The Dog Share by Fiona Gibson

 

Ebook previously provided by NetGalley. Thank you.

4/5 stars

Suzy's partner Paul decides on a whim to buy a Whiskey distillery that they visited on holiday on a small Scottish island. 2 years later Paul has vanished and the distillery is close to going bust. Suzy equally on a whim but for the right reasons decides to go it alone and try to save it.

On a visit to the island Suzy comes across a lost terrier that she names Scout. Trying to find his origins she connects with local Cara who has just had to put her own dog to sleep. Suzy eventually decides to keep Scout, a new mascot for a new life.

Ricky's dad was the former head distiller and Ricky and his son Arthur are visiting for Easter to try and cheer up grandad following the loss of his dog not so long ago. Suzy tries to get Harry re-involved with the distillery but he's reluctant until Ricky and Arthur have a chance meeting with Scout on the beach.

This was super cute, I loved the variety of characters and the way everyone's paths crossed and how one dog can affect so many people.

The writing style was easy and engaging but there were frequent time jumps (two weeks later, two months later etc) which were a little annoying. There were a couple of plot threads that felt incomplete by the end which was a little bit frustrating but I still really enjoyed it.

Steff Out x

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

Eight Pieces of Silva by Patrice Lawrence

 

Ebook previously provided by NetGalley. Thank you.

3/5 stars

Becks's mum and Silva's dad have just got married and gone on their dream honeymoon. Silva at 18 is supposed to be the responsible adult looking after 16 year old Becks but then Silva doesn't come home after waving the parents off.

Becks's cat Azog decides to poop in Silva's room and while cleaning it up Becks finds a bunch of receipts for random items, the earliest dated has a handwritten message on it expressing romantic interest. Further investigation reveals other strange items: a crappy wig, fairground token, medal, locker key and a football related newspaper article.

So I loved Becks. Black, out and proud lesbian, Marvel and Tolkien obsessive (her cat's name even comes from the Hobbit movies). Also China - I wish we could have had more of her. Raych was interesting but we didn't know her enough to care about what happened

But Silva. Silva pissed me off in short. She's supposedly so fragile following her mum's death from cancer but it's not like she was a little kid (I can't recall if the amount of time was specified), enough time has passed for her dad to feel comfortable remarrying. Also her blind obsession frustrated me to no end. You are 28 yet you are acting like a child!

The ending was also very abrupt like the author didn't want to go over a certain word count.

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

Isle of Ever by Jen Calonita

 

Ebook provided by NetGalley. Thank you.

4/5 stars

12 year old Everly "Benny" Benedict is living with her mum in a tiny flat worrying about how they're going to afford the rent and whether they'll have to move again when a lawyer shows up.

Benny's great great grandmother (not sure how many greats) has left a letter addressed specifically to her. She will inherit Evelyn Terry's estate and accompanying vineyard and her fortune but only if she completes her game by the 12th June.

Told in dual timeline between Benny's search in the present day and Evelyn's journal in 1835 when the area was plagued by Pertussis known as The Cough. I really enjoyed the concept for this and I liked the characters although despite them being described as Benny's age Zara and Ryan read as a little older and understandably due to the journal format we didn't learn a lot about the historical characters.

The pacing was a little uneven, slow in parts, fast in others. The explanation for Benny specifically being addressed could have come a little earlier and there was a particular troublesome family that were mentioned but that didn't come to anything at this point. A cliffhanger ending which certainly entices you to pick up the next book and I'll certainly keep my eye out for it.

Steff Out x

See the Stars by Eleanor Ray

 

Ebook provided by NetGalley. Thank you.

5/5 stars

Alice is an astronomer. Previously she was studying for her masters degree but left it suddenly and joined the world of finance in the city. As a kid she loved nothing more than stargazing with her beloved grandpa until his descent into dementia and rambles about a comet no-one else could see.

Following a collapse at work and the diagnosis of a mini-stroke Alice goes home to Yorkshire to recuperate, re-discovering her grandpa's logbooks in the process and maybe he wasn't wrong about the comet? Along the way she reconnects with her teenage crush Matt, through his nerdy, autistic nephew Berti. I loved Berti as a character and his autism is obvious to me but unfortunately never named on page which is my only slight bugbear with this novel

Told in dual timeline between Alice's time as a child and her university journey and present day this is an emotional, engaging story and I didn't find the space stuff too complicated or overwhelming in the way it was written. The characters were all well-written and easy to connect to. I was hoping for a certain outcome and I was not disappointed but no spoilers here of course.

Steff Out x