Author: bookafterbook

Publication: 23th August 2018 by HQ

Silence can be deafening.

Jean McClellan spends her time in almost complete silence, limited to just one hundred words a day. Any more, and a thousand volts of electricity will course through her veins.

Now the new government is in power, everything has changed. But only if you’re a woman.

Almost overnight, bank accounts are frozen, passports are taken away and seventy million women lose their jobs. Even more terrifyingly, young girls are no longer taught to read or write.

For herself, her daughter, and for every woman silenced, Jean will reclaim her voice. This is only the beginning…

 

I have been hearing talking about this book for months and months and when I finally got my hands on an early copy, for which I’d like to thank HQ, I devoured it in two days. I was completely blown away by its unrealistic and scary plot and I couldn’t put it down.

In a near future, a pure religion movement has taken control of the government of the United States and has established a law according to which women are allowed to use only 100 words a day. And to be sure they follow this law the women have to wear a bracelet that gives them electric shocks whenever they go over the limit. The protagonist and narrator of this novel is Jean McClellan. She was a linguist scientist before all women were banned from doing any job. I shared Jean’s frustration and anger as she watches helplessly as women are forced to give up not only talking, but also working or even simply reading a book or the mail. All they have to do is to take care of their house and their family, waiting for the men to come home. There are bracelets that keep your word count, cameras that watch every step you make, and men that take you away to camps if you do something that it’s deemed impure.  Jean has four children, one of which is a six-year-old girl who is so scared to talk that she never uses her 100 words a day. On the other hand, her seventeen-year-old son Steven is being brainwashed at school in becoming one of the government puppets. But how did they get to this? Through Jean’s flashbacks, we see how nobody really believed that something like this could really happen until it did.

I really liked the character of Jean. She is strong-willed and determined and, even though she is limited to 100 words a day, she doesn’t give up on hope that one day things will be better and fights for her right to speak. She wants a better future for her daughter and all the other women and this makes her brave and dangerous.

VOX is chilling, it’s scary and it makes you furious and frustrated at the way not only women, but also people of different race or LGQBT are treated page after page. It’s a dystopian thriller full of twists, it’s suspenseful, compelling, and completely gripping, and it should be on everyone reading list.

It is my absolute pleasure to reveal the cover of A VILLAGE AFFAIR by Julie Houston. Isn’t it beautiful?

This funny and captivating novel will be published on November 6th, 2018 by Aria Fiction.

Cassie Beresford has recently landed her dream job as deputy head at her local, idyllic village primary school, Little Acorns.

So, the last thing she needs is her husband of twenty years being ‘outed’ at a village charity auction – he has been having an affair with one of her closest friends.

As if that weren’t enough to cope with, Cassie suddenly finds herself catapulted into the head teacher position, and at the forefront of a fight to ward off developers determined to concrete over the beautiful landscape.

But through it all, the irresistible joy of her pupils, the reality of keeping her teenage children on the straight and narrow, her irrepressible family and friends, and the possibility of new love, mean what could have been the worst year ever, actually might be the best yet…

Julie Houston’s novels are funny, wonderfully warm and completely addictive. Perfect for all fans of Gervaise Phinn, Katie Fforde and Jill Mansell.

 

JULIE HOUSTON is the author of THE ONE SAVING GRACE, GOODNESS, GRACE AND ME and LOOKING FOR LUCY, a Kindle top 100 general bestseller and a Kindle #1 bestseller. She is married, with two teenage children and a mad cockerpoo and, like her heroine, lives in a West Yorkshire village. She is also a teacher and a magistrate.

Buy links:

Amazon: mybook.to/AVillageAffair

 

Website: www.juliehouston.co.uk

Twitter: @juliehouston2

Facebook: @JulieHoustonauthor

 

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Publication: 9th August 2018 by HarperFiction

You’ve known her your whole life…
Andrea Oliver knows everything about her mother Laura. She knows she’s always lived in the small town of Belle Isle; she knows she’s a pillar of the community; she knows she’s never kept a secret in her life.

but she’s hiding something…
Then one day, a trip to the mall explodes into a shocking act of violence and Andy suddenly sees a completely different side to Laura.

and it could destroy you both…
Hours later, Laura is in hospital, her face splashed over the newspapers. But the danger has only just begun. Now, Andy must go on a desperate race to uncover the secrets of her mother’s past. Unless she can, there may be no future for either of them…

 

You think you really know someone, especially someone as close as your own mother, with whom you’ve been living together for the last three years, until the day everything changes and you see her under a completely different light and you find out that your mother’s life is full of secrets. Every time I read a new Karin Slaughter’s novel I know that I will be surprised, captivated, and completely glued to the page, and, once again, I wasn’t disappointed.

PIECES OF HER starts with what it was supposed to be a normal day at the mall. Andrea is thirty-one years old, she is living in her mother’s garage, working the night shift as a dispatcher, and going through her days with nothing barely exciting going on. She certainly didn’t expect to be snapped out of her monotony during her birthday lunch with her mother, Laura. After a man starts shooting at the mall and another one breaks into her mother’s house and threatens her, Andrea finds herself on the run across the United States while she tries to uncover her mother’s secrets.

Although the novel is slow-paced, the tension is always high. The present narration is interrupted by flashbacks to a past linked somehow to Laura and I found myself completely absorbed in both narratives. While reading about Andrea’s investigation on her mother’s past I couldn’t wait to go back to the story of a naïve young girl who found herself involved in something that she couldn’t control, and vice versa.

Even though I expected some of the twists, I still found myself mesmerised and eager to find out what would happen next. The beautiful writing style of the author makes for an entertaining read and, once again, Karin Slaughter created well-developed characters. At the beginning, I found the character of Andrea often irritating and frustrating, but it was fascinating watching her mature and pull out her surviving (and also investigative) skills and half-way through the book I started really liking her.

PIECES OF HER is a stunning, compulsive, and unusual read that it’s not easy to put down and I’d like to thank HarperCollins for providing me with an early copy of the book.

 

9th August 2018 by HQ

The Plus One [n] informal a person who accompanies an invited person to a wedding or a reminder of being single, alone and absolutely plus none

Polly’s not looking for ‘the one’, just the plus one…

Polly Spencer is fine. She’s single, turning thirty and only managed to have sex twice last year (both times with a Swedish banker called Fred), but seriously, she’s fine. Even if she’s still stuck at Posh!magazine writing about royal babies and the chances of finding a plus one to her best friend’s summer wedding are looking worryingly slim.

But it’s a New Year, a new leaf and all that. Polly’s determined that over the next 365 days she’ll remember to shave her legs, drink less wine and generally get her s**t together. Her latest piece is on the infamous Jasper, Marquess of Milton, undoubtedly neither a plus one nor ‘the one’. She’s heard the stories, there’s no way she’ll succumb to his charms…

 

THE PLUS ONE is one of these books that should be on everyone’s reading list. It has an enjoyable and captivating plot, a cast of colorful and engaging characters, and a likable and funny heroine. I laughed a lot and I couldn’t get enough of Polly’s adventures.

The protagonist of the novel is Polly. She is a journalist working for Posh, a magazine that focuses on the English royalties, their pets, their children, and their weird quirks, so she finds herself going to orgies attended by politicians, dukes, and princes, organizing photoshoots involving five hundred avocados, and trying Russian detox treatments all for the sake of an article. She also finds herself mixing with lords, marquess, and sheiks, all obsessed with their animals (mostly dogs, horses, and chickens). On the personal side, Polly is worried about her mother who has been on her own since her husband died twenty years earlier. Her two best friends are with people she doesn’t really like and one of them is getting married in a few months. Tired of being just “Polly” on wedding invitations, Polly hopes that this time she will find her plus one, her Mr Willoughby (her idea of romance is the love story between Marianne and Mr. Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility). This novel made me laugh not only for the weird situations Polly get herself in, but also for the personality of the protagonist. She is down-to-heart, realistic, and loyal. She is entertaining and witty and I wished she was my friend.

I like the author’s writing style, flawless and clear, which, together with the compelling and refreshing plot, made it almost impossible for me to put it down (if it wasn’t for my job, I would have read this in less than a day). I am already looking forward to whatever Sophia Money-Coutts writes next, but, in the meantime, I would like to thank HQ and Joe Thomas for providing me with a proof of this immersive, brilliant, and sexy novel.

Publication: 1st July 2018 by Orenda Books

If I can’t have you … nobody can

After leaving her marriage to jealous, possessive oncologist Maxwell, Lily and her six-year-old son have a second chance at happiness with headteacher Sebastian. Kind but vulnerable, Sebastian is the polar opposite of Maxwell, and the perfect match for Lily.

After a whirlwind romance, they marry, and that’s when things start to go wrong…
Maxwell returns to the scene, determined to win back his family, and events soon spiral out of control. Lily and Sebastian find themselves not only fighting for their relationship, but also their lives…

Chilling, dark and terrifying, Do No Harm is a taut psychological thriller and a study of obsession, with a killer twist that you will never see coming.

 

Sebastian and Maxwell couldn’t be more different. The first is a head teacher, he loves children, he is patient and kind. The other is a renowned oncologist, he is arrogant, narcissist, and not at all likable. What do they have in common? They are in love with the same woman (in Maxwell’s case, it’s more an obsession drove by his egotism).

After years married to a man who controlled her and cheated on her, Lily has finally found a man who treats her with respect and loves her son as much as she does. So she and Sebastian marry a few months after they started dating but their bliss is quickly cut short by incidents, disappearances, circumstances, and someone who has a big plan in motion to destroy their joy. This someone is the mysterious third narrator. We don’t find out who they are until the end of the novel, but we are aware of their plans (and I was so into the story that I wish I could have stopped them). Even though I figured out who this mysterious narrator was, I felt myself still glued to the page, eager to find out more, and I was taken by surprise by the many unpredictable twists. And there are many twists, page after page, and you never know what to expect next.

If you are looking for a thriller that it is jaw-dropping, gripping, and character-driven, a thriller that you won’t be able to put down until you get to the very last page, then DO NO HARM should be at the top of your list. A story of love and obsession with a dark and unsettling plot and with characters that I found very intriguing, complex, deeply flawed and, for this reason, more realistic, DO NO HARM is a must-read for this summer and I’d like to thank Anne Cater and Orenda Books for inviting me to take part in the blog tour and for providing me with a copy of this compelling book.

 

Lucy V. Hay is a novelist, script editor and blogger who helps writers via her Bang2write consultancy. She is the associate producer of Brit Thrillers Deviation (2012) and Assassin (2015), both starring Danny Dyer. Lucy is also head reader for the London Screenwriters’ Festival and has written two non-fiction books, Writing & Selling Thriller Screenplays, plus its follow-up Drama Screenplays. Her critically acclaimed debut thriller The Other Twin was published in 2017. She lives in Devon with her husband, three children, six cats and five African Land Snails.

Publication: 26th July 2018 by Quercus Books

Trust me. Love me. Just don’t believe me…

Claire Wright likes to play other people.

A British drama student, in New York without a green card, Claire takes the only job she can get: working for a firm of divorce lawyers, posing as an easy pick-up in hotel bars to entrap straying husbands.

When one of her targets becomes the subject of a murder investigation, the police ask Claire to use her acting skills to help lure their suspect into a confession. But right from the start, she has doubts about the part she’s being asked to play. Is Patrick Fogler really a killer . . . Or the only decent husband she’s ever met? And is there more to this set-up than she’s being told?

And that’s when Claire realises she’s playing the deadliest role of her life . . .

 

JP Delaney is back with a twisty, dark, and fast-paced thriller that I wasn’t able to put down. After reading The Girl Before last year, I have been waiting for something new from this author so I’d like to thank Hannah Robinson and Quercus Books for providing me with a copy of his new novel and for inviting me to take part in the blog tour.

The protagonist of BELIEVE ME is Claire Wright. She is a very complex and multi-layered character. You never know what to expect from her, she is an unreliable narrator and, as an actor, she easily switches character. She moved from England to New York where she studies to become an actor. She needs a job to pay the bills, but because she doesn’t have a green card, she can’t be a waitress or walk dogs like all the other struggling actors, so she finds a job off the books for a law firm: filming cheating husbands while they pick her up in hotel bars. I can’t say I liked Claire very much, but I also found her well-developed and intriguing and she kept me glued to the page.

I loved that the author mixed the narration style by narrating some scenes in the form of a script play, complete of dialogues and directions. It makes the story more entertaining and I was always looking forward to them.

The story is completely unpredictable. There are many twists and turns, there is always an air of doubt and tension and I never knew what to expect next, what was real and what was not, which character to trust and to believe. The dark atmosphere and the presence of Baudelaire’s sinister poems give the novel a creepy feeling and the  deceptions and the trust game made me completely engrossed in the novel and I flew through it in just a few hours.

If you loved The Girl Before, if you are looking for unreliable characters, claustrophobic atmosphere, and jaw-dropping twists, then BELIEVE ME is a must-read. It is addictive, shocking, and takes you by surprise, page after page.

BELIEVE ME is the second psychological thriller from JP Delaney, a pseudonym for a writer who has previously written bestselling fiction under other names. JP Delaney’s first thriller THE GIRL BEFORE became a global bestseller published in forty-one countries. A film version is being brought to the screen by Academy Award winners Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment.

Publication: 2nd August 2018 by Corvus

Aged just 16, Geo’s best friend Angela disappeared without a trace. Years later, Angela’s body is discovered in the woods near Geo’s childhood home, revealed as yet another victim of the notorious serial killer Calvin James. Geo’s high-school boyfriend.

For fourteen years, Geo knew what had happened and told no one, carrying the secret until she was arrested and sent to prison. Why would any woman protect a man capable of committing such a heinous crime? Geo had her reasons…

To Geo, Calvin is more than a monster, a serial killer with no remorse. He is something else entirely. And while Geo did her time, Calvin escaped and went on the run. Now released, Geo is ready to start over. But then the bodies begin to turn up, killed in the exact same manner as Angela…

As chilling secrets are revealed, everything turns on what really happened one fateful night, almost 20 years ago. Is it too late for anyone, Geo included, to survive the truth?

 

JAR OF HEARTS is a dark, suspenseful, and scary thriller and I loved every page of it. There are scenes that are disturbing, there is gratuitous violence and abuse, but the plot is so gripping and so well-written that I couldn’t put it down. It’s a story of young love, obsession, jealousy, and secrets with a final twist that you really don’t see it coming.

The characters are dark, not completely likable, and complex, especially the protagonist, Georgina “Geo” Shaw. She grew up without a mother, who died when she was little, and her father, a doctor, worked long hours, so she was often left on her own. Despite this, she was a nice and good girl with high grades at school and never getting into trouble and spending her time with her two best friends, Angela and Kaiser. But then she met Calvin James and things changed.  Throughout the story, she dances on the line between good and bad and it’s hard to figure out how much she is innocent and how much she is guilty.

Georgina’s story is sometimes interrupted by Kaiser’s story. He has been in love with Georgina his whole life, but she always thought of him as a friend. He is the detective who arrested Calvin and Georgina for Angela’s murder, and now he is also the detective leading the search for Calvin after he escapes from prison. As the murders start again, Kaiser struggles between his duty to his job and his personal feelings for Georgina.

JAR OF HEARTS is a fast-paced, compelling, and completely addictive novel. This is my first Jennifer Hillier’s novel but I really liked her prose and I was drawn to her characters and their stories and I am definitely going to read more from this author. I’d like to thank Corvus for providing me with an early copy of this gripping thriller.

Publication: 19th April 2018 by Orion

They say I’m a murderer.

Six years ago, Kate Reynolds was found holding the body of her best friend; covered in blood, and clutching the knife that killed her.

I plead guilty.

Kate has been in prison ever since, but now her sentence is up. She is being released.

But the truth is, I didn’t do it.

There’s only one person who can help: Private Investigator Madison Attallee, the first officer on the scene all those years ago.

But uncovering the truth means catching a killer.

 

I am so happy that this is the first book in a series, because I really enjoyed it and I am already looking forward to the next book.

Four women are the protagonists of this novel. Four women emotionally damaged with their secrets, their guilt, and their fears. But they are also strong, not afraid to stand up for themselves and the people they love, and I liked them all very much.

The first woman is Kate Reynolds. She just got out of prison after serving a six-year sentence for killing her best friend, Naomi Andrews. At the time, she had pleaded guilty, but now she is not so sure that she was the killer. Kate comes from a family with a history of mental illness. Her mother died when she was little and, growing up, she was often left alone. When reading from her point of view, she comes out as a good person, even if she may have killed her best friend. But I thought also that Kate was an unreliable character (I do love an unreliable character in thrillers). The night of Naomi’s murder, Kate was drunk and on drugs, so her memories were hazy and for half of the book I didn’t know whether to believe her or not.

Madison Attalee was one of first agents on the scene at Naomi’s murder. After being forced out of the police, she is now working as a PI, and Kate asks her to reinvestigate the murder. Madison accepts because she was never completely convinced that Kate was guilty. The series is based on Madison who I really liked because she is the character who feels more real. She is a complex character, flawed, and she has her own personal guilt to face and her troubled past to deal with (which I am not going to give away).

Kate’s family shut her out after she went to prison. Her father and her sister refused to talk to her or to visit her, while her brother Marcus just sent a letter every month. Now that she is out, Kate hopes to start fresh with her family, but the only one who seems to welcome her is her sister-in-law, Claudia. Although my favorite character is Madison, I found Claudia quite interesting. She thought she had the perfect husband with their perfect house and their perfect daughter, but she quickly learns that perfection comes to a price. She is stronger and smarter than she looks and she is like a lioness when it comes to protect her daughter.

Anthea Andrews’s life revolved around her daughter Naomi. She was her miracle baby, coming late in life, after years of trying. Her love for Naomi made her blind to her daughter’s true character and her death completely destroyed Anthea so, when Kate comes out of prison, her grief quickly becomes a desire of revenge towards the girl who took away her daughter, transforming Anthea in a very dangerous woman.

This is a dark suspense thriller full of twists that will make you gasp in surprise. The author explores themes that, unfortunately, are very common now, from dysfunctional families and mental illness to adultery, from domestic violence and abuse to alcoholism and, although there will be moments that will make you cringe, there are no gruesome details as the author focuses mostly on the feelings of the characters.

I liked the use of multiple points of view that change every chapter as it helps to build the tension which is always high. All in all, I, WITNESS is a haunting, gripping, and very well-written novel, and I’d like to thank Tracy Fenton and Orion for inviting me to take part in the blog tour and for providing me with a copy of the book.

 

Publication: 12th July 2018 by HQ

The house where Stella and her sister Amy grew up never changes – the red front door, the breath-taking view over the Cornish coast, her parents in their usual spots on the sofa. Except this summer, things feel a little different…

Stella’s father is nowhere to be seen, yet her mother – in suspiciously new Per Una jeans – seems curiously unfazed by his absence, and more eager to talk about her mysterious dog-walking buddy Mitch.

Stella’s sister Amy has returned home with a new boyfriend she can barely stand and a secret to hide, and Stella’s husband Jack has something he wants to get off his chest too. Even Frank Sinatra, the dog, has a guilty air about him.
This summer, change is in the air for the Whitethorns…

 

This novel is 400 pages long and yet I read it in less than two days because I was completely addicted. First of all, I loved the characters. They are engaging, realistic, and very very likable. There is Stella, who left Cornwall and the family home at eighteen after a fallout with her father and, since then, she has been back just for quick visits. Now she is a journalist with her own successful column about motherhood, even though she can’t seem to understand her teenage son, Sonny, who is a tech genius and seemingly very wise for his age. Her husband Jack does everything she asks and their younger daughter Rosie is adorable in her own innocence. Her younger sister Amy has always been the baby of the family with everyone taking care of her. Now, she is living in London on her own, trying to prove to her family that she can do it on her own, especially now that she is pregnant after a one-night stand. When their father suddenly leaves the family home without an explanation, both women travel to Cornwall to figure out what is going on, Amy followed by Gus, the father of her baby, and my favourite character with his wittiness and charm. Their mother Moira doesn’t seem too concerned by the disappearance of her husband. She finally feels free from being the wife of a man who demanded all her attention and, for once, she is thinking just about herself.

I really liked the author’s writing. This is my first Jenny Oliver’s novel (I really need to catch up) and I found her writing clear and distinct. The narration flows easily with the right amount of descriptions and dialogues, with hilarity, emotional moments, and a few twists. Each character has their own stories and a few secrets that entertain and kept me glued to the page because, just like the characters, they are realistic and engaging.

THE HOUSE WE CALLED HOME is a story about family, about forgiveness, and about growing up and I loved everything about it, from the first to the last page. It’s a compulsive and refreshing read and I’d like to thank HQ and Lily Capewell for inviting me to take part in the blog tour and for providing me with a copy of this immersive summer read.

Publication: 12th July 2018 by Simon and Schuster UK

Jess, a 29-year-old Londoner with a Kate Beckett fringe and a tendency for dramatics, gets taken on a surprise trip by her long-term boyfriend, Pete, to attend her best friend’s last-minute wedding in South Africa. Jess imagines sun, sand, wine and safaris. And returning to London with an ethically mined diamond on her left hand…
 
But this holiday isn’t set to be quite the fairy tale Jess has planned… Suddenly she finds her world tilting on its axis, and things are only set to get worse when Jess returns home…
 
Catherine Bennetto is back with her trademark wit and an equally hilarious cast of characters who will have you rooting for them from the first page.

 

After reading her first novel, How Not To Fall In Love, Actually, I was really looking forward to read more by Catherine Bennetto and I wasn’t disappointed because MAKE OR BREAK is a brilliant and completely absorbing novel and I’d like to thank Simon & Schuster UK and Harriett Collins for inviting me to take part in the blog tour and for providing me with a copy of  the book.

I laughed so much reading this book. If you are like me and you read during your commute, expect strange looks from people around you who don’t understand why you giggle every couple of minutes while reading a book.

Jess leaves for a holiday to South Africa with her boyfriend Pete to attend her best friend’s wedding and also to spend some quality time with Pete. But noyhing goes as planned, starting from the airport, and she also manages to antagonize the entire cabin crew during her flight. Luckily, not everything goes wrong and Jess not only finds new friends, but she takes the reader with her in her exploration of the beautiful African country: from music festivals to food markets, from safari to beaches with penguins walking and swimming around.

The protagonist of the novel is Jess. Let me say right away that I really loved this character. She is down-to-earth and funny. She has internal conversation with her wicked self and also with a dog called Flora. She is caring and selfless, spending all her free time helping her sister Annabelle to take care of her two young children. She suffers from anxiety and she sees the most dramatic outcome in every situation. The outcomes she comes up with are so funny that I can’t help but share some of my favourite: from poachers shooting her because, somehow, they mistake her for a rhino to her sister ending up in jail because Jess went to South Africa and nobody was checking on Annabelle’s 7-year-old son Hunter (probably) googling “how to make a bomb”. And let’s not forget a very disastrous butterfly effect in which a butterfly flaps her wings in Kent causing a chunk in Australia to break off and families to be divided and new maps to be drawn.

The characters are hilarious and very likable and the plot is completely entertaining. I laughed from the first to the last page and, even during some emotional scenes, the author manages to insert some humourism that is not out of order and lightens up the situation. MAKE OR BREAK is a refreshing, witty, and compulsive read and I am already looking forward to whatever the author writes next.

CATHERINE BENNETTO was born in New Zealand to a British father and Kiwi mother. She studied a variety of things at University, including Design and Biomedical Science, before settling on a career in television production.

Catherine, her husband and their two young boys have spent the past few years being permanent residents of nowhere – going where the work takes them. They’ve lived in Australia, England, the Caribbean, Hungary, Malaysia and South Africa, and have learnt some useful tricks for entertaining children along the way.

In 2013 she gained a place on Curtis Brown Creative’s inaugural online novel writing course. How Not to Fall in Love, Actually is her first novel.