Shelley's Book Nook

☆ Kindle Edition, 281 pages Expected publication: October 25th 2018 by Bookouture About the Book: How well do you really know your husband? Grace Dalton is trying to put her life back together after her husband John died suddenly in a hit and run. Her perfect world is collapsing around her, the home she hoped to fill with children is huge and empty, and she’s paralysed with grief. But as Grace sorts through her husband’s belongings, she realises the man she loved was lying to her. There’s a mysterious list of names hidden among his things, a secret bank account, and a shocking revelation about his family that he kept from her since the day they met. Who was John Dalton? As Grace tries to identify the names on the list she realises something is wrong. She’s imagining things: seeing John in the faces of strangers and finding things in an entirely different place to where she’d swear she left them. Is Grace losing her grasp on reality, or is someone trying to stop her finding out t...

☆☆☆☆ ebook, 336 pages Expected publication: October 23rd 2018 by Simon Schuster About the Book: A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl is a poignant novel about three generations of the Wise family—Evelyn, Laura, and Grace—as they hunt for contentment amid chaos of their own making. Evelyn set aside her career to marry, late, and motherhood never became her. Her daughter Laura felt this acutely and wants desperately to marry, but she soon discovers her husband Gabe to be a man who expects too much of everyone in his life, especially his musician son. Grace has moved out from Laura and Gabe’s house, but can’t seem to live up to her potential—whatever that might be. In A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl we see these women and their trials, small and large: social slights and heartbreaks; marital disappointments and infidelities; familial dysfunction; mortality. Spanning from World War II to the present, Thompson reveals a matrilineal love story that is so perfectly grounded in our time—a story...

☆☆☆☆ ebook, 264 pages Expected publication: October 9th 2018 by Crooked Lane Books About the Book: Her husband is missing. Visiting her family’s South Carolina estate, socialite Gray Godfrey wakes from a night out to an empty bed. Her husband Paul is gone and a thrashing hangover has wiped her memory clean. At first, she’s relieved for the break from her tumultuous marriage; perhaps Paul just needed some space. But when his car is found abandoned on the highway, Gray must face the truth: Paul is gone. And Gray may not want him found. Her life is unraveling. When a stranger named Annie calls claiming to know Paul’s whereabouts, Gray reluctantly accepts her help. But this ally is not what she seems: soon Annie is sending frightening messages and revealing disturbing secrets only Gray could know. As Annie’s threats escalate and Gray’s grip on reality begins to slip, the life she thought she had and the dark truth she’s been living begin to merge, leaving an unsettling question: W...

☆☆☆☆ Kindle Edition, 376 pages Expected Publication October 15th 2018 by Legends Press About the Book: Not having a child can change your life as much as having one. Grace has returned to London after twenty years abroad to manage her dying mother's affairs. When she receives a blank Mother's Day card in the post, she is confused and unsettled. Who could have sent it to her and why? She isn't a mother.  Another Mother's Day card arrives. Then come the silent phone calls. Haunted by disturbing flashbacks, Grace starts to unravel. Someone is out to get her. Someone who knows what she has done.  Whatever is covered up will be uncovered, & every secret will be made known. This book has all the elements you look for in a great read. Character development is a key part to the storyline. Some you will root for and some you will grow to despise, but you never quite know who you can trust until the end. The characterization was very well done and I had no trouble p...

☆☆☆☆ Kindle Edition, 376 pages Published June 6th 2017 by SparkPress About the Book: If Will Fletcher’s severe bipolar disorder isn’t proof he shouldn’t be a parent, his infant daughter’s grave is. Once a happily married, successful veterinarian, he now lives with his sister and thrives as the small-town crazy of Half Moon Hollow. But when a fifteen-year-old orphan claims she’s his daughter, Will is forced back into the role he fears most: fatherhood.  Her biological dad isn’t the hero Regan Whitmer hoped for, but he’s better than her abusive stepfather back in Chicago. Still haunted by her mother’s suicide and the rebellious past she fears led to it, Regan is desperate for a stable home and a normal family—things Will can’t offer. Can she ride the highs and lows of his illness to find a new definition of family?  The Rules of Half explores what it is to be an atypical family in a small town and to be mentally ill in the wake of a tragedy—and who has the right to determine both. ...

☆☆☆☆☆ Kindle Edition, 288 pages Expected publication: November 13th 2018 by Random House About the Book: Lucille Howard is getting on in years, but she stays busy. Thanks to the inspiration of her dearly departed friend Arthur Truluv, she has begun to teach baking classes, sharing the secrets to her delicious classic Southern yellow cake, the perfect pinwheel cookies, and other sweet essentials. Her classes have become so popular that she's hired Iris, a new resident of Mason, Missouri, as an assistant. Iris doesn't know how to bake but she needs to keep her mind off one big decision she sorely regrets. When a new family moves in next door and tragedy strikes, Lucille begins to look out for Lincoln, their son. Lincoln's parents aren't the only ones in town facing hard choices and uncertain futures. In these difficult times, the residents of Mason come together and find the true power of community--just when they need it the most. Elizabeth Berg is my favourite a...

☆☆ Kindle Edition, 216 pages Expected publication: October 18th 2018 by Landmark Media About the Book: A trusting wife, a perfect husband… a buried secret. Jane likes the quiet life, living in a cottage on the edge of a small village in Yorkshire. Her husband works in London during the week and comes home at the weekends. Jane thinks she has the perfect life. The one traumatic event of her life is safely buried and forgotten – until a letter arrives that makes her question everything she thinks she knows. Should she risk destroying her idyllic life to find the truth? Who is Victoria? Why has Adam hidden her existence? Why does Jane stay secluded in that little town? How come she shouldn't make friends ? AND WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED IN THAT RED ROOM!? This started off quite well with a good plot line, however, as an avid reader of physiological thrillers I would have to say that this book was not at all riveting. The characters were one dimensional and very little insight i...

☆☆☆☆ Kindle Edition, 247 pages Expected Publication October 28 2018 by Matador About the Book: Sasha is just about managing to hold her life together. She is raising her teenage son Zac, coping with an absent husband and caring for her ageing, temperamental and alcoholic mother, as well as holding down her own job. But when Zac begins to suspect that he has a secret sibling, Sasha realises that she must relive the events of a devastating night which she has done her best to forget for the past nineteen years. Sasha’s mother, Annie, is old and finds it difficult to distinguish between past and present and between truth and lies. As Annie sinks deeper back into her past, she revisits the key events in her life which have shaped her emotionally. Through it all, she remains convinced that her dead husband Joe is watching and waiting for her. But there’s one thing she never told him, and as painful as it is for her to admit the truth, Annie is determined to go to Joe with a guilt-free...

☆☆☆☆ Kindle Edition, 353 pages Published September 18th 2018 by Bloodhound Books About the Book: Her father abused her when she was a child. For years she was too afraid to speak out. But now she suspects he’s found another victim. Laura, a young woman struggling to deal with what her father did to her a decade ago, is horrified to realise that the girl he takes swimming might be his next victim. Emma is twelve – the age Laura was when her father took away her innocence. Intimidated by her father’s rages, Laura has never told anyone the truth about her childhood. Now she must decide whether she has the courage to expose him and face the consequences. Can Laura overcome her fear and save Emma before the worst happens? There is something wrong, Mum. There’s something I have to tell you. This fast paced, heart thumping book sucked me in from the beginning. I loved how the chapters were from the perspective of each member of the family, this was done so smoothly there was no time ...

☆☆☆☆ Kindle Edition, 269 pages Published September 18th 2018 by Lake Union Publishing About the Book: In her grand home in Charleston, Willa Bellemore raised two girls during the tumultuous 1970s. One was her daughter, Lady. The other was Lady’s best friend, Nell—adopted after the sudden, heartbreaking death of her mother, the Bellemores’ beloved maid. Willa showered Nell with love and support, all the while ignoring the disdainful whispers of her neighbors. After all, they were family. Nell and Lady were sisters at heart—sisters who vowed to never let anything come between them. Then, on the night of Lady’s sixteenth birthday, something went terribly wrong, sparking painful secrets and bitter resentments that went unspoken for three decades. Now Willa is dying, and Lady and Nell—each with a teenager of her own—are brought together after all these years. It’s Willa’s last wish. The time has come to confront what happened on that fateful night. But it may take a tragic twist of fa...

☆☆ Kindle Edition, 347 pages Published June 8th 2018 by Hard Line Publications About the Book: WOULD YOU KILL TO SAVE YOUR DAUGHTER'S LIFE? Emma Dixon has a great life. Loving husband and perfect daughter. But she gets an email from an unknown person who has photos of little Molly. More messages arrive, and the threat against Molly rises to a critical point. Who is sending them? And why are they after Molly? Someone tracks every move Emma makes. They will not let go. I couldn't give this book many stars simply because there were so many editorial errors. There were misspellings, missing words, the wrong word and grammatical errors. The editing and the continuity of this book was amateurish. The writing at the beginning was banal and felt like it was going nowhere. Unfortunately, I just never got into that groove of reading when you just can't put the book down because you are so caught up in the story. Part of the problem was that the writing style just felt very ...

☆☆☆☆ Kindle Edition, 400 pages Published February 22nd 2018 by Penguin About the Book: What if all your mother left you was a confession to a life you never knew she'd had? When Sophia saw the note in her mother's handwriting she felt a chill down her spine. 'I can't do this anymore. I will destroy him and I could destroy Sophia. I must make this right.' That's when she looked out of the window; her mother's body hanging from the big chestnut tree. Her father lying in a pool of his own blood. The police suspect an attempted murder suicide. But Sophia could never believe that of her mother. She needs to clear her name, and to do this she needs to wade into her murky past. But she soon discovers that the woman she thought she knew was involved in something so sinister it's cast a shadow over her whole life. Do whatever you want, my darling heart. You get to choose. But before you do, first of all, you need to take a deep breath and think. This b...

☆☆☆☆ Kindle Edition, 288 pages Published September 11th 2018 by Flatiron Books About the Book: We’ve been waiting for an hour. That’s what Audrey says. She states it with a little bit of an edge, her words just bordering on cursive. That’s the thing I think first. Not: Audrey Hepburn is at my birthday dinner, but Audrey Hepburn is annoyed. At one point or another, we’ve all been asked to name five people, living or dead, with whom we’d like to have dinner. Why do we choose the people we do? And what if that dinner was to actually happen? These are the questions Rebecca Serle contends within her utterly captivating novel, The Dinner List, a story imbued with the same delightful magical realism as One Day, and the life-changing romance of Me Before You. When Sabrina arrives at her thirtieth birthday dinner she finds at the table not just her best friend, but also three significant people from her past, and well, Audrey Hepburn. As the appetizers are served, wine poured, and dinner t...

☆☆☆☆ Kindle Edition, 288 pages Expected publication: January 15th 2019 by St. Martin's Press About the Book: A seemingly perfect marriage is threatened by the deadly secrets husband and wife keep from each other. Susannah, a young widow and single mother, has remarried well: to Max, a charismatic artist and popular speaker whose career took her and her fifteen-year-old son out of New York City and to a quiet Vermont university town. Strong-willed and attractive, Susannah expects that her life is perfectly in place again. Then one quiet morning she finds a note on her door: I KNOW WHO YOU ARE. Max dismisses the note as a prank. But days after a neighborhood couple comes to dinner, the husband mysteriously dies in a tragic accident while on a run with Max. Soon thereafter, a second note appears on their door: DID YOU GET AWAY WITH IT? Both Susannah and Max are keeping secrets from the world and from each other —secrets that could destroy their family and everything they have bui...

ebook, 478 pages Published November 28th 2017 by Relay Publishing ☆☆☆ About the Book: Clara McNair is running out of time to save her son, James. When the two-year-old is diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer, only an experimental treatment can save his life. She desperately needs money to pay for the surgery, but she’ll have to travel back to the site of her darkest memories to get it. Clara has escaped the demons of her youth—or so she thinks. It’s been ten years since the mysterious disappearance of her parents. Widely suspected of murdering her mother and father, Clara fled west to start a new life. Now, a documentary film crew is offering cold, hard cash—enough to pay for James’s treatment—in exchange for the sordid secrets of her past. With no other choice but to delve into a long-ago tragedy, Clara must unravel the lies surrounding that terrible night. Facing hostile gossip, Clara is fighting to clear her name and learn the truth about what really happened. But how far...

Kindle Edition, 400 pages Published May 17th 2018 by Sphere ☆☆1/2 About the Book: He stole her childhood. She'll take his future. What would you do if you accidentally encountered the man who once abused you? And how would you get away with it? Bridget's life is small and safe: she loves her husband, her son and works hard to keep her own business afloat. Then one day her world is changed forever. The music teacher who abused her walks into a shop with the teenager he's clearly grooming. Bridget is sent spiralling back into her past. Anthony begins to stalk Bridget, trying to ensure her silence - until suddenly, she snaps. And now Bridget must find away to deal with the aftermath of her actions. It wasn’t about sex, after all. It was about hurting someone. It was about power. This is another of those psychological thrillers that isn't about who did it or what is the twisty ending. This is a very slow burner of a story and that isn't always a good thing. It ...

Kindle Edition, 496 pages Published August 28th 2018 by MIRA ☆ About the Book: Tear Me Apart is the powerful story of a mother willing to do anything to protect her daughter even as their carefully constructed world unravels around them. Competitive skier Mindy Wright is a superstar in the making until a spectacular downhill crash threatens not just her racing career but her life. During surgery, doctors discover she’s suffering from a severe form of leukemia, and a stem cell transplant is her only hope. But when her parents are tested, a frightening truth emerges. Mindy is not their daughter. The race to save Mindy’s life means unraveling years of lies. Was she accidentally switched at birth or is there something more sinister at play? The search for the truth will tear a family apart…and someone is going to deadly extremes to protect the family’s deepest secrets. I know I am not going to make many friends with this review as I am in the minority and this book has many four and...

Kindle Edition, 352 pages Published August 28th 2018 by Sourcebooks Landmark ☆☆☆☆ About the Book: 2 CHILDREN FOR SALE The scrawled sign, peddling young siblings on a farmhouse porch, captures the desperation sweeping the country in 1931. It’s an era of breadlines, bank runs, and impossible choices. For struggling reporter Ellis Reed, the gut-wrenching scene evokes memories of his family’s dark past. He snaps a photograph of the children, not meant for publication. But when the image leads to his big break, the consequences are devastating in ways he never imagined. Haunted by secrets of her own, secretary Lillian Palmer sees more in the picture than a good story and is soon drawn into the fray. Together, the two set out to right a wrongdoing and mend a fractured family, at the risk of everything they value. Inspired by an actual newspaper photo that stunned readers across the nation, this touching novel explores the tale within the frame and behind the lens—a journey of ambition,...

Kindle Edition, 223 pages Published August 20th 2018 by Matador ☆☆☆1/2 About the Book: It is 1976 and Mikey, eight-years-old and street-wise beyond his years, is looking forward to a summer of freedom, roaming the creeks and the mud-flats of Canvey Island. But violent emotions are rumbling beneath the surface, about to destroy all that he thought he knew.  When Mikey’s neighbours, the Freemans, win a great deal of money, the old couple become the targets of a criminal act that leaves Peggy Freeman dead and her husband, Bert thirsting for revenge. Believing that young Mikey’s family is responsible, Bert devises a highly unusual but devastatingly effective form of reprisal. But where does the guilt really lie, and will there be punishment or redemption?  Told from Mikey’s viewpoint with light touches of humour, A Patient Man is a gripping crime novel peopled with believable characters who are drawn inexorably in to a story that explores the effects of greed, money and the human need...