🏚Wake by Shelley Burr…. A Book Blog Tour Review!!!🏚

Stunning Cover!!!

Publication Date: Out now!!!

Formats: Hardback & Ebook

Price: Hb £14.99/ Ebook £7.99

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

I would like to say a huge thank you to Steven Cooper for inviting me on to this fantastic and gripping book’s tour. I would also like to say a huge thank you to Hodder & Stoughton for allowing me to read and review a finished copy of this brilliant book. I would also like to say a huge thank you to the creative genius, Shelley Burr, for creating such a visceral, tense and gripping crime novel, about girls who go missing, and how families break apart and also struggle to come to terms with their loved ones gone or just absent. There’s also a real hard life of towns that have seen better days, with communities becoming more and more fragmented and distant, this is all set in the out back of Australia which gives an almost noir like feel. Intrigued? let’s head over to the blurb and find out a bit more.

Everybody thinks they know Mina McCreery.

Everyone has a theory on what happened to her sister.

Now it‘s time to find out the truth……

Mina McCreey’s sister Evelyn disappeared nineteen years ago. Her life has been defined by the intense public interest in the case. Now an anxious and reclusive adult, she lives alone on her family’s destocked sheep farm.

When Lane, a private investigator, approaches her with an offer to reinvestigate the case, she rejects him. The attention has had nothing but negative consequences for her and her family, and never brought them closer to an answer. Lane wins her trust when his unconventional methods show promise, but he has his own motivations for wanting to solve the case, and his obsession with the answer will ultimately risk both their lives.

I was gripped right from the start, and could not put this wonderful and thrilling book down. the characters are all complex and flawed each with their own secrets and pain which manifests into their own lives. With Lane seeking to find answers that will eventually lead him to seek revenge on the one person he feels is responsible to all the cases he is trying to solve. We also have Mina, who’s sister disappeared and which left their family shattered and broken. And which has left her feeling anxious and isolated within a community that should be wanting to help her but with which she can never let her pride down to allow. There are also other characters which appear and have their own scars to share, and through all these stories of loss and no knowing what has happened is a trail that could lead to answers but also could lead to imprisonment or death.

We see how her implacable distrust in Lane becomes softened to the point that her inner self who wants to know the answers and a hope that she can then move on and live her life, becomes amenable to helping find answers to what happened to her sister, as long as he does something for her in return. I won’t go into much more detail than that but wow, this book is such a gripping read you will definitely want to keep on reading this till you turn the last page. There are so many moments of twists and turns and red herrings, that will leave you spinning. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, and I want more.

Ratings: 5 🌟s with a large ☕️ and a large 🍰

Authors Blurb:

Shelley Burr is the winner of the CWA Debut Dagger award with Wake, an alumni of the ACT Writer’s Centre HardCopy program (2018) and a Varuna fellow. When not writing she works at the Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment. She lives in Canberra, but grew up splitting her time between Newcastle and Glenrowan, where her father’s family are all sheep farmers. WAKE is Shelley’s first novel.

I hope you have enjoyed this dark, sinister and gripping outback noir novel, where the heroes and heroines are not as clean or straight as you would think and that everyone hides a secret, it’s whether you are brave enough to find out the truth or let it lie. If you want to grab hold of a copy for yourself, you can find a copy at Waterstones, any independent store or of course on Amazon. I will leave you now to say Happy Reading and see you all soon!!!

Please check out these lovely bloggers too!!!

Advertisement

👨‍👩‍👦🏚Still Lives by Reshma Ruia…. A Book Blog Tour Review!!! 👨‍👩‍👦🏚

A simple yet stunning cover!!!

Publication Date: 29th June

Format: Paperback

Price: Pb £10.00

Publisher: Renard Press

I would like to apologise profusely for my late posting of my review of this, searing and heartbreaking look at a family falling apart at the seams without the two adults really noticing. I would like to say a huge thank you to Will of Renard Press for inviting me on to this hard looking book’s tour and for gifting a copy of this book too. I would also like to say a huge thank you to Reshma Ruia for creating such an intriguing and hard hitting and wince inducing main character’s POV (Point Of View), If you love shows such as Peep Show, this book is one for you, it mainly looks into a family man’s life and how he feels he is owed more than what his family provides until an incident happens to draw him back to where he really should be, but is it too late? Intrigued? let’s head over to the blurb and find out a bit more.

Young, handsome and contemptuous of his father’s traditional ways, PK Malik leaves Bombay to start a new life in America. Stopping in Manchester to visit an old friend, he thinks he sees a business opportunity, and decides to stay on. Now fifty-five, PK has fallen out of love with life. His business is struggling and his wife Geeta is lonely, pining for the India she’s left behind. One day PK crosses the path of Esther, the wife of his business competitor, and they launch into an affair conducted in shabby hotel rooms, with the fear of discovery forever hanging in the air.

As soon as I started to read this fascinating and intriguing book, which looks at family and how dysfunctional over time can cause cracks to appear in the surface of a marriage that on the outside looks normal and charming. A father who owns a business (it might be failing but he still has it… just) a wife who’s there to keep the whole family together and whole ( though from what PK thinks of her is a bit unjust and quite cruel) and their only child their son, who is quiet and keeps his head down (or does he feel the emotions swirling between his mother and father a bit too much and does he feel totally alone and not considered at all which can cause anxiety and depression).

With all these complex characters, comes into the mix the marital affair which threatens the life of the mother and son and also to some extent PK himself as he tries to keep both sides of his life separate and secret. For me reading this from the POV of PK the father it at times was incredibly cruel and wince inducing. I almost at times felt frustrated with the main character and at times intensely disliked him, he’s arrogant, cruel and callous and cannot see that his mistakes and decisions will cost him his family’s security and life. This is almost like a King Lear-esque tale of hubris and folly. I found that my sympathies lay with Geeta and his son, and that they all are caught up within his selfishness and casual gas lighting. This is a hard hitting read and might cause a few people to discuss this book quite strongly. I won’t go into more just in case I spoil this strong viewed novel. All I will say is that this will make you think about family dynamics and how pride always comes before a fall and that you are never too old to take a lesson from life.

Ratings: 5 🌟s with a large ☕️ and a large 🍰 .

Authors Blurb:

Reshma Ruia

Reshma Ruia is an award-winning author and poet. She has a PhD and a Master’s in Creative Writing from Manchester University, as well as a Bachelor and Master’s from the London School of Economics. Her first novel, Something Black in the Lentil Soup, was described in the Sunday Times as ‘a gem of straight-faced comedy’. She has published a poetry collection, A Dinner Party in the Home Counties, and a short story collection, Mrs Pinto Drives to Happiness; her work has appeared in international anthologies and journals, and she has had work commissioned by the BBC. She is the co-founder of the Whole Kahani – a writers collective of British and South Asian writers. Born in India and brought up in Rome, her writing explores the preoccupations of those who possess a multiple sense of belonging.

I hope you have enjoyed this at times, hard hitting and heart wrenching novel of family, sense of identity and how our actions can affect others around us, that there is always consequences to our mistakes. If you are intrigued by this book and would like to purchase it, I would urge you to get hold of a copy from Renard Press itself as it helps an independent and you might find some other goodies too, or you can always buy from Amazon. I will leave you now to say Happy Reading and see you all soon!!!

Please check out these lovely bloggers too!!!