Well today is a great day for new books!
To read my reviews click on the book covers
First up is The One Plus One by Jojo Moyes
Blurb
One single mum
With two jobs and two children, Jess Thomas does her best day after day. But it’s hard on your own. And sometimes you take risks you shouldn’t. Because you have to . . .
One chaotic family
Jess’s gifted, quirky daughter Tanzie is brilliant with numbers, but without a helping hand she’ll never get the chance to shine. And Nicky, Jess’s teenage stepson, can’t fight the bullies alone.
Sometimes Jess feels like they’re sinking . . .
One handsome stranger
Into their lives comes Ed Nicholls, a man whose life is in chaos, and who is running from a deeply uncertain future. But he has time on his hands. He knows what it’s like to be lonely. And he wants to help . . .
One unexpected love story
The One Plus One is a captivating and unconventional romance from Jojo Moyes about two lost souls meeting in the most unlikely circumstances. Goodreads
This is one emotional read but utterly satisfying. Jojo Moyes is one of those writers that has the power to make you really care about the characters she has created so much so they become your friends. A publisher’s dream for Penguin Books.
Next up is Mrs Sinclair’s Suitcase by Louise Walters
Blurb
Forgive me, Dorothea, for I cannot forgive you. What you do, to this child, to this child’s mother, it is wrong…
Roberta likes to collect the letters and postcards she finds in second-hand books. When her father gives her some of her grandmother’s belongings, she finds a baffling letter from the grandfather she never knew – dated after he supposedly died in the war.
Dorothy is unhappily married to Albert, who is away at war. When an aeroplane crashes in the field behind her house she meets Squadron Leader Jan Pietrykowski, and as their bond deepens she dares to hope she might find happiness. But fate has other plans for them both, and soon she is hiding a secret so momentous that its shockwaves will touch her granddaughter many years later…Goodreads
A fantastic dual time-line novel with the modern day Roberta finding out about Dorothy’s life at the time of World War II. Who couldn’t forgive Dorothea and why is the big question at the heart of this novel published by Hodder & Stoughton.
Next up is the debut novel by Sarah Hilary, Someone Else’s Skin one of my favorite crime novels written this year, published by Headline.
Blurb
Detective Inspector Marnie Rome. Dependable; fierce; brilliant at her job; a rising star in the ranks. Everyone knows how Marnie fought to come back from the murder of her parents, but very few know what is going on below the surface. Because Marnie has secrets she won’t share with anyone.
But then so does everyone. Certainly those in the women’s shelter Marnie and Detective Sergeant Noah Jake visit on that fateful day. The day when they arrive to interview a resident, only to find one of the women’s husbands, who shouldn’t have been there, lying stabbed on the floor.
As Marnie and Noah investigate the crime further, events begin to spiral and the violence escalates. Everyone is keeping secrets, some for survival and some, they suspect, to disguise who they really are under their skin.
Now, if Marnie is going to find the truth she will have to face her own demons head on. Because the time has come for secrets to be revealed…
This is just my sort of crime fiction, one where there are a myriad of storylines, expertly handled and with likeable characters to compensate for the baddies! This book was so much more than I had expected!
And lastly out of the fab four is the superbly creepy A Pleasure and a Calling by Phil Hogan published by Doubleday
Blurb
You won’t remember Mr Heming. He showed you round your comfortable home, suggested a sustainable financial package, negotiated a price with the owner and called you with the good news. The less good news is that, all these years later, he still has the key.
That’s absurd, you laugh. Of all the many hundreds of houses he has sold, why would he still have the key to mine?
The answer to that is, he has the keys to them all.
William Heming’s every pleasure is in his leafy community. He loves and knows every inch of it, feels nurtured by it, and would defend it – perhaps not with his life but if it came to it, with yours… Goodreads
This book has haunted me since the day I read it and I know I am going to have to pick it up again to experience the sheer cleverness of the tale of a boy who started by hiding in wardrobes and finished up living amongst unsuspecting families.