Based on a True Story by Sarah Vaughan is the fourth book I’ve read by Vaughan, best known for Anatomy of a Scandal which was made into a series on Netflix. This centres around a family gathered for the 70th birthday of a renowned children’s author amid threats to that author–promising to reveal long-buried secrets that could potentially destroy her career and life–and her three adult daughters all grappling with secrets of their own.
The Last Days of Kira Mullan is a suspenseful read but – at times – it’s also a frustrating read, but that’s only because Nicci Gerrard/Sean French have bound readers so tightly to our lead Nancy North that we alternate between being angry, frustrated and worried on her behalf. We quickly learn that Nancy was recently hospitalised following a psychotic breakdown and we’re put in Nancy’s head so firmly that I found myself questioning her (and my) sanity, though at the same time being confident in her/my convictions. And of course, those mental health struggles – and their impact on her life and the way others treat her – feature strongly here, against a backdrop of a young woman’s death.
One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware is centred around a reality television program billed as Love Island meets Survivor. Although unlikely reality TV contestant Lyla has a sense from the get-go that all is not what it seems with this production and with the producer. And Lyla is certainly an anomaly here, spending much of the time explaining that she’s not actually a medical doctor but a virologist with a PhD. She’s there however because she’s trying to help her TV star wannabe boyfriend find fame and fortune.
I was very excited to see Judgement Prey by John Sandford pop up for review that I let it leap-frog over a heap of other books. And I’m even blessing it with a review on my much-esteemed website 😉 rather than just on Goodreads even though I only had an electronic copy. Because I freakin’ loved this book. I’m almost tempted to give it 4.5 stars except I was a smidge disappointed by the actual ‘who’ part of the whodunnit. It wasn’t left-field but let’s just say we weren’t given some of the clues we needed earlier and I do prefer an even playing field when it comes to the big reveal / finger-pointing thing.
Zero Days by Ruth Ware is a fast paced action-packed read. I’ve read a few of Ware’s books now and know she has a big fan base. She’ll also be attending the crime writing festival I’m going to next month in England so this is a timely read. Although I kinda felt it was pretty obvious whodunnit here, the why was certainly unexpected and Ware also complicates the who with some murky shadow-lurking types.
I enjoyed Louise Candlish’s The Other Passenger, published in 2020. It proved popular, as did Our House, published in 2018 and since made into a four-part miniseries. I missed her 2021/22 book The Heights but happily dove into her latest release, The Only Suspect. Like The Other Passenger, here Candlish offers up a twisty tale with a narrator (well, two in fact) we’re not sure we can trust.
Nicci Gerrard and Sean French (writing together as Nicci French) are back with another standalone thriller, The Favour. And I enjoyed this even though the protagonist – Jude, a young geriatrician – annoyed the crap out of me, making one bad decision after another. I still liked her but groaned each time she entrenched herself more deeply into the world her former high school boyfriend and his very unorthodox group of friends lived.
The It Girl by Ruth Ware is an absorbing read. It unfolds in the past and present, both via our narrator Hannah. In the past she’s starting out at Oxford University, climbing out of her public school past and and navigating the quagmire that is university life – grappling with study and new friends (which I remember as if it wasn’t 35 years ago 🙄 ). And in the present, she’s married, living in Edinburgh and working in a bookshop – never having graduated from university.
Ware doesn’t keep us guessing why as the book opens with Hannah finding the body of her best friend and room-mate April but we’re then taken back to their meeting and the weeks and months leading up to April’s murder.