Category: Blog Tour

Blog Tour/Review: The Thirteenth Gate by Kat Ross

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I’m thrilled to be one of the hosts for today’s stop on the blog tour for The Thirteenth Gate by Kat Ross, Book 2 in her exciting Dominion Mystery series.  You can read my review below.  To check out the other great bloggers on the tour and see what they thought, click here.

WinPlus there’s a giveaway (US & Canada only, sorry!) with a chance for one lucky person to win a signed paperback copy of Book #1 in the Dominion Mystery series, The Daemoniac.

To enter click here.

 

TheThirteenthGateAbout the Book

Winter 1888. At an asylum in the English countryside, a man suspected of being Jack the Ripper kills an orderly and flees into the rain-soaked night. His distraught keepers summon the Lady Vivienne Cumberland – who’s interviewed their patient and isn’t sure he’s a man at all. An enigmatic woman who guards her own secrets closely, Lady Vivienne knows a creature from the underworld when she sees one. And he’s the most dangerous she’s ever encountered. As Jack rampages through London, Lady Vivienne begins to suspect what he’s searching for. And if he finds it, the doors to purgatory will be thrown wide open…

Across the Atlantic, an archaeologist is brutally murdered after a Christmas Eve gala at the American Museum of Natural History. Certain peculiar aspects of the crime attract the interest of the Society for Psychical Research and its newest investigator, Harrison Fearing Pell. Is Dr. Sabelline’s death related to his recent dig in Alexandria? Or is the motive something darker? As Harry uncovers troubling connections to a serial murder case she’d believed was definitively solved, two mysteries converge amid the grit and glamour of Gilded Age New York. Harry and Lady Vivienne must join forces to stop an ancient evil. The key is something called the Thirteenth Gate. But where is it? And more importantly, who will find it first?

Format: ebook Publisher: Acorn Publishing Pages: 350
Publication: 26th Jun 2017 Genre: Historical Mystery, YA    

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com ǀ Barnes & Noble ǀ Kobo ǀ iTunes
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

 Find The Thirteenth Gate on Goodreads

 

My Review

‘In the universe…there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.’

What do you get if you take an intricately plotted, suspenseful historical mystery set in 19th century London and New York and add ghouls and daemons? An enthralling, wonderfully entertaining read, that’s what! I’m not much into paranormal or fantasy but I really enjoyed this book because the fantasy elements were subtly woven into a satisfyingly complex historical mystery.

Lady Vivienne makes a feisty, idiosyncratic and resourceful heroine alongside her companion, Alec Lawrence. Their bond is symbiotic in nature, forged and developed over a great expanse of time with each contributing skills and abilities that make them an effective fighting force against the powers of evil. As Lady Vivienne explains, ‘We are the light against the darkness’.

Harrison (Harry) Pell and her friend, John Weston, specialise much more in solving the crimes of this world – think Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, but of course they were only fictional, weren’t they? However, in The Thirteenth Gate, Harry and John are forced to confront malefactors from a distinctly more shadowy realm.  When Lady Vivienne, Alec, Harry and John join forces, nothing can stop them – or can it?

This is the second book in the series. (Click here to download Book #1, The Daemoniac, which is currently free from Amazon.)  Although there are lots of references to earlier events in The Thirteenth Gate, this didn’t affect my enjoyment and the book works perfectly well as a standalone. Except….that having read this you’re definitely going to want to read the first one (I certainly do), so why not start there? In fact, as the author explains in her afterword, the story of Lady Vivienne and Alec starts much further back than that, in The Fourth Element trilogy.  Book #1 of the trilogy, The Midnight Sea, is currently free to download from Amazon – click here to get hooked.

I received a review copy courtesy of the author and Xpresso Book Tours in return for an honest and unbiased review.

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In three words: Compelling, suspenseful, imaginative

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAbout the Author

Kat Ross worked as a journalist at the United Nations for ten years before happily falling back into what she likes best: making stuff up. She lives in Westchester with her kid and a few sleepy cats. Kat is also the author of the dystopian thriller Some Fine Day (Skyscape, 2014) about a world where the sea levels have risen sixty meters. She loves magic, monsters and doomsday scenarios. Preferably with mutants.

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Blog Tour/Review: It Was Only Ever You by Kate Kerrigan

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ItWasOnlyEverYou

I’m thrilled to be one of the co-hosts for today’s stop on the blog tour for It Was Only Ever You by Kate Kerrigan and to bring you my review of this luscious historical romance.  Do check out today posts from my co-hosts Celeste Loves Books and SibzzReads.

And while you’re reading my review, why not smooch along to the song, ‘It Was Only Ever You’

About the Book

Patrick Murphy has charm to burn and a singing voice to die for. Many people will recognise his talent. Many women will love him. Rose, the sweetheart he leaves behind in Ireland, can never forget him and will move heaven and earth to find him again, long after he has married another woman. Ava, the heiress with no self-confidence except on the dance floor, falls under his spell. And tough Sheila Klein, orphaned by the Holocaust and hungry for success as a music manager, she will be ruthless in her determination to unlock his extraordinary star quality. But in the end, Patrick Murphy’s heart belongs to only one of them. Which one will it be?

Format: Paperback Publisher: Head of Zeus Pages: 389
Publication: 13th Jul 2017 Genre: Historical Romance

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com ǀ
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find It Was Only Ever You on Goodreads

My Review

 

In It Was Only Ever You, the author has created three distinctive female characters. I loved Ava who, in her ‘lucky suit’, made me think of the young Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not. To me she was the most fully realised female character and the one I found myself most engaged with and who I rooted for most.  I also liked how, in Sheila, the author created a picture of a strong, independent woman, not afraid to challenge society’s expectations and break through into an industry dominated by men. (I pictured her as Celeste Holm in Gentleman’s Agreement). Beautiful, beloved Rose was the character I felt least drawn to, although I’m not sure quite why. Perhaps it was her cool, perfect beauty (which if we’re indulging in film star comparisons can only be to a young Grace Kelly) or the fact she was the catalyst for so many of the dramatic events in the book.

 

Alongside these three strong female characters, Patrick Murphy has a tough job to gain the reader’s attention and sympathies. He’s handsome, charming and the author does a great job of communicating how his wonderful voice is so attractive to women. However, he’s also rather naive and his poor choices will set in train unintended and tragic consequences.

Perhaps surprisingly, because he is not at first sight that attractive a figure, the male character I really engaged with was Iggy Morrow, the music impresario. I felt the author created a really believable character and his journey from loner to someone prepared to make a commitment to another person for the first time in his life was credible and rather moving.

Amongst many other compelling aspects of this book is the evocation of the New York of the period with its dance halls, jazz clubs, show bands and the advent of the sound that would revolutionize the music scene – rock’n’roll.

‘But with this new, strange rockabilly sound [Sheila] found her hips were swaying from side to side at a speed that felt fast – too fast – and yet she was compelled to move in a way that felt utterly natural. It was as if the beat had injected her, and everyone else there, with a kind of electricity. Her body seemed to understand what to do in a way it had never done before now.’

If that doesn’t make you want to listen to ‘Rock Around the Clock’ I don’t know what will! Similarly, I loved the picture of the tight-knit Irish émigré community, where everyone knows one another – making subsequent events entirely believable.

The author gives us tantalising hints about some of the characters’ earlier lives. I’m curious – and greedy – so I would have loved more about the back stories of Rose, Sheila and Rose’s mother, Eleanor. For example – no spoilers, as these facts are revealed in the opening chapters of the book – information about Rose’s biological parents, more detail about what happened to Sheila’s family and what in Eleanor’s past made her so fearful for her daughter.

The book ended satisfyingly for me with two of the three women being rewarded precisely in the way I’d hoped for and the third getting just what she deserved. I’ll leave you to read the book and work out what I mean and which is which!

It Was Only Ever You takes the reader on a wonderful journey from rural Ireland to the excitement of New York. There is love and drama and sadness, there are partings and reunions, all set against the backdrop of the sheer joy of music.

I received a review copy courtesy of publishers Head of Zeus in return for an honest and unbiased review.

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In three words: Emotional, dramatic, stylish

Try something similar…The Summer House Party by Caro Fraser

KateKerriganAbout the Author

Kate Kerrigan is an author living and working in Ireland. Her novels are Recipes for a Perfect Marriage, The Miracle of Grace, Ellis Island, City of Hope, Land of Dreams and The Lost Garden. Kate began her career as an editor and journalist, editing many of Britain’s most successful young women’s magazines before returning to her native Ireland in the 1990’s to edit Irish Tatler. She writes a weekly column in the Irish Mail about her life in Killala, County Mayo – and contributes regularly to RTE’s radio’s Sunday Miscellany. Her novel, The Dress, published by Head of Zeus was shortlisted at the Irish Book Awards in 2015 and her new novel, It Was Only Ever You, was published in hardback in October 2016.

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