First a quick explanation!
Due to some severe health issues over the last few years, and a lingering chronic condition, my planned review schedule went right out of the window and I have been scrabbling ever since to get it back on track.
In an attempt to try to regain some lost ground, I have been scrunching some of my (overdue) NetGalley reviews together into one or two posts each week: shorter reviews, but still covering all of the points I intended to.
That’s the plan anyway, so let’s continue the year as we mean to go on, with a new selection from my back-shelves…!
Title: Fablehouse
Author: E L Norry
Publisher: Bloomsbury Children’s Books
Blurb: Unlock the legends.
Unleash the magic.
Save your home.
Fablehouse is a children’s home like no other. Housed in a crumbling mansion that perches on a cliff and backs on to ancient mysterious woodland, this is the home for many of Britain’s Brown Babies, children born to African-American GIs and white British women following the Second World War.
Heather has already been through several children’s homes and is wary of Fablehouse and its unusual head teacher, Miss Isolde. But when children start acting strangely, Heather discovers a plot from a fae realm to infiltrate and overthrow the human world.
With the help of Palamedes – the Black Knight from King Arthur’s Round Table who has been guarding the magical doorway to the fae world – and three friends, Heather sets off on a quest to rescue the children who have been replaced by changelings. No child will be forgotten or discarded on her watch.
Discovering extraordinary powers and a fire inside herself, Heather will battle to save the first place that has felt like home for years…
Review: Fablehouse is a middle grade adventure story about fighting the Fae and human prejudice simultaneously.
The story follows Heather as she tries to find her place in another in a string of homes for unwanted children – this one specialising in taking the ‘Brown Babies’ that resulted from wartime liaisons. Heather is extremely relatable in her prickly defensiveness, righteous anger and lonely isolation, and in her distress at finally finding a family group of her own at Fablehouse, only to have it threatened by outside forces.
The adults in the story aren’t particularly helpful – either falling to fae magic or moaning about their situation (I’m looking at you there, Pal!) – but the children really shine, bringing their own individual talents to the fore, battling their personal weaknesses and insecurities, and sticking together to support each other above all else.
There is a great overall theme of choosing oneself rather than waiting around for a Chosen One to turn up and save you, and a really good exploration of how both prejudice and self-doubt can attack your sense of identity.
This book was a little slow to get started but once it got fully underway it was a fun and easy read and I can recommend it to middle grade readers who fancy a modern-day Arthurian adventure!
Purchase Link: Fablehouse on Amazon
Title: The Launch Party
Author: Lauren Forry
Publisher: Bonnier Books UK, Zaffre
Blurb: THE TRIP OF A LIFETIME. YOU’D DIE TO BE THERE.
Ten lucky people have won a place at the most exclusive launch event of the century: the grand opening of the Hotel Artemis, the first hotel on the moon. It’s an invitation to die for. As their transport departs for its return to Earth and the doors seal shut behind them, the guests take the next leap for mankind.
However, they soon discover that all is not as it seems. The champagne may be flowing, but there is no one to pour it. Room service is available, but there is no one to deliver it. Besides the ten of them, they are completely alone.
When one of the guests is found murdered, fear spreads through the group. But that death is only the beginning. Being three days’ journey from home and with no way to contact the outside, can any of the guests survive their stay?
Review: Imagine And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, but set on the moon! This is the initial premise of this story and how it starts off, and I was definitely here for it – I love the Christie classic, but once you’ve read it and know the ending it just doesn’t have the same impact, so having a new and unknown version was very exciting.
Unfortunately, despite being a decent murder mystery, this strayed from the source material in its most important aspect… the end reveal was disappointing. I had wanted it to be the well-thought out, complex revenge plot that it appeared to be, but it turned out to be simpler and more straightforward than I had expected and the exciting moon setting barely featured at all – it could have been set in any isolated location (snowed-in hotel etc). And the main character had numerous phobias that could have had some interesting impacts on the plot and on her ability to investigate events, but mostly remained part of her background characterisation instead.
Mismatched expectations aside, I really did like the main character, Penelope Strand, and her journey through the story, from her anxiety at the launch to her curiosity and dogged determination once things started to go wrong. The plot, too, was well-paced and kept me hooked throughout, until the big reveal. And I was kept guessing about most of the solution, even if I had worked out some of the details.
Really, this is a decent whodunnit and howdunnit that is hampered by just how good its premise is and how iconic its predecessor was. Without those initially over-high expectations, this was a thoroughly enjoyable mystery read.
Purchase Link: The Launch Party on Amazon
Title: Catch Your Death
Author: Ravena Guron
Publisher: Usborne Publishing
Blurb: Trapped in a mansion with a murderer and a family of liars – how would you survive? A deathly thriller from the author of THIS BOOK KILLS, perfect for fans of Holly Jackson and Karen McManus.
When three girls are stranded at the grand Bramble Estate in the middle of a snowstorm, they stumble into a murder plot. Someone has poisoned wealthy Emily Vanforte in the middle of a family dinner – which means Devi, Lizzie and Jayne are trapped in the house with a killer and a mystery to solve…
Review: I enjoyed Ravena Guron’s This Book Kills, and I enjoyed this second standalone murder mystery-thriller even more!
The plot has a very clever hook, in that the author has placed two ‘pauses’ in the book where readers are encouraged to make notes and play along with guessing what is going on, and I was utterly caught up in attempting to solve the mystery before the reveal/s. In fact, it confirmed my previously-suspected belief that while I am pretty good at working out the whos and whys of a mystery, but am clueless when it comes to the hows!
We follow three young women narrators – Devi, Jayne and Lizzie – as they arrive at Bramble Estate and find themselves embroiled in an isolated-location murder investigation with a very limited suspect pool. Each of the three is a distinct and interesting character, making no difficulty in telling them apart, and I was quickly very anxious about their wellbeing and invested in them surviving to find their individual happy-ever-afters.
Really easy to read and great fun, I would recommend this to murder mystery fans who, like me, love to play along!
Purchase Link: Catch Your Death on Amazon
Title: Didn’t See That Coming
Author: Jesse Sutanto
Publisher: Farshore, Electric Monkey
Blurb: A hilariously fresh and romantic send-up to You’ve Got Mail about a gamer girl with a secret identity and the online bestie she’s never met IRL – until she unwittingly transfers to his school . . .
Seventeen-year-old Kiki Siregar is a fabulous gamer girl with confidence to boot. She can’t help but be totally herself… except when she’s online.
Her secret? She plays anonymously as a guy to avoid harassment from other male players. Even her online best friend—a cinnamon roll of a teen boy who plays under the username Sourdawg—doesn’t know her true identity. Which is fine, because Kiki doesn’t know his real name either, and it’s not like they’re ever going to cross paths IRL.
Until she transfers to an elite private school for her senior year and discovers that Sourdawg goes there, too.
But who is he? How will he react when he finds out Kiki’s secret? And what happens when Kiki realizes she’s falling for her online BFF?
Review: I really love this author’s mystery novels and so thought I would give her rom-com a try.
This is a sweet gamer-romance and friends-to-lovers story, in which Kiki is forced to move schools and deal with struggling to be accepted and hiding her true self from her peers and her online friend, Sourdawg, who thinks she is a boy. This leads to some pretty nasty bullying, as her classmates start to call her CrazyKiki and spread nasty pictures/videos about her… a situation that is likely to feel very relatable for many teens these days.
Along with the sweet developing romance, there is an interesting exploration of the challenges facing the main character as a Chinese-Indonesian teen, with all of the parental pressure and societal misogyny that can bring. Which, of course, links neatly to the Gamergate-style issues of being female in a male-dominated online game.
I found most of the story a pleasant easy read but was a little baffled as to why Kiki’s parents were so keen for her to change schools with only one year left to go – maybe a cultural confusion there? – and I found Kiki’s long climactic speech a little bit too much. It didn’t really fit with the pace and tone of the rest of the story and felt a bit like the ‘And then the whole school clapped’ trope (although it was ‘gave thumbs ups’, in this case).
Personally, I prefer the author’s mystery writing, but then I am not really the target audience for this book and can see that teens looking for a fun, relatable romcom about gaming and identity are likely to love it.
Purchase Link: Didn’t See That Coming on Amazon
Title: Murder by Candlelight
Author: Faith Martin
Publisher: HQ Digital
Blurb: One suspicious death. Two amateur sleuths. And an utterly impossible crime…
Selected by the Crime Readers Association as Read of the Month for January
The Cotswolds, 1924. At the Old Forge in the quiet village of Maybury-in-the-Marsh a cry of anguish rings out: lady of the house Amy Phelps has been discovered dead. But with all the windows and doors to her room locked from inside, how – and by whom – was she killed?
Arbuthnot ‘Arbie’ Swift finds himself in the unlikely position of detective. The celebrated author of The Gentleman’s Guide to Ghost-Hunting is staying at the Old Forge to investigate a suspected spectre, but now the more pressing matter of Amy’s murder falls to him too.
With old friend Val, he soon uncovers a sorry tale of altered wills, secret love affairs and tragic losses – and plenty of motives for murder. When events take another sinister turn, Arbie must find the killer, fast. And to do so will mean cracking a most perfectly plotted crime…
Perfect for fans of The Thursday Murder Club, The Appeal and The Marlow Murder Club, don’t miss this stunning new series from the multi-million bestselling author!
Review:Â I absolutely thoroughly enjoyed this Christie-esque, Golden Age style murder mystery!
And that is despite me very quickly solving at least some aspects of the mystery, but only thanks to my prior reading of a certain Terry Pratchett book (which I’m not going to name specifically because a) spoilers and b) you should read all 60+ of his books repeatedly yourself, and then you would know!). If it hadn’t been for that glimmer of a clue then I would have been completely in the dark throughout the story. As it was, I still didn’t guess everything and really enjoyed following the characters as they found it all out.
In fact, it was the characters that I loved and enjoyed most, especially main characters Arbie and Val, with their sweet, oblivious, romantic chemistry and bantery one-upmanship. There was a touch of the Wodehouse in their investigative double act which kept the story light and easy to read. It was all very quaint and cosy Olde English, with a dash of modern sensibility.
This is the perfect book if you are looking for a not-too-serious but pleasantly fun cosy mystery and I would definitely be happy to read more of Arbie and Val’s adventures in future.
Purchase Link: Murder by Candlelight on Amazon
It’s been a little while, thanks to my lack of ‘spoons’ after Christmas, but I am back on the horse now and galloping on with my backlog, spurred on by the lovely pile of Christmas and birthday books next to me as I type!
This batch was another slightly murdery one, with three mysteries and only one each of middle-grade fantasy adventure and teen romance… what can I say, I do love a good mystery (or three!).
I hope you find something you like the look of, but don’t worry if not – I’ve got plenty more in my pile waiting to be introduced to you.
See you next time and until then, happy reading! 🙂
Bookshine And Readbows 