Tag: thriller

#BookReview The Traitor by Ava Glass @PenguinUKBooks @AvaGlassBooks #TheTraitor

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Traitor by Ava Glass. My thanks to Amanda at Moonflower Books for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my digital review copy via NetGalley. Do check out the posts by my tour buddies for today, Amanda at gingerbookgeek and Linda at Linda’s Book Bag.

About the Book

LONDON. EARLY MORNING. A body is found in a padlocked suitcase. Investigator Emma Makepeace knows it’s murder. And it’s personal.

She quickly establishes that the dead man had been shadowing two oligarchs suspected of procuring illegal weapons in the UK. And it seems likely that an insider working deep within the British government is helping them.

To find out who the traitor is, Emma goes deep undercover on a superyacht owned by one of the oligarchs.

But the glamorous veneer of the rich hides dark secrets. Out at sea, Emma is both hunter and prey, and no one can protect her.

Never has the turquoise sea and golden sands of the Rivera seemed so dangerous.

As the hunt intensifies, Emma knows that she is in mortal danger. And that she needs to find the traitor before they find her …

Format: ebook (411 pages)                        Publisher: Penguin
Publication date: 14th September 2023 Genre: Thriller

Find The Traitor on Goodreads

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My Review

Ava Glass is a new author to me and I haven’t read The Chase, the book which first introduced Emma Makepeace to the world. I’m pleased to say I didn’t feel at any disadvantage not having read the first book and that The Traitor can easily be read as a standalone, although there are spoilers for key events in The Chase.

The storyline of The Traitor with its Russian oligarchs and their luxurious properties, extravagant lifestyles, superyachts, trophy girlfriends and links to organised crime feels bang up to the minute.

Although the author gives Emma a very believable motivation for embarking on the dangerous missions she undertakes, at first I didn’t find her a very convincing spy. Some of her actions aboard the superyacht seemed rather naive such as assuming that just because she couldn’t see them there weren’t any hidden cameras. That all changes in the latter part of the book when she becomes the kick-ass ‘female James Bond’ we were promised, the master of the lock pick and someone able to turn just about any implement into a deadly weapon.

The pace picks up too as Emma and her colleagues embark on the hunt for the traitor who compromised the mission, taking the reader into real John le Carré territory. I liked the cast of secondary characters, such as Zach the tech wizard, Martha the expert in disguise and most of all, Emma’s boss, Ripley, the spymaster who heeds his own advice that a spy should always have a deadly weapon close at hand.

I also liked the way the author explored the challenges of being a spy: never being able to reveal your occupation, having to lie to friends, family and lovers, living a double life with a name that is not your own. ‘Everything suffers when you can never tell the truth.’

The Traitor is an entertaining, escapist thriller, ideal for reading on the beach or, dare I say it, the deck of a luxury yacht.

In three words: Exciting, pacy, dramatic

Try something similar: Cut Adrift by Jane Jesmond

About the Author

Ava Glass is a former crime reporter and civil servant. Her time working for the government introduced her to the world of spies, and she’s been fascinated by them ever since. She lives in the south of England.

Connect with Ava
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#BookReview Before We Were Innocent by Ella Berman

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About the Book

The truth depends on who you ask…

Ten years ago, after a sun-soaked summer spent in Greece, Bess and Joni were cleared of having any involvement in their best friend Evangeline ‘s death. But that didn’t stop the media from calling them everything under the wild, promiscuous, liars, guilty .

Now Joni is tangled up in a crime in LA eerily similar to that one fateful night, and when she turns up at her old friend’s doorstep asking for an alibi, Bess has no choice. She still owes her.

They say the truth will set you free but can Bess face up to what happened that night?

She should know by now… you can’t be an innocent woman when everyone wants you to be guilty.

Format: eARC (384 pages) Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 13th July 2023 Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Thriller

Find Before We Were Innocent on Goodreads

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My Review

To quote Joni, Before We Were Innocent is ‘the story of three perfectly imperfect women who hurt each other in all the most obvious ways, but who loved each other enough for a lifetime.’ Well, that’s how she chooses to frame it.

Moving between 2018 and ten years earlier, the book gradually reveals how a dramatic event on the island of Tinos changed Bess and Joni’s relationship from that of inseparable best friends to virtual strangers. And how it changed them as individuals too. Whereas Bess has retreated into self-imposed isolation, punctuated by episodes of risk-taking behaviour, Joni has seemingly put the past behind her, reinventing herself and using her experiences as a springboard for her career. But although Bess and Joni may have become estranged they are bound together forever by a lie. ‘Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive’ as someone once said…

Although narrated almost exclusively from the point of view of Bess, this isn’t a case of being either ‘Team Bess’ or ‘Team Joni’ because we’re never quite sure about the reliability of what we’re being told. While I didn’t find either Bess and Joni particularly likeable or their actions laudable (perhaps because my wild – if they ever were – teenage years are well behind me), they’re definitely nuanced characters and the author skilfully ensures your empathy moves back and forth between them.

Three into two don’t go, there’s always one left over. This is definitely Evangeline to whom Bess and Joni are actually quite horrible at times. Some of this ganging up comes back to haunt them. For me, Evangeline always remained a rather hazy character and I didn’t get any sense of the strong bond that supposedly existed between her and Joni before Bess came on the scene.

Before We Were Innocent is part coming-of-age story, part depiction of the complexity of friendships, and part intriguing mystery. It also exposes the impact of intrusive media attention on individuals and their families and the toxic nature of online discourse. Although it has plenty of twists and turns, for me it simmered but never really reached boiling point.

I received a digital review copy courtesy of Head of Zeus via NetGalley.

In three words: Intense, intriguing, twisty

Try something similar: Sister of Mine by Laurie Petrou

About the Author

Ella Berman grew up in both London and Los Angeles and worked at Sony Music before starting the clothing brand London Loves LA. She lives in London with her husband, James, and their dog, Rocky.

Connect with Ella
Website | Twitter