Tropical Girl Reads

Christmas has arrived in Cumbria, and wedding bells are ringing.
But an ice-cold killer is waiting in the fells…

As the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, DI James Walker receives a phone call that puts paid to his Christmas break. During the wedding of the year at a lakeside hotel, the bride’s sister has vanished.

When Rachel left the wedding breakfast before her speech, newly-wed Libby was furious. But as the night went on with no sign of her maid-of-honour, Libby started to realise something was very, very wrong…

Before the wedding night is out, the lake is being searched for a body.

Something old, something new. One guest is a killer. The question is: who?

The most chilling crime thriller you’ll read this winter, perfect for fans of Catherine Cooper’s The Chalet and Simon McCleave’s The Snowdonia Killings – and anyone who prefers their mince pies with a side of murder.

Needless to say, I am actually addicted to this series!

The story starts with a wedding that is held in a hotel during the Christmas week. During the weeding, the bridesmaid, Rachel who also happened to be the bride’s younger sister went missing after a drunken argument. Within few hours, Rachel’s body was found, beaten to death. One of the guests at the wedding must be responsible for the murder and nearly most of the wedding guests had been not getting along with Rachel.

From start to finish, I was really gripped by this thriller. Though it is DI James Walker series, the author somehow introduces all the main characters at the beginning of the story so if you are a first time reader of the series, then you would get to know the characters before hand! I like the fact that the author did a good job of making the reader feel like they are a part of the story and I was really hooked into the story from the start to finish. The ending was completely unexpected and overall, this was a fast paced thriller filled with twists and turns and unputdownable.

If you are looking for Christmas thrillers or love reading Christmas thrillers, then this one is for you–worth five stars!

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opinion only.

A gripping psychological suspense and a powerful tale of a house that holds a shocking secret.

When Alice and Leo move into a newly renovated house in The Circle, a gated community of exclusive houses, it is everything they’ve dreamed of. But appearances can be deceptive…

As Alice is getting to know her neighbours, she discovers a devastating secret about her new home, and begins to feel a strong connection with Nina, the therapist who lived there before.

Alice becomes obsessed with trying to piece together what happened two years before. But no one wants to talk about it. Her neighbors are keeping secrets and things are not as perfect as they seem…

This is the third book I have read from this author and after I enjoyed reading her debut book, I want to read all her books.

This book wasn’t bad–I would say this was an OK thriller. The story starts with Alice and Leo moving into a new housing compound known as The Circle. They meet and befriend other couples living in the same compound–Tamsin and Connor, Eve and Will, Maria and Tim and the elderly couple, Lorna and Edward. Then soon, Alice learns through a private investigator named Thomas Garinger that the house they live in is a site of a murder–a woman named Nina Maxwell was brutally murdered by her husband Oliver, right inside the house that Alice and Leo live in. And the coincidence of all is, Alice’s dead sister’s name was also Nina. Now Alice is obssessed with finding the truth about what really happened to Nina and whether she can trust anyone around her including her boyfriend, Leo.

To me, this was slightly boring but then in the middle it got interesting. However, I found the characters a little bit annoying and I thought Alice searching for answers and being suspicious was a little bit over the top. The ending wasn’t that surprising. Overall, it was an OK thriller and not as good as her previous books. Worth four stars.

I can’t trust him. I can’t live with him. I can’t let him go.

At my daughter Mabel’s sixth birthday party, there’s a cake with candles, sausages on the barbecue, and the sound of her friends’ excited voices as we open her gifts. But at the end of the day, I hug my daughter tightly, drop a kiss into her shiny brown hair… and leave her with my ex-husband, who won’t even meet my eyes.

After our divorce, Matthew and I wanted to do the best thing for Mabel. We agreed to share the family home, despite living separate lives. Now one of us stays with her, and one of us stays at the apartment across town.

The night of the party, I fall asleep on the sofa, tired and a little sad. When I wake up and stumble into my bedroom, I know immediately something is wrong.

There’s a body in my bed. A man I dated. In an apartment where only Matthew and I have the key.

Would Matthew go this far to be rid of me? I thought I could trust him… but now I can’t be sure.

Or has someone learned the terrible secret that both tore us apart, and tied us together forever?

This is the third book I have read written by Miranda Smith and I wasn’t disappointed!

Synopsis

Matthew and Lillian are divorced but are amicable. After leaving the party, Lillian returns home feeling drunk and when she reaches her apartment, she immediately falls asleep on her sofa. When she wakes up and comes into her room, she feels that something wasn’t right–and she finds a dead body lying on her bed.

Review

To me this was an interesting thriller with an intriguing plot. The story is told in Lillian’s and Matthew’s POV and they are both unreliable narrators in my opinion that you wouldn’t exactly know who is telling the truth. We also know that both Lillian and Matthew are holding a deep secret that involve a death of a person…who is actually connected to the person who was found in Lillian’s bed. Many of the suspects in the story are suspects and we don’t really know who is responsible for the murder. There were twists and turns and the fact that this is a fast paced thriller is a plus point for me. The ending was quite unexpected.

Overall, this was a good thriller packed with twists anfd turns and is quite fast paced. Worth 4.5 stars.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opinion only.

A journalist begins to question everything she knows about her mother’s murder in a startling novel of suspense by the New York Times bestselling author of The Body Reader.

Culpable in an exposé gone tragically wrong, investigative journalist Jupiter Bellarose takes her boss’s advice: head back to her hometown for a fluff piece and get her world in balance. But in Savannah, the past is waiting.

Twenty years ago Jupiter’s mother, actress and celebrated beauty Marie Nova, was murdered, leaving many in her wake: Jupiter’s father, who has erased memories of his wife’s murder with alcohol. The matriarch of the cosmetics company who helped make Marie a star—and who takes every opportunity to reopen old wounds. Then there’s the fragile cop with blood on his hands, and the killer whose confession no longer seems convincing.

With so many lingering questions, Jupiter must revisit the grisly event that has influenced every decision in her life. Maybe her homecoming will bring closure.

Or maybe the worst is yet to come.

Jupiter Bellrose is an investigative journalist working in Minnesota. So when the latest article left her in such a mental state, Jupiter decides to go to Savannah, Georgia, where once when she was a teenager, her mother, who was an uprising actress was brutally murdered and dismembered. Together with Ian, who was a police cop at the time, they try to find the secret behind the murder even though the culprit is already caught and is already behind bars.

This was in my opinion, an OK thriller. Not fast paced as I liked it to be but not a slow burn either. There were some boring parts in the story but overall, it was OK. There were some twists and turns and the book mainly talks about Jupiter’s past and mental state. Overall, it was a good thriller. Worth four stars.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opinion only.

There are thirteen knives. One by one they begin to disappear

Nora didn’t expect Hidden Lake Camp to be in a state of ruin. Dock full of rotten boards, smashed windows, cabins falling apart. To her new husband, Paul, the camp is the past he’d just as soon bury. Nora agreed to drive north with him to get his elderly parents settled while he makes enough repairs to sell the property. Only a few months, Paul said. The summer camp, however, and its deep lake have other plans.

After Nora’s first meal with his difficult family, one knife-part of a prized collection-goes missing. By the time the fourth and fifth vanish from behind locked doors and out from under watchful eyes, Nora can barely sleep. There’s talk of ghosts, secret rooms and someone at the summer camp found dead in the tall grass.

Unsettling, gripping, and totally original, Book of Knives is a literary thriller that shows how one person’s unraveling can bring the whole house down.

OK, the plot sounded interesting and intriguing and the book cover is appealing and so I decided to try this book out.

Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy this book as much I thought I should be and almost DNF the book.

Nora agrees to accompany her husband Paul to Hidden Lakes to look after Paul’s elderly parents and was surprised to see the camp in ruins. Paul’s brother Gabe and the kids are also at the camp with a Gabe’s wife named Salish as well. Then for some reason or the other, the thirteen knives start disappearing one by one. There is a rumor of a ghost hunting around the cabin and also a murder that had occured in the camp. And while these things are happening, tensions start developing between the family members.

First of all, I am not sure which type of genre it belongs to–horror or a mixture of horror and thriller? Second of all, this was a slow burn and there were few parts of the story where it was really boring and there were some parts in the story that I didn’t really understand. The ending to me was somewhat confusing. I don’t know whether it was just me, but honestly, I didn’t really enjoy reading this book. The plot was interesting but the way the story was executed was poor. Overall, a 2.5 stars for me.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opinion only.

A dark, satirical thriller by the bestselling Japanese author, following the perilous train ride of five highly motivated assassins—soon to be a major film from Sony

Nanao, nicknamed Lady Bird—the self-proclaimed “unluckiest assassin in the world”—boards a bullet train from Tokyo to Morioka with one simple task: grab a suitcase and get off at the next stop. Unbeknownst to him, the deadly duo Tangerine and Lemon are also after the very same suitcase—and they are not the only dangerous passengers onboard. Satoshi, “the Prince,” with the looks of an innocent schoolboy and the mind of a viciously cunning psychopath, is also in the mix and has history with some of the others. Risk fuels him as does a good philosophical debate . . . like, is killing really wrong? Chasing the Prince is another assassin with a score to settle for the time the Prince casually pushed a young boy off of a roof, leaving him comatose.

When the five assassins discover they are all on the same train, they realize their missions are not as unrelated as they first appear.

A massive bestseller in Japan, Bullet Train is an original and propulsive thriller that fizzes with an incredible energy and surprising humor as its complex net of double-crosses and twists unwind. Award-winning author Kotaro Isaka takes readers on a tension packed journey as the bullet train hurtles toward its final destination. Who will make it off the train alive—and what awaits them at the last stop?

A dark, satirical thriller by the bestselling Japanese author, following the perilous train ride of five highly motivated assassins—soon to be a major film from Sony

Nanao, nicknamed Lady Bird—the self-proclaimed “unluckiest assassin in the world”—boards a bullet train from Tokyo to Morioka with one simple task: grab a suitcase and get off at the next stop. Unbeknownst to him, the deadly duo Tangerine and Lemon are also after the very same suitcase—and they are not the only dangerous passengers onboard. Satoshi, “the Prince,” with the looks of an innocent schoolboy and the mind of a viciously cunning psychopath, is also in the mix and has history with some of the others. Risk fuels him as does a good philosophical debate . . . like, is killing really wrong? Chasing the Prince is another assassin with a score to settle for the time the Prince casually pushed a young boy off of a roof, leaving him comatose.

When the five assassins discover they are all on the same train, they realize their missions are not as unrelated as they first appear.

A massive bestseller in Japan, Bullet Train is an original and propulsive thriller that fizzes with an incredible energy and surprising humor as its complex net of double-crosses and twists unwind. Award-winning author Kotaro Isaka takes readers on a tension packed journey as the bullet train hurtles toward its final destination. Who will make it off the train alive—and what awaits them at the last stop?

If you like

• Thriller with five dangerous criminals
• A book set in Japan

Then Bullet Train will be the best. The story involved a Shinkansen known as Bullet Train that will journey from Tokyo to Morioka. Inside the train, there are five dangerous criminals–Satoshi known as “Prince” is a teenage psychopath, Kimura who wants to avenge on his son’s injury, Nanao the unluckiest assasin and the duo, Lemon and Tangerine. The story starts of with Lemon and Tangerine saving a dangerous boss’s son carrying a suitcase filled with money. The son ended up dead on the train ride and the suitcase goes missing. We see that the suitcase was stolen by Nanao on the mission to get off at Ueno once he is done with stealing but soon he loses the suitcase. Throughout the journey to Morioka, we see that all these criminals are connected in someway, including the mysterious “snack” girl.

In my opinion, the beginning to me was interesting and the story is told from the five criminals POVs. We see some disturbing cases and I have to say, the author did a good job of drawing the reader into the story. I also like how Lemon and Tangerine (we don’t know their real names) mentions about Thomas and the train, mentioning about the characters. The whole book to me felt like I was watching an action packed movie, (in reality this book will be turning into a movie with Brad Pitt in it) that is keeping me on the edge of the seat. And not only that, we don’t really know what is going to happen to these five killers when they finally reach their destination. I wasn’t really engrossed into the story as there are some parts which are little boring to read but I actually enjoyed reading this book–worth solid four stars.

All’s fair in love and revenge in this taut thriller from bestselling author Lisa Gray.

Ex–crime reporter Leonard Blaylock spends his days on an unusual hobby, developing forgotten and discarded rolls of film. He loves the small mysteries the photographs reveal to him. Then Leonard finds something no one would ever expect, or want, to see captured on film—the murder of a young woman.

But that’s impossible, because the woman is already dead. Leonard was there when it happened five years earlier.

He has never been able to shake his guilt from that terrible night. It cost Leonard everything: his career, his fiancée, his future. But if the woman didn’t really die, then what actually happened?

This was actually a very interesting thriller.

Leonard Blaylock is an ex crimes reporter who develops the forgotten and discarded rolls of film. So he gets a shock when he discovers one of the film rolls contains a picture of a murdered woman. But five years ago, Leonard had seen this woman dying in front of him which cause him to lose his job and fiancee. But if the woman did not die, what really happened back then?

In my opinion, this was a good thriller. Not too fast paced but not a slow burn either. To me it got more interesting by the middle of the book and then started becoming more interesting and intriguing with shocking plot twists. There were also too many suspects as well with a motive to kill. The ending was what actually twisted me in a complete surprise and I actually did not see that ending coming at all. Neverthless, I actually enjoyed reading this book and this is one of the rare thrillers that the main protagonist was a male and a potential villain as well.

So if you like plot twists, then I recommend this book–worth four stars!

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opionin only.