Summer Reads catch up...

It's been a busy summer with lots of travelling, so it's only now that I'm finding time to reflect on some of the many books that I've read over the past few months.

Firstly, this addictive debut novel quickly had me hooked.

The setting is lush and exotic, with a story that keeps you glued to your seat.

The Belize jungle feels suffocating and always oppressively present like an additional character.

Having a protagonist struggling with a hearing disability was sensitively portrayed and, for me, increased the sense of frustration and difficulties throughout the novel.

Plenty of twists kept me reading, this would work so well as a film- I'll definitely look out for Jo Morey's next novel.

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It's a liar's paradise

Wittering Lodge, Stann Creek, Belize

In the dead of night, lying in her father’s jungle lodge, Laelia watches her partner Aid sleeping – her mind racing with everything that’s brought her to this moment.

The heady Caribbean holiday when they first met.

The rum-fueled passion that, day by day, creeps into something darker.

The secrets she discovered in a hidden nook of the lodge, revealing a devastating past.

Above all, she thinks about the impossible decision she must make before dawn.

Does she stay silent and protect their newfound paradise? Or does she confront the lies which run as deep and dark as the lagoon – surfacing a dangerous truth from which there’s no return…

A transporting book club novel with the pulse of a thriller, The Night Lagoon is about the secrets and lies that simmer just beneath the surface of paradise.

Thank you#NetGalley & HarperCollinsUK for my ARC of the novel

Published on the same day was another thriller that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Yet another addictive crime thriller which was hard to put down.

As a parent the horror was particularly acute- made even worse when one parent is a policeman.

The story is told from multiple points of view, has multiple layers and many people involved- I thought I knew who did it, but twist after twist proved me wrong.

Picked up by Richard & Judy, this is a gripping novel to read in the run up to Halloween...

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A party at sunset. A body at sunrise.

What happened that night in the woods?

ELLIE

When the body of a young woman is discovered in the woods the morning after Halloween, arranged with ritualistic precision, teenager Ellie has more reason than most to be afraid …

RACHEL 

As both Ellie’s mum and the local school counsellor, Rachel, must grapple with the terror gripping the community, a tough job that’s made even harder when she realises her daughter is keeping secrets …

BEN

Police detective Ben Chase is desperate to solve the murder, but with his daughter Ellie struggling and the noose circling ever tighter, can he catch the killer before they strike again?

Thank you to NetGalley & Simon& Schuster UK for my ARC