First a quick explanation!
Due to some severe health issues over the last few years, and a lingering chronic condition, my planned review schedule went right out of the window and I have been scrabbling ever since to get it back on track.
In an attempt to try to regain some lost ground, I have been scrunching some of my (overdue) NetGalley reviews together into one or two posts each week: shorter reviews, but still covering all of the points I intended to.
That’s the plan anyway, so let’s spring into my latest selection!
Title: The Potting Shed Murder
Author: Paula Sutton
Publisher: Dialogue Books | Renegade Books
Blurb: Welcome to the sleepy village of Pudding Corner, a quintessentially English haven of golden cornfields, winding cobbled lanes … and murder.
Daphne Brewster has left London behind and is settling into her family’s new life in rural Norfolk, planting broad beans in raised beds and vintage hunting for their farmhouse.
But when the local headmaster is found dead in his potting shed, amongst his allotment cabbages, the village is ablaze: Who would kill beloved Mr Papplewick, pillar of the community? Daphne soon comes to realise perhaps the countryside isn’t so idyllic after all…
When the headmaster’s widow points her finger at Minnerva, Daphne’s new friend, Daphne vows to clear her name. Sneaking into the crime scene and chasing down rumours gets her into hot water with the local inspector – until she comes across a faded photograph that unearths a secret buried for forty years…
They say nothing bad ever happens in close-knit Pudding Corner, but Daphne is close to the truth – dangerously close…
There’s death amongst the dahlias… A truly unputdownable whodunnit by Paula Sutton – otherwise known as Instagram’s happiest influencer: Hill House Vintage, the queen of cottagecore – an unforgettable new voice in cosy crime. Perfect for fans of Richard Osman, Janice Hallett and Richard Coles.
Review: This was quite a slow-starter for me – I struggled to get the hang of the style of writing until I got further into the plot (after the murder). There is lots of description and detailed, meandering sidebars that lead to nothing and nowhere relevant.
Once I did get the hang of main character Daphne and the writing style, I did quite enjoy the mystery, although I did also guess both Minerva’s secret and the identity of the murderer very early on.
The story felt to me like more of a parody of a classic or cosy crime novel rather than a straightforward one. It was an enjoyable enough read but the characters were more caricatures and the pacing a little uneven – three quarters of slow burn followed by a burst of frenetic action in the last leg.
This may need a little perseverance to start with, but once you get going it’s a fun cosy mystery with a style all of its own.
Purchase Link: The Potting Shed Murder on Amazon
Title: The Madness of Miss Grey
Author: Julia Bennet
Publisher: Independently published
Blurb: Everyone thinks Helen Grey is mad but, despite ten years imprisoned in a crumbling Yorkshire asylum, she’s managed to cling to sanity. When a new doctor arrives, she sees an opportunity. William Carter may seem like an honorable man but she’s sure he’ll prove easy to seduce…and trick into helping her escape.
Will would never bed a patient, no matter how tempting she might be. But once he realises Helen’s been imprisoned for no good reason, he’s determined to save her. They need to work together but freeing her won’t be easy, not when her mysterious benefactor is determined to keep her locked up and hidden from society forever.
Review: Well, this was surprisingly dark for a Victorian romance, even a Gothic one!
Set in a private insane asylum, we aren’t spared any of the possible horrors – from careless neglect to deliberate torture, to just the sheer helplessness of being constantly under the control of others and disbelieved so consistently that you start to doubt yourself. I felt agonies of frustration for Helen Gray and was totally sympathetic towards anything she had to do or say to effect her escape from that place.
Luckily, the chemistry between the two main characters was very believable and would have had me rooting for them even if she hadn’t been in such dire straits!
I did think the frater-ex-machina towards the end of the book was a bit of a weak spot in a plot that, until that point had had Helen and Will solving their own problems, but I liked the new character so much that I was willing to wink at it and give them a pass.
This makes for some very grim reading at some points and readers not looking for their romance in dark places might not appreciate this story setting much, but I really enjoyed the story, the characters and the romance and would definitely be tempted to read on to the next in this series and find out whether the aforementioned sibling lives up to his promise in the role of a main character!
Purchase Link: The Madness of Miss Grey on Amazon
Title: Close to Death
Author: Anthony Horowitz
Publisher: Random House UK, Cornerstone | Century
Blurb: How do you solve a murder… when everyone has the same motive? From global bestselling Anthony Horowitz, a brilliantly entertaining new mystery in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series.
Richmond Upon Thames is one of the most desirable areas to live in London. And Riverview Close – a quiet, gated community – seems to offer its inhabitants the perfect life.
At least it does until Giles Kenworthy moves in with his wife and noisy children, his four gas-guzzling cars, his loud parties and his plans for a new swimming pool in his garden.
His neighbours all have a reason to hate him and are soon up in arms.
When Kenworthy is shot dead with a crossbow bolt through his neck, all of them come under suspicion and his murder opens the door to lies, deception and further death.
The police are baffled. Reluctantly, they call in former Detective Daniel Hawthorne. But even he is faced with a seemingly impossible puzzle.
How do you solve a murder when everyone has the same motive?
Review: I love this series, but this one fell a little flat for me compared to the others so far. One of my favourite aspects of the books is the interplay between PI Hawthorne and author Horowitz as they investigate a mystery, and we get less of that here as it is an old case that Hawthorne investigated with someone else and that Horowitz is now writing up years later.
Another aspect of this slightly changed format is that I found it odd that Horowitz couldn’t simply look up information about the case and suspects himself rather than waiting for Hawthorne to grudgingly dole the pieces out in dribs and drabs – Hawthorne can always be a bit annoying but this was particularly irritating, knowing that he knew everything but wouldn’t tell us!
As Horowitz wasn’t witnessing events himself, most of the book is written in the third person, as a murder mystery in a closed community with a small, close-knit group of residential suspects. And I found the suspects and their various stories and motives really intriguing and enjoyed following the story, even though I had no clue who actually dunnit on this occasion.
Meanwhile poor Horowitz was limited to the framing sidebars of this case and spent most of our time with him investigating Hawthorne himself – an ongoing side-plot that gives me anxiety-induced acid indigestion every time it comes up, as I wait for the other ex-police boot to drop and finally crush their odd frenemy-ship for good.
I’m definitely hooked on this series and the main characters generally – I just found the added distance from the main action a little less engaging, which is a pity because the plot was very good and I could easily picture Horowitz (the author character, not the author author!) bumbling around the Close suspecting and trusting all the wrong people. But as this is Book 5 of the series, I can understand the author wanting to switch things up a bit, instead of Horowitz getting stabbed again! Mystery fans should start from the first book and just keep reading for as long as Horowitz (the real-life one) is willing to write these.
Purchase Link: Close to Death on Amazon
Title: Water Baby
Author: Chioma Okereke
Publisher: Quercus Books | Quercus
Blurb: A beautiful coming of age story based on the real settlement of Makoko in Nigeria. Perfect for readers of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
She’s the Pearl of Makoko and the world is her oyster.
In Makoko, the floating slum off mainland Lagos, Nigeria, nineteen-year-old Baby yearns for an existence where she can escape the future her father has planned for her.
With opportunities scarce, Baby jumps at the chance to join a newly launched drone-mapping project, aimed at broadening the visibility of her community.
Then a video of her at work goes viral and Baby finds herself with options she could never have imagined – including the possibility of leaving her birthplace to represent Makoko on the world stage.
But will life beyond the lagoon be everything she’s dreamed of? Or has everything she wants been in front of her all along?
Review: Water Baby immerses us in the floating community slums of Mokoko, off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria. Through the resourceful but frustrated eyes of main character Baby, as she begins to struggle with the traditional expectations placed on her and yearn towards a future of her own making, we see the troubles facing the wider community: no sanitation, no waste services or clean water and a government that is ready to turn on them and destroy their homes and lives in the name of urban improvement.
The irony of the lagoon water being so terribly polluted and yet the daily lives of Mokoko residents revolving entirely on and around it is highlighted with every fishing boat, floating taxi, trade boat and fish-smoking huddle and the pervasive poverty that makes Baby strive for more, easily turns others like her cousin to drink drugs or crime to achieve temporary release from the grind.
Baby showcases the resourcefulness, resilience and creativity of the rising young generations (as do her friends), but her inner conflict shows that, while change is needed for the people and environment, it is also feared for the potential loss of community and culture through traditions formed to support within the community where they lack support from without. Baby is torn between her desire for more than marriage and Makoko life and her love for her home, where her memories of mother and her strong bond with her brother form deep roots.
The later part of the novel shows a stark contrast to Makoko and its troubles, as Baby gets to experience a taste of Switzerland and cleaner waters, and attempts to draw international eyes to the plight and pride of her local community, and explores some of the dangers of local people being treated as mere ‘figureheads’ by well-meaning outsiders wanting to ‘save’ them without listening to their needs and ideas.
There is loads to think about here. I was inspired, after reading, to take to the internet and find out more about Makoko, and recognised so much of the information from what I had just read, in what is actually a quite simple tale of a young woman coming of age and working out her own path between tradition and change. Watching The Journey’s video on YouTube: ‘Life in a Floating Slum in Africa – Makoko’, merely confirmed the mental picture that this author had already painted so vividly with her words and brought to life in her characters.
Purchase Link: Water Baby on Amazon
Title: North is the Night
Author: Emily Rath
Publisher: Quercus Books | Arcadia
Blurb: With the dark, mythical magic of the Winternight trilogy, and the slow-burn romance of Spinning Silver, NORTH IS THE NIGHT is a feminist fantasy adventure that shows the power of female friendship and how love – both romantic and familial – can conquer even death itself.
In the harsh interior of the Finnish wilderness, best friends Aina and Siiri are inseparable despite their opposite natures: Aina is gentle and cautious while Siiri is headstrong and brave. But their friendship is put to the test when Aina is kidnapped by a death goddess and taken to the mythical underworld Tuonela.
Determined to save her friend, Siiri embarks on a dangerous journey north to seek out Väinämöinen, the only mystical shaman to travel to Tuonela and return alive. As the dark winter looms, Siiri uses all the strength she possesses to survive her journey, which is plagued by trappers, a band of roving wolves, and a cunning snow witch with her own quest for power. But finding Väinämöinen is only the beginning. Siiri must convince him to share his magic so she can sneak into Tuonela and save Aina.
In Tuonela, Aina is forced to play the sadistic games of Tuonetar, the cruel queen of the underworld, alongside other captured maidens. But Aina’s kindness allows her to make allies in the dark, harsh environment. She soon discovers that Tuoni, the god of death and king of Tuonela, is also a victim of Tuonetar’s spells that can only be broken when he remarries. To save him and the other girls, Aina offers herself as his bride.
As she spends more time in the underworld, Aina falls in love with Tuoni and must make a decision that will alter the course of her fate forever . . . not knowing her fearless friend is on the way and plotting a daring escape.
Review: In this fantasy adventure, based on Finnish folk tales, Aina and Siiri – childhood best friends – face the old Finnish gods that their fellow countrymen and women had been losing faith in since the Swedes invaded their country, bringing their Christian God with them.
The story is told from the two perspectives of the friends, as Aina is kidnapped by a Death Goddess and must try to survive the land of the dead, Tuonela, and a mad queen who plans to sacrifice her and other young girls for fun. Meanwhile Siiri embarks on a quest to save her friend by finding a legendary shaman and bringing back the old gods to the land they seem to have forsaken.
It is a story of fierce femininity of ALL kinds – soft, strong, sharp, powerful, rough, gentle, kind, cruel – and of all kinds of love too. Love between a man and woman, between women, between parent and child, between mentor and disciple, between humanity and their gods. The storytelling is compelling, incorporating folklore and mythology into a powerful new legendary tale.
For a while, towards the start of the story, I thought this was a teen/YA coming-of-age story, then I thought it was more of a dark romantasy of the adult kind. Actually, it is both of those, and a fairytale, and an LGBTQIA love story, and probably more besides. I would recommend North is the Night for those who like stories of death, the underworld, goddesses and heroines, and women-centred narratives of all kinds.
Purchase Link: North is the Night on Amazon
Some gorgeous and striking covers here, containing murder, ‘madness’, mystery, romance, fantasy and reality in varying doses between their pages.
I hope one or more take your fancy and look forward to bringing you more soon (I’ve got some indie authors coming up for you in my next batch!)
Keep shining and happy reading! 🙂
