Book Review: The Beloveds by Maureen Lindley

The Beloveds by Maureen Lindley
My rating: 🌟🌟🌟 (3 stars)
Publisher: Gallery Books

The summary really drew me to The Beloveds (okay, so did that cover!) but I did not (nor could I have) anticipated a narrator as sour as Betty/Lizzie. Wow. She was so thoroughly demented and unreliable a narrator that I disbelieved that none around her ever got the sense that anything was amiss. Not even her psychoanalyst sister, Gloria. My eyebrow quirked permanently from about a third of the way through the book.

Book Review: Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent

Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent
My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟 (4 stars)
Publisher: Penguin UK

I bought this in paperback last year with a pile of other UK books and this has sat on in a bookcase ever since. I started seeing it pop up in bookworld and found it's to be released in the US in June, so I decided that it was long overdue for it to be more than a shelf sitter and finally cracked it open. I can't give up big spoilers (and just about every revelation unfurled in this story, feels like one!) but I can say that it was difficult to put down and that's the only reason it took me a day and a half to read it.

Book Review: The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories by Agatha Christie

The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories by Agatha Christie
My rating: 🌟🌟🌟 (3 stars)
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks

The Regatta Mystery is my first instance of reading about Parker Pyne. He may be more memorable a character in other stories but here he feels rather generic. It can't be easy to be compared to Poirot or Marple (or even Tommy and Tuppence Bereseford). Still, I liked Pyne and it was a solid mystery with a good solution. I also quite enjoyed his handling of a bit of a domestic issue in Problem at Pollensa Bay. I got to learn a bit more about Pyne as a person and he showed himself to be compassionate but not indulgent and I liked that. I don't know how many other works I'll come across Pyne but I look forward to it.

Book Review: Sparkling Cyanide (Colonel Race #4) by Agatha Christie

Sparkling Cyanide (Colonel Race #4) by Agatha Christie
My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟 (4 stars)
Publisher: HarperCollins


In my further quest to read all the Christies, I picked up Sparkling Cyanide. As it happens this publication has a great cover so that pulled me in as well. The situation here is that Rosemary Barton is a year dead and her husband George is sure (after a series of letters) that she did not commit suicide as the inquest determined, but was murdered. He gathers together the people who were in attendance at her birthday dinner the night of her death to find the killer. It goes terribly and now it's up to Colonel Race to solve a murder (or two) and possibly a third if he's not quick about it.

Book Review: The Book of M by Peng Shepherd

The Book of M by Peng Shepherd
My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟 (4 stars)
Publisher: William Morrow (June 2018)

The Book of M made me hope in the face of hopelessness, believe the unbelievable and in a most rare occurrence, make me grieve for all the main characters and pretty much all the secondaries. It was, all around, time well spent.