Yes I know it is Saturday well I think it is, I really don’t know which day is which at the moment, they are all blurring into one! Here in the UK we have not seen the sun for what seems like months and apparently it has rained every day since January 1st and I believe them! This week it has been grey, overcast and raining and it has been like that for days and days. Anyway it has meant I have been able to read quite a few books, so that is definitely an upside.
Since January I have read nine books but two were DNF’s.
*****
Firstly this was Jayne’s and my Cosy Book Club Book for January. Ed the devoted father of Daughter Abbie must come to terms with her new Fiancé, Ryan, and their wish to marry quickly because of her Grandmother being so ill. However Ed has reservations that are not shared by other members of the family. There is something just not quite with Ryan and Ed cannot put his finger on it and so begins a spiral of events which will lead Ed to do things he has only ever seen in movies but all to protect Abbie. Can he find any evidence that Ryan is not who he portrays himself to be?
This is a mystery but not in the traditional sense. It is well written and the story moves along but the ending is not quite as you hope. I gave it Five Stars.
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*****
I actually listened to this on BookBeat whilst I was working the other week and it was very good. Monday morning four people get into an elevator in one of the many high rises in New York City to go to their different floors. The buttons are pressed and the doors close but the elevator does not stop on any of the floors and just keeps going until it reaches the very top floor where it stops. The four people cannot get the doors to open and then the elevator drops all the way to the bottom. Tuesday morning another building, another elevator same thing. Wednesday morning the same and what appeared to be a tragic accident on Monday has turned out to be a serial killer who is killing people at arms length. Can Detectives Borgue and Delgado find who is doing this before the body count rises?
First book of Lindwood Barclays I have read and it was well done. The story moved through the book and was easy to follow their progress of the case to the end with the twist as well. I again gave it Five Stars.
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*****
You will see that I first read one of Jane Bettany’s books last month, “Murder on Bluebell Hill” and I really enjoyed it. They are in the Cosy Crime section of the bookshop and I can honestly say very Agatha Christie. They are, like her books, not very long but the characters are good and there is generally only one murder and our heroine “detective” Violet Brewster generally finds out who done it with a twist. They are very easy to read but that does not detract from the stories. There are currently five in total in the series and I believe a new one is being written. They areally are very good and of course gave them Five Stars.
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*****
I read this over three days! It was that good. Beth is waiting for her Husband, Tom, to get home from work. She has fed, bathed and put their daughter to bed and is waiting in their expensive kitchen in the cottage they have renovated for him to get home. There is a knock on the front door and Beth rushes to it ready with a string of abuse and especially as he has also forgotten his keys. But it is not Tom it is a Detective and some Police officers and they want to talk to Tom. It is about his old girlfriend from ten years ago and Beth cannot understand why they want to talk to Tom. As the weeks unfold and more information comes out Beth begins to wonder if she ever knew her husband really at all.
It really is a good book and you do become invested in their lives and as Beth finds out more so, dear reader, do you. However the twist at the end is very good and that is all I am going to say!
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This is my Three Star read for February so far. I was again talked into buying this by Bookstagram and I am beginning to think that I should not take any recommendations from there at all! This is about the fourth book I have had this happen to me so am really beginning to think I need to trust my own judgement and not listen to anyone else! However, of course, that is what I am doing here!!!!!! It is a conundrum!
Eden Fox and her husband have moved into their forever home, Spyglass, in the seaside village of Hope Falls. The house needed a lot doing to it but they have managed to update it. Eden has even had time to go back to her first love of paining and that evening she is having a local exhibition of her work. She decides to go for a run, to calm her nerves, and sets off on her usual path. She gets back home and her key will not open the door, when she knocks a woman comes to the door who looks a lot like her and dressed in her clothes. Eden cannot believe her eyes and demands to know who she is, then her husband, the man she has been married to for a long time, comes to the door and asks this other woman, who he calls Eden, what is wrong. Eden is confused and demands to know what is going on and the Police are called. They believe her husband and this woman and Eden has no phone, no idea how to prove who she is, what is she going to do?
To be honest with you I got a littl confused with this book, especially with Eden and Eden and them talking about the situation. I was never sure which Eden you had talking. It was okay and some of it was predictable. The twist at the end was okay but the ending did feel like it was all being wrapped up in a little bow for you. I think it is one of these books which has been over hyped again, especially by people who have had advance copies sent to them and “LOVED” it! I have read better!
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If I could I would have given this no Stars, oh wait I can here but not on my Goodreads account! I love a good Fantasy book and I love the building of the world and this book is going to be a series. However Ms Parker I think swallowed a dictionery and thesaurus and then every sentence decided to fill said sentence with twenty words where five would have done. Example : “So close I’m struck with a smoky musk pinched with the smell of freshly split stone, softened with notes of something buttery.” I mean what does that even mean? and every single sentence is like that! I got to page 50 of 576 and I could not read it anymore! I really wanted to like it but it was actually unreadable. I honestly do not know how some of these books get published!
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This was another book that did not deserve even one star! The premise was a good idea ish! Librarian Anne Adams who lives in Scotland loves her job but then is involved in a serious car crash which kills her twin brother and Anne was driving. She spends months in hospital recovering and her parents blame her entirely for his death and although she goes back to live with them to continue her recovery they basically ignore her. Anne cannot go back to the Library and looks around for a new job and finds it cataloguing a private library at Winterbourne on a remote island on the west coast of Scotland, but not all is as it seems!
I started to listen to this on BookBeat but I could not stand it! The Narrator was particularly dour and to be perfectly honest I did not like the character of Anne, her parents or the story so I DNF’d this too!
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Looking back so far on February out of the nine books I don’t think I have done too bad by DNF’ing two of the nine! I still have some books on my shelf that I have bought because of recommendations from Bookstagram but I am going to go through my shelves and have a long hard look at all the books and assess whether they are staying or going. However certainly with “When The Moon Hatched” you would not have known how bad it was until you started to read it!
I hope you lovely lot have had some time to read and the weather where you are is better than here in Derbyshire at the moment, although we have seen the sun today which was glorious, it was very cold but sunny! They have forecast some snow overnight of course! My eye Op is still down for February 23rd at the moment and I will be utilising my BookBeat account for the week afterwards, especially where I have to have my head down for 45 minutes of every hour!!!!
Have a wonderful week and I am aiming to get back to posting most days now that everything has settled down a bit.
Hugs & Love, Susie & Coco xx
Happy Valentines Day Too!
As you know I am not big on watching the news, however I do read the headlines on The Daily Telegraph to just see what is happening. Most of the time it is so depressing however yesterday the headlines were a shock!
The foundations of Windsor Castle must be rocking after yesterday’s news headlines of Mr Mountbatten-Windsor being arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office, an offence which if found guilty carries the sentence of life in prison! A lot of the news is just depressing but this is playing out like a soap opera. I am sure this is how our Parents and Grandparents felt when King Edward the VIII abdicated so that he could marry Wallis Simpson, a Constitutional crisis. I am sure all this is going to be a Netflix film when the dust settles!
I am going through another one of those periods where I am waking up anywhere between 2.00am and 4.00am! I do the same thing most days, eat more or less the same things so why one night I can sleep through without waking up and yet another period I am waking up at stupid o’clock is beyond me. However speaking to my friends I am not alone in this! Anyhoo I was awake at 2.00am today and I was wide awake so I got up and cleaned our home from top to bottom, before they all got up including the animals! It was quite peaceful really. I put an audio book on and I was off and do you know, it seemed a lot easier to clean at that time of day then during normal hours!!!! As you can tell from the picture above Coco did not even bother getting up when I left our room!!!
For those of you who follow me will know I have been reading Jane Bettany’s books and they are in the Cosy Mystery section of the bookshops. They really are very good. The characters are good and you learn a bit about them without getting bogged down and the stories do move through the book very well, with good conclusions. Very Agatha Christie based so if you like her books I am sure you will like these. I will let you know how we get on.
This is what I am also reading. Poppy Greer is getting married and has four of her old school friends as her Bridesmaids. Poppy gives all four of them a first class flight to a private Caribbean Island for a luxurious stay for her Hen Party, however the women underestimated their host and each other and secrets from their past surface and the trip of a lifetime becomes the hen do from hell! 
