Twenty years ago, Dennis Danson was arrested and imprisoned for the brutal murder of a young girl in Florida's Red River County. Now he's the subject of a true-crime documentary that's whipping up a frenzy online to uncover the truth and free a man who has been wrongly convicted.
​
A thousand miles away in England, Samantha is obsessed with Dennis's case. She exchanges letters with him, and is quickly won over by his apparent charm and kindness to her. Soon she has left her old life behind to marry him and campaign for his release.
But when the campaign is successful and Dennis is freed, Sam begins to discover new details that suggest he may not be quite so innocent after all.

But how do you confront your husband when you don't want to know the truth?
​

As soon as I read the synopsis for this book, I knew it would be one that I'd enjoy.
I was hooked from the prologue and the use of letters between Sam and Dennis is really effective.
In the beginning, the book switches between the perspective of Sam and extracts from documentaries of Dennis' past which enabled me to feel like I was getting to know the characters. These extracts about Dennis made learning about what happened even more interesting and engaging and the attention to detail is fantastic. Yet just the right amount of information is held back to maintain the intrigue and suspense.
I recommend this book for those who enjoy plenty of focus on the psychological aspect of the characters as this is really brought out in Sam through her obsession and mind games.
The Innocent Wife gets better and better the more it progresses and I didn't want to put it down. I found that I really cared what would happen next and I felt really involved in their story and relationship.
This book is well-paced with plenty of tension and unease and quite a few shocking moments. There were times where I sat reading with my eyes wide in disbelief!
Although I would've loved a bit more detail in the ending, I did like it and I enjoyed imagining what the future might hold.
Overall, I'm giving The Innocent Wife 4 out of 5. It was engaging, shocking and dripping with suspense.
​

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This book was provided for free in exchange for an honest review.

Amy Lloyd studied English and Creative Writing at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Her writing combines her fascination with true crime and her passion for fiction. In 2016 she won the Daily Mail Bestseller Competition for her novel The Innocent Wife. Amy lives in Cardiff with her partner, who is also a published novelist.

​SOMETIMES PEOPLE ARE NOT ALL THEY SEEM...
SOMETIMES THE TRUTH HIDES A SECRET...
SOMETIMES A CONFESSION IS THE BEGINNING... NOT THE END

Late one night a man walks into the luxurious home of disgraced banker Harry McNamara and his wife Julie. The man launches an unspeakably brutal attack on Harry as a horror-struck Julie watches, frozen by fear. It looks like Harry's many sins - corruption, greed, betrayal - have finally caught up with him.
An hour later the intruder, JP Carney, hands himself in, confessing to the assault. The police have a victim, a suspect in custody and an eye-witness account, but Julie remains troubled.
Has Carney's surrender really been driven by a guilty conscience or is this confession the first calculated move in a deadly game?
​

If I was asked to describe this book in one word, without a doubt the word I would use is twisted. It's full of manipulation, secrets, betrayal and intrigue, it flips everything on its head and I love it!
At first, I found it a little slower than I would've liked, however as the tension started to build and the pace picked up, Spain reeled me in deeper and deeper and before I knew it, I was obsessed.
It's told from three different perspectives which weave together well and maintained my interest by keeping me on my toes and leaving me wanting more at the end of each chapter.
My favourite perspective was from JP as I found him and his past fascinating. He was joined by other brilliantly written characters such as Julie and Harry who Spain managed to make me care about and engage with, despite their many flaws and the fact I didn't particularly like them as people.
During the last few chapters, I was frantically trying to get to the bottom of everything and all of the things I thought I'd guessed turned out to be wrong. The ending was a complete shock and it took me a good few minutes to recover from the final 'showdown'. For me, it was extremely powerful and a brilliant ending that really resonated in my mind.
Overall, I'm giving The Confession 4 out of 5. It's tense, taut and terrifically twisted.

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Jo Spain has worked as a party advisor on the economy in the Irish parliament. Her first novel, With Our Blessing,was one of seven books shortlisted in the Richard and Judy Search for a Bestseller competition and went on to be a top-ten bestseller in Ireland. Joanne lives in Dublin with her husband and their four young children.

PERFECT HUSBAND. PERFECT FATHER. PERFECT LIAR?
​
Vivian Miller is a CIA analyst assigned to uncover Russian sleeper cells in the USA. After accessing the computer of a potential Russian spy, she stumbles on a secret dossier of deep-cover agents living in her own country. Five seemingly normal people living in plain sight.
A few clicks later, everything that matters to Vivian is threatened - her job, her husband, even her four children . . .
Vivian has vowed to defend her country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. But now she's facing impossible choices. Torn between loyalty and betrayal, allegiance and treason, love and suspicion, who can she trust?
Will her next move be the right one?

Need to Know is really tense with plenty of action and I was drawn in to it straight away. From the very beginning, I wanted to know what had happened and every line made me want to read on.
I thought the characters and development of Viv and Matt fitted the book perfectly. I never felt that I truly knew them but this helped with the theme of not knowing who to trust and added an extra edge of tension.
I audibly gasped at almost all of the twists, especially the really big twists and shocks towards the end. As more and more was revealed about the past and the present, things started to click into place and I was really involved in the book. Any time I actually managed to put the book down for a few minutes, I found myself thinking about the plot and characters and wondering what was going to happen next!
The book is well-paced and balanced perfectly. It's not too fast or too slow and I think that the pace speeds up and slows down in all the right places.
The ending gave me lots to think about. Who can you really trust? Do you ever truly know someone? What would you do if you found out that someone is not who you thought they were at all? Need to Know makes you re-evaluate everything and is very thought-provoking. A little sinister even. It is extremely tense and engaging with twists and secrets at every turn. A thrilling and gripping debut!
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Karen Cleveland spent eight years as a CIA analyst, focusing on counter-terrorism and working briefly on rotation to the FBI. She has master's degrees from Trinity College Dublin and Harvard University. She lives in northern Virginia with her husband and two young sons.

Today is my stop on the blog tour for Hydra by Matt Wesolowski! It's a brilliant book so I'm delighted to be involved! Thank you so much to Anne for organising the tour and Orenda Books for my copy of the book. Don't forget to check out the rest of the stops on the tour!

A family massacre. A deluded murderess. Five witnesses. Six Stories. Which one is true?

One cold November night in 2014, in a small town in the northwest of England, 21-year-old Arla Macleod bludgeoned her mother, stepfather and younger sister to death with a hammer, in an unprovoked attack known as the Macleod Massacre. Now incarcerated at a medium-security mental-health institution, Arla will speak to no one but Scott King, an investigative journalist, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation.
King finds himself immersed in an increasingly complex case, interviewing five key witnesses and Arla herself, as he questions whether Arla’s responsibility for the massacre was as diminished as her legal team made out. As he unpicks the stories, he finds himself thrust into a world of deadly forbidden ‘games’, online trolls, and
the mysterious black-eyed kids, whose presence seems to extend far beyond the delusions of a murderess... Dark, chilling and gripping, Hydra is both a classic murder mystery and an up-to-the-minute, startling thriller that shines light in places you may never, ever want to see again.

Hydra has a highly original style and concept which is bang up to date and makes it stand out from all of the other thrillers on the market. I absolutely love the idea and it's so well executed that reading it becomes almost addictive.
It's part of the 'Six Stories' series but you don't need to have read Six Stories in order to enjoy this book. (Although it's fantastic so I would highly recommend reading it too! My review for that is here)
The speech is realistic and natural and the characters have an instantly recognisable voice, coming to life just through the way their individual voices are portrayed. It feels as though you can actually hear them speaking.
I really liked how different medias, such as newspaper reports and extracts of radio broadcasts, are used to present information. It added an extra dimension to the story and was much more engaging than just being told about it from a character.
Wesolowski writes with such skill and manages to take the tiniest details, like a 'shuffling noise', and turn them into something that made my heart stop. I found myself constantly thinking about how clever the writing was and the great attention to detail that is present in the book.
The plot is tense, gripping and extremely chilling, there are some parts that I definitely wouldn't recommend reading at night!
It's full of shocks and just when I thought I had it all figured out, Wesolowski managed to surprise me again! Once I finally found out who was behind things, it made so much sense, but I never in a million years would've guessed it! Even though looking back, it was staring me in the face, Wesolowski's expert writing kept me on my toes and diverted my attention to other places.
The harrowing and thought-provoking ending was the perfect way to finish this unique and memorable book.
Overall, I'm giving Hydra 4.5 out of 5. It's highly original, completely engaging and full of suspense. I sincerely hope there will be more to come from the Six Stories series.

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This book was provided for free in exchange for an honest review.

Matt Wesolowski is from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the UK. He is an English tutor for young people in care. Matt started his writing career in horror, and his short horror fiction has been published in numerous UK- and US-based anthologies such as Midnight Movie
Creature Feature, Selfies from the End of the World, Cold Iron and many more. His novella, The Black Land, a horror set on the Northumberland coast, was published in 2013. Matt was a winner of the Pitch Perfect competition at Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival in 2015. His debut thriller, Six Stories, was an Amazon bestseller in the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia, and a WHSmith Fresh Talent pick, and film rights were sold to a major Hollywood studio.

We all have fears we hide from. But in the end they will find us . . .
The Chalk Man is coming . . .
​​
None of us ever agreed on the exact beginning.
Was it when we started drawing the chalk figures, or when they started to appear on their own?
Was it the terrible accident?
Or when they found the first body?

After reading just the first few paragraphs, I was hooked straight away on this book and on the clever writing which instantly created so many questions in my mind, that I knew I wouldn't be able to put The Chalk Man down any time soon. The book was packed with tension and every single paragraph made me want to read on.
The narrative was split into past and present which added to the haunting sense of foreboding created by the little hints and breadcrumbs of information that were dropped in along the way to give a small taste of what had happened in 1986. I often found myself suddenly realising the significance of earlier things which seemed unimportant when I first read them, and I really appreciated this level of detail.
I particularly enjoyed the build up to finding out the 'why' and even though I had guessed the 'who', I was so riveted by the story, that it didn't detract from my enjoyment in the slightest. I stayed up way too late finishing this because I simply couldn't stop reading!
The twists and shocks continued until the very end, even after everything seemed to be over. I found myself gasping constantly and at times it got so tense I almost forgot to breathe!
Overall, I'm giving The Chalk Man 4.5 out of 5. It was haunting, dark and hypnotising. A really fantastic debut from C. J. Tudor.

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This e-book was provided for free in exchange for an honest review.

C. J. Tudor was born in Salisbury and grew up in Nottingham, where she still lives with her partner and young daughter. Her love of writing, especially the dark and macabre, started young. When her peers were reading Judy Blume, she was devouring Stephen King and James Herbert.
Over the years she has had a variety of jobs, including trainee reporter, waitress, radio scriptwriter, shop assistant, voice-over artist, television presenter, copywriter and now author. The Chalk Man is her first novel.