Category: Blog Tour

#BlogTour #BookReview Blackstone Fell by Martin Edwards

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BLOG TOUR BANNER_BFWelcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Blackstone Fell by Martin Edwards. My thanks to Sophie at Ransom PR for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Head of Zeus for my digital review copy via NetGalley. Do hop over to Instagram and check out the post by my tour buddy for today, Jan at Jan_is_reading.

Blackstone FellAbout the Book

Yorkshire, 1606. A man vanishes from a locked gatehouse in a remote village. 300 years later, it happens again.

Autumn 1930. Journalist Nell Fagan knows there’s only one person who can get to the bottom of this mystery: Rachael Savernake. But someone wants Nell dead, and soon, while investigating a series of recent deaths at Blackstone Sanatorium, she’s missing entirely.

Looking for answers, Rachel travels to lonely Blackstone Fell, with its eerie moor, deadly waters and sinister tower. With help from Jacob Flint – who’s determined to expose a fraudulent medium at a séance – Rachel will risk her life to bring an end to the disappearances…

Format: Hardback (416 pages)             Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 1st September 2022 Genre: Historical Fiction, Crime

Find Blackstone Fell on Goodreads

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Hive | Amazon UK
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My Review

Blackstone Fell is the third book in Martin Edwards’s Rachel Savernake series. I haven’t read either of the earlier books in the series – Gallows Court and Mortmain Hall – but I don’t think it is essential to have done so in order to enjoy Blackstone Fell. If anything waiting for the first appearance in person of Rachel Savernake, having had snippets of information about her from other characters, only increased my curiosity. And wasn’t it worth the wait because she makes a fascinating central character, a sort of female Sherlock Holmes (but without the pipe).

Rachel is a rich young woman whose early life is shrouded in mystery (although it will be more familiar to readers of the earlier books). As Rachel admits, she loves the thrill of the unexpected. ‘Puzzles, mysteries – the more outlandish, the better.’ She guards her privacy with ‘a ruthless zeal’ and is a formidable adversary.  The members of Rachel’s household – Martha Trueman, Martha’s brother Clifford and Clifford’s wife Hetty – are devoted to her; not so much servants as a ‘tight-knit cabal’. Rachel is good at utilising their talents as part of her investigations whether that’s gathering gossip or conducting a little subterfuge.

I confess it took me a while to familiarise myself with the different inhabitants of Blackstone Fell and understand the layout of the village. (The book contains a map but this wasn’t included in my advance digital copy.) Safe to say there are the usual features of small village life: gossip, petty rivalries and tall stories exchanged at the bar of the public house.

The book has a number of different strands including those inexplicable disappearances from Blackstone Lodge, efforts to expose a medium who is preying upon the loved ones of the deceased and a series of deaths from natural causes (or were they?) at a local sanatorium.  Throw in some religous zealotry, infidelity, poison pen letters, financial skulduggery, greed and thwarted ambition, and you have a heady mix all set against the backdrop of a remote location.  ‘The brooding moors, the deadly marsh, Blackstone Leap.’

Blackstone Fell contains many of the elements of classic crime fiction including a denoument at which, with all the suspects gathered together, Rachel reveals the solutions to what turn out to be more than one mystery.  A neat touch is the addition of a ‘cluefinder’ at the end of the book (apparently all the fashion during the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of detective fiction) in which the author identifies the pages on which clues appeared. Well done if you spotted any of these because most of them passed me by, but then I don’t have the observational skills, breadth of knowledge or deductive ability of Rachel Savernake.

Blackstone Fell will appeal to fans of classic crime fiction (think Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers),  those who like to be immersed in the milieu of an earlier age and who enjoy the challenge of unravelling an intricate plot.

In three words: Intricate, clever, intriguing

Try something similar: Dark Dawn Over Steep House by M.R.C. Kasasian

Martin EdwardsAbout the Author

Martin Edwards has won the Edgar, Agatha, H.R.F. Keating, Macavity, Poirot and Dagger awards as well as being shortlisted for the Theakston’s Prize.  He is President of the Detection Club, a former Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association and consultant to the British Library’s bestselling crime classics series. In 2020 he was awarded the Diamond Dagger for his outstanding contribution to crime fiction.

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#BlogTour #BookReview Every Shade of Happy by Phyllida Shrimpton

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Every Shade of Happy by Phyllida Shrimpton. My thanks to Amy at Head of Zeus for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my digital review copy via NetGalley. Do check out the post by my tour buddy for today, Frankie at Chicks, Rogues and Scandals.

Every Shade of HappyAbout the Book

Algernon is at the end of his life.
His granddaughter is at the start of hers.
But they have more in common than they think…

Every day of Algernon’s 97 years has been broken up into an ordered routine. That’s how it’s been since the war, and he’s not about to change now.

Until his 15-year-old granddaughter arrives on his doorstep, turning Algernon’s black-and-white life upside down. Everything from Anna’s clothes to the way she sits glued to her phone is strange to Algernon, and he’s not sure he likes it.

But as the weeks pass, Algernon is surprised to discover they have something in common after all – Anna is lonely, just like him. Can Algernon change the habits of a lifetime to bring the colour back into Anna’s world?

Format: Hardback (400 pages)          Publisher: Aria
Publication date: 18th August 2022 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find Every Shade of Happy on Goodreads

Purchase links
Bookshop.org
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Hive | Amazon UK
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

Okay, I’m going to cut to the chase and say I was Team Algernon from the outset. Yes, he may be a little grumpy, rather lackadaisical about washing his smalls and definitely set in his ways but that’s just his way of coping with the world, particularly since the death of his wife, Evie. He feels she’s with him in spirit though, giving him a nudge when needed or the occasional gentle rebuke just as she did when she was alive. I loved everything about Algernon and, although he may be out of touch with modern technology – he favours a map over an app – perhaps he’s not wrong when he asserts a letter, a telephone call or a face-to-face meeting means more than an email, text or ‘like’ on an Instagram post.

It took me a little longer to warm to Anna’s mother, Helene. Initially, she comes across as someone who lurches from one crisis to another. Even Anna admits her mother is impulsive and clumsy, charging into things without due thought. It’s not Helene’s fault that she and Anna have ended up homeless but her precarious financial situation is the reason they’ve had to resort to living with Algernon. However, I came to admire the way Helene gradually gains control of her life, eventually finding something she’s really good at; as even Algernon is forced to admit.

Anna’s love of colour is about more than just wearing clothes of every hue or creating body art, it’s her form of self-expression. When forced to don a drab school uniform, she feels she’s no longer Anna, just a dull, grey version of herself. It’s one of the things, along with the upheaval of a new home, new school and having to leave her friends behind, that makes her retreat into herself, with only Gary her cactus for company. At this point I must mention one of my other favourite characters in the book – Jacob, the eldest son of Algernon’s neighbours – who literally catapults himself into the story variously performing the role of joker, protector, counsellor, delivery driver, cream tea devourer and much more besides. I also loved Jacob’s quirky sense of humour and his endless patience towards Algernon.

Dismiss any preconceived notion that Every Shade of Happy is the simple story of young Anna melting the heart of her grumpy old granddad because it’s much more nuanced than that. Although Anna and Algernon may appear to be running on parallel lines and that never the twain shall meet, in fact they have more in common than either of them thought. They just need a bit of guidance and encouragement to find out what it is. My first weepy moment was when an additional armchair was ordered – yes, really – and there were plenty of times after that I found myself reaching for the tissues.

There is a real warmth to the story perhaps partly because, as the author reveals in the Acknowledgments, the book is an ‘ode’ to her father whose wartime experiences were similar to Algernon’s, as was his reticence to talk about them.

Every Shade of Happy is a wonderfully affecting story told with warmth and wit.

In three words: Heartwarming, funny, touching

Try something similar: The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams

Phyllida_ShrimptonAbout the Author

Phyllida Shrimpton obtained a postgraduate degree in Human Resource Management, a career choice which was almost as disastrous as her cooking. Thankfully her love of books and writing led her to a new career as an author. Her young adult novel Sunflowers in February won the Red Book Award for YA Fiction in 2019. Having lived in London, The Netherlands and the Cotswolds with her husband, daughter, giant Saint Bernard and grumpy old terrier, she now lives on the Essex Coast in a place she likes to describe as being where the river meets the sea. Every Shade of Happy is her first adult novel.

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