Book Synopsis:

A Scottish Broch.

An archaeologist scorned.

A ghost disturbed.

The Detective Duo, Fergus and Flora, are spending their summer on an archaeological dig, searching for the Lost Broch.

But someone—or something—seems set on sabotaging the project. An infestation of spiders—a swarm of mice—the campsite trashed—who knew archaeology could be so dangerous?

And is the Lost Broch really under a curse?

The Haunted Broch is available in ebook and paperback now, you can purchase your copy of both here.

Guest Post:

Inspiration Through Books that Inspired me as a Child
I have always been a reader. My mother, showing admiral patience, taught me to read when I was three. This was probably inspired by a family of voracious readers. An only child I was left to read pretty much when and what I wanted. This suited me down to the ground as I was a bookworm from the get-go.

I read most of the classics by the time I was ten. I was given a set of children’s classics for my Christmas one year. It turned out these were the real McCoy just with children’s covers. Not knowing any better I read them all. Dickens, Austin, Thackery, the lot. I also read books such as the Milly Molly Mandy series, The Folk of the Faraway Tree, the Cherry Ames and Sue Barton Nursing series and any Chalet School books I could get my hands on.

Through all this my favourites were always the mysteries. I’ve read every Famous Five, Secret Seven, Hard Boys and who could forget Nancy Drew. They always seemed to lead such exciting lives and no one seemed to care what they got up to. They ran wild, within certain parameters, and were the only people who could solve a mystery. What a fabulous way to spend your summer holidays.

I wanted to bring elements of this into a contemporary series. Obviously, my characters, Fergus and Flora, are modern teens and their temperaments and characters reflect this. However, I also wanted it to be a bit Famous Five meets Scooby Doo for an older and more modern, age range.

In the Haunted Broch Fergus and Flora are spending their summer on an archaeological dig at Scotland’s Lost Broch. The lost Broch is a real one which was first discovered by a Victorian spinster called Christian Maclagan. When she reported it to the Society of Antiquaries in Scotland, they gave her short shrift because she was a woman. She couldn’t be a fellow as she wasn’t a fellow. Therefore, the broch was never excavated. It has recently been found again. In the book, no sooner do our intrepid investigators get there than ghostly goings on and dastardly deeds occur. It would appear Christian is not happy with her broch being disturbed. Or is that the case? Fergus and Flora set out on a madcap trail to find out who, or what, is disturbing their dig.

I’m excited that I’ve been able to follow in the footsteps of some of my favourite authors from my childhood. Here’s to spending time doing things you love – like reading, reliving our childhood or solving a mystery.

Thanks so much Wendy for this great guest post.  I always enjoy seeing what books inspired writers!

Author Bio

Award Winning Author Wendy H. Jones lives in Scotland, and her police procedural series featuring Detective Inspector Shona McKenzie, is set in the beautiful city of Dundee, Scotland. Wendy has led a varied and adventurous life. Her love for adventure led to her joining the Royal Navy to undertake nurse training. After six years in the Navy she joined the Army where she served as an Officer for a further 17 years. This took her all over the world including Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. Much of her spare time is now spent travelling around the UK, and lands much further afield. As well as nursing Wendy also worked for many years in Academia. This led to publication in academic textbooks and journals. Killer’s Countdown is her first novel and the first book in the Shona McKenzie Mystery series. Killer’s Crew won the Books Go Social Book of the Year 2107. There are now six books in this series with Killer’s Crypt being released in August 2017. The Dagger’s Curse, the first book in The Fergus and Flora Mysteries for Young Adults, was a finalist in the Woman Alive Magazine Readers Choice Award Book of the Year.
The first book in her new series, Cass Claymore Investigates, was released in August 2018 and her first children’s picture book, Bertie the Buffalo was released at the beginning of November 2018

Book Synopsis:

Don’t let the authentic Cuban recipes fool you: This is no cozy mystery. Set in Havana during the Black Spring of 2003, a charming but poison-laced culinary mystery reveals the darker side of the modern Revolution.

Matt, a San Diego journalist, arrives in Havana to marry his girlfriend, Yarmila, a 24-year-old Cuban woman whom he first met through her food blog. But Yarmi isn’t there to meet him at the airport, and when he hitches a ride to her apartment, he finds her lying dead in the bathtub.

With Yarmi’s murder, lovelorn Matt is immediately embroiled in a Cuban adventure he didn’t bargain for. The police and secret service have him down as their main suspect, and in an effort to clear his name, he must embark on his own investigation into what really happened. The more Matt learns about his erstwhile fiancée, though, the more he realizes he had no idea who she was at all–but did anyone?

Death Comes In Throughout The Kitchen us available in hardback now and in paperback on the 25th April 2019. You can purchase or pre-order your copy here.

My Review:

Death Comes In The Kitchen Door is a fascinating, cosy mystery set in Cuba which is guaranteed to get your taste buds tingling!

I haven’t read many novels that are set in Cuba so this, along with my mum just having visited the country, interested me from the start.  I loved the vivid, colourful descriptions of the beauty of cuba and found it fascinating to learn more about it’s recent history.  It was especially interesting to learn more about what daily life was like in Cuba as it’s still quite a secretive country.

My favourite character was Yarmi as I loved her vibrant blog posts about her food.  Her enthusiasm was infectious and her recipes sounded so delicious that I would definitely like to try some Cuban food in the future.  I wasn’t too sure about the main character Matt at the beginning of the book as he came across as quite brash and arrogant but he grew on me as his travels through the country seemed to take the edge off him.

The murder mystery was very intriguing, well plotted and quite fast paced.  I liked how the investigation was mixed in with Yarmi’s food blog as that help to keep my interest and gave me more of an insight into what type of person she was.

This is the author’s debut book and I’d definitely be interested in reading more from her in the future, especially if the books are set in Cuba again.  If you like cosy murder mysteries with a culinary twist then you’ll love this book.

Huge thanks to Rachel from Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me onto the blog tour and for my copy of this book.

About The Author:

Teresa Dovalpage was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1966. She earned her BA in English literature and an MA in Spanish literature at the University of Havana, and her PhD in Latin American literature at the University of New Mexico. She is the author of twelve other works of fiction and three plays, and is the winner of the Rincón de la Victoria Award and a finalist for the Herralde Award. She lives in New Mexico.

Good evening everyone I’m on the blog tour for Finding Jess by Julia Ibbotson I have a great extract to share with you all.

Finding Jess is available now in paperback and ebook, purchase your copy here.

Before I share the extract with you here is a little bit about the book.

Book Synopsis:

Single mum Jess has had her world turned upside down. Now it’s about to be turned inside out.

Jess has got a tough life back on track after love-of-her-life husband Simon walked out on her and their beautiful young daughters Katy and Abi. But she has long-time friend and confidante Polly to turn to…until Polly and Simon start having an affair together.

When Polly decides to apply for a job at Jess’s school, in the English department, Jess feels threatened. So why has Polly set her sights on the department head’s role? And why is the school now offering Jess a sideways ‘promotion’?

Jess can no longer trust anyone – including herself. Then out of the blue she is mysteriously sent a clipping for a temporary post in the Ministry of Education in Ghana, where she did a gap year as a teenager, and where she was happy. She is on the brink of losing everything at home but could this be a lifeline?

Julia Ibbotson’s Finding Jess is a passionate study of love and betrayal – and of one woman’s bid to reclaim her self-belief and trust after suffering great misfortune. It is a feel-good story of a woman’s strength and spirit rising above adversity.

Extract:
Chapter One: January 1990 – Before
“Please forgive me! I don’t know why I did it, I must have been mad. Oh god, Jess, can you ever forgive me?”
Jess looked at the tense huddled figure on the doorstep. She watched the tears coursing down the pale face before her, fair fringe plastered to her brow, eyes red and bulging, hands threaded through the straps of the hobo bag and clasped together at her chest. A study in tension and grief. What could she say? Could she ever forgive? All that had happened flooded back into her mind, events and emotions she had fought off for years and thought that they were past and that she was over it all. She touched the door lintel to try to steady herself.
Where was the attractive stylish blonde, the confident self-assured woman she had known as her best friend, before … before …?
Yet Jess noted the expensive designer jeans she wore and the draped silky top.
“You’d better come in,” she said with a grimace and led her visitor through the tiny narrow hall to the bijou living room. She liked the word ‘bijou’; it sounded better in her mind than small and cramped.
She moved her daughter’s school bag off the battered armchair, gestured to Polly to sit and perched herself on the sofa, back stiff and upright as if she was ready for flight at the first sign of anything untoward. Yet this was someone with whom she had shared so much, university, work, marriage, having children.
And a husband. Simon, who had been her soul mate …

Chapter Two: Ghosts
Jess slept fitfully that night, her mind in turmoil. So Polly had left Simon; he was unfaithful to her too. And now she had decided to return to Matt and the bosom of her family, her boys. The boys she had deserted. Did she even know (she must do!) that she, Jess, and Matt had … If they had imagined that Polly would return … of course they wouldn’t have …
The past was coming back to haunt her again, when she had imagined that she had organised her life in some kind of order, making the best of things, got life on an even keel. Now it had started up again, that insecurity, that confusion, those ghosts of the past. Just like in Ghana all those years ago. And then, long after Ghana, just like that dreadful night when it all went disastrously wrong …
****
On that night, in 1986, so long ago, on their wedding anniversary, lying next to her beloved Simon, listening to his breathing, loving him yet somehow afraid, she had held her hands up over her face trying to blank out the rhythmic rising and falling of sounds in the heavy darkness, that sense of imminent danger. She had no idea what was about to happen to them, to her much-loved family, but somehow it reminded her so vividly of that time in Ghana, and those portentous drumbeats … they were haunting her again, whatever they meant …
… the whispering souls and spirits calling to her across the bush; the surging and dying of the wind on the night air, the insistent beat of the kpanlogo djembe. Once more, her dreams were garish and crowded as they had been there. And she remembered that haunting. What was it that felt so ominous now?
Eventually, exhausted, she had slept, but it was restless and in the morning she had struggled out of bed feeling as though she had the worst hangover ever. Simon was already up and she could hear him downstairs as she went for her shower.
“Katy! Abi! Are you both up?” she had called.
“Yes, I’m getting dressed and Katy’s gone down.”
After her shower she had sunk onto the stool at the dressing table and peered at her drawn features. Her eyes looked puffy and sore. Right. Makeup out, let’s get respectable. Paint a decent face on …
As she swept brown eyeliner across her eyes, she became aware that he was standing in the bedroom doorway, a sense of agitation emanating from him. She could almost smell the sweat. She looked up and saw that he was leaning against the lintel staring at her. It was not a loving stare but a troubled, frowning one and she knew that he needed to tell her something that she wasn’t going to like. She knew him so well. Some money problem? Work? He wanted to resign from his job and let her to be the breadwinner? Oh dear – she hoped not. She didn’t have the years of promotions behind her to stand keeping the family on her income. But he had threatened that so many times.
She raised her eyebrows enquiringly. He shifted from foot to foot in the doorway and Jess began to feel very uneasy. Her hand trembled and she dripped the liquid eyeliner onto the dressing table.
“I have to tell you,” he said with a slow intake of breath, those fatal, unimaginable, alien words that would haunt her forever. “I’m leaving you.”
“What?” She hadn’t expected that. Her heart fell, tumbling to inexorable death.
“You heard me,” Simon snapped, his face suddenly contorted. “I’ve decided that I don’t want to be a husband and father any more.”
“Decided …? What on earth do you mean?”

About The Author:

Acclaimed, best selling and award-winning author, Julia Ibbotson says that she loves curling up with a good book by the fire (or in the Madeiran sunshine!) and of course, writing. Find her at http://www.juliaibbotsonauthor.com

An author and academic, Julia also loves travel, choral singing, cooking for family and friends, country walks, and swimming – and has a fondness for Earl Grey tea with homemade sticky ginger flapjacks for afternoon tea in the garden.

She is fascinated by the early medieval world and by the concept of time, and spends many a happy hour researching these areas for her books. Hence her medieval historical novel A Shape on the Air and her fantasy medieval children’s novel S.C.A.R.S, which both revolve around time-slip. She studied Anglo-Saxon language, literature and history at university and is currently reviewing recent research into the Dark Ages.

Julia has also written the Drumbeats trilogy, the first of which is Drumbeats, the story of love and tragedy set in 1960s West Africa against the backdrop of civil war. It’s available on Amazon, as are all her books. The second in the trilogy, Walking in the Rain, deals with some harsh realities of relationships, and the third, Finding Jess, sees her protagonist finding closure and resolution.

She is also the writer of the best selling memoir and history of the kitchen: The Old Rectory: escape to a country kitchen, which is about the renovation of an English Victorian rectory, and about finding what’s important in life, with recipes to feed the soul at the end of each chapter.

In her life as a university lecturer, Dr Ibbotson has published many academic papers and books, mainly in the field of linguistics, education, gender, management and leadership.

Book Synopsis:

Bertie the Buffalo is based on a true story of when a Water Buffalo escaped from a Buffalo Park in Fife, near Dundee, Scotland.

A rhyming book about the adventures Bertie got up to and how he safely returned home, demonstrating how important each of us is no matter how insignificant we feel.

Bertie felt that no one noticed him. But he didn’t need to think that as we are all special. We are all a part of one big family.  

Bertie The Buffalo is published in paperback on the 16th November, pre-order your copy here.

My Review:

Bertie the Buffalo is a wonderful children’s story about a very cute buffalo that my kid’s absolutely loved.  It has taken pride of place in my daughter’s book shelf and she has asked for it as her bedtime story the last three nights, so I think I will soon know it off by heart!

The book is beautifully illustrated with lovely bright illustrations that help bring the story to life and helped keep my kids interest.  They enjoyed looking at them and finding out all the smaller details that were included, like rabbits etc.  My six year old liked reading the small speech bubbles on each page too which helped boast his reading confidence.

The story is very easy to follow and the lovely rhyming words are always a huge hit with my children.  Rhyming stories help children with their reading as it helps them to pick up sounds within words so, as well as being a great story, it is also educational!

There is a lovely message to this story about how everyone is special no matter how small.  My six year old had a different slant on it that kids were able to have adventures knowing that they always had a safe place to go which I thought was really lovely.  He also said that the ending was his favourite bit as Bertie got home safely to his family.

Huge thanks to Kelly from Love Books Tours for inviting me onto the blog tour and to the Publisher for our copy of this book.

About The Author:

Award Winning Author Wendy H. Jones lives in Scotland, and her police procedural series featuring Detective Inspector Shona McKenzie, is set in the beautiful city of Dundee, Scotland. Wendy has led a varied and adventurous life. Her love for adventure led to her joining the Royal Navy to undertake nurse training. After six years in the Navy she joined the Army where she served as an Officer for a further 17 years. This took her all over the world including Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. Much of her spare time is now spent travelling around the UK, and lands much further afield. As well as nursing Wendy also worked for many years in Academia. This led to publication in academic textbooks and journals. Killer’s Countdown is her first novel and the first book in the Shona McKenzie Mystery series. Killer’s Crew won the Books Go Social Book of the Year 2107. There are now six books in this series with Killer’s Crypt being released in August, 2017. The Dagger’s Curse is the first book in The Fergus and Flora Mysteries for Young Adults. This book is currently shortlisted for the Woman Alive Magazine Readers Choice Award Book of the Year. She is also a highly successful marketer and she shares her methods in the book, Power Packed Book Marketing.
She is currently writing a new series called, Cass Claymore Investigates. The first book. Antiques and Alibis will be released in January

Book Synopsis:

Undercover ops are always dangerous, but DC Constance Fairchild never expected things to go this wrong.

Returning to their base of operations, an anonymous office in a shabby neighbourhood, she finds the bloodied body of her boss, and friend, DI Pete Copperthwaite. He’s been executed – a single shot to the head.

In the aftermath, it seems someone in the Met is determined to make sure that blame for the wrecked operation falls squarely on Con’s shoulders. She is cut loose and cast out, angry and alone with her grief… right until the moment someone also tries to put a bullet through her head.

There’s no place to hide, and no time to cry.

No place to cry is available in ebook and paperback now, purchase your copy here.

My Review:

No Time To Cry is a fantastic start to a new series by James Oswald, an author I’ve heard lots about but have never read until now.

The story starts straight away with one of the most hard hitting openings I’ve read.  I felt immediately drawn into the story and the action, intrigued as to what happenned.   What follows is a very action packed, dark novel which is quite gruesome in places.  Oswald definitely knows how to set a scene and the graphic descriptions made the story seem very real. I definitely found myself holding my breath at times and not just because of the fascinating story line but sometimes to try and process what I was reading.

I loved the main character Constant Fairchild who seemed a very capable, strong police officer.  I found I really admired the strength and determination she showed trying to find out what happened against all odds.  I was on her side the whole way through the book hoping she would be successful and prove her superiors wrong.

This is the first book by this author I have read, which I seriously can’t believe as I thought the writing and story was superb! I’ve already ordered some more books from him and I’m so excited to read those too.

Huge thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me onto the blog tour and to Jenni from Wildfire for my copy of this book.  If you like fast paced, gritty crime novels then you’ll love this book!

About The Author

Book Synopsis:

A gripping contemporary Gothic thriller from the bestselling author of the Dr Ruth Galloway mysteries: Susan Hill meets Gone Girl and Disclaimer.

Clare Cassidy is no stranger to tales of murder. As a literature teacher specialising in the Gothic writer R.M. Holland, she teaches a short course on them every year. Then Clare’s life and work collide tragically when one of her colleagues is found dead, a line from an R.M. Holland story by her body. The investigating police detective is convinced the writer’s works somehow hold the key to the case.

Not knowing who to trust, and afraid that the killer is someone she knows, Clare confides her darkest suspicions and fears about the case to her journal. Then one day she notices some other writing in the diary. Writing that isn’t hers…

The Stranger Diaries is available in ebook and hardback now, you can purchase your copy here.

My Review:

I’m a huge fan of any mystery or thriller that evolves around a book so The Stranger Diaries intrigued me from the start.  I love the idea of a book holding clues to a mystery that’s happening in the present so this book was a big hit with me!

I wasn’t sure about the main character Claire.  On one hand she seemed very sassy and I found some of her observations very amusing.  However she seemed like an unreliable narrator as she kept lying to the police which made me question her motives.

This book is fairly fast paced as there is always something happening.  That along with a creepy school, an old mystery and a murderer who starts to emulate the plot of a book and things start getting very thrilling very quickly.  I soon found myself tearing through the pages and trying to hide from the kids to read a little more.

I’ve read quite a few books by Elly and I really enjoy her original thrillers!  I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.

Huge thanks to Quercus publishers for my copy of this book via Netgalley and to Olivia from Quercus for inviting me into the blog tour.  If you like dark, thrilling mysteries then you’ll love this book!

About The Author:

Book Synopsis:

The Long Shadow (1975), Celia Fremlin’s ninth novel, tells a Christmas story with a difference. Imogen Barnicott’s husband – a celebrated, cruel and egocentric professor of Classics – has recently died in a car accident. Now, to the pain of widowhood is added the attentions of an anonymous phone-caller who accuses Imogen of murder and alleges that he can prove it. But can Imogen be certain her husband is truly dead and gone?

The Long Shadow has been republished by Faber & Faber and is available now in ebook and hardback.  The ebook is currently only 99p buy you can purchase a copy of both here.

My Review:

The Long Shadow is a chilling novel of psychological suspense that made my hair stand on end at times.  This is definitely a Christmas book with a difference and not one to pick up if you want a jolly festive book!

The atmosphere is tense from the start with a strange phone call in the middle of the night and house guest who keep inviting themselves to stay for seemingly innocent reasons but who all have a hidden agenda.  The situation that unfolds is even more chilling as it seems very real.  I could well imagine a scenario like the one described with lots of relatives descending on the recently widowed to try and ‘help’.

The author adds some dark humour and some rather asute character observations that are rather cruel at times.  These are something she used to laugh about with her husband and things that she misses discussing with him now he’s died.  The one I most enjoyed was Imogen’s observation that there seems to be a competition among some of the relatives over who is most upset.  This did make me chuckle a few times.

The weird events that happen are very cleverly, casually described so that sometimes I didn’t think much of them and the weirdness of the event didn’t hit me until a few pages later.  This made them have a greater impact on me and made the book more gripping as I wasn’t sure when the next freaky thing would happen.

My only small gripe about this book is that it took me a while to get used to the style but once I got into the book more it wasn’t a problem.

Huge thanks to Joanna from Faber & Faber for inviting me onto the blog tour and for my copy of this book.  If you like classic, chilling psychological suspense novels then you’ll love this book.

About The Author:

Celia Fremlin (1914-2009) was born in Kent.  Her first published novel of suspense was The Hours Before Dawn (1958), which went on to win the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1960.  Over the next thirty five years Fremlin published a further eighteen titles.

Book Synopsis:

Perfect for the fans of Dilly Court and Rosie Goodwin.

Charlotte Brookes flees her lecherous guardian, McBride, taking her younger sister with her. After a year on the road, they stumble into a Yorkshire village where the Wheelers, owners of the village shop, take them in. This new life is strange for Charlotte, but preferable to living with McBride or surviving on the roads.
Harry Belmont is an important man in the village, but he’s missing something in his life. His budding friendship with Charlotte gives him hope she will feel more for him one day, and he will marry the woman he yearns for.
When McBride discovers where Charlotte lives, his threats begin. Harry fights to keep Charlotte safe, but World War I erupts and Harry enlists.
Left to face a world of new responsibilities, and Harry’s difficult sister, Charlotte must run the gauntlet of family disputes, McBride’s constant harassment, and the possibility of the man she loves being killed.

Can Charlotte find the happiness that always seems under threat, and will Harry return home to her?

The Promise Of Tomorrow is available in ebook and paperback now, you can purchase your copy of both here.

My Review:

The Promise Of Tomorrow was absorbing, emotional and heart warming book that I loved! The story just draws you in from the start with an intriguing story and wonderful historical details that helps sets the scene of the story so I could really envision the setting.  Its the little descriptions that the author manages to include in the story about the way of life for the characters, the expectations of them and the class divides between them that makes this a truly fascinating read.

There are some fabulous characters in this book which are really well developed and who I loved reading about.  My favourite character was Charlotte though.  I really liked the strength she shows when dealing in the situations she finds herself in.  She never gives up but instead tries to find a solution to the problem which I really admired.  I enjoyed reading about her story and hoped she would get the happy ending I felt she deserved.

The love affair which develops between Harry and Charlotte was very heart warming to read about and seemed very real.  I found I enjoyed watching it develop and found myself living each moment alongside them.  When Harry goes to war I found myself tearing up and willing Harry not to go as I didn’t want anything to spoil their happiness.

This book was nearly impossible to put down as there is always something happening! The reader soon falls in love with the characters and I felt invested in their story which meant I wanted to keep reading to find out what happens to them.

This is the first book by this author I have read and I can’t wait to read more from her in the future.

Huge thanks to Rachel from Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me onto the blog tour and for my copy of this book.  If you like enthralling, heart of historical fiction with some fantastic characters then you’ll love this book.

About The Author:

Poignant, powerful and searingly emotional, AnneMarie Brear stands shoulder to shoulder with the finest works by some of the genre’s greatest writers such as Catherine Cookson, Audrey Howard and Rosamunde Pilcher.” Amazon reviewer.
Australian born AnneMarie Brear writes historical novels and modern romances and sometimes the odd short story, too. Her passions, apart from writing, are travelling, reading, researching historical eras and looking for inspiration for her next book.
AnneMarie Brear on the web:
http://www.annemariebrear.com
http://annemariebrear.blogspot.co.uk
https://www.facebook.com/annemariebrear
Twitter @annemariebrear.

Book Synopsis:

When writer, comedian and Red Dwarf actor Robert Llewellyn’s son scrawled a picture of him at Christmas and titled it ‘Some Old Bloke’, Robert was cast deep into thought about life and what it means to be a bloke – and an old one at that. In this lighthearted, revealing and occasionally philosophical autobiography, we take a meandering route through Robert’s life and career: from the sensitive young boy at odds with his ex-military father, through his stint as a hippy and his years of arrested development in the world of fringe comedy, all the way up to the full-body medicals and hard-earned insights of middle age. Whether he is waxing lyrical about fresh laundry, making an impassioned case for the importance of alternative energy or recounting a detailed history of the dogs in his life, Robert presents a refreshingly open and un-cynical look at the world at large and, of course, the joys of being a bloke.

Some Old Bloke is available in ebook and hardback now, you can purchase your copy here.

My Review:

I do like breaking away from my normal genre’s to try something new and I often find autobiographys to be a good way to do this as you always learn something new.  Some Old Bloke is no exception as Robert covers a variety of different topics that were very interesting, though some a little more than others.  I’ve got a real interest in going to visit Australia so I found the chapter relating to his time there to be very fascinating.  It’s really made me want to visit the country in the future.

Throughout the book Robert’s writing style makes the book easy to read and just draws the reader into the story.  He writes with great warmth and humour which further increased my enjoyment of the book.  There were some parts which had me laughing out loud and that I had to share with my husband as I thought they were very amusing.  He agreed and read the book straight after me! Some of the humour is quite rude, with a few graphic words used at times so if you’re easily offended you might want to avoid.

Overall I enjoyed this book and reading about Roberts experiences and take on life.  Red Dwarf isn’t mentioned much but I still thought it was an interesting book as it provided an interesting insight into Robert’s life.

Huge thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me onto the blog tour and to Unbound publishers for my copy of this book.

About The Author:

Robert Llewellyn is an actor, novelist, screenwriter, comedian and TV presenter, best known for Red Dwarf and Scrapheap Challenge. He lives in Gloucestershire.

Book Synopsis:

Grace has returned to London after twenty years abroad to manage her dying mother’s affairs. When she receives a blank Mother’s Day card in the post, she is confused and unsettled. Who could have sent it to her and why? She isn’t a mother.

Another Mother’s Day card arrives. Then come the silent phone calls. Haunted by disturbing flashbacks, Grace starts to unravel. Someone is out to get her. Someone who knows what she has done. Someone who will make her face the past she has run from for so long.

Emerson creates an intricate web in this intense psychological thriller whose high energy and fast-pace will have you racing towards the climactic conclusion. Perfect for fans of The Girl Before.

My Review:

She Chose Me is a creepy, emotional read about motherhood and regrets.   It’s also quite a thought provoking book which I didn’t expect as it touches on a range of important themes which I have continued to think about long after reading.

The book intrigued me from the start as I started to realise more about the characters and what was going on.  The unnamed girl who was following Grace around, believing her to be her mother was quite chilling to read about.  This is made more so when the stalking increases and she starts to talk about them doing shared activities together when actually they’d just be sitting in the same place together with Grace having no knowledge she is being followed.

The story is told in alternate chapters from the point of view of Grace and another unnamed narrator who is trying to find her mum.  Neither of the two main characters are particularly likeable but there was something about them that did make me feel sorry for them. The name of the narrator isn’t mentioned at the beginning of the chapter which is a little confusing at the start as it takes you a while to figure out whose story you’re following.  This does become easier as the story goes on and you become more used to the different styles used for each character.

There are lots of twists and turns through the book which I didn’t see coming and some reveals that had me gasping and flicking back through the book to see if I had missed something.  The ending was also completely different from what I expect which was great as I love it when I’ve not veeb able to guess correctly.

This is the author’s debut novel and I’m very excited to read more from her in the future.  If you like creepy, tense thrillers that make you think and keep you guessing you’ll love this book.

Huge thanks to Lucy from Legend Press for my copy of this book and for inviting me onto the blog tour.

About The Author:

Before writing fiction, Tracey worked in theatre and community arts. As well as acting, she ran drama workshops in hospitals, focusing on adults with mental health issues. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from The University of Edinburgh and works as a literary consultant and writing tutor. She is also the Creative Director of The Bridge Awards, a philanthropic organisation that provides micro-funding for the arts. She Chose Me is Tracey’s first novel.