EXCERPT: One more summer here would be divine. She could relive all the good memories and then create more to replace the bad ones. Spend her days watching the ocean change colour and walking and cooking and even try to write again. Growing up, Ivy had written stories almost as much as read books and later, part of her interest in managing Fairview was the opportunity to pursue her love of writing. Not poetry, like Dad, but sweeping sagas of family drama across generations. Nobody understood why she gave up on her writing dream, but she knew. Having real-life tragedy forced upon a person will do that, let alone losing the chance to have a future with someone who might be your soulmate.
ABOUT ‘THE HOUSE AT ANGEL’S BEACH’: Ivy Ross left Rivers End ten years ago, vowing never to return. Her heart broken, her trust gone, the father she adored behind bars. But when her sister Jody begs Ivy to return to finalise their inheritance, the majestic Fairview House, she is drawn home. And when she finds a collection of heartfelt letters hidden in her father’s library, everything she thought she knew is called into question.
The anonymous letters reveal a heartbreaking love story that force Ivy to rethink the terrible night that tore her family apart. And when Ivy meets Leo, the man whose life was also devastated by her father’s crime, she realises that it’s time to uncover the truth. But that’s not the only secret waiting for them in Fairview. Can facing up to her shocking family history lead Ivy to a future she could never have imagined…?
MY THOUGHTS: The House at Angel’s Beach is a slow-moving family drama/mystery/romance with the emphasis firmly on the family drama and is told entirely from Ivy’s point of view with the assistance of flashbacks and a bundle of secreted letters.
The two sisters are very different. Ivy is a nurse, and lives alone in a small flat on a tight budget. Jody has married well and bears little resemblance to the woman Ivy knew ten years ago. She works for a charity organisation, mixes in high society, is polished, toned and buffed. She has ‘people’ to do everything for her. Ivy thinks she drinks too much and is far too thin.
Although this is a quick easy read, I failed to be fully engaged by it. Ivy’s flashbacks were annoying, the secret letters a disappointment, and the mystery easily seen through. I would have liked to have liked this more, but I just don’t. However, I am an outlier in my opinions on The House at Angel’s Beach by Phillipa Nefri Clark so please do check out the many more positive reviews.
⭐⭐.5
#TheHouseatAngelsBeach #NetGalley
THE AUTHOR: Phillipa lives just outside a beautiful town in country Victoria, Australia. She also lives in the many worlds of her imagination and stockpiles stories beside her laptop.
DISCLSOURE: Thank you to Storm Publishing via NetGalley for a digital ARC of The House at Angel’s Beach by Phillipa Nefri Clark for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.
The House at Angel’s Beach by Phillips Nefri Clark was published 31 May 2024
Is it just me or are the weeks spinning by at a ridiculously fast pace? It feels like only yesterday I was writing last week’s post.
What am I currently reading? The House at Angel’s Beach by Phillipa Nefri Clark, a new-to-me Australian author.
Ivy Ross left Rivers End ten years ago, vowing never to return. Her heart broken, her trust gone, the father she adored behind bars. But when her sister Jody begs Ivy to return to finalise their inheritance, the majestic Fairview House, she is drawn home. And when she finds a collection of heartfelt letters hidden in her father’s library, everything she thought she knew is called into question.
The anonymous letters reveal a heartbreaking love story that force Ivy to rethink the terrible night that tore her family apart. And when Ivy meets Leo, the man whose life was also devastated by her father’s crime, she realises that it’s time to uncover the truth. But that’s not the only secret waiting for them in Fairview. Can facing up to her shocking family history lead Ivy to a future she could never have imagined…?
On Call by Ineke Meredith is a memoir of a young New Zealand woman of Samoan descent on her journey to becoming a surgeon.
The world of surgery is strange, messy and intense. From a man presenting with fishhooks in his stomach toto being punched in the face by a patient, it’s all in a mad day’s work for a female general surgeon. Even with emergency operations in the wee hours and constantly being mistaken for a nurse, there are still moments of laughter and tenderness amid the chaos.
When Ineke’s parents in Samoa fall ill, she becomes torn between her roles as a surgeon, a daughter and a single working mother, leading her to ask: are the sacrifices of a life in scrubs worth it?
And I am listening to One Year After You (One Day With You #2) by Shari Low, one of my January titles.
Four shocking secrets. One tumultuous tale of love, loss and second chances.
One year ago today, Tress Walker’s husband was killed in a car accident, on a trip with his secret mistress whilst Tress gave birth to their son. But as time moves on, Tress has to choose whether to protect her fragile heart or open it to love again.
Noah Clark was equally devastated to discover his wife and his best friend were having an affair. Now the love of his life is asking for a second chance. But can there ever be a way back once the trust is broken?
For forty years, the fabulous Odette Devine has been a beloved actress on a Scottish TV show. Today she is broken, betrayed, and desperate to find out if this is her payback for a lie she told four decades ago.
Noah’s sister Keli Clark has recently been ghosted by the man she loves. When a message from a complete stranger reveals the reason why, Keli will have to decide whether to forgive, forget, or make sure he pays.
I am enjoying all of these to varying degrees.
I have 14 (yes you are reading right!) ARC titles to read for review in the coming week. Not a snowball’s chance in hell, as my late mother was fond of saying! I don’t know what I was thinking – or if I was thinking at all. But, here goes –
Smoke and Mirrors by M.E. Hilliard is the first title on my list and the one I will head for first after I finish The House at Angel’s Beach. I have read earlier books in this series and loved them, but for some unknown reason have missed a few. It’s also a title I have selected for my June Aussie Readers challenge. This will also fulfill a category in my Perks of Being a Book Addict World Book Day Challenge in that the main character is a librarian.
Having spent months quietly investigating in the village of Raven Hill, Greer Hogan returns to New York City determined to find her husband’s murderer. She secures a temporary gig at a private library inventorying the personal collection of a deceased magician. In her free time, Greer sleuths, leaving no stone unturned–even the ones which could be hiding deadly secrets.
Four years earlier, Greer had discovered her husband Dan dead in their apartment. He’d tried to tell her about something strange going on at his office, but she hadn’t had time to listen until it was too late. Worse still, she has always suspected that the wrong man was convicted of the crime. Now, Greer has solved other murders and has a few tricks up her sleeve. She combs through belongings she packed away soon after Dan’s death and interviews his former colleagues and people who were near the scene when he died. Soon, Greer is followed and attacked, so she knows she’s struck a nerve—but whose?
When two more people are killed and Greer realizes she can’t escape the smoke and mirrors surrounding her suspects, she confides in one of her new colleagues, a magician named Grim with whom she’s bonded over similar traumas. Though she knows he’s got secrets of his own, the tricky Grim may be exactly the assistant Greer needs to pull a rabbit out of a hat and shine a spotlight on a killer before the curtains come down on her for good.
I have now read and enjoyed a few books by Victoria Helen Stone and Follow Her Down is her next release due to be published 4th June.
The murder of Elise Rockwood’s sister shattered her family. Their mother’s anxiety kept her housebound. Elise’s paranoid brother, Kyle, saw conspiracies everywhere. Elise numbed her grief in an aimless lifestyle that left her emotionally broken. All of them victims. A local boy eventually confessed, but the damage was already done.
Years later, Elise is reinventing herself. She’s bought a mountain lodge to be close to home again and to find stability. Not even an email from her ex tempts her into revisiting the past. But Kyle won’t let it go. He still believes there’s more to their sister’s murder—and the confession—than meets the eye. When Elise’s ex is found dead in the same forest where her sister went missing decades before, Elise is finally willing to listen.
The traumas of the past are reemerging. So is the truth. Elise’s greatest fear now is who will survive it.
The Skeleton House by Katherine Allum is also due to be published 04 June by @FremantlePress.
Meg’s life is woven into the fabric of St. Stephens. It’s a tapestry made of two precious children, a hidden truth, and a husband whose ideas of a perfect wife do not match her own. When Meg puts her foot down on a third kid, gets a job, and is empowered by the same book group that was meant to keep her in her place, her marriage begins to disintegrate. Set in a tiny Mormon community, this is a novel about resilience and courage – the fierceness of mother-love and the power that comes with never forgetting who you really are.
David Mark is one of those authors who make my heart pound! When the Bough Breaks is another June 04th release.
Traffic cop Sal Delaney’s past is catching up with her . . .
North of England. Cumbria. Salome Delaney didn’t have a great start in life. But her abusive childhood came to a tragic conclusion with the killing of her tyrant mother, Trina, by a jealous ex-boyfriend. At least, that’s what the police say. Sal has never believed kind Wulf, who tried to protect her from her mother’s dark side, could have committed such a crime, but the evidence was irrefutable . . . and who else could have done it?
Now an adult, with a good job as a Collison Investigation Officer, Sal’s done her best to put the past behind her. But one snowy morning she’s called to an accident scene, and she recognizes the body – Barry Ford, the man her mother left Wulf for, all those years ago.
It soon becomes clear this wasn’t just an accident – it was murder. And Wulf, now out of prison, lives very close by . . .
The question of who really killed her mother has haunted Sal her whole life, but as she launches a complex investigation, which gets darker by the hour, she starts to wonder if she really wants to know the answer after all.
Forgotten on Sunday by Valerie Perrin and narrated by Elisabeth Legalee, An unforgettable story about an unlikely friendship and about healing the wounds of a broken past.
Justine is 21 years old and has lived with her grandparents and her cousin Jules since the death of her parents. As a nursing assistant at a retirement home, she spends much of her days listening to her residents’ stories.
After bonding with Hélène, an almost 100-year-old resident, the two women slowly reveal their stories to one another. Whilst Justine helps Hélène to relive her memories of love and war, Hélène encourages Justine to confront the secrets of her own past and the loss she keeps buried deep within.
One day, a mysterious phone call detailing a shocking revelation shakes the retirement home to its core. At once humorous and melancholic, Valérie Perrin’s novel depicts the consequences of undeclared love and, in her inimitable way, portrays once again how the past is never really past.
I adored The Secret Life of Albert Entwhistle and so was excited to receive Matt Cain’s next title, Becoming Ted.
If Ted Ainsworth were to compare himself to one of the ice cream flavors made by his family’s company, famous throughout his sleepy Lancashire hometown, it might be vanilla—sweet, inoffensive, and pleasantly predictable. At forty-three, Ted is convinced there’s nothing remotely remarkable about him, except perhaps his luck in having landed handsome, charismatic Giles as a husband.
Then Giles suddenly leaves him for another man, filling his social media feed with posts about #newlove and adventure. And Ted, who has spent nearly twenty years living with, and often for, another person, must reimagine the future he has happily taken for granted.
But perhaps there is another Ted slowly blossoming now that he’s no longer in Giles’s shadow—funny, sassy, more uninhibited. Someone willing to take chances on new friendships, and even new love. Someone who’s been waiting in the wings too long, but who’s about to dust off a long-ago secret dream and overturn everyone’s expectations of him—especially his own. . .
The art of perfume making has always fascinated me, so The Scent of Hours by Barbara O’Neil was a must-read for me.
Nikki Bridges has it good. An enviable home in an upscale neighborhood, a heavenly-scented hobby making personal-blend perfumes, a cherished daughter, and comfortable rituals with a husband she loves. How was she to know it would all blow up with her husband’s affair, a blindsiding divorce, and an identity crisis she never saw coming?
With little money, less work experience, and a modest apartment, Nikki is tentatively moving on. Along the way: a waitressing job, a bond with an empathetic group of friends, and reentering the dating game at fortysomething. Luring her out of her funk is Niraj, an ex-Londoner with twinkling eyes and a hint of cinnamon and ginger. For the first time in a long time, Nikki feels a warm summer flush—and with it, a spark of inspiration.
On a liberating quest for self-expression and the courage to follow a dream, Nikki is blending the pieces of a new life into a fragrance that is uniquely and passionately her own.
I am so looking forward to visiting with Judith, Suzie and Becks again in Robert Thorogood’s Queen of Poisons, a Marlow Murder Club Mystery.
The Marlow Murder Club is on the hunt for a killer…
Geoffrey Lushington, Mayor of Marlow, dies suddenly during a town council meeting. When traces of aconite—also known as the queen of poisons—are found in his coffee cup, the police realize he was murdered. But who did it? And why?
The police bring Judith, Suzie, and Becks in to investigate the murder as civilian advisors right from the start, so they have free rein to interview suspects and follow the evidence to their heart’s content… which is perfect because Judith has no time for rules and standard procedure. But this case has the Marlow Murder Club stumped. Who would want to kill the affable mayor of Marlow? How did they even get the poison into his coffee? And is anyone else in danger? The Marlow Murder Club is about to face their most difficult case yet…
Stella Quinn is a new-to-me Australian author. Down the Track will be my introduction to her writing.
Dr Joanne Tan is an expert in a lot of things. Love isn’t one of them.
Being thirty-something, broke, divorced and in a cold war with her ten-year-old son is a lot, but Jo’s handling it. Just. At least she is until her job at the Natural History Museum is put in jeopardy. An invitation to dig up dinosaur bones on a remote Queensland sheep station arrives at just the right time.
It’s not her first trip to Yindi Creek, but it’s not as though anyone will remember her from fifteen years ago … And by anyone, of course, she means the pilot she had that fling with. The fling that taught her she’s far safer sticking to science …
Gavin ‘Hux’ Huxtable, helicopter pilot and reluctant sheep-shearer, has turned his broken heart into a secret (and successful) writing career. But running into Jo again, all these years down the track, stirs up a lot more than outback country dust.
A missing person, a fossilised legbone and a nosy country cop force Jo and Hux together and the sparks that start flying don’t go unnoticed by the locals …
Digging up the past isn’t easy. Digging up the truth can be even harder.
I am always excited by a new Faith Hogan title, even more so because this one is set in a bookshop and titled The Bookshop Ladies.
Joy Blackwood has no idea why her French art dealer husband has left a valuable painting to a woman called Robyn Tessier in Ballycove, a small town on the west coast of Ireland, but she is determined to find out. She arrives in Ballycove to find that Robyn runs a rather chaotic and unprofitable bookshop. She is shy, suffering from unrequited love for dashing Kian, and badly in need of advice on how to make the bookshop successful.
As Joy gets drawn into the dramas of everyday life in the town, she finds it more and more difficult to confess why she really came, let alone find the truth about the painting she brought with her. When she does finally summon up the courage, it sets the cat amongst the pigeons in the close-knit, friendly community she has come to love.
Will Dean is another author who always gets my heart pounding, and I am sure that The Chamber won’t be an exception.
HIGH PRESSURE OUTSIDE On a boat heading out into the North Sea, Ellen Brooke steels herself to spend almost a month locked inside a hyperbaric chamber with five other divers. They are all being paid handsomely for this work – to be lowered each day inside a diving bell to the sea bed, taking it in turns to dive down and repair oil pipes that lie in the dark waters. It is a close knit team and it has to be: any error or loss of trust could be catastrophic.
EXTREME PRESSURE INSIDE All is going to plan until one of the divers is found unresponsive in his bunk. He hadn’t left the chamber. It will take four more days of decompression, locked away together, before the hatch can be opened. Four more days of bare steel, intrusive thoughts, and the constant struggle not to give way to panic. Mind games, exhaustion, suspicion, and, most of all, pressure. And if someone does unlock the door, everyone dies…
I always look forward to a new Lucy Foley, and I am looking forward to The Midnight Feast.
Midsummer, the Dorset coast
In the shadows of an ancient wood, guests gather for the opening weekend of The Manor: a beautiful new countryside retreat.
But under the burning midsummer sun, darkness stirs. Old friends and enemies circulate among the guests. And the candles have barely been lit for a solstice supper when the body is found.
It all began with a secret, fifteen years ago. Now the past has crashed the party. And it’ll end in murder at…
THE MIDNIGHT FEAST
Alex Finlay is another author who never fails to please. If Something Happens to Me sounds very intriguing.
The crushing blow to the head. Hands yanking him from the vehicle. His girlfriend’s piercing scream…
For the past five years, Ryan Richardson has relived that terrible night. With no trace of Ali after she is abducted, a cloud of suspicion hangs over him, though he is never charged. Trying to put his past behind him, Ryan changes his name and enters law school.
It’s on a summer trip to Italy that he gets the call: his missing car has finally been found, submerged in a lake in his hometown. But inside the car are two dead men. The only trace of Ali is a cryptic note, the envelope in her handwriting stating If something happens to me…
Reeling from the news, Ryan sees the man who has haunted his nightmares since the night Ali was taken. But how could that be possible, so far from home? His search for answers leads him to England and France, but the truth may lie in the shape of two very different people back in the USA.
So, there we have it. I just won’t be sleeping AT ALL this week.
I have no idea what I am going to read after Smoke and Mirrors, but if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them!
We had a lovely lunch out with Dustin and Luke today. I spent the morning in the garden beforehand picking spinach and mandarins to send home with them, along with Luke’s gumboots and his science books that he left behind after he stayed the weekend a couple of weeks ago.
Pete is busy screwing new boards onto the back porch as a few of them were getting quite spongy and unsafe. After he has finished that we are going to catch up with some friends we haven’t seen for a few weeks.
It is long weekend (King’s Birthday) here in New Zealand so tomorrow is a public holiday and another chance to get a bit more done around the house and yard. I hope the lawn dries out enough that I can mow it. It’s not long, just looking untidy.
Here we are at the end of autumn and winter staring us in the face in the southern hemisphere. It is a wintery day today with sudden showers accompanied by equally sudden drops in temperature, cold winds and only the odd, brief glimpse of the sun. It’s definitely time for me to pack away my summer clothes and to bring out my winter woolies.
I have signed up for the Goodreads Aussie Readers Winter Challenge, and I will post about that later in the week.
What am I currently reading?
Paris Echo by Sebastian Faulks is a title from my 2018 NetGalley backlist which I am finding fascinating reading.
Here is Paris as you have never seen it before – a city in which every building seems to hold the echo of an unacknowledged past, the shadows of Vichy and Algeria.
American postdoctoral researcher Hannah and runaway Moroccan teenager Tariq have little in common, yet both are susceptible to the daylight ghosts of Paris. Hannah listens to the extraordinary witness of women who were present under the German Occupation; in her desire to understand their lives, and through them her own, she finds a city bursting with clues and connections. Out in the migrant suburbs, Tariq is searching for a mother he barely knew. For him in his innocence, each boulevard, Métro station and street corner is a source of surprise.
The first in a new series (The Village Detective) is The Art of Murder by Fiona Walker. If you are looking for a humorous and light-hearted cosy-mystery, this will definitely fit the bill!
Welcome to the beautiful English village of Inkbury. Tucked deep in the North Wessex Downs, its only claim to fame is the picturesque riverside that once appeared in a Richard Curtis movie. That is, until the murder…
Former stand-up comic Juno Mulligan has been suffering a serious sense-of-humour failure. Not only has she lost the love of her life, but she’s having to relocate to the (admittedly idyllic) village of Inkbury to watch out for her elderly mother, who she’s genuinely worried might be marrying a wife-killer.
She hopes that her old friend, disgraced-journalist-turned-novelist Phoebe Fredericks can help her crack the case of whether her mother’s perma-tanned, iceberg-smiled, three-times-a-widower fiancé is hiding a murderous past.
But before they have a chance, the local art dealer washes up distinctly dead in the village’s famous river. His lover is in the frame, but Juno and Phoebe suspect that there is a deeper secret… One that relates to Phoebe’s own past and Juno’s present.
Will the unofficial Village Detective Agency solve the mystery before the killer strikes again? In sleepy Inkbury, as they soon discover, living one’s best midlife can be murder.
This is the last of my reads needed to complete my Aussie Readers May Challenge. It is book #4 in Joy Dettman’s Woody Creek series – Wind in the Wires.
The wind is whispering in Woody Creek…Change is in the air
It’s 1958 and Woody Creek is being dragged kicking and screaming into the swinging sixties.
Jenny’s daughters, Cara and Georgie, are now young women. They have inherited their mother’s hands, but that is where their similarity ends. Raised separately, they have never met. A mistake from Cara’s teenage years looms over her future, but she believes emphatically in the white wedding and happily ever after myth. Georgie has seen enough of marriage and motherhood. She plans to live her life as her grandmother did, independent of a man.
But life for the Morrison girls has never been easy, and once the sisters are in each other’s lives, long-buried secrets are bound to be unearthed, the dramatic consequences of which no-one could have predicted…
I have four reads for review scheduled this week. They are:
Feels Like Summer (Oh, how I wish it did!) by Wendy Francis a new-to-me author.
For three sisters, this Memorial Day weekend is a much-anticipated reunion—and a sizzling escape—where secrets, lovers, and betrayals collide in a small coastal town.
It’s Memorial Day weekend, the annual kickoff to summer for the Lancaster sisters. But the festivities take a deep dive when a mysterious boating accident occurs off their seaside town, sparking questions about how well the sisters know their neighbors—and each other.
Kate, whip smart and rich, lives a charmed life—if only her lawyer husband wasn’t always disappearing for his next big case. Older sister Shelby, when not selling houses, is falling hard for an on-again, off-again lover. He’s perfect for Shelby in many ways, and so wrong in others. And Bree, the youngest, is reeling from a recent breakup and in desperate need of her sisters. They’ve always been there for each other, but as secrets arise and gossip spreads like wildfire, the idyllic weekend takes a dramatic tailspin. Will this summer’s troubles change their bond before their sisterhood is righted again?
Goyhood by Reuven Fenton, another new-to-me author.
When Mayer (née Marty) Belkin fled small town Georgia for Brooklyn nearly thirty years ago, he thought he’d left his wasted youth behind. Now he’s a Talmud scholar married into one of the greatest rabbinical families in the world – a dirt poor country boy reinvented in the image of God.
But his mother’s untimely death brings a shocking revelation: Mayer and his ne’er-do-well twin brother David aren’t, in fact, Jewish. Traumatized and spiritually bereft, Mayer’s only recourse is to convert to Judaism. But the earliest date he can get is a week from now. What are two estranged brothers to do in the interim?
So begins the Belkins’ Rumspringa through America’s Deep South with Mom’s ashes in tow, plus two tagalongs: an insightful Instagram influencer named Charlayne Valentine and Popeye, a one-eyed dog. As the crew gets tangled up in a series of increasingly surreal adventures, Mayer grapples with a God who betrayed him and an emotionally withdrawn wife in Brooklyn who has yet to learn her husband is a counterfeit Jew.
Guilty Mothers by Angela Marsons is #20 in the Kim Stone series, every book of which I have loved! So you know where my reading journey for the coming week is going to start, don’t you!
She lies on the floor, her blue eyes wide and unseeing, arms outstretched as if begging for help. Kneeling next to her, wearing a purple sequinned ballgown and holding a knife in shaking hands, is her daughter…
In a quiet kitchen, where two mugs wait by the kettle to be filled, Sheryl Hawne lies in a pool of blood. Her only daughter, Katie, is found at her side, still clutching the murder weapon and apparently incapable of speech. To Detective Kim Stone, the case seems open and shut. But Katie is in no state to be questioned, so Kim and the team must dig deep to understand what triggered this brutal act.
Soon, they learn that Katie participated in beauty pageants as a child, and her mother kept a shrine to her achievements. As Kim gazes at the golden trophies and shiny rosettes, she is forced to wonder if this was what set Katie on the path to murder…
But then Kim receives a shocking call. Another woman is dead. And with Katie safely locked up, she cannot be the killer. The second victim also entered her daughter in pageants, and a broken tiara is found thrust down her throat. Someone clearly feels that these mothers are guilty – and that they deserve to die. Forcing back the memories of her own monstrous mother, Kim vows to find justice for these women, no matter what pain they caused.
Now more than a day behind their killer, Kim races to learn more about a competitive world where appearances are everything and mothers will go to any lengths to ensure their daughters triumph. Buried somewhere in this dark past is the key to unlocking the case… but will Kim be able to find it before another family is destroyed forever?
My final read is also by a new-to-me author, Australian Phillipa Nefri Clark.
Ivy Ross left Rivers End ten years ago, vowing never to return. Her heart broken, her trust gone, the father she adored behind bars. But when her sister Jody begs Ivy to return to finalise their inheritance, the majestic Fairview House, she is drawn home. And when she finds a collection of heartfelt letters hidden in her father’s library, everything she thought she knew is called into question.
The anonymous letters reveal a heartbreaking love story that force Ivy to rethink the terrible night that tore her family apart. And when Ivy meets Leo, the man whose life was also devastated by her father’s crime, she realises that it’s time to uncover the truth. But that’s not the only secret waiting for them in Fairview. Can facing up to her shocking family history lead Ivy to a future she could never have imagined…?
Are any of these books on your reading radar? Let me know!
Sandy's Book a Day Blog 