My #Review of #eighteenseconds by @LouiseWriter published by @MardleBooks on 27.4.2023

Family is the best thing in your life. And the worst.

My mother once said to me, ‘I wish you could feel the way I do for eighteen seconds. Just eighteen seconds, so you’d know how awful it is.’

I thought about it. Realised we could all learn from being in another person’s head for eighteen seconds. Eighteen seconds inside Grandma Roberts’ head as she sat alone with her evening cup of tea, us girls upstairs in bed. Eighteen seconds inside one-year-old Colin’s head when he woke up in a foster home without his family. Eighteen seconds inside the head of a girl waiting for her bedroom door to open.

Writer, Louise Beech, looks back on the events that led to the day her mother wrote down her last words, then jumped off the Humber Bridge. She missed witnessing the horror herself by minutes.

Louise recounts the pain and trauma of her childhood alongside her love for her siblings with delicious dark humour and a profound voice of hope for the future.

Thank you to Mardle Books for kindly sending me an early proof of Eighteen Seconds.

Im not sure what drew me to this memoir by author Louise Beech but I’m so glad, which is a strange thing to say about such a touching and horrific memoir.

This book will not be for everyone, it deals with mental health issues, abuse, suicide and fractured families, that said this is such an uplifting book, and what comes from reading it, is hope, hope that through the darkest of times, we can overcome and find joy and love in those around us, that support us and love us for who we are, not what we’ve been through.

Louise Beech writes with assured honesty and dark humour ( I’m just going to add here that growing up with a chronically ill Mother, my Brother and I have learnt this art, an example…when our Mum used to go to the local chest hospital ( she had chronic asthma ), there was a sign on entering saying “Dead Slow”, well us being kids laughed at it, and I remember my Mum also laughing but my Dad got very cross with us all!), in fact, I actually felt Louise coming off the pages and talking just to me. What an absolute talent, to be able to look back and write of past and current horrors BUT move forward and learn to work through the very situations and emotions that can floor anyone, to survive and become an excellent writer is amazing, to have used writing as a way of dealing with some of the awful things that happened to Louise and her siblings, is such an uplifting event.

My overall feeling when I had finished Eighteen Seconds was that I just wanted to find Louise Beech and give her the biggest hug ever! Not because I feel sorry for her but because I’m in awe of her talent and ability to move on with her life in such a positive way. obviously, I’m not able to do this, but should I ever meet Louse Beech I shall definitely give her a huge Jude hug!.

A touching, heartfelt, moving, horrific and uplifting memoir and well deserving of 5 Stars.

Louise’s debut novel, How to be Brave, was a Guardian Readers’ pick in 2015 and a top ten bestseller on Amazon. The Mountain in my Shoe longlisted for the Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize 2016. The Sunday Mirror called Maria in the Moon ‘quirky, darkly comic, original and heartfelt’. It was also a Must Read in the Sunday Express and a Book of the Year at LoveReadingUK. The Lion Tamer Who Lost was described as ‘engrossing and captivating’ by the Daily Express. It also shortlisted for the RNA’s Romantic Novel of the Year and longlisted for the Polari Prize 2019. Call Me Star Girl hit number one on Kobo. It also longlisted for the Not The Booker Prize and won the Best magazine Big Book Award 2019. This Is How We Are Human was a Clare Mackintosh August Book of the Month 2021. Audiobook memoir Daffodils came out in 2022, and novel Nothing Else too. Her memoir is coming in paperback as Eighteen Seconds April 2023.
Louise also writes as Louise Swanson.

You can buy Eighteen Seconds for £9.19 HERE

You can visit Louise’s website HERE

You can follow Louise on TWITTER INSTAGRAM FACEBOOK

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My #Review of #HerSistersShadow by @CWimpeney published by @northoxpress

Child killer Gary Brunswick has just been imprisoned for life for the murder of ten-year-old David Foster, but for DCI Kay Harris of Greater Manchester Police, it’s cold comfort.

As Senior Investigating Officer Kay has agonised over the case for months, could she have saved the boy? The Foster case, and the death of her sister, Helen, by suicide a year ago, weigh heavily on her.

She finds her sister’s diary, believing that Helen meant it for someone else. Each page exposes her sister’s pain, her marriage problems, her suspicions about her husband. It becomes clear the diary was intended for Kay alone. Each entry taunts and pokes and Kay’s guilt. Her sister’s words haunt her.

As Kay’s concentration deteriorates, a period of leave is recommended. A condition of which is that she accepts therapy. Reluctantly Kay attends but decides to escape the probing sessions by retreating to her holiday home in the Scottish Highlands.

Before leaving for Scotland Kay happens upon Ava, a woman intent on jumping to her death to escape her abusive ex-husband. Kay convinces Ava to flee with her to Scotland. In her increasingly fragile state, Kay believes by saving Ava she will earn redemption for all those she couldn’t save and will finally be able to lay her sister’s shadow to rest.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Her Sisters Shadow, but once the story started I was utterly gripped!

Without giving too much away this book s about grief, guilt and the way our minds handle extremely stressful situations. Our main protagonist DCI Kay Harris is an amazing character and a real feat of writing, we follow her slow descent into mental distress and how our minds work during a total mental breakdown. It was so well written I really couldn’t put this book down, the way Ms Wimpeney has crafted this insight into what must be such a horrific experience is astounding, combine this with a fabulous plot, shocking twists, and a great cast of supporting characters make this book a real gem.

If you like a book that will keep you up all night and have you totally invested in it’s cast and storyline, then Her Sisters Shadow is a must!

Brilliant and another 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ read!

Catherine was born and raised in Manchester. Her Sister’s Shadow is her debut novel. She has worked as a mental health nurse and is a qualified Psychotherapist. She is drawn to writing which reflects her psychological practice.

You can buy Her Sisters Shadow HERE

You can follow Catherine on TWITTER @CWimpeney

My #Review of #TheManOnHackpenHill by #JSMonroe @JSThrillers published by @HoZ_Books

Her best friend is dead and she needs to know why.

Aspiring journalist Bella is on work experience at a national newspaper when, out of the blue, she receives an anonymous letter promising her a big scoop if she travels down to Wiltshire.

All she finds is a government scientist spouting conspiracy theories in the pub. But then Bella’s best friend Erin is found dead in a nearby field, her body staged in the centre of a crop circle. Bella is devastated. Is this the real reason she was lured out here?

While detective Silas Hart searches for evidence, Bella scours her own memory for clues. But it’s full of blanks – the details of her university days with Erin keep slipping away. What secrets was Erin hiding? And, once they’re uncovered, what will it mean for Bella?

Firstly thank you so much, as always to the wonderful Head Of Zeus Publishing for gifting me a copy of The Man On Hackpen Hill by J.S Monroe

Secondly, this is my first read of a J.S Monroe book, the blurb had got my interest piqued, and let me tell you, from the moment I picked it up, I was hooked and obsessed!

The storyline is fast and really interesting revolving around our two protagonists Bella and Jim and the dark goings on of Porton Down, and testing of psychiatric drugs on human guinea pigs! I loved both these characters so much, and found them totally believable, so much so that I never saw the ending coming!! The illegal goings on are investigated by DI Silas Hart of Swindon CID, and he is also a character I loved… he had his own demons to deal with which made this case pretty close to home. I really hope that DI Silas Hart will return in another book as I also adored the setting in the countryside around Swindon, Wiltshire and Hampshire and not a million miles from where I live, and I’m quite familiar with it, which I think also makes for a reader to love this book.

It’s not too scientific which is good as it’s not really something I’m that interested in BUT it works so well in this storyline! I read The Man On Hackpen Hill over a weekend as I could not put it down! The writing is easy to read with short sharp chapters, I can find no faults with this book, in fact it’s going to be in my top 10 of the year I’m sure, I utterly loved loved loved it!

If you like a fast paced gripping thriller then look no further than The Man On Hackpen Hill by J.S Monroe.

An exceptional 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ star read!

J.S.Monroe is the pseudonym of author Jon Stock (see separate author page), who is currently the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford. The new J.S.Monroe suspense thriller, set in rural Wiltshire, is called The Man on Hackpen Hill. It was published in the UK in September 2021 and is the third book to feature DI Hart, head of Swindon CID. A dead body in a crop circle sends a coded message. Can DI Hart uncover the chilling truth before it’s too late?
Rosamund Lupton, bestselling author of Three Hours, said of it: “Original and brilliantly plotted, with not so much a twist as a seismic shifting of the ground under your feet … Amazing.” Tom Bradby, author of Secret Service, said: “A kind of Wiltshire Da Vinci Code, with crop circles, mathematical equations and shadowy figures from Porton Down. A real page turner written with beguiling wit.”
J.S.Monroe’s third thriller, The Other You, was published by Head of Zeus in in the UK in January 2020 and in paperback in January 2021. The book, the second to feature DI Silas Hart, has been in the Kindle Top 100 for two months and an Amazon #1 Bestseller in Medical thrillers.
“Brilliantly original and intriguing … Kept me hooked, enthralled and guessing to the very end,” according to Peter James. The Telegraph’s Jake Kerridge agreed: “I doubt many other psychological thrillers published this year will be as propulsive and fun.”
Monroe’s best-selling debut, Find Me, was published in the UK and the US in 2017. Translation rights have been sold to 14 countries.
Forget My Name, the first DI Hart thriller, was published by Head of Zeus in hardback in the UK in October 2018 and in paperback in June 2019. It was published in the US as The Last Thing She Remembers by Park Row Books (HarperCollins) in May 2019.
After reading English at Magdalene College, Cambridge, Jon worked as a freelance journalist in London, writing features for most of Britain’s national newspapers, as well as contributing to BBC Radio 4. He was also chosen for Carlton TV’s acclaimed screenwriters course.
In 1995 he lived in Kochi in Kerala, where he worked on the staff of India’s The Week magazine. Between 1998 and 2000, he was a foreign correspondent in Delhi, writing for the Daily Telegraph, South China Morning Post and the Singapore Straits Times. He also wrote the Last Word column in The Week magazine from 1995 to 2012.
On his return to Britain in 2000, Jon worked on various Saturday sections of the Telegraph before taking up a staff job as editor of its flagship Weekend section in 2005, which he oversaw for five years. He left Weekend and the Telegraph in 2010 to finish writing his Daniel Marchant trilogy (under the name Jon Stock) and returned to the Telegraph in February 2013 to oversee the Telegraph’s digital books channel. In May 2014 he was promoted to Executive Head of Weekend and Living, editing the paper’s Saturday and Sunday print supplements, as well as a range of digital lifestyle channels. He left the paper in October 2015 to resume his thriller-writing career.
Jon’s first two novels, The Riot Act, and The India Spy (originally published as The Cardamom Club) were reissued as eBooks by Head of Zeus – “J.S.Monroe writing as Jon Stock” – in November 2018.
The Riot Act, originally published by Serpent’s Tail, was launched on the top floor of Canary Wharf tower in 1997. The book was shortlisted by the Crime Writers’ Association for its best first novel award and was subsequently published by Gallimard in France as part of its acclaimed Serie Noir. The Sunday Times called it a “darkly sparkling crime thriller”. The Cardamom Club was published in 2003 by Blackamber (now Arcadia Books) in Britain and by Penguin in India. It was hailed by the travel writer William Dalrymple as a “witty, fast-moving, cleverly plotted espionage romp”.
Dead Spy Running, his third novel and the first in the Daniel Marchant (or ‘Legoland’) trilogy, was published by HarperCollins (Blue Door) in 2009 and has been translated into five languages. It follows Daniel Marchant, a young MI6 officer, as he tries to clear the name of his disgraced father, the former Chief of MI6. The sequel, Games Traitors Play, was published in 2011, and the final part of the trilogy, Dirty Little Secret, was published in 2012.
Warner Brothers bought the film rights to the trilogy in 2009, hiring Oscar-winner Stephen Gaghan (Traffic, Syriana) to write the screenplay for Dead Spy Running, which went into development with McG (Terminator IV, Charlie’s Angels, This Means War) and Kevin McCormick (Gangster Squad) producing. Jamie Moss worked on Gaghan’s script, followed by Simon Barrett, with Adam Wingard attached to direct.
In 2014, the film rights to Dead Spy Running were bought by Wonderland Sound and Vision, McG’s own production company.
In 2017, Jon was commissioned by The Nare, a luxury hotel in Cornwall, to write a spy novella set in and around the hotel, which is located on the Roseland Peninsula. To Snare A Spy is available to buy from the hotel.

Www.jsthrillers.com