Diagnosis: Bookaholic

  SYNOPSIS Serial killer Neva has been conditioned not to ask questions of the mysterious Network, to remain perfectly incurious and perennially cold-blooded. She must simply execute the targets they text her and live to bury the tale. But then she’s tasked with terminating a fellow assassin and glimpses her own future in her colleague’s fate. When she leaves flowers on the gravesite, someone notices. Agent Michael Kensington knows he’ll have his work cut out for him when he’s recruited by MI5 onto operation Archive to piece together patterns in cold cases. Nothing could ever have prepared him for Neva… An assassin obsessed with hell, a fugitive tortured by the secrets of her past, a woman destined to unthread him. Title: The House of Killers Author: Samantha Lee Howe Publisher: One More Chapter Publication date: March 26, 2021 REVIEW RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ "The house of killers" was such a pleasant surprise. Earlier this year I read the author's first novel, a classic d...

  SYNOPSIS In his many years as a Commissario, Guido Brunetti has seen all manner of crime and known intuitively how to navigate the various pathways in his native Venice to discover the person responsible. Now, in the thirtieth novel in Donna Leon's masterful series, he faces a heinous crime committed outside his jurisdiction. He is drawn in innocently enough: two young American women have been badly injured in a boating accident, joy riding in the Laguna with two young Italians. However, Brunetti's curiosity is aroused by the behaviour of the young men, who abandoned the victims after taking them to the hospital. If the injuries were the result of an accident, why did they want to avoid association with it? As Brunetti and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, investigate the incident, they discover that one of the young men works for a man rumoured to be involved in more sinister night-time activities in the Laguna. To get to the bottom of what proves to be a gut-wrenching case, ...

SYNOPSIS It’s normal to wish that your baby came with a snooze button, right? When I got pregnant, Will and I didn’t have a clue what we were signing up for. It turns out that there’s loads we weren’t warned about: 1) In the middle of the night you’ll be begging Siri for advice on getting your baby to sleep. (In case you’re wondering, whale music doesn’t work.) 2) If you make the mistake of going to a nightclub you’ll nod off, drool, and be woken up by an angry bouncer. 3) You’ll spend more time spooning your child’s cuddly donkey than your own boyfriend. 4) Communication with your other half will be via post-it notes on the fridge, mainly telling him to buy more milk. 5) Sex is something that happened in another dimension. But even if I feel like I’m waiting for my motherhood powers to come in the post, at least I’ve got Will. Our old life – festivals, sambuca shots, an actual sex life – might be a distant memory, but we can get through anything together, can’t we? At least that’s wha...

  SYNOPSIS Finlay Donovan is killing it . . . except, she’s really not. She’s 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 . . . Soon, Finlay 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. Title: Finlay Donovan is killing it Author: Elle Cosimano Publisher: Minotaur Books Publication date: February 2, 2021 REVIEW RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Finlay Donovan is killing it. Literally and metaphorica...

  SYNOPSIS A Life No One Will Remember. A Story You Will Never Forget. France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever—and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name. Title: The invisible life of Addie LaRue Autor: V. E. Schwab Publisher: Tor Books Publication date: October 6, 2020 REVIEW RATING: ⭐⭐⭐ "Books are a way to live a thousand lives - or to find strength in a very long one". - "Why would anyone trade a lifetime of talent for a few years of glory?" "Because happiness is brief, and history is lasting, and in the end, everyone wants to be remem...

SYNOPSIS Our love story is simple. I met a gorgeous woman. We fell in love. We had kids. We moved to the suburbs. We told each other our biggest dreams, and our darkest secrets. And then we got bored. We look like a normal couple. We are your neighbors, the parents of your kid's friend, the acquaintances you keep meaning to get dinner with. We all have our secrets to keeping a marriage alive. Ours just happens to be getting away with murder. Title: My lovely wife Author: Samantha Downing Publisher: Berkley Publication date: March 26, 2019 REVIEW RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐   OMG! This was BLOODY BRILLIANT! I can’t believe I didn’t read this before. I feel like I’m late to the party but better late than never! After reading both “My lovely wife” and “He started it”, I wonder what goes on in Ms. Downing’s head to create such disturbed, disturbing and, at the same time, likable characters. It’s been a while since I read a debut novel so intricately plotted where everything worked as a perfectly oi...

SYNOPSIS The text message arrives in the small hours of the morning:  I need you . Isa drops everything, takes her baby daughter and heads straight to Salten. She spent the most significant days of her life at boarding school on the marshes there, days which still cast their shadow over her. Isa and her three best friends used to play the Lying Game, competing to convince people of outrageous stories. Now, after seventeen years of hiding the truth, something terrible has been found on the beach. The friends' darkest secret is about to come to light... Title: The lying game Author: Ruth Ware Publisher: Vintage Publication date: March 8, 2018 REVIEW RATING: ⭐⭐⭐ Liar, liar, pants on fire... At this point it's not a secret (because I've repeated it ad nauseam) that "One by One" was one of my favorite reads this year. When my friend Susan came up with the idea of a "Lying Game" buddy read I said yes immediately, hoping to repeat the success I had with Ware...