JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

City of Vengeance by D.V Bishop

Florence. Winter, 1536. A prominent Jewish moneylender is murdered in his home, a death with wide implications in a city powered by immense wealth.

Cesare Aldo, a former soldier and now an officer of the Renaissance city’s most feared criminal court, is given four days to solve the murder: catch the killer before the feast of Epiphany – or suffer the consequences.

During his investigations Aldo uncovers a plot to overthrow the volatile ruler of Florence, Alessandro de’ Medici. If the Duke falls, it will endanger the whole city. But a rival officer of the court is determined to expose details about Aldo’s private life that could lead to his ruin. Can Aldo stop the conspiracy before anyone else dies, or will his own secrets destroy him first?

Debut historical thriller City of Vengeance by D.V Bishop takes us to Renaissance Florence, 1536. Cesare Aldo is tasked with solving two murders — moneylender Levi, who was stabbed to death in his home, and cross-dresser Corsini, who was bashed to death after dark. The novel also explores the unrest in Florence, and the traitorous plan to overthrow Alessandro de’ Medici by his own cousin. Whilst fiction, this book is inspired by true events, which are detailed in the Author’s Note at the end.

Readers needn’t love historical fiction to enjoy City of Vengeance — you must merely enjoy crime and thriller stories. At its core, this is a book about two murders, and a lead detective trying to uncover the truth. Whilst the setting may feel vastly different, this novel follows a similar format to most police procedural tales.

“It took Strocchi hours to find a true address for Corsini. The Otto’s records revealed several arrests of him in recent months: petty theft, pickpocketing and indecent acts. But the accused gave a different address each time, forcing Strocchi to eliminate them all.”

D.V Bishop does well to paint the setting. I’m somewhat familiar with the Medici reign and felt like the author captured the atmosphere of the time — societal behaviour and attitudes— rather well. It’s clear that years of research went into writing this book, a lot of source material and perhaps reference books as well.

City of Vengeance explores political intrigue, betrayal, familial obligation and keeping secrets. Each major character has been crafted uniquely, their personalities differing significantly. We have more than one villain, and plenty of red herrings along the way to throw us off the scent of the murderer/s. Aldo in particular is a well-developed character. He is in charge of uncovering secrets, but at the same time, he’s hiding some secrets of his own.

“Aldo went to the door. It stood ajar but there was no splintering to the wood, and no damage to the bolt. That suggested Levi had let his attacker in — a debtor, maybe, or a rival? Or had it been someone closer to home? Killings in Florence were not infrequent and were usually personal, fuelled by family, love, hate or greed.”

Despite the book only taking place over a few days, the pacing slows in the middle and suddenly the novel feels very long. Four hundred pages wasn’t necessary for the scope of this story, and I’ll admit I groaned a little when I found out this was the first book in a planned series. Please, make the sequel more succinct!

Admittedly, the other gripe I had with the story were the similarity in names. Perhaps unavoidable when writing a story based on true events, but we had Cesare, Corsini, Cosimo and Cerchi. It took me about one hundred pages to tell them apart whenever they appeared in a scene together — some names starting with another letter would’ve been welcome.

“Levi had been anxious on the road back from Bologna, but not defeated. If what Dante said was true, something must have happened after Levi’s return to Florence.”

Energetic and intense, with enough intrigue to keep you reading. Recommended for readers of fantasy and medieval history.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

City of Vengeance
D.V Bishop
February 2021
Pan Macmillan Book Publishers

Crackenback by Lee Christine

Detective Sergeant Pierce Ryder of the Sydney Homicide Squad is on the hunt for notorious fugitive Gavin Hutton.

After months of dead-ends, the breakthrough Ryder has been hoping for leads him back to the New South Wales Snowy Mountains on the trail of the suspected killer.

Meanwhile, when an injured man bursts into the remote Thredbo lodge managed by Eva Bell, her first instinct is to protect her daughter, Poppy. The terrifying arrival of Jack Walker turns Eva’s world upside down as the consequences of Jack’s presence become clear.

With a killer on the loose, Jack Walker and Ryder are tangled in the same treacherous web – spun across the perilously beautiful Crackenback Range.

Suspense novelist Lee Christine returns with her latest novel set in the Snowy Mountains — Crackenback. Split between two storylines and written in third person POV, the hunt is on for an escaped murderer deep in icy terrain.

Half of the book focuses on Thredbo lodge manager Eva, whose life is upended when former lover Jack Walker turns up on her doorstep — injured, anxious, and forcing Eva and their daughter Poppy into hiding. Notorious killer Gavin Hutton is on the lease, and Eva and Poppy are his targets.

The other chapters in the book focus on Detective Sergeant Pierce Ryder, who is hunting Gavin. As the novel flicks back and forth between these two settings, events happen concurrently and Pierce and Eva’s lives inevitably collide as Gavin Hutton draws near.

“Eva squinted harder. What was it she could see down there? It was then she realised that it was a set of footprints, partially obscured by the fresh snowfall. They were leading from her front verandah to the trail to the Willy Wagtail. Or was it the other way round?”

Strengths lie in the police procedural aspect of the book, and Ryder’s collection of evidence. We follow Pierce as he interviews witnesses and close contacts, desperately trying to piece together Gavin’s whereabouts. It’s clear that great research has gone into this aspect of the novel to ensure authenticity.

Another strength is characterisation — Christine crafts characters we grow to love. We sympathise when they struggle, and we keep reading to find out how their stories will end. Quieter moments in the book allow for the characters to face unresolved conflict, adding a layer of depth to the book.

Once again, we finds ourselves deep within an icy, cold setting. It’s the perfect read to accompany a glass of red wine. I could feel the biting temperatures and I could picture the blocked, snowy doorways. I could sense the danger lurking beyond the dark, misty outdoors.

“Eva locked the door with a violent shiver. When guests were staying, she would leave it unlocked twenty-four-seven so they had unlimited access to the mountain bikes, skis and snowboards stowed in the equipment room next to the laundry.”

The only aspect of the novel that I didn’t love was the slow pace of the Eva/Jack storyline. He bursts into her home and their setting doesn’t change much for majority of the novel. It’s really just them hiding out, and whilst it was interesting at first, I did find myself getting a little impatient — perhaps a little bored. Even Poppy doesn’t really provide much of an obstacle for their safety, and sometimes I forgot she was even in the house.

I felt like the author was trying to establish more of a romance than a thriller in this setting, and I think there was definitely capacity for both. I would’ve liked it if Gavin reared his ugly head a little earlier on the novel, pushed them out of their hiding place sooner.

“In the lobby, she watched as Jack dug in his pocket for the key and unlocked the drawer. Poppy had gone from spinning the bear in circles to wheeling the chair around the lobby like a pram. How was it that their lives had changed so much in an instant? One minute, she’d been looking forward to the snow season and happily chatting to Bede about his son’s wedding, and the next…”

High stakes and a cracking mystery right until the end, Crackenback is recommended for fans of crime and thriller, but only if you’re also interested in romance. If romance isn’t for you, then this isn’t the series for you. Fans of Christine’s previous novel, Charlotte’s Pass, will be excited to see the return of a few familiar characters.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Crackenback
Lee Christine
February 2021
Allen & Unwin Book Publishers

Shiver by Allie Reynolds

In this propulsive locked-room thriller, a reunion weekend in the French Alps turns deadly when five friends discover someone has deliberately stranded them in a deserted mountaintop resort.

When Milla is invited to a reunion in the tiny resort that saw the peak of her snowboarding career, she drops everything to go. While she would rather forget the events of that winter, the invitation comes from Curtis, the one person she can’t seem to let go.

The five friends haven’t seen each other for ten years, since the disappearance of the beautiful and enigmatic Saskia. But when an icebreaker game turns menacing, they realise they don’t know who has really gathered them there and how far they will go to find the truth. In an isolated lodge high up a mountain, amid a looming snowstorm, the secrets of the past are about to come to light.

Allie Reynolds’ Shiver is a compulsive, break-neck thriller set in the freezing and claustrophobic confines of the French Alps. Ten years earlier, the beautiful but bewildering Saskia went missing somewhere near the ski resort. Now, someone has brought five of Saskia’s closest friends together to find out what really happened to her.

Firstly, kudos must be given to Allie for crafting a setting that allows for so much plot within such little footprint. I love a claustrophobic setting, such as a college dormitory, or a summer holiday. It makes you feel like you’ve been squeezed in together with these characters, observing the fallout of long-repressed secrets. And in Shiver, these five characters are stuck together in this resort — no way out — until the person who brought them together finds out what happened to Saskia all those years ago.

“Saskia has her arm around me like I’m her new best friend. She smells of perfume, heady and exotic, though she wears no make-up apart from violet eyeliner that makes her eyes look even bluer.”

Each of the characters are so different, it allows for a seamless reading experience. There were a couple of times in the very beginning where I got Dale and Brent confused with each other, but once the flashbacks start refining their personalities and their backstories, the characters separate from each other as a group and become far more unique.

The book switches between present day and ten years ago, slowly revealing how Milla’s life became so entangled with Saskia’s, and ultimately, what happened the day she went missing. In the present, we’re taken on a frantic goose chase throughout the resort as someone starts forcing the five to reveal their secrets. And there are a lot of them!

“Athletes are physical people. We have all this energy and sometimes there’s some left at the end of the day. So it doesn’t surprise me that the boys did that. And I like how they did it. There was nothing leery or threatening about it; they simply put out the offer for me to take or leave.”

A lot of experience has gone into this novel. There’s considerable insight into the life of a professional athlete, and how important winning is to each of them. As a former snowboarder, Allie’s knowledge of snow and the mountains, the dangers they present, have informed the entirety of this book. There’s a lot of detail into the competitions surrounding snowboarding — the routines. But don’t let this deter you. Readers don’t need to be familiar with snowboarding, or even like it, to read this book. You’ll find yourself absorbed in the pages from the very first chapter.

I will admit that there were elements of the ending that I found predictable. Spoiler: due to the logistics of everyone’s whereabouts, and how they tended to stick together most of the time, it became clear quite quickly that none of the five were responsible for the botched reunion. It had to be someone else. From there, it was quite easy to figure out who was behind everything.

But despite that, I ripped through the pages in one day, desperate to get to the end. Shiver is intoxicating and enthralling, an instant favourite.

“When I was fourteen I got a Saturday job at the local dry slope, so I switched to snowboarding because I could ride for free. I got where I am without help from anyone. It’s part of what drives me. My way of giving Dad the finger.”

Recommended for readers of mystery, thriller and crime. Agatha Christie set in the French Alps.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Shiver
Allie Reynolds
February 2021
Hachette Book Publishers

The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean

He is her husband. She is his captive.
Her husband calls her Jane. That is not her name.

She lives in a small farm cottage, surrounded by vast, open fields. Everywhere she looks, there is space. But she is trapped. No one knows how she got to the UK: no one knows she is there. Visitors rarely come to the farm; if they do, she is never seen.

Her husband records her every movement during the day. If he doesn’t like what he sees, she is punished.

For a long time, escape seemed impossible. But now, something has changed. She has a reason to live and a reason to fight. Now, she is watching him, and waiting …

The perfect thriller to devour this Summer, Will Dean’s The Last Thing to Burn follows a kidnapped woman and her desperate plea to save herself, her baby, and her captor’s latest victim. The novel charges forward at a roaring pace, exploring the evils of human trafficking.

Set in rural United Kingdom on an isolated pig-farm, the novel clocks in at just under 250 pages and is hard to put down once you’ve started. Will Dean does a masterful job of keeping tension bubbling under the surface, filling the reader with dread. Like the main character, a trafficked Vietnamese woman, we can sense how much control her ‘husband’ has over her, the danger she’s in.

The mental image of her mangled, broken angle and how it sits at 90 degrees will haunt me for some time. This injury is enough to know why she’s still there — why she can’t run. It’s enough to realise the danger her captor poses, the damage he could still do. I found myself pulling my feet close to me whenever I was reading, my anxiety growing.

“I want more pills to dull my life, but then I’ll never get out of this place and he’ll do whatever he wants. Whenever he wants. It’s a horrific balance. Numb enough to carry on but not too numb that I lose control.”

At the beginning of the novel, we come to understand that with each indiscretion that the main character commits, she has to choose one personal item to be destroyed. When we meet her in chapter one, attempting to escape her prison, she does not have many personal items left. She is down to the final few cherished items, and departing with any of them strips her of her identity, forcing her into a depressive state.

Dialogue is lean in the book, which I’m sure is a deliberate structural technique. Without too much dialogue, Will is able to establish this incredibly tense, moody setting — claustrophobic — and we’re forced to deduce elements of this woman’s story without her explicitly telling us. And for her captor, the less he says, the more terrifying he is because you don’t know what he’s thinking.

“I drink a sip of water and try to stand. My ankle has the colour and ripeness of some long-forgotten soft fruit. It feels less cohesive than usual after my walk yesterday, my failed not even halfway walk. It feels like it might crumble and fall apart if I put any weight on it.”

Written in first person, hope keeps the reader enthralled in the story. But there’s admittedly so little of it throughout the novel. She’s alone and rescue is not coming — her ‘husband’ makes sure of that. She’s secluded and it’s been so long since she’s seen family, she’s been brainwashed into thinking her actions may have consequences for her sister, who is apparently working off her debt in Manchester.

Spoiler: I wish there was more time explored on the outside of the house — the epilogue skimmed over what would’ve been a really tense escape away from the burning house and I felt a little cheated we didn’t get to experience some of that.

“And I’ll reread the letters in three weeks’ time when I get to sleep in my own room again, not mine, his, but my air, at least when he’s not barging in to watch me undress for bed or watch me sleep or watch me brush my hair with his mother’s brush.”

Recommended for readers of thriller and mystery. Room by Emma Donoghue is a good comparison title, although The Last Thing to Burn is far more violent.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Last Thing to Burn
Will Dean
January 2021
Hachette Book Publishers

Instant Karma by Marissa Meyer

Chronic overachiever Prudence Daniels is always quick to cast judgement on the residents of her coastal town. Her dreams of karmic justice are fulfilled when, after a night out with her friends, she wakes up with the sudden ability to cast instant karma on those around her.

Pru giddily makes use of the power, flexing it on everyone from public vandals to karaoke hecklers. But there is one person on whom her powers consistently backfire: Quint Erickson, her slacker of a lab partner and all-round mortal enemy.

Soon, Pru begins to uncover truths about Quint, her peers and even herself. She discovers how thin the line is between virtue and vanity, generosity and greed . . . love and hate.

Marissa Meyer’s Instant Karma is a rom-com YA novel about the perception of others, how quick we are to cast judgement, and the importance of understanding how multi-layered justice is.

An outing with her friends results in Prudence developing supernatural powers, allowing her to wreak karma on those she thinks deserves it. It feels like the perfect punishment for her lazy, sloppy lab partner, Quint Erickson. Until she starts volunteering at the local sea animal rehabilitation centre and learns there’s more to Quint than she thought.

Teenage readers will enjoy this novel — the setting, characters, and direction. Admittedly, this book doesn’t really feel like it’s about karma at all. It’s actually quite an insignificant part of the story, feels a little like the author jammed it in post-first-draft. There certainly doesn’t feel like there’s a resolution to it.

However, readers will appreciate the lessons that uptight, goody-two-shoes Prudence learns along her journey. In the beginning, she’s borderline insufferable. By the end, she’s quite an engaging protagonist.

“It’s not that deep, but when she lands on her backside with a splash, the water comes nearly to her neck. She scrambles to her feet and bolts from the water, her dress coated in sand and clinging to her thighs.”

Setting feels like its own character in this novel. The Southern California beach is the perfect backdrop to this setting — it offers a light, fun, carefree story. This is the perfect summer read, an ideal book to take to the beach or by the pool. A real resort read.

There are some important issues and themes to digest in the book — nurturing animals, wildlife rescue and rehabilitation, littering, the environment — but Marissa presents them in a manner that doesn’t feel overbearing or preachy. Ideally, the reader must possess some kind of interest or affection for animals, or they might find themselves a little bored. The opening of the book is certainly a little slow to start, because it’s dominated by a biology project that is a little snoozy.

“I start to read the text, and…my opinions begin to plummet. Typos. Misspellings. Run-on sentences. Rambling, almost incoherent statements. Criminy. How did this guy pass ninth-grade English?”

I loved that Pru was confident, dominant, sure of herself, but I also really appreciated it when Quint put her in her place — when he pointed out when she was being unreasonable. When her perfectionist tendencies were putting unrealistic pressure on those around her, it was important for that to be checked.

Despite Quint feeling a bit one-dimensional and not overly layered, he was relatable in those moments, and it was important for Prudence to be put in her place so she could learn from her mistakes and grow as a character.

“How is it that I can have such high expectations, for myself and those around me, while Quint can be so…so Quint. I’ve even spent the last year lowering my expectations for him, bit by bit, and still he manages to disappoint. I’ve truly asked so little of him.”

A little predictable, but highly recommended for teenage readers, perhaps even 10+ depending on the individual.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Instant Karma
Marissa Meyer
November 2020
Pan Macmillan Publishers Australia