RoroblusMumReadsReviews/Rants

3.5* Dragged a lot, maybe because I'm new to the series and am missing what's happened so far? This is bogged down in Scottish life and wasn't a very entertaining read. Add in some personal drama for the lead, and I got a bit bored. Of course there was a cover-up - that much was clear from the prologue. It's normally always money or sex, and here, things took 20-odd years to unravel, with innocents sacrificed because of greed. ARC courtesy of NetGalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers, for my reading pleasure. 

4* Been waiting for this one for a few years, and it didn't disappoint.  This book isn't the first Sci-fi tale from BE, but it's definitely unique - what sweet, lovely Joe is forced to do will make your eyes water, both times, and yes, he's tortured by it, but his instinct to live, by whatever means possible, means that it's inevitable. And, I think the part of him he left behind, definitely did its thing along the way for Kaden.  I don't know who I liked more. Gentle Kaden with his great dad and a great relationship with his dad, or lovely Joe who literally had no one and nothing to his name. I know who I didn't like - the ex, but for once, him not getting Scorpio-level-satisfaction comeuppance sat OK with me. I was hoping he wouldn't turn even more dastardly with the hitchhikers he'd picked up, but nope, Marmite  al rescate!   The book ends well, many years down the line. The boys are happy cat slaves. Joe's brain is helping him help humanity, ...

2* Has too many things going on, and nothing felt entirely believable. I've not read a GM book since his horror heyday, and probably shouldn't have bothered with this. The female lead is supposedly in a happy relationship with a judge, but gets into bed naked with a female subordinate, and doesn't hesitate to make a move on her before belatedly coming to her senses - this is despite just having reassured the judge that if she commits to marrying him, she'll be faithful. Hmm. Then there's the nursing home with the strange vibes and the residents forced to rewrite their wills in favour of the owners, under actual torture. With the aid of a corrupt solicitor. How was this not spotted by the regulators? How were the repeat deaths not considered suspicious? Do Irish authorities not inspect care homes or do DBS checks on employees?  The PIP aspect really, really, really deserves a strong warning of graphic animal cruelty. I had to skip several pages because of this.  The ...

3.5* Good storyline, progress towards Carve-Up's comeuppance, hopefully, but...MAJOR SPOILER.......... ....Andy Maslen copped out. All the Van/Marnie stuff, all the flirting between Kat and Jack was just a big fat nothing. Don't get me wrong, I didn't want either Kat or Van to cheat, but all the bigging up, all the innuendo, all the butterflies, and it was resolved with: THEIR MARRIAGE WAS FINE. MARNIE WAS JUST A HARMLESS, IF DETERMINED, FLIRT - LIKE JACK. SHE FOUND, WITH A SENSE OF RELIEF, THAT SHE DIDN’T EVEN THINK OF HIM THAT WAY NOW THAT HANNAH WANTED TO MAKE A PLAY FOR HIM. So yeah, twee and not-believable avoidance. And yet just pages before, there'd been mention of Van maybe not believing her protests about Jack. Hmm. Titillation for nothing.  The Hannah character stole the show. There's already a massive spoiler in this review, so I won't add another, but she kicked arse. Her neurodivergence worked, and it was great to see Carve-Up humiliated.  The Under...

4* Well executed but loses that 1* for me as the reveal of the actual baddie didn't feel believable, nor did the SOCOs attending the house and not spotting a phone was on charge...won't spoiler here, but yeah, a bit of a big one to swallow.  This is a well-done tale with several characters who could've been the killer/s, and events that felt sufficiently murky from 35 years ago, to make the then-story work well with the reveals in the now. I'm not sure that IRL the male detective - I've forgotten his name - would've been allowed to investigate events, given his connections with cases past and present, so that was a big suspension of disbelief ask of me. I managed it.  The detective work was good, aided by today's technology but British policing doesn't work at the speed that was described here, especially where budgets are concerned, and more so, where permission from local councils and use of GPR come into it.  Still, a decent tale not bogged down by pe...

3.5* Much improved writing and editing.  This follows on from A Body In The Forest, and you do need to read the predecessor so as not to be lost in this tale. Someone at Joffe has been hard at work weeding out all the editing issues and making a smoother read, so this was much easier to get into.  Some of the writing still isn't the clearest, such as why a character was expecting Samantha and didn't query why instead they were meeting Sam, a different person, nor why Sam took food to meet said person. Those bits were never explained.  The tale was in parts sad and in parts, shocking. Poor Sam. Poor Emmi. Poor dad. Poor mum. And some of the crimes were a bit farfetched for rural Wales, but you hsve to go with the flow. The trafficking storyline faded out a bit too conveniently, I suspect because there's no way to really bring that to a satisfactory conclusion where justice is done, but I rolled my eyes and went on. Is this the end of the line for the series? I think it's...

3* Kind of predictable but an OK read. Slightly unpalatable at the end.  This is short and works because of today's culture of everything online. Some of it needed a bit of suspension of disbelief, because organisations don't work that quickly irl, but the theory is doable. What I didn't like is that none of the characters had any personality.  ARC courtesy of NetGalley and Amazon Original Stories, for my reading pleasure.

3.5* The title was too much of a giveaway of the storyline. Decent read but no surprises, except for Natalie. This is a decent read but there were no surprises about it. Names, events, hsppenings, characters, were all a bit clunky and plonked-in, rather than blending in. I figured out who the bad guys were just from the mention of 10 years. And all the body parts that Cam's dad had been collecting for years. The only kind of nice thing about the tale was that life goes on. Natalie was a surprise, and even when her life as a kid was mentioned, I wasn't sure where she was going - prostitution was what jumped to mind. The book ends well. There's life for more than I expected, although with social media, VPNs and the likes, it could've been happier for many more people. ARC courtesy of NetGalley and Storm Publishing, for my reading pleasure.

3.5* Decent intro to this author, despite a rather slow, unexciting yet it-pulled-me-in tale. I don't recall reading the blurb to this book, so it was pretty much all reveals. Done UK-style, so without faux American gloss ir bigging-up, which made it work. Was it creepy? Yes. How does someone get so evil so quickly, without anything huge enough to be their catalyst?  I'm not sure I felt for either Bella or Jade; neither had enough depth to them. Neither felt capable of real feelings - was it because of what happened to them? Because of the circumstances of their birth? If they were victims, they were very different ones. One silver spoon nepo baby, one council-house-ish, although she maybe hadn't needed to be because of the reveals.  Anyway, the ending was satisfying although I needed to suspend disbelief a bit.  ARC courtesy of NetGalley and Thomas and Mercer for my reading pleasure. 

 5* Struggling to think of a title for one of my best reads this year. It's beautifully British, believable, and it ends in a way that makes me impatient for book 3. This picks up immediately where book 1 ends, with the police and Callie trying to figure out her mentor's murder. And there's more death. Senseless death, it seems until someone presumed dead happens not to be and Blackbird comes to light. The author's drawn on some of the frankly shit, abominable, unpalatable, racist, private militia stuff that's come out in that orange twat's 2nd administration in the formerly decent US of A, now more so the plaything of said orange twat. It's only a small part of the tale but it's the thing that set things into motion, with an abuse of power - or maybe a head trip - and political lies and eventual cover-up. It's utterly believable and dovetailed.  Callie's her usual self - boozing, smoking, junk eating, but wised-up to Richard, despite her guilt a...

 4* Good, but best to re-read book 2 so as not to be lost here.  I'm glad that the romance that was a non-starter for me in both books 1 and 2 takes a back seat in this book that starts with a walk in a forest, only for Nicole, Rowan and Thor the dog to discover a serial killer's lair. And connections to Emma, Nicole's adopted daughter.  It becomes a battle against an adversary that seemingly has the upper hand, until a spectre from Emma's past is revealed. Not a scary spectre, but one that was self-serving for the most, until it decided to do the right thing, and paid the price. The red herrings and investigation are solid. There's a glimpse of Mercy and Truman, but the book sticks to the policing aspects. The romance still doesn't work for me. Nicole and Bloke kind of feel dead from the waist down in those stakes. But they're better working together, thankfully.  Emma is the heroine of this tale, and boy does that woman deserve a break. It was bad enough w...

3.5* It drags a bit, and is a tiny bit obvious as to the mole's identity, but a decent enough whodunit. This tale was my intro to this author, in a bit of a twee cosy mystery with a not-needed broken-off romantic aspect that was hinted at, not really present in the tale, but bigged up from Ali's end right in the closing chapter, that put a bit of a dampener on the book, tbh. Her ex did pretty much nothing but spout in a bit of a MCP way, and had pit his career over what they'd spent 3 years building, so in my book, that made him no prize. If he'd not been in the book, it'd have been better. The final pages felt forced. So, a worth-reading tale that had a killer I'd not seen coming, with stuff that came out of the woodwork giving rise to a few not-bad red herrings. Was it believable? Not really in rural Ireland, with Ali and her nephew Gavan pretty much showing up the local Garda.  ARC courtesy of NetGalley and Storm Publishing for my reading pleasure.

4* Another good book in this series, that ideally does need to be read in order. This book doesn't have harrowing detail of the murder, but the deed is fairly gruesome and I'm not sure when the killer's identity is revealed, that they'd actually have known to carry out the vindictive attack they did. I'm using "they" so as not to Spoiler the tale, ss there didn't appear to be an abundance of suspects to me.  The tale loses 1* for me because at the end, someone with clout jumps on a bandwagon and goes #MeToo, unconvincingly. I was left wondering if justice would get done for the victims, because there was more than just one, especially financially. I hope that gets picked up as an aside in the next book, when things go to court. Malkie has very little time for his loved ones because of the murder and because of pressure and bullying by the CI aiming to become a DCI off the back of this high profile case. And I LOVED how he turned the tables and called o...