REVIEW: Murder in the Village by Lisa Cutts

Murder in the Village (Belinda Penshurst #1) by Lisa Cutts

Genre: Cosy mysteries

Read: 18th August 2021

Goodreads

Amazon

Published: 25th August 2021

★ 1.5 stars

DESCRIPTION:

Meet Belinda Penshurst. Castle owner, dog lover… crime solver?

Belinda Penshurst loves her home village Little Challham, with its shady lanes, two pubs and weekly market, and she’s determined to keep it peaceful. She may live in Challham Castle but she knows almost everything that goes on under her nose. So when irritable pub landlord Tipper is found dead in his cellar, she’s perfectly placed to investigate.

Retired detective Harry Powell moved to Little Challham for a quiet life. He didn’t expect to be dragged into a murder investigation. But the police don’t seem half as enthusiastic as Belinda about the case, and there are strange things happening in the village. Particularly the number of dogs that have disappeared lately…

Is there a dognapper snaffling schnauzers and luring away Labradors? Is Belinda barking mad to be worried that her brother Marcus was arguing with Tipper on the day he died? Belinda and Harry track down the suspects: the rival landlord, the outraged barmaid, the mysterious man in the black car following dogwalkers around. But are the dogged detectives running out of time to sniff out the killer, before he starts hounding them?

A charming cozy mystery full of laughs and eccentric characters. Fans of M.C. Beaton, H.Y. Hanna and Emily Organ will love the first novel in the Belinda Penshurst series!

MY REVIEW:

Nothing ever happens in Little Challham...nothing really happens in this book either! Yes, the local pub landlord drowned in his own ale and there are a band of dognappers lurking in the dark...but none of it is exciting enough to hold my attention.

Belinda Penshurst might love her life in Little Challham...hell, I probably would too if I lived in her castle! But I didn't like Belinda. She was irritating and seemed to look down her nose at everyone. Her brother Marcus was another fool who hasn't appeared to have grown up. Harry Powell, now retired from the author's previous East Rise series, was the only likeable character with his little chats with the villagers...but with Belinda I was left scratching my head. What on earth are they talking about? The pair left me utterly confused by their interactions to the point I just didn't care anymore.

I really couldn't get into this book and I don't even have the energy to rehash the plot in my own retelling of it because there doesn't seem much point.

I love Midsomer Murders and the whole cosy English village scene...but MURDER IN THE VILLAGE doesn't cut it for me. But don't take my word for it...plenty of other people have enjoyed it so you might too!

I haven't read the author's crime series but I think that would be more up my alley, particularly the ones that feature DI Harry Powell who has now retired to Little Challham and featured in this book, as I'm fairly fussy about cosy mysteries that can hold my attention.

I would like to thank #LisaCutts, #Netgalley and #Bookouture for an ARC of #MurderInTheVillage in exchange for an honest review.

MEET THE AUTHOR: 

Lisa Cutts is a full-time detective constable investigating murders for a living. When off duty she writes a fictitious version of her day job. She lives and works within the county of Kent with her husband and Labrador.

She is the author of the DC Nina Foster books, 'Never Forget' and 'Remember, Remember'. 'Never Forget' was longlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award 2013 and the winner of the Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award 2014 for Best Thriller. She has also written four books in the East Rise Incident Room series, 'Mercy Killing', 'Buried Secrets', 'Lost Lives' and 'Don’t Trust Him'. All four centre around DI Harry Powell and his Major Crime Team battling to solve the latest murders within the county. Currently she is writing the Little Challham mysteries, cosy mysteries set in a fictional village in Kent also featuring the now retired detective Harry Powell.

She writes a monthly column, Behind the Tape, for Writing Magazine answering police procedural questions from other writers. In early 2016, she was honoured to become the Patron of Rochester Literature Festival and help establish Murderous Medway, an annual crime fiction festival packed full of amazing author panels. As well as being on BBC Radio 4’s Open Book, Lisa has twice appeared on This Morning to chat about TV crime dramas Broadchurch and Line of Duty.

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REVIEW: Blasted Things by Lesley Glaister

 

Blasted Things by Lesley Glaister

Genre: Literary fiction

Read: 9th October 2020

Goodreads

Amazon

Published: 7th May 2020

★ 1.5 stars

DESCRIPTION:

1920: Britain is trying to forget the Great War. As a nurse at the front, Clementine has found and lost love, but has settled for middle class marriage. Vincent had half his face blown off, and wants more than life offers now. Drawn together by their shared experiences at the Front, they have a compulsive relationship, magnetic and parasitic, played out with blackmail and ending in disaster for one of them.

Powerfully drawn together they enter a deadly relationship that careers towards a dark and haunting resolution.

MY REVIEW:

I've not read Lesley Glaister before and I was drawn to BLASTED THINGS for it's premise which promised something a little different to what I was actually expecting. As a historical fiction fan, I had expected a lovely easy read set during and after the Great War. A love story? Or something of a saga, maybe? But that's not what BLASTED THINGS is about.

In fact, what is IS about, beyond Clementine and Vincent and their dangerous liaison, is an exploration into the damage left behind after the war. Clementine and Vincent are products of such an horrific time, yet each suffer differently.

Clementine was a VAD nurse in France during the war where she worked alongside fellow nurses Iris and Gwen, under the watchful eye of Sister Fitch. After the death of her brother Ralph, Clementine trained for the Voluntary Aid Detachment as a nurse and, against her pompous fiance's wishes, went to France to serve in a field hospital. There she met Canadian surgeon Powell Bonneville and fell in love. He asked her to marry him, returning also to Canada with him when the time came. But just as he was about to leave and the field hospital was packing up to move five miles further out of harms way, a shell landed in their midst...killing Powell instantly as well as her dear friend Iris. Only she, Gwen and Sister Fitch survived, with Clem secretly miscarrying whilst recuperating.

She returned home to Blighty to marry her fiance Dennis Everett, a doctor no less, but a pompous, condescending, patronising fool. She bore him a son they named Edgar...though I doubt Clem had much say in the naming as she was too busy reliving and mourning the loss of Powell and their baby all over again. Being a doctor, Dennis knew how to treat her and she spent the next few weeks or so in a haze of injections and medications and, I fear, her marital duties.

On a visit to her widowed sister-in-law Harri and after a show of Dennis patronising her, Clem managed to escape for some fresh air and a walk. While on this walk, she stepped out into the road as a motorbike came around the corner and swerved to miss her...and ultimately crashing. Filled with a sense of guilt, Clem feels she must visit the poor chap in hospital but Dennis cannot see the logic. However she is is insistent and he acquiesces...though protesting loudly and often. 

And so Clem meets Vincent Fortune, ex-sergeant, but the war left him changed. He is now so physically damaged that he wears a prosthetic mask covering one side of his face and an unseeing glass eye. Dennis thinks this is the end of it but he couldn't be more wrong. Clem insists on paying for the damage to Vincent's prized possession - his Norton motorcycle - which Vincent milks for all it's worth.

The two continue to meet clandestinely, looking for something in the other that neither can provide, leading them something far more dangerous. And while Vincent may seem like something of a "villain", the reality is his unravelling through no fault of his own. The war left many people changed and damaged...and Vincent was but one of its living casualties.

BLASTED THINGS was nothing like I expected it to be so therefore I was disappointed. I didn't want an exploration into the damage of war or those of the limited choices of a woman caught in a loveless marriage. I wanted a light easy read that I so love about historical fiction. This was too heavy for me and not to my taste at all. 

The writing, whilst powerful, was at times rather uncomfortable. In the end, I could not finish this book so I have no idea how it all panned out. But from what I did read, it couldn't have ended well.

While it may not have been to my taste, BLASTED THINGS will certainly appeal to many others, I'm sure. I just don't think I was the right kind of audience.

I would like to thank #LesleyGlaister, #NetGalley and #SandstonePress for an ARC of #BlastedThings in exchange for an honest review.

MEET THE AUTHOR:

Lesley Glaister (born 4 Oct 1956, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire) is a British novelist, poet and playwright. She has written 14 novels, 'Blasted Things' being the most recent, one play and numerous short stories and radio plays. She is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of St Andrews, and is a regular contributor of book reviews to the Spectator and The Times. 

Lesley's subject matter is often serious (murder, madness and obsession crop up regularly in her books) but with a thread of dark humour running through it. Her first novel 'Honour Thy Father' (1990) won the Somerset Maugham Award and a Betty Trask Award, 'Now You See Me' was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for fiction in 2002, and 'Easy Peasy' was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Award 1998. Her first play, 'Bird Calls' was performed at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, in 2003.

Lesley is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is currently writer in residence at the University of Edinburgh. She is married to poet Andrew Greig.

Social Media links:

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REVIEW: I Choose You by Gayle Curtis (ARC)

I Choose You by Gayle Curtis

Genre: Psychological thriller

Read: 29th February 2020

Goodreads

Purchase: Amazon

(publication date: 1st January 2020)

★ 1.5 stars

Firstly, I think it is important to note before starting this book that suicide features heavily in this story. It is talked about, it is acted out and it is a game purported by an unknown subject manipulating their victims - or participants, as they are referred to - into playing. As a difficult issue for some I felt it important to make it known that it is a common thread throughout the entire story.

So, ready?

Thirty years ago, Elise and Nathaniel shared a horrific trauma in which their mothers both committed suicide...the possible victims of the Suicide Watcher. This united them in grief when they meet up again in a support group run by Magda King, whose brother succumbed to suicide. A recipe for disaster, right? Well, these two were obviously blind to that fact and ended up married with three children of their own - Ida, Miles and Buddy. (honestly where does the author come up with these names? Ida for a 15 year old girl??) Elise has recently had baby Buddy (whose name sounds more like a dog than a child), and had some kind of post natal psychosis going on where she didn't feel that Buddy was hers. Aside from that, they finally believe that their nightmares are over...until Ida is murdered. (don't believe the premise in the abduction theory...never happened)

Fast forward a couple of years later...and baby Buddy is now 20 months old. But Elise is a raving lunatic. She is now in full-on psycho mode accusing a doctor she worked with and his wife of swapping their babies when they were both born at the same time in the same hospital. She has gone so far that they have taken out a restraining order against her and threatening legal action. But Elise is adamant. Their baby - Louis - is really her child, and Buddy is their's. What makes her think that? Her baby had an unusual birth mark on his right leg which she saw immediately after he was born...but later when they brought him to her in the hospital it was gone. The doctor's wife's face said it all...Louis has that very birthmark.

So amidst accusations, threats, police involvement and whatnot, Nathaniel assures Elise that Buddy IS their's as the DNA results proved it. But Elise would not be swayed.

And that seems a plausible enough storyline, right? Wrong!

Then there are the intermittent philosophical ramblings of a headcase peppered throughout the entire story, picking off their victims like going through a shopping list. Only with a far more metaphysical take in the theoretical sense of the entire nonsensical waffle! Did that make any sense? No? Well, neither do these chapters.

The story goes back and forth between the past and the present - titled THEN and NOW. That should be easy enough to follow in theory...I repeat IN THEORY. But the problem was there was one story in the THEN, another in the NOW and then the philosophical theoretical nonsense thrown in between! I have to admit I found it terribly difficult to remember in which timeline which story went where and what related to who when. It didn't make it any easier that Elise and Nathaniel featured in both, which simply added to the confusion.

Then we get confession after confession regarding Ida's death...which incidentally took place in the THEN chapters. And after all that, it was then theorised that Ida took her own life as the latest victim (participant) of the Suicide Watcher...or maybe it was the mother's brother's uncle twice removed? Then when the identity of Ida's killer is revealed it would have been a clever touch, if not for the whole convoluted mess in between, but it really just fell as flat as the rest of the story.

And by the end, I'm thinking...WTF? This person kills that person after they had killed another person and then kills themselves?

Honestly...I CHOOSE YOU could be broken down into three categories:
The GOOD, the BAD and the UGLY.

The only good thing this book had going for it was the whole Suicide Watcher theme. It was original and intriguing. "You have sixty seconds to choose - to shoot yourself or to be shot?"

Then we have the characters, none of which were likable in any way, shape or form. I wanted to shoot all of them, they irritated me that much. And there was so much happening in this book I simply could not keep up. Nor could I distinguish between the past and present as it all just jumbled together with a load of random people that had no development or substance.

Which then brings us to the worst part of this book - the UGLY. O.M.G!! The horribly choppy writing that was just such a convoluted mess. That by the end I was just so confused by all the unanswered questions and plot holes that were left unresolved. I just didn't get the whole point of whose baby was really Elise's and the random nutter that was a friend but also a patient but also a client...where did that one come from and what the hell did it mean? It was never followed up and just left blowing in the breeze like most of the storyline.

When I started this book, I went in with my eyes open to enjoy it...and I tried. I really did. And when it started it did show promise. I thought for sure I would give it at least 3 stars. But what the hell happened after that? In all honesty, I kept reading hoping all loose ends would be tied up by the end and I'd find out who the Suicide Watcher was and who killed Ida. I guessed who the Watcher was but not Ida's killer...but then I think they were running out of suspects after all the confessions.

There was way too much happening in this book and way too many random people that just didn't need to be there. I'm sorry, but I just couldn't like this book...and despite the almost clever way it ended, I just didn't much care anymore by then.

I would give it 2 stars just because I finished it, but even then 2 stars is leaning towards the notion that I thought it was "OK". Which I didn't. So it's a sorry 1 from me.

I have her next book already. I just hope it is vast improvement on this one.

I would like to thank #GayleCurtis, #NetGalley and #AmazonPublishingUK for an ARC of #IChooseYou in exchange for an honest review.

REVIEW: Her Perfect Lies by Lana Newton (ARC)

Her Perfect Lies by Lana Newton

Genre: Psychological thriller

Read: 3rd December 2019

Goodreads

Purchase: Amazon

(publication date: 7th November 2019)

★ 1.5 stars

An exciting premise for a promising tale of psychological suspense, HER PERFECT LIES did not live up to my expectations. In fact I had to force myself to keep reading because I wanted to know how it ended...and even then it was far from exciting or gripping.

After a car accident, Claire wakes in hospital with no memory of who she is or how she got there. She doesn't recognise her husband, her friends or family. When she discovers her father is also in the hospital in a coma, she rushes to his bedside to sit with him, despite having no memories of him she just knows she has to be there.

She is soon fit to be discharged and her husband Paul takes her home...which isn't just a house, it's a mansion! Which her very wealthy mother bought for them, Paul informs her.

Home is meant to be a sanctuary, but there are so many nooks one can hide in this huge house to gain some privacy. And yet, Claire doesn't feel like it's home. She aches to get back to the hospital to visit her father again...and glean some more information from him about her life.

She is supposed to be happily married and yet Paul is distant with her. He watches her take her meds to ensure she does so...saying he just wants what's best for her. But does he really? Her best friend Gaby tells her that they had "issues" without elaborating, and when Claire discovers divorce papers with their signatures on, she believes that their issues must be pretty big.

And then the nightmares begin...or are they memories? Claire doesn't know but one thing she is sure of is that she is terrified of them. Who is the faceless man in her nightmares? And why is she so afraid of him? Is it Paul? Or someone else? Or is she just imagining it?

Claire begins to realise that the place she feels safest is with her father, so when Paul informs her that the hospital is discharging him, Claire insists he come and live with them. As her father is confined to a wheelchair unable to walk, Paul hires a nurse and a physiotherapist to see to his needs. Despite his willingness to help, Claire finds herself unable to trust Paul. Is it something her subconscious knows about him? Is he the man from her dreams?

And where was Claire's mother? Her father claims she was in the USA tending to a sick relative, but Gaby insists that there was no way on earth that Angela (her mother) would not fly back to be at her daughter's bedside. Her father is vague about when her mother will return - 3 weeks or 3 months, he isn't sure. Then her mother calls from the USA. Claire is ecstatic to hear from her, though she cannot picture her. In a flurry of words, Angela tells her she wishes she could be with her but she will be as soon as she can. At least now she knows where her mother is.

...Until she hears her father sobbing from his room, the police and Paul at his bedside. What's going on, she asks. Her mother's body has just been found, stabbed on her kitchen floor. Claire claims that that isn't possible as she has just gotten off the phone to her mother in the USA. But when Paul and her father return from identifying the remains Claire's world collapses even further. It's her. She is gone. Her mother is dead. But...then who has been calling her?

Claire finds that she must untangle the threads of her life...and discover who she was. Beginning with the car accident. Why does her father tell her she wasn't in the car, yet the police constable remembers vividly pulling her out? And why did he then lie to the police telling them she WAS in the car and they were on the way to go horse riding? Which is the truth?

But the more Claire digs, the more she uncovers that makes little or no sense. She learns that she had a brother she knew nothing about and an aunt, her mother's twin, she hadn't seen since she was 16. The house she thought she had grown up in in North London she had moved to from Windsor at the same age she last saw her mother's twin sister. What secrets was her family trying to cover up? Was it something she did and they were merely protecting her?

Claire realised the truth lay in Windsor...and endeavoured to find out exactly what truth that was.

The concept behind HER PERFECT LIES was an interesting one in where a woman wakes from a coma with no memory of her life whatsoever. Imagine what one could do with that! Her family, friends and even husband could rewrite her history and she would be none the wiser. However, it just didn't work here. I felt the story was just a jumble of one dimensional occurrences involving a handful of characters that were just too implausible.

I didn't warm to anyone in the story and found myself longing for it to end. But at the same time, I had to force myself to continue just so I could find out what really happened...and once I got there, I felt I would have been better off ditching the book for something far more enthralling. The conclusion was predictable in the end because what other explanation was there? There were so many secrets and lies all tangled together I couldn't even make headway with them that I didn't even care who was responsible in the end.

I must be one of the minority with this book because many others rave about it but I honestly could not see why. With a similar concept I believe Steve (S.J.) Watson did it far better in "Before I Go To Sleep" and because of that, I guess it is difficult to surpass its success.

Sadly, I did not enjoy HER PERFECT LIES at all and really struggled to complete it...and that was only because I wanted to find out what happened. But, don't take my word for it...there are plenty of others who have really enjoyed it. I'd recommend you take a look for yourself. Everyone's tastes are different and you may love it or you may not. You never know until you give it a go.

I would like to thank #LanaNewton, #NetGalley and #HQDigital for an ARC of #HerPerfectLies in exchange for an honest review.