RATED 3/5 – Best Crime Books and More

A Gift for Dying by M J Arlidge

Synopsis: Nothing surprises Adam Brandt anymore. As a forensic psychologist, he’s seen and heard everything.
That is, until he meets Kassie.
Because she claims to have a terrible gift – with one look into your eyes, she can see when and how you will die.
Adam doesn’t believe her.
But then a serial killer starts wreaking havoc across the city, and only Kassie seems to know where he’ll strike next.
Against all his intuition, Adam starts to think Kassie might be telling the truth.
He just doesn’t realise how dangerous this trust might be .

My Rating: 3/5

My Review: Mmmm this is a very strange one for me. I am definitely a fan of this author especially the Helen Grace series, however this stand alone has left me wondering where I sit with this standalone book. Our main character Adam Brandt is a forensic psychologist and he sees all sorts of patients and feels like nothing much surprises him anymore. That is until he meets Kassie the other lead character in this book. According to Kassie all she has to do is look into somebody’s eyes and she can see how and when they die. That in itself makes me a little bit detached from the storyline as it’s not really my cup of tea. However, you can’t knock it until you try it so I continued.

When a serial killer starts attacking and killing people it seems only Kassie knows where they will strike next. The actual writing and storyline was as good as other books MJA has written but there was something I just couldn’t get along with in this book. I don’t even think it’s the storyline itself, more so the characters. I just didn’t care than much about them and to be honest I didn’t really like any of them? This certainly isn’t a bad book and its written in such a way you need to find out what happens next…but…for me it just didn’t hit the spot so I am giving it a middle of the road rating.

We Can See You by Simon Kernick

.Synopsis: You have it all. Success, a beautiful home, a happy family. Until, in a heartbeat, it’s gone. We’ve kidnapped your daughter, and we know everything about you. Including the dark secrets from your past you thought were forgotten. We tell you not to contact the police – and that we’ll know if you do. Because we can see you. And now you know this is no ordinary abduction. It’s worse. Within hours you’re on the run, with only one thought in your head:That you will stop at nothing to get your daughter back

My Rating: 3/5

My Review: I have to start by saying that I am a big fan of Kernick especially books such as Relentless and The Last Ten Seconds however this….not so much. The synopsis felt like a departure from my expectations of a Kernick novel so I was excited to try something a little different. Brook Conner is on her way home and is excited to see her daughter Paige. When she arrives she just knows something is off as her housekeeper Rosa is not there with Paige but her car is. Confused she calls Rosa to no reply followed shortly thereafter to her husband. It becomes all too clear that her daughter has been kidnapped.

Now right out the gate I admit I did not warm to any of the characters in this book. Brook, her husband, her lawyer, literally everybody! The storyline also bordered on the ridiculous. Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against stretching the realms of reality for a story, but it has to be a good story for me to be on board with it! I managed to trudge my way through this but it felt like a chore. Every now and then you can read a book by an author you love and just not gel with the book and this is one of those times.

Brutal by Mandasue Heller

Brutal Synopsis: A bereaved husband is faced with a devastating choice in Brutal, an engrossing, gritty thriller from the top ten bestselling author Mandasue Heller.

When Frank Peter’s wife Maureen dies, he feels that his once-idyllic life on the Yorkshire Moors is over. And with a daughter emigrating to Australia and a son who has his own marital problems, Frank feels resigned to a life of loneliness. Then one night he finds a frightened young woman hiding at the back of his farmhouse. She explains that her name is Irena and was brought to this country by a man who promised her the world and then forced her into prostitution.

Frank offers her a bed for the night but it’s the middle of winter, and when heavy snowfall prevents her from leaving the next day, he’s forced to extend the invitation. But the longer Irena stays, the easier it gets for the men she’s trying to escape from to find her.

People-trafficking could just be the tip of the iceberg, and Frank has no idea what these people are really capable of . . .

My Rating: 3/5

My Review: It’s been a very long time since I read a Mandasue Heller and chose this one from my very long to be read pile. We meet Frank Peters an ordinary man who lives on a farm in the Yorkshire moors. Following the death of his wife, he is managing okay but with his daughter now moving to Australia and his son who has his own problems he does feel the loneliness start to creep in. One night in the middle of winter he comes across a scared woman in the snow hiding behind his farm. With the snow making it hard to get about he offers her a bed for the night and hopefully some relative safety.

What transpires is a rather unusual plot where Frank become unwittingly caught in the middle of an elaborate scheme involving sex trafficking. To be honest the book was definitely readable but for me the plot was kind of ‘out there’ and it instantly put me off. I loathed Franks son and daughter from the off and the fact that Frank was so naïve just felt a little too contrived for me.

I certainly finished this and it wasn’t a bad book but for me I preferred MH older books with slightly different settings and storylines. For me this was just middle of the road

The Lost Children by Michael Wood (Matilda Darke 9)

The Lost Children Synopsis: APRIL 2020: LOCKDOWN

DI Brady has been tracing victims of systemic abuse at a local children’s home after a high-profile accusation pitched it into the spotlight – a case that couldn’t be more personal.

As Matilda and her team piece together the disturbing picture of the history of the home, it soon becomes clear that this is much bigger than they ever suspected.

But nothing prepares them for what they uncover next…

The Lost Children is an utterly gripping crime thriller weaving a breakneck tale of a vast network of secrets and lies, a relentless detective determined to sabotage it, and a murder that shatters two decades of silence.

My Rating: 3/5

** WARNING** If you plan on reading the series in order and are not yet at this stage in the series please do not read the review as it will inevitably contain spoliers

I have been binge reading and enjoying the Matilda Darke series and although this book was no different, in one respect I feel like the disbelief is just getting worse. This team has been to hell and back and it seems like they are continuing to be the unluckiest people in Sheffield.

The storyline does feature historical sexual abuse of children but I think it was handled as best as it could be. The writing was, as ever, extremely good and the story flowed well. However, for me I just want the team to get their teeth into a juicy case and work the case as they normally do without somebody within the team either being killed off or being the victim of something horrific. Like I said I am really enjoying the books and the series but I feel like it either needs to be wrapped up and ended or continued in the most normal way and let the team work a case without being on the receiving end.

Survivor’s Guilt by Michael Wood (Matilda Darke 8)

Survivor's Guilt Synopsis: A TEAM TORN APART

Nine months ago DCI Matilda Darke survived a bullet to the head. The brutal attack claimed dozens of lives, including those she loved most, and the nightmares still plague her every waking thought.

A MEMORY SHE’D RATHER FORGET

Now, she’s ready to get back on the job. But a new terror awaits. A woman is found murdered and her wounds look eerily similar to several cold cases. Desperate to find a lead, DCI Darke and her team must face a terrifying truth: a serial killer is on the loose in Sheffield.

A THREAT CLOSE TO HOME

Matilda has led countless murder investigations before but the lingering emotional scars from her ordeal and the uneasiness within her once-tight team have left tensions high. As the body count rises, Matilda realises that this might just be where it all ends.

My Rating: 3/5

** WARNING** If you plan on reading the series in order and are not yet at this stage in the series please do not read the review as it will inevitably contain spoliers

My Review: Okay, I am in a quandry here. I am binge reading this series and think the author is extremely talented and has created a series full of characters that I love. I am invested as a reader and of course as an avid reader I am able to put aside those times when storylines go a little outside the realms of belief. However….this time I just can’t put that aside for this latest book.

The last book was a huge shock to the system and with the devastation that happened to the team following the last case I was already reeling. So when we are brought a new storyline with prostitutes being murdered it gives the team (what’s left of them) the chance to get their teeth back onto something. I like the fact that the characters that I love didn’t just fall right back into their normal ways and are all struggling to get back on an even keel. Nearly all the remaining characters have their own battles following the shootings nine months earlier.

The storyline was written well as ever and I enjoyed the book immensley until the killer was revealed. I mean look, I like it when author’s aren’t afraid to do things that aren’t necessarily fan favourites as they normally have good reasoning for it, but this time I think it suspends belief a little too much for my liking. I mean how much bad luck can one team have? That alone was a shocker but this latest storyline just felt too contrived. I am really hoping that the next book takes us back to a new level of normal (at least as far as this particular team and set of characters goes).

The Mother of All Christmases by Milly Johnson

The Mother of All Christmase Synopsis: Eve Glace – co-owner of the theme park Winterworld – is having a baby and her due date is a perfectly timed 25th December. And she’s decided that she and her husband Jacques should renew their wedding vows with all the pomp that was missing the first time. But growing problems at Winterworld keep distracting them …

Annie Pandoro and her husband Joe own a small Christmas cracker factory, and are well set up and happy together despite life never blessing them with a much-wanted child. But when Annie finds that the changes happening to her body aren’t typical of the menopause but pregnancy, her joy is uncontainable.

Palma Collins has agreed to act as a surrogate, hoping the money will get her out of the gutter in which she finds herself. But when the couple she is helping split up, is she going to be left carrying a baby she never intended to keep?

Annie, Palma and Eve all meet at the ‘Christmas Pudding Club’, a new directive started by a forward-thinking young doctor to help mums-to-be mingle and share their pregnancy journeys. Will this group help each other to find love, contentment and peace as Christmas approaches?

My Rating: 3/5

My Review: It’s been quite some time since I have read a Milly Johnson book and needed a break from the crime so picked this one up and was looking forward to it. I have to be completely honest and say I wasn’t blown away by this particular book which is a shame as I have absolutely loved some of her other books.

This book is based on three women brought together by their membership of the Christmas Pudding Club (a club for women expecting a baby around Christmas). Eve Glace, Annie Pandoro and Palma Collins are the three characters who we get meet and delve into their lives. The first few chpaters for some reason felt a little hard going with the introduction of the people in these womens lives. Once I got to grips with everybody the story certainly flowed but I couldn’t really get into the storyline and I actually don’t know why.

The story overall was okay but for some reason I couldn’t quite gel with it and didn’t much care what happened to the characters. I think I may well have dulled certain senses in my brain by reading too much crime fiction. I will no doubt return to this author at a later date….

Hard Fire by J B Turner (Jon Reznick 10)

Hard Fire Synopsis:

Jon Reznick is not a man to cross. A brutally effective black-ops veteran, Reznick has a history of taking the law into his own hands. So when a group of masked men murders his closest friend, he swears to exact vengeance. The now-deceased Bill Eastland had been Reznick’s last living tie to his father, leaving him devastated…and furious. Whether or not the FBI approves, he swears to hunt down whoever issued the hit on his friend.

With the help of hacker Trevelle Williams, Reznick tracks the masked murderers from Maine to Texas to New York, quickly becoming embroiled in the shadowy world of the Aryan Brotherhood and the Mafia. As Reznick’s own body count begins to climb, clues lead him to one of the most dangerous crime families in New York, headed by the infamous Paul Moretti. But FBI Assistant Director Martha Meyerstein has just learned a crucial secret that could derail Reznick’s quest for revenge—Moretti is a high-level FBI informant.

Reznick faces a stark choice: take on the FBI and risk severing ties with Martha, or inflict his own form of rigorous justice no matter the possible fallout. How far will he go—and how many government agencies will he undermine—to get retribution for his best friend’s death? He might just have to create his own set of rules.

My Rating: 3/5

My Review: I have read this series from the beginning and have absolutely loved them all. Somehow this latest book I didn’t feel fit with what I knew about this character so far and by the time I finished the book I wondered what had happened. I won’t re-hash the synopis as that is pointless and to be fair the storyline never seems to be an issue which shows the skill JBT has as an author.

What I found hard to stomach was the character I have grown to know and love reading about. Jon is returning from a trip and intercepts some bad guys, when he realises they killed his old pal Bill Eastland it rams up his revenge factor. For some reason this story didn’t sit right with me at all. It didn’t feel anything like the character I had read about for the last ten books because this version of Jon was a little too crazy. He didn’t care for Martha (definitely didn’t sit right with me) and he cared little for anybody else’s feelings.

An average read which for some reason didn’t resonate with me, I can only hope that the Jon I know and love returns for book 11

THE NURSERY BY SUE WATSON

Synopsis: Then: Morning light shines into the nursery, casting shadows across the pale pink walls and wooden cot in the middle of the room. She opens the door expecting to hear the soft coo of her daughter Sofia stretching herself awake. But the room is silent. The cot is empty. Her little girl has vanished…

Now: Twelve years have passed, but Emily will never forget the night her life changed forever and she’s happy to have her daughter back beside her. A teenager now, Sofia – who was once a star student – is getting into trouble at school and she’s started asking questions about when she was a baby, but Emily can’t tell her what really happened the night she went missing. Nobody would understand why Emily did what she did, and if anyone ever found out, she could lose her daughter forever.

But when Emily catches Sofia messaging a stranger online, her heart pounds in her chest as she reads the last message received.

Your mother isn’t who you think she is.

Days later, Emily returns home to find the house silent. She checks every room but Sofia has vanished, again. She shudders as she remembers that night in the nursery. Has her past finally caught up with her? And is she already too late to save her precious daughter?

My Rating: 3/5

My Review: I have to start by saying that I would definitely say I am a fan of some of Sue Watsons books, however this one infuriated me beyond belief. Emily and her daughter Sofia are the stars of this latest story and at first it was pretty readable and it was very clear that Emily had run from something. The story flowed well and I got into it pretty quickly but there were a few niggles that continued to irritate and just seemingly got worse.

Emily as a Mother was ridiculously over the top, but I could forgive that to a point. However, considering she trusted nobody, she then decides to trust a dude she literally met five minutes before? That annoyed me, as did her friend Nancy. She needed a good slap and to be told to disappear off the face of the planet. The final and worst thing for me was the addition of stating the obvious at the end of what felt like every chapter!

These few niggles really put a dampner on this book for me and lessened the enjoyment hugely. It was still an okay read but nowhere near what I have come to expect from this author and this definitely wouldn’t be on my list of books from her I love.

PIECES OF HER BY KARIN SLAUGHTER

Pieces of Her Synopsis:

She’s the person you think you know best…

But what if you don’t actually know her at all?

Andy Oliver thinks she knows everything about her mother Laura.

Until, in a moment of terrible danger, Laura steps forward into the line of fire.

Now, Andy must embark on a desperate race against time to uncover the secrets of her mother’s past.

Before they both run out of time…

Kat’s Rating: 3/5

Kat’s Review: I must say I am a huge fan of Karin Slaughter, whether it’s a part of her series of books or a standalone I am normally thoroughly absorbed with her books…until now! For some reason this book just rubbed me up the wrong way! The synopsis kind of gives you the idea as follows:-

“What if the person you thought you knew best turns out to be someone you never knew at all . . . ?

Andrea knows everything about her mother, Laura. She knows she’s spent her whole life in the small beachside town of Belle Isle; she knows she’s never wanted anything more than to live a quiet life as a pillar of the community; she knows she’s never kept a secret in her life. Because we all know our mothers, don’t we?

But all that changes when a trip to the mall explodes into violence and Andrea suddenly sees a completely different side to Laura”

Well all I can say is that by the end of the third chapter I wanted to slap the hell out of the character Andrea. She made me feel like she was a slightly spoiled and at times slow on the uptake woman. The idea behind the story was good and as the story unfolds flipping between the current time with Andrea and the past with her Mum I could see that the idea was a great one…for me it just wasn’t executed not because of the writing, but because I just didn’t particularly like any of the characters, To be fair the last quarter of the book was more well paced and things unfolded in a way that made you want to read more.

Sadly for me the dislike of the main characters was the first hurdle and I just couldn’t gel quite as well with the story and writing as well as I usually would with this author. Overall an okay book, but not one I would return to unless I literally had nothing left to read!

A CORNISH SUMMER BY CATHERINE ALLIOTT

Synopsis: Flora’s been in love with her husband for twenty years. The trouble is, he’s been married to someone else for the past fifteen . . .

A summer on Cornwall’s sandy beaches sounds like the perfect getaway.

Except Flora finds she’ll be spending it with her former scheming mother-in-law, ex-husband and his new wife . . .

Can she survive the summer playing happy families?

Could a holiday romance help her finally get over her him?

And will stumbling on the family secret change her mind about them all?

Kat’s Rating: 3/5

Kat’s Review: It’s been quite some time since I have read a Catherine Alliott book but decided to give this one a go. The basic premise doesn’t need repeating as the synopsis says it all, however this book is what I would describe as a slow burner. There are a lot of characters and it takes some time to wrap your head around all of them and what part they play.

The storyline and writing was okay but nothing that blew me away but it was reasonably enjoyable. I think the sheer volume of characters at the beginning put me off a little and although I completed the book for some reason it felt like a little bit of a chore. I finished this and didn’t feel compelled to write a review which left me conluding this as a middle of the of rating.