Debbish

ARC review: Nothing Personal by Alex Dook

July 12, 20262 min read

I have to admit I almost put Nothing Personal by Alex Dook aside multiple times as I just couldn’t seem to engage at all. More particularly in the early parts of the book where we’re meeting a stack of not-necessarily-likeable characters. I also wondered if Dook is a pantser type writer as some of the characters felt inconsistent as if they morphed throughout the book. Lola, our lead character and narrator not soo much but some of the support cast certainly. A mobster’s son, Bradley Parker on first meeting, seems nice and wanting something different from his life. Trying to prove his worth to his father, and younger brother Johnny who seems a bit less hinged. In fact, I was expecting him to become a love interest for Lola. But that kinda reverses completely and I wondered if that was a purposeful ploy by Dook, or where the storytelling took him.

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Book review: Philly Barker and the French Connection by Joanne Tracey

July 10, 20262 min read

Philly Barker and the French Connection by Joanne Tracey is the fourth in the cosy crime series featuring the likeable and pragmatic former cop-turned antique dealer. Here she again pairs up with recently-retired DI Robbie and eclectic colleagues from the Chipwell Barns Antiques. And I’m reminded (other than the murders and crimes) I kinda want Philly’s life*, where she wanders down to the Chipwell Arms most nights to hang with her friends and colleagues.

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Book review: The Gardens by Emma Babbington

July 6, 20263 min read

The Gardens by Emma Babbington is a suspenseful read. There’s no sinister undertone so it’s not a thriller as such but a mystery to be picked apart which Babbington does artfully though a cold case police investigation and Jess, a middle aged woman trying to find out what happened to her 18 year old half-sister Nina who went missing over 30 years earlier. The discovery of bones in the garden of the pair’s childhood home at Willow Gardens makes Jess think they’ve finally learned Nina’s fate, or if they’re not Nina’s, that they’re somehow linked to her disappearance.

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Book review: The Secrets We Hide by Karin Slaughter

July 4, 20262 min read

The Secrets We Hide by Karin Slaughter is the second book in her North Falls series. I LOVED the first, We Are All Guilty Here, and was excited it was labelled #1, knowing more would come. I commented at the time how much I loved the characters and they would be wasted if we didn’t meet them again. And…. they’re back. Well… not all of them. 🙄 #ahem

We have two narrators here, Acting Chief Emmy Clifton (in the role following the events of book one) and her sister, Jude a former FBI profiler, who returned home in book one after over 40 years in the family wilderness. The case here involves a murdered cop and her barely-clinging-to-life daughter and, as the mother bore the brunt of her husband’s violent tendencies, it seems obvious he’s finally gone too far. Things change however, as a number of other factors and potential motives appear.

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Book review: The Death Row Club by VA Vazquez

June 30, 20262 min read

The Death Row Club by VA Vazquez was the second book I’d read in a short amount of time involving an adult daughter discovering their father was (in fact) a serial killer. Though this has a very different flavour to Happy Woman.

I found elements of this a little confusing and I’m unsure if Vazquez means for that to be the case (duping us), or if it doesn’t flow as well as it could or I missed obvious details or foreshadowing. For example, it’s not clear (initially) that Nicola’s father’s murders were committed twenty years earlier. And there’s reference to true crime show host Greer playing a role in uncovering Nicola’s father’s crimes but then we learn Nicola had been helping Greer on the case. And it seems that was coincidental until we (eventually) learn it wasn’t. Huh? That aside, I became sufficiently invested in the unfolding events so needed to hang in there.

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Book review: For All The Dead Girls by Sherryl Clark

June 26, 20263 min read

I hadn’t realised For All The Dead Girls by Sherryl Clark was the second in a series, following Louisa (Lou) Alcott’s first outing in Woman, Missing. She’s a PI here but was (at one point) a police officer and this opens as her estranged father – also the Assistant Commissioner of Police – offers her a job back on the force. I gather Lou wasn’t one to toe the rather-prescriptive blue line and she’s seemingly happy working at Paul Marshall Investigations. Paul is obviously her mentor who seemingly cares and respects Lou, and she likes ‘Gang’ PMI’s tech-genius who plays a big role here as we dip into the murky online incel-like world of women-haters. Trigger-warning that this centres around women and children exposed to domestic violence and those who try to support them are targeted viciously via online ‘pile-on’.

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Book review: Every Time She Wakes by Petronella McGovern

June 21, 20263 min read

I was a bit worried going into Every Time She Wakes by Petronella McGovern because it features a Groundhog Day scenario… so I made some assumptions about how it would play out. But… wow, McGovern throws that trope on its head as the world in which Suzanna (Suze) wakes each time is very different. Eventually she reflects on her daughter’s philosophy studies about timelines and dimensions, not in a woo-woo way, rather trying to make sense of her same-but-different adventures (and I’ve written before about my fascination with the parallel lives concept). In each though, Suze’s family is abducted, which ends in a tragic accident… at which point she wakes up. Again. In the past.

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Book review: Find Me by Holly Craig

June 20, 20263 min read

Find Me by Holly Craig is a well-paced and action-packed read that goes beyond the thriller genre, digging into family relationships and roles we fall into… even into adulthood. Craig gives us three voices here: that of estranged sisters Hallie and Gertie who team up following their mother’s death for a last-ditch effort to find their brother Pete who disappeared in Tasmania three years earlier. We also offered another storyteller, one whose identity remains shut-off to us for much of the novel. We also hear from Pete through emails he sent home and (eventually) his journal.

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Book review: The Damned by Matt Rogers

June 17, 20262 min read

The Damned by Matt Rogers is the second in the series featuring former CIA assassin Logan Booth and I just need to say I bloody loved this book. Rogers again gives us a complex and fully formed (albeit slightly flawed) character in Logan along with ex-crack addict Alice (thankfully with new teeth, her old ones ruined by her habit)*. Here Logan travels to Columbia where a former lover has been (briefly) kidnapped. Unfortunately for him, her new boyfriend is connected to a cartel family which now has multiple reasons to hunt him down.

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