Attorney Alton Carver has a problem: he’s under federal investigation for embezzling and securities fraud. Instead of spending the next three to five years behind bars, he’s got a plan: stage his own death, take the money he stole and light out for Central America, leaving behind wife Nicole and daughter Clara. But when he sticks around town long enough to watch his own funeral, he makes the unpleasant discovery that the life he’s leaving behind isn’t the life he thought he had.
The shock of seeing Nicole in the arms of another man leads Alton to postpone his plan to run for the border and forces him to reconsider his self-image as a respected and admired pillar of the legal community. What comes next is a slow-burn train wreck, a tale of self-deception, revenge, and bad decisions.
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
Chas and his light-beer-commercial friends were still tossing beanbags around. One of the girls squealed for some reason. She probably felt a thought forming. It can hurt if you’re not used to it.
My Review:
This was exceedingly clever and deftly paced – I never would have guessed it was the author’s first novel. I had trouble putting my Kindle down today and was prone to hiss or moan when my avid perusal was interrupted, as I didn’t want to miss a moment of the snarky observations and inner musings of this rather vile couple. Not one of the characters featured was an upstanding citizen or the type of person I would choose to share air with, yet I was riveted to their tale and deathly curious to know how it would resolve. I keenly followed each surprising twist and crafty revelation with fervent interest and waffled in my opinions as the layers were cunningly peeled back ever so shrewdly. Spencer Fleury is a wily storyteller with strong word voodoo. He is definitely one to watch.
Spencer Fleury has worked as a sailor, copywriter, economics professor, and record store clerk, among other disreputable professions. He was born in the Detroit suburbs, spent most of his life in Florida, and now lives in San Francisco.
His first novel, How I’m Spending My Afterlife, was published in October 2017.
Brand NEW from the bestselling author of The Village Shop For Lonely Hearts.
After escaping her parents’ unhappy marriage to sleepy Cranbridge a long time ago, Belle Clarke dreams of staying at The Black Swan Inn forever.
But with the rundown Inn threatened with closure, Belle may be forced to leave, unless a buyer can be found … quickly.
So, when her oldest friend Pete Kennedy returns from working abroad with a plan to save the Inn, Belle should be overjoyed. The trouble is, Pete has some rather radical ideas for the renovation which Belle disagrees with.
But when a snowstorm hits, Belle and Pete are forced to put aside their differences and work together to help the village.
Can Belle realize her dreams to stay in Cranbridge and can Pete ever stop running from his past?
As they try to save The Black Swan Inn, secrets are revealed and just maybe they’ll finally find out how they really feel about each other.
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
Aunty Angie’s view of clothing, hair and make -up was that you needed to be seen from outer space. Preferably without the need of a telescope.
Angie’s cooking was legendary and, unfortunately, not in a good way. Her food was almost always revolting and was normally soggy, dry or inedible. Sometimes all three at once.
My Review:
The small village of Cranbridge sounds pleasant and gentle, despite the frigid weather and dodgy electrical service. I’m enjoying getting to know the quirky residents and uniquely appealing characters. Each tale in this series has involved rebuilding and strengthening not only the buildings but of the people residing in them as well as the village at large. I appreciate the pleasant sense of satisfaction of a community finding camaraderie and pulling together to help those in need as well as the sweet love story blooming amongst the toil and sweat. The engaging storylines were easy to follow and populated with struggling yet likable and oddly endearing characters I can’t help but root for.
About the Author
Alison Sherlock is the author of the bestselling Willow Tree Hall books. Alison enjoyed reading and writing stories from an early age and gave up office life to follow her dream. Her new series for Boldwood is set in a fictional Cotswold village and the first title was published in July 2020.
I might be the youngest Lockhart brother, but I’m not stupid. When Noah goes behind my back and hires Lauren, my gut tells me something isn’t right about the beautiful, intelligent woman.
When she uncovers a company secret, I rethink my doubts about her.
When her ex pops back into her life, I’m on guard again.
When her adorable daughter and snaggle-toothed, one-eyed dog melt my heart, I lose sight of what’s important.
In the end, I should have gone with my gut. She’s trouble with a capital T. The question is, what do I do when I’ve fallen for her, already love her daughter, and my company needs her expertise?
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
It’s not up to you to make him into the man he should already be.
My Review:
This was a quick and entertaining story that took the final Lockhart brother off the market. Quinn had been a somewhat bitter holdout after a bad relationship and had been watching his brothers succumb to love from the sidelines while being envious yet leery. The storylines were easy to fall into and unfolded with a smooth and steady progression as the realistically flawed yet likable characters fell for each other while Lauren was also dealing with and enabling her manipulative waste of skin ex-husband, a loathsome villain worthy of a triple hex. Sweet moments and amusing humor were provided by an adorable preschooler and her faithful snaggletoothed dog.
International bestselling author of over 30 novels, Kelly Collins writes with the intention of keeping the love alive. Always a romantic, she blends real-life events with her vivid imagination to create characters and stories that lovers of contemporary romance, new adult, and romantic suspense will return to again and again.
“April White writes the kind of books I love to read: romantic but suspenseful, smart yet so consuming. And you’ll love this cast.” – Amy Harmon, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and New York Times bestselling author
Code of Ethics, an all-new enemy to lovers romantic suspense standalone in the Cipher Security series from April White, is available now!
There are three things you need to know about Oliver Curran:
1) He’s a privileged playboy who happens to be a code-writing genius
2) For once in his life he’s trying to do the right thing
3) Someone wants him dead.
Dallas is a close protection specialist at Cipher Security whose bodyguard skills have already saved Oliver’s life once. But when the assassin gets too close to her uncooperative client, Dallas takes the party boy away from the city where he’s the social king, to the Yukon wilderness where she’s a master of survival.
If Dallas has to put her life on the line for a self-absorbed guy she doesn’t respect, then Oliver has to take orders from the too-serious woman he can’t charm. But living wild brings out their true natures, and suddenly funny is hot, capable is dangerous, and trust is the strongest survival skill of all.
‘Code of Ethics’ is a full-length enemies-to-lovers romantic suspense and can be read as a standalone. Book #3 in the Cipher Security series, Seduction in the City world, Penny Reid Book Universe.
“Is there something else I can help you with, Mr. Curran?”
“Oliver,” I said automatically, my eyes still looking in the direction Quinn had gone.
“Excuse me?”
“My name is Oliver,” I said, my eyes finally meeting hers, and I dug for my nicest-guy-in-the-room default. “Yours is Dallas, right?”
“Correct.”
She started walking toward the elevators again, and I couldn’t think of a reason not to follow. I assumed it wouldn’t get me anywhere to go after Quinn, and Dallas seemed to be the only one who cared that I was still in the building.
“Proprietary tech is the only game in the marketplace right now. If my code leaks, my program turns into the equivalent of generic drugs—worth pennies instead of millions.”
We’d reached the elevators, and she turned to face me. I was surprised that she wasn’t taller, because her vibe was all ferocity and overbearing disapproval. “You didn’t ask for my opinion, but I’m going to give it to you anyway,” she said.
Of course she would. Women like her couldn’t help themselves. They had to be right—all the time—out loud. I sighed, too exhausted to bother to dig up more charm for her.
“Millions are just zeroes and ones in an account,” she continued. “This is your life, and I think the Russian will do a lot worse than try to knife you if he manages to catch you alone.”
I’d just hit the button, but I whipped around to face her. “The Russian? What are you, partners?”
The woman almost rolled her eyes at me, and I was glad to get a rise out of her. It was way more fun than panicking, which was my other option.
“I heard him swear in Russian,” she said in a voice that was back to ice queen inflection.
“You speak Russian,” I scoffed.
“Enough,” she said. The elevator doors opened behind me, and Dallas reached a hand past me to hold them.
“What did he say, then?” I asked. She took a step forward, crowding me back into the elevator.
“Ty moy, suchka.”
“Which means?” I asked, taking a step forward when I realized that she’d managed to make me move with just her body language.
She let go of the elevator doors. “You’re my bitch,” she said, and I had to jump back as the doors closed between us.
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
He also had the kind of manners that Europeans and old-money people had— like they automatically knew which fork to use without getting a raised eyebrow from whichever parent might have been home.
It makes him laugh every time I wear it, so I make sure he catches me in it when I’m naked.” Shane burst out laughing. “Naked Baby Yodanna!” Anna flapped her Yoda ears. “When I can make Darius laugh, he looks at me like I’m chocolate and movie night and browned butter all rolled up in one.”
His voice is like a thick, creamy salve you put on sunburns when you don’t want to be touched, and when I get sunburny like that, his voice feels like fingers running through my hair—which he does too, by the way.”
She wanted me, and being wanted by this woman suddenly felt more than physical. It felt like something that mattered.
My Review:
Written from a dual POV, this tale had a multiple-layered, slowly paced, and complex plot with uniquely complicated characters, heaping helpings of angst, peril, and a lot of inner dialog and conflict while building to a slow-burn romance. The storylines were intricately woven around the nucleus of a thorny and dangerous threat to a new client with tentacles that spread into family drama, predatory tracking, facial recognition hacking and fraud, and survivalist training and living off the grid in the frozen Canadian Yukon territory.
It was an interesting twist to use the female main character as the protector and trained survivalist, although I initially found her difficult to fully appreciate, as she was rather rigid, emotionally distant and a cold fish. However, once her background was revealed I was greatly impressed by the author’s thoughtful and perceptive character building. I adored her family yet I was outraged to learn of the past and present discriminatory practices and arrogant attitudes toward Canada’s indigenous tribes, which is as shameful as what occurred and continues to proliferate in the USA towards our own. Then I thought about the similar horrors that occurred in India, Australia, Africa, etc. The arrogance of the British Empire has a lot to answer for.
About April White
** Vivian Award Nominee, 2021 **
APRIL WHITE has been a film producer, private investigator, bouncer, teacher, and screenwriter. She has climbed in the Himalayas, survived a shipwreck, and lived on a gold mine in the Yukon. She and her husband share their home in Southern California with two extraordinary boys and a lifetime collection of books.
Her first novel, Marking Time is the 2016 winner of the Library Journal Indie E-Book Award for YA Literature, and all five books in the Immortal Descendants series are on the Amazon Top 100 lists in Time Travel Romance and Historical Fantasy. Code of Conduct was an RWA Vivian Award finalist for romantic suspense, a Next Generation Award finalist for romance, and RONE Award finalist for suspense. And Death’s Door is a Grand Prize winner of the Next Generation Award, and a Foreword Reviews Award finalist. More information and her blog can be found at www.aprilwhitebooks.com.
Annie’s big birthday is looming. Sixty! She feels half that age, even if the mirror tells her otherwise. Hubby Keith promises her a birthday to remember and doesn’t let her down, but packing his suitcase to shack up with a forty-something isn’t quite the memory Annie wants to make. Suddenly she’s single and – as an empty nester – very, very alone. The Bucket List she and Keith had promised to work their way through is but a dream, until besties Bella and Caz rally around Annie and whisk her away for a trip that will be remembered forever. Dubai. But it’s not all skyscrapers, bling, sand dunes, and sheiks. As the sun sinks over the horizon of Jumeirah Beach… might there also be love?
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
Suddenly I was aware of being scrutinised by two American guys to the right. One was bald, with skinny legs and a stomach that flopped like exhausted knicker elastic. The other was pot-bellied and covered in the sort of tattoos that looked like a child had gone berserk with a biro. Neither were attractive, but I was nonetheless secretly thrilled to have them check me out… until they started to loudly discuss me. ‘She ain’t bad,’ drawled Skinny Legs. ‘Take it or leave it,’ said Tattoo Man dismissively.
I felt empowered. Like an Olympic swimmer. Look at me go! … I felt like bursting into song. Morphing into Helen Reddy. Belting out the first few lines of I Am Woman. I continued to pause poolside, milking the moment. ‘Annie,’ Caz urgently hissed. ‘For God’s sake cover up. You’ve fallen out of your swimsuit.’
Where are you, Annie? We’re worried you’ve been kidnapped by a sheikh looking to expand his grandad’s harem!
My Review:
This was wicked funny and cleverly amusing while also hitting some feels and tapping several social and aging issues. I adored it and knew that I would as after I read Willow’s Wedding Vows I immediately added this wily author to my list of favorites and swept her entire listing onto my TBR. Her characters are uniquely knowable and realistically flawed in the most humorous of ways.
Annie was prone to vivid daydreaming and given her active and colorful imagination, I hooted in mirth, frequently giggle-snorted, and maintained a near-constant gleeful smirk as I made my way through this delightful tale. Being of an… ahem… mature age, I easily identified with Annie and her gal pals and envied their tight bond and highly eventful trip to the land of blingy Dubai. The storylines were engaging and cunningly paced with frequent comedic mishaps that often tugged a bit at the heartstrings while simultaneously tickling my funny bone.
Debbie Viggiano has mad skills!
About the Author
Prior to turning her attention to writing, Debbie Viggiano was, for more years than she cares to remember, a legal secretary. She lives with her Italian husband, a rescued pooch from Crete, and a very disgruntled cat. Occasionally her adult children return home bringing her much joy… apart from when they want to raid the fridge or eat her secret stash of chocolate.
Tweet @DebbieViggiano or follow her on Facebook!
Forrest for the Trees, an all-new slow-burn small-town romance from Kilby Blades, is LIVE in Kindle Unlimited! Kilby kicks off the brand new Green Valley Heroes series in the Smartypants Romance Universe with her enemies to lovers standalone!
Forrest Winters isn’t just a federal fire marshal; he’s a thorn in Ranger Sierra Betts’s side. The way he swings his big ax, fixes her with his chameleon gray eyes, and talks about his jurisdiction has a way of breaking her concentration. He has a way of showing up everywhere he doesn’t belong, including Greenbrier Ranger Station. And he really needs to quit stealing her bacon bites.
When a series of suspicious fires, an underhanded co-worker, and a cagey Parks Police Chief threatens her job and the park itself, Sierra grudgingly agrees to partner with Forrest. Their side investigation may be her best shot at preventing the framing of an innocent man. But can his firefighting expertise and her detective skills lead them to the real arsonist before Forrest breaks her with his charm?
‘Forrest for the Trees’ is a full-length contemporary romance, can be read as a standalone, and is book #1 in the Green Valley Heroes series, Green Valley Chronicles, Penny Reid Book Universe
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
He wasn’t a full-on curmudgeon, but half of one, a right she supposed he’d earned from managing to keep himself alive for so long.
“Please tell me you didn’t name your axe.” “I name all my axes. It makes them feel special.”
Just remember. That “no sex ’til the third date” crap is for people who secretly hate themselves and resent their bodies.
My Review:
Shame on me. I’d never heard of Kilby Blades before picking up this book and I reveled in her clever and original arrangements of words. I fell right into her smooth and easy storytelling and I was quickly invested in her uniquely endearing and quirky characters as well as smirking, sighing, and deathly curious about their exploits and endeavors. I have always enjoyed my visits to Green Valley and haven’t found a clunker yet in the Smartypants collective. Forrest for the Trees kicks off a new series and I am totally committed, hooked, enamored, and inquisitive of what will come next. In the meantime, I’ll be perusing Ms. Blades’s listing of twenty-one published books. Where have I been?
About the Author
Kilby Blades is a USA Today Bestselling author of Romance and Women’s Fiction. Her debut novel, Snapdragon, was a HOLT Medallion finalist, a Publisher’s Weekly BookLife Prize Semi-Finalist, and an IPPY Award medalist. Kilby was honored with an RSJ Emma Award for Best Debut Author in 2018 and has been lauded by critics for “easing feminism and equality into her novels” (IndieReader) and “writing characters who complement each other like a fine wine does a good meal” (Publisher’s Weekly).
During her career as a digital marketing executive, she moonlighted as a journalist, freelanced as a food, wine, and travel writer, and lived it up as an entertainment columnist. She has lived in five countries, visited more than twenty-five, and spends part of her year in her happy place in the Andes Mountains. Kilby is a feminist, an oenophile, a cinephile, a social-justice fighter, and above all else, a glutton for a good story. Follow her everywhere @kilbyblades.
When the devil comes to town, you have to meet him head-on.
Which is exactly what I did when Grant Stone rolled into our small Texas town, driving a sports car I could fit in the bed of my truck, wearing a suit as black as his soul. He’s here to acquire mineral rights to half a dozen farms in town.
And there’s no way he’s getting mine.
I don’t make deals with the devil.
So when he challenges me to show him the small town ropes, my motivation is the prospect of seeing him make a fool of himself. He might have an angle, but if he thinks he can finagle me into endangering my bee farm, he’s got another thing coming.
Until the line in the sand is washed away.
My farm in danger. A town in upheaval. A man who will stop at nothing to get what he wants.
And me in the middle.
When the devil comes to town, you have to meet him head-on.
And when he sneaks into your heart, he’ll only break it.
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
He began to speak, the deep, easy lilt in his voice hypnotic. When I glanced around me, everyone’s pupils could have been pinwheels— they even leaned toward him just a little. The man was a black hole.
And the town singles were flapping around in his orbit like moths. He was new, shiny, rich, and this town’s dating pool was stagnant and covered in pond scum. There were two ways to find love in Lindenbach— either you married your high school sweetheart or you left town and brought somebody back with you. So an eligible bachelor with a sports car that cost five times the town’s median income would get noticed. Recently divorced, middle-aged Dolores James, who’d quit paying attention to fashion somewhere around 2002, literally adjusted her boobs— hands in the cups and everything—before sauntering over to him, lashes flapping and smile on full blast. He didn’t even look at her when she bumped into him.
I’ll be your somebody. I hadn’t realized I’d needed one until then.
My Review:
While this crafty wordsmith is a fairly recent discovery for me, every Staci Hart book I have picked up so far has been a guaranteed smirk factory with a few delectable sensual scenes hotter than a blazing furnace tucked inside. Her latest missive, For Love or Honey, continues this streak of winning word combinations with snort-worthy humor, irreverently amusing observations, and heart-squeezing and emotively insightful inner musings and revelations. I adore her clever humor, engaging storytelling, and flawed yet endearing characters. While I would never want to live in their tiny Texas town, I have whole-heartedly enjoyed my brief drop-ins with the Blum sisters.
About the Author
Staci has been a lot of things up to this point in her life — a graphic designer, an entrepreneur, a seamstress, a clothing and handbag designer, a waitress. Can’t forget that. She’s also been a mom, with three little girls who are sure to grow up to break a number of hearts. She’s been a wife, though she’s certainly not the cleanest or the best cook. She’s also super, duper fun at a party, especially if she’s been drinking whiskey. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, sleeping, gaming, or designing graphics.
USA Today & Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author, Jewel E. Ann returns with an addictive new adult romance about a young woman who discovers years of Sunday sermons didn’t prepare her for the many lessons of the crude and sexy man who is now her boss.
It’s official.
I’m eighteen and a young woman with endless possibilities on my way to reunite with my mom in Colorado after five years apart—she had a little weed incident in Nebraska.
At the airport, she springs the news on me … she’s leaving for a month of job training. And me? I’m left on my own in the basement she’s renting from the fisherman, aka her landlord who lives upstairs.
He’s ten years older than me. Never wears a shirt. And makes it hard to remember all the things I learned at Christian Academy.
Did I mention he’s also my new boss?
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
I needed the fire department to extinguish the embarrassment from my face.
“You deserve to have your breath taken away … every day.” Those. Those ten words. They wrapped around my heart like sticky peanut butter and jelly fingers.
Even if Fisher didn’t share the same emotions, I knew he would always be my first love—that really good kind of love where my brain had no say. The kind with no logical explanation. The kind that took a special place in my heart as first. God willing, I would go on to love another. Have a family. And die in the arms of my husband. But …first would always be Fisher Mann.
I know they say love is patient, but it’s not. Love is the brightest star in the sky. It doesn’t have an off switch or a timer. It doesn’t wear a watch or look at a calendar.
My Review:
Jewel E. Ann is a gifted raconteur with an excellent memory. She well recalls the distressingly awkwardness, angsty self-consciousness, and ego-centrism of being a teenage girl on the cusp of adulthood while believing herself to be an adult woman ready to make her own way. Ms. Ann is also remarkably insightful in tapping into and rocking the damage caused to the psyche by the hypocritically judgmental and stridently rigid teachings of conservative religion. She knocked me back to that period of confusion in my life when wanting to establish my own identity while struggling against my parents’ weird religious beliefs where everything was a sin and everyone else was going to hell, yet it was oddly okay for them and their friends to cheat on their spouses and swear like angry sailors with a hangover.
Reece’s storylines were far more entertaining and comical than my own memories but this crafty author captured all the feels with remarkable clarity and deftly perceptive observations. I adore her unique and knowable characters, even when I want to give them a whack with my Kindle. I was totally invested and completely engaged in this tale and continued to ruminate about it when grudgingly forced to put my tablet down and do some dreaded adulting.
I am tapping my little foot in pique and hissing with disdain at the demonically evil cliffhanger – which are vile contrivances that I despise with the heat of a thousand suns. While the wait is thankfully brief one of two weeks before the release of the second half, I have a feeling it will seem like the longest two weeks of my existence.
About the Author
Jewel is a Wall Street Journal & USA Today best-selling author with a quirky sense of humor. When she’s not saving the planet one tree at a time, you can find her role modeling questionable behavior to her three boys, binge-watching Netflix with her husband, and writing mind-bending romance.
Beatrice Halliday has been working hard at the Princess and The Pea Inn loved up with landlord Atholl and enjoying planning events for the locals. But at Christmas, there’s a kick – as she realizes she’s expecting.
Despite being fearful of the future, Beatrice is graced with a distraction: the prospects of helping a romance flourish when a married couple spends their first child-free holiday at the Inn – and it becomes clear they need some help rediscovering each other. In true Beatrice fashion, she can’t help meddling.
Featuring the story of first love, a new family, a marriage in crisis, and an octogenarian love affair, you’ll fall head over heels for this heart-warming rom-com.
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
Sometimes tourists stopped them in the street when they were on days out in Fort William or Inverness, wanting a selfie with a true redheaded Scotsman of the clan warrior type. She’d come to think of it as the Outlander effect.
Years ago, she would joke with her girlfriends – thank goodness for girlfriends – about the need for regular marriage maintenance sex. Maintenance sex was a bit like sending your car for a service to keep it roadworthy… If Ruth’s sex life was a car, its road tax had well and truly expired and it was up on bricks in the driveway.
My Review:
This was a fun and satisfying women’s fiction read with clever wry humor and interesting twists on several familiar tropes with something to appeal to just about everyone. The book started with a dumped broken-hearted traveler hoping to save her career in the back of beyond who wasn’t all that sympathetic on arrival as she was aloof, self-serving, and acted like a snob, but she grew on me. I also enjoyed the empty nest couple with the exasperated menopausal wife hoping she could reconnect with her workaholic husband on their holiday. However, the majority of the storylines belonged to the loved-up innkeepers – an anxious older mother-to-be and her ever attentive and lovable Scottish weaver, the perfect BBF with a delicious burr in his voice. Rounding out the cast was a small village full of gentle and unique characters and family members. The storylines were engaging, the characters were endearing, and the writing was insightful, amusing, and easy to fall into. Sigh, I need more Scotsmen in my life.
About the Author
Kiley Dunbar writes heart-warming, escapist, romantic fiction set in beautiful places, with One Winter’s Night being shortlisted for the RNA Romantic Comedy Novel Award 2021.
Kiley’s five novels include The Borrow a Bookshop Holiday (May 2021), One Winter’s Night (September 2020), Summer at the Highland Coral Beach (2020), Christmas at Frozen Falls (2019), and One Summer’s Night (2019).
When Private Investigator Charlie Cameron agrees to take on a cold case, he is drawn back into Glasgow’s dark underworld…
Glasgow PI Charlie Cameron knew Kim Rafferty was bad news the moment they met. Desperate people always spelled trouble in his experience, and Mrs. Rafferty was as desperate as they come. What she was asking for was insane. If he agreed to help the wife of the notorious East-End gangster, the consequences for them both could be fatal.
Twenty-four hours later, another betrayed woman with a hopeless case is pleading for Charlie’s help. The PI is her only chance to keep an innocent man from serving a second prison sentence for murders he didn’t commit.
Dennis Boyd is on the run, and as Charlie fights against the clock to keep him out of jail, he crosses a line that puts him on the wrong side of the law and pits him against his old friend and ally, DS Andrew Geddes.
As the body count grows, and the defense for his client falls apart bit by bit, Charlie refuses to accept the inevitable. But everyone has their limits – even the infamous Charlie Cameron. Will he be forced to admit that this case may be the one to beat him…
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
Secrets. Everybody had them. The only people who didn’t were six feet under.
He’d helped me more often than I could remember; he had a good heart. But if you wanted to find it, you had to be prepared to dig.
She stepped back to look at him. ‘How do you manage to stay in such good shape?’ ‘Clean living. Avoid it at all costs.’
She rummaged in her bag again with the enthusiasm of a panhandler, except the silver and gold she was after were dried leaves and paper. Diane inhaled hard enough to suck the oxygen from the room; when she spoke, there was smoke in her voice.
When it suited him, Andrew was a paid-up member of the Awkward Squad.
My Review:
Owen Mullen is a master storyteller but he must have a dark and dastardly soul as his well-crafted storylines were dripping with gripping intrigue while raw, gritty, and cringe-worthy with violence and twisted cruelty. I found I was flinching and needed to take it in stages and periodically put my kindle down and walk away. Finishing took me quite a bit longer than expected yet I couldn’t leave it alone. I was hooked, ensnared, and addled by my unrelenting curiosity as the clever wordsmith wasn’t giving anything away. I had to know the who, why, and how as his well-honed mystery seemed unsolvable. The little pea in my brain was working overtime and although my meager gray matter failed to crack it, the beleaguered yet persistent bloodhound Charlie Cameron came through. I was so proud of him I now feel compelled to read all the previous books in this series.
In addition to a new addiction for crime thrillers, I came away from this book with a new entry for my Brit Words and Phrases List with wide boy – which is British informal for a man earning a lot of money in a nefarious or illegal manner. Not at all the image I had pictured 😉
Owen Mullen is a highly regarded crime author who splits his time between Scotland and the island of Crete. In his earlier life, he lived in London and worked as a musician and session singer. He has now written seven books and his first gangland thriller for Boldwood, Family was published in January 2021.
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Kilby Blades is a USA Today Bestselling author of Romance and Women’s Fiction. Her debut novel, Snapdragon, was a HOLT Medallion finalist, a Publisher’s Weekly BookLife Prize Semi-Finalist, and an IPPY Award medalist. Kilby was honored with an RSJ Emma Award for Best Debut Author in 2018 and has been lauded by critics for “easing feminism and equality into her novels” (IndieReader) and “writing characters who complement each other like a fine wine does a good meal” (Publisher’s Weekly).
