What have we been reading outside of our own books you ask? We give a lot of attention to our own books. But we also strongly believe that other publishers should be given support! And we love reading as much as we can. These are a few of our favourites from this month.
The Black Sheep
Sophie Mckenzie has quickly became a household name for her thrillers, we adored Close my Eyes, and have been meaning to pick up another one of her works. Everyone loves a good old fashioned thriller over here, and The Black Sheep gave us that. The story circles around Francesca, a recently windowed lady who is attempting to get over the grief and get on with living her life. Just when things are seeming to look up, she is contacted by a gentleman who claims to have information about her husband’s death, which all leads to her own family – the thought of one of our family members having treacherous ways is terrifying, so we immediately loved the angle this book took. Fast paced, exciting and reminiscent of a Gillian Flynn book. We would highly recommend this to anyone looking for a captivating read.
Thank you to Simon and Schuster for sending us a review copy.
How to Think Like a Cat by Stéphane Garnier
Okay, we’ll admit. We wanted to read this because we love cats. And do you know what, we were not disappointed. But let us just come right out and say, you don’t have to be an owner of a cat or cat ‘lover’ to appreciate this book.
Before we even go into the book, can we just look at it. The hardback is worth buying just for the feel of the paper – thick and expensive feeling, we had a cat-like-instinct to rub our faces all over it when we first received it… so we’ll just add that this book does indeed make one think like a cat before even opening said book. It’s more of a self-help book really, giving you wonderful tips to help add some positivity and helpful changes in your life, inspired by the magnificent kitty. Do you think a cat would really force itself to do something it doesn’t want to do, learn to say no! Add a little curiosity in your life, they say ‘Curiosity killed the cat’ but sometimes it leads to a tasty biscuit that fell down the side of the sofa. We loved it, and we’re keeping it on our coffee table for others to enjoy. It was instantly uplifting and a wonderful present for any lover of cats or a friend who needs a little uplifting.
Thank you to the wonderful Harper Wave (an imprint of HarperCollins) for sending us a beautiful review copy.
The Rabbit Hunter
We’ll admit straight away, it took us a little time to get engrossed in this book, but when we did. That was it. Cancel our dinner plans, reschedule our meetings and put our phone on aeroplane mode for the rest of the evening. Our favourite so far in the Joona Linna series was The Nightmare, but now we’re not so sure. We don’t say breath-taking often, but this Crime/Mystery is just that. There was some, shall we say, obvious moments, and we did guess the identity of the infamous Rabbit Killer before Joona did, but we have a knack for that. This is a classic example of a sympathy for the killer scenario - we know we shouldn't be feeling for a serial killer, but just read it and you'll understand. We're not going to ruin the book, so let's just say you'll want to read the ending when it's light out. Nerve wrecking is the word that comes to mind to sum up the novel.
Thank you to Harper Collins for sending this over to us.
Fatal Crossing
I think you can see an on-going trend here. Many of our favourite genres to read are Thriller/Mysteries. This is another to add to our list of favourites for this month. And we would certainly class this as a mystery. The story mostly revolves around two girls who disappeared from a ferry trip, the main protagonist, Nora was a fantastic character, we actually finished this book near the time of International Women’s day, so we were really loving having a strong and passionate female lead – there’s a reason we loved playing games such as Tomb Raider – these ladies give other lovely ladies hope. The crimes were almost unfathomable, but honestly very relevant to the events of today – thankfully nothing of this magnitude. But it all felt very real, very believable – and that is a very rare quality in thrillers we find. We couldn’t believe this was a debut novel, it was quite simply a quality read. We highly recommend reading, but it goes without saying, stay away if you’re easily scared, it’s not what we would call a horror at all, but it was shocking enough to keep you awake thinking about it at night.
Thank you to Arcadia Books for kindly sending us a copy.
