Friday, 5 September 2025

Clues to You by Claire Huston - #bookreview #blogtour


Kate squeezed past another huddle of chattering guests, her gaze fixed on the banner at the top of the noticeboard to the left of the reception desk...


The Blurb

One murder mystery weekend. Two rival sleuths.

They’re looking for answers. But will they find love?

Kate Brannon is delighted to be attending her first murder mystery weekend in a movie-worthy Victorian manor house. Still getting over being dumped, cracking the case would be a welcome boost to her flagging confidence. And the prize money wouldn’t hurt either.

But Kate’s dreams of victory become a nightmare with the arrival of Max Ravenscroft. Smart, enigmatic and annoyingly handsome, Max is Kate’s sleuthing nemesis. 

When she and Max are forced to work together, Kate despairs. But, as the investigation brings them closer, she finds being his partner in solving crime isn’t all bad. 

With growing suspicions that the game is rigged against them, can Kate and Max beat the odds to find the killer? And, as their partnership deepens, can they find romance too?

This rivals-to-lovers romance is a standalone romcom and part of the Love in the Comptons collection.


My Review

Clues to You was the winner of BBNYA 2024! More about BBNYA below.

It was a highly entertaining novel which I really enjoyed reading. Whilst it is the third book in the Love in the Comptons series, each book is completely standalone. This is the first in the series which I have read.

Set during a murder mystery weekend, friends Kate, Bella, Ethan and Max make up a team to solve the murder in a 1920's manor house. However, there are tensions between Kate and Max which creates the enemies to lovers trope perfectly and I loved the undeniable chemistry between them.

The author has done a great job in creating her characters. Kate and Max are believable and well fleshed out. The secondary characters are equally good.

Kate has always felt that Max thinks he is superior to her. However, this weekend she is determined to prove to him that she is just as capable as him of reading all of the clues and discovering the murderer.

The book had Agatha Christie vibes and I liked the way the author created a 1920's story within a  contemporary setting. She writes very well and really knows how to pull a reader into the story.

I am not in the least surprised that this book won the Book Bloggers Novel of the Year Award last year, and I feel it was a very worthy winner. I recommend this book to readers who enjoy murder mysteries, coupled with a nice romance.

About BBNYA

BBNYA is a yearly competition where book bloggers from all over the world read and score books written by indie authors, ending with 15 finalists (16 in 2024) and one overall winner.

If you want some more information about BBNYA, check out the BBNYA Website https://www.bbnya.com/ or take a peek over on Twitter @BBNYA_Official. BBNYA is brought to you in association with the book blogger support group @The_WriteReads. 



Book Details

ISBN:  978 1913719906

Publisher:  Goldcrest Books International

Formats: e-book and paperback  (currently available on Kindle Unlimited)

No. of Pages:  379 (paperback)

Series:  Part of the Love in the Comptons series


Purchase Links

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Amazon CA


About the Author


Claire Huston lives in Warwickshire, UK, with her husband and children. She writes uplifting modern love stories about characters who are meant for each other but need a little help to realise it.

A keen amateur baker, she enjoys making cakes, biscuits and brownies almost as much as eating them. You can find recipes for all the cakes mentioned in Art and Soul, her first novel, at clairehuston.co.uk along with over 150 other recipes. This is also where she talks about and reviews books.

 You can also find Claire at:

Instagram

Facebook

Tik Tok

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(ARC and media courtesy of The Write Reads)

(all opinions are my own)



Thursday, 4 September 2025

Grave of the Fireflies by Akiyuki Nosaka and Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori - #bookreview

On the mainline Sannomiya Station, bayside exit, Seita sat slumped against a column, its tiles peeling off to expose the bare concrete, with his bottom on the floor and both legs stretched out straight before him...


The Blurb

The heartbreaking Japanese classic telling the story of two orphans fighting for survival at the end of World War Two, published in English for the first time

In the dying days of the War, Seita and Setsuko must fend for themselves. Firebombs have obliterated their home in Kobe, leaving them searching for shelter and scrambling to survive in the depths of the countryside. But, as their suffering becomes a constant companion, so do the lights of the fireflies – shining from the bomber planes, and the insects glowing by the lake at night.

This unforgettable semi-autobiographical tale by Akiyuki Nosaka won him the Naoki Prize, cementing his place in the Japanese cultural canon. Published here for the first time as a standalone story, Grave of the Fireflies illuminates the untold sorrows of normal people who live in the shadow of war.


My Review

Publishing today this short but heartbreaking and raw novella is an absolute must read. 

It is the story of Seita and Setsuko who have been orphaned by war. Brother and sister are aged about fourteen and four respectively. Reading of how the older sibling tries to take care of his younger sister amidst such terrible and harrowing circumstances made me feel quite emotional. 

 The author describes everyday life for them as society disintegrates around them as Japan faces defeat. Originally published in 1967, this book is as relevant today as it was when it was written. Our media is full of war and the suffering of innocent people and I could not help but think that nothing has been learned from the past.

At less than 80 pages I found this to be a concise telling of the harrowing hardships of war.  This semi-autobiographical work which was originally a short story made for excellent reading. 

Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori she has done an excellent job of bringing this story to the attention of the wider reading community and I highly recommend it.


Book Details

ISBN:  978 0241780213

Publisher:  Penguin Classics

Formats:  e-book and paperback

No. of Pages:  80 (paperback)


Purchase Links

Bookshop.org

Amazon UK

Blackwell's

Waterstones


About the Author


Akiyuki Nosaka (1930-2015) was a novelist, singer, lyricist and former member of the House of Councillors in Japan. Born in Kamakura, Kanagawa, his memories of living through the Second World War – including the loss of his adoptive father in the 1945 Kobe bombings – served as the inspiration for his most famous short stories. In 1967, he won the Naoki Prize for Grave of the Fireflies and American Hijiki, both based on the Japanese experience of the War. Nosaka also wrote erotic fiction, including The Pornographers (1963), and in later life he continued his career as a newspaper and TV journalist, as well as a politician and chanson singer.




(ARC and media courtesy of the publisher)

(author photo courtesy of Wiki)

(all opinions are my own)

(Bookshop.org affiliated)


Wednesday, 3 September 2025

The Pumpkin Spice Cafe by Laurie Gilmore - #bookreview



Jeanie Ellis had never killed a man before, but tonight might be the night. Desperate times and all that. She clutched the baseball bat tighter in her fist and crept down the rickety, back staircase...


The Blurb

When Jeanie’s aunt gifts her the beloved Pumpkin Spice Café in the small town of Dream Harbor, Jeanie jumps at the chance for a fresh start away from her very dull desk job.

Logan is a local farmer who avoids Dream Harbor’s gossip at all costs. But Jeanie’s arrival disrupts Logan’s routine and he wants nothing to do with the irritatingly upbeat new girl, except that he finds himself inexplicably drawn to her.

Will Jeanie’s happy-go-lucky attitude win over the grumpy-but-gorgeous Logan, or has this city girl found the one person in town who won’t fall for her charm, or her pumpkin spice lattes…


My Review

This book was recommended to me by one of the members of my book group. To be honest, I wasn't sure that it would be my sort of book but decided to give it a go. I am so pleased that I did as I devoured it and have already ordered the next one in the series.

It is a charming book with the main characters, Jeanie and Logan falling nicely into the sunshine/grumpy trope. Jeanie's Aunt Dot has gone off travelling and passed the business to Jeanie to run. It is perfect timing as Jeanie needs a fresh start away from the city where she has worked as an executive PA for many years. She is definitely not looking for a relationship, but then she meets Logan.

Logan is a farmer and has lived in the small town of Dream Harbor all his life. It is a town where everyone knows his business and witnessed the terrible and humiliating ending of his last relationship, leaving him with abandonment issues. He is absolutely not looking to repeat the experience, but Jeanie disconcerts him as he feels an instant chemistry with her.

I loved spending time in Dream Harbor. The author did a great job in describing the claustrophobic atmosphere of small town life. Her main characters, Jeanie and Logan are excellently portrayed and I was fully engaged by them. In addition, the secondary ones are quirky and utterly believable.

It was an easy, entertaining and spicy read and I loved it. I am so looking forward to reading the next one.


Book Details

ISBN: 978 0008610678

Publisher: One More Chapter

Formats: e-book, audio, hardback and paperback (currently free on Prime)

No. of Pages: 374 (paperback)

Series: Dream Harbour Book 1


Purchase Links


Bookshop.org

Amazon UK

Amazon US


About the Author


Laurie Gilmore is a No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller and a USA Today bestseller who writes steamy small-town romance. Her Dream Harbor series is filled with quirky townsfolk, cozy settings, and swoon-worthy romance. The first book in the series, The Pumpkin Spice Café, was featured on Good Morning America and was named the TikTok Shop Book of the Year 2024.

She loves finding books with the perfect balance of sweetness and spice and strives for that in her own writing.

Laurie also writes romantic fantasy as Melissa McTernan.

You can also find Laurie at:

Author Website

Instagram

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(media courtesy of the author's website)

(all opinions are my own)

(Bookshop.org affiliated)


Tuesday, 2 September 2025

The Other Boy by Heidi Field - #guestpost #authorpost #blogtour


I am absolutely thrilled to have author, Heidi Field on the blog today. Heidi is going to be talking about her book, The Other Boy which was published in June of this year. Before I hand over to Heidi, let me tell you a little about the book.


The Blurb

The Other Boy is a pulse-pounding psychological thriller with shocking twists that will keep you turning pages late into the night.When the worst comes calling…

Scott and Blair Bagby are a happy, successful English couple living in the suburbs with their teenage son and Great Dane. Life seems good, until one beautiful spring morning when a detective inspector knocks on their door asking if their son is home, unleashing an unspeakable horror that blows apart the life they thought they had.

Police have discovered bodies buried deep in the Peasedale forest and the inspector suspects one is Jamie, the final victim of a brutal and prolific serial killer. But Jamie’s death is unlike all the others, starting with his emergency phone call that leads to a macabre burial ground near a dilapidated hunting shack and creates shocking suspicions.

With bone deep grief threatening to destroy their marriage and their sanity, Scott and Blair set out to investigate Jamie’s death, a journey that not only upends their perceptions of who they are, but torturously reveals they may not have known Jamie at all…


Heidi, welcome to the blog.

The Other Boy is my first published novel and writing it has been the most wonderful rollercoaster of hard work, steep learning curves and dogged determination.

I first started writing shortly after giving birth to my first child, a baby who slept during the day and not at night. I was suffering from post-natal depression and my marriage was crumbling under the pressure. Hormone fuelled and in need of an escape, I began to write. The world was awash with Harry Potter, so my first attempt at writing was an epic YA fantasy, more Game of Thrones than Harry Potter. I then wrote a time-slip romance and a handful of children’s picture books. I had no idea if what I was producing was any good, I just loved writing.

I divorced and was a single mum for a few years before creating a blended family with my current partner and having a second child. We were raising five children, and I was working as a massage therapist. Life was busy! Writing took a back seat for fifteen years. When I emerged from the fog of a young family, with more time for me, I took a master’s degree in creative writing at Winchester University, and my writing adventure truly began. 

I loved writing thrillers, my characters were often dark, damaged, unpredictable and driven by an inner darkness, although, outwardly they were also ordinary, relatable people who had been pushed beyond their limits and were clawing their way to sanity, freedom and salvation.

The idea for The Other Boy came after watching a documentary about Dean Corll, the Candyman serial killer, who raped, tortured and murdered over twenty teenage boys and young men. I didn’t want to write about a serial killer, or his victims, and I didn’t want to write about the families of the victims either, those stories are out there. I wanted to write a different story, one that was in the shadows of the gruesome crimes someone like Dean Corll committed, a story about the parents of the boys who assisted the killer, the killer’s accomplices. 

I had four teenagers, one more child still to face those tricky years, and I asked myself how I would feel if my child made a choice that I could never have imagined, a terrifying choice. The Other Boy has become the first in a series of four novels, The Other Mother, The Other Killer and The Other Brother all explore the lives of other characters from the first novel, they all have unexpected twists, and each one will make you question what you know about everyone involved. 

What you think is going to happen, doesn’t, what you hope will happen, won’t, and what you learn about the characters along the way may not be the whole story. Sometimes, it is the people closest to us who have the darkest of secrets, or maybe we just choose to ignore the signs because the truth is too frightening to face.

Thank you so much for joining me today. 


Book Details

ISBN:  978 1966593737

Publisher:  Tule Publishing Group

Formats:  e-book and paperback

No. of Pages:  366 (paperback)


Purchase Links

Amazon UK

Amazon US


About the Author

Heidi Field was raised in the beautiful countryside of the South of England with her parents and her two sisters. In her twenties she was a freelance Sports Massage Therapist. She achieved a Degree in Zoology at the age of thirty and then went on to raise two boys and became the stepmother of three more young children. She still lives near her family home with her partner, their Great Dane and the children that have yet to fly the nest. In her early forties Heidi completed a Masters in Creative Writing at Winchester University. She entered the course hoping she would become a children’s fantasy writer and left with a burning desire to write contemporary mysteries and thrillers. Heidi wanted to put relatable people in extraordinary situations, challenge them, push them to their limits and watch them fight for their sanity. The Other Boy is her first novel.

You can also find Heidi at:

Author Website

Facebook

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Bluesky





(media courtesy of Rachel's Random Resources/author)

(all opinions are my own)



Monday, 1 September 2025

10 Ten Books I Want to Read in September 2025

 


Welcome September! The month when the leaves on the trees turn yellow, and temperatures dip. Although, who knows whether we may yet have a bit of late summer sun.

Whatever the weather, here are just ten books that I would like to read this month.


The Physician of Ninevah by Glenn Cooper

London, present day. Dr. Kate Mayne, a brilliant Assyriologist still recovering from heartbreak, devotes her life to uncovering the secrets of the ancient world. She never expects one of those secrets to walk into her life—claiming to be a royal physician from the long-lost city of Nineveh.

Assyria, 7th century BCE. Mannu-ki-Ashur, Chief Physician to King Ashurbanipal, faces an impossible choice. The woman he has loved since childhood is dying from a poison no medicine or forbidden magic can cure. In desperation, Mannu turns to an ancient ritual that sends him hurtling through time to modern-day London.

When Kate confirms Mannu’s identity through ancient texts only she can read, she is swept into a race against time, assassins from Nineveh, and the limits of belief. Together, Mannu and Kate must find a cure and confront a destiny that spans empires. Along the way, they discover a bond that might just be stronger than time itself.

Purchase Link 


 The Midnight Hour by Eve Chase

Present day Paris: Maggie Parker receives a call. The new owners of her family’s old Notting Hill home are digging up the basement. They’ve no idea what might lie beneath.

London, twenty-one years earlier: teenaged Maggie, babysitting her little brother, waits in vain for her mother to come home after a night out. Seeking clues to her mother’s mysterious disappearance, she's drawn away from the neighbourhood’s grand terraces and into its hustling backstreets - and the arms of someone else living on their wits.

Over two decades later, the clock is ticking on a secret set to shatter Maggie’s grown-up life. But the draw of the past is irresistible...

Purchase Link


 The Vanishing Act by Jo Jakeman

Life as a missing person is absolute murder...

When artist Eloise Ford hears that human remains found in an abandoned mine are believed to be those of long-missing teenager Elizabeth King, the shock sends her reeling.

It can't be true. Eloise knows this for a fact because... she is Elizabeth King.

Now, her carefully curated life in Cornwall is falling apart. Her husband is acting strangely, her children aren't speaking to her and she can't sell a painting for love nor money. But much more worrying are the signs that someone knows exactly who she is... and why she had to vanish thirty years ago.

Eloise needs answers. Is her son's ex-girlfriend just plain annoying... or does she know something? Will the detection skills of the online 'Truth Seekers' group prove more than amateurish? What's the real story behind those village newcomers?

And just how far would she go to keep her family, her friends, and her fraudulent life, safe?

Purchase Link


The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths

Ali Dawson and her cold case team investigate crimes so old, they're frozen - or so their inside joke goes. Most people don't know that they travel back in time to complete their research.

The latest assignment sees Ali venture back farther than they have dared before: to 1850s London in order to clear the name of Cain Templeton, the eccentric great-grandfather of MP Isaac Templeton. Rumour has it that Cain was part of a sinister group called The Collectors; to become a member, you had to kill a woman...

Fearing for her safety in the middle of a freezing Victorian winter, Ali finds herself stuck in time, unable to make her way back to her life, her beloved colleagues, and her son, Finn, who suddenly finds himself in legal trouble in the present day.

Could the two cases be connected?

Purchase Link


The Eights by Joanna Miller

They knew they were changing history.

They didn’t know they would change each other.

Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1000-year history, the world’s most famous university has admitted female students. Giddy with dreams of equality, education and emancipation, four young women move into neighbouring rooms on Corridor Eight. They have come here from all walks of life, and they are thrown into an unlikely, life-affirming friendship.

Dora was never meant to go to university, but, after losing both her brother and her fiancé on the battlefield, has arrived in their place. Beatrice, politically-minded daughter of a famous suffragette, sees Oxford as a chance to make her own way – and her own friends – for the first time. Socialite Otto fills her room with extravagant luxuries but fears they won’t be enough to distract her from her memories of the war years. And quiet, clever, Marianne, the daughter of a village vicar, arrives bearing a secret she must hide from everyone – even The Eights – if she is to succeed.

But Oxford’s dreaming spires cast a dark shadow: in 1920, misogyny is still rife, influenza is still a threat, and the ghosts of the Great War are still very real indeed. And as the group navigate this tumultuous moment in time, their friendship will become more important than ever.

The Eights is a captivating debut novel about sisterhood, self-determination, courage, and what it means to come of age in a world that is forever changed.

Purchase Link


A Keeper by Graham Norton

A masterly tale of secrets and ill-fated loves set on the coast of Ireland.

Elizabeth Keane returns to Ireland after her mother's death, intent only on wrapping up that dismal part of her life. There is nothing here for her; she wonders if there ever was. The house of her childhood is stuffed full of useless things, her mother's presence already fading. And perhaps, had she not found the small stash of letters, the truth would never have come to light.

40 years earlier, a young woman stumbles from a remote stone house, the night quiet but for the tireless wind that circles her as she hurries further into the darkness away from the cliffs and the sea. She has no sense of where she is going, only that she must keep on.

Purchase Link


 The Life She Could Have Lived by Laura Pearson

What if the answer to one little question could change your whole life?

Soon after Anna goes on the best date of her life with a man called James – she and her best friend Niamh visit a fortune teller. Who tells Niamh that she will have one great love. But all she tells Anna is that her future is with a man whose name begins with a J.

It won’t be Jamie though – he never calls. And then Anna meets Edward – gorgeous, kind, loving. He’s all she’s ever dreamed of. Until he asks her to make a choice about their future.

If Anna says ‘yes’ to him, her life will go one way. If she says ‘no’, it’ll go another. Both of the worlds could be happy. Both of the worlds could be heartbreaking… But as Niamh meets her one great love in both worlds, which of Anna’s answers – yes or no – will bring her life together with the person who she’s fated to be with?

Purchase Link


 The Traitor's Circle by Jonathan Friedland

Berlin, 1943. A group of high-society anti-Nazi dissenters meet for a tea party one late summer afternoon. They do not know that, sitting around the table, is someone poised to betray them all to the Gestapo - revealing their secret to the Nazis' most ruthless detective.

They form a circle of unlikely rebels, drawn from the German elite: two countesses, a diplomat, an intelligence officer, an ambassador's widow and a pioneering headmistress. Meeting in the shadows, rescuing Jews or plotting for a future Germany freed from the Führer's rule, what unites them is a shared loathing of the Nazis, a refusal to bow to Hitler and the courage to perform perilous acts of resistance. Or so they believe.

How did a group of brave, principled rebels, who had successfully defied Adolf Hitler for more than a decade, come to fall into such a lethal trap? And who betrayed them?

Undone from within and pursued to near-destruction by one of the Reich's cruellest men, they showed a heroism that raises a question with new urgency for our time: what kind of person does it take to risk everything and stand up to tyranny?

Purchase Link


 A Slowly Dying Cause by Elizabeth George

Amid the beauty of Cornwall’s coastline, the death of a local man shatters the peace with its violence. The body of Michael Lobb is discovered in his family’s tin and pewter workshop, and Detective Inspector Beatrice Hannaford is brought in to investigate. Suspicion quickly develops when it emerges that a mining company had been trying to buy the man’s land, and Lobb was the only remaining obstacle to the deal going through.

But every step of Bea’s investigation provokes more questions than answers, and the complexity of the case develops further as Lobb’s family life, rife with mistrust and deception, comes to light. With cryptic alibis and shifting motives, the tangled web of intrigue soon draws in her colleagues Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers, who must search for a killer in a community that has very little trust in outsiders . . .

Purchase Link


 The Great West Railway Girls Do Their Bit by Jane Lark

1940 - As the Nazi invaders race across Europe, the women of the Great Western Railway works pull together like never before.

Catherine wrestles with self-pity after a machine-shop accident. With her fiancé and brothers on the front lines in France, she must find a new way to fight on the home front.

At her side are her steadfast GWR friends, among them Maggie, facing the loss of her father and family home, and Lily, desperate for news of her childhood sweetheart. All are determined to keep morale high and do their bit to win the war.

Amid blackout nights and rationed days, as the war creeps closer to home, these resilient women forge deeper bonds of sisterhood, confronting heartache and embracing joy. Standing up and volunteering to do even more, when hundreds of thousands of exhausted and wounded troops are rescued from Dunkirk and arrive in Dover. Britain’s ships and small boats saved them, now the trains must move them to safety and the women need to help to keep them alive...

Purchase Link


Happy September Reading!

Annie x