JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

The Guilt Trip by Sandie Jones

They went away as friends
They came back as suspects . . .

Jack and Rachel. Noah and Paige. Will and Ali. Five friends who’ve known each other for years. And Ali, Will’s new fiancée.

To celebrate the forthcoming wedding, all three couples are having a weekend get-away together in Portugal. It’s a chance to relax and get to know Ali a little better perhaps. A newcomer to their group, she seems perfectly nice and Will seems happy after years of bad choices. But Ali is hiding more than one secret . . .

By the end of the weekend there’ll be one dead body and five people with guilty consciences wondering if they really know each other so well after all. Because one of them has to be the killer…

Sandie Jones’ The Guilt Trip is a domestic thriller set during a weekend get-away in a Portuguese villa for a friend’s glamorous wedding. There are three sets of couples and a long list of secrets between them. By the end of the weekend, someone will be dead and someone will be responsible.

This has to be my favourite Sandie Jones novel so far. The plotting is neater, the mystery more hidden, and the events unfold in a much more realistic manner. The premise is simple yet effective, and the tension between the characters will entice any fan of thrillers.

“The bed is unmade, the sheets tangled, and their pillows still show the indentations of their heads. She lets out a relieved sigh. What the hell was she thinking? How had she allowed a fleeting image, one that she can’t even be sure she saw, to infiltrate her mind and bring about insecurities she never even knew she had?”

Written in third person, the novel centres around protagonist Rachel. No one knows about her short fling with best friend Noah two decades earlier, and it’s important the secret stays a secret. But her husband is acting shady, and no one really likes Will’s fiancé. She’s fleeting and secretive, and far too young for him. But over time, the group will come to learn first impressions aren’t always accurate and it can be the people you least expect who hold the greatest secrets.

Hints are dropped sporadically and carefully, so you’re never really sure what’s going to happen until the drama has unfolded. Chapters end on cliffhangers, encouraging you to keep going. The Guilt Trip is a great holiday or aeroplane read – something to devour in a short amount of time.

“Twenty years have passed, and Noah has no doubt developed a whole heap of idiosyncrasies that she knows nothing about, and enjoyed experiences with Paige that she’ll never have a window onto, yet, for some reason, she stills feels she knows him better than anyone else.”

Despite loving this book, there were a couple of gripes I had. Firstly, it was really hard to keep track of all the characters, even when I was well into the book. I kept getting Noah and Jack mixed up. And when we find out that Jack and Rachel have a son called Josh, I started getting Jack and Josh mixed up. I got backstories confused, and relationships confused. I had to pause a lot to remember who was who before continuing. I’d say it was about the halfway mark before I felt more confident with the character names.

Secondly, people looking for a murder mystery should be warned that the death mentioned in the blurb actually doesn’t happen until the final chapters, so most of the book is about the relationships between these five adults. It is a bit ‘soap opera’ and so won’t be suitable for all readers, but I really enjoyed it.

Thirdly, I found the characterisation of Paige to be a little inconsistent. No spoilers, but once you get to the end and look back, I found her actions and dialogue to be a bit hard to swallow. Was she meant to be a red herring? I found her a little confusing.

“She shakes herself down as the unfamiliar, and wholly unwelcome, thoughts wrap themselves around her psyche. She tells herself that this is merely a knee-jerk reaction to seeing Noah unconscious on the beach today.”

Addictive and entertaining, The Guilt Trip is recommended for readers of domestic thrillers. Readership skews female, 25+

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

The Guilt Trip
Sandie Jones
July 2021
Pan Macmillan Publishers

Catch Us The Foxes by Nicola West

Some secrets you try to hide. Others you don’t dare let out …

Ambitious young journalist Marlowe ‘Lo’ Robertson would do anything to escape the suffocating confines of her small home town. While begrudgingly covering the annual show for the local newspaper, Lo is horrified to discover the mutilated corpse of her best friend – the town’s reigning showgirl, Lily Williams.

Seven strange symbols have been ruthlessly carved into Lily’s back. But when Lo reports her grisly find to the town’s police chief, he makes her promise not to tell anyone about the symbols. Lo obliges, though it’s not like she has much of a choice – after all, he is also her father.

When Lily’s murder makes headlines around the country and the town is invaded by the media, Lo seizes the opportunity to track down the killer and make a name for herself by breaking the biggest story of her life.

What Lo uncovers is that her sleepy home town has been harbouring a deadly secret, one so shocking that it will captivate the entire nation. Lo’s story will change the course of her life forever, but in a way she could never have dreamed of.

Catch Us the Foxes is Nicola West’s debut, set in a small coastal town and centring around the murder of a young journalist. When Marlowe discovers best friend Lily’s body, she is expected to hide secrets about the death and so takes it upon herself to follow clues and solve the murder.

Nicola builds tension with each chapter, and she has crafted a strong cast of characters. The pacing is quick and chapters are short, so readers won’t have any problem powering through.

“It wasn’t like I didn’t have a motive. Anyone who knew us would know we’d been competing since childhood. For the most part, things had been pretty equal, particularly at school, but once we entered the real world Lily kept pulling ahead. After a mere month of us both interning, she’d been granted a paid role at the local paper.”

Strengths lie in Nicola’s ability to capture that small-town atmosphere, where everyone knows everyone and gossip spreads fast. People are unforgiving and secrets are buried deep.

Another strength is protagonist Marlowe, who does come across as a sympathetic, reasonable soul. She’s also determined and tenacious – strong and level-headed. You feel confident in her instincts and the direction her story takes in the novel. She knows who to trust and who to be wary of.

“I hauled myself upright and dragged my fingers through my hair. I was still groggy, but I knew I had things to do. I spotted the golden gift bag that had been sitting – untouched – on my dresser since Christmas Eve. It was elegant and understated, just like Lily.”

I think this book will serve a younger audience best, rather than seasoned adult readers of crime and thriller. The writing at times is a bit caricature, and the interactions between characters not entirely realistic. Dialogue is forced at times, and conversations a bit over-the-top. Whilst the premise is interesting and the protagonist engaging, at times the book feels over-written.

Catch Us the Foxes covers a lot of ground in its 370-ish pages – mental illness, murder, satanic cults, friendships, family, relationships, homophobia, to name just a few. Some might feel it spreads itself a bit too thin in its story, and perhaps Nicola could’ve allowed for more exploration of certain issues if she wasn’t trying to cover so much throughout the story.

“Lily’s mum fell to her knees, sobbing violently. She began pounding at her head with her fists and screaming Lily’s name – like she was punishing herself for her daughter’s death. Despite my father and Michael being twice her size, they struggled to subdue her.”

Recommended for younger readers, and those interested in crime and mystery. The characters and relationships read younger. Readership is skewed female, 15+

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

Catch Us The Foxes
Nicola West
July 2021
Simon & Schuster

The Others by Mark Brandi

On his eleventh birthday, Jacob’s father gives him a diary. To write about things that happen. About what he and his father do on their farm. About the sheep, the crop, the fox and the dam. But Jacob knows some things should not be written down. Some things should not be remembered.

The only things he knows for sure are what his father has taught him. Sheltered, protected, isolated. But who is his father protecting him from? And how far will his father go to keep the world at bay?

All too soon, Jacob will learn that, sometimes, people do the most terrible things.

Firmly establishing himself as a master of crime and thriller, Mark Brandi’s latest novel The Others is another haunting tale.

Set on remote farmland and largely written in diary form, The Others follows an 11-year-old boy as he documents his day-to-day interactions with his overly protective but secretive father. Just who are the others he keeps talking about? And is Jacob actually in any real danger?

“So I have to stay home, and I have to stay in my room. It’s just in case the others come. I don’t mind staying home so much, because it gives me time to do my own things. Sometimes, I hear gunshots from somewhere in the bush. It must be a long way away, because it takes a long time for sound to travel.”

The Others reminds me a little of Room by Emma Donoghue. We only get snippets of the truth because we’re experiencing everything through the mind of an innocent child. Jacob looks to his father as protector, however his father is anything but.

As the reader, you know that Jacob is being fed lies and you witness him start to realise that his beloved parental figure might not be entirely truthful. It’s about following the story as the tension builds, pacing increases and you wonder how the tale is going to unfold.

Strengths lie in Jacob’s voice – he’s young and innocent, and quite naïve. But he’s not annoying or frustrating as a narrator. He is both insightful and present within his surroundings. His childlike voice offered a new perspective to Brandi’s novels, which haven’t yet delved into this kind of protagonist yet. It felt like something unique to his repertoire, and fans of his work will appreciate the pivot.

“He cooked it good this time. He always cooks the meat and I do the porridge. That’s the deal. He served it up and it was nicer, with the crispy bits, and the meat cooked right through.”

I did find that the book ended with a lot of unanswered questions, particularly around the women out hiking. The woman seemed to know Jacob’s father, so I’m not sure why he felt so threatened by her. And it perhaps felt a little unrealistic that the woman managed to find Jacob’s cabin so easily, when later in the novel we are told just how incredibly remote and difficult to discover it actually is?

And was Jacob’s mother actually sick? Jacob’s memory seemed to imply she was bedridden for a long time, but the revelation at the end seems to contradict that. Perhaps there was a bit of scope to reveal some of that information, particularly during those short sections where we’re with Jacob when he’s an adult.

Also, when is this novel set? It’s not necessary to know this, but talks of sickness and plague and illness made me think this was all fictional, but another reviewer interpreted this novel to be set post-COVID.

“The soft eyes are worse than when he gets angry. They hang around like the fog. Like the fog on the hill in winter. That’s what it’s like. But when he gets angry, even if the whites of his eyes scare me, it passes pretty quick.”

Overall a really entertaining novel and very quick to read – more pages than paragraphs, it felt. I ripped through this in one afternoon and really enjoyed it. The Others is engaging and atmospheric, and recommended for readers of crime, thriller and mystery. Readership skews 25+

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

The Others
Mark Brandi
July 2021
Hachette Book Publishers

The Husbands by Chandler Baker

Welcome to the neighbourhood. We do things differently here.

Recently, Nora has started to feel that ‘having it all’ – a family, a soon-to-be new house, a successful career in law – comes with a price, one her husband doesn’t seem to be paying quite so heavily. She loves Hayden, but why is it that, however hard men work, their wives always seem to work that much harder?

Then her house-hunting takes them to an affluent suburban neighbourhood and Nora’s eyes are opened to a new world. One where women can have it all. One where the men actually pull their weight.

But a wrongful death case involving one of the local residents draws Nora further into this perfect world and she begins to realise that the secret of ‘having it all’ is far more complicated than she could ever have imagined. In fact, it may be worth killing for…

Feminist thriller The Husbands is Chandler Baker’s second novel, this time set in an affluent suburban community in Austin Texas, where the residents aren’t as they seem and protagonist Nora gets sucked into solving a strange house fire.

The Husbands is very reminiscent of Stepford Wives, where behaviour doesn’t quite have an explanation and each domestic relationship holds countless secrets. The Husbands imagines an environment where husbands pull their weight and responsibility is shared equally — an environment I’m sure many female readers wish existed.

“But he looked so sad. It was her fault — she’d been the one to go and marry an extrovert. And he’d really wanted to have one with Liv, only Nora had never gotten around to planning it. And anyway, he promised, promised, that they weren’t those kinds of parents.”

Strengths lie in the pacing and build-up of tension, drip-feeding clues to the reader and enticing us to keep flicking to the next chapter. The Husbands will please fans of thrillers and mysteries.

The characterisation of Nora will resonate with the reader, as Chandler does well to capture her frazzled, frustrated state of mind. She’s fed up and at the end of her tether, and Chandler captures moments of tension between Nora and her husband with relatable dialogue and scenes.

“Nora finds much of the explanation has flown over her head: Maybe she has one of those interrupted neural pathways. Science always makes her feel like a dimwit. But she makes an encouraging noise as they continue to walk and talk through the next corridor, where closed doors line either side.”

The premise of the novel isn’t anything new, nor is Nora’s character arc. A determined career woman trying to juggle a career and a family, with very little help from her dopey husband, feels like quite a common plot. But the mystery surrounding the Dynasty Ranch neighbourhood and the strange house fire that killed a man does add another layer to it that separates it from the rest of the genre.

I do wish the revelations at the end — in particular, the backstory provided by Cornelia — was less of an info dump. Cornelia’s truth would’ve been more interesting to discover had Nora stumbled upon some of it herself, instead of Cornelia just blurting it all out at the end of the book like a horror movie.

“Nora and Francine linger a moment longer, sizing one another up. Nora tries to sort through what her role here is, attempts to calculate which would be worse, to tell Cornelia and Asher or not to.”

Clever and twisty, The Husbands is recommended for readers of contemporary fiction and thriller — part murder mystery part domestic psychological thriller. Readership skews female, 30+

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

The Husbands
Chandler Baker
July 2021
Hachette Book Publishers

The 22 Murders of Madison May by Max Barry

‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.’

In Queens, New York, 22-year-old real estate agent Madison May is showing a house. The buyer, a man she’s never met, is friendly, engaging . . . and claims to be her soulmate from a parallel life. She’s in danger, he tells her. He’s come to save her.

Later that day, newspaper journalist Felicity Staples is assigned to report on Madison May’s murder. Discontent with her own life, Felicity finds herself drawn into a shocking conspiracy involving a powerful group who have harnessed the ability to slip between lives – to move between one version of reality to another.

On the run, turned into an imposter in her own life, Felicity is forced to seek the truth behind Madison May, the woman who is murdered over and over, in different ways, wherever she goes. For only by saving Madison May can Felicity reassemble the broken pieces of herself.

Max Barry’s The 22 Murders of Madison May is a parallel-universe thriller about a crazed psychopath and his incessant, unexplained need to travel between different worlds to kill the same girl, over and over — Madison May.

We meet Madison in the opening chapter. She’s a young real estate agent showing a new listing to a potential buyer. Before long, he’s professing his love for her. And then he’s stabbing her to death. When reporter Felicity Staples is assigned the story, she’s suddenly thrust into an inter-dimensional saga that has her leaping through time in an effort to save Madison May.

“She sprawled on the tracks, banging her chin and elbow and knee. Her bag hit the ground and vomited forth her belongings. She raised her head quickly, because there was a train approaching, she recalled, a train, its lights blooming, and as she did, the air split with a bone-rattling blast from its horn.”

Barry’s novel is very good — so good I ripped through the story in one day. This is the very definition of a cat-and-mouse chase.

The world-building is complex enough to be interesting and draw the reader in, but not so complicated that it’s hard for readers to follow. Everything about this novel is comprehensible and easy to follow.

In each new world, Felicity’s life is very similar, with a few exceptions. Perhaps her boyfriend suddenly knows how to cook, or one of her cats doesn’t exist. Her job is the same, and her apartment as well, but her furniture might be different. And in every new world, Madison May has the same aspirations and the same friends, but her life is in a different place. She’s a real estate agent or a waitress, or perhaps she’s trying to make it as an actress.

Once we’ve moved on from one world, we never go back again, so the story is always progressing in a forward motion and there’s always something new to discover when we meet Madison May again and again and again. The poor girl just keeps getting murdered, and yet Felicity is determined to save her, even though she knows that when she moves into another world, she’ll never be able to go back to her old life. She’s moving further and further away from her own reality.

Experimenting with notions of the space-time continuum, The 22 Murders of Madison May is certainly something I could see playing out on the big screen.

“She didn’t want to give up the egg. It was practically the only thing she had: the only thing that had come with her aside from the clothes she’d been wearing. But she couldn’t hide it for much longer. Eventually, they would find it.”

There’s a small cast of characters, which allows Barry to capture each with depth and believability. Each new world is an alternate construction of Madison May, and how she intersects with Felicity, Clay and Hugo. Occasionally, secondary characters make an appearance.

I’ll admit, there didn’t seem to be as much introspection for Felicity as I would’ve expected. She doesn’t seem particularly stricken to discover she can never go back to her old life, and she seems to cast aside her job rather quickly — so quickly I forgot her job existed at all. Her character development is about embracing the life you’re given and not dwelling on what’s lost, but still, I expected a bit more reflection from her character. Psychologically, shouldn’t she be more affected by what she’s facing?

“She didn’t dare turn. But she saw his eyes shift. The hand holding the knife moved lower, hovering between the front seats like the fang of a snake. He would let the car pass, she saw. If she moved, he would stab her, but his plan was to kill her after it had gone.”

Chilling and clever, and progressing at breakneck speed, The 22 Murders of Madison May is a joy to devour. For fans of crime, thriller and mystery novels. Readership skews 20+

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

The 22 Murders of Madison May
Max Barry
July 2021
Hachette Book Publishers