Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter? by Nicci French

EXCERPT: Thirty years ago in a village in East Anglia where the land is swallowed up by mudflats and marshes and a hard wind blows in from the sea, a woman went missing.
It was midwinter, sleety and dark, but Christmas was coming. There were festive lights in the high street, decorated trees in the windows, smoke curling from the chimneys of the houses. And in a barn on the edge of the village, people were gathering for a party.
But one person never arrived, and life was changed forever in that ordinary little village. Her disappearance was the start of a chain of terrible events that for more than three decades blighted the lives of two families.
This is a story of dark secrets that were buried a life-time ago, but which never lost their power, and of the grip that past has upon the present.
It is the story of the people whose lives unravelled from that winter day: sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, partners and friends.
It is the story of a woman. She is a wife, a mother, a confidante. She is impulsive and warm-hearted and full of life. when people describe her, they use words like ‘radiant’, ‘vital’, ‘generous’, ‘optimistic’. She is a woman of appetites: she loves food, red wine, long hot baths. She loves dancing. Walking in all weathers. Jigsaw puzzles. Gossip. Weepy films. Nice clothes. Crumpets. Marmalade. Chance encounters. Peonies and sweet peas. Candles, Mangy dogs. Lost causes.
She loves life. She loves people. Above all, she loves her four children.
He name is Charlotte Salter.

He looked up.
‘Does that seem all right?’
‘It was fine. More than fine. It was good.’
‘Then it’s a wrap.’

ABOUT ‘HAS ANYONE SEEN CHARLOTTE SALTER?’: 1990
When beautiful and vivacious Charlotte Salter fails to turn up to her husband Alec’s fiftieth birthday party, her children are worried, but Alec is not.

As the days pass, Etty, Niall, Paul and Ollie all struggle to come to terms with their mother’s disappearance. How can anyone vanish without a trace?

NOW
Etty returns home after years away to help move her father into a care home. Now in his eighties, Alec has dementia and often mistakes his daughter for her mother.

Etty is a changed woman from the trouble-free girl she was when Charlie was still around – all the Salter children have spent decades running and hiding from their mother’s disappearance.

But when their childhood friends, Greg and Morgan Ackerley, decide to do a podcast about Charlie’s disappearance, it seems like the town’s buried secrets – and the Salters’ – might finally come to light.

After all this time, will they finally find out what really happened to Charlotte Salter?

MY THOUGHTS: If you are looking for a great character-based mystery, pick this up!

It’s hard to beat the French duo – Nicci Gerard and Sean French – when it comes to creating an enticing atmosphere and relatable mesmerizing characters.

Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter is a slow-burn; it is quietly absorbing and addictive. I put everything else aside to immerse myself in this. I felt Etty’s pain as her fears for her mother were brushed aside, disregarded. Everyone else just seems to get on with their lives; but Etty’s true north has disappeared. She is devastated and struggles to cope.

But while it may appear that everyone else just gets on with their lives; it is not true. Paul, already a victim of depression, flounders even further, falls into an even deeper chasm. Niall, the eldest, falls back into the arms of the girl he broke up with on the day of the party and remains in the family business which he had been planning to leave. Ollie continues on his booze and drug filled way. And Alec? He really is a reprehensible character. He blusters and bombasts and continues on his adulterous way.

And so the family drifts, untethered and apart, for thirty odd years until two catalysts occur: Alec needs to be put into full-time care, and Morgan and Greg Ackerley announce their intention to make a podcast about the disappearance of Charlotte Salter, the woman their father is said to have murdered; the woman he supposedly killed himself over.

Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter is written in three distinct parts – 1990 the party and its aftermath; 2022 Etty and Ollie return home to help clear out their father’s house, and Morgan announces his intention to make a podcast on Charlie’s disappearance with the aid of his brother Greg; 2022 with a further death involving the Salters, DI Maud O’Connor from London is brought in to investigate.

Let the fun begin . . . and it does. Maud is a fresh pair of eyes and resented by the local force – in fact some of them are downright hostile toward her. They are obstructive and even rude. Lazy and slapdash, something Maud won’t tolerate. Maud is appalled by the way they failed to fully investigate Charlotte Salter’s disappearance, taking the easy way out, tying it to Duncan Ackerley’s apparent suicide to wrap it all up – quick and easy. But something doesn’t sit right with Maud – she is sure that all three deaths are linked and brings in her own reinforcements.

I loved this book. I loved the atmosphere Nicci French created – the pain, the grief, the bewilderment, the lost souls, the devastation of not one, but two families. The plot is cleverly constructed, linear, and contains some red herrings, plausible and well-constructed.

And did I solve the mystery? – No, but I loved every moment.

The Nicci French duo never fails to please me and Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter is right up there with the best of their work.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

#HasAnyoneSeenCharlotteSalter? #WaitomoDistrictLibrary

Die Last (Max Wolfe #4) by Tony Parsons

Another back title from my 2018 NetGalley shelf . . .

EXCERPT: Prologue
The Girl from Belgrade

The first thing they took was her passport.
The man jumped down from the cab of the lorry and snapped his fingers at her.
Click-click.
She already had her passport in her hands, ready for her first encounter with authority, and as she held it out to the man she saw, in the weak glow of the Belgrade streetlights, that he had a small stack of passports. They were not all burgundy red like her Serbian passport. These passports were green and blue and bright red – passports from everywhere. The man slipped her passport under the rubber band that held the passports together and he slipped them into the pocket of his thick winter coat. She had expected to keep her passport.
She looked at him and caught a breath. Old scars ran down one side of his face making the torn flesh look as though it had once melted. Then the man clicked his fingers a second time.
Click-click.
She stared at her kid brother with confusion. The boy indicated her suitcase. The man wanted the suitcase. Then the man with the melted face spoke in English, although it was not the first language of either of them.
‘No room,’ he said, gesturing towards the lorry.
But she gripped her suitcase stubbornly and she saw the sudden flare of pure anger in the man’s eyes.
Click-click, went his fingers. She let go.
The suitcase was the second thing he took. It was bewildering. In less than a minute she had surrendered her passport and abandoned her possessions. She could smell sweat and cigarettes on the man and she wondered, for the first time, if she was making a terrible mistake.
She looked at her brother.
The boy was shivering. Belgrade is bitterly cold in January with an average temperature of just above freezing.
She hugged him. The boy, a gangly sixteen-year-old in glasses that were held together with tape on one side, bit his lower lip, struggling to control his emotions. He hugged her back and he would not let her go and when she gently pulled away he still held her, a shy smile on his face as he held his phone up at head height. They smiled at the tiny red light shining in the dark as he took their picture.
Then the man with the melted face took her arm just above the elbow and pulled her towards the lorry. He was not gentle.
‘No time,’ he said.
In the back of the lorry there were two lines of women facing each other. They all turned their heads to look at her. Black faces. Asian faces. Three young women, who might have been sisters, in hijab headscarves. They all looked at her but she was staring at her brother standing on the empty Belgrade street, her suitcase in his hand. She raised her hand in farewell and the boy opened his mouth to say something but the back doors suddenly slammed shut and her brother was gone. She struggled to stay on her feet as the lorry lurched away, heading north for the border.
By the solitary light in the roof of the lorry, she saw there were boxes in the back of the vehicle. Many boxes, all the same.
Birnen – Arnen – Nashi – Peren, it said on the boxes. Grushi – Pere – Peras – Poires.
‘Kruske,’ she thought, and then in English, as if in preparation for her new life. ‘Pears.’
The women were still staring at her. One of them, nearest to the doors, shuffled along to find her space. She was some kind of African girl, not yet out of her teens, her skin so dark it seemed to shine.
The African gave her a wide, white smile of encouragement, and graciously held her hand by her side, inviting the girl from Belgrade to sit down.
She nodded her thanks, taking her seat, and thinking of the African as the kind girl.
The kind girl would be the first to die.

ABOUT ‘DIE LAST’: 12 DEAD GIRLS

As dawn breaks on a snowy February morning, a refrigerated lorry is found parked in the heart of London’s Chinatown. Inside, twelve women, apparently illegal immigrants, are dead from hypothermia.

13 PASSPORTS

But in the cab of the abandoned death truck, DC Max Wolfe of West End Central finds thirteen passports.

WHERE IS SHE?

The hunt for the missing woman will take Max Wolfe into the dark heart of the world of human smuggling, mass migration and 21st-century slave markets, as he is forced to ask the question that haunts our time.

What would you do for a home?

MY THOUGHTS: I have enjoyed this series but somehow missed reading Die Last (Max Wolfe #4) when it was published. I was excited when I found it on my shelf. Unfortunately, Die Last never really gripped me like Tony Parsons’ books usually do. It may have been the content – human trafficking. I had this ‘been there, done that’ feeling.

Initially the whole human trafficking subject was treated with a great deal of empathy and compassion. I can only imagine how desperate you would have to be to agree to being smuggled into a foreign country; how frightened. But somewhere along the way the tone changed. It may have had something to do with Max’s boss who didn’t seem to have a very high regard for human life at all; not for that of her staff and certainly not for the refugees.

There’s a bit of everything in Die Last – human traffickers, old style gangster families, Chinese tongs and corrupt businessmen.

The resolution to this left me stunned – in more ways than one. I didn’t see it coming re who was behind the human trafficking. I liked that he did, in the end, get his just desserts, BUT I was with my favorite character, Edie Wrenn when she cried, ‘Max, no! No, Max, no!’ I couldn’t see the justification of what he was doing – the wrong people were being punished and I just couldn’t see the point to it.

While this isn’t my favorite book of the series, it certainly is a thought-provoking one.

Die Last by Tony Parsons was published 22 February 2018. I listened to the audiobook of Die Last, superbly narrated by Colin Mace.

⭐⭐⭐.3

#DieLast #NetGalley

THE AUTHOR: Tony Parsons is a British award-winning journalist, broadcaster and bestselling author of contemporary books.

Born in Romford, Essex, Parsons dropped out of school aged sixteen in order to work on the night shift of Gordon’s Gin Distillery in Islington, London, before being offered a journalism job on New Musical Express.

He for the next couple of years travelled with and wrote about legendary musicians such as The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, The Clash, The Sex Pistols and others, before eventually leaving his job to pursue writing.

Tony, whose books have been translated into over 40 languages, currently lives in London with his wife, daughter and their dog.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Random House, UK, Cornerstone, Arrow via NetGalley for providing a digital ARC of Die Last by Tony Parsons for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

What Happened to Us? by Faith Hogan

What Happened to Us? by Faith Hogan is another title from my 2018 backlist.

EXCERPT: DUBLIN
The first night of winter and it was wet, very wet, and she knew the rain was pouring in drops down her face, could feel them drip, drip, dripping off the end of her nose. She could feel the tears too, hot and stingy in her eyes. Someone had given her a cigarette, miraculously she’s managed to smoke halfway down, but it was soggy and extinguished now, which was no bad thing. She’d never smoked, why add to her list of failures at this late stage?
At the far end of the lane, something or someone caught her eye, but she must be mistaken for who, in their right mind, would be out on an evening like this? Probably a stray cat, attracted by the heat and aromas that emanated from the fans blowing into the frigid night air.
Her thoughts darted back to the kitchen behind her, Kevin, bloody Kevin. Well, she hadn’t seen that coming had she. She was still reeling, angry, upset and, yes, she could admit it to herself, broken-hearted. And Valentina? Kevin was in love with Valentina, he’d told her so himself, so it must be true.

ABOUT ‘WHAT HAPPENED TO US?’ Sometimes the end is only the beginning… After ten years together, Dubliner Carrie Nolan is devastated when she’s dumped by Kevin Mulvey without even a backwards glance. But on reflection, she had been sacrificing her own long-term happiness by pandering to his excessive ego – well, not anymore! While Kevin is ‘living the dream’ with his beautiful new Brazilian girlfriend, Carrie seeks solace from a circle of mismatched strangers who need her as much as she needs them. Then suddenly a catastrophic sequence of events leaves Carrie unsure if there’s anyone she can trust. How far do you need to fall before you realise it’s never too late to start again?

MY THOUGHTS: What Happened to Us? is a lovely read – uncomplicated, with just the right amount of angst and drama, a broken heart and a romance along with just a touch of a crime thriller all delivered in a nice easy to read format.

Carrie is a lovely character – one of life’s fixers, but this is something even she can’t fix. There are things she can do though – like help Jane, the elderly publican across the road, and Luke, who seems every bit as lost as the stray dog he was watching out for. Carrie is the sort of person I would like for a friend. She is warm, caring and totally selfless, which Kevin has been taking advantage of for years!

Kevin and Valentina are very easy to dislike. Kevin for being the lazy, selfish, disloyal git that he is, and Valentina for being grasping, greedy, conniving and whiny. Don’t even let me get started on Valentina’s two bullying ‘cousins’!

With an engaging storyline and equally engaging characters, this certainly didn’t feel like 444 pages . I romped through it, rooting for Carrie, Luke, Jane and Teddy (the dog) every step of the way. An enjoyable, entertaining and uplifting read.

I listened to the audiobook of What Happened to Us?, narrated by Clare McKenna. While I loved her Irish accent, and she also did a brilliant job of the Columbian accents, she did speak very fast.

⭐⭐⭐.7

#WhatHappenedToUs #NetGalley

THE AUTHOR: Faith Hogan writes grown up women’s fiction which is unashamedly uplifting, feel good and inspiring.

She gained an Honours Degree in English Literature and Psychology from Dublin City University and a Postgraduate Degree from University College, Galway.

She also writes crime fiction as Geraldine Hogan.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Aria via NetGalley for providing a digital ARC of What Happened to Us by Faith Hogan for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

The Suffering of Strangers by Caro Ramsay

This is a title from my 2018 backlist.

EXCERPT: Roberta was aware she was screaming. ‘Where did that car go? she was shouting in the woman’s face, flecking her skin with saliva. She plunged her hands into her pockets, grabbing only the silky lining and fresh air, frantically searching for her phone. It was on the dashboard of the car. James had called. She’d put it back in the cradle on the dashboard. After she had moaned about Sholto, how horrible he was, how noisy.
Well, her world was quiet now.
‘Where did it go?’ She heard the screeching of a banshee. She knew it was her, but she couldn’t stop herself.
Now Barry was stopping people, the woman at the auto bank, the teenager walking the pug, another customer. Roberta scanned them, her finger held horizontally, pointing at each one, thinking that one of them could have taken the baby; one of them must have seen something they were not telling her. It was a conspiracy. They were all in it together. Cars do not disappear, not in that short period of time. How long had it been?
She heard the word “Duster”.
‘What? What?’ She wiped the snot from her face.
The teenager with the pug pointed. ‘Look, there’s a blue Duster parked around there.’ Just as the man who worked the front till for Barry shouted something from the end of the road and waved up the side street.
Roberta ran to the corner, to the narrow road that led to the small car park behind the shops. Not somewhere to leave a car on a rainy, darkening night. Not somewhere she would have parked. She thought she had been careful.
The Duster was there. She stopped dead, registering the number plate. Then began moving quickly again, almost laughing. Somebody had played a little joke and she had fallen for it. She could see the front seat, the outline of Sholto’s car seat, still in its place. She ripped open the door. Wrapped up warm in his yellow blanket, the baby was there. He was fine.
He was quiet, he was gurgling and content.
She pulled down his fluffy blue coverlet trimmed with creamy fluffy lambs.
And then she started screaming.

ABOUT ‘THE SUFFERING OF STRANGERS’: When a six-week-old baby is stolen from outside a village shop, Detective Inspector Costello quickly surmises there’s more to this case than meets the eye. As she questions those involved, she uncovers evidence that this was no impulsive act as the police initially assumed, but something cold, logical, meticulously planned. Who has taken Baby Sholto ? and why?

Colin Anderson meanwhile is on the Cold Case Unit, reviewing the unsolved rape of a young mother back in 1996. Convinced this wasn’t the first ? or last – time the attacker struck, Anderson looks for a pattern. But when he does find a connection, it reaches back into his own past . . .

MY THOUGHTS: The Suffering of Strangers is #9 in the Anderson and Costello series, a wonderfully realistic and gritty series set in Glasgow. Now, just a wee word of warning: this is a series that does need to be read in order because sometimes the cases overlap from one book to the next – as is the case in this book.

There is a lot of grim reading in this book – child abduction, domestic abuse, rape, missing persons and human trafficking. The Anderson and Costello team have been split up with Anderson having been sent to re-examine cold cases and Costello to the domestic violence unit.

There are multiple storylines within The Suffering of Strangers. Ramsay juggles these with ease, resulting in a tense and absorbing read. The plot is complex and riveting. One of the team members becomes personally involved, a historic act coming home to roost. It was most surprising and, well, almost comforting.

The characters are every bit as important as the plot. Past events weigh heavily on our characters and somewhat influence their decisions in the present – not always wisely.

Ramsay doesn’t pull her punches. Some of this is quite harrowing to read, but all is relevant and timely. She highlights the inadequacies of the social services, but also their lack of support for burnt out and overworked staff, and the consequences of the system not working as it should.

A gritty and rewarding read.

⭐⭐⭐⭐.1

#SufferingOfStrangersthe #NetGalley

THE AUTHOR: Caro Ramsay was born and educated in Glasgow. She has been writing stories since she was five years old, developing a keen interest in crime fiction.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Severn House for providing a digital ARC of The Suffering of Strangers by Caro Ramsay for review. I apologise sincerely for taking so long to read this. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

The Inn by James Patterson and Candice Fox

EXCERPT: He could tell his words tickled something inside her, stroked her in that exact right spot, piqued her interest. Success wasn’t something that rolled around here in waves. She was looking for it, the key to the door that led her out of her small-town world, the path to the kinds of things she saw in movies. Big houses, lavish parties, trips to New York, yachts. Dreamland on the horizon. Cline had her pegged. She was probably washing dishes in a cafe around here somewhere, scraping fried food off plates for minimum wage. Cleaning toilets. Daddy was absent – one of the crab wranglers who left and returned in the dark – and she’d promised herself a long time ago she wouldn’t end up with someone like him. Cline watched the pink lights dancing in her eyes.

ABOUT ‘THE INN’: Bill Robinson is starting over. The Inn at Gloucester stands alone on the rocky New England shoreline. Its seclusion suits former Boston police detective Bill Robinson, novice owner and innkeeper. As long as the dozen residents pay their rent, Robinson doesn’t ask any questions. Yet all too soon Robinson discovers that leaving the city is no escape from the dangers he left behind. A new crew of deadly criminals move into the small town, bringing drugs and violence to the front door of the inn. Robinson feels the weight of responsibility on his shoulders. His sense of duty compels him to fight off the threat to his town. But he can’t do it alone. Before time runs out, the residents of the inn will face a choice. Stand together? Or die alone.

MY THOUGHTS: I liked Bill Robinson, despite his rather gung-ho approach to life at times. A disgraced ex-cop widowed and struggling with his grief, he is shutting himself off from any meaningful contact, even with his housemates, a mostly bedraggled bunch who society has rejected, selected by his late wife.

The plot is relatively simple, the characters intriguing: Clay, a divorced, overweight sheriff; Angelica, a know-it-all novelist; Neddy Ives who lives entirely in his room and doesn’t interact with other household members; Vinny, a wheelchair bound ex-gangster; Nick, ex-Afghanistan veteran with a hefty case of PTSD; Effie, who doesn’t speak; Susan, ex-FBI; and Marni, the teenager Siobhan had rescued. Cline is the bad guy, a major drug distributor who moves his operation into Gloucester causing havoc in the town.

While I admire Bill’s motives, I don’t like guns being the solution. There are a lot of guns, shooting and dead bodies. I prefer a little more finesse. Yet despite this, I enjoyed the read which has a distinct vigilante seeking revenge theme.

#TheInnPattersonFox #WaitomoDistrictLibrary

⭐⭐⭐.7

THE AUTHORS: JAMES PATTERSON is passionate about encouraging children to read. Inspired by his own son who was a reluctant reader, he also writes a range of books for young readers. James has donated millions in grants to independent bookshops and lives in Florida with his wife and son.
CANDICE FOX is the middle child of a large, eccentric family from Sydney’s western suburbs. The daughter of a parole-officer and an enthusiastic foster-carer, Candice spent her childhood listening around corners to tales of violence, madness and evil as her father relayed his work stories to her mother and older brothers. Candice lives in Sydney with her family and is a volunteer rescuer of wildlife.

Trust Me by Zosia Wand

Trust Me by Zosia Wand is a title from my 2018 backlist. Yay! Another one bites the dust!

EXCERPT: Sam sees it first. I’m oblivious to what’s about to happen, resting against the wooden lip of the hull with my head tilted up as the sun licks my face. Coniston Water. The English Lake District. A glorious spring day, sharp as a shard of glass. We’re gliding up the lake, the boat following a comfortable melody, and I’m finally beginning to relax.
I’m a city girl; sailing is an alien activity. In my former life, people who sailed inhabited a different world. I glimpsed them in foreign sun-kissed marinas as they descended from dazzling white yachts in their deck shoes, designer jeans turned up at the ankle and pastel-coloured jumpers draped across their shoulders. I was the one walking past in search of a cheap hostel, interrail card in my pocket, back sweaty from the rucksack dragging on my shoulders. When the boys first mentioned sailing I’d foolishly imagined gin and tonics in iced glasses and careless laughter over meals in restaurants too exclusive to display their prices, but this is Coniston in March, not La Rochelle in August.

ABOUT ‘TRUST ME’: Lizzie is 27, and she has a great relationship with her 17-year-old stepson, Sam, even though they could pass for brother and sister. When Sam becomes sullen and withdrawn, Lizzie starts to suspect that something sinister is going on at school. She thinks an older woman is grooming him, trying to turn him against his family. But nobody believes her—and then suspicion falls on Lizzie herself. Trust Me is an absorbing, suspenseful and thought-provoking thriller that asks if you can ever really trust anybody . . . including yourself.

MY THOUGHTS: Trust Me was different to what I was expecting. The start, in fact probably the first half of the book, is very slow, but there was enough promise to keep me interested and reading.

The main character, Lizzie, is a difficult person to like. She is 27 and living with Jonty who is in his fifties. She comes across as very immature, but then Jonty is also very immature. Just how immature doesn’t fully come across until the second half of the story.

I think Lizzie is more than a little in love with Sam, Jonty’s son. She gushes about him and is constantly touching him. She is in a strange position. She is much closer to Sam’s age than Jonty’s and has no formal status in the household. Is she expected to be like a stepsister to Jonty, or stepmother? Lizzie has no real idea and thus wings it, but some of her actions seemed to me borderline inappropriate bearing in mind Sam is 17 and full of raging male hormones.

But then a curveball is thrown into the mix and the easy-going atmosphere of the household disintegrates into rage, jealousy and turmoil. Zosia Wand has done a great job depicting the changing family dynamics and Sam’s mercurial character.

I ended up enjoying this book far more than I expected at the outset. It got a whole lot more interesting after the 50% mark and I didn’t know who to trust.

I will be looking for more books by this author.

⭐⭐⭐.8

#TrustMeZosiaWand #NetGalley

THE AUTHOR: Zosia Wand is an author and playwright whose stories are rooted in the landscape of South Cumbria. She has worked extensively in reader development, regularly hosts events in libraries and bookshops and teaches creative writing.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Head of Zeus via NetGalley for providing a digital ARC of Trust Me by Zosia Wand for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

Trust Me by Zosia Wand was published May 2018. My bad for taking so long to read it.

I listened to the audiobook of Trust Me by Zosia Wand superbly narrated by Imogen Church who is one of my favorite narrators.

First Lines Friday

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

I just realised I haven’t done one of these posts for months, since well before Christmas . . . Welcome to First Lines Friday originally hosted by Reading is my SuperPower.

Instead of judging a book by its cover, here are the first few lines which I hope will make you want to read this book.

Something very bad was about to go down.

There are things you know as a cop in Boston. You know how the city feels, because its streets are your veins and the voices of its people come through your lips when you talk. You know the smell of the salt in the harbor like the scent of the back of your wife’s neck, and it’s just as precious, reassuring. The hammering of footsteps out of Back Bay Station for the morning rat race wakes you up, and the wail of sirens in the old Combat Zone at nigh puts you to sleep. Every Christmas, you gather up some young wide-eyed uniforms and take poor kids from East Boston and Hyde Park into the toy stores, try to show the new cops and the kids that they can get along. You know that in a few years, some of those cops and some of those kids will end up killing each other. But that’s how the city works. It’s like a living thing. It sheds, and it hurts, and it bleeds.

Do you like what you’ve just read?

Does it make you want to read more?

These are the opening lines of The Inn by James Patterson and Candice Fox, published 2019. Candice Fox is the author showcased in the Goodreads Aussie Readers March challenge.

Bill Robinson is starting over. The Inn at Gloucester stands alone on the rocky New England shoreline. Its seclusion suits former Boston police detective Bill Robinson, novice owner and innkeeper. As long as the dozen residents pay their rent, Robinson doesn’t ask any questions. Yet all too soon Robinson discovers that leaving the city is no escape from the dangers he left behind. A new crew of deadly criminals move into the small town, bringing drugs and violence to the front door of the inn. Robinson feels the weight of responsibility on his shoulders. His sense of duty compels him to fight off the threat to his town. But he can’t do it alone. Before time runs out, the residents of the inn will face a choice. Stand together? Or die alone.

The Hidden Hours by Sara Foster

EXCERPT: December 2016
The body bobs lightly against the grey stone wall, snared by something unseen, resisting the current. A police diver slowly untangles it, and gently pushes it towards the waiting boat. People watch from the footbridge, transfixed. Some cover their mouths with gloved hands, pointing, gasping, retching. Others clutch their phones in a chokehold. One woman takes furtive pictures. They are all relieved it hangs face down in the cold, murky river. No one wants to see the person to whom that long blonde hair once belonged.
The body floats towards waiting hands. A tiny crab scuttles down the slim line of one of those ghostly white legs and disappears into the gloom.

ABOUT ‘THE HIDDEN HOURS’: Keeping her secret may save her family.

But telling it may save her life.

Arabella Lane, senior executive at a children’s publisher, is found dead in the Thames on a frosty winter’s morning after the office Christmas party. No one is sure whether she jumped or was pushed. The one person who may know the truth is the newest employee at Parker & Lane – the office temp, Eleanor.

Eleanor has travelled to London to escape the repercussions of her traumatic childhood in outback Australia, but now tragedy seems to follow her wherever she goes. To her horror, she has no memory of the crucial hours leading up to Arabella’s death – memory that will either incriminate or absolve her.

As Eleanor desperately tries to remember her missing hours and uncover the events of that fateful night, her own extended family is dragged further into the dark, terrifying terrain of blame, suspicion and guilt.

Caught in a crossfire of accusations, Eleanor fears she can’t even trust herself, let alone the people around her. And soon, she’ll find herself in a race against time to find out just what happened that night – and discover just how deadly some secrets can be.

MY THOUGHTS: The Hidden Hours moves between two time frames, 2016 and 2005 and is told exclusively from the viewpoint of the main character, Eleanor.

It is frustrating enough to not remember small things, like where you put something or someone’s name. Imagine if you have a whole night missing from your memory, particularly if it resulted in someone’s death and you were there . . . This is the situation Eleanor finds herself in. Unfortunately it’s not the first tragic death with which she has been involved. She suffered from PTSD after the first one, and Arabella’s death is bringing it all back to the surface.

Add in being in a foreign country, with extended family she doesn’t really know – and can you hear the time bomb ticking? Do the police believe her that she can’t remember a thing? Or do they think she’s lying? . . . tick . . . tick . . . what’s going on with her Uncle Ian and his wife Susan, who works for Arabella’s husband? . . . tick . . . tick . . . why has Will, one of her co-workers, suddenly decided to befriend her? . . . tick . . . tick . . . and come to that, why did Arabella pick her? . . . tick . . . tick . . .

Sara Foster has a way with her characters. They are perfectly depicted, realistic and enticingly unreliable. I trusted no one; suspected everyone.

Intense, gripping and suspenseful.

I listened to the audiobook of The Hidden Hours by Sara Foster which was superbly narrated by Anthea Greco.

⭐⭐⭐⭐.4

#TheHiddenHoursSaraFoster #NetGalley

THE AUTHOR: Sara is passionate about developing strong women characters and female-led stories. She has a PhD, looking at maternal representation in fiction with young adult heroines, and she lives in Western Australia with her husband and daughters.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Simon & Schuster via NetGalley for providing a digital ARC of The Hidden Hours by Sara Foster for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

All That is Lost Between Us by Sara Foster

I first read this in 2016. I have just listened to the audio version which I also enjoyed. This certainly hasn’t lost any of its pertinence in the intervening years.

EXCERPT: GEORGIA
It was only a memory now. The three of them walking along the dark, narrow lane. The awkward silence that lingered in their footsteps. The phone buzzing insistently in her pocket. They had been there just a few hours ago, but already it had become a distant recollection of a time when their lives had travelled in a neat, straight line. Georgia could see them vividly without needing to close her eyes – hear the tread of their shoes on the deserted road, feel the chilly late-September wind toying with her hair, a contrast to the warmth of her right hand, wrapped within Danny’s. They hadn’t known that they were sleepwalkers, unaware of what headed towards them, until it was too late. Until all Georgia could see was darkness, before the minutes snuck in and made an unbridgeable gap of time, and it was impossible to go back and change anything.

ABOUT ‘ALL THAT IS LOST BETWEEN US’: Seventeen-year-old Georgia has a secret – one that is isolating her from everyone she loves. She is desperate to tell her best friend, but Sophia is ignoring her, and she doesn’t know why. And before she can find out, Sophia is left fighting for her life after a hit and run, with Georgia a traumatised witness.

As a school psychologist, Georgia’s mother Anya should be used to dealing with scared adolescents. However, it’s very different when the girl who needs help is your own child. Meanwhile, Georgia’s father is wracked with a guilt he can’t share; and when Zac, Georgia’s younger brother, stumbles on an unlikely truth, the family relationships really begin to unravel.

Georgia’s secret is about to go viral. And yet, it will be the stranger heading for the family home who will leave her running through the countryside into terrible danger. Can the Turner family rise above the lies they have told to betray or protect one another, in order to fight for what matters most of all?

MY THOUGHTS: I enjoyed the wild ride this book took me on. Every time I thought I knew where it was going, something unexpected would happen.

Families are difficult. Relationships are difficult. Familiarity breeds contempt.

Secrets and lies, both well intentioned and malicious, are exposed.

Anya and Callum have been married for what seems like forever. Their marriage is feeling a little stale, but neither will yet admit there is a problem. They snipe at each other. They are rushed, harried, and spend little time together. Anya resents the time Callum devotes to volunteering with Mountain Rescue. And Callum feels pushed aside for the children.

Anya is a counsellor at the school her children Georgia and Zac attend but feels excluded from her children’s lives as well as from her husband’s life.

But then seventeen-year-old Georgia is involved in a hit and run accident that leaves her cousin Sophia seriously injured. Georgia and Sophia have always been close, but this summer they have drifted apart, each harboring their own secrets.

Was the hit and run deliberate or a random accident? Who is the woman seen lurking outside Sophia’s hospital room? And how will Zac’s actions affect the family? Will they pull together, or will this be the thing that finally shatters their fragile relationship?

This book is beautifully written from multiple points of view, but only Anya’s pov is in first person.

I am sure that most of us will be familiar with the emotions that rage in this book – teenage angst and bravado, fragile friendships, first love, forbidden love, marriage worn thin by the daily grind, temptation . . .

I found All That is Lost Between us to be a gripping read, even the second time around. It is a coming-of-age story, a family drama, a story of secrets and discovery, and the perils of social media. It is a story of a mother’s fierce love for her children as they struggle to assert their independence, and of a marriage breaking down due to lack of communication. Sara Foster weaves these threads together into a taut and suspenseful tale that kept me reading late into the night.

I have also listened to the audiobook of All That is Lost Between us which is superbly narrated by Anne Dover.

⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

#AllThatisLostBetweenUs #NetGalley

THE AUTHOR: Sara is passionate about developing strong women characters and female-led stories, She is currently studying for her PhD, looking at maternal representation in fiction with young adult heroines, and she lives in Western Australia with her husband and daughters.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing a digital ARC of this All That is Lost Between Us by Sara Foster for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

Nothing But Trouble by Kerry Wilkinson

This is a book from my 2018 NetGalley backlist.

EXCERPT: The man’s body was limp, eyes closed, unmistakably dead as the breeze bobbed him gently back and forth. His neck still tied within the noose. The sight was intoxicating: utterly grim, yet so out of the ordinary that it was hard to turn away…

ABOUT ‘NOTHING BUT TROUBLE’: When the body of a violent criminal, recently escaped from prison, is found brutally battered and hanging dead from a bridge, the police are left reeling. What message is the killer trying to send?

Struggling to keep secrets of her own, Detective Jessica Daniel throws herself into uncovering the truth. But when a woman is murdered with a single bullet to the head, the investigation leads Jessica to the centre of a twisted game of lies…

As the body count rises, the case becomes uncomfortably close to home for Jessica. A mysterious figure has been watching her… could she be in more danger than she realises?

MY THOUGHTS: An engaging well-paced novel that is much more than a bog-standard murder-mystery.

The opening is shocking and because of it I was on tenterhooks the whole way through. Then the story backs up a several weeks and we learn the background and lead-up to this unimaginable event.

There are multiple threads to this story, from an illegal boxing event to someone watching Jessica’s house to a DNA puzzle to the quandary of why break someone out of prison only to kill them? There is, as always plenty going on to keep the reader enthused and entertained.

To be quite honest, I don’t really care much for Jessica – although I do love her snarkiness – and I certainly don’t like Archie, her on-and-off lover. But there is something about this series that keeps me coming back for more.

Although this is a series, it is able to be read as a stand-alone. There is enough background information to make this viable. WARNING: Cliffhanger ending.

⭐⭐⭐.9

#NothingButTrouble(detectiveJessicaDanielThrillerSeriesSeason2book4) #NetGalley.

THE AUTHOR: Originally from the county of Somerset, Kerry spent way too long living in the north of England, picking up words like ‘barm’ and ‘ginnel’.

When he’s short of ideas, he rides his bike, hikes up something, or bakes cakes. When he’s not, he writes it all down.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Bookouture via NetGalley for providing a digital ARC of Nothing But Trouble by Kerry Wilkinson for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.