BOOKSIMO

  Description Resolutions are made Marriages are broken… A gripping domestic thriller set in The Cotswolds and perfect for fans of Liane Moriarty and Adele Parks! It started with the party… Frankie, Verity and Alice live in the idyllic Cotswolds community of White Fir Lake, but behind closed doors everyone has a secret they’re desperately trying to keep… And ended with a bang! Now, as midnight on New Year’s Eve approaches, the three women will face the consequences of a long-ago holiday, one which changed their lives forever … and threatens to shatter their perfect worlds into perfect pieces. Review A different seasonal read. Despite the title of the book it's obviously only one night, so the main story begins early in the month but also stretches back to events many years ago too. Three characters Frankie, Verity and Alice take turns telling us the tale.  I did not like the exact same dialogue being repeated as the story was told from the different point of view. I also got a...

Description 'A howl of feminist rage, but also one that is pure fun'  Stylist The wives here are different. They are living proof that women can have it all: successful careers, loving families, beautiful homes. Their husbands are different too. They are living proof that men can do just as much as women. They can remember the kids' schedules, use an iron and notice when the house needs dusting. Nora thinks she's found the perfect new home for her family. But when she agrees to get involved in a wrongful death case in the neighbourhood, Nora becomes convinced that there's a dark secret at the heart of this perfect world. For these women, it seems the secret to having it all is worth killing for . . . 'This gender-swapping  Stepford Wives  story is as creepy as it is delicious'  Good Housekeeping Review Some of what Nora has to say will probably resonate with you. Nora has to do it all, even the things her husband says he will do and all while taking care of ...

  Description The perfect murder mystery for fans of Richard Osman and Robert Thorogood. 'Spotswood understands that [...] spending time with unforgettable characters is paramount.' -  New York Times New York, 1946: The last time Will Parker let a case get personal, she walked away with a broken face, a bruised ego, and the solemn promise never again to let her heart get in the way of her job. But she called Hart and Halloway's Travelling Circus and Sideshow home for five years, and Ruby Donner, the circus's tattooed ingenue, was her friend. To make matters worse the prime suspect is Valentin Kalishenko, the man who taught Will everything she knows about putting a knife where it needs to go. To uncover the real killer and keep Kalishenko from a date with the electric chair, Will and Ms. Pentecost join the circus in sleepy Stoppard, Virginia, where the locals like their cocktails mild, the past buried, and big-city detectives not at all. The two swiftly find themselves l...

  Description How well do you know your neighbour? Would you trust them with your life? I heard  Emily  before I saw her. The harsh smack of heels against cheap wooden floorboards. The loud phone calls. The incessant music. I knew  Emily  before I met her. Discarded receipts in our communal hallway. Sticky leftovers in the shared food waste bin. Wine shop vouchers in the letterbox. Now she’s gone  missing , and I’m the only one who can find her. The only one who can save her. Because I know her best, and I heard  everything . Review Suzie lives in a flat in London with only one other flat upstairs, which is occupied by Emily. There is a lot of unwanted noise from upstairs and Suzie is getting very fed up of it all, and the way Emily treats the communal hall.  So when upstairs suddenly goes quiet you'd think Suzie would be pleased, and to begin with she is. Until she gets the feeling that is all is not as it should be, and maybe Emily is missing. S...

  Description People  like  Emmy Jackson. They always have. Especially online, where she is Instagram sensation Mamabare, famous for telling the unvarnished truth about modern parenthood. But Emmy isn’t as honest as she’d like the fans to believe. She may think she has her followers fooled, but someone out there knows the truth and plans to make her pay . . . Review I'm not sure I've ever read a book quite like this before. Emmy is IG influencer Mamabare connecting with her fans, telling it like it is with no filters. Her followers hang on her every word, IG photo, and buy her branded merchandise. The book begins with Emmy letting us into her world. Then in the next chapter, her writer husband Dan tells us just how the world of Emmy really is. Straightaway we are given a backstage pass to the real life Emmy and just how she goes about curating that wonderful IG feed of hers. At this point I was thinking this was going to be a look behind the scenes of an IG influencer. Bu...

  Description In one of the most talked about and hilarious debuts of the year, Afi Tekple, a bright young seamstress from a small town in Ghana, is convinced by her family to marry a man she has never met. Elikem Ganyo is a wealthy businessman whose family has chosen Afi in the hope that she will distract him from a relationship with another woman they think is inappropriate. The fact that she doesn't know Elikem seems a small price to pay for a marriage that offers her family financial security and provides the key to a lifestyle she has always wanted. But when Afi arrives in Accra, Ghana's gleaming capital, she realises her fairy-tale ending might not be all she had hoped for... His Only Wife  is a life-affirming, must-read novel about a young woman's search for independence in a man's world, and the rules she just might have to break along the way. Review A very different and interesting read.  One of the great things about this book for me was learning about the cu...

  Description Requiring minimal equipment--just scissors, glue, paper, and pens--collage is an accessible craft that offers limitless creative possibilities. Like meditation or journaling, making collage can be an avenue for self-reflection and artistic exploration. In  Collage Your Life , artist and teacher Melanie Mowinski teaches a variety of core techniques including lettering, stamping, stenciling, transfers, and adhesive methods, and provides dozens of prompts to jumpstart the creative process and encourage crafters to explore the versatility of collage, such as: make a self-portrait; disrupt your routine instincts; incorporate text; assemble mementos from a trip; process anger or anxiety; collage with others; or try creating block-out poetry with pages from a magazine. Inspiring examples of the author's work along with that of other collage artists are featured throughout. Crafters, journaling fans, scrapbookers, and artists alike will find guidance and support for deve...

  Description Two women. One life. They can't both have it. Kelly Medina's son left for college a year ago and now she feels totally alone. So when she discovers that a single mother  also  called Kelly Medina has moved to her town, it's an unexpected reminder of the life she used to live. For days, Kelly can't stop thinking about the woman who shares her name, who has a baby son she can still hold and her whole life ahead of her. She can't help looking for her: at the grocery store, at the gym, on social media. When they happen to bump into each other outside a pediatrician's office, simple curiosity gets the better of them both. Their unlikely friendship brings Kelly a renewed sense of purpose. But the relationship quickly turns to obsession, and when one Kelly disappears the other one may know why . . . Review This one really reeled me in. I wasn't sure where this book was going to begin with. Kelly Medina finds out that there is someone else new to town ...

  Description A new chapter is just beginning… ‘The story is an absolute joy . . . A captivating and exquisitely crafted debut’  Sunday Times  bestseller, Heidi Swain ‘Absolutely captures the magic of reading and libraries’ Louise Hare When Aleisha discovers a crumpled reading list tucked into a tattered library book, it sparks an extraordinary journey. From timeless stories of love and friendship to an epic journey across the Pacific Ocean with a boy and a tiger in a boat, the list opens a gateway to new and wonderful worlds – just when Aleisha needs an escape from her troubles at home. And when widower Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to connect with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha introduces him to the magic of the reading list. An anxious teenager and a lonely grandfather forming an unlikely book club of two. Review A book about books - great for a book lover. Aleisha works in the local library for the summer. It's a job she is enduring until she goes to U...

  Happy publication day for The Imperfect Art of Caring (and Carers Rights Day). One small act can make a big difference Violet Strong is strong by name but not by nature, or so she thinks. She listens but never talks about herself. She’s friendly but doesn’t have many real friends. She’s become good at keeping people at a distance ever since she left home at eighteen and never looked back. But when Violet is forced to return home to care for her estranged mother, Glenys, she quickly finds out that life as a carer isn’t easy. Feeling overwhelmed, she’s forced to turn to the other local carers, including childhood friend, Adam, for help. Although returning home still feels like a mistake, maybe it will help Violet right some wrongs. After all, she can’t keep running from her past forever, and in learning to look after others, perhaps Violet can start to finally love herself… Thank you to HQ stories for a copy of the book. I will be back w ith a review as soon as I've read it. I...

  Description No one even knew they were together. Now one of them is dead. 56 DAYS AGO Ciara and Oliver meet in a supermarket queue in Dublin and start dating the same week COVID-19 reaches Irish shores. 35 DAYS AGO When lockdown threatens to keep them apart, Oliver suggests they move in together. Ciara sees a unique opportunity for a relationship to flourish without the scrutiny of family and friends. Oliver sees a chance to hide who - and what - he really is. TODAY Detectives arrive at Oliver's apartment to discover a decomposing body inside. Can they determine what really happened, or has lockdown created an opportunity for someone to commit the perfect crime? Review This book was just pure genius. From word one this book had me on the wrong footing. I decided to play amateur sleuth and turn my assumptions on their head. This is much better I thought I've got the measure of this book. Except I really hadn't at all... Ciara and Oliver have a chance meeting in a supermark...

  Description The new standalone book in the internationally bestselling series! Snuggle up in your favourite armchair and take a trip across the Irish sea for comfort food, cosy cottage nights and a heartwarming romance… Talented lawyer Hannah Campbell is after a change in her workaholic Manchester life – so on an uncharacteristic whim she books herself a place at the world-renowned Killorgally Cookery School in County Kerry. But on her first night In Ireland, sampling the delights of Dublin, Hannah can’t resist falling for the charms of handsome stranger Conor. It’s only when Hannah arrives at her postcard-pretty home at Killorgally for the next six weeks that she discovers what happens in Dublin doesn’t quite stay in Dublin… Nestled amongst rolling green hills and breathtaking countryside, the cookery school throws Hannah and Conor together again–for better or worse. Review I love this series of books and was delighted to find there was a new one. It can be read as a standalone ...

  Description ONE MURDER. FIFTEEN SUSPECTS. CAN YOU UNCOVER THE TRUTH? There is a mystery to solve in the sleepy town of Lower Lockwood. It starts with the arrival of two secretive newcomers, and ends with a tragic death. Roderick Tanner QC has assigned law students Charlotte and Femi to the case. Someone has already been sent to prison for murder, but he suspects that they are innocent. And that far darker secrets have yet to be revealed... Throughout the amateur dramatics society's disastrous staging of All My Sons and the shady charity appeal for a little girl's medical treatment, the murderer hid in plain sight. The evidence is all there, waiting to be found. But will Charlotte and Femi solve the case? Will you? The standout debut thriller of 2021 that delivers multiple brilliant twists, and will change the way you think about the modern crime novel. Review Very clever and certainly the new Agatha Christie. This book consists entirely of emails, messages and post it notes. ...

  Description Everything gets easier in your thirties, right? Though she has plenty to celebrate - successful career, new home, loving friends and family - for Nina Dean, her thirties have not exactly been the liberating experience she was sold. From fading friendships to exes popping the question, everyone is moving on (or worse, to the suburbs). And as her dad slowly loses his memories, her mum seems dead set on making new ones. Then she meets Max, who tells her on date one that he's going to marry her. But what seems like an exciting new development will ensure this year is Nina's strangest yet . . . Review I wasn't interested in reading this book at all, but then the audio was on the library app, and I thought I would give it a go. Wow! Thank goodness I did, I would have missed this gem of a book. Nina George Dean (named George for reasons that will be explained) had thought she was settled until she broke up with her ex and now she is on the look out for Mr Right again...

  Description Winner of the RT Reviewers Choice Award for Best Amateur Sleuth! Professional organizer Charlotte Adams has to clean up a mess from the past to stop a killer in the present . . . Given the number of times she’s dialed 911 in a panic, professional organizer Charlotte Adams is more than a little startled when she answers a distress call from the 911 operator herself. Mona’s calling to alert her that the “mean girls” who terrorized her in high school are back and that she wants to wring their necks. Charlotte writes off the threat as angry exaggeration—until a woman resembling one of the mean girls is killed and Mona goes into hiding. Worried that some lingering trauma from being bullied may have sent her friend over the edge, Charlotte decides she’ll have to investigate the murder to find out who’s behind it. But then another mean girl is run down, and she’s certain that  someone  from the past is settling old scores. Desperate to learn whether Mona is making ...

  Description The Pulitzer Prize-winning, Booker-longlisted, bestselling author returns to her beloved heroine Lucy Barton in a luminous novel about love, loss, and the family secrets that can erupt and bewilder us at any point in life Lucy Barton is a successful writer living in New York, navigating the second half of her life as a recent widow and parent to two adult daughters. A surprise encounter leads her to reconnect with William, her first husband - and longtime, on-again-off-again friend and confidante. Recalling their college years, the birth of their daughters, the painful dissolution of their marriage, and the lives they built with other people, Strout weaves a portrait, stunning in its subtlety, of a tender, complex, decades-long partnership. Oh William!  captures the joy and sorrow of watching children grow up and start families of their own; of discovering family secrets, late in life, that alter everything we think we know about those closest to us; and the way ...

  Description CAN YOU AVOID A BIZARRE DEATH IN ENGLAND’S MOST DANGEROUS COUNTY?  All is not well in the beautiful county of Midsomer. On the eve of its first Villages In Bloom competition, a man lies slain, smelling of damson jam. Who could have done it? Well, that's where you come in. Step into the shoes of Midsomer CID's newest recruit, choose your own path and decide which way the story goes. Could You Survive Midsomer? sets off on an engaging pick-your-own adventure format to challenge the reader to solve a crime or succumb to the county's suspiciously high death rate. Set in television’s most celebrated and murderous county, the book allows readers to see if they can get to the bottom of the mystery and bring the perpetrator to justice, avoiding an untimely, and possibly bizarre death, along the way. Your task is to make the right choices, solve the case and – most tricky of all – stay alive!  Review This book is certainly a very clever concept. I'm not a big a fan...

  Description 'The Sun always has ways to reach us.' From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change for ever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans. In  Klara and the Sun , his first novel since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly-changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love? Review This story was just amazing. Klara is an Artificial Friend and it is through her eyes the story is told. From her sitting in the shop window with her friend Rosa another AF and then when she is chosen by Josie to be her AF. I loved the beginning of the book and seeing the wor...

  Description Shay Bastable is the woman in the middle. She is part of the sandwich generation – caring for her parents and her children, supporting her husband Bruce, holding them all together and caring for them as best she can.   Then the arrival of a large orange skip on her mother’s estate sets in motion a cataclysmic series of events which leads to the collapse of Shay’s world. She is forced to put herself first for a change.   But in order to move forward with her present, Shay needs to make sense of her past. And so she returns to the little village she grew up in, to uncover the truth about what happened to her when she was younger. And in doing so, she discovers that sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to find the only way is up. Review Wow! Milly has packed so much into this book.  Shay is in the middle of it all. She cares for her Mother and her children even though they are now grown up and she cares for everyone else too. Unfortunately for Shay this i...

  Description She thought she had the perfect stepfather. So why is she running for her life? Emily longs to be an artist. So she’s thrilled when her famous and talented stepfather offers to act as her mentor. But when his teachings take a darker turn, she flees his fancy home. Bad boy Jack has made good as a hot DJ. Then he sees thugs attack a rough sleeper, and shocking memories spur him to her rescue. He doesn’t know she’s only 15 and running from a deadly predator. Emily’s hopes of safety are crushed when her stepfather hunts her down. Now Jack faces the hardest choice of all. If he protects Emily from the fiend who’s stolen her childhood, he’ll kiss goodbye to his future. What would you sacrifice to save a life? If you enjoy nail-biting suspense, slow-burning secrets and dark domestic noir, you’ll love AA Abbott’s chilling psychological thriller. Read Bright Lies today to join Emily and Jack on their journey! I'm on the blog tour today with Random Things Tours for this audiobo...