Tag: murder msytery

Book Reviews

Book Review: The Examiner by Janice Hallett

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Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you are all having a good day today!

Today I am bringing you my book review for The Examiner by Janice Hallett. I don’t usually include spoilers in my reviews but there is one tiny twist from this book that I want to talk about, I don’t think it will ruin a big part of the book for you if you read this review then read the book but if you want to go in with no spoilers at all, maybe wait and read my review after.

Okay, on with the review!

Blurb/Synopsis:

Six Students. One Murder. Your Time Starts Now.

The students of Royal Hastings University’s new Multimedia Art course have been trouble from day one. Acclaimed artist Alyson wants the department to revolve around her. Ludya struggles to balance her family and the workload. Jonathan has management experience but zero talent for art. Lovely Patrick can barely operate his mobile phone, let alone professional design software. Meanwhile blustering Cameron tries to juggle the course with his job in the City and does neither very well. Then there’s Jem. A gifted young sculptor, she’s a promising student… but cross her at your peril.

The year-long course is blighted by accusations of theft, students setting fire to one another’s artwork, a rumoured extra-marital affair and a disastrous road trip. But finally they are given their last assignment: to build an interactive art installation for a local manufacturer. With six students who have nothing in common except their clashing personal agendas, what could possibly go wrong?

The answer is: murder. When the external examiner arrives to assess the students’ essays and coursework, he becomes convinced that a student was killed on the course and that the others covered it up. But is he right? And if so, who is dead, why were they killed, and who is the murderer? Only a close examination of the evidence will reveal the truth. Your time starts now.

My Review:

I have read all of Janice Hallet’s books so far, I absolutely love them. I love the unique way that she writes entirely in different forms of mixed media. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to do it that way, with its limitations on plot and form and it not really having an active voice as everything has already happened when it is talked about but I love the way she does it. I can’t day much about this book because it will be spoilers but I can say that I found I had strong feelings about each character individually and that is what drove me to keep reading, I wanted to know what happened to them and which one of them had supposedly been ‘murdered’ or not.

Now, as I warned at the beginning, there is one thing I want to talk about that can be considered a spoiler. So, stop reading here if you missed my earlier warning.

One of the characters in this story is revealed to be visually impaired. Personally, I had figured this out a long time before it was revealed but that is because I was reading the character and relating to how they described people by smells not aesthetics and the other things they were doing, it is the same way I recognise people being visually impaired myself, and that is why I wanted to talk about this. There are so few books that include blind characters and the ones that do, that I have read, don’t do it very well or they use the character as a gimmick, or worse than all of that – they put in a blind character and then the twist is that they were faking it the whole time. I just wanted to make a comment about how nice it is to have a visually impaired character written well.

Have you read The Examiner? What did you think of it?

Book Reviews

Book Review- Finlay Donovan Is Killing It by Elle Cosimano

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Happy Monday bookish people! Today I am bringing you a review of one of the few books I read in February, Finlay Donovan is Killing it by Elle Cosimano.

In this book review I will give star ratings to four categories and I will write a little bit about each one. I will try to keep it as spoiler free as possible. I hope you enjoy my book review.

Finlay Donovan Is Killing It Plot:

For the first 100 pages I wasn’t sure what I thought of this book, there was so much happening in so few pages that it should have felt fast but it actually felt like it was pretty slow, it took me a week to read the first 100 pages but then I picked it up to read a bit more and ended up finishing the rest of the book in one sitting. So my opinion on it changed. I ended up loving it, the mystery had a twist that I did not see coming and it has a strong motive for Finlay, being her children and keeping her family together. It felt realistic and it was something that I really liked about this novel.

Finlay Donovan Is Killing It Characters:

So Finlay is the main character and she has a really great character arc, she has a focus on her children and her job and while her life is a mess at the beginning you see how hard she is trying to put it back together, I liked how relatable the character is even though the events of the novel aren’t realistic, it created a good balance.

Finlay Donovan Is Killing It Writing And Dialogue:

As I said the pace of the novel felt slow for the first part and that might be the writing a little but for the rest of the book the writing was excellent, clear and helped me to be dragged into the story.

Finlay Donovan Is Killing It Overall:

Overall I gave this book four stars because the second half was very entertaining but the first 100 pages let it down a little bit. I am excited to pick up the sequel as soon as possible.

Blurb/Synopsis:

Finlay Donovan is killing it…except, she’s really not. A stressed-out single mom of two and struggling novelist, Finlay’s life is in chaos: The new book she promised her literary agent isn’t written; her ex-husband fired the nanny without telling her; and this morning she had to send her four-year-old to school with hair duct-taped to her head after an incident with scissors.

When Finlay is overheard discussing the plot of her new suspense novel with her agent over lunch, she’s mistaken for a contract killer and inadvertently accepts an offer to dispose of a problem husband in order to make ends meet. She soon discovers that crime in real life is a lot more difficult than its fictional counterpart, as she becomes tangled in a real-life murder investigation.

Fast-paced, deliciously witty, and wholeheartedly authentic in depicting the frustrations and triumphs of motherhood in all its messiness, hilarity, and heartfelt moments, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It is the first in a brilliant new series from award-winning Elle Cosimano.

That’s it for this book review, I hope you all enjoyed it!

blog tours, Book Reviews

Book Review: The Woman In The Wood by M K Hill

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Happy Saturday bookish people! I hope you’re all having a great start to your weekend. Today is my stop on the book tour for The Woman In The Wood by M K Hill. Thank you to Anne cater and Head of Zeus for sending me a copy of this book to read and review.

In this book review I will give star ratings to four categories and I will write a little about each one. I will try to keep it as spoiler free as possible. I hope you enjoy my book review.

The Woman in the Wood Plot:

Rating: 3 out of 5.

I will start by saying I did enjoy the mystery element of this story. There were many tiny clues subtly mentioned throughout the novel that thinking back would have helped me identify the killer much quicker and I liked that there were sort of two different mysteries happening alongside each other. However, I did not really enjoy the reality TV show side of it, I felt that it took away from the tense atmosphere of the novel. I also didn’t like that I figured out who the killer was as early on as I did.

The Woman in the Wood Characters:

Rating: 3 out of 5.

In this novel we follow the Detective Sasha Dawson and I did like her character and how she was represented throughout, she was a very grounded character who had struggles in her public and professional lives. What I didn’t like about most of the characters was that there were a lot of things they did that never had any consequences. They kept saying they would talk about it later and similar phrases but it left me feeling quite annoyed. The situations didn’t feel real enough.

The Woman in the Wood Writing and Dialogue:

Rating: 3 out of 5.

I liked that throughout this novel we got to see different character perspectives because it added details to the story that as a reader we needed and we wouldn’t have gotten any other way. I did find M K Hill’s writing to be well-written and clear throughout which made it a nice read for me.

The Woman in the Wood Overall:

Rating: 3 out of 5.

I gave this book three stars overall because although I enjoyed parts of it, there were other parts I enjoyed a lot less.

Blurb/Synopsis:

Three years ago, Danny ‘Abs’ Cruikshank, star of reality show Laid in Essex!, was living the dream – but on the night of the party, everything changed. It was supposed to be an intimate weekend gathering, just a few close friends in a remote cottage in Wales. But after a night of heavy drinking in the village pub, a local girl was reported missing – and never seen again. Abs and his friends had been the last to see her alive.

No-one was ever charged, but the controversy destroyed Abs’s career. So now, three years later, the celebrity who once captured the heart of millions is opening Basildon’s new branch of Quidstore.

But then one of Abs’s mates is murdered.

Does someone know what really happened that night in Wales? DI Sasha Dawson and her team must race against the clock to find the killer before they strike again – but first she must discover what happened to Rhiannon Jenkins on the night she vanished.

Will the truth set Abs free? Or bury him?

A reality TV star becomes a suspect in an Essex murder case in the sharp, exciting and moving new thriller from the brilliant new star of crime-writing M.K. Hill.

That’s it for this book review, I hope you all enjoyed it!