interesting and enjoyable book to dip in and out of and I do recommend it.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts are my own.

The Vanity Fair Diaries: 1983-1992 is out now and available here.

About the Book

No one lives this way unless they want to hide something.’

When Caroline and Francis receive an offer to house swap, they jump at the chance for a week away from home. After the difficulties of the past few years, they’ve worked hard to rebuild their marriage for their son’s sake; now they want to reconnect as a couple.

On arrival, they find a house that is stark and sinister in its emptiness – it’s hard to imagine what kind of person lives here. Then, gradually, Caroline begins to uncover some signs of life – signs of her life. The flowers in the bathroom or the music in the CD player might seem innocent to her husband but to her they are anything but. It seems the person they have swapped with is someone she used to know; someone she’s desperate to leave in her past.

But that person is now in her home – and they want to make sure she’ll never forget . . .

My Thoughts

I was keen to get my hands on this book from the moment I first heard about it so I was thrilled when I was approved to read it from NetGalley.

The House Swap is a novel about a woman who on a whim posts her home on a house swap site and then months later she gets an alert that someone wants to swap for a week. She decides to do it and her husband are soon spending the week in Chiswick while someone spends a week in their flat in Leeds. Caroline and Francis are trying to rebuild their marriage after a rough few years but things aren’t all as they seem with the house swap.

I was expecting this novel to be darker than it was but even so it was definitely thrilling. I ended up reading it in one sitting over the course of an afternoon and I didn’t want to put it down in that time.

The characters in The House Swap aren’t particularly likeable, they all have issues and it makes them quite self-centred but I liked the book all the more for this. I was keen to find out what made them the way they were and if they were going to have any kind of redemption by the end of the novel.

There are twisty elements in this book, and I did work most of them out, but it was still quite the ride as I was reading it. It was deeply unsettling to think of a stranger in your home, while you’re in theirs, only you’ve left more of who you are in your home and they can find out all your dark secrets. I’ve always shuddered at the thought of house swaps. I know they’re increasingly popular but the idea of it is very unnerving to me (even more so after reading this novel)!

I found The House Swap to be a fast-paced read and I really enjoyed it. I’d recommend it if you like domestic novels with some thriller elements.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts are my own.

The House Swap is out now and available in hardback and ebook formats from here!

About the Author

Rebecca Fleet lives and works in London. The House Swap is her first thriller.

About the Book

Will they ever learn the truth?

Three people, leading very different lives, are about to be brought together – with devastating consequences . . .

John has a perfect life, until the day his daughter goes missing.

Maisie cares for her patients, but hides her own traumatic past.

Miller should be an innocent child, but is obsessed with something he can’t have.

They all have something in common, though none of them know it – and the truth won’t stay hidden for long . . .

My Thoughts

I’ve been eagerly anticipating Ronnie Turner’s debut novel Lies Between Us and I’m so happy to say that I absolutely loved it. I’m delighted to be sharing my review today for the blog tour.

Lies Between Us follows three characters: John, Miller and Maisie. John is a married father whose young daughter has gone missing and he’s desperate to find her. Miller is utterly creepy, the things we learn about his childhood behaviour were disturbing to read at times. Maisie is an ICU nurse who is caring for a man in a coma who’s been viciously assaulted. Something is linking these characters, but what is it?

This novel goes between the three main characters, and in three different timelines so it can seem a teeny bit confusing in the beginning but trust me if you go with it it has such a rewarding pay off! The tension is there from the beginning of the book, with John’s daughter going missing and it just continues to ramp up and up as you get further through the novel.

Miller was the most fascinating character for me, I was utterly unnerved by him and yet I wanted to know more about him. He is one of the creepiest characters I’ve read about in a novel and really got under my skin. It takes a deft hand to write a character as creepy as Miller and still have him be complex and believable throughout the entire novel so I applaud that. John was interesting to me too because he was so devoted to his daughter and desperately wanting to get her home safe, and yet I was never quite sure of him. I kept wondering if he was just too good to be true. I ended up being suspicious of just about everyone, and it felt like that came in a very natural way as Turner has written characters that felt so real to me. Maisie was the character that I connected with the least initially but as we get more of her back story I came to understand her a lot more.

I loved this novel, it’s very rare for me to be surprised by the reveals in a book but Ronnie Turner had me questioning everything that I thought I knew! I reached the stage of putting the book down for a minute just to try and work it all out, and I thought I had it and then something else happened and I was back to questioning it all. The moment where all begins to be revealed had my head spinning as suddenly it all began to slot into place. I loved that Turner kept me on my toes from start to finish!

Lies Between Us is a complex and compelling novel about obsession: it’s dark and twisty and impossible to put down! I already can’t wait to see what Ronnie Turner writes next! In the meantime I highly recommend Lies Between Us.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. All thoughts are my own.

Lies Between Us is out now in ebook and available here.

About the Author

Ronnie Turner grew up in Cornwall, the youngest in a large family. At an early age, she discovered a love of literature and dreamed of being a published author. Ronnie now lives in Dorset with her family and three dogs. In her spare time, she reviews books on her blog and enjoys long walks on the coast. She is currently working on her second novel.

Twitter:@Ronnie_ _Turner

Facebook: @RonnieTurnerAuthor

Instagram: @ronnieturner8702

Website: www.ronnieturner.wordpress.com

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/RonnieTurner

You can find the rest of this tour at the following blogs:

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About the Book

Maria wants to be friends.
But Maria is dead . . . isn’t she?

When Louise Williams receives a message from someone left long in the past, her heart nearly stops.

Maria Weston wants to be friends on Facebook.

Maria Weston has been missing for over twenty-five years. She was last seen the night of a school leavers’ party, and the world believes her to be dead. Particularly Louise, who has lived her adult life with a terrible secret.

As Maria’s messages start to escalate, Louise forces herself to reconnect with the old friends she once tried so hard to impress. Trying to piece together exactly what happened that night, she soon discovers there’s much she didn’t know. The only certainty is that Maria Weston disappeared that night, never to be heard from again – until now. . .

My Thoughts

As soon as read the premise for Friend Request I knew it was one I had to get my hands on as soon as possible. It sounded so creepy and intriguing, and I’m pleased to say that I very much enjoyed reading it.

This is very a prescient novel with the way social media plays such a huge part in our lives now and it’s so easy to see a new friend request and because we recognise the name and profile photo we believe it’s who we’re told it is because how would we know otherwise? Louise gets a shock when she gets a friend request from an old school friend, who has been missing for twenty five years but she feels compelled to accept it and to find out what is going on. This really unnerved me because a few years ago I got a friend request from a boy I’d known at school, the photo was of him as a teenager and the name was correct… except I knew it couldn’t be genuine because my mum still lived in the town I’d grown up in and she knew he’d been tragically killed in an accident soon after we left school. It was very creepy. Obviously I reported the profile and it was eventually removed but it did make me wonder how many people, perhaps people who no longer had connections to our home town, would have been taken in by the profile. So it felt totally believable to me that Louise would want to know more about her old friend.

Friend Request is told in a dual timeline: one strand is the present day where Louise is increasingly unsettled by strange happenings and also dealing with messages supposedly from Maria. The other strand is back in 1989 and leads up to what happened to Maria’s disappearance. I loved how the picture of events was gradually built up and found this novel near impossible to put down as the tension ramped up.

A school reunion is organised and Louise feels compelled to attend, and this is the part of the novel where we also get the leaving party from 1989 so all the main people in the novel are at these parties across the years and I loved how it was all played out. It gave a sense of past and present being overlapped and you get a real sense of who these people were as teenagers and how quickly people can revert to those personality traits in stressful situations. By this point I didn’t trust anyone, and I wasn’t even sure Louise was telling the whole truth so I was on the edge of my seat reading it.

I read this book as I was trying to get out of a bit of a reading slump and it definitely got me out of it because I just didn’t want to put this book down until I knew what was going on. I read in two sittings and immediately recommended it to a friend who was looking for an unputdownable novel.

I recommend Friend Request, it’s a fast-paced novel that will keep you questioning who you can trust right through to the end!

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts are my own.

Friend Request is out now and available here.

About the Author

Laura Marshall grew up in Wiltshire and studied English at the University of Sussex.

In 2015 she decided it was time to fulfil a lifetime’s ambition to write a novel, and enrolled on the Curtis Brown Creative three month novel writing course.

Her first novel, Friend Request, was runner-up in the Bath Novel Award 2016 and shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize 2016. Friend Request was published by Little, Brown in the UK in 2017 and became a number one Kindle bestseller.

Laura lives in Kent with her husband and two children.

About the Book

THE SERIAL KILLER ISN’T ON TRIAL.

HE’S ON THE JURY…

‘To your knowledge, is there anything that would preclude you from serving on this jury?’

Murder wasn’t the hard part. It was just the start of the game.

Joshua Kane has been preparing for this moment his whole life. He’s done it before. But this is the big one.

This is the murder trial of the century. And Kane has killed to get the best seat in the house.

But there’s someone on his tail. Someone who suspects that the killer isn’t the man on trial.

Kane knows time is running out – he just needs to get to the conviction without being discovered.

My Thoughts

I couldn’t resist clicking to request Thirteen on NetGalley recently when the publisher offered it for just thirteen hours, and I was thrilled when I was approved. I’ve been wanting to read this book for ages! I defy anyone not to be drawn to a book with the tagline this book has!

Eddie Flynn is called in to be second chair on a murder case. The accused is Hollywood movie star Robert Solomon, and the victims are his wife, also a huge star, and his security guard. There is so much more going on in this novel though when we find out there is a serial killer involved and he is on the jury!

This is such a fantastic premise for a novel and the idea that the killer is on the jury is so different and I couldn’t wait to start reading this book.

This is the first book I’ve read by Steve Cavanagh and I didn’t realise when I downloaded it that it was part of a series. It works fine as a standalone though, I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. The book was so good though that I’ve already bought the previous books and I can’t wait to read them all!

Thirteen is such a fast-paced and engrossing novel; it’s one of those books that made me begrudge real life interfering with my reading time! The book alternates between the defence lawyer Eddie Flynn and the serial killer Joshua Kane, which is brilliant and really makes the tension ratchet up at quite a pace. It was fascinating to see the cat and mouse game play out as we see things through each of their perspectives and wonder who will come out on top. The end when it came was so good and so satisfying, it’s definitely a book that will stay with me!

I feel sure that Thirteen will be in my top books of 2018, it’s so different from anything else I’ve read in this genre and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts are my own.

Thirteen is out now in ebook and paperback available here.

About the Author

Steve Cavanagh is a critically acclaimed, award-winning author and lawyer. He is also one half of the Two Crime Writers and a Microphone podcast. His latest novel, Thirteen, is out in ebook now and paperback in June.

About the Book

A brilliant high-concept thriller – a debut with all the intrigue of Gone Girl and the drama of Before I Go To Sleep – just how do you solve a murder when you can only remember yesterday?

There are two types of people in the world. Those who can only remember yesterday, and those who can also recall the day before.

You have just one lifeline to the past: your diary. Each night, you write down the things that matter. Each morning, your diary tells you where you were, who you loved and what you did.

Today, the police are at your door. They say that the body of your husband’s mistress has been found in the River Cam. They think your husband killed her two days ago.

Can you trust the police? Can you trust your husband? Can you trust yourself?

My Thoughts

After seeing this book around on social media for a few weeks I just couldn’t resist requesting it on NetGalley and I was thrilled when I was approved. I actually read this quite a few weeks ago now but due to ill health I haven’t managed to finish my review until now, but I can say that this is a book that has stayed with me which is the sign of a great read!

I’m fascinated by books about memory and I do love an unreliable narrator so this book really appealed to me and I’m so pleased to say that it absolutely lived up to the appeal. The novel is unsettling from the start because it’s set in our world in the present day but everyone is either a mono (with a memory span of only the last 24 hours) or a duo (who can remember the previous 48 hours). This means that everyone has to keep a meticulous record of their lives in order to recollect anything beyond the time span on their memory. Obviously the duos have an advantage as they can remember things for longer so marriage between monos and duos is very much frowned upon. Claire is a mono, and her husband Mark is a duo. As far as Claire is concerned they have been happily married for a number of years but the only sadness is that they can’t have a child.

Claire is shocked one day when the police turn up at her door to tell her that her husband’s mistress has been found dead near their home and they think her husband killed her. The novel builds with such pace and tension from this point on as we see how Claire begins to try and put together any memories she can find about their past and if there is any hint that her husband has been cheating on her. She only has her diary to rely on for memories and this really ramps up the tension in the novel.

The novel then follows four perspectives – Claire, Mark, the mistress and the police detective – and all four have secrets. Some are dark secrets, and some are things that you can understand and have some sympathy for link in the case of the person who is trying hard to hold on to their career. Everyone in this novel is relying on their diaries and that makes this novel fascinating and makes for a book whereby all of the characters are unreliable (and I do love unreliable narraters!). The unfolding of all the secrets and lies makes for a very tense and thrill-filled novel and I found this very hard to put down!

I did find it a slightly difficult to get into at first as this is a novel set in the present day but obviously monos and duos don’t exist so it was a bit strange. I very quickly got into the story being told though and this aspect became something that fascinated me and I really enjoyed this novel.

This is a really different thriller to anything that I’ve read in a long while and I found it so refreshing. It has twists and turns along the way and some of the reveals I managed to work out and others just blindsided me, which I loved. I highly recommend this book if you’re looking for a sophisticated and different take on the thriller genre! I loved this book and it’s one that has really stayed with me.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Yesterday is out now!

About the Author

Felicia Yap grew up in Kuala Lumpur. She read biochemistry at Imperial College London, followed by a doctorate in history (and a half-blue in competitive ballroom dancing) at Cambridge University. She has written for The Economist and the Business Times. She has also been a radioactive-cell biologist, a war historian, a Cambridge lecturer, a technology journalist, a theatre critic, a flea-market trader and a catwalk model.

Felicia lives in London and is a recent graduate of the Faber Academy’s novel-writing programme. She has just finished her debut novel, Yesterday, a high-concept thriller.

(Author bio and photo taken from: curtis brown.com)

About the Book

Part autobiography, part self help, part confession, part celebration of being a common-or-garden woman, part collection of synonyms for nunny, Sarah Millican’s debut book delves into her super normal life with daft stories, funny tales and proper advice on how to get past life’s blips – like being good at school but not good at friends, the excitement of IBS and how to blossom post divorce.

If you’ve ever worn glasses at the age of six, worn an off-the-shoulder gown with no confidence, been contacted by an old school bully, lived in your childhood bedroom in your thirties, been gloriously dumped in a Frankie and Benny’s, cried so much you felt great, been for a romantic walk with a dog, worn leggings two days in a row even though they smelt of wee from a distance, then this is Your Book. If you haven’t done those things but wish you had, This Is Your Book. If you just want to laugh on a train/sofa/toilet or under your desk at work, This Is Your Book.

My Thoughts

I’m a huge fan of Sarah Millican so when I heard she had a memoir coming out I was super excited. It was lovely to get an ARC to read ahead of publication and I’m so happy to say that this book was even better than I was expecting!

How to be Champion is part-memoir and part self-help book, and it’s just everything you’d want it to be. Sarah’s brilliant humour shines through in this book and so does her honesty and warmth.

I really loved reading this book. Sarah Millican is very open about her life and she shares personal stories alongside some advice on how to deal with similar situations that may crop up in your own life. It’s one of those books where you feel like the author is telling her story directly to you – you could be sat down with a cuppa having a chat.

This book covers everything from bad haircuts and clothing to periods to relationships and breakups. It felt like a really honest and open book that every woman will be able to relate to – I know it made me feel better about some of my own insecurities. It also made me laugh a lot as it reminded me of so many things that have happened in my own life. There are parts of this book that were moving too so it has such a great balance of how life really is. You know you’re reading a good book when it makes you feel all the feelings and this book definitely did that!

One of my favourite parts of the book was Sarah’s list of the men she’s loved in her life – Phillip Schofield is second on the list and it’s very amusing to find that the last man she fell in love with is not her husband! I could understand why the man who won her heart most recently did so though because he’s very cute (read the book to find out more!).

This is one of those books that I found I could really identify with at times; it made me laugh, it made me nod my head in agreement and it as I turned the last page I felt really uplifted. How to be Champion is a book I will hold on to and re-read but I’ll also be buying copies for my good friends.

This book is better than champion, and it will make you feel better than champion when you read it. I highly recommend it to everyone!

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

How to be Champion is out now!

About the Author

Sarah Jane Millican is an English comedian. Millican won the if.comedy award for Best Newcomer at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.