From the outside, the house in Lakeview Terrace looks perfect and the Bigelows seem like the perfect family. But the perfect facade hides far undercurrents. Teenager Zane and his younger sister Britt, are terrorised by their violent father until one dark, brutal night when their father’s temper takes a horrifying turn for the worse.
Over time, Zane moves on and builds a new life for himself but a childhood like that can cast a shadow the length of a lifetime. Can Zane ever really be free of his past? Or could those dark undercurrents rise back to the surface, forcing Zane to fight for his once again…
My thoughts 💭 💭💭
First! I love Nora Roberts.
This is probably my favourite book of hers.
Trigger warning: domestic abuse and violence
Nora Roberts captures her readers from the moment you open the book. There’s no doubt about that. She’s brilliant!
Darby starting afresh in a new town. After getting a feel of the place she decides this is where she’ll start over.
Zane Walker is one hell of a guy. He’s been through hell and back and he’s come out stronger.
This book is about new beginnings, leaving the old life and starting over. It speaks in detail of violence and abuse from childhood to adulthood. Are we ever free from a past that was filled with violence? Well read Zane’s story and you’ll see that you can come out better and stronger.
Obviously there was romance and suspense rolled into one. You can always find a book of Nora Roberts with a bit of everything in it.
Thank you to Jonathan Ball Publishers for a copy of this novel for review
Synopsis
A perfect marriage…
Golden couple Annie and David Crayce have it all. A loving marriage, three beautiful children and a thriving family business. Life couldn’t be better. Until the unthinkable happens…
A perfect crime?
A piece of damning DNA evidence has arisen, placing David as the prime suspect of a murder committed twenty years ago. Annie is sure David is innocent.
As the police investigate the cold case, so does Annie. Trawling through her old diaries, she begins to desperately looking for answers. But it all comes down to a few lost hours she can’t solve.
And Annie begins to doubt the one person she thought she knew best…
Her husband.
What Ithought 💭 💭💭
I was into it from the beginning. It starts with a scene from 20 years ago. Then we’re in 2019 living the perfect life with Annie and David Crayce.
Imagine having the perfect life. The perfect husband. Three adorable children. Extended family that’s always there through thick and thin. Then one day your whole life comes to a halt and you’re questioning everything everyone does. This is what Annie had to go through.
We are pulled back and forth between the now and the crime that happened twenty years ago. There are quite a few secondary characters which puts you in a position of questioning all of them.
I loved Annie. She’s strong, vulnerable and determined to find the truth. David is a man who has changed his life from the wild past to the now perfect husband.
DS Rundle I was drawn too as well but I often felt that she was using her own past experience and comparing it to David Crayce. She was determined to prove him guilty.
This book is probably one of my favourite books from Susan Lewis. I became a fast fan of hers in a short time and am always looking forward to her books. She’s got a way with speaking to the reader. Getting us involved in the investigation and feeling what the characters feel.
Would I recommend this book? Yes. I enjoyed it. I gave it ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
If you want to solve a cold case. This is a book which will help you play detective.
Can’t wait for the next Susan Lewis novel to be released.
Thank you again to Jonathan Ball Publishers for this copy for review.
Thank you Jonathan Ball Publishers for gifting me a copy for review
Synopsis
ST CHRISTOPHER’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, IS A CLOSED WORLD TO MOST.
For Mariana Andros – a group therapist struggling through her private grief – it’s where she met her late husband. For her niece, Zoe, it’s the tragic scene of her best friend’s murder.
As memory and mystery entangle Mariana, she finds a society full of secrets, which has been shocked to its core by the murder of one of its own.
Because behind its idyllic beauty is a web of jealousy and rage which emanates from an exclusive set of students known only as The Maidens. A group under the sinister influence of the enigmatic professor Edward Fosca.
A man who seems to know more than anyone about the murders – and the victims. And the man who will become the prime suspect in Mariana’s investigation – an obsession which will unravel everything…
My thoughts
I have questions. I’m still thinking about that plot twist in the end. I had a suspicion but then dismissed it.
The author had me going in circles figuring out this plot.
A page turner and twisted. It’s dark and brutal. A little Greek Mythology added to the mix.
‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all…
Alfred Tennyson
I enjoyed it. But I didn’t get into it like I did with The Silent Patient.
Thoughts of her livedin that angry and patient brain. But there was time, so much time yet. And there were others. Many others who would come before.
Adrian Rizzo is a beautiful young woman with a successful business, and a wonderful family and friends. She’s worked hard to build a happy life for herself. When she receives a death threat in the post, she puts it down to jealousy and tries to forget about it. But Adrian doesn’t realise that it’s more than just spite. Someone is very unhappy about her happy life and will stop at nothing to bring it all crashing down.
My Thoughts:
Well one thing is for sure. Nora Roberts never disappoints.
I loved this book. It took me a while to read because… life; but I didn’t want it to stop. It was page turning from the first chapter.
Another thrilling book with a strong female lead and just as strong secondary characters. Women may the target but they’re are certainly not weak and useless.
This is a story of family, friends, community. The book has three parts namely: Ambitions; Changes; Legacies.
A story of building yourself up. Taking control of your life. Doing what is best for you and your family. A story of grief and loss and pushing through the hard times.
Murder. Love. It has it all. A little doggie love story too. and some seriously smart attentive kids.
I rated this a thrilling ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thank you to Jonathan Ball Publishers for gifting me a copy for review.
I received an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review
Blurb:
What is worse than having your mother set you up on a blind date? I’ll tell you, crushing on Aiden Lang.
The new office hunk, who has every girl’s attention even my best friend Amy’s. She took one look at him and was convinced that he’s her soulmate. Fate wasn’t playing fair when our boss had Aiden and myself working on the same project, having meeting after meeting together. The one day I tripped over my heels right into his hard chest. Amy was my only reminder that I didn’t have any claim to Aiden like she did. Becoming a bad friend for a good time just wasn’t in me. Determined to forget my best friend’s crush I jumped head first back into online dating. Though destiny wasn’t done with me yet.
Betray my best friend or take the risk on someone new? The thing about dating on the internet is you never truly know who’s behind the screens.
My Review:
Witty, fun, misunderstandings and love.
This book is witty and is a story based on mismatched couples and finding your true love.
I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was an easy and quick read.
I loved that we got the point of view of almost all the characters. We got to see what each character was feeling and what went through their minds when doing the silly things they did.
It’s a good clean soft love story of two people who are afraid of going after the one they actually want, so they make stupid decisions because that’s what you do when you’re inlove, you make stupid decisions. Each chapter starts with a quote on love, which is really sweet. Each chapter is dedicated to a character. An interesting plot twist in chapter ten, had me re-reading chapter nine to make sure I wasn’t reading wrong.
Loved the characters of Aiden and Jade obviously, they’re the stars of the book. Agatha had me in stitches. Couldn’t stand Amy. I liked Jack until a certain point, when he just seemed shallow. But I loved the book.
Swipe To Love releases on 22 June 2020. If you’re into soft, sweet, clean romance novels, then this is the book for you.
I was gifted a copy of this book by Jonathan Ball Publishers (@jonathanballpub) for an honest review.
Synopsis:
Sean Tennant is at a shopping mall when Henry Alan Keen, scorned by a woman he’s been dating, pulls out a gun and begins shooting everyone in sight. A former soldier, Sean rushes toward Keen and ends the slaughter with two well-placed shots – becoming a hero with his face plastered across the news.
But his newfound notoriety soon exposes him to the wrath of two men he thought he had left safely in his past. One blames Sean for his brother’s death. The other wants to recover a treasure that Sean and his partner Molly stole. Both are deadly and relentless enemies, and Sean and Molly will need to draw on their strength and devotion to each other if they hope to elude them.
Thus begins a cross-country chase that leads from Texas to Montana, from Tennessee to New York to Michigan, as the hunters and their prey grow ever closer.
My Review:
I quite enjoyed this book. It’s the first Harry Dolan book I’ve read and I won’t mind reading his other books.
I loved the characters, I love how they all interconnect with each other. The story behind all of them and why they did what they did. Who doesn’t love a good car chase across the country.
From stealing to killing. You get to understand what goes on in the minds of the hunter and it’s prey.
Sean is a hero on the run. It’s great to see how communities react to him when he lands in their town. Are they on his side? Are they willing to give him up? You’re kept wondering.
Jonathan Ball Publishers gifted me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.
Synopsis:
Angie Watts used to have everything. A new home. A beloved husband. Three adored children.
Then Angie’s perfect life is shattered – and it’s up to her to hold the family together.
Her son is missing. Her daughter is looking for help in dangerous places. And it’s getting harder and harder for Angie to keep them safe.
But Angie is a mother. And a mother will protect her family whatever it takes…
Page-turning and emotional, Home Truths is the stunning new novel from the Sunday Times bestseller.
Review:
When I finished this book the following sayings came to mind: “Every cloud has a silver lining” & “There’s light at the end of the tunnel”
This was a beautiful story of the love of a mother and the lengths she would go to keep her family safe and together.
From the very beginning I was hooked. I needed to know what happened and why it happened. The book though, started off with a cliffhanger and then went into the life of a mother that is given a really raw deal. She struggles keeping it together.
This book deals with issues of debt, missing children, violence, trafficking of drugs and people. This might be a trigger if you have dealt with issues before. It’s heart-breaking and emotional. As a mother, it hit me to the very core. I was so empathetic of Angie. I kept asking myself if I would be able to go through this as a single parent.
Loved it! If you love emotional books that give you that real life feel, I would recommend this book.
“Combining sweet nostalgia with the important issues Kennedy never shies away from, Queen Moveis nothing less than wonderful.
I couldn’t put it down and never wanted it to end!”
— Alexa Martin, Author of Intercepted
Queen Move, an all-new powerful second chance standalone from Wall Street Journal bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author Kennedy Ryan, is coming May 26th and we have your FIRST LOOK!
Make sure to enter on Kennedy’s site to win a QUEEN BOX, stuffed with a signed paperback and all the things you’ll need to
treat yourself like a queen!
Prologue
Kimba
Two Years Before Present
Is there anything sadder than a daddy’s girl at her father’s funeral?
My mother’s quiet sniffs a few seats down give me the answer.
A grieving widow.
“He was a good man,” someone in the long line of mourners offering condolences whispers to her.
Mama’s head bobs with a tearful nod. In this day and age, she still wears a pillbox hat and veil. It’s black and chic like Mama, channeling tragic Jackie Kennedy or Coretta Scott King. My father was not just a good man. He was a great man, and everyone should know he leaves behind a widow, grieving deeply, but ever-fly. I squeeze the funeral program between my fingers, glaring at the printed words.
Joseph Allen leaves behind a wife, Janetta, three children, Kayla, Keith and Kimba, and six grandchildren.
He leaves behind.
Daddy’s gone, and I don’t know how to live in a world my father does not inhabit. The casket is draped with sweet-smelling flowers in the center of the funeral tent. When we leave the cemetery, it…he will be lowered into the ground with unfathomable finality, separated from us by white satin lining, six feet of dirt and eternity.
Kayla, my older sister, sobs softly at the end of our family’s row. Her four children watch her carefully, probably unused to seeing their unshakeable mother shaken and reduced to tears. Even I’d forgotten how she looks when she cries—like she’s mad at the wetness streaking her cheeks, resentful of any sign of weakness.
It’s not weak to cry, Daddy used to say. It’s human.
“But doesn’t the Bible say even the rocks will cry out?” I’d challenged him when I was young, loving that something from Sunday school took. “So maybe tears aren’t just for humans.”
“You’re getting too smart for your britches, little girl,” he’d said, but the deep affection in his eyes when he kissed me told me he was pleased. He liked that I asked questions and taught me to never accept bullshit at face value.
I miss you, Daddy.
Not even a week since his heart attack, and I already miss him so much.
Humanity blurs my vision, wet and hot and stinging my eyes. I want this to be over. The flowers, the well-dressed mourners, the news cameras stationed at a distance they probably deem respectful. I just want to go to the house where my parents raised us, retreat to Daddy’s study and find the stash of cigars that only he and I knew about.
Don’t tell your mother, he used to whisper conspiratorially. This will be our little secret.
Mama hated the smell of cigars in the house.
“Tru.”
Who would call me by that name? Now, when the only people who use it, my family, are all preoccupied with their own pain? A tall man stands in front of me, his thick, dark brows bunched with sympathy. I don’t know him. I would remember a man like this, who stands strong like an oak tree. A well-tailored suit molds his powerful shoulders. Dark brown, not quite black, hair is cut ruthlessly short, but hints at waves if given the chance to grow. His prominent nose makes itself known above the full, finely sculpted lips below. His eyes are shockingly vivid—so deep a blue they’re almost the color of African violets against skin like bronze bathed in sunlight. No, a man like him you’d never forget. Something niggles at my memory, tugs at my senses. I’d never forget a man who looked like this, a man with eyes like that…but what about a boy?
“Ezra?” I croak, disbelief and uncertainty mingling in the name I haven’t uttered in years.
It can’t be.
But it is.
Keep Going!
Read the REST of the prologue and enter the QUEEN BOX giveaway on Kennedy’s website:→ https://bit.ly/35U65FL
**QUEEN MOVE will have the special pre-order and release week price of $3.99. After that, the price will increase.**
The boy who always felt like mine is now the man I can’t have…
Dig a little and you’ll find photos of me in the bathtub with Ezra Stern.
Get your mind out of the gutter. We were six months old.
Pry and one of us might confess we saved our first kiss for each other.
The most clumsy, wet, sloppy . . . spectacular thirty seconds of my adolescence.
Get into our business and you’ll see two families, closer than blood, torn apart in an instant.
Twenty years later, my “awkward duckling” best friend from childhood,
the boy no one noticed, is a man no one can ignore.
Finer. Fiercer. Smarter.
Taken.
Tell me it’s wrong.
Tell me the boy who always felt like mine is now the man I can’t have.
When we find each other again, everything stands in our way–secrets, lies, promises.
But we didn’t come this far to give up now.
And I know just the move to make if I want to make him mine.
About Kennedy Ryan
A RITA® Award Winner, Wall Street Journal and USA TodayBestselling Author, Kennedy Ryan writes for women from all walks of life, empowering them and placing them firmly at the center of each story and in charge of their own destinies. Her heroes respect, cherish and lose their minds for the women who capture their hearts.
Kennedy and her writings have been featured in Chicken Soup for the Soul, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, Glamour and many others. She has always leveraged her journalism background to write for charity and non-profit organizations, but has a special passion for raising Autism awareness.The co-founder of LIFT 4 Autism, an annual charitable book auction, she has appeared on Headline News, The Montel Williams Show, NPR and other media outlets as an advocate for ASD families. She is a wife to her lifetime lover and mother to an extraordinary son.
I swear all my family wants from me is kids. Or at least my mother does.
But I’m the black sheep of the family. The one that left for bigger and better things.
No farm for me. I’m a self-made billionaire bad boy now.
Real Estate is the game and making money is my thing.
All is well in my bachelor-like world until I rent a cottage on my property to a beautiful school counselor.
Sweet. Curvy. Smart as hell.
This woman shouldn’t be out of my league, but it feels like she most certainly is.
Good thing she falls for me too. I need a fake girlfriend to take back home, and I’m hoping she’ll be up for the ruse.
Which she is not. Go figure.
Things don’t always work out the way I plan, especially when she’s hiding something from me.
A baby. One I didn’t think I wanted until it was inside of her.
She’s walking away and I’m begging. I don’t need forever to win her back.
Just give me the weekend.
Excerpt:
Moving with grace I wouldn’t have expected from a man who had to be at least six and a half feet tall, he carried his lean muscled frame over to me. At least, I was guessing that was the kind of frame he had.
He definitely looked built, solid and broad, but not in an obnoxious, roid-ridden, monster way. There was no giant bulk of muscle. It was far more subtle than that. Just the way I liked it.
It had been a long time since my blood had made a visit south of the border, but it was certainly flowing there now. It was easy to imagine tangling my fingers into his thick, dark brown hair and stare into his golden-flecked milk-chocolate eyes.
About the Author:
Hey there. I’m Weston.
Have we met? No? Well it’s time to end that tragedy.
I’m a former firefighter/EMS guy who’s picked up the proverbial pen and started writing bad boy romance stories. I co-write with my sister, Ali Parker, but live in Texas with my wife, my two little boys, a dog and a turtle.
Yep. A turtle. You read that right. Don’t be jealous.
You’re going to find Billionaires, Bad Boys, Military Guys and loads of sexiness. Something for everyone, hopefully.
Mallory Murdoch has found herself in one really long dating dry spell. With a new school year starting, the kindergarten teacher has agreed to let her girlfriends take her out for an end of summer hoorah.
Despite her girlfriends’ ambitious plans for her, she never expected to wake up in an unknown bed, next to a bearded, tattooed bartended who is definitely not her type. Not to mention, he is crude, cocky and fifty shades of irritating.
One night. One night was all it took for Ellis Phillips to bid good riddance to the tiny, prissy, know-it-all, even if he did enjoy giving her the best night of her life.
Unfortunately, fate is a fickle bitch and she has plans of her own.
They say there’s a thin line between love and hate, and that you can quickly go from feeling one to the other.
But what they don’t say, is that the two emotions are so full of passion, that often times you can’t feel one without also feeling the other.
Hate to Love is the second standalone novel in the Quick to Fall series.
Although it is not necessary to read the previous novel in the series to enjoy this one, it is recommended as characters are introduced in the previous novel and are seen in future novels as well.
Hate to Love is a sweet and sexy romance, there is no cheating and has a HEA, it is intended for mature audiences, as it contains adult language and scenes
My Review:
Finished in one sitting! Loved it! Loved Ellis! There was an element of surprise that I loved. I actually read the blurb again to make sure I didn’t miss it lol. A one night stand that changes their lives. He doesn’t think he is worthy of her, she can’t stop thinking about him. They’re from two different worlds.
Ellis is a down to earth bartender and Mallory is a kindergarten teacher. They cannot surely be together other than a one night stand. Fate has other ideas.
It was an easy read, a quick read. The author had my attention from the beginning. I like the writing. Obviously had a happy ever after. Looking forward to future books by this author
Hey Candi! What are you reading??? 