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[[Category:New Reviews|Thrillers]]__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->
 
[[Category:New Reviews|Thrillers]]__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author= Gunnar Staalesen
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|author=Teresa Driscoll
|title= Fallen Angels
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|title=Her Perfect Family
|rating= 2
+
|rating=5
 +
|genre=Thrillers
 +
|summary=The novel begins by introducing you to Gemma, who at first instance appears to be your average student, faced with the familiar horrifying realisation, at the eleventh hour, that her graduation outfit is all wrong. Suddenly, Gemma receives an eerie message stating ''He is not who he says he is…'', paving the way for the sinister tone that remains throughout the novel. In a twist of events, and after a change of outfit, Gemma is shot in the midst of her graduation ceremony. With Gemma then in a coma, what follows is a complex whodunit with a list of suspects that continues to grow the further you read.
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|isbn=1542028752
 +
}}
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{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=0008370982
 +
|title=Rock Paper Scissors
 +
|author=Alice Feeney
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=Varg Veum, lone wolf detective, is back. After attending a former friend's funeral, Veum catches up with old friends but soon historic grievances and wounds are opened and the sins of the past are exposed to the light of the present. A horrific murder threatens these tenuous bonds and Veum is thrust into an investigation to root out the clues hidden in his own history and to catch a killer.
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|summary=Amelia Wright is forty-two and it was the staff raffle at Battersea Dogs Home that gave her a weekend away in a converted chapel in Scotland.  Her husband, Adam, isn't so keen on the idea. Like Amelia, he knows that their marriage has been under strain: he's a screenwriter and he's never shy of making it clear to Amelia that he'd prefer to spend time with the novels he's hoping to adapt than with her.  Amelia's annoyed that he never enquires about how her day has been - and working with the dogs, many of whom have been abused, is never easy. Still - she's won the weekend away, even if it does mean driving for eight hours in her 1978 Morris Minor Traveller with Adam beside her in the passenger seat - and then doing the same thing to come back a couple of days later.
|isbn=1913193063
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author= Deborah O'Connor
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|isbn=0008421714
|title= The Captive
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|title=Mrs March
|rating= 4
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|author=Virginia Feito
|genre= Thrillers
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|rating=4.5
|summary=Hannah knows the cage, intimately. It lurks in the corner of her eye. Soon, it will be occupied. Then what? What if he speaks to her? What if he escapes? What if he hurts her? What if she hurts him?
+
|genre=Literary Fiction
|isbn=1838772650
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|summary=The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, ''but isn't this the first time he's based a character on you?''  She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'her mannerisms''.  Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.''
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B087JXQ3JQ
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|isbn=0241989094
|title=The Long Dark Road
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|title=The Perfect Life
|author=P R Black
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|author=Nuala Ellwood
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=Two years ago Dr Georgia's Healey's nineteen-year-old university-student daughter went missing as she walked along the lonely A928 at Ferngate BridgeThere was a furious storm going on and she'd already refused the offer of help from one man in a big vehicleWe'll see - but no one else will know - that another car stops and Stephanie is bundled into the car and driven off.  There has been no sign of her - or her body - in the two years since.  Georgia is back is Ferngate, determined to find out what happened and she's not going to be stopped.
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|summary=In August 2018 we meet a young woman called Imogen and she's viewing a house in Goring-on-Thames and telling the estate agent about her three children, Lavender, Freddie and BarclayThe boys are a bit of a handful which is why she's making this trip on her ownThe house would be perfect for them.
 +
 
 +
It's the same month but now we're in Wimbledon and we encounter the same young woman, only this time she's job hunting and living in her sister, Georgie's, spare room, where she's been since she broke up with her boyfriend, Connor.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author= Susi Holliday
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|isbn=1787634493
|title= The Last Resort
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|title=All Her Fault
|rating= 3.5
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|author=Andrea Mara
|genre= Thrillers
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|rating=4.5
|summary=A group of strangers gather on a private island. They have been invited to an all-expenses paid retreat to test a brand-new product from the mysterious Timeo Technology company. The group includes a games designer, social media influencer, gossip columnist and hedge fund manager. Everyone seems to have an area of expertise that makes their attendance necessary. All except Amelia whose presence is a mystery. We follow the group as they explore the island, and each other's histories and it becomes clear that they all have a dark secret they would rather keep hidden. As the clock ticks down, these well-kept secrets are revealed, and it soon becomes clear that this luxury retreat is really a gilded cage. In a race against time, Amelia must struggle to uncover the reason for her attendance and protect the rest of the guests from the increasingly sinister accidents that befall them. 
 
|isbn=1542020018
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|isbn=0008330131
 
|title=The Stolen Sisters
 
|author=Louise Jensen
 
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=When we start ''The Stolen Sisters'' we know that twenty-years on from a dreadful event they are all healthy adultsWell, they're healthy in the physical sense, but Carly has trust issues, Leah has OCD and Marie drinksThey're the Sinclair sisters and one day they were all stolen.  Carly was thirteen-years-old and she was in charge of her sisters, the eight-year-old twinsMuch as she loved them Carly was desperate to get a text from Dean Malden and her mobile phone held her attentionLeah and Marie were nattering about a lost ball and a fleece which had been left outsideThe gate wasn't shut properly and Bruno, their boxer dog, escaped.  As the three girls went to chase after him they were snatched by two men.
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|summary=It had seemed like one of those serendipitous events which sometimes happen.  Marissa Irvine had been hoping that the opportunity would arise for her son, Milo, to go on a play dateShe was concerned that he didn't have any friends at his new school.  Milo would go home from Kerryglen National School in an affluent Dublin suburb with his classmate Jacob - and Marissa would pick him up from 14 Tudor Grove a little laterWhat could be better?  Only, when Marissa arrived at the house, expecting to meet Jacob's mother, Jenny, the door was answered by Esther, who didn't know Jenny or JacobThe phone number she'd been given for Jenny was not recognisedMilo had disappearedAnd so had Jenny's nanny.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Will Carver
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|author=Claire McGowan
|title=Hinton Hollow Death Trip
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|title=I Know You
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=4
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary= Hinton Hollow, population 5,120. It sounds like one of those signs you see on improbably wide highways in America's mid-west, but this particular Hinton Hollow is a small town in Berkshire, England.  Detective Sergeant Pace grew up here, until something happened and he ran away to the city.  He's running away again…only this time evil is following him and is going to touch just about everyone in town.
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|summary=''Then:'' Casey returns from a walk with the baby, Carson, and comes across three bodies, almost a whole family taken down.
|isbn=1913193306
+
 
 +
''Now:'' Rachel is out for a walk with her dog, Brandy, when she comes across a body in the woods.
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 +
|isbn=1542019974
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008378363
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|author=Peter Papathanasiou
|title=One Perfect Morning
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|title=The Stoning
|author=Pamela Crane
 
 
|rating=3.5
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=A husband is about to have his throat cut in his own bed.  To find out who - and why - we need to go back nine days and twenty years.
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|summary=In a town sleazy enough to make sh*tholes elsewhere look glamorous in comparison, a teacher has been transported across town at night in a shopping trolley, and she's been taped to a tree and she's had rocks bowled at her as if she were the world's tallest cricket stumps. When she's discovered by the town gossip everyone, including the local cops, are quite confident the culprit has come from the immigrant detention centre the place is reluctantly home to. An arson attack on that shows the feeling – and it's only fair, is the general opinion, for the occupants are often setting their own fires in protest at their conditions. Cue the arrival of George Manolis, a higher rank from the city, to sort everything out. Because such an aggrieved, insular community is really going to welcome a Greek-heritaged city boy laying down the law...
 
+
|isbn=1529416973
Mackenzie, Robin and Lily met when they all went to the same college in Monroeville, Pennsylvania and twenty years later they're still the best of friends. When they first met they called themselves the Spicier Girls as a nod to the famous girl band of the day. Lily would be Adventure Spice, Robin the Homemaker and Mackenzie - well, Mackenzie would be the supporting actress in her own life. She married Owen, her college sweetheart and they have a daughter, Aria, who's now fifteen-year-old.
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0751567426
+
|isbn=1787631869
|title=The Wicked Sister
+
|title=The Rising Tide
|author=Karen Dionne
+
|author=Sam Lloyd
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=4
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=When we first meet Rachel Cunningham she's an inpatient at the Newberry Regional Mental Health Center in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.  She's twenty-six and has been there for fifteen years, convinced that she accidentally killed her mother when she was eleven-years-old and that her father then took the gun and killed himselfHer sister, Diana, just twenty-years-old, was left at the family home, a lodge in the Upper Peninsula wilderness.  Rachel's very bright and although she's a voluntary patient at the Mental Health Center she remains there, feeling that this is what she deserves.  Perhaps, though, the circumstances are not as she remembers.
+
|summary=Lucy Locke's early life hadn't been easy but she'd built a good and decent life in the aftermath.  She's now married to Daniel, who co-owns Locke-Povey Marine on Penleith Beach, and they live at Wild Ridge on Mortis Point with Billie, Lucy's daughter and Fin, the child she had with DanielThey have financial difficulties, some caused by Nick Povey, Daniel's partner and so-called best friend.  Nick and Daniel have a history together from the time they both spent in a children's home but it's difficult to think that Nick has Daniel's best interests at heart, particularly where Lucy, or money, is concerned.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008314721
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|isbn=1786332388
|title=Truth Be Told
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|title=The First Day of Spring
|author=Kia Abdullah
+
|author=Nancy Tucker
|rating=5
+
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
+
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=The Hadids are an ''effortful'' familyFlowers are sent for the slightest problem or achievement: letters are sent to thank and this prompts a phone call in returnThere are two sons of the family, seventeen-year-old Kamran and sixteen-year-old AdamTheir mother, Sofia, regrets that she didn't name them the other way round: 'Adam and Kamran' trips off the tongue so much more easily than 'Kamran and Adam'.  Sofia worries about that sort of thingBoth boys go to the prestigious Hampton school, where they board, despite the school being less than ten miles from their Belsize Park home.  Kamran has a place at Oxford next year and all seemed to be going well until the night when he was raped.
+
|summary=Sometimes I wonder if I take my pleasures too sadly - and ''The First Day of Spring'' was one such occasionThe writing is superb and completely compellingThe characterisation is excellent and the plot grips you and won't let goSo, what's the problem?  Well, the problem is Chrissie, the main character.  When we first meet her she's just eight years old, small for her age and she readily tells us that she's just killed someone - a two-year-old boyShe's completely cold about what she's done with her main memory being that whilst she was killing - suffocating - her hands seized upThere's a clue that Chrissie isn't completely responsible for her actions a little later in the book: when will Steven come back, she wonders?  Hasn't he been dead for long enough?
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Agnes Ravatn and Rosie Hedger (translator)
+
|isbn=B088YWF5BC
|title=The Seven Doors
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|title=The Lies We Tell
 +
|author=Jane Corry
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
+
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=Come here for a thriller that interestingly doesn't even try to suggest a genre of any kind until we're a full fifth of the way through.  We start with our couple, she a literature lecturer, he big in medical provision and decisions at the council, being forced to move out of their home, a building that had existed throughout her life since childhood and which they'd occupied for over thirty yearsThe building he's inherited, meanwhile, and which they let out to a single mother, is needed by their adult daughter, who quite blatantly says to its occupant 'take a hike, I'm moving in and you're moving out'Now, at this stage you may well, if you know this is a genre read, think it's going to be a throwback to those 'home invasion' thrillers Hollywood gave us in the 1980s, but noWe avoid genre completely, as I say – instead learning about Greek tragedy, in case that has any bearing on what happens here, and seeing how an older-middle aged couple live their lives.  Until at that twenty per cent stage we find something that raises an eyebrow as any crime book should – until the point where the evicted tenant is found to have completely vanished.
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|summary=Sarah Wallace said that she grew up on a council estate in Kent and that she had two brothers and two sistersIt seemed to have been a loving, stable family.  When we first meet her, she can't sleep because her son, Freddie, who's nearly sixteen, hasn't come home by the time he sort of half-promised he'd be in byHer husband, Tom, is fast asleep: they're moving house in the morning but he's still going to be going to work and he needs his sleepHe wakes, though, when Freddie does come in and overhears him tell his mother that he's killed someone.
|isbn=1913193381
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1471179273
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|author=Louise Candlish
|title=House of Correction
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|title=The Heights
|author=Nicci French
+
|rating=4.5
|rating=5
+
|genre=Thrillers
|genre=Crime
+
|summary=Ellen doesn't expect to see Kieran that day. She's on site, visiting a client for a lighting consultation when she spies him in a building across the way. There are lots of things, lots of people, you might see when you look out across London, but this isn't one Ellen expected that day or in fact any other day. Why? Because Kieran has been dead for over two years, and Ellen knows this for a fact, because she had a hand in his murder.
|summary=When we first meet Tabitha Hardy, she's in prison, on remand. She's sharing a cell with Michaela, who's more caring than she first appears.  She delivers tough love and gets Tabitha eating and drinking - and encourages her to have a shower, unpleasant as the whole processes might be. And how did Tabitha get here?  Well, on 21 December the body of Stuart Robert Rees was discovered in her garden shed by Andrew Kane, who was helping with the renovations to Tabitha's house. So far as the police are concerned, Tabitha is the only person who could have killed Rees - and when they arrived at her house she was covered in his blood.
+
|isbn=1471183483
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B07WWSCGVS
+
|isbn=1838853804
|title=The Lies You Told
+
|title=The Cursed Girls
|author=Harriet Tyce
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|author=Caro Ramsay
|rating=5
+
|rating=4
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=Year six student Robin Spence isn't happy about having to start a new schoolShe's left the school she loved in New York and now she's going to Ashams in North LondonIt's very upmarket; places are rare as hens' teeth and as the pupils have all been there ''forever'', they have their established groups. Robin's going to be an outsiderAnd why is this happening?  Well, over a matter of a few days her parents' marriage fell apart.  Andrew Spence is staying in New York - he works for a securities firm - and her mother, Sadie Roper, has come back to London to pick up her practice as a criminal barrister.  That's easier said than done when you've been out of the market place - and the country - for more than ten years.
+
|summary=Megan Melvick's earliest memory is of her fourth birthday: she followed her grandfather down to the pond, only to find that he'd hanged himselfTwenty years later she's back home again and this time the occasion is no less sad.  She's there to say her final farewells to her sister, Melissa, who is dying of anorexiaAs she dies, Melissa whispers 'sorry' to Megan but what did she mean?  There were lots of things, minor and major cruelties, for which Melissa might have been sorry - or was it even a question?  Was she asking if Megan was sorry for sleeping with Melissa's husband, Jago, on their wedding day? The Melvicks might seem to have everything - Ivan Melvick was Lord Lieutenant of the County and money was never in short supply - but there did seem to be a curseIn addition to Melissa's health problems, Megan was deaf and their mother, Beth, had left suddenly three years before.  Would she come back for her elder daughter's funeral?
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author= Mark Dawson
+
|isbn=1409181669
|title= The Cleaner
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|title=The Maidens
|rating= 4
+
|author=Alex Michaelides
|genre= Thrillers
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|rating=5
|summary= Ruthless and coldly competent, John Milton is one of the British government's best assets – a contract killer with lethal instincts. Now, after ten years, he wants out. But his job isn't one you can just walk away from…
+
|genre=Crime
|isbn=178739462X
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|summary=Mariana was convinced that Professor Edward Fosca had committed two murders and looked likely to get away with them both.  She needed to think carefully about what she knew and decide how she should proceed.
 +
 +
Everything - or so she thought - had begun with the death of Tara Hampton on the Paradise nature reserve in Cambridge.  She'd been brutally stabbed and Mariana's niece, Zoe, had telephoned her in distress.  Tara had been her best friend and she was struggling to cope.  Mariana wasn't ''entirely'' happy about having to go to Cambridge, but she caught the first fast train from King's Cross.  Mariana and Zoe were close and had been made all the more so by the death of Mariana's husband, Sebastian, in a swimming accident on Naxos some fourteen months earlier. Zoe had been their surrogate daughter after the death of Zoe's mother and Mariana's sister, Eliza.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1838951067
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|author=Sarah Langan
|title=The Nothing Man
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|title=Good Neighbours
|author=Catherine Ryan Howard
+
|rating=4.5
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=When we first meet Jim Doyle, he's about to get a shock.  He's security at a supermarket and he's watching a woman who is acting suspiciously. She has a book tucked under her arm and he wonders if she's planning to pay for it. Suddenly it drops to the floor with the spine splayed upwards. ''Nothing Man'' by Eve Black, is the title. Why is Jim shocked?  Well, Jim was - ''is'' - the Nothing Man who, until eighteen years ago raped and killed.  The author of the book was twelve years old when Jim raped her mother, and then killed her, her father and her seven-year-old sister, Anna.
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|summary= If you're of a certain vintage, it's hard to read the words ''Good Neighbours'' without adding a sing-song ''that's when Good Neighbours…become…good friends''. Maple Street is no Ramsay Street, though, Arlo and Gertie live a world apart from the Melbourne suburbs. They're one of 18 households on the crescent, quite new arrivals having moved in a year earlier. They're not quite like all the other families (he's an ex rocker, she's a former beauty queen) but they've made some friends and their kids have settled in, and it's all going ok. Until it isn't. One hot, clammy, sticky, sweaty summer, a sinkhole opens up in the park across the way. It's a revolting mess of dirt and chaos, but for the residents of Maple Street, the worst is yet to come.
 +
|isbn=1789098211
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=178089922X
+
|isbn=0008395594
|title=Invisible Girl
+
|title=Both of You
|author=Lisa Jewell
+
|author=Adele Parks
|rating=5
+
|rating=4
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=''When you wear a hood, you're invisible.''
+
|summary=You could be forgiven for thinking that Leigh Fletcher has it all: great husband and two gorgeous stepsons whom she adores.  Then, one Monday, she went to work and never came home. Mark, Oli and Seb are shatteredWell, Mark and Seb are but Oli's sixteen and at the stage where he thinks boredom is his best lookHe's been a bit off with Leigh for a while but she put it down to him growing up and starting to become independent.  Seb's only twelve and Leigh's absence hits him hardThen Daan Janssen, a wealthy Dutch businessman, reports his wife, Kai missingShe too has vanished without trace.
 
 
Saffyre Maddox is seventeen-years-old and beautifulBy her own admission, she's a bit of a boffin, doing and enjoying maths, physics and biology at A levelLife hasn't been easy for her: most people who have been close to her have died and she's now living with her Uncle Aaron in an eighth-floor flatSomething ''really, really bad happened'' to her when she was ten and she self-harmed for a long time.  Aaron organised psychological help and for three years Roan Fours was her therapist.  He gently unpeeled the layers of her psyche, but somehow managed to miss that 'something really, really bad'When the therapy ended Saffyre felt cast adrift, but she retained an interest in Roan.
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Sharon Doering
+
|isbn=1848458428
|title=She Lies Close
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|title=Local Woman Missing
 +
|author=Mary Kubica
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary= Ava Boone was five years old when she went missing, around 6 months ago. There has been no sign of her since, and no arrests have been made. And yet, this book is not about Ava. Not really. This book is about Grace, who has just discovered her neighbour in her new house is a suspect in Ava's disappearance. As a single mother to two young children, she's really wishing this sort of information had come to light before they moved in.
+
|summary=Eleven years ago, a man regularly came home to his wife with lipstick marks on his collar and lame excuses as to why he was late - again. His wife was in the habit of going out for a run late at night.  It was the only time she had for herself when she didn't have to look after her baby - but when she was out she would meet up with a man, grateful for the unquestioning affection he gave her. The locality was stunned when Shelby Tebow disappeared, seemingly without a trace, leaving her husband to look after her disabled baby. Ten days later, a local woman and her six-year-old daughter disappeared.  Meredith Dickey was a birth doula and she'd seemed to be under some strain for the last couple of weeks or so.  Her body was eventually found in a seedy motel - it appeared that she'd committed suicide. She left a note saying that her daughter, Delilah, was safe and there was no point in looking for her.
|isbn=1789094194
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1409187438
+
|author=Terry Miles
|title=The First Lie
+
|title=Rabbits
|author=A J Park
+
|rating=4.5
|rating=3.5
+
|genre=Science Fiction
|genre=Thrillers
+
|summary=Welcome to the world of The Game. Or should that be the game, for while it ought to be capitalised to high heaven, it never leaves lower case throughout this book. It's also called Rabbits, although only as a slangy term for it – as far as anyone knows, it has no official title, no official source, no hard and fast structure, and to the average person no obvious entry point. A bit like the game of life then. Yes, this is the game of life for a certain tribe of people – the fan of the conspiracy, the computer game, the hack from the darkest of webs. People like our hero, K, named like that in the least Kafkaesque manner possible. K and his bezzies are trying to be historians of the game, and have studied amongst many things the most unique of high score boards, for the lists of who has successfully won the game are in the most peculiar places, and are still very short. However this time it's different. This time the game seems the most dangerous, nay lethal, the most broken it's ever been – morally and otherwise. Unfortunately for K, in trying to sort out what the game is doing, if it's even being played, and how his loved ones might be kept safe, he is only to find out that the line between observing and learning about the game, and playing it, is a very thin one indeed...
|summary=On the second of October 37-year-old barrister, Paul Reeve, returned home at 9 pm to find his house in darkness and the front door open. His wife was in the bedroom in a state of shock and in the bathroom there was a dead man who had been stabbed repeatedly in the neck with Paul's paper-knife.  In that moment Paul takes a decision that will be irrevocable: he decides that he and Alice are not going to ring the police and tell the truth. They're going to bury the body in woodland and go on as though nothing has happened.
+
|isbn=1529016932
 
}}
 
}}
  
 
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Move on to [[Newest Travel Reviews]]

Revision as of 07:52, 16 September 2021

1542028752.jpg

Review of

Her Perfect Family by Teresa Driscoll

5star.jpg Thrillers

The novel begins by introducing you to Gemma, who at first instance appears to be your average student, faced with the familiar horrifying realisation, at the eleventh hour, that her graduation outfit is all wrong. Suddenly, Gemma receives an eerie message stating He is not who he says he is…, paving the way for the sinister tone that remains throughout the novel. In a twist of events, and after a change of outfit, Gemma is shot in the midst of her graduation ceremony. With Gemma then in a coma, what follows is a complex whodunit with a list of suspects that continues to grow the further you read. Full Review

0008370982.jpg

Review of

Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney

4.5star.jpg Thrillers

Amelia Wright is forty-two and it was the staff raffle at Battersea Dogs Home that gave her a weekend away in a converted chapel in Scotland. Her husband, Adam, isn't so keen on the idea. Like Amelia, he knows that their marriage has been under strain: he's a screenwriter and he's never shy of making it clear to Amelia that he'd prefer to spend time with the novels he's hoping to adapt than with her. Amelia's annoyed that he never enquires about how her day has been - and working with the dogs, many of whom have been abused, is never easy. Still - she's won the weekend away, even if it does mean driving for eight hours in her 1978 Morris Minor Traveller with Adam beside her in the passenger seat - and then doing the same thing to come back a couple of days later. Full Review

0008421714.jpg

Review of

Mrs March by Virginia Feito

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, but isn't this the first time he's based a character on you? She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'her mannerisms. Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch. Full Review

0241989094.jpg

Review of

The Perfect Life by Nuala Ellwood

4star.jpg Thrillers

In August 2018 we meet a young woman called Imogen and she's viewing a house in Goring-on-Thames and telling the estate agent about her three children, Lavender, Freddie and Barclay. The boys are a bit of a handful which is why she's making this trip on her own. The house would be perfect for them.

It's the same month but now we're in Wimbledon and we encounter the same young woman, only this time she's job hunting and living in her sister, Georgie's, spare room, where she's been since she broke up with her boyfriend, Connor. Full Review

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Review of

All Her Fault by Andrea Mara

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It had seemed like one of those serendipitous events which sometimes happen. Marissa Irvine had been hoping that the opportunity would arise for her son, Milo, to go on a play date. She was concerned that he didn't have any friends at his new school. Milo would go home from Kerryglen National School in an affluent Dublin suburb with his classmate Jacob - and Marissa would pick him up from 14 Tudor Grove a little later. What could be better? Only, when Marissa arrived at the house, expecting to meet Jacob's mother, Jenny, the door was answered by Esther, who didn't know Jenny or Jacob. The phone number she'd been given for Jenny was not recognised. Milo had disappeared. And so had Jenny's nanny. Full Review

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Review of

I Know You by Claire McGowan

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Then: Casey returns from a walk with the baby, Carson, and comes across three bodies, almost a whole family taken down.

Now: Rachel is out for a walk with her dog, Brandy, when she comes across a body in the woods. Full Review

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Review of

The Stoning by Peter Papathanasiou

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In a town sleazy enough to make sh*tholes elsewhere look glamorous in comparison, a teacher has been transported across town at night in a shopping trolley, and she's been taped to a tree and she's had rocks bowled at her as if she were the world's tallest cricket stumps. When she's discovered by the town gossip everyone, including the local cops, are quite confident the culprit has come from the immigrant detention centre the place is reluctantly home to. An arson attack on that shows the feeling – and it's only fair, is the general opinion, for the occupants are often setting their own fires in protest at their conditions. Cue the arrival of George Manolis, a higher rank from the city, to sort everything out. Because such an aggrieved, insular community is really going to welcome a Greek-heritaged city boy laying down the law... Full Review

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Review of

The Rising Tide by Sam Lloyd

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Lucy Locke's early life hadn't been easy but she'd built a good and decent life in the aftermath. She's now married to Daniel, who co-owns Locke-Povey Marine on Penleith Beach, and they live at Wild Ridge on Mortis Point with Billie, Lucy's daughter and Fin, the child she had with Daniel. They have financial difficulties, some caused by Nick Povey, Daniel's partner and so-called best friend. Nick and Daniel have a history together from the time they both spent in a children's home but it's difficult to think that Nick has Daniel's best interests at heart, particularly where Lucy, or money, is concerned. Full Review

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Review of

The First Day of Spring by Nancy Tucker

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Sometimes I wonder if I take my pleasures too sadly - and The First Day of Spring was one such occasion. The writing is superb and completely compelling. The characterisation is excellent and the plot grips you and won't let go. So, what's the problem? Well, the problem is Chrissie, the main character. When we first meet her she's just eight years old, small for her age and she readily tells us that she's just killed someone - a two-year-old boy. She's completely cold about what she's done with her main memory being that whilst she was killing - suffocating - her hands seized up. There's a clue that Chrissie isn't completely responsible for her actions a little later in the book: when will Steven come back, she wonders? Hasn't he been dead for long enough? Full Review

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Review of

The Lies We Tell by Jane Corry

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Sarah Wallace said that she grew up on a council estate in Kent and that she had two brothers and two sisters. It seemed to have been a loving, stable family. When we first meet her, she can't sleep because her son, Freddie, who's nearly sixteen, hasn't come home by the time he sort of half-promised he'd be in by. Her husband, Tom, is fast asleep: they're moving house in the morning but he's still going to be going to work and he needs his sleep. He wakes, though, when Freddie does come in and overhears him tell his mother that he's killed someone. Full Review

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Review of

The Heights by Louise Candlish

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Ellen doesn't expect to see Kieran that day. She's on site, visiting a client for a lighting consultation when she spies him in a building across the way. There are lots of things, lots of people, you might see when you look out across London, but this isn't one Ellen expected that day or in fact any other day. Why? Because Kieran has been dead for over two years, and Ellen knows this for a fact, because she had a hand in his murder. Full Review

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Review of

The Cursed Girls by Caro Ramsay

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Megan Melvick's earliest memory is of her fourth birthday: she followed her grandfather down to the pond, only to find that he'd hanged himself. Twenty years later she's back home again and this time the occasion is no less sad. She's there to say her final farewells to her sister, Melissa, who is dying of anorexia. As she dies, Melissa whispers 'sorry' to Megan but what did she mean? There were lots of things, minor and major cruelties, for which Melissa might have been sorry - or was it even a question? Was she asking if Megan was sorry for sleeping with Melissa's husband, Jago, on their wedding day? The Melvicks might seem to have everything - Ivan Melvick was Lord Lieutenant of the County and money was never in short supply - but there did seem to be a curse. In addition to Melissa's health problems, Megan was deaf and their mother, Beth, had left suddenly three years before. Would she come back for her elder daughter's funeral? Full Review

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Review of

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

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Mariana was convinced that Professor Edward Fosca had committed two murders and looked likely to get away with them both. She needed to think carefully about what she knew and decide how she should proceed.

Everything - or so she thought - had begun with the death of Tara Hampton on the Paradise nature reserve in Cambridge. She'd been brutally stabbed and Mariana's niece, Zoe, had telephoned her in distress. Tara had been her best friend and she was struggling to cope. Mariana wasn't entirely happy about having to go to Cambridge, but she caught the first fast train from King's Cross. Mariana and Zoe were close and had been made all the more so by the death of Mariana's husband, Sebastian, in a swimming accident on Naxos some fourteen months earlier. Zoe had been their surrogate daughter after the death of Zoe's mother and Mariana's sister, Eliza. Full Review

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Review of

Good Neighbours by Sarah Langan

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If you're of a certain vintage, it's hard to read the words Good Neighbours without adding a sing-song that's when Good Neighbours…become…good friends. Maple Street is no Ramsay Street, though, Arlo and Gertie live a world apart from the Melbourne suburbs. They're one of 18 households on the crescent, quite new arrivals having moved in a year earlier. They're not quite like all the other families (he's an ex rocker, she's a former beauty queen) but they've made some friends and their kids have settled in, and it's all going ok. Until it isn't. One hot, clammy, sticky, sweaty summer, a sinkhole opens up in the park across the way. It's a revolting mess of dirt and chaos, but for the residents of Maple Street, the worst is yet to come. Full Review

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Review of

Both of You by Adele Parks

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You could be forgiven for thinking that Leigh Fletcher has it all: great husband and two gorgeous stepsons whom she adores. Then, one Monday, she went to work and never came home. Mark, Oli and Seb are shattered. Well, Mark and Seb are but Oli's sixteen and at the stage where he thinks boredom is his best look. He's been a bit off with Leigh for a while but she put it down to him growing up and starting to become independent. Seb's only twelve and Leigh's absence hits him hard. Then Daan Janssen, a wealthy Dutch businessman, reports his wife, Kai missing. She too has vanished without trace. Full Review

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Review of

Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica

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Eleven years ago, a man regularly came home to his wife with lipstick marks on his collar and lame excuses as to why he was late - again. His wife was in the habit of going out for a run late at night. It was the only time she had for herself when she didn't have to look after her baby - but when she was out she would meet up with a man, grateful for the unquestioning affection he gave her. The locality was stunned when Shelby Tebow disappeared, seemingly without a trace, leaving her husband to look after her disabled baby. Ten days later, a local woman and her six-year-old daughter disappeared. Meredith Dickey was a birth doula and she'd seemed to be under some strain for the last couple of weeks or so. Her body was eventually found in a seedy motel - it appeared that she'd committed suicide. She left a note saying that her daughter, Delilah, was safe and there was no point in looking for her. Full Review

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Review of

Rabbits by Terry Miles

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Welcome to the world of The Game. Or should that be the game, for while it ought to be capitalised to high heaven, it never leaves lower case throughout this book. It's also called Rabbits, although only as a slangy term for it – as far as anyone knows, it has no official title, no official source, no hard and fast structure, and to the average person no obvious entry point. A bit like the game of life then. Yes, this is the game of life for a certain tribe of people – the fan of the conspiracy, the computer game, the hack from the darkest of webs. People like our hero, K, named like that in the least Kafkaesque manner possible. K and his bezzies are trying to be historians of the game, and have studied amongst many things the most unique of high score boards, for the lists of who has successfully won the game are in the most peculiar places, and are still very short. However this time it's different. This time the game seems the most dangerous, nay lethal, the most broken it's ever been – morally and otherwise. Unfortunately for K, in trying to sort out what the game is doing, if it's even being played, and how his loved ones might be kept safe, he is only to find out that the line between observing and learning about the game, and playing it, is a very thin one indeed... Full Review

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