Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney

 

Ebook previously provided by NetGalley. Thank you.

3/5 stars

Grady Green is an author. He has just phoned his wife, Abby, with news of being a New York Times bestseller when she stops the car saying she sees someone in the road. The call goes silent and when Grady goes to investigate Abby has vanished!

A year later Grady is a broken man living in a cheap hotel and with a writing advance needing to be paid back (he only wrote one book of a two book deal) his debts are accumulating. But then his agent Kitty - Abby's godmother - phones. She needs him to write a new book and she's got just the place he can use, the cabin used by a now deceased author on the isolated island of Amberley off the coast of Scotland.

The island when Grady arrives is a very strange place. A tiny community of 25, phones that don't work, or do they? No consistent schedule to be able to leave the island. Odd looks and comments and for Grady the delivery of some of Abby's old newspaper articles possibly referencing people on the island.

This started off interestingly but it took a lot of time to get anywhere. The pacing struggled. There's only so many paranoid hallucinations someone can take before thinking just get on with the plot! The last quarter where we get all the reveals felt crowded and muddy. There were moments one character mentioned that earlier in the book seemed to belong to another character. Some stuff seemed a bit out of the blue and unbelievable. And then that ending!?!? What was that??? I hated the lack of clarity there.

Steff Out x

Day of the Accident by Nuala Ellwood

 

Paperback read but ebook previously provided by NetGalley. Thank you.

4/5 stars

Content warnings: child death, suicide plus attempts, eating disorder, grief.

Maggie has just woken up from a coma to be told that her daughter Elspeth has drowned and her husband Sean has left. Maggie's injuries tell the police that she tried to stop the car going into the river but what caused the accident? Maggie has lost her memories of the day. Then she's told that due to her husband leaving she now has no home or belongings and very little money of her own.

This was a gripping, fast-paced novel with nice short chapters. Some of the chapters were separated by letters from an unnamed child in some kind of children's home situation. You might have guesses as to who this child is but you are probably wrong because that particular reveal comes quite late.

The only thing I didn't like was that the whole situation between Maggie and her husband is very brushed over and I feel like it needed more page time.

Steff Out x

The Villa by Jess Ryder

 

Ebook previously provided by NetGalley. Thank you.

3/5 stars

3 years ago Dani, Aoife, Tiff, Beth and Celine came to Villa Floriana in Marbella for Aoife's hen party. Aoife was killed in a suspected burglary gone wrong. Dani was never convinced by this story so she's brought the other hens back to the villa to try and figure out the truth.

Told in dual timeline of then and now and from the perspectives of the 4 surviving hens. Tiff and Beth are Aoife's childhood best friends, Dani is her adulthood best friend who was leading her astray - according to Tiff - and Celine is someone she worked with who technically wasn't supposed to be there due to some "mix-up" of a 6 person villa being booked as opposed to a group-friendly hotel.

I liked the mystery surrounding what happened and the gradual reveal of the events but apart from Dani the characters are mostly unlikable in their secret bitchy-ness. Are you people her friends or not? Also the reveal was a letdown and in my feeling not really believable. There were also some other plot points that were introduced so late that they may as well not have been there, it's like the author was just trying to add extra tension instead of working with what she already had.

Steff Out x

Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan

 

Paperback read but ebook previously provided by NetGalley. Thank you.

3/5 stars

CW: animal abuse and suicide

Detective Alec Nichols has been summoned to a very unusual crime. The discovery of sixteen severed horse's heads partially buried in a field. Alec calls in Veterinary Forensics expert Cooper Allen to assist with the investigation.

Soon blackmail, hidden anthrax, family secrets and more abused animals are revealed.

This book does not go where you expect it. I really enjoyed the writing style but it felt like the author lost track of his plot and didn't know where the story was going. Several threads were abandoned, the ending wasn't exactly explained and also made no sense.

Steff Out x

A Serial Killer's Guide to Marriage by Asia Mackay

 

Ebook previously provided by NetGalley. Thank you.

4/5 stars

Haze and her husband Fox were a serial killer team murdering bad men across Europe. They have very opposite backgrounds, Haze is a Brit, grew up in care under multiple abusive foster families. Fox is American, born into privilege until his parents discovered his first kill and exiled him to England.

Both agreed to retire when they had daughter Bibi but Haze in particular is struggling. She's mostly a stay at home mum - she's also a successful artist but her main inspiration was their kills - which leaves her time to dwell. Fox seems to be having a successful business career but both are hiding things.

I loved the characters and I thought it was brilliantly written but I do wish it had come to that big climax a little bit sooner. I certainly hope that there's a sequel though!

Steff Out x

Keep Him Close by Emily Koch

 

Ebook previously provided by NetGalley. Thank you.

2/5 stars

Alice's son Lou has just died following a night out. Indigo's son Kane has confessed to killing him but is that the truth?

Alice finds herself getting close to Indigo, first by accident when she visits the library where Alice works but then she deliberately orchestrates further meetings. Indigo herself refuses to believe her boy has done wrong, is she right or is she blinded by a mother's love?

I kept reading because I wanted to know the truth. Neither of our main female characters are particularly likable, Alice is cold and judgemental and Indigo is fussy and obsessed with everything containing radiation. The plot is thin and weak and everything takes way too long to be resolved and when it is it makes the ending weak.

Steff Out x 

The Memory Wood by Sam Lloyd

 

Ebook provided by NetGalley. Thank you.

3/5 stars

This is told in 3-way narration between Elissa who has been kidnapped from her chess tournament, Mairead the detective looking for her who has been having troubles of her own, and Elijah the mystery boy who visits Elissa but is unwilling or unable to help her.

This was an interesting novel and an intriguing concept but I think the execution was lacking slightly. It felt like the reveal and the full story behind it were kind of rushed and glossed over. The ending was very rushed as well.

Steff Out x

The Island by C.L. Taylor

 

Paperback read but ebook previously provided by NetGalley. Thank you.

4/5 stars 

6 teenagers are on holiday with their families. Their parents met while pregnant and the holidays have become an annual tradition each year. This year's coincides with Jefferson's birthday and his dad has organised an extra expedition: a week on a tropical island unaccompanied by the adults.

Things start off well enough but then their guide dies of a stroke and the teens are stranded. Twins Milo and Mia, Jefferson, Danny and girlfriend Honor and Jessie who is struggling following a traumatic incident. The group discusses phobias on their first night and then those phobias start appearing...

This was super tense and definitely kept me guessing but the initial idea of them going on yearly holidays because their parents were pregnant together was a little weak. The characters weren't super likable but we also didn't learn a lot about them.

Steff Out x

The Death Sculptor by Chris Carter

 

4/5 stars

Detective Robert Hunter is part of an elite murder investigation team in LA when he gets a call one day about a grisly murder. A district attorney has been killed despite being terminally ill and weeks from death. Yet this isn't an ordinary murder. He has been brutalised with limbs chopped off and used to make a grotesque sculpture, but what does it mean?

This was a gripping, fast-paced novel and the characters were interesting but I did have issues. The author was obsessed with describing everyone... Well everyone female. I don't care if the female bartender has a messy bun, or that the random in the bar has obviously artificial breasts, or that the victim's daughter is five foot five. None of this is relevant to the plot.

My other big issue was the plotting itself. The killer reveal was suitably tense but it did raise questions about things that happened earlier in the novel. There was a scene where the killer poses as a certain trade but I can't imagine it panning out as is but no disguise was ever mentioned.

Elements read as a debut novel rather than the author's fourth but I did enjoy it and seeing how things unfolded and the clues revealing themselves.

Steff Out x

Someone Else's Skin by Sarah Hilary

 

2/5 stars

I liked the characters and the plot was interesting but I felt like there were too many things being juggled and some got dropped. They were originally going to talk to Ayana but then her storyline got all but abandoned. They made a massive thing about Marnie having tattoos and they may have been seen by the wrong person but I didn't understand the relevance of the tattoos and them being seen by this person was forgotten.

Also the writing style itself could use a bit of pruning. Near the beginning a character's only description was "obese girl in a black tracksuit". Are you telling me there was no better way to describe her than that? It feels very dehumanising. Also Marnie was referred to as a child as living in "near-autistic" silences. That just made me cringe. A lot of autistic people are not silent. And then there was the chapter opening where two or three sentences were used to describe thunder. The "then" and "now" chapters could have been clearer. The ending felt very rushed as well.

Stef Out x