Category: Blog Tour

#BlogTour #BookReview Duels & Deception by Cindy Anstey

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I’m thrilled to be today’s stop on the blog tour for Duels & Deception by Cindy Anstey and to bring you my review of this lively, fun and entertaining book.

duels

About the Book

Miss Lydia Whitfield, heiress to the family fortune, has her future entirely planned out. She will run the family estate until she marries the man of her late father’s choosing and then she will spend the rest of her days as a devoted wife. Confident in those arrangements, Lydia has tasked her young law clerk, Mr. Robert Newton, to begin drawing up the marriage contracts. Everything is going according to plan. Until the day Lydia is kidnapped—and Robert along with her. Someone is after her fortune and won’t hesitate to destroy her reputation to get it. With Robert’s help, Lydia strives to keep her family’s good name unsullied and expose whoever is behind this devious plot. But as their investigation delves deeper and their affections for each other grow, Lydia starts to wonder whether her carefully planned future is in fact what she truly wants…

Format: eARC (368 pages)         Publisher: Swoon Reads
Publication date: 11th April 2017 Genre: Young Adult, Historical Fiction, Romance

Purchase Links
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My Review

This was a hoot. The author perfectly captures the style of Jane Austen down to the chapter summaries (‘In which a carriage should not have been ordered and an apology has unseen consequences’), the period phrases (such as ‘doing it up too brown’ to mean doing something well) and the sly wit and humour:

‘With a gasp, Lydia sat up in a dizzy stupor and came perilously close to issuing a most undignified scream. Had her training at Miss Melvina’s Finishing School for Young Ladies been anything buy exemplary, she might have done so…’

Lydia is a plucky and resourceful heroine and Robert an able and likeable hero. Together they seek to find out who is behind the abduction of Lydia and the attempt to ruin her reputation. For as any fan of Jane Austen knows, a lady’s reputation must be maintained at all costs:

‘A ruined reputation would affect the entire household. Society would look askance at all the ladies of Roseberry should news of Lydia’s disappearance be made known. Worthy marriage prospects for Elaine, Ivy and Tessa would vanish on the strength of Lydia’s immoral influence.’

The book has a cast of characters worthy of Jane Austen including scatty mama and unlucky in love friend. So if you want reticules, spencers and curricles and a Regency romp involving bonnets, butlers, duels at dawn, light-hearted intrigue, tender romance, interspersed with tea in the drawing room, then this is the book for you.

Well done to the author for this accomplished pastiche and respectful homage to her literary heroine, Jane Austen. Although it is categorised as Young Adult, I think it would make a fun, light read for readers of any age.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of the author and publishers, Swoon Reads, in return for an honest review.

In three words: Lively, fun, engaging

Try something similar…The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

CindyAbout the Author

Whenever she is not sitting at the computer, throwing a ball in the backyard, gardening or reading, Cindy can be found– actually, not found –adventuring around the world with her hubby. She has lived on three continents, had a monkey in her yard and a scorpion under her sink, dwelt among castles and canals, enjoyed the jazz of Beale St and attempted to speak French. Cindy loves history, mystery and… a chocolate Labrador called Chester. Love, Lies and Spies is her debut novel.

Connect with Cindy
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Blog Tour: Faithless by Kjell Ola Dahl

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FaithlessBlogTour

I’m delighted to be today’s stop on the blog tour for Faithless by Kjell Ola Dahl. You can read my review of this dark, brooding Nordic Noir thriller below.

FaithlessAbout the Book

When the body of a woman turns up in a dumpster, scalded and wrapped in plastic, Inspector Frank Frølich is shocked to discover that he knows her—and their recent meetings may hold the clue to her murder. As he begins to look deeper into the tragic events surrounding her death, Frølich’s colleague Gunnarstranda finds another body, and things take a more sinister turn. With a cold case involving the murder of a young girl in northern Norway casting a shadow, and an unsettling number of coincidences clouding the plot, Frølich is forced to look into his own past to find the answers – and the killer – before he strikes again. Dark, brooding and utterly chilling, atmospheric page-turner marks the return of an internationally renowned and award-winning series, from one of the fathers of Nordic Noir.

To purchase Faithless from Amazon.co.uk, click here (link provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme)

My Review (4 out of 5)

I really enjoyed this book and I particularly liked the different characters making up the police team. It took me a while to figure out their professional relationships – who was the boss of who, and so on – and I guess I missed knowing more of their back story that must have been played out in earlier books in the series.    Frølich is an interesting character who comes across as rather solitary, lonely even with no current relationship. In that respect, he reminded me of Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse.   In this case, Frølich feels conflicted and compromised by an old friend’s connection with the victim, particularly since it reawakens troubling memories from his childhood.

I liked the way that various attitudes to modern day policing were covered. There is Gunnarstranda, suspicious of the “new ways” – data analysis, sifting through CCTV footage, etc – instead clinging to a belief in the value of face-to-face conversations to get to the truth. He also has a strong “sixth sense” when danger lurks. Lena is more into action, whatever it takes to nail a suspect, with sometimes a seemingly casual regard for her own safety. And there is the boss, Rindal, focused on the need to use resources effectively.

The author deftly manages a number of different plot strands – a missing Nigerian woman, a spate of burglaries and the discovery of a dead body that has chilling echoes of an earlier murder.   Dahl constantly plays with the reader’s expectations of how these different strands might come together and introduces a number of plausible suspects to keep one guessing right up to the end. I was certainly led up a few garden paths to some red herrings!

I really enjoyed reading Faithless and I will certainly look out for other titles by the author.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of publishers, Orenda Books, in return for an honest review.

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In three words: Dark, suspenseful, page-turner

DahlKjellOlaAbout the Author

One of the fathers of the Nordic Noir genre, Kjell Ola Dahl was born in 1958 in Gjøvik. He made his debut in 1993, and has since published eleven novels, the most prominent of which is a series of police procedurals cum psychological thrillers featuring investigators Gunnarstranda and Frølich. In 2000 he won the Riverton Prize for The Last Fix and he won both the prestigious Brage and Riverton Prizes for The Courier in 2015. His work has been published in 14 countries, and he lives in Oslo.