Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
#readaway2025
review
OutsmartYourShelf
post image
Pickpick

Emily was in a coma for 4 months following an accident & to aid her recovery somewhere quiet, she agrees to move from London to 'Larkin Lodge', a house on the Devon moors. She hopes that this will give her marriage to husband Freddie a fresh start, but when they arrive, far from the pretty country home on the website, the house is shrouded in mist & inside the house is either unbearably hot or achingly cold.

OutsmartYourShelf As strange things start to happen especially on the top floor in the empty suite, Emily becomes convinced that the house is haunted, but as the occurrences only happen when she is alone, Freddie thinks she is seeing things due to her meds. When four of her friends come to visit they drunkenly decide to use Emily's old Ouija board & it spells out the message 'Find it, find it.' Find what? And why is Freddie acting so oddly? 12h
OutsmartYourShelf My reading experience with this author has been a bit hit & miss, but this one is definitely a hit! It kept my attention from the start & the twists were excellent. I loved the short chapters which kept things moving, & those half dozen or so chapters from the raven's point of view are poignant. I really enjoyed this one & I recommend readers go into this one knowing as little as possible about the plot. 4.5🌟
12h
OutsmartYourShelf My thanks to #NetGalley & publishers, Orion Publishing Group, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

Full Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7463735725
Read 1st-2nd Jun 2025

#ReadAway2025 @Andrew65 @DieAReader @GHABI4ROSES
12h
DieAReader 🥳Fabulous!! 12h
27 likes4 comments
review
OutsmartYourShelf
The Party | Natasha Preston
post image
Mehso-so

A group of friends decide to have a secret party weekend in a remote castle owned by the parents of one of the teens. Undergoing development, the castle has limited electricity & heating & no-one will know they are there. Soon after they arrive a storm rages & only 10 of them manage to make it to the site. The weather traps them inside & their mobiles go missing on the first evening so they can't call for help, (continued)

OutsmartYourShelf & as one by one they begin to meet with fatal 'accidents', friend Bessie & Kash realise they are trapped with friends that they don't know as well as they thought.

The covers, settings, & synopses of the books by this author suck me in every time, & every time the characters are too underdeveloped for the reader to care about what happens to them. In this one there was also a lot of wandering about with a killer on the loose -
1d
OutsmartYourShelf the group would decide to stay together (safety in numbers) & then one of them would suddenly take off meaning the rest of them would split up to find them. Rinse & repeat. Entertaining enough to finish reading it but I wouldn't pick it up again. 3⭐

Full Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7221169259
Read 2nd-4th Jun 2025

#ReadAway2025 @Andrew65 @DieAReader @GHABI4ROSES
1d
DieAReader 🎉👋🏻 #Next 1d
26 likes3 comments
review
OutsmartYourShelf
post image
Pickpick

Theories about the identity of Jack the Ripper are legion & a plethora of suspects have been proposed over the decades, but is there a suspect who has been overlooked all this time? Charles Lechmere (aka Cross) was a carman who was on the way to work in the early hours when he discovered the body of the first canonical Ripper victim, Mary Ann Nichols. (continued)

OutsmartYourShelf Lechmere, along with another witness who happened along the way shortly after, alerted a police officer on his beat nearby & gave evidence at the inquest, but the fact he gave an incorrect name & that the timings were fuzzy was never picked up on. Could the Ripper have been in-situ at the first murder & hidden in plain sight all along?

4d
OutsmartYourShelf First of all this is a intriguing theory & the book is written in a very accessible way for those not familiar with the murders. It gives brief synopses of the five canonical victims, considers other possible victims, & either excludes or rules in the usual suspects. All this takes up 80% of the book, & Lechmere is not really discussed in any detail until almost the end. This could be because there is scant information about his life apart from 4d
OutsmartYourShelf the usual birth/marriage/death, but it just seems strange that the subject of the book would only appear in, at most, 20% of the book. It is very readable though & the theory is worth considering. 3.75🌟

My thanks to #NetGalley & publishers, Pen & Sword, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

Full Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7538881075
Read 22nd - 25th May 2025

#ReadAway2025 @Andrew65 @DieAReader @GHABI4ROSES
4d
DieAReader 💖💖💖 3d
23 likes4 comments
review
OutsmartYourShelf
post image
Pickpick

The Zodiac Killer, who committed his serial killings in the late 1960s in the San Francisco area, has never been caught. Over the decades, many suspects have been posited but in June 1999, Mike Rodelli followed a hunch & found evidence that suggested a suspect that had never been fully considered before. This book sets out Rodelli's 20-year quest to prove that this man was the Zodiac Killer. (continued)

OutsmartYourShelf I've heard of the Zodiac Killer through films & TV (like Criminal Minds) but never read a book about them until now. Rodelli argues a convincing case - sure, some of the evidence could be argued away as coincidence, but not all of it. It was fascinating to see the evidence laid out & how each point connected to the suspect. Not least of which was a photograph of the suspect which does look very like the sketches of the Zodiac. 4d
OutsmartYourShelf I agree that the Zodiac was most definitely not a sexual sadist. There is no sexual element in the killings & it was about power & control - thumbing his nose at the authorities & getting away with it. I did find it a little heavy-going at times, there seemed to be some repetition & an irritating habit in the early chapters of mentioning something & then saying it would be dealt with later on. 4d
OutsmartYourShelf Overall though it was an interesting read & I think the author may be on to something here. Pity we'll probably never know for sure. 3.5🌟

My thanks to #NetGalley & publishers, Indigo River Publishing, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

Full Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4145541068
Read 29th-31st May 2025

#ReadAway2025 @Andrew65 @DieAReader @GHABI4ROSES
4d
DieAReader 🥳🥳🥳 3d
25 likes4 comments
review
OutsmartYourShelf
The Prison Healer | Lynette Noni
post image
Pickpick

I was absolutely glued to the start of this book & the premise was intriguing, unfortunately it suffered from the tendency to prioritise romantic relationships over the Trials which made the middle section drag a bit. The ending almost made up for it though, I was surprised by that extra twist, & that doesn't happen often. I was 50-50 on carrying on but the ending caught my attention again, so I probably will read the next one. 3.75🌟

TheSpineView Great job!🤩📖📚 1w
DieAReader 🎉🎉🎉 1w
Tove_Reads Ah, these books are a bit challenging, but good that you‘ll continue. 1w
31 likes4 comments
review
Andrew65
post image
Pickpick

This was an excellent read. Can never beat time travel, but this one had intrigue, a slow burn love story and bees thrown in! Made it very difficult to put down towards the end. Now I desperately need book 2 to find out what happens, check out my full review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7566675966

#SeriesLove2025 #Readaway2025 @TheSpineView @DieaReader @Ghabi4Roses

Andrew65 Counting this for the #Shelfsweeper Readathon as been on my Kindle for a month or two. @Tove_Reads 1w
TheSpineView Fantastic! 🤩📖📚 1w
DieAReader 🎉💖Excellent!! 1w
56 likes3 comments
review
OutsmartYourShelf
The Darkest Minds | Alexandra Bracken
post image
Pickpick

In a dystopian USA, children start dying from a new illness which has a high mortality rate. Those that do survive develop alarming new abilities, making the adults afraid of them. From the age of 10 all surviving children are taken into federal custody & placed into camps run by guards. The children are sorted into colours according to their abilities: green is the least dangerous, then blue, yellow, & orange, with red being the most dangerous.

OutsmartYourShelf Ruby is locked up on her 10th birthday & is categorised as green but when she reaches 16, she is broken out of the camp by The League. Ruby soon realises that they are wanting to use her ability for themselves so runs away at the first opportunity. She joins 3 other teenagers on a road trip to find East River - a group of kids living out in the woods with a leader who is rumoured to be able to do the impossible. 2w
OutsmartYourShelf Ruby knows that all of them are hiding secrets from her, but she is hiding one from them, you see she's not really a green....

At heart this is your standard YA dystopia: kids against adults, sorted into factions, hot guy, second hot guy for the obligatory love triangle, etc. It started off quite slow & I almost DNF'd but it did pick up about a third of the way through. I already have the next 2 so will probably read them at some point. 3.75🌟
2w
See All 6 Comments
TheSpineView Well done! 2w
DieAReader 🎉🎉🎉 2w
Andrew65 Looks good, well done 🎉🎉🎉 2w
35 likes6 comments
review
OutsmartYourShelf
post image
Mehso-so

England, 1942 & American & Canadian soldiers were billeted in the Surrey countryside awaiting details of their next posting. One soldier was Private August Sangret who struck up a relationship with local girl, Joan Wolfe, one that Joan thought would be leading to marriage. For weeks witnesses usually saw them together, including living in a hastily constructed 'wigwam' or tipi in the woods until one day Joan disappeared. (continued)

OutsmartYourShelf Sangret searched for her for a while but then seemed to be over it & he told anyone who asked that Joan had gone away on a course.

When Joan's body was found in a shallow grave, the lead detective honed in on Sangret. He was not the first or only soldier that Joan had been involved with, but he was executed by hanging for her murder. The forensic evidence was mainly inconclusive so was Sangret actually guilty,
2w
OutsmartYourShelf or was he a scapegoat due to his Métis (mixed European & indigenous Canadian ancestry) background?

This was an interesting read about a case I had never heard of before, but the timeline seemed a bit confusing to me. The narrative jumped around over lots of different background stories & it was difficult to work out what had happened when. The author argues that Sangret did not get a fair trial due to his skin colour & background.
2w
OutsmartYourShelf The investigation was certainly perfunctory in some respects as Sangret was by no means the first or only soldier to have a relationship with Joan, but none of the others seem to have been investigated. At present, I'm not 100% convinced that Sangret wasn't the killer but there is certainly enough evidence to suggest that other avenues should have been investigated more fully. Overall, an interesting if slightly confusing read. 3⭐
2w
See All 6 Comments
DieAReader 🎉Excellent! 2w
Andrew65 Well done 🎉🎉🎉 1w
29 likes6 comments
review
OutsmartYourShelf
post image
Pickpick

The fifth outing for the team of Detective Sergeant Washington Poe & civilian analyst, Tilly Bradshaw sees them tackle two puzzling cases. A poisoner is running amok, seemingly able to get to his victims even if they are under police protection, & for his fourth victim he uses the might of social media to get the public to vote on who he kills next. (continued)

OutsmartYourShelf Meanwhile pathologist Estelle Doyle has been arrested for killing her father. She says she's innocent but there's physical evidence including firearms discharge residue on her hands, & hers are the only footprints in the snow going in. The house has been thoroughly searched & no weapon has been found.

Intriguing cases for Poe & Bradshaw & they were well plotted. For me though, there was too much Doyle & not enough Bradshaw.
2w
DieAReader Excellent!!🎉🥳 2w
See All 6 Comments
TheSpineView Fantastic! 🤩📖📚 2w
Tove_Reads Love, love, love his books! 2w
Andrew65 Excellent 🎉🎉🎉 1w
35 likes1 stack add6 comments