Welcome to Book Club Friday!  I have been keeping up with my Aims for the year and been reading more and I have also discovered audio books now, especially when I am working.  Also Jayne’s and my Book Club is making me read more as well. To that end I have finished two books and several audio books in June!

This is Jayne’s & My Book Club Book for July.  I am on Page 229 out of 424 and am really enjoying it.  Nancy is trying to rebuild her life after her mother & step-father were murdered by her step-brother and to help her heal she heads to her Grandmother’s home, Tall Chimneys, in Cornwall. However the press find her wanting to know what really happened on the night in question and Nancy just wants to forget but Tall Chimneys has its own dark legacy from the last War and someone knows all about it and about the night of the murders and they have nothing left to lose.  Can Nancy keep all the secrets hidden?

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This is my book I am reading at the moment and you know, for those who have followed me for a while, that Clive Cussler is my go to Author for escapism!  This book brings together the original book by Mr Cussler “Raise The Titanic” a Dirk Pitt Adventure with the Isaac Bell Adventures set in 1911.  Bell is tasked with explaining the deaths of nine miners in a mine in Colorado but it was not an ordinary mine and they were trying to locate a rare element which eventually takes Bell to Europe.  Dirk Pitt when he raised the Titanic was looking for the very same rare element, how are these two cases linked?

I have only just started this but know it will be a great story.

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I am still not convinced about audio books!  There I said it!  I have out of the fifteen I have listened to over the last few months only found three that I have given Five Stars to!  Twelve of them have ranged from one star to three stars!  I get to the end of the book I am listening to with a quite deflated view of the book, the author or both!  

This one, “The Book Seller” looked quite promising but!  It is about Helen who has been released from prison on Licence after killing her Boyfriend who was abusive to her.  She has decided that instead of going back to her civil service job she wants to own a book store selling second hand books and with some money she has inherited is using that to set up the shop.  However from the start things go wrong with a break in at the shop and her home, neighbours at the shop she is worried are trying to get her out of her shop so they can take over and a Parole Officer who is obnoxious!  She gets some good luck with buying second hand books for her store and is given a vast collection of books by an elderly lady as she is downsizing her home.  Helen is ready to open until someone else comes in and trashes all the work she has done so far!  Can she sort it out before her opening day and will she be able to succeed?

The premise was good but very slow in places repeating the same sort of day over and over again before we actually got further into the story.  The ending was predicatable having been led there right at the end of the book in all a rush to finish it!  I would not read or listen to this again and I only gave it Three Stars.

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I have seen a lot of books around Bookstagram and reviews for Freida McFadden’s work and have her most popular book “The Housemaid” in paperback on my TBR shelf.  So when I saw this on the Must Listen To section I downloaded it!  I really wished I hadn’t!  If this book is anything to go by I may not like “The Housemaid” either!  I gave this book only Two Stars!

Blake Porter has been made VP of Marketing in the company he has been at for ten years in Manhatten.  He has just bought a lovely old Brownstone and he is engaged to a wonderful woman who bakes!!  In the space of a week his world collapses when he is fired from his job, his wages of which are paying for the mortgage on his home.  The only way out is to rent one of the bedrooms to someone whilst he looks for a new job and enter Whitney who is down to earth, charming and willing to pay what he asks for the room.  After the first week things begin to go wrong, Blake’s food is going missing, his neighbour is upset with him, he wakes in the middle of the night to hear strange noises coming from their Tenant’s room.  Blake begins to think he has done the wrong thing renting the room out but then his business life begins to have problems again does Whitney know more about him than he thinks?

I will give you a trigger warning for this book some of the descriptive bits are very yuck! Very, very yuck!  By the time you get to near the end of the book, again, you see the twist and admittedly it is a good twist but by the Epilogue you really don’t like any of the characters and the conclusion you are left with a bit of a well it happened but no explanation of how it was resolved sort of thing!  

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I think this is my problem with audio books I start off with high hopes of the book being good and then, for whatever reason, by the end of it I think if I had been reading it I would have probably DNF it!   It does while away the hours whilst I am working to be able to listen to something as I find I cannot listen to music in my ears whilst I am working!  Don’t ask me why?!  So will continue to listen to the books but I do think as a bit of a palate cleanser I will listen to a few of my most favourite books, to help with these books that I really don’t like!

I will let you know how I get on with “The Housemaid” when I eventually read it!

I hope you are all having a wonderful Friday and you find time to read and a great weekend to come. 

Hugs & Love, Susie & Coco xx