Release Day Round-Up #22

This week it has been extremely had to pick just three favourites as there are just so many good books being released today. So I have decided to pick three that I don't yet have copies of.

The Weekends of You and Me by Fiona Walker

Published: 10th March 2016

Publisher: Sphere

Pages: 512

Available in Hardcover and on Kindle

Order now from Amazon

Can your final fling become your Happy Ever After?

When Jo Coulson finds herself single again in her late thirties, she finally resigns her membership to Last of the Hopeless Romantics, fully intending to tackle midlife and motherhood alone. First, she plans one legendary last fling...

In walks Harry Inchbold, and the connection is electric. Passionate, unpredictable and messily divorced, Harry is the perfect antidote to cosy coupledom. Known as The Sinner, drama follows him around with a clapper board.

Harry's favourite holiday hideaway in the wilds of South Shropshire puts the mud and fun into the perfect dirty weekend. But at the cottage Harry reveals a very different side, melting Jo's resolve. What better combination to face an uncertain future than two cynics who have learned from their mistakes?Together they make a pact; 'same time next year'; they can promise no more than that.

Through life's most stressful decade, Harry and Jo return to the Shropshire hills for one weekend each year to rediscover passion and make peace. As career, family and home crises all threaten to bring them unstuck, the cottage is their glue. Here, different rules apply: the day to day world is not allowed to intrude.With Harry and Jo, however, it's only a matter of time before rules get broken. As real life gets increasingly complicated, can they keep renewing their promise?

As I've mentioned before I love Fiona Walker books and this one looks just as good, as there so huge there ideal to take on holiday, which is probably when I'll read this one.

Song of the Skylark by Erica James

Published: 10th March 2016

Publisher: Orion

Pages: 400

Available in Hardcover and on Kindle

Order now from Amazon

Lizzie has always had an unfortunate knack of attracting bad luck, but this time she's hit the jackpot. Losing her heart to her boss leads to her losing her job, and with no money in the bank, Lizzie finds herself forced to move back home with her parents. When she reluctantly takes a voluntary job, she meets Mrs Dallimore, a seemingly ordinary elderly woman with an astoni Lizzie has always had an unfortunate knack of attracting bad luck, but this time she's hit the jackpot. Losing her heart to her boss leads to her losing her job, and with no money in the bank, Lizzie finds herself forced to move back home with her parents. When she reluctantly takes a voluntary job, she meets Mrs Dallimore, a seemingly ordinary elderly woman with an astonishing past . . .

Now in her nineties, Mrs Dallimore is also reluctantly coming to terms with her situation. Old age is finally catching up with her. As she and Lizzie form the bond of unexpected friendship, Mrs Dallimore tells the story of a young girl who left America before the outbreak of World War Two and, in crossing an ocean, found herself embarking on a new life she couldn't have imagined.

As Lizzie listens to Mrs Dallimore, she begins to realise that she's not the only person to attract bad luck, and that sometimes life has a way of surprising you . . .

Can you believe this is Erica's twentieth novel! Although I've only read a few of them I have enjoyed them immensely and got lost in her story telling. This one sounds like another winner and I'm really hoping to read a few more of her books this year.

Trust No One by Claire Donoghue

Published: 10th March 2016

Publisher: Pan

Pages: 368

Available in Paperback and on Kindle

Marriage is complicated. It doesn't always work out. Sometimes there are things you discover about yourself and each other which mean the marriage has to end. Sad, particularly when kids are involved - but all pretty normal.
Normal that is, until there's a murder.
DS Jane Bennett and DI Mike Lockyer are called in to investigate one of South London's most difficult and distressing cases yet - where family and friends come under scrutiny in the hardest of circumstances.

This is the third instalment in the Bennett and Lockyer series and although its not a series I've read yet its one I think looks interesting. I have realised that despite reading almost twenty books this year I've yet to read an actual crime novel.

So that's my top three this week, many more are listed in my releases page above and I have reviews for some more coming up over the next week. Happy reading until next time.

Book Review - The Daughter's Secret by Eva Holland

 

The Daughter's Secret by Eva Holland

Published: 13th August 2015

Publisher: Orion

Pages: 320

Available on Kindle and in Paperback

Order now from Amazon

 

Blurb

My daughter is a liar. A liar, liar, liar. And I'm starting to see where she gets it from.

When Rosalind's fifteen-year-old daughter, Stephanie, ran away with her teacher, this ordinary family became something it had never asked to be. Their lives held up to scrutiny in the centre of a major police investigation, the Simms were headline news while Stephanie was missing with a man who was risking everything.

Now, six years on, Ros takes a call that will change their lives all over again. He's going to be released from prison. Years too early. In eleven days' time.

As Temperley's release creeps ever closer, Ros is forced to confront the events that led them here, back to a place she thought she'd left behind, to questions she didn't want to answer. Why did she do it? Where does the blame lie? What happens next?

 

Review

 

The Daughter’s Secret tells the story of Stephanie Simm, of her abduction when she was fifteen by her geography teacher Nathan Temperley and how her and her family coped in the aftermath on her return to her family. Now six years later all their emotions and secrets are brought back as Nathan Temperley is set to be released, in just eleven days’ time. I found Eva Holland’s debut novel to be well written, gripping and very thought provoking

The story is told through the eyes of Rosalind, Stephanie’s somewhat neurotic mother, a woman who has led a very comfortable life and up until Stephanie’s disappearance had no reason to be so paranoid about life, except that she was about everything. Ros was not a character I could totally warm too, I really wanted to as I myself have bouts of anxiety but she just seemed fixated on bad things happening all around her, like suitcases falling from the sky and buses not being safe enough to travel on, so much so it’s kind of no wonder Stephanie ran away. When she learns of Nathan Temperley’s release she goes into overdrive wanting to protect Stephane but I felt it was also an excuse to let her paranoia run wild causing even more friction within her family.

Dan, the husband, I found more interesting as he seems to be disconnected to his family with his own secrets. He’s happy just placing them in the perfect house and then going off to work without considering if they are actually happy. I felt he had some kind perfectly planned out life and he can never quite forgive Stephanie for ruining it and showing the world their imperfections. Dan wants his problems to go away and that means Stephanie and her problems must be sent away either to boarding school or to rehab, so she can’t ruin the perfect picture of the stable happy family which he wants the outside world to see.

Stephanie herself seemed a girl who is longing for approval and acceptance and goes along with Temperley because he is giving her what she is craving from her home life but isn’t getting from her distant parents.  I felt sad for her that she is still heavy with guilt and isn’t able to completely let Temperley out of her life once her ordeal I is over and so longed for her to find peace.

I enjoyed reading this debut novel very much and I loved the structure with the chapters being split into the days leading up to Temperley’s release. Each day getting slightly longer in length as the tension this news is causing builds up between the members of the Simm family until finally it explodes. I thought this was brilliant and really added to the way the story gripped me, with a slow start and then getting more intense until I couldn’t put this book down.

Although I really enjoyed this novel and found the ending to be satisfactory I still felt there were a lot of unanswered questions as to what happened next for the family and I think personally I would have liked an epilogue to answer some of the questions. This has meant though that I have kept thinking about this book after I had finished reading it, which makes it an ideal book club choice as there is plenty to discuss. I would give this book 4 out of 5 and would like to thank Orion the publishers for sending me a copy to review.