There’s no such thing as a right time to have a baby.

But six months into a new relationship is definitely not good timing.

Especially as Kat and boyfriend Max are still finding their feet as a couple.

And his snarky mother is doing everything she can to ensure Max dumps Kat and gets back with his ex-girlfriend. Continue reading →

Single dad Eddie is quick-witted, warm-hearted and devoted to his daughter Daisy.

He’s almost perfect – even his ex-partner Jean, Daisy’s mother, is still more than a little bit in love with him.

In fact, they’d probably still be together if she hadn’t jumped into bed with his best friend Jason.

But it wasn’t her fault – Jason looked at her with lust in his eyes while Eddie, working flat out to build his tattoo business, would collapse asleep with exhaustion. Continue reading →

One of my stand-out cinematic memories is the death of Bambi’s mother in Disney’s wonderful 1942 animation.

The hunter raises his rifle and every child in the movie theatre, and quite a few adults, me included, wails in anguish.

It’s one of cinema’s most heart-breaking OMG! moments.

There are two such blood-thumping, sharp-intake-of-breath, stop-the-clock plot twists in Beneath the Skin, RL Martinez’s stunning sequel to In the Blood, the equally memorable opener to her Witchbreed fantasy series. Continue reading →

As you’d expect from someone who cut her writing teeth at Jackie magazine, author Karen King writes with confidence and style.

Hand on heart, romantic fiction isn’t my preferred genre – I’m more of a whodunit fan – but if anyone could convert me, King could.

Her new release from Accent Press, The Cornish Hotel by the Sea is a perfect demonstration of her story-telling expertise: a nicely believable plot that builds at a satisfying pace without getting bogged down in long descriptive passages, which could have been a temptation given the glorious setting.  Continue reading →

It’s not often I get to the end of a book and find myself lost for words – although perhaps that’s an appropriate response to a book titled The Silence.

I turned the last page and thought: ‘Oh!’

(Strictly speaking, I didn’t turn the page, I swiped my kindle. But you get the point.)

And, it wasn’t: ‘Oh, that was unexpected.’ Or even: ‘Oh, I enjoyed that.’

Although both of those are true.  Continue reading →

Quite by coincidence I’m writing this review of Nordic noir thriller Wolves in the Dark by Norway’s legendary Gunnar Staalesen shortly after a particularly intense trek with my Friday Nordic walking group.

Appropriate really because this latest instalment of Staalesen’s long-running Bergen-based Varg Veum series is equally intense, with a brutal plot and at least one genuine sharp intake of breath moment.

As the novel opens, Veum, who debuted in 1977 in the bizarrely titled The Buck to the Sack of Oats, is still reeling from the death of his great love Karin. Continue reading →

Goodness me! There are enough red herrings in One to Watch, the new thriller from Rachel Amphlett, to feed a smorgasbord of crime fiction readers.

First, the guilty person just HAD to be X.

Then it was definitely Y and I never saw Z coming until the last couple of pages.

Although, perhaps that’s because making Z a murderer breaks one of the cardinal rules of classic crime fiction.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you which one because then you’d know whodunnit. Continue reading →