Tag: Book Blog

Phantasma & Enchantra . Kaylie Smith

My occasional foray into other genres has taken me back to the latest reading fad that seems to have struck over the last few years.

And it’s becoming somewhat of a guilty secret. I’m certainly not the target readership, either by age or gender, but I do enjoy these books.

The thing that initially peeked my interest in this series was that the first book is set in New Orleans. It’s one of my favourite cities, and as a place to set a book, in whatever era, it has loads to give.

Secondly the gumph on Amazon suggested an element of New Orleans occult, another subject that has pricked my interest over the years.

So I decided to read Phantasma, an I enjoyed it that much I was straight into Enchantra. Here’s my thoughts

Phantasma is a really good story, When Tess Grimm dies suddenly her gift as a necromancer passes to her eldest daughter Ophelia.

It’s not long before Ophelia finds out mother was hiding other secrets and that her, and her sister Genevieve are about to lose their home.

One thing leads to another an Ophelia finds herself inside a mansion that manifests into the city to hold a deadly competition.

Tasks based on the nine circles of he’ll are played out on a daily basis. The reward for wining is high but once in the competition there are only three ways out, forfeiting, dying, or win the whole thing.

Ophelia forms an unlikely alliance with a Demon who is also to escape eternally being held in the tournament.

Things get very spicy between the two, this is definitely not a book for younger teens, and the will they won’t they is more about, will they fall in love, more than will they get it on, which they definitely do.

The Second Book Enchantra has Ophelia’s sister as the main character.

Following on a few months after the end of Phantasma Genevieve is in Italy looking to unlock more of her mother’s secrets.

Disappointingly the story gets very familiar very quickly. A deadly game of hide and seek in a mystic mansion, a will they won’t they relationship with a Demon and a fair bit of spice.

The story in the two books is so similar it made me think did the author have two settings for the same story and just went ahead and wrote both versions.

It’s a shame really because the first book showed a lot of promise

Damascus Station. David McCloskey

This is one of the easiest reviews I’ve written. Buy the book.

My formative years of reading were taken up reading great espionage books by the likes of Robert Ludlum, Alistair McLean, Nelson Demille and the likes, and rarely have books that come close to their work.

This one does. Billed as the first of four this book it is set around the end of the Assad regime in Syria, and not only looks at American CIA activities but also the in fighting between different factions in Assad’s security and militia, and the rebels seeking to free the country from the Assad regime.

CIA agent Sam specialises in developing assets in foreign countries. So when a woman working at the heart of the Assad regime is thought to be a viable target to turn into an American agent it’s him they send.

Miriam works as an assistant to a high level officer in Assad’s security forces.

Miriam herself is tasked with silencing a rebel who is spreading the anti Assad message throughout Europe.

Unknown to her boss she is also having doubts about the regime, even though her father and uncle are high ranking officers in the Army she sees the tyranny and misjustices that comes with it. Her own cousin is caught at anti government rallies and is beaten badly before her uncle arranges her release.

The story of Sam making contact and attempting to lure Miriam is the main story, but the infighting and politics of the different factions in Syria make this complex and fascinating.

Family members on different sides of the political, and moralistic fences. Fanatics who thrive on violence, and people with more empathy and sympathy, clash within the same factions.

There are those who want war, and those who are not against it, but not at any cost, working for the same people.

How can Sam and Miriam navigate their way through this. Do they both want the same thing, and who is playing who, and to what end.

Not everybody comes out of this book in one piece. The happy-ever-after is not guaranteed. Just like real life the scenarios in this book are messy, and inevitably mistakes are made on both sides as all interested parties look to gain advantage.

This is a great read. At times I sat holding my breath, at others I found myself reading at a frantic speed to find out what happened next.

Brilliantly written, very realistic, great characters and a cracking story.

Pages: 433. Publisher: Swift Press Audiobook length: 12 hours 48. Narrator: Andrew B Wehrlen

The Seven Robyn Delvey

43 Dead, 24 injured. Two bombs devastate a London Theatre.

The Seven are the survivors of the gang that took the audience hostage during the celebration of a famous actress, before detonating two bombs.

The Seven are on trial at the Old Bailey, in what should be a slam dunk guilty verdict case.

Eve Wren, a young Solicitor is now working for the CPS and is trying to keep a low profile. She had been touted as one of the brightest defence solicitors in the country, until she spotted a mistake by a senior Barrister at the midland law firm she worked at. Her reward for pointing it out was to have the blame turned on her, which led to her firing.

She is young, she is diligent and she is very good at her job. Good enough to have been noticed by her new boss. Good enough to be pulled of a case she is working on to help the prosecution team in the trial of the seven. But the case has already begun, so why move her now.

The credibility of a member of the investigating team has been brought into doubt following mistakes in another case.

They had been responsible for logging evidence.

Some evidence in trials is never used. It’s things that were discovered during an investigation but are deemed irrelevant to the case, and therefore undisclosed to the defence.

Wrens job is to go over the evidence deemed irrelevant, just in case there is something there that should have been disclosed.

As you would imagined the Police Officers who investigated the incident are not happy. But the SIO and his boss have to accept that Wren needs to do her job.

The political wranglings of who Wren should inform of any discoveries first, the lead Barrister or the Police, as well as the moral dilemma of what she should do if she discovers evidence that may conflict the case are central to the plot.

I really enjoyed this book. At first I did have a problem with the now-and-then plot, switching between the night of the incident and the time of the trial. I thought some of the “then” sections were spurious, but actually the knitted the plot together nicely.

Book two in the series The Bait is also available and is now on my TBR list.

Pages: 364. Publisher Thomas & Mercer. Audiobook length: 10.36. Narrator: Moira Quirk

The Devil’s Code. Michael Wood

The second in the Dr Olivia Winter series.

Her father is still alive and in prison but has no big part to play in this book, except that a TV series based on his killings is about to be aired on prime time television. Bringing Olivia back into the unwelcome spotlight.

The main story in this book centres on the investigation into a series of murders. Isaac McFadden is in prison for one murder. He was stopped by the police for a faulty light on his car, but they discovered a dismembered body in the boot.

Throughout his arrest and questioning he replied no comment to all questions. In court he was found guilty of one murder. But when his daughter started to clear out his house she found a note book with some coded entries, and an eclectic mix of items she’d never seen before, hidden in the bedroom.

The police now think there may have been more than one murder and turn to Olivia to help her crack the code in the book, and McFaddens code of silence.

Moving to Newcastle to help the police she has to interview the daughter, a woman that is going through what Olivia went through, finding out the father she loved is actually a killer. She tries to help her emotionally, but the spotlight from the TV series has an adverse effect.

I have to say the plot in this book is brilliant. I love the characters, the way it’s written, the story, the cadence, everything.

I think the code in the notebook is clever, and most of it I’d never have got, but the two parts the team really struggle with, for me, were the most obvious. It didn’t detract from my enjoyment, but I think most people will suss it quite quickly.

The fears at the end of my review of the first book didn’t transpire. Olivia Winter is a brilliant Forensic Psychologist, who was the only survivor when her father killed her family, the latest in a series of his killings.

My fear was that it would be another of those series where the incarcerated father would be the go too expert relied on by the law abiding daughter. Apart from the TV series he has little part to play and is hardly mentioned, but when he is ……..

The second book in a series can often be “the difficult second book” but if anything this one is even better than the first, and now I can’t wait for number three.

Pages: 477. Publisher: One More Chapter. Audiobook length: 13.48 hours. Narrator: Olivia Mace

The Chemist A.A Dhand

A massive heads up to give about a book that I think is the best crime thriller I’ve read this year.

Not set with a cop as the main character, but with a pharmacist who is just trying to do the right thing.

Idris Khan is the “Chemist” a pharmacist on a tough council estate in Leeds. His chemist shop is where the locals go for their medicine, it’s also where the local drug addicts get their daily methadone treatment.

Khan is also the only pharmacist who the local drug lord allows into the Mews, a council estate of high rise flats.

Jahangir Hosseini is the drug lord. He runs the five flats and the houses around them. Nobody gets past his gatekeepers, nobody sells drugs unless they are his. But most importantly nobody ever leaves the estate to live elsewhere, because once he has you hooked on his drugs, he doesn’t want you to taking your trade anywhere else.

The rest of Leeds underworld is run by Thomas Mead and he has always wanted to run the Mews but can’t afford the damage a gang war would do.

Meanwhile a small time pimp is running prostitutes in Heaton, one of them, a fresh face is sent out on her first night. Her client attacks her but Liam says if he wants it rough, get him to pay extra. In desperation she turns to Rebecca, a councillor who works with street girls.

In a crazy turn of events Rebecca kills the client by stabbing him in the back. The client just happens to be Thomas Meads brother who has only just been released from prison.

In a panic Rebecca calls he ex husband, Idris Khan, for help.

And that is where the story really starts.

The more Khan helps the deeper the hole he is digging himself, Rebecca, and Amy the young prostitute

This is a compelling story of a man who is trying to help people. Drug addicts, prostitutes, people generally down on their luck, living in a terrible part of the country.

When that help takes him into the mews he is protected by the drug lord, but only their terms.

He has free range to move around in places the police daren’t go.

And in the words of some actor in a film I can’t remember the name of, he has skills. Not physical, he has a brain, and he has a pharmacy in a world where drugs are a daily necessity for most people.

This is the story of bad decisions and loyalties. The story of a man just trying to get along in life by helping others. When that help leads to trouble it comes from all directions. Two drug lords, the police and the community.

A cracking read from and unusual point of view, and I loved it.

Pages: 432. Publisher: HQ. Publishing date: 22/05/2025. Audiobook length 10 hours 14, Narrator TBC

What The Dead Want. M.J Lee

DI Ridpath #10

This series is constantly one of my top two British crime thriller, police procedural, reads

M.J Lee has created a unique character. DI Tom Ridpath has two jobs. His main job is in the Major Investigation Team of Greater Manchester Police. But following treatment for cancer he was seconded to the Corner as her investigator, a job he is still doing four years later, although he is increasingly back in the fold of the police.

The uniqueness of the situation sees Ridpath investigating deaths for the Coroner that sometimes haven’t raised suspicions of the police.

In this case a high death rate at a Residential Care Home for the elderly.

At the same time Ridpath is tasked, by the police, to look at the case of a fourteen year old boy who went missing during the Covid lockdown, and was never found.

Why was the case so badly handled in the first place?

It’s a hot chalice for Ridpath, often seen as an outsider, and an ideal scapegoat, could this be somebody engineering his failure.

Covid took its toll on the police and they were slow to respond, officers went sick and the continuity of the investigation was shattered. So what can the new investigation find, without highlighting just how badly the police had messed up, without Ridpath taking the blame.

Meanwhile a serial killer is lounging in a high security hospital plotting his escape. Ex medical examiner Harold Lardner wants revenge on the people that put him in jail. That includes everybody at Greater Manchester Coroners Office.

The residential care home starts to crop up in Ridpaths missing persons case, and his inquiries for the Coroner are being thwarted by the care home management.

Surely the two cases can’t be related.

Lardner is plotting and pulling strings like a master puppeteer, but surely he can’t have been playing the long game and somehow be responsible for the disappearance of the boy four years ago.

This is a great story in a great series.

The main character, Ridpath, struggles with his work life balance. A a widowed father with a fourteen year old daughter his home life is fractious. As a cop with two jobs, which comes with often conflicting loyalties, work is also fractious.

Ridpath and the recurring characters, the background storyline running through the series, and the story within each book makes these books unmissable.

Pages:394. Publisher Canelo Crime

Zodiac. Conrad Jones

It’s a common name in serial killers, one factual and many fictional but this Zodiac story is a real standout. One of the fastest paced psychological thrillers I’ve read for a while, and what a story.

With a time line that dances back and forward between previous kills and the current investigation the tension is built quite quickly.

The first murder, four years ago is brilliantly written without being gratuitous, the tension of a girl walking through the woods to her death, alluding to the horrors she’s been through since she was kidnapped, and the way she is about to die, without going into the gore of a complete description.

Today, a young brother and sister leave home with no breakfast, their mom and dad still in bed sleeping of last nights alcohol and drugs excesses, witness a gang fight on a bus. Two teenagers are killed one stabbed, the other hit by a car as he runs from the scene.

Another day on the streets of Liverpool. They live in a low socioeconomic area where kids hang out around a row of shops at night, where rumours are rife that the owners of the shop are grooming young girls, but those girls don’t care because they are actually getting the attention they should be getting at home, but it comes at a cost.

One of the boys killed on the bus is the son of one of Liverpools biggest organised crime groups. A violent man who leads a violent gang.

He wants the killer of his son.

More girls go missing and eventually bodies start to turn up.

It is when all of these seemingly isolated strands start to knit together that things really start to get dangerous on the streets.

The Police are running investigations into missing persons, murders, grooming, and organised crime gangs. Some of these are linked, some are just distractions that throw red herrings in their direction, but ultimately they realise they are after one person. The Zodiac.

The problem is the head of the Gang is also running an investigation, and his interrogation techniques are not as friendly as the police’s, his crew don’t have to stay within the niceties of the law, they can use things like pliers, drills and blowtorch’s.

Who will untangle the threads of the investigation first. Will the Gangs attempts to find their bosses sons killer get in the way of the police’s attempts to find Zodiac, or is it really one person they are both after.

I loved this book, well nearly. The cadence of the story telling is wonderful. The plot is fantastically woven right up to the last page it provides shocks and twist. But……there is a but.

Why do authors go to so much trouble getting the crime and policing side of a story right and then do such a poor job of other aspects.

There are two major scenes where the Fire Service is involved in this book, and the inaccuracies and naivety of these sections of the book was in stark contrast to the rest of the story.

I know not many people would pick up on this but I’m sure a few will.

For me, if I was writing reviews with ratings, this would have dropped an easy five star to a four. If those scenes had have been at the start of the book I would have put it down, but thankfully I was fully hooked by then.

Would I recommend it yes. It does get a bit gory in places, but it’s well placed, essential to the story, and not overly graphic.

The sections where the author talks about grooming are well written and I wouldn’t really say there’s any section I would warn about for triggering.

It is one of the best UK based psychological thrillers I’ve read for a very long time.

Pages: 402. Publisher: Red Dragon Books.

Hunted Abir Mukherjee

If you’ve missed the type of book that Robert Ludlum wrote back in the 70s and 80s, or some of the early Tom Clancy novels, then this book set firmly in the modern day is definitely for you.

Hunted is set against the backdrop of an imminent American Presidential Election, very thinly disguised and based on Trump v Harris, and hints that one of them, or at the least their supporters, are trying to sway the election by setting up terrorist attacks on US soil.

Young vulnerable Asian women are being groomed to join a US Terror Cell, but they are not being told the truth about the severity of there actions, or the cause they are fighting for.

Somebody wants to make it look as though there is a Muslim Terror Cell working in America.

After an explosion in a Mall FBI Agent Shreya Mistry manages to see CCTV footage of the alleged attacker, but she looks like she’s running away, not planting a bomb.

Mistry has difficulty getting her bosses to agree with her and finds herself increasingly distanced from the investigation.

Meanwhile and American mother goes to the U.K. to find the family of another Asian girl who is believed to be part of the cell. The mother’s white and is convinced her son is also part of the cell, but knows he can’t be acting out of principles the American Government Agencies, and the press, are attributing to the cell.

She convinces the father to go to the States with her to find their children before the FBI does, because she’s afraid they won’t be listened to fairly, if at all.

The title the hunted come onto play here. The mismatched couple are hunting their children. The FBI are hunting the cell, and also the mother and father team who they now think are also terrorists.

So, who is the puppeteer grooming and guiding the would be activists into terrorism.

And what s their ultimate goal.

I loved this book. It took me right back to the books that hooked me as a young adult. This sits nicely alongside Ludlum, Clancy, and DeMille as a brilliantly tense terrorism novel.

Hopefully there will be a follow up. It doesn’t exactly end on a cliffhanger, but there is scope for another book.

Pages: 468. Publisher: Vintage Audiobook length: 13 hours 21. Narrator: Mikhail Sen

Onyx Storm Rebecca Yarros

To start with I acknowledge that I am not the target audience for this book.

Last year I read the first two in the series, Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, as a challenge to myself to read a different genre, and I really enjoyed them.

This book, the third, has been really hyped over the two or three months prior to its publication, and I was one of the people really looking forward to seeing what happened after the cliff hanger at the end of Iron Flame .

Before I read it I saw some reviews where people were stating that they were struggling to catch up with the plot or make sense of where the story picked up immediately after the end of the last book.

Some even went as far as to say they had reread Iron Flame just to make sense of the start of this book.

The story told through the series is actually quite complex, with people of different families having different allegiances, dragons and other mythical monsters forming bonds with different people, all having their own intricacies.

So with Iron Flame finishing at the end of a vicious battle, which saw a whirlwind of death, injury, and changing sides, it’s easy to see why people were a bit bamboozled, I was over 100 pages in before I was comfortable with being caught up and on the right track.

Onyx Flame continues in the aftermath of a battle. Lines had been crossed and alliances tested, stretched and in some cases broken.

Spoiler alert if you haven’t read the first two books

Xaden is not all that he seems, he has bad blood running through him, poisoning his soul and it should be turning him to the dark side, but he’s fighting it.

Violet won’t accept that she’s losing him and sets out, with her friends from the Fourth Wing, to try and find a cure. This involves trying to locate the mythical seventh breed of dragon.

At the same time the Wyvern are attacking with towns and villages falling.

As Xaden tries to hide his changing bloodline he helps to battle the type of beings that he is turning into.

During the quest, and one of the ensuing battles Violet meets her ultimate enemy, the her of the enemy, and only one of them can be allowed to live, unless Violet crosses over.

Although the main gist of this story is the quest to find a cure, and the seventh breed, it’s also a story of war and politics, and as with the previous book’s loyalties

And of course the relationship between Violet and Xaden.

I put a warning on my blog about the first two books, that although they were classed as young adult, they contained some graphic spice scenes. I was amazed how many people replied thanking me because their young, thirteen and fourteen year old, teenagers had been asking for the books as presents. Well if anything the spice in this book is even more graphic.

So what did I really think of the book.

Would I have read it all the way through if I hadn’t read the first two. No, I read this because I became invested in the whole story.

If this was the first book would I have been as engaged. No, if this was the first book I would have given in after the first fifty or sixty pages.

Will I read the next instalment. Yes. I’m invested in the characters and as this book ends on an even bigger cliff hanger than the last one I feel compelled to read whatever comes next.

That’s the sign of a clever author. Like Ink Black Heart in the Strike books by Robert Galbraith, I might not have loved the book, but the ongoing story has me hooked, but if the next one is in the same vain as this one, it might be my last.

Publisher Piatkus. Pages 544. Audiobook length 23.54 hours. Narrator Jasmin Walker

Hidden. Kendra Elliott

Billed as book 1 in the Bone Secrets series, and what an opener.

Looking online there are 5 books in this series, so far, and I can’t wait to get stuck into the next one.

Forensic Odontologist Lacey Campbell is young and at the beginnings of her career. A lecturer at her local Dental School, and occasional forensic consultant, she is called to a scene where a collection of bones have been discovered.

She quickly realises she knows the victim. The last time she had seen the girl she had been taken by a serial killer, and became his last victim.

The bones are found in a building belonging to a medically retired cop, Jack Harper.

Jack had once dated another victim of the killer, and when his ex cop partner is found tortured to death, links start to fall in place. That cop had been one of the officers to catch the killer.

An uneasy alliance forms as Lacey and Jack start to work on their own theories.

Both come under suspicion by the officers investigating the current killings.

But what is the link?

Can Lacey really trust Jack?

A great story. I don’t know where the series will go next, which characters will return, but there’s enough interesting subplots in this book to open many avenues.

Lacey is young, hot, and hot blooded. Her character is a really enjoyable read.

The relationship with Jack is steamy. They are both passionate about finding this killer, and that passion boils over into a will-they-won’t-they scenario.

Jack is a business owner who owns many properties. He was a cop for a short time, until an arrest went wrong and he got injured. He had returned for a short while but found it wasn’t right for him so joined his father’s business.

Then there’s Lacey’s friend Michael, a no nonsense journalist who she once dated but is now best friends with.

Set in the coastal state Oregon there is loads of potential for crimes to investigate, big cities, isolated towns, seaports, the list could be endless

So let’s see where it goes next.

Pages: 373. Publisher: Montlake Romance (Don’t know why, it’s definitely a crime thriller)