🍺😵Lairies by Steve Hollyman…. Happy Publication Review!!! 🍺😵

(Swear word insert here) love this cover!!! 😉 👍

Publication Date: 8th April

Format: Paperback & Ebook

Price: £9.99

Publisher: InfluxPress

I would like to say a huge thank you to Jordan Taylor-Jones for allowing me to review this, utterly brutal, vicious, soul searing and yet brilliant and darkly funny book, I am incredibly grateful to receive anything especially from such an inspiring independent publisher InfluxPress, with whom I also say a massive thank you to. I would also like to say a huge thank you to the creative talent Steve Hollyman, wow just wow, I love this book for its punchy and brutal yet utterly tragic and devastating this depicts of a group of lads out on the lash during the start of twenty-first century. If you are intrigued by this and want to know more, lets head over to the blurb and find out.

Shaun wakes up in hospital after a fight in a local nightclub and discovers his girlfriend has been assaulted. Ade and Colbeck were there that night – the climax to weeks of escalating violence, their two-man vigilante mission to kick back against a broken generation. A misguided plan to combat the lairies that blight broken Britain’s bars, pubs and streets

What really happened that night? and how did it come to this?

Wow this book literally tore my heart out and fed it back into me ( sorry if thats a gruesome image) but this is how it affected me, I was left gasping, crying with both tears of laughter and sadness and anger on behalf of the characters and occasionally against them, like football fans can sometimes get emotionally invested in the game. So do you with all these brilliant, sad and lost boys (they are not men as such yet, they feel lost and have that desperate need to be seen and yet have that stubborn pride that leads them down into places they would never thought they would cross). Also a lot and I mean a lot of wincing in sympathy with their pain every time they dish and get dished in return. This book really does hit you below the belt, its full of swagger, foul mouthed arrogance that is underscored by an almost, deep and emotional vulnerability and a desperate struggle with all the characters to be as honest as they can even if their somewhat brutal methods are a bit destructive and damaging at times.

We see two tragedies playing out, a young man who has been attacked whilst out on the town recovering in hospital and then being blindsided by the news that his girlfriend has been assaulted within the same venue and evening he got attacked. We then see the people who either may or may not have inflicted said injuries on to this man and follow these swerving and interconnected lives that also may or may not involve what happened to his girlfriend.

I loved each and every character for their own ways, Ade for being this ultra cool, yet viciously violent and yet also calm and collected character, Colbeck and Duncan (Ade’s younger friend). Ade and Colbeck have known each other decades and with Duncn it feels he is like a younger annoying sibling, with whom they mock and tease in a good natured and sometimes not so good natured way (depending on their moods, which varies on any given hour or day). We also see Shaun’s point of view too as he tries to come to terms with how his life has turned out and what it means to rely and be supported by people and also what the hell happened to him and his girl. This is also shines a light on how out of the bright lights of London and around the edges of cities like Manchester and Birmingham for example during the early 00’s there was this edgy, hard and dark feel to certain strata of society where there’s a thin line between being living and poverty and well barely hanging on.

As the book meanders on, there’s a sense of doom, urgency and an almost desperation in certain characters to self destruct as they see an ever decreasing circle of no return. This almost nightmarish and repeating drunken bouts of destroying takes on a ghastly and terrible meaning to these laddish nights out. You see friends start to veer away and become separate from each other until there is no going back.

This book tears you apart and puts the pieces back in a haphazard fashion, yet there is some raw honesty, love and devotion within the murky and violent depths of these lost youths. There is a lot of swearing in this novel and I would not usually go for these sorts of books, but the characters are superbly drawn and the plot just grabs you by the throat that you are instantly hooked, the swearing almost in some cases has this poetical, hypnotic and rhythmic tune that lulls you and hits you at the same time. I quite honestly don’t know how to describe this book, I am lost for words (well of course I am not but every time I try and think of this book I am left speechless) I cannot highly recommend this book enough. Its powerful, highly charged and full of brutal violence yet painfully vulnerable and emotional.

What song would characterise and be the soundtrack to this brilliant book…. well for awhile as I was reading this I had “I Predict A Riot by The Kaiser Chiefs and to quote a line of the song ” watching the people get lairy…. its not very pretty I tell thee….walking through town is quite scary….its not very sensible either… a friend of a friend he got beaten” this song just sums up to me what this book is all about, drunkeness, having a good bash, occasionally people will take this too far and yet at the end of it all can have a laugh with your mate or share a bit of a rant about how lost we all are.

Ratings: 5 🌟s with a large 🍺 maybe two or three and then go out and have some more…. (oh wait you will be reading…. maybe put on some angry and heavy music 😂)

Authors Blurb:

Steve Hollyman was born in Stoke-On-Trent and currently works as a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing. He is a graduate of the Manchester Writing School, where he completed an MA and PHD. He is the vocalist and guitarist in a three-piece alternative rock band CreepJoint.

I hope you have enjoyed this rather honest, sharp, brutal, violent and soul searing novel filled with punches and hard hitting subjects. If you have become intrigued by this post you can buy this wonderful novel when its out or even preorder this from http://www.influxpress.com or from Waterstones and of course from Amazon. I will leave you now to say Happy Reading and see you all soon!!!

🎸 🥁 🎵 The Twenty Seven Club by Lucy Nichol…A Book Blog Tour Review!!! 🎸 🥁 🎵

Love the cover!!!

Publication Date: Out now!!!

Formats: Paperback & Ebook

Price: £7.99

Publisher: Lark

I would like to say a huge thank you to Anne Cater and Random Things Tours for organising this fascinating and moving book’s tour. I would also like to thank Lark (the publishers) and Netgalley for allowing me access to review the digital copy of this book, and I would also like to say thank you to the author Lucy Nichol for highlighting Mental health especially when it comes to stars and the ripple effect of a musician’s death can have on everyone. So what’s this book all about I hear you say? lets head over to the blurb and find out.

It’s 1994. The music industry is mourning Kurt Cobain, Right Said Fred have re-emerged as an ‘ironic’ pop act and John Major is the country’s prime minister. Nothing is as it should be.

Emma, a working-class rock music fan from Hull, with a penchant for a flaming Drambuie and a line of coke with her best mate Dave down The Angel, is troubled.

Trev, her beloved whippet, has doggy IBS, and her job ordering bathroom supplies at the local caravan company is far from challenging. So when her dad, Tel, informs her that Kurt Cobain has killed himself aged 27, Emma is consumed with anxiety.

Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix….why have so many rock musicians died aged 27? and will Emma be next to join The Twenty Seven Club?

Ok where do I start with this intriguing and fascinating book, at the beginning I hear you shout, well of course, but I do have to say a few words before we find out what I thought of this book. Just a warning this book is extremely expletive throughout the book and some of the content is pretty descriptive, just a warning. I also have to admit that I wasn’t a huge fan of that language within the book (sorry if that makes me sound like a prim and nervous woman, I am not I don’t mind swearing where its needed because I am not a saint lol, but when its in nearly every paragraph…. I kind of feel thats a bit much).

Having said all of that I did get into the story (once I ignored the swearing) and found myself hooked into Emma’s life, for me this was not walking down memory lane, which I thought it would be, this shone a bleak and painful light on people who were trying to scrape a living during the 90’s in Hull of all places, and one in which as a young child I never knew and never came into contact with. I do now, sympathise and empathise with the main character’s anxiety of having reached a certain age where many famous stars, musicians especially, had either died or passed before they reached 30, due to drugs, drinking problems and within that mixture the pressure of being famous and yes being clinically depressed. For so many fans in the 90’s it was the death of Kurt Cobain that really made everyone gasp with shock and horror and probably made people like Emma stop and think about their life and choices. When I turned 27, I also felt a moment of sadness and guilt at having lived more years than Amy Winehouse, another musician who lost her life at a young age, and having that endless question which will never be answered of why? I felt the same again when I heard Chester Bedingfield (of Linkin Park) and Avicii also too their own lives, for me these our my childhood and also adult music heroes/idols which shocked and devastated my world.

Knowing these people who you look up to as immortal, godlike human beings, suddenly and tragically die, makes you question your own mortality and also leaves you feeling more fragile and lost. Because in your mind deep down in the depths a voice will say ‘well if they have gone, why don’t you follow’. This is what this book delves into and brings to the light and also what Emma herself battles to overcome and try to make sense of. This book deals with Mental Health brilliantly especially anxiety and panic attacks ( I know medically they are different but with my own experience I get anxious.. which builds and builds and then develops into a full blown panic attack, that is if I don’t get to deal with it before it escalates).

Its not just about the bad times either, there are some rather chaotic, rocking jams, parties that make you want to crank up the volume and just party (yes like its 1999). If you remember what is like back in the 90’s this book is definitely one for you and will also take you right back there. I did grow to love this one, its definitely a slow burner, and one that has a fascinating and intriguing question how do you find yourself when you are lost? and will anyone be there to help? and also like the song why do the good die young?

Ratings: 4 ⭐️s with a large ☕️ and a large 🍰 whilst listening to 90s rock on your phone.

Authors Blurb:

Lucy Nichol

Lucy Nichol is a mental health campaigner and PR consultant, and a former columnist with Sarah Millican’s Standard Issue magazine. She has written for The Independent, The I Paper, NME, Red Magazine, Den of Geek, Men’s Fitness, Metro, and Huff Post. Her first book, A Series of Unfortunate Stereotypes, a non-fiction mental health memoir, was published by Trigger in 2018. Lucy has worked with the media in PR and marketing for almost 20 years and has experienced Generalised Anxiety Disorder for even longer.

I hope you have enjoyed this intriguing and fascinating journey back to the 90’s and one tragic death that shocked, traumatised and shaped the lives of teenagers around the world and even to this day. If you are intrigued by this book please please please go out and buy this now on Amazon and I think Waterstones too. I will leave you now to say Happy Reading and see you all soon!!!

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🍸 Nick by Michael Farris Smith… A Book Blog Tour Review!!!! 🍸

I ❤️ this cover!!! 😍 😍

Publication Date: 25th February

Formats: Hardback and Ebook

Price: £12.99 & £6.99

Publisher: No Exit Press

Celebrating 125 years since the birth of F Scott Fitzgerald, we are given this treat of a book. I would love to say a huge thank you to No Exit Press for inviting me to take part in this wonderful book’s blog tour, Just take a look at the books stunning cover!!. Thank you also for gifting me this copy too, I would also like to thank the author Michael Farris Smith for being brave enough to take on the challenge to delve into the narrators back story from The Great Gatsby and give him some life and our attention. I have to say you did it extremely well full marks to you, I am sure F. Scott Fitzgerald would smile and nod or even raise a cocktail glass in appreciation.

So before I go gushing all over the place about this delectable book, you will all need to know what the hell this book is about?…I mean we all know The Great Gatsby, but now its time to know the narrator and how he came to be where we meet him at the beginning of that classic tale. So on to the blurb.

Before Nick Carraway moved to West Egg and into Gatsby’s world, he was at the centre of a very different story – one taking place along the trenches and deep within the tunnels of World War I. Floundering in the wake of the destruction he witnessed first-hand, Nick delays his return home, hoping to escape the questions he cannot answer about the horrors of war. Instead, he embarks on a transcontinental redemptive journey that takes him from a whirlwind Paris romance to the dizzying frenzy of New Orleans, rife with its own flavour f debauchery and violence.

‘Stylish, evocative, haunting and wholly original’ Chris Whitaker, Author of We Begin At The End.

‘The title figure of NICK, offers a soul for the ages, one that finally and deftly slips into the cannon’ Jeffry Lent, New York Times bestselling author of In The Fall.

‘NICK is, sentence by sentence, scene by scene, an atmospheric masterpiece of imagination and prose’ Patti Callahan, New York Times bestselling author of Becoming Mrs Lewis.

I thought I should start with some praise of this novel, from more discerning reviewers and authors,I hope my little blog can help raise this book up as well as they have done. I was hooked from the first page of this exceptional novel that really does stand alongside it’s predecessor The Great Gatsby. I fell in love with this story that sweeps you up and doesn’t let you go till the last page. If you could see my notes for this book all you would see are one word descriptors of how this book just enraptured me here’s a few examples; Mind blowing, heart pounding, harrowing, desperate, mad inducing, sweet and the bitter dregs etc. I could go on, have I told you I love this book? no… ok I love this book.

Did you think I would leave you there? of course not, anyway I was gripped by the novels story and how you feel all that horrible sense of hopelessness and desperate wanting and willing to survive during the scenes of World War I, this whole part of the story is filled with nightmarish, terrifying inducing images that make you see what he and others like him went through. We see how each moment of his survival is piecemeal and not taken for granted till he loses his mind somewhat, which is not to say we wouldn’t either to be honest I don’t think we would even survive as much as he did, or did he lose a part of himself there on the battlefields of Europe? that is the question this book makes you think about as we head into the rest of the story.

Theres another story within this novel, and thats the love that affects him throughout this book, which he loses as soon as he heads off back to war. We see his scars of both the War and what he lost, not just a part of himself but a part that would have helped heal him a bit quicker.. maybe? but of course we and the main character will never know, which haunts and teases him.

This book also deals with a lot of heartache, loves and losses, bitterness especially when he decides to reside in New Orleans and watches a bunch of characters essentially tear themselves apart with rage, revenge and grief, murder and death which seems to follow Nick though not yet touching him. All of these secondary and third characters which swirl around and occasionally with Nick are so believable and vivid they almost jump out from the page, there’s a lot descriptions which evoke a sort of hallucinatory and drug induced scenes which also affect our main character, with his nightmares that constantly plague him both night and day, as we know what he is experiencing is called PTSD and survivors guilt.. why him? and not them? what did he deserve to survive the brutal war. I don’t want to spoil any more of this wonderful and intoxicating book any further for you, but this definitely evokes the sense and feel of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s work and storytelling and also gives us a much clearer insight into what he himself went through too, this also brings events from Gatsby into sharper focus and comparison.

I fell in love with this book and with the character and even if you haven’t read The Great Gatsby (which you should btw) this does not spoil anything for you, if anything it brings the narrator of both books firmly to life and breaths life into his past which we had inklings and hints of in Gatsby but was never elaborated on. It also shines the light on a seedier, dirtier and more real side of the twenties and thirties of that time, and how those times were not just about parties, glamour and glitz, it was about desperation, survival and yes death, blood, sweat and tears. So yes please buy this amazing, fantastic and utterly compelling book. I would recommend that you pre order this book from No Exit Press or go to Waterstones and Amazon.

Ratings: 5 🌟s with a 🍸 or two 😉 (you have to have something glamorous to go with this book)

Authors Blurb:

Yep there’s still time to enter grab your tickets now!!!

Michael Farris Smith is the author of NICK, Blackwood, The Fighter, Desperation Road, Rivers and The Hands of Strangers. He has been awarded the Mississippi Author Award for Fiction, Transatlantic Review Award, and Brick Streets Press Story Award. His novels have appeared on Best of the Year lists with Esquire, Southern Living, Book Riot, and numerous others, and have been named Indie Next List, Barnes & Noble Discover, and Amazon Best of The Month selections. He has been a finalist for the CWA Gold Dagger Award in the UK and the Grand Prix des Lectrices in France, and his essays have appeared in The New York Times, Bitter Southerner, Garden & Gun, and more. He lives with his wife and daughters in Oxford, Mississippi.

I hope you have enjoyed this little trip back to a time where the onslaught of war, madness, terror and rage and grief, love and death as well as poverty on an unimaginable scale swept through America and how one man who we would know only as the narrator in The Great Gatsby came to be, and how he eventually made his way to over see and participate in events in that classic novel. I can honestly say its been an absolute privilege to read this brilliant and scintillating novel. So please either pre order this gorgeous novel now!! or wait till publication day but you have to get hold of a copy its gorgeous and looks amazing on your shelves (hehe) not that the story isn’t just as delicious as the cover. I will leave you now to lust over this book (hopefully) and only to say Happy Reading and see you all soon!!!

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