Tag: thriller

Blog Tour/Book Review: Call Me Star Girl by Louise Beech

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Call Me Star Girl, the latest novel by Louise Beech.

My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Orenda Books for my review copy.  You can read my review below.

Call Me Star GirlAbout the Book

Tonight is the night for secrets…

Pregnant Victoria Valbon was brutally murdered in an alley three weeks ago – and her killer hasn’t been caught.

Tonight is Stella McKeever’s final radio show. The theme is secrets. You tell her yours, and she’ll share some of hers.

Stella might tell you about Tom, a boyfriend who likes to play games, about the mother who abandoned her, now back after twelve years. She might tell you about the perfume bottle with the star-shaped stopper, or about her father …

What Stella really wants to know is more about the mysterious man calling the station … who says he knows who killed Victoria, and has proof.

Tonight is the night for secrets, and Stella wants to know everything…

With echoes of the chilling Play Misty for Me, Call Me Star Girl is a taut, emotive and all-consuming psychological thriller that plays on our deepest fears, providing a stark reminder that stirring up dark secrets from the past can be deadly…

Format: Paperback (300 pp.)    Publisher: Orenda Books
Published: 18th April 2019 Genre: Fiction, Thriller

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Call Me Star Girl on Goodreads

My Review

I’ve seen so many other book bloggers heaping praise on Louise Beech’s latest book that I’m pleased to have had the opportunity finally to experience it for myself. I know her pedigree as a writer from her earlier book, Maria in the Moon, which I really loved, and I have several of her other books in my TBR pile.

Call Me Star Girl oozes atmosphere from the very first page. This is a book where your review has definitely to be more about how the book made you feel than what it’s about both for fear of giving anything away or of spoiling the sheer experience of reading it for others. In the author’s skilful hands, the reader is taken on an emotional journey that is, at times, unsettling, chilling and full of twists and turns.

Events unfold over one night during Stella’s last shift at a community radio station. It’s late at night and for much of the time she’s alone in the building with only callers to the station providing any human contact. The narrative is interspersed with chapters from the point of view of Stella and her mother, Elizabeth, going back and forth in time to chart their troubled relationship, and between Stella and her boyfriend, Tom. I confess some of the latter felt voyeuristic in a way I found quite unsettling.

I loved that Louise Beech chose once again to use Hull as the setting for her book. I also enjoyed the occasional references to the nature of fiction, reminding the reader that you should not necessarily believe everything you’re told. And there’s room for a couple in jokes as well. At one point the young Stella, after recounting a story she’s written at school, is told she should write mystery novels when she grows up. Earlier, in response to the use of the pet name ‘Star Girl’ by her mother, Stella says, “We just need a killer twist and a cliffhanger ending, and we could have a bestseller called Star Girl“.

Call Me Star Girl is a dark, intense story of desire, control and secrets. It poses the question what would you do, how far would you go, what risk would you incur for the one you love?

I received a review copy courtesy of publishers, Orenda Books, and Random Things Tours.

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In three words: Dark, intense, compelling

Louise Beech Author PhotoAbout the Author

Louise Beech is an exceptional literary talent, whose debut novel How To Be Brave was a Guardian Readers’ Choice for 2015. The follow-up, The Mountain in My Shoe was shortlisted for Not the Booker Prize. Both of her previous books Maria in the Moon and The Lion Tamer Who Lost were widely reviewed, critically acclaimed and number-one bestsellers on Kindle. The Lion Tamer Who Lost was shortlisted for the RNA Most Popular Romantic Novel Award in 2019. Her short fiction has won the Glass Woman Prize, the Eric Hoffer Award for Prose, and the Aesthetica Creative Works competition, as well as shortlisting for the Bridport Prize twice.

Louise lives with her husband on the outskirts of Hull, and loves her job as a Front of House Usher at Hull Truck Theatre, where her first play was performed in 2012.

Connect with Louise

Website  ǀ  Twitter  ǀ  Goodreads

call me star girl blog poster 2019

Blog Tour/Book Review: Dark Sky Island (Jennifer Dorey Mystery #2) by Lara Dearman

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Dark Sky Island Blog Tour v2

Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for crime mystery, Dark Sky Island (Jennifer Dorey Mystery #2) by Lara Dearman.

My thanks to Trapeze Books and NetGalley for my review copy.  You can read my review below.

Dark Sky IslandAbout the Book

DCI Michael Gilbert is called out to Sark – the world’s first dark sky island – after bones are found on Derrible Bay. He is followed by journalist Jennifer Dorey, driven by a secret in her own past. The remains are decades old, but after a body is discovered Jennifer and Michael fear there may be a killer on the island. Together they follow a dark trail of bad blood and a conspiracy of silence.

Everyone on the island is under suspicion. No one is what they seem. And the murderer could strike again at any time…

Format: Paperback (336 pp.)    Publisher: Trapeze
Published: 18th April 2019 Genre: Crime, Mystery

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Dark Sky Island (Jennifer Dorey Mystery #2) on Goodreads

My Review

Dark Sky Island is the second book in Lara Dearman’s ‘Jennifer Dorey Mysteries’ series. As someone who’s not read the first book, The Devil’s Claw, I can assure readers Dark Sky Island works perfectly well as a standalone. However, there are references to events in the first book making me wish I had been able to read The Devil’s Claw first. Having said that, the author clearly left a few plot elements unresolved at the end of The Devil’s Claw so that new readers don’t feel they’ve lost out and readers of the series can (finally) have their curiosity satisfied. Very clever.

I really enjoyed the unusual setting of the book – the Channel Islands of Guernsey and Sark. There’s loads of convincing sounding local detail and information about the history of Sark, in particular. I loved the way the author used the contrast between the seemingly idyllic island of Sark with its bicycles and horse-drawn carts, unspoilt natural landscape and rocky coastline and the brutal reality of murder. There’s an undercurrent of tension too between the locals and more recent arrivals, between old customs and modern developments. Given the only way on and off Sark is by boat, it gives a feeling of a locked room mystery. That sense of claustrophobia is enhanced by the island’s small population, made up of families who have lived there for generations and where pretty much everyone knows everyone else. Plenty of opportunity too for past feuds, long-held grievances and secrets in what Jenny refers to at one point as ‘this twisted paradise, with its shadowy figures and their veiled threats‘.

Through the alternating narratives of Jenny and Michael, as well as a few other characters whose part in the story is not immediately obvious, the reader follows the course of the police investigation into the identity of remains found hidden in a cave and the murder of a local man. In addition, Jenny has a very personal mystery she needs answers to. Are they connected? You’ll have to read Dark Sky Island to find out but what I can say is that as the book progresses the revelations comes thick and fast. There were also a few ‘I wouldn’t do that, Jenny/Michael, if I were you’ moments to get the pulse racing as the story builds to its dramatic conclusion. And you never can tell, can you, who’s a goodie and who’s a baddie?

I really enjoyed Dark Sky Island and as the author definitely seems to have left a few loose threads at the end of the book, I’m hopeful this isn’t the last story featuring Jennifer.

I received a review copy courtesy of publishers, Trapeze, and NetGalley.

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In three words: Gripping, atmospheric, suspenseful

Try something similar…The Temptation by Vera Morris (read my review here)

Lara DearmanAbout the Author

(Bio courtesy of author website) Lara was born and raised on the Channel Island of Guernsey. She moved to the UK to study International Relations and French at the University of Sussex, after which she endured a brief career in finance before giving it up to be a stay at home mum to her three children. A short course in Creative Writing at Richmond Adult Community College led to Lara studying for a Masters in Creative Writing at St Mary’s University, London. She graduated in 2016 with a distinction.

Having moved from Guernsey to Brighton to London to Paris to Singapore and back to London over the last fifteen years, she has now settled in Westchester, New York, with her family. Her first novel, The Devil’s Claw, combines her love of Guernsey, myths and folklore with her obsession with crime fiction and serial killers. In the sequel, Dark Sky Island, murder and mystery arrive on the beautiful and isolated island of Sark. (Photo credit: Goodreads author page)

Connect with Lara

Website  ǀ  Facebook  ǀ  Twitter  ǀ  Instagram ǀ Goodreads