This is why this week has been so, so busy!  Little Lady has arrived safe and sound weighing in at 8 pounds, although after an emergency C-section due to her being so comfy, she was not coming out after twenty four hours on the labour ward!  Mom is doing very well even though she is sore and tired of course but so far she is being very good for the new Parents.  All the four legged friends have seen her and they are not too sure she is much use yet for playing and throwing tennis balls for them!  As per the new Parents wishes this will be the only photo of her  but I can tell you she has dark hair like her Mummy!

They came home on Tuesday evening and I have just lost count of what day it is this week!  I did go to Eldest’s on Wednesday working and yesterday got home jobs done which was a relief.  I have a basket of ironing to do this evening as DH is out all evening and all weekend at the County swimming championships at the 50m Pool.  However having got all my jobs done I am able to spend the weekend quilting!  I am hoping I will be able to show you some pictures soon.

Despite the chaos I have managed to keep up with our work too and not got behind which is a relief as I hate being behind with things be it work or home!  

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Susie’s Friday Book Club Extra!

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As promised at the beginning of January I wanted to move to doing two book posts per month and here is a book I finished a couple of weeks ago!  I am always on the lookout for a new Author and sometimes I pick a book up and reading the blurb looks good and then, having read half of the book, do not like it!  It is always diffiult and I suppose this is where your local Library is a great help with the try before you buy.  

When I was a little girl my Parents and I went every week to our local Library, above, to pick our books for the week.  It was Saturday afternoon and I loved spending a couple of hours in the Library and picking my books for the week and handing over my tickets.  As I got older the Children’s Library which was the windows on the left of the building did not hold my interest and as I was quite an advanced reader I was allowed to have main Library tickets and then I got six tickets, so I could get six books out!  I did develop a passion when I was a young teenager for the romance novels but then I also discovered the murder/mystery books, mainly Agatha Christie and loved every one of them.  So I used to alternate between murder/mystery, historical fiction, romance and the occasional gothic horror!  

Anyway I found the above book on BookBeat and listened to it whilst I was at Eldest’s work and then listened to it on the way home in the car.  

Monday Mornings can be bad but for these four people getting into an elevator in the middle of Manhatten it is going to get a whole lot worse.  They each press a button for a different floor but one by one each floor goes past without the elevator stopping to let them out.  It reaches the top of the building when it does stop and no pressing of the buttons can get it to open the doors or move.  Suddenly it begins to fall and none of the safety systems kicked in, it did not stop until it got to the bottom when the ground finally stopped it.  

It was a terrible accident but when Tuesday arrives and another elevator in another Manhatten skyrise falls to the bottom , Wednesday the same and for one of the most vertical cities in the World people were starting to avoid using any elevator.  The Police are not convinced there is any foul play but then a body is found on the Highline with no fingers and no face and whilst investigating that they find he was an elevator repair man!  How does this relate to the deaths over the last three days and can the Detectives assigned to the case stop them before any more deaths?

It was a really good book.  The story moved through quite well and the characters were well rounded without there being too much information where you get confused as to who is who etc.  The suggestion of who had done the evil deed does not come out until the end and it is a very good twist.  No blood, guts and gore in it either for those that do not like that sort of thing.  

I really enjoyed the Book and gave it five stars and I will now be looking out for more of Mr Linwood’s books.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend and I will see you here next week.  DH is away all week at a business exhibition so I will have a few hours free on my own this coming week and I am hoping to catch up on all those little jobs that get put to one side!!!

Hugs & Love, Susie & Coco xx

Coco the other morning when it was very frosty!

Here in Derbyshire we have been lucky with the weather and although it has been very, very cold we avoided the heavy snowfall although there was some in the north of the County but we have had some very hard frosts and ice!

Well as I write this I am a week late with Book Club (!) and it is now January 16th where did that go?  At this rate it will be December again soon and Christmas.  

I have been catching up with our work and Eldest’s work, which is now done, and home jobs of course.  We are still waiting for the arrival of the baby but Fiancée’s Due Date is January 22nd so very near now, although she was hoping that the baby would arrive a little sooner. As long as it is not like my Boys who were both ten days late!  However as we all know they come on their time not ours!  I will let you know when it happens.  

Down to Book Club and what I have been reading at the start of the new year.  I did get quite a bit of reading done over the Christmas Holidays as we were quiet and it was great, so although it was the end of the year I am putting them into January as the hooks were so good.

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*****

Not only is the cover of this book absolutely stunning the story is good too and I gave it five stars.  Lillian Delaney is an apprentice book binder in Oxford in 1901.  She takes on her first commission and while she is at her Patron’s home she finds a book which has been burnt in amongst a delivery sent to him.  He gives it to her and Lillian is fascinated with the book.  When back at the workshop she starts to take it apart to repair it when she finds a letter which tells the story of a forbidden love but it ends on half a page and Lillian is determined to find out who the woman is writing the letter and what happened to her.  Lillian sets off on a journey of discovery which takes her to London and other book binders and to several bookshops to try and find the books that the first letter was put in.  Along the journey she meets peopole who help  and others who want to kill her!  

I really enjoyed it.  I love historical fiction anyway, but this was so different to anything I have read for a while so I think that helped.  

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*****

Of course my most favourite of genres is crime/mystery books but sometimes I want something which is not too heavy, so the genre of cosy crime I usually find something to read there.  This book was in that pile.

Violet Brewster has moved to Merrywell, Derbyshire from the city for a new start in the country.  She is running her own marketing business in the village and loving meeting her neighbours and made friends with other business owners.  Violet has a meeting with the owners of the local garden centre to sort out some marketing but she finds him distraught holding the body of his wife by ofn the the diplays of plants.  Violet bends down to see if there is a pulse but sadly she has passed away.  The police arrive and suspect that she slipped on the wet paving stones and banged her head but the more they investigate the more they realise she was murdered, but who did it?

I absolutely loved the story, it was easy to read, it flowed well but did not get bogged down with too much detail on the characters or the story.  Jane Bettany has written four more Merrywell books so I will be looking out for them.  

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This book looked like a good one but half way through I sort of lost interest in it!  Grace meets Jack in the park where she is with her sister Millie who is Downs.  Jack dances with Millie and Grace is impressed with his kindness.  As she gets to know him he is the man she has been waiting for; he is kind to her and Millie, he has a very good job as one of the top Barristers in London and when he proposes to her she accepts without a second thought!  However she should have had that second, third and fourth thought!

On their wedding day, Millie falls down the steps of the Registry Office going in and Grace is distraught, she wants to call the wedding off but Jack says no and they should carry on as Millie is taken to hospital with a broken leg .  Millie tells Grace that Jack pushed her but Grace thinks it is just shock until she gets to her Honeymoon destination and finds out that Jack is not kind.  She tries to escape but he has her under his tumb now, will Grace ever be free and can she save Millie?

The story was okay but the story of Grace trying to find a way to escape went on too long without any movement in the story.  When you get to the end of the book the ending is predicatable and a little light on explanations which is why it got three stars from me.

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*****

This was Jayne’s pick for our Cosy Girls Book Club November/December 2025 and it was great and well deserved Five Stars.

Neve is managing the Stardust Lake Hotel on a snowy covered island in Scotland with her brother.  However she is remembering her lost love, Oakley Rey, who loved being with her on the island but left to pursue his dreams of acting when he got a part on a TV show filming half way around the world.  However as Christmas approaches and the hotel guests begin to arrive for the Christmas and New Year Festivities it also brings Oakley.  Neve has a secret and she wants to tell Oakley but is scared of how he will react and she does not know whether she should in light of the success of his show?  Whilst she is coming down the stairs at her cabin she collapses and falls down the stairs and blacks out.  Oakley helps her brother to get her to the mainland via the company helicopter but will Neve be okay and what about the secret?

I loved the story, it was not too sugary and they all sort it out by the end of the book.  It is a very gentle read but the story does move along very well.

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These two were my choice for December as they were two short volumes as it was Christmas.   

Murder in Advent – It is the Festive season and Litchester is getting reading for carols by candlelight at the Cathedral but there is also an argument happening about the sale of the 1225 copy of the Magna Carter that the Cathedral owns to help pay for the upkeep.  So instead of harmony and the best of the Festive season there is murder and secrets abound.

I got to the end of it but should have DNF’d it !  It was just boring it was rather like reading the Parish Council Minutes!  I honestly don’t know how some books get published!

The Christmas Guest – Now this was a completely different book!  This is a classic Country House murder mystery!  Ashley Smith is working in London and is quite lonely being so far from her home in the US, when her classmate invites her for Christmas at their Cotswold Manor.  She records everything in her diary and is excited to have a traditional English Christmas and she also gets to meet her friends twin brother, Adam.  However when Ashley arrives at the Manor House she realises that things might not be as they seem and will she avoid being caught up in the murder?

I gave it five stars because again it was not a long book but there is a lot packed into it and it had that wonderful Christmas feel.  Definitely one for your shelf.

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I hope you have found something in here that you would like to read and are having a great January and start of the year.

Hugs & Love, Susie & Coco xx

I did rather well with my Reading Aims in 2025.  I re-did my Goodreads account at the start of the year and used that to track my reading as well as my Book Journal too.  Last year for the Reading Challenge I chose to try and read 50 books and actually read 55 so for this year’s Challenge I chose to read 100 books! 

Now there has been a lot of controversy about people saying they are going to read 100 books this year but why?  Like book reviews it is all subjective.  Someone may only read five books this year, whereas someone else will only read 1 and of course there are some who will read more than 100.  It is up to everyone to set themselves whatever goals they like and we should, quite honestly, keep quiet about it!  It is like if you put a review of a popular book up and say you do not like it, people come at you about it.  That is the whole point of a point of view, you are not going to like some books and the ones you do like someone else might not like them.  This is the joy of reading.

The book that I did not particularly like is being talked about at the moment, “The Housemaid” by Freida McFadden.  It has now been turned into a film.  I read the book last year along with another of Ms McFadden’s books.  Firstly the plots are the same and in both books I read there as an “ick” factor!  They were also both predictable even with the twists and by the time you got to the end there were some plot holes.  Now that is my opinion and I know there are a lot of people who love her and her books, 

*****

Of my 55 books last year I had 23 which were Five Star Reads and here they are :

The majority of thm are crime/thrillers which I love as a genre but mixed in are a few different ones; “The Secret Christmas Bookshop” is very much a Christmas read and “A Funny Story” is very much a summer chick book read.  All of them have been reviewed by me for our Friday Book Club in 2025.

To pick my favourite five star read out of the books above is hard as they are all so good, hence the five stars but if I am really pushed my favourite of the year would be “The Wartime Bookshp”  This is definitely a cosy mystery but also about women coming together during WWII and helping each other in an English Village that although far from the war is still affected by it.  There are more books in the series and I am intending on getting them.  

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Here are my 1 Star or DNF books of 2025:

Not too many as I try very hard to not get books that I don’t absolutely love.  However these nine caught me out, although Where The Crawdads Sing was Jayne’s and my Book Club Book, I could not get on with it at all.  The top four I just did not like and DNF’d them.  Yellowface was just dreadful!  The characters were not likeable and the premise was just out there. 

I really wanted to love The Book That Wouldn’t Burn and it is a series of three books which I had all three.  However I got half way through it and it was so boring.  The story was not there are all and the characters were doing everything at a snails pace so that was DNF’s and the other books went with it.  

Verity I was told to read by everyone as they loved it, could not put it down etc.  I read it and finished it but by the end of it I wanted to kill everyone of the characters!  None of them came out of the story in a good light and the whole story was just slightly yuck!  I have since read on line other reviews about Colleen Hoover’s books and they are all written in the same way so I will not be reading any more of hers!

I have saved Message Deleted for last as I cannot believe that this book was ever published!  K.L. Slater needs to do more research as she had police doing things in this book that they would never do!  The story was confused and quite frankly did not know how to end which when it came it was rushed and a mess!  I did not DNF’d it but wish I had, it was one of those books that I was hoping would get better but it never did and to add to all this characters were thin and not likeable at all.  I will never buy another of her books.

Thnere were a lot of other books, 23 exactly, in between the  Five Stars and One Star with all different ratings most of which have appeared on our Friday Book Club.  I hope you have enjoyed  this look at the books I read in 2025. 

Hugs & Love, Susie & Coco xx

Well one of my Aims at the start of this year, as in most years, was to increase my reading.  I don’t know about you but I do go through phases of reading non-stop and then only reading a bit a day and of course there is the inevitable reading slump which seems to affect everyone at some point.  I have also got myself out of my reading slump by listening to books through the BookBeat App when I am working.  This has definitely helped and some of the books have been really successful and others not so much but that happens with hard copy books too.  

Anyway onto the books I have read and listened too in November 2025 so far;

Thisa is a hard copy book which I started last month and have about twenty pages left.  It is about the three Dahlias and them investigating a murder at the Castle in Scotland where they have been invited to  the wedding of their dear friend and the Laird of the Castle.  The castle gets cut off by a bad snow storm and also loses power and then the murder happens.  Not only is a young woman dead but she is wearing the wedding dress and a diamond necklace which had gone missing!  Why and who did it?  It is a gentle read with no horros in it and I have thoroughly enjoyed it.  Just waiting to see who the murderer is!!!!

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This is one of the hard copy books I am not sure of!  I sort of liked it but then the more I got into the book the more I did not like the main character at all!

Dinah Marshall meets up with her old Oxford University friends for a weekend away but she was not invited the first time round, she was invited because one of the other friends could not make it.  So Dinah knows she is second best.  It does not help that she did not finish University with her friends but that was another story.  They are staying in a fabulous home in one of the Home County villages whilst the owners are holidaying abroad.  To Dinah this home represents everything her life is not, her small flat would fit into the sitting room and her job at the local cafe does not provide her with much money.  She becomes obsessed with the owners of the home and starts to stalk them, putting herself on the fringes of their group and then miracle of miracles she gets drawn into their group, but it will end in murder.

Dinah is not a likeable person and the more you get to know her the more you don’t like her but then she has to put up with a very pushy younger sister who treats her like her third child and a mother wo does not care about her at all, she is seen as just a nuisance and her sister has spies reporting on Dinah’s behaviour to her!  Therefore you begin to feel sorry for her but then she does something and you are right back to the you could quite cheerully smack her!!!  This is where I got to with this book and at the end it is a bit of a mess.  Would I read another one  of Ruth Irons books?  Probably not but I did give it four stars.

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I gave this Four Stars as well because again I was not sure about the story and again the ending was not quite right!

Two couples, one bad decision a death and a cover up!  Kirsten and Nick are driving home after a weekend away in Devon when they are involved in an accident and a man is killed.  Instead of calling the autorities they decide that they will cover it up including taking the dog that the man was walking!  

Amy & Greg have been married for ten years and are expecting their first baby together.  When Greg fails to come hom from a short dog walk Amy begins to worry and calls the Police, their friends and his parents.  The Police first think that Greg has left because of his life changing, baby on the way, his business is slow, been married for ten years.  However Any knows that Greg would not leave her and something is wrong but they cannot find him or their dog Rusty.  Amy decides to investigate his disappearance herself and vows to get justice and if she cannot get justice then it will be revenge!

The story wa good although in parts slightly annoying.  There is a twist in the end but then the final bit is a bit far fetched so hmm.  Definitely one I would not read again.

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*****

This I listened to whilst doing a job on Thursday and finished it on Thursday as well!  I loved it!  If I could give it more stars I would!

DI Barton is about to retire but he is not sure if he actually wants to.  His loving wife Holly has put up with so much over the years and now their children, one at University and one about to go, are older he wants to give Holly time to do what she wants to do for a change.  However there is one last case he needs to deal with before he leaves and it is an unusal case.  Firstly he has to help his young neighbour who has been abandoned by her husband with their almost one year old son.  He finds her stood in her living room with no heat or lights on and a knife in her hand.  She has not done anything but she is stood looking into the distance, her son is safe upstairs in his cot.  He taks her and the little boy home and Holly moves into high gear getting her warm and feeding the baby.  He knows they are safe.

The same thing cannot be said for a member of the local Book Club.  He and his wife went home after the meeting at the beginning of December and whilst he was in his study have a nightcap whisky he falls to sleep never to wake up.  It is assumed he died of a heart attack until the Pathologist finds no heart disease.  DI Barton and his team take on this last case to find the murderer before he strikes again, although he may already have done so.

This story is well written, DI Barton and the characters are very likeable and he goes about his investigation without any fanfare but does so in a way where he gets answers without too much stress.  It is funny in places and there is no angst in it.  All in all a great read with a good ending.  There are several of the DI Barton books so I am now able to go back and read the others which is always a bonus finding a new set of books!

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As we are going into the third week of November, the third “Ber” Month, I have got out my “Christmas” books which I love to read at this time of year, all those cosy Christmas books with the odd Christmas murder thrown in!!!!  I will let you have a list next month.  

I have also started to listen to this on my Book App.  I have seen a lot of recommendations for Riley Sager books and as we know what one person likes is not always liked by someone else and this may be the case with his books!  I am 20% of the way through this and will be listening to it whilst I am cleaning but the Narrator, Stephanie Cannon, her voice is a little hard to listen to!  She comes across as a little girl playing dress up!!!  I will contine to see how it goes but not sure yet!

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That is my round up for November.  December is looking good as I got quite a few Christmas books on my TBR shelf from last year.  As the nights are drawing in fast, it is now dark by 4.15pm, it is the perfect time of year for reading by the fire.  Hopefully by the end of today I will be able to finish my book and then start another.  I hope you lovely lot are able to find time to read over the weekend. 

Hugs & Love Susie & Coco xx

As you, who have followed me for a while now, know I love crime/thrillers as my book of choice but being a Gemini I also love fantasy books, historical books, the very occasional romance book and novels too!  So you could say any book.  However it has to be the right book!!

What do I mean by the right book?  Well, although they say “do not judge a book by its cover” I do.  If the cover does not look right or I don’t like it then generally I don’t like the book itself.  I know that is perhaps shallow but it has stood me in good stead with my choice of books.  This is part of what I am going to tell you about.  Audio books.  The App I am using, and it has been very good, is BookBeat.  They have varying Memberships and depending upon how much you want to use the App depends upon the cost.  I am on the top amount because I am using it quite a bit but they do a try out for 30 days free.  I tend to listen to the Books when I am at Eldest’s working there and it has been really good and I also listen to them on the drive home tool

Now this was the book I was reading and listening to on our October Friday Book Club and I had just started it.  Well It was a little slow to start with but I thought it would pick up when Liv got to the Library and then meeting Evar.  It didn’t!  It was dreadful, it was boring, the characters were flat and they never seemed to get anywhere.  The story was just about them being in the Library and doing well not a lot.  Mr Lawrence kept referring to things but nothing ever happened.  So I got to page 480 out of 576 and then DNF’d it!  The worse part; it is Book One of a trilogy and I also have the other two books and all three are now in my donate pile!  Can I tell you what a huge disappointment this was and I loved the cover!

This is my next book that I am reading, not listening to.  Now this book is another story in a series of The Dahlia Stories, which I have not read before., so I will be able to go back and read the others.  Rosalind, Caro & Posy are used to playing the part of Dahlia Lively Detective in films but they have discovered a talent for investigating real life crimes.  They are all invited, with their partners, to a high society wedding at Christmas in a Scottish Castle and no sooner have they arrived when a dead body is found on the beach beneath the castle wearing a very expensive diamond necklace and a wedding dress!  Will the wedding be called off or can the three lady “detectives” solve it and help the bride and groom?

I have only just started this but so far it is giving very cosy, blanket and cup of tea vibes, not forgetting Coco curled up next to me. 

Now I listened to this over two days and gave it five stars!  However if you are not in the mood for a trial, especially based in the British legal system then you may find this borning.  However as it is the field I worked in for ten years  it brought back so many memories and I could follow all the ins and outs of it. 

A retired teacher  leaves his home on New Year’s Eve to buy a bottle of champagne for him and his wife to toast the New Year in as their original plans were cancelled due to the weather.  Whilst he is out he comes across three male 17 year olds who attack him and he loses his life.  All three are charged with Murder and the three Defence Barristers are busy trying to defend their Clients whilst blaming the other two for the murder.  The Preosecuting Barrister is busy trying to prove that all three did it but the evidence starts to show a different story.  Over the course of the chapters we get to hear from all the defendents and their back stories until we get to the conclusion of the case and the Jury retire to consider their verdict.  There are a few twists at the end of the book.

I really enjoyed it but as I say a few people have said that they found it boring and basically too much talking!

Finally I come to  “His and Hers” by Alice Feeney whose books I have seen around but never read any of them. Again I listenend to this one and began it on October 12th and finished it on the 15th.  I did give it five stars as I did think the story was good and the narration of the male parts was done by Richard Armitage.  Now if you don’t know who he is, he played Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbitt and he does have a very distinctive voice!

Anna Andrews is a newsreader for the BBC News Lunchtime programme, a job she has been doing since the previous news anchor went on maternity leave and then got pregnant straight away after the first baby.   So Anna has enjoyed a few years in the top spot.  This has been her salvation after a traumatic few years when her marriage to Jack ended in divorce.  He was busy with his job as a DCI in the Police and then there was their daughter.  Her colleague comes back to work and Anna is transferred back to being a roving reporter and her first assignment is back in her childhood village of Blackdown and where all her problems started.  A woman is found dead in the woods and as Anna begins to report on it she discovers it is an old school friend of hers and Jacks and then Jack is suspected of knowing something about the death.  Can they prove tht he had nothing to do with it and find out who the actual killer is?  

My only complaint of this book, and I was talking to DH about this, is that I guessed who the baddy was by the middle of the book!  Now is this because I have read so many thriller/crime books over the years that I have become so habituated to these stories?  I got to the end of it and although I did enjoy it, I also felt a little flat when the ending came with a sort of shrug of the shoulder!  What I am also concerned about is, is it because I am listening to these books instead of reading them?  Do you not gain the same enjoyment listening to a book as you do from actually holding the book and reading it?  I am going to see how this goes with the book I am currently reading as opposed to the one I am currently listening to!

I am going to get some reading done this weekend, along with my quilting and a few other home jobs which need finishing too.  The weather is forecast to be not very nice with a possible storm coming through on Sunday, but Coco and I will be tucked up at home and DH will be at the swimming pool.  Hopefully it will have passed over by the time he needs to pack all the equipment up!  

Have a wonderful Literary weekend you lovely lot.

Hugs & Love, Susie & Booky Coco xx

Welcome to Susie’s Friday Book Club for October!  It has been a busy month since our last Book Club Friday for my reading and also Jayne’s and my Book Club Book too.

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This was Jayne’s pick for our Book Club for September.  When we went for lunch Jayne was telling me that it took her a while to get into the book but when she did she loved it and the ending and she liked all the characters.  I completely disappointed her by my review; I absolutely hated it!!!!  She was mortified but I said no this is the whole point of a book club, you are not going to like every choice and she may not like my Choice for October!  

I started to read this but found it heavy going from the start, so I swapped to listening to it but still found it heavy going.  I did not get into the characters at all and in fact did not like them very much either.  The fact that she was left completely on her own as a young child to fend for herself and then when she made some money with her drawings into books and finally got back with the man who, as a boy, had helped her and then she died! No not my cup of tea at all.  I did think this when it was first published but I did finish it for Jayne, but is it not a book I would pick for myself.

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I also read this in September, “The Countdown Killer”.  A killer is tracking people down and killing them and making a DVD about it, one of which finds its way into the hands of DCI Cara Elliott.  The murdered man is found and they work out that there is 48 hours between the time of abduction and the death and so far the victims have gotten away with various crimes by being found not guilty in court, so is this revenge?  When the killer finds out he is being investigated he kidnaps a police officer on the team, who now have to race the 48 hours to find him and get him back and find the killer before he kills again.

The story was good, but the ending was a  little flat!  I read and listened to this but the audio, the Narrator was doing all the voices and the men came across as either sounding like they had a heavy cold or stupid, which really put me off the audio!  In the end I gave this three stars!

This is my next book I have just started to read.  I love books about books or bookshops or anything to do with books so this was definitely coming home with me!

It is a fantasy book where Evar has been trapped within the vast library which is older than Empires and larger than cities.  Livina has always lived in a tiny settlement on the Dust but both their lives collide in the Library where Evar thinks he will never be free and Liv wants to be there forever!  Can they make it work?

I have read the first 50 pages and it has been a slow start although now that Liv is at the Library it is picking up a bit.  This is the first of three books so it may be that Mr Lawrence is building the characters and stories, but I will wait and see how I feel when I have finished this book!  

Finally this was my Pick for September for Jayne’s and ,my Book Club book and I will tell you all about it next Friday after Jayne and I have had lunch on Tuesday!

I hope you have had a great week, good weekend to come and you can find some time to read, whatever else you are up to. 

Hugs & Love, Susie & Coco xx

Waterstones, Piccadilly – Europe’s Largest Bookstore.

Since we have been back from holiday I have managed to still get some reading in despite cathing up on work and home jobs!!  Our holiday seems like a lifetime ago now but being in September  we are definitely feeling the Autumn weather making itself known now with cooler evenings and of course it is getting dark earlier and earlier.  I do love this time of year though and I also think I tend to read more as the nights draw in.  

During our holiday I did start three books which I ended up DNFing for various reasons.  They were:

“The Housekeepers” by Alex Hay  /  “The Village Library Demon Hunting Society” by C.W. Waggoner /  “A Winter’s Murder” by Simon Brew.

The Housekeepers was a good idea set in the 1920’s England and they get together to rob their employers.  However the writing and style did not come across at all well, so after 50 pages I DNF’d it!

The Village Library Demon Hunting Society was again a good idea except again the writing was not good and the demon appearing was not Stephen King inspired at all!  DNF

Finally A Winter’s Murder was a story where you decide what direction it will take and you jump around pages with the decisions and I took about four turns and then I was out as I had made the wrong decisions!  I could not be bothered to go back and start again! DNF

*

Finally “Yellowface” by R.F. Kuang I read and listened to this and got half way through the book and I just got to the point where I did not like any of the characters at all and would have quite happily slapped them all!  The whole premise of the book, one character stealing the unpublished book of her dead friend and passing it off as her own and then the person who discovers the deception being equally immoral.  Because of this I DND’d it also!

*****

Finally I read this and gave it five stars!   Small town life has lots of secrets especially at the school gates.  Newly divorced Mom Jude is drawn to Widower Will especially when their daughters become friends but she is warned off him by the other Moms because his wife died in mysterious circumstances and his partner has been missing for a few years!  Can Jude prove them wrong or will she be next?  

This was well written.  You get to follow Jude in her quest along with other mysteries surrounding the Mom’s at the school gates and their stressful lives even when they appear organised and happy!  A very good book and a good ending.

*****

Karin Slaughter is one of my favourite Authors and I have read several of her books already.  This one was published in June this year and I began it whilst on holiday.  North Falls is a small town and everyone knows everyone’s business and a lot of the time actually related to each other.  On 4th of July cook out and fireworks for the town, Deputy Sherriff Emmy Clifton is asked by her best friend if she will talk to her step-daughter, Madison, who has become very withdrawn to see if Emmy can find out what is wrong.  Before she has chance Madison and her best friend Cheyenne go mising and Emmy throws herself into finding the girls, but she is not ready for all the secrets that are going to be revealed.

The characters in the book are very well crafted and the interactions of them with each other whilst trying to find out what happened to the two teenagers is well done.  There is a twist near the end which I did see coming but it did not detract from the book.  It is a thriller but also about how human these people are.  I really enjoyed it.

***

Finally for this month is “The Housemaid” by Freida McFadden.  This is where I will perhaps lose people with my opinion on this book!  Earlier in the year I listened to “The Tenant” by Ms McFadden on audiobook, the first of her books I read/listened to and my Review was in July 2025.  I gave it two stars!  As you can imagine I went into this with a bit of trepidation and I was right!

Millie is desperate for a job so she does not have to live in her car anymore.  The problem is that very few people want to give you a job after they know you have been in prison.  However she sees this job for a live in Housemaid in a very nice area on Long Island and she applies.  Mrs Nina Winchester interviews her and offers her the job to begin immediately and Millie is so relieved. 

Her room is in th attic and is small, cramped and the window does not open and to make matters worse there is a lock but on the outside of the door which makes her suspecious.  However the room has a bed, its own bathroom and it is going into winter.  Mr Andrew Winchester is very handsome and helps Millie to settle in and navigate Nina’s unstable outbursts and their daughters rude behaviour but she will have to be careful not to get too involved or attached she needs the job.   The longer she is at the house the longer Millie realises that things are not right with the Winchesters, but she has to stay, however how long can she last in this deeply disfunctional home?

Now don’t get me wrong the book is okay but having read The Tennant I quickly realised that it and The Housemaid are the same plat with slight tweeks here and there.  It has a similar twist and a flat ending again, just like The Tenant! However it did not have as many “ick” moments in as The Tenant does, hence three starts for this but only two starts for The Tenant!

I have found this problem with some other authors, where they find a formula and so every book is written in the same way and for me that gets boring.  Ms MCFadden’s books are not long and it does move quickly but if all of her books are the same I won’t be reading them. I have one more of her books on my TBR shelf and I will read that but if it is the same then I am afraid she will not become a favourite of mine.  I know there are a lot of thriller book readers out there who aboslutely love her books, but I don’t think I am going to be one of them! 

I have read one more book which was for Jayne’s and my Book Club book for September and I will tell you about that next week as I am seeing Jayne for lunch on Tuesday!  

I hope you lovely lot have a wonderful weekend, find some time to read, whatever you are up to and I shall see you all back here on Monday. 

Hugs & Love, Susie & Cocoxx

Above are the books I have brought with me on Holiday.  As those who follow me know that along with Quilting, Reading is my other passion.  One of my Aims at the beginning of the year was to do more reading and I have certainly tried, along with also doing our Little Book Club with Jayne and also listening to Boots when I am at Eldest’s working.  So far I have been getting through more books and this has encouraged me to read more physical books as well.  

However at the end of June I went for my annual eye test and my old Optician had retured and the new one said I needed an uptick in my perscription.  However he felt I would benefit from some new lenses which help those who work al day on a computer and then with reading.  They are in fact like a graduated lense.  I decided to given them a try although I was a little apprehensive. Well I have given them a month and I am not getting on very well with them at all.  Of course there is nothing I can do whilst I am in Scotland but have an appointment when I get back to sort them out!  

This has meant that I have not done as much reading as I would have liked due to these goasses.  However I have read Jayne’s and My’s Book Club Book this month which I chose:

Jayne reads my Blog so I will have to not give the game away too much with I loved it! I chose it as it is definitely something I wold not normally pick up but I wanted to be fair about choosing the books to not always have the same genre which I know we can fall into.  My only stiputlation from my point of view when Jayne and I were sorting our Litte Book Club out wa that I would not read any deep or meaningful books such as “The Kite Runner” or “The Tattooist of Auschwitz”!  I am sure they are tremendous books but I read books to escape and that style of book I would not want to read.  This is why I have never joined a book club because whenever I have spoken to anyone in the Club they end up always readinf this type of book!  

Anyway back to ” Funny Story” Daphne is getting married to Peter and they have moved back to his home town, where his parents live and all his old friends, including his best friend from Kindergarton, Petra.  Petra is living with Milkes.  Just before Daphne’s wedding Peter says he cannot marry her as he has realised that he loves Petra and she loves him.  That night he leaves to go on holiday with Petra and asks Daphne to move out of the home they share!  Daphne  loses her home and her Fiancé!  She does however meet Miles who offers her his spare room and they both are miserable together.  One drunken evening they decided to take a picture together and post it on Social media and make out that they are now a couple to get back at their horrendous ex’s.  Of course trouble begins going down this path.  

It is a great summer read.  Very easy but well written and I will now be buying Ms Henry’s other books!

When we are home I will go through all my other books I brought away because I also missed World Book Lovers Day on August 9th!   

Hugs & Love Susie xxx