Sunday Summary: 2nd February 2020
Sunday Summary: 2nd February 2020
Hi All!
Weekly Highlights is a feature that I used to do a few years ago that I have deicded to revive and revamp! So on Sunday’s (hopefully every one but it may be every other!) I plan to do a Sunday Summary, detailing what books I have read or am reading, what posts I posted, what books I received or bought and what posts/books are upcoming next week.
It is inspired by The Story Sirens In My Mailbox, Books, Biscuit and Tea’s Showcase Sunday, Kimba Caffeinated’s Sunday Post, and the British Letterbox Love, and Kris’ Wednesday Weekly.
Posts From The Week
I’ve had a much better week on the blog this week. I’ve basically had a post go live every day this week!
On Monday, I posted a review of The Liar’s Daughter for the blog tour. You can find that over here.
On Tuesday, I shared my thoughts on Missing, Presumed – a good few months after finishing the book! You can read them here.
On Thursday, I told you all what books I am planning and hoping to read during February. Check out the list here.
On Friday, I was back with my new Friday Feature: Book Lover Spotlight! You can go meet Sabrina in this post.
On Saturday, I wrapped up the month and told you what books I had managed to read. Have a look at all of those over here.
And lastly, earlier today, I posted as part of the The Cellist’s Notebook blog tour. You can find that post here.
Books I Read
Physical Books
Name: The Liar’s Daughter
Author: Claire Allan
Publisher: Avon
Published: 23rd January 2020
Format: eBook
Source: Netgalley
Add It: Amazon UK. Goodreads.
Summary: No one deserves to be taken before their time. Do they?
Joe McKee – pillar of the Derry community – is dead. As arrangements are made for the traditional Irish wake, friends and family are left reeling at how cancer could have taken this much-loved man so soon.
But grief is the last thing that Joe’s daughter Ciara and step-daughter Heidi feel. For they knew the real Joe – the man who was supposed to protect them and did anything but.
As the mourners gather, the police do too, with doubt being cast over whether Joe’s death was due to natural causes. Because the lies that Joe told won’t be taken to the grave after all – and the truth gives his daughters the best possible motive for killing him…
A gripping suspense novel about deadly secrets and lies. The perfect read for fans of Clare Mackintosh.
Title: All The Rage
Author: Cara Hunter
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 23rd February 2020
Format: Paperback
Source: Review Copy
Add It: Amazon UK. Goodreads.
Summary: A teenage girl is found wandering the outskirts of Oxford, dazed and distressed. The story she tells is terrifying. Grabbed off the street, a plastic bag pulled over her face, then driven to an isolated location where she was subjected to what sounds like an assault. Yet she refuses to press charges.
DI Fawley investigates, but there’s little he can do without the girl’s co-operation. Is she hiding something, and if so, what? And why does Fawley keep getting the feeling he’s seen a case like this before?
And then another girl disappears, and Adam no longer has a choice: he has to face up to his past. Because unless he does, this victim may not be coming back . . .
Books I'm Reading
eBooks
Innocence is no protection against evil…
One early October afternoon, ten-year-old Jacob Rossi begins the short walk home from school. But he never makes it.
Days later, DCI Anna Tate is called to the scene of a burning building, where an awful discovery has been made. A body has been found, and the label in his school blazer reads: J. Rossi.
As Anna starts digging, she soon learns that a lot of people had grudges against the boy’s father. But would any of them go so far as to take his son?
And is the boy’s abductor closer than she thinks?
In book one, Zaiba is attending a family Mehndi party at The Grand Royal Star Hotel when she hears that the prized Italian Greyhound of a famous actress has gone missing from the star’s suite. With the help of her best friend and her little brother, the amateur sleuth manages to foil the petnapping plot and save the day.
AGENT ZAIBA INVESTIGATES is a fun, contemporary new series for fans of The Sinclair’s Mysteries and the Murder Most Unladylike books.
Eleven-year-old Zaiba is obsessed with crime. Her Aunt Fouzia runs a detective agency back in Karachi and has turned Zaiba on to the brilliant Eden Lockett Mysteries. She has every book in the series – and the quilt cover, and the phone case. All she needs now is a crime to solve…
In book one, Zaiba is attending a family Mehndi party at The Grand Royal Star Hotel when she hears that the prized Italian Greyhound of a famous actress has gone missing from the star’s suite. With the help of her best friend and her little brother, the amateur sleuth manages to foil the petnapping plot and save the day.
Letterbox Love
Here are the books I’ve received this week!
Physical Books
What if you knew how and when you will die?
Csorwe does — she will climb the mountain, enter the Shrine of the Unspoken, and gain the most honored title: sacrifice.
But on the day of her foretold death, a powerful mage offers her a new fate. Leave with him, and live. Turn away from her destiny and her god to become a thief, a spy, an assassin—the wizard’s loyal sword. Topple an empire, and help him reclaim his seat of power.
But Csorwe will soon learn – gods remember, and if you live long enough, all debts come due.
I actually squealed when this book arrived and I cannot wait to read it. It has been described as an epic queer fantasy and I am 100% here for that. Thank you Tor for sending me this review copy!
Life is a puzzle just waiting to be solved. That’s how Reya, a young woman with a penchant for solving complex puzzles sees it. Reya’s life is governed by routine; a roadmap of rules from what foods she eats to what she wears. Most of her time is spent working on her online challenge forum known as ‘The Puzzler’.Reya, herself an Agoraphobic with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, views her own symptoms as just another Puzzle to be solved. After six years without sight of the outside world, Reya, with the help of her self-made therapeutic entity named “Ivan”, has created a carefully laid out plan to get her back into society.When their plan goes awry, Reya retreats to the safety of her home, and that night when she sleeps she finds herself in a shared dreamspace known as “The White Room”This is a boundless and wonderful place accessible only to a small selection of individuals from around the word. A place in which one can make anything they desire tangible. Here, Reya can finally interact with others face to face without needing to leave her home. As Reya begins to use her talents to help these people and forge new relationships, she starts to feel more and more connected to the dreamspace. But what is this place? Do these people really exist? Or is The White Room merely an addictive fabrication to retreat from the gravity of her illnesses?
This is a book that I’m really intrigued about. As someone who struggles with her mental health issues, I am also fascinated to read how they’re portrayed in books. Thank you to Luke Melia and Push Publishing for this book.
They are driving home from the search party when they see her.
The trees are coarse and tall in the winter light, standing like men. Lauren and her father Niall live alone in the Highlands, in a small village surrounded by pine forest. When a woman stumbles out onto the road one Halloween night, Niall drives her back to their house in his pickup. In the morning, she’s gone.
In a community where daughters rebel, men quietly rage, and drinking is a means of forgetting, mysteries like these are not out of the ordinary. The trapper found hanging with the dead animals for two weeks. Locked doors and stone circles. The disappearance of Lauren’s mother a decade ago.
Lauren looks for answers in her tarot cards, hoping she might one day be able to read her father’s turbulent mind. Neighbours know more than they let on, but when local teenager Ann-Marie goes missing it’s no longer clear who she can trust.
In spare, haunting prose, Francine Toon creates an unshakeable atmosphere of desolation and dread. In a place that feels like the end of the world, she unites the gloom of the modern gothic with the pulse of a thriller. It is the perfect novel for our haunted times.
In case you missed it, we worked on the Bookstagram tour for this book and the minute I heard about the book, I knew I wanted to read it. The book came this week and it is absolutely stunning. I cannot wait to dive in! Thank you Simon and Schuster for this review copy.
Meet Ginny, 34, and Cassie, 55. Neighbours, and (very) unlikely friends.
Some women have it all. Others are thirty-four, renting a tiny flat alone because they recently found their long-term boyfriend in bed with their boss. Unfortunately, the latter applies to Ginny Taylor. Single and jobless, Ginny is certain her life can’t get any worse. But then she encounters her downstairs neighbour for the very first time…
Cassie Frost is a woman who had it all – she was a once-loved actress, but a recent stint on reality TV has rocketed her to online infamy. She’s suddenly become a national hate figure – and she desperately needs a new publicist. And Ginny is a publicist who desperately needs a job… but can she be persuaded to work for the uber-difficult, excessively prickly woman that lives below her floorboards?
Because sometimes – just sometimes – bad neighbours become good friends…
I’m on the blog tour for this book next week and so I was expecting to receive this book but I’m still really looking forward to reading it. It sounds like the perfect contemporary read for me. Thank you Avon books for this read!
An extraordinary, page-turning Gothic mystery set in the wilds of the Norfolk Fens from the BSFA-shortlisted author.
London, 1901. After the death of Queen Victoria the city heaves with the uncanny and the eerie. Séances are held and the dead are called upon from darker realms.
Samuel Moncrieff, recovering from a recent tragedy of his own, meets Helena Walton-Cisneros, one of London’s most reputed mediums. But Helena is not what she seems and she’s enlisted by the elusive Lady Matthews to solve a twenty-year-old mystery: the disappearance of her three stepdaughters who vanished without a trace on the Norfolk Fens.
But the Fens are a liminal land, where folk tales and dark magic still linger. With locals that speak of devilmen and catatonic children found on the Broads, Helena finds the answer to the mystery leads back to where it started: Samuel Moncrieff.
Doesn’t this book sound incredible? Also look at that beautiful cover! I am very much looking forward to giving this a read soon. Thank you Titan for this review copy.
eBooks
Tala Warnock has little use for magic – as a descendant of Maria Makiling, the legendary Filipina heroine, she negates spells, often by accident. But her family’s old ties to the country of Avalon (frozen, bespelled, and unreachable for almost 12 years) soon finds them guarding its last prince from those who would use his kingdom’s magic for insidious ends.
And with the rise of dangerous spelltech in the Royal States of America; the appearance of the firebird, Avalon’s deadliest weapon, at her doorstep; and the re-emergence of the Snow Queen, powerful but long thought dead, who wants nothing more than to take the firebird’s magic for her own – Tala’s life is about to get even more complicated….
This book is one I’ve been wanting to read for a while so when I saw it was on Read Now on Netgalley, I jumped at the chance. Thank you to Sourcefire Books for this review copy!
As a successful social media journalist with half a million followers, seventeen-year-old Cal is used to sharing his life online. But when his pilot father is selected for a highly publicized NASA mission to Mars, Cal and his family relocate from Brooklyn to Houston and are thrust into a media circus.
Amidst the chaos, Cal meets sensitive and mysterious Leon, another “Astrokid,” and finds himself falling head over heels—fast. As the frenzy around the mission grows, so does their connection. But when secrets about the program are uncovered, Cal must find a way to reveal the truth without hurting the people who have become most important to him.
Expertly capturing the thrill of first love and the self-doubt all teens feel, debut author Phil Stamper is a new talent to watch.
This is another book that has been on my radar for a while. I do love a good LGBT read so many thank yous to Bloomsbury for this book!
“I need your help getting Chynalls in order so I can stay in my own house. Come down right away!”
After the death of her mother, Rebecca is sorting through her empty flat. Starting with the letters piling up on the doormat, she finds an envelope post-marked from Cornwall. In it is a letter that will change her life forever. A desperate plea from her mother’s elderly cousin, Olivia, to help save her beloved home.
Rebecca arrives at Chynalls to find the house crumbling into the ground and Olivia stuck in hospital with no hope of being discharged until her home is made habitable.
Though slightly daunted, Rebecca sets to work. But as she peels back the layers of paint, plaster and grime, she uncovers secrets buried for more than seventy years. Secrets from a time when Olivia was young, the Second World War was raging, and danger and romance lurked round every corner…
I’m on the blog tour for this book later on in the year because it sounds like the kind of read I would absolutely love. Thank you Head of Zeus for this review copy.
And there you have it, my Sunday Summary!
What Did You Get This Week? What Cool Blog Posts Did You Write? What Are You Reading This Week?
