Book Synopsis:

Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life.

Grady calls his wife as she’s driving home to share some exciting news. He hears Abby slam on the brakes, get out of the car, then nothing. When he eventually finds her car by a cliff edge, the headlights are on, the driver door is open, her phone is still there . . . but his wife has disappeared.

A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief and desperate to know what happened to Abby. He can’t sleep, and he can’t write, so he travels to a tiny Scottish island to try to get his life back on track. Then he sees the impossible: a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.

Wives think their husbands will change, but they don’t.
Husbands think their wives won’t change, but they do.

Beautiful Ugly is out on the 30th January 2025 & Rossiter Books in Malvern is hosting an event with Alice Feeney on the 31st January 2025! Tickets available via the Rossiter Books website!

My Review:

Beautiful Ugly is a dark, chilling thriller from one of my all-time favourite thriller writers! It’s going to be a difficult book to review as I don’t want to give anything away.  

The story is told mainly from the point of view of writer Grady who is struggling with grief after his wife goes missing and flashbacks from Abby detailing events a week before her disappearance. I started off quite liking Grady who seemed quite a sympathetic, lost character thrown into a situation he can’t seem to understand but that changed a bit as the story continues and we discover more about him. Abby was a fascinating character as she starts off quite mysterious with her past slowly coming out as the story continues.  There were times when I felt quite sorry for her but others where I felt frustrated with her as she often seemed to only care about what she wanted.

I really like the vivid descriptions of the fictional island of Amberley with its rugged beauty and interesting, tragic history.  As soon as Grady arrives on the island, he realises that nothing and nobody is quite what it seems.  The author does a great job at slowly increasing the tension in as we learn more about the characters and the secrets that they are hiding.  The tension was so intense at times that I found my self holding my breath as I read more about the truth of what was happening.  

The ending was brilliant, horrifying and very unexpected.  It’s definitely a book that I’ve continued to think about long after I’ve finished reading and I will be highly recommending it to everyone who enjoys a dark thriller.  

About The Author:

Alice Feeney is a New York Times million-copy bestselling author. Her books have been translated into over thirty-five languages, and have been optioned for major screen adaptations. Including Rock Paper Scissors, which is being made into a TV series by the producer of The Crown. Alice was a BBC journalist for fifteen years, and now lives in Devon with her family. Good Bad Girl is her sixth novel.

You can follow Alice on Instagram and Twitter: @alicewriterland

To find out the latest book and TV news, or to sign up for Alice’s free newsletter, please visit: http://www.alicefeeney.com

Good morning everyone and happy Tuesday. Today on Two For Tuesday I’m featuring two books I’ve received from the lovely people at Book Break.

A Beautiful Family is a story about dark family secrets which I always enjoy, while Rooms For Vanishing is a sweeping book following a family after the second world war … Or does it?!? Eek so intrigued!

These both sound brilliant and just my type of book so I’m very excited to read them both soon.

Huge thanks to @bookbreakuk and @panmacmillan for sending these to me.

A Beautiful Family is out on the 19th June 2025 & Rooms For Vanishing is out on the 21st August 2025.

Find out more about the books below ⬇️

A Beautiful Family by Jennifer Trevelyan

In the past, we had always spent our summer holidays in remote places. That had always been my mother’s preference. This year was different . . .

A Beautiful Family by Jennifer Trevelyan is a breathtaking novel of family secrets, dark mystery and searing atmosphere that promises to be the standout debut of 2025.

New Zealand, 1985. As the long summer holiday stretches ahead, ten-year-old Alix wants to spend every second on the beach and in the water. But with her parents unusually distracted and her older sister now more interested in boys, she finds herself alone.

Then Alix meets Kahu. He’s on holiday too, and he lets her in on a secret: a few years ago, a little girl went missing and was presumed drowned. But no one ever found her body.

Suddenly, the summer has purpose. The two friends will find the missing girl and become local heroes. But as their investigation progresses, Alix risks uncovering dark secrets about the neighbourhood – and her own beautiful family . . .

Rooms For Vanishing by Stuart Nadler

In the summer of 1938, Sonja is lifted onto a Kindertransport train that will take her from Nazi-occupied Austria to London. She leaves behind her parents, Fania and Arnold, and her baby brother Moses. She is the only member of her family to survive.

In 1966 Fania is working as a massage therapist in Montreal, a place that provided her safe haven after she lost her entire family in the Second World War. And yet there are strange echoes, impressions, of those she loves everwhere she turns. Has she lost her mind or is her family still alive?

In 21st century Vienna, Arnold receives a message from an Englishwoman claiming to be his long-lost daughter, Sonja. Daring to believe that she survived, Arnold waits for her at the train station.

Finally, in New York, 2002, Moses is haunted by the ghost of his best friend who was killed in the Prague Spring, and who exhorts Moses to return to Prague to make peace for the dead.

Moving from the Second World War to 2016, between Vienna and Prague, London and Montreal, New York and Miami, Rooms for Vanising is the story of a family blown apart and across the globe by war. They each believe that they are the sole survivor, and maybe they are, because this is a novel of maybe-lived lives, parallel worlds and possibilities, and one populated by ghosts. Spellbinding and profound, Rooms for Vanishing explores the collisions between desire and reality, memory and facts; it is a singular work that masterfully reimagines the lost possibilities of history itself.

Book Synopsis:

A city burning. A revolution raging. A woman on the run.

Nadezhda has never wanted to be a witch. But the occult is in her blood. Her mother, Militza, conjured Rasputin and introduced him into the Romanov court, releasing the devil himself. Now he is dead, but Militza still dreams of him – stalking her sleep and haunting her waking hours.

As Petrograd burns and the Russian Empire crumbles, Nadezhda escapes through the capital, concealing a book of generational magic. But as danger grows closer, she may be forced to embrace her heritage to save what she loves most…

Based on a true story, The Witch’s Daughter is an epic tale of women rising from the ashes of an empire, perfect for fans of Elodie Harper’s The Wolf Den and Madeline Miller’s Circe.

My Review:

The Witch’s Daughter is a fascinating, gripping read which is an amazing mix of real life historical facts with fantasy and magic mixed in.

Firstly I have always been fascinated with Russian history, especially the period surrounding the Russian Revolution as I studied it at GCSE. The author has done a great job of setting the scene in this book so I really felt transported to Russia at the start of the 20th Century, experiencing all the fear and upheaval of the period. It was particularly fascinating to learn more about court life at the time and the aristocrat’s understanding of the hatred directed towards them.

There are some fabulous characters in this book who I really enjoyed getting to know as story continues. I have always loved strong female characters so it was great fun following the two main characters as they live through the events leading up to the revolution and beyond. I thought they were incredibly courageous, doing things that I don’t think I’d be able to do in similar circumstances and so very resilient. I loved seeing how they tried to change and adjust to everything going on. I grew very fond of them and found myself caring about what happened to them.

Overall I really enjoyed this book and will definitely be interested in reading more from her in the future. I though there was a good level of intrigue in the book and there always seemed to be something happening to keep me interested. There were some quite brutal moments which were quite shocking but also some very sad moments which had me sobbing as I read. My only slight niggle with this book is that I was expecting a bit more about the main character’s magic in the book from the title but this didn’t affect my overall enjoyment of the book as I still thought it was a great read. The Witch’s Daughter is actually the second book in the series, but can easily be read as a standalone like I have as anything that you need to know is explained. I will definitely be going back and reading the first in the series.

Huge thanks to Anne from Random Things Tours for inviting me onto the blog tour and to Head Of Zeus for my copy of this book.

About The Author:

Imogen Edwards-Jones is the bestselling author of Hotel Babylon, Air Babylon and Fashion Babylon, as well as novels such as My Canape Hell and Shagpile. She lives in west London with her husband and their two children.

Good morning everyone and happy Saturday. I was lucky enough to receive a copy of The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce this week.

She’s one of my favourite authors so you can imagine my squeals when I opened it at the shop- much to the amusement of our customers who immediately wanted to know what book had got me so excited.

Huge thanks to the lovely Alison Barrow and Doubleday for sending me a copy of this book. I can’t wait to read it!

The Homemade God is out on the 17th April 2025 and you can find out more about the book below.

Are you a fan of Rachel Joyce? What’s your favourite book she’s written?

Book Synopsis:

There is a heatwave across Europe.

Goose and his three sisters gather at the family’s house by Lake Orta in Piedmont, Italy. Their father, a famous artist, has recently remarried a much younger woman and decamped to Italy to finish his masterpiece. Now he is dead. And when they arrive there is no sign of his new wife or his final painting.

Alhough the siblings have always been close, the things they learn that summer – about themselves, their father and their new stepmother – will drive them apart before they can come to any kind of understanding of what their father’s legacy truly is.

Wonderfully atmospheric and suspenseful, this is at heart a novel about family, about sibling relationships: what holds a family together and what might fracture it forever.

About The Author:

Rachel Joyce is the author of the Sunday Times and international bestsellers The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Perfect, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, The Music Shop, and the New York Times bestseller Miss Benson’s Beetle, as well as a collection of interlinked short stories, A Snow Garden & Other Stories. Her books have sold over 5 million copies worldwide, and been translated into thirty-six languages. Two are currently in development for film.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book prize and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Rachel was awarded the Specsavers National Book Awards ‘New Writer of the Year’ in December 2012 and shortlisted for the ‘UK Author of the Year’ 2014.

Rachel has also written over twenty original afternoon plays and adaptations of the classics for BBC Radio 4, including all the Bronte novels. She lives with her family near Stroud.

Book Synopsis:

Three first dates and an art-world mystery – it’s going to be a busy Christmas for Darcy. All I Want for Christmas is a cosy winter romance from Karen Swan, author of Christmas By Candlelight.

Can she find love this Christmas?

Christmas in Copenhagen is a magical time of year but Darcy Cotterell isn’t feeling festive. Newly single, again, she’s not even going home for Christmas. Instead she will be spending her holiday finishing her art history PhD. Her best friend, Freja, has other ideas. She signs Darcy up to a dating app, determined that she won’t be lonely this Christmas.

Darcy agrees to three dates – but her mind is on work, not play: an unknown portrait by Denmark’s greatest painter has been found and she is tasked with identifying the woman in the painting. During her research, she encounters sexy, arrogant lawyer Max Lorensen – who happens to be bachelor number one! The attraction is instant but, knowing they must work together, they abandon the match. Or try to. But their feelings are undeniable – until Darcy discovers Max has an agenda . . .

My Review:

All I Want For Christmas is a gorgeously festive, absorbing book which is perfect for reading this festive season.

Firstly having grown up in Germany I’ve always loved how European cities look at Christmas and especially the wonderful Christmas markets they have there so this book instantly appealed to me. The author has done a great job of creating some fantastic characters who I enjoyed getting to know throughout the book. My favourite characters were definitely Darcy and her fabulous best friend Freya. I loved how real Darcy seemed and how, even though I really liked her as a character, I also found her incredibly frustrating at times.

I thought this book had two storylines running through it. One was the slow burn romance between Darcy and Max which was fun watching develop. I wasn’t too sure about Max to begin with and my opinion kept changing as the story went on. I liked that the author wasn’t scared to play with the readers emotions and that a happy ending wasn’t necessarily guaranteed. The other part of the story was a mystery surrounding a lost painting which I found fascinating to follow, particularly as I enjoyed learning about the history behind the artwork.

Overall, as you can probably guess, I really enjoyed this book and I’d definitely recommend it to anyone wanting a great festive read. There were a lot of surprising twists that kept me guessing and I loved watching the two storylines slowly reach a satisfying conclusion.

Huge thanks to Chloe from Pan Macmillan for inviting me onto the blog tour and for my copy of this book.

About The Author:

Karen Swan is the Sunday Times Top Three and international best-selling author. Her novels sell all over the world and she writes two books each year – one for the summer period and one for the Christmas season. Her books are known for their evocative locations and Karen sees travel as vital research for each story. She loves to set deep, complicated love stories within twisting plots.

The Last Summer is the first book in her five-book historical series called The Wild Isle Girls, set around the dramatic evacuation of the Scottish island St Kilda in the summer of 1930. It was partly inspired by Karen’s Scottish roots: her father’s family came from Skye, moving to Fort William where Karen was christened and where many of her family still live. Her childhood memories are full of Christmases, Hogmanay and summer holidays spent in the Highlands and she was married there in 2001.

She lives in Sussex with her husband, three children and two dogs.

Visit Karen’s author page on Instagram @swannywrites, Facebook, and Twitter @KarenSwan1.

Good evening everyone I hope had a great Wednesday. I was lucky enough to be sent a copy of this fabulous looking book. I’ve read and loved all of her previous books so I’m very excited to read this book.

Huge thanks to @viper.books for sending me a copy of this book. I can’t wait to read it.

This book is out today the 17th October and you can swipe to see the synopsis.

Have you been to London? What’s your favourite to thing to visit?

Book Synopsis:

He looked as if he had just received some very bad news. In that he was certainly right, for he was perfectly and incontrovertibly dead…

London, 1774. Susan Bell spends her days within the confines of Westminster Abbey, one of many who live in the grounds of the ancient building. Her father, the kindly Dean of Westminster, is always busy keeping the many canons and vergers in check, when not being romantically pursued by forceful widows. Life at the abbey is uneventful, even after the unwelcome arrival of Susan’s cousin Lindley and his unusual scientific demonstrations. That is until the Society of Antiquaries come armed with a letter from King George III, demanding to open the tomb of Edward I.

As the Society prepares to open the tomb, a ghostly figure is seen walking the abbey cloisters, wearing the crown and shroud of the dead king. Then there is further uproar when one of the Antiquaries is found viciously murdered, and the corpse of Edward I is stolen. With her father’s position under threat from the scandal, Susan feels duty-bound to investigate these strange occurrences. Could one of the Society members be harbouring a murderous secret? Or is one of the abbey’s own a killer?

The new historical mystery from the bestselling author of Black Drop, Blue Water and Scarlet Town. Perfect for readers of Andrew Taylor, Laura Shepherd-Robinson and S.J. Parris.

About The Author:

Leonora Nattrass lectured on the literature and politics of the 18th century for almost ten years before running away to Cornwall, where she now lives in a seventeenth-century house with seventeenth-century draughts and knits the wool of her small flock of Ryeland sheep into complicated jumpers.

Her first novel, Black Drop, was a Times Book of the Year and her second, Blue Water, was a Waterstones Thriller of the Month, shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger and longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. Her third, Scarlet Town was a Telegraph book of the year and shortlisted for the CWA historical dagger.

Book Synopsis:

Anna Deerin moves to a remote Cotswold cottage to become a gardener, trying to strip away everything she’s spent all her life as a woman striving for, craving the anonymity and privacy her new off-grid life provides.

But when she clears the last vegetable bed and digs up not twigs but bones, the outside world is readmitted.

With it comes Detective Inspector Hitesh Mistry, who has his own reasons for a new start in the village of Upper Magna.

Drawn in spite of herself to this unknown woman from another time, Anna is determined to uncover her identity and gain recognition for her, if not justice.

As threats to Anna and her new life grow closer, she and DI Mistry will find that this murder is inextricably bound up with issues of gender, family, community, race and British identity itself – all as relevant in decades past as they are to Anna today.

My Review:

I really enjoyed this atmospheric, intriguing mystery which I can’t believe is a debut novel.  

The story is told from the point of view of Anna a gardener and Hitesh a Detective Inspector recently arrived in the village in the present day.  Their story is interspersed with a diary like entry from the daughter of Fallow Hall in 1967.  I really like both Anna and Hitesh and enjoyed learning more about their backstory as the book continues.  I found Anna’s job as a gardener particularly interesting as I loved the wonderfully vivid descriptions of what she grows and how she makes everything into produce to sell at the local market.  Hitesh was another fascinating character, and it was lovely watching him become integrated into village life- particularly with his heart warming friendship with the local vicar.  

I thought the book had a gentle pace to it and I enjoyed finding out more about village life as well as the history of the hall.  The relationship and power dynamics between the villagers was interesting to unpick as there was definitely more lurking beneath the surface than I initially realised.  I did guess who the victim was fairly early on, but I actually think that was the authors intention and there is enough uncertainty over who it might be that I had to keep reading to find out if I was right.  The twist at the end was very clever as the reader discovers more about the murky history of the hall and why the victim was murdered.  I must admit that it took me a bit my surprise as I had many theories but had been unable to guess.  

Overall as you can probably guess I enjoyed this book and will be recommending it to people who might like a gentle, cosy mystery involving a very interesting house.  I look forward to reading more from her in the future.  

About The Author:

Born and raised in South Gloucestershire, Bonnie Burke-Patel studied History at Oxford. After working for half a decade in politics and policy, she changed careers and became a preschool teacher, before beginning to write full time. She lives with her husband, son, and needy cat in south east London, and is working on her next crime novel about fairy tales, desire, and the seaside.

Good morning everyone and happy Tuesday. I’ve been wanting to feature this series for a while and as there are now three books in the series, it’s perfect for a Three For Tuesday Post!

The series in order is:
🎃The Pumpkin Spice Cafe
🍪The Cinnamon Bun Bookshop
🌲The Christmas Tree Farm

I’m a huge fan of this series so having two books published in quick succession has been brilliant! I’ve already read The Cinnamon Bun Bookshop which I really enjoyed (I mean it includes a bookish treasure hunt what’s not to love?!) and I’m hoping to read The Christmas Tree Farm very soon. I have a few Halloween books I want to read first before I start on Christmas books.

If you’re a fan of romance books that somehow manage to be cosy and spicy then I think you’ll love this series!

It’s my eldest son’s 12th birthday today and, as luck would have it, he has a half day off school ! I’m working this morning so my mum is picking him up and meeting me at the bookshop so we can take him out for lunch. I’m really looking forward to spending some quality time with him as it sadly doesn’t happen much. I’ll post a picture of his impressive tbh pile later!

Do you read romance books? Any recommendations for me?

All these books are out now and you can find out more about the books below ⬇️

The Pumpkin Spice Cafe

When Jeanie’s aunt gifts her the beloved Pumpkin Spice Café in the small town of Dream Harbor, Jeanie jumps at the chance for a fresh start away from her very dull desk job.

Logan is a local farmer who avoids Dream Harbor’s gossip at all costs. But Jeanie’s arrival disrupts Logan’s routine and he wants nothing to do with the irritatingly upbeat new girl, except that he finds himself inexplicably drawn to her.

Will Jeanie’s happy-go-lucky attitude win over the grumpy-but-gorgeous Logan, or has this city girl found the one person in town who won’t fall for her charm, or her pumpkin spice lattes…

The Pumpkin Spice Cafe is a cozy romantic novel with a grumpy x sunshine dynamic, a small-town setting and a HEA guaranteed!

The Cinnamon Bun Bookshop

When a secret message turns up hidden in a book in the Cinnamon Bun Bookstore, Hazel can’t understand it. As more secret codes appear between the pages, she decides to follow the trail of clues… she just need someone to help her out.

Gorgeous and outgoing fisherman, Noah, is always up for an adventure. And a scavenger hunt sounds like a lot of fun. Even better that the cute bookseller he’s been crushing on for months is the one who wants his help!

Hazel didn’t go looking for romance, but as the treasure hunt leads her and Noah around Dream Harbor, their undeniable chemistry might be just as hot as the fresh-out-of-the-oven cinnamon buns the bookstore sells…

The Christmas Tree Farm

Kira North hates Christmas. Which is unfortunate since she just bought a Christmas tree farm in a town that’s too cute for its own good.

Bennett Ellis is on vacation in Dream Harbor taking a break from his life in California. And most importantly, taking a break from his latest run of disastrous dates.

After a run in with Kira in her fields, Ben has no intention of offering to help the grumpy owner set up her tree farm, despite the fact she’s clearly got no idea what she’s doing.

Kira knows she should stop being so stubborn, but her farm is not all cute and cozy like people always show on social media, it’s borderline dangerous with no heating, and she’d rather no one saw it.

But somehow fate finds Ben at Kira’s farm once more, and as Kira watches him swing an ax at the first tree, she finds herself appreciating his strength and questioning why she refused help in the first place…

Book Synopsis:

It was only when the bones of the first devoured victims were discovered that the true nature and power of these swarming black creatures with their razor sharp teeth and the taste for human blood began to be realized by a panic-stricken city. For millions of years man and rats had been natural enemies. But now for the first time – suddenly, shockingly, horribly – the balance of power had shifted . . .

My Review:

The Rats is a chilling, gripping and thoroughly scary read that I won’t be forgetting about soon.

Firstly I’ve never been a huge fan of rats and this book really hasn’t improved my opinion of them. I think the thing that hit me most about this book is how plausible the situation described in the book could be. Rats have a history of spreading disease so mutant rats that attack humans doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch.

The author does a great job of describing 1970’s London with all the grime and class differences that were perhaps more apparent at the time. There is a lot of gory descriptions in the book which are quite graphic at times so might not be to everyone’s taste. I felt that these were in keeping with the situation though and weren’t overdone just to get a reaction however.

I thought this book has a great pace to it, though there are some much needed slower moments amongst all the chaos. The characters seemed incredibly real so I really felt for them and all they were experiencing. This made the book quite emotional at times as I wanted to ensure that all the characters were ok. The ending was very dramatic and I’m now very intrigued to read more in this series.

If you like gripping, horror stories which are perfect for spooky season than I highly recommend this book. Be aware though it’s really not for the faint hearted!

About The Author:

James Herbert was born on April 8, 1943 in East End, London, England, UK. He was a writer, known for The Unholy (2021), Deadly Eyes (1982) and The Survivor (1981). He was married to Eileen O’Donnell. He died on March 20, 2013 in Woodmancote, Henfield, West Sussex, England, UK.