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REVIEW: The Marsh House by Zoë Somerville
The Marsh House seeps in atmospheric brilliance. It has the uncanny ability to remind you just how boring your life is. The novel tackles relationship breakdowns from multiple angles. A mother and daughter. A house in the country. Creepy diary entries. Personally, living in a cold, damp property in the middle of winter is a dead cert no for me but the protagonist had a story to unfold. It’s December 1963 and Malorie escapes to the country with her daughter, Franny. Her life is changing far quicker than she could have ever anticipated. Her relationship with Franny’s father, Tony has broken down. Partly due to his multiple infidelities and Malorie’s…
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REVIEW: The Search Party by Simon Lelic
The Search Party is a story that aims to entangle the reader into the web Simon Lelic has so expertly weaved. It incorporates the fear and danger of the forest – personally, there’s nothing more frightening than the open forest in the dead of the night. The branches reaching out and enveloping you in a death hug, the eerie noises that can empale you with terror, and the dark longs to crush you with its inky blackness. A group of friends is one member down, a disappearance, and the remainder of the group decides to lead a search party to locate her. However, what are their motives, and are they…
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REVIEW: Far from the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson
Far from the Light of Heaven reminded me a lot of a closed room murder mystery. Think Agatha Christie for the Science Fiction genre. The premise was exciting, but the execution left me feeling just meh. The characters weren’t particularly memorable and as the story progressed, I wasn’t bothered about how the mystery was solved. Wooden characters and a plot that felt a little convoluted, to me at least. The threads of the story should have been tied together in an understandable spectrum of events, but I was left confused and annoyed. The prologue got me very excited about the potential of the story. Far from the Light of Heaven…
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REVIEW: Hide by Nell Pattison
Hide was a difficult book for me to rate. It didn’t work all that well for me. The cover is extremely enticing, and the plot sounded like one of my favourite thriller tropes – whiteout conditions. A lot of people think that the snow is this beautiful phenomenon that reminds them of Christmas time and sitting around an open fire. I, however, have always found it just a bit too scary. Imagine being caught in whiteout conditions, you can’t see anything, and someone or something could easily sneak up on you without your knowledge. Scary stuff! However, the plot was a bit flat for me. Imagine spending Christmas with those…
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REVIEW: The Woman on the Pier by B.P. Walter
The Woman on the Pier…going, to be honest here, I felt like the title was the biggest spoiler. It’s not until you finish the book just how big a spoiler you have been dealt. The story dealt with difficult content and if you are triggered by child death and terrorist attacks, I would advise you to stay clear of this one. A mother and father grieving for their teenage daughter’s lost life and potential, Jessica. A marriage crumbling from the very seams. Secrets that could destroy everything. Jessica planned to visit her friend in Somerset so why on earth was she killed in a terrorist attack at Stratford train station?…
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REVIEW: The Killer in the Snow (DI James Walker #2) by Alex Pine
Very few authors can keep me engrossed in a story from the beginning, through the middle until the very end. Alex Pine has done just that with The Killer in the Snow. The cover initially pulled me in, but I stayed for the storyline. A family massacre with mother, father and daughter killed in cold blood. It initially looks like a murder-suicide but as the investigation delves deeper it’s found to have dark connotations to a similar murder/suicide on the same property twenty-four years ago. Are the two connected? Or is this a deathly case of coincidence? If you’ve been a follower of my blog for any length of time,…
