Whisper of the Seals By Roxanne Bouchard Translated By David Warriner
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
Today I am on the blog tour with a review of Whisper of the Seals. It is part of the Detective Moralès series. This is a bit different for me as this detective book takes place out at sea. This book is shortlisted for the Crime Writers of Canada Best French Crime Book 2022. Check out the blurb and my review below. Thanks to Random T. Tours and Orenda Books for the spot and a copy of the book.
Blurb
Fisheries officer Simone Lord is transferred to Quebec’s remote Magdalen Islands for the winter, and at the last minute ordered to go aboard a trawler braving a winter storm for the traditional grey seal hunt, while all of the other boats shelter onshore.
Detective Sergeant Joaquin Moralès is on a cross-country boat trip down the St Lawrence River, accompanied by Nadine Lauzon, a forensic psychologist working on the case of a savagely beaten teenager with Moralès’ old team in Montreal.
When it becomes clear that Simone is in grave danger aboard the trawler, the two cases converge, with startling terrifying consequences for everyone involved….
Review
Feeling the heat? Turn it down with this cooling seafaring book. There is more than just the lapping of the sea, this is winter and the tide has turned from the summery tides to darker, more moody crashing waves and the lives on the seas are also facing more than a bit roughness as the tide turns. The setting is a fishing community, which seems innocent enough, but going onwards there are secrets to uncover.
Simone Lord is transferred to Quebec’s remote Magdalen Islands. It’s cold and stormy, creating treacherous conditions for the traditional grey seal hunt. The weather conditions and time of year, make it deeply atmospheric and perfect conditions for a crime to take place. There are two cases for readers follow, the one of the beaten teenager and Simone being in great danger. There are many twists and turns as it goes along and has much suspense in many parts of this mystery at sea.
The book flows well, so it feels like it works as a translated book, this is with thanks to David Warriner, who has been part of opening up these books to more readers, by translating them into English.
Darkly thought-provoking as Will Carver’s books are; The Daves Next Door is another highly unique, shockingly plausible thriller. Find out more below in the blurb and the rest of my review below, as well as a bit about the author. Thanks first to Orenda Books and Random T. Tours for a spot on the blog tour to review and for a copy of the book.
Blurb
A disillusioned nurse suddenly learns how to care.
An injured young sportsman wakes up find that he can see only in black and white.
A desperate old widower takes too many pills and believes that two angels have arrived to usher him through purgatory.
Two agoraphobic men called Dave share the symptoms of a brain tumour, and frequently waken their neighbour with their ongoing rows.
Separate lives, running in parallel, destined to collide and then explode.
Like the suicide bomber, riding the Circle Line, day after day, waiting for the right time to detonate, waiting for answers to his questions: Am I God? Am I dead? Will I blow up this train?
Shocking, intensely emotive and wildly original, Will Carver’s The Daves Next Door is an explosive existential thriller and a piercing examination of what it means to be human … or not.
Review
The events within the book, as it says near the start, are pretty close to the truth, but are actual fictional. There are many stories in the universe, big ones and small ones and this is shown within this book and majestically points this out in a captivating way, right from the prologue. The book isn’t really about that terrorist attack at all, it’s about insights and observations of society. It isn’t your typical thriller with such characters as is within the blurb, with death, blood, guts and gore. It’s more a cerebral, psychological thriller; which is where Will Carver’s books tend to settle in.
This book packs a punch! Will Carver and his bravery of saying things how they are in excellent story-telling that captivates until the very end, meaning for many a late night reading one of his books. What Will Carver expertly does is shows the consequence and the aftermath of an event. The events are explosively shocking! People who didn’t initially know each other now have a connection. He has taken a different angle starting with the prologue and then ingeniously finishes the prologue on a question, so how can you not be enticed to read on?
Then the book takes readers to the Daves. They are terribly unwell, both psychologically and physically, but there is some unexpected optimism in tone at certain times.
The book shows a little about being in a life or death scenario and the human condition. There’s an old man and the Daves and a young sportsman who have of course been in better ways in their health and life. There’s also Vashiti, the nurse, who questions her ability to care, whether she actually does care and then re-learns this. There’s also a could be terrorist and what thoughts go on. There is also, intriguingly, some chapters called God? Terrorist? Narrator? – all 3 mentioned in the title, before splitting off a bit. It’s a very unique book and this poses a very different set of questions, compared to the Daves or the nurse.
There’s so much that is thought-provoking that makes you see things in different ways as the book takes readers on a journey into the human psyche. This is something Will Carver does rather expertly and then fictionalises it just enough to create an entrancing, yet very plausible story that shows elements of society and perhaps shows parts in a true light. He finds all the darker, often hidden in plain sight corners and reflects them back to the reader. There are elements of themes and writing style that are reminiscent of Nothing Important Happened Today and Hinton Hollow Death Trip, but it is perfectly okay not to have read these first as The Daves Next Door is standalone. They all shine a light in the most original ways on society in storytelling that I certainly hadn’t seen before. So, if you need something to read that is entirely new, check out Will Carver’s books.
The Daves Next Door is compulsive and immersive reading. Like his other books, it provides great insight into the world and people’s minds, parts that aren’t particularly talked about, but are there, quietly existing amongst the earth today. Will Carver takes people out of the everyday thoughts and observations and gives a different, but still truthful, perspective on society. It’s yet another must read book. I know, I know, I’ve said this about every single book by Will Carver that I have read and reviewed, which is almost all of them, but it isn’t something I say lightly. Books by him go deep into your soul, are unforgettable and could, if everyone read them, have people having a deeper understanding, a deeper insight and perspective into society as well as thinking about their own lives, all in what are works of fiction, but a white-knuckle journey, close to the truth.
About The Author
Will Carver is the international bestselling author of the January David series. He spent his early years in Germany, but returned to the UK at age eleven, when his sporting career took off. He turned down a professional rugby contract to study theatre and television at King Alfred’s, Winchester, where he set up a successful theatre company. He currently runs his own fitness and nutrition company, and lives in Reading with his two children. Will’s latest title published by Orenda Books, The Beresford is out in July. His previous title Hinton Hollow Death Trip was longlisted for the Not the Booker Prize, while Nothing Important Happened Today was longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. Good Samaritans was book of the year in Guardian, Telegraph and Daily Express, and hit number one on the ebook charts.
Hold on tight for a breath-taking fast-paced summer read in Hostage By Claire Mackintosh. Today I am on the blog tour with a review. Find out more in the blurb and review below. Thanks first to Random T. Tours and Book Sphere for inviting me onto the tour to review and for a copy of the book.
Blurb
Save hundreds of lives. Or save your child? You’re on board the first non-stop flight from London to Sydney. It’s a landmark journey, and the world is watching. Shortly after take-off, you receive a chilling anonymous note. There are people on this plane intent on bringing it down – and you’re the key to their plan. You’d never help them, even if your life depended on it. But they have your daughter . . . So now you have to choose. DO YOU SAVE HUNDREDS OF LIVES? OR THE ONE THAT MATTERS MOST?
Review
Hostage begins with a heart in the mouth moment, there’s no other way of describing the opening pages. It’s tense as eyes open wider and boom, hooked, and got to know what happened to lead up to that moment of a horrific and terrifying incident. A situation no one would ever want to find themselves in.
The book cycles between Mina and Adam and various passengers. Mina’s life has complexities that are spilled out to her work colleague, like she is getting it all off her chest; the difficulties to conceive, Sophia who she adopted and turns out she has been diagnosed by a psychologist with hyperlexia and other deep issues. The book takes readers between homelife and the momentous, ground-breaking flight.
There’s a lot of anticpation about the first non-stop flight to Sidney and Mina is working on it. The passengers have various reasons to be on this particular flight, some are very deep and to very consciously leave something or someone behind. They all have a story to tell, all with some type of profound emotion attached.
Adam, Mina’s husband, works in the police force in CID on major cases as he is a Detective Sergeant, who is given a hard time by Sophia, but the intense love cuts through.
Things get even more intense, as if that were possible, but Mackintosh wracks it up a few more notches and it all becomes increasingly chilling when a note is found that spell that lives are in danger and a situation involving Sophia comes to head.~ There are many moments that are sure to make any reader gasp and want to hold their breath as it is breath-taking, but remember to breath as no one can hold their breath for 385 pages, no matter how fast-paced they are.
Hostage is intense and an absolute page-turner. It’s incredibly immersive, more than what readers may be bargaining for.
About the Author
Clare Mackintosh is the multi-award-winning author of five Sunday Times bestselling novels, including I Let You Go, which was the fastest-selling debut thriller in the year it was released. Translated into forty languages, her books have sold more than two million copies worldwide, have been New York Times and international bestsellers and have spent a combined total of 64 weeks in the Sunday Times bestseller chart. Clare spent twelve years in the police force, including time on CID, and as a public order commander. She left the police in 2011 to work as a freelance journalist and social media consultant and is the founder of the Chipping Norton Literary Festival. She now writes full time and lives in Wales with her husband and their three children. http://www.claremackintosh.com / http://www.facebook.com/ClareMackWrites / @ClareMackint0sh
The Poet is powerful with current and universal themes told in ways readers may not expect. Check out the blurb and my full review below. First, thanks to the publisher – Double Day and organiser – Random T. Tours for gifting a copy of the book and for inviting me to review.
Blurb
Bright, promising Emma is entangled in a toxic romance with her old professor – and she’s losing control.
Charming, cruel Tom is idolized by his students and peers – and he thinks he holds all the cards.
In their small Oxford home, he manipulates and undermines Emma’s every thought and act. Soon, he will push her to the limit, and she must decide: to remain quiet and submit, or to take her revenge.
The Poet is a portrait of a toxic relationship, about coercive control, class and privilege: it is also a passionate, page-turning tale of female solidarity and survival.
Written in verse and charged with passion and anger, The Poet is a portrait of a deeply dysfunctional relationship, exploring coercive control, class and privilege. It is also a page-turning tale of female solidarity and survival.
Review
The Poet gives a unique perspective as to how a story about life can be told, in that it is presented in verse inside its evocative cover. It’s a book that may prompt/provoke strong feelings to come to the fore.
There’s rawness, strong emotion, the harshness of life being challenging with a relationship being toxic and coercive control, with a softer tone of something beautiful in nature, a cat and female solidarity. It looks great on a page, the way the words are set out to get their point across, but I also think it would be great being performed like “street/performance poetry”. There are elements that I imagined would sound great being said aloud, with its light and dark, with the shades inbetween. The book is powerful, thought-provoking, sometimes soft, sometimes fierce with rage in its universally current themes. There’s the idea of love, of how things could be for Emma in her relationship with Tom, then comes the searing reality of how the so called romance actually is, with a distinct creepy chill that is sure to run down any reader’s bones to see how his charm changes and turns bad, which has consequences and effects as the writing shows what someone coercing a lover can do and what happens next as a result. There are places where it turns a corner, into how to survive and female solidarity that has some strength to it. Overall it is an exquisitely written book.
About the Author
Louisa Reid has lived in Cambridge, London and Zurich, and now lives near Manchester. She graduated with a degree in English from Oxford before training as an English teacher at Cambridge University and she continues to work as a teacher. Louisa is the author of four novels for young adults: Black Heart Blue and Gloves Off were both nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal.
I am thrilled that today is my turn on the blog tour. May God Forgive is a page-turner gritty Tartan Noir. This is the 5th Harry McCoy series by Alan Parks, who is cleverly including each month in the title. They work as stand-alone or as part of a series. All books in the series are critically acclaimed. You can find more titles at the end of my review. Thanks to Random T. Tours and publisher – Cannongate for inviting me to review. Discover more below about the author, the blurb and my full review.
About the Author
ALAN PARKS captures the dark beating heart of 70s Glasgow in his highly acclaimed Harry McCoy series. Parks has spent most of his working life dealing with the production of images for Musical Artists, as Creative Director at London Records in the mid 1990’s then at Warner Music. From cover artwork to videos to photo sessions, he created ground-breaking, impactful campaigns for a wide range of artists including All Saints, New Order, The Streets, Gnarls Barclay and Cee Lo Green. He was also Managing Director of 679 Recordings, a joint venture with Warner Music. For the past few years he has worked as an independent visual and marketing consultant. Alan was born in Scotland and attended The University of Glasgow where he was awarded a M.A. in Moral Philosophy. He still lives and works in the city as well as spending time in London.
Blurb
Glasgow is a city in mourning. An arson attack on a Royston hairdresser’s has left five women and children dead, and a community reeling. People, more used to turning a blind eye to criminality, erupt now with rage.
When three youths are charged with the crime, an angry mob gathers outside the courthouse, the prisoners are snatched from a police van and disappear. Days later the body of one is found with a note attached to his mutilated body – ‘One down, two to go’.
Detective Harry McCoy comes from these streets; his feral childhood battling to survive on them still haunts him years on. But it also gives him an insight into the soul of Royston and the people who control it. Time is ticking, and Harry must confront his own past and figures that haunt him still to prevent another body being found on its mean streets.
Review
Alan Parks books have a month of the year in the title in this series and now he has reached the month of May. Set in Glasgow, 1974, a city that is very troubled and as hard as can be, especially in that decade, Detective Harry McCoy has another case to solve as this thriller gets off to an action-packed start and to add to the tension, time is ticking fast and there’s not much of it left to crack the case.
Dolly’s Salon had been attacked by arson in an already hardened part of the city, where any heart that was in it before a motorway was built, had practically diminished and there was little left. Instantly the atmosphere and depiction of Royston, Glasgow in the 70’s can be grasped.
Detective Harry McCoy needs to help DS. Doug Watson (Wattie) make progress on a case, concerning a 15 year old, dressed for a night out and discovered dead, but isn’t easily yielding much evidence as to what happened… He is also working on the quiet for to get answers about the arson at the salon. It’s a full on first day back at work from being off on the sick.
There’s gangland underworld, drugs, violence and arson, but also a detective who is prepared to do everything he can to protect the city’s citizens in this compelling series.
May God Forgive is intensely gritty and a fascinating work in fiction, closely relating to fact, that is engaging and depicts Glasgow at a very particular time.
The Shadow Child is a compelling, thought-provoking contemporary fiction/literary fictiondebut novel full of secrets and the ‘human condition’. Find out more in the blurb and my review and then a bit about the author. First, thanks to Random T. Tours for the invite onto the blog tour.
Blurb
Eighteen-year-old Emma has loving parents and a promising future ahead of her. So why, one morning, does she leave home without a trace?
Her parents, Cath and Jim, are devastated. They have no idea why Emma left, where she is – or even whether she is still alive. A year later, Cath and Jim are still tormented by the unanswered questions Emma left behind and clinging desperately to the hope of finding her.
Meanwhile, tantalisingly close to home, Emma is also struggling with her new existence – and with the trauma that shattered her life.
For all of them, reconciliation seems an impossible dream. Does the way forward lie in facing up to the secrets of the past – secrets that have been hidden for years? Secrets that have the power to heal them, or to destroy their family forever …
The Shadow Child is a book of hope and reconciliation, of coming to terms with trauma and learning to love again. Most of all, it’s about how you can never quite escape from the shadows of your past – especially when one of those shadows is a child …
Review
The prologue sweeps by fast, with its talk about shadows, that is written in a way that you would expect from a child, but knowing the blurb, it takes on a bit of an eerie slant, thereafter it is a bit of a slow-burn of curiosity that seeks to grasp you and succeeds. The family is fairly normal, Cath is a teacher and Jim is a newspaper photographer and was practically love at first sight. They then had 2 children, but one died and the other is now mysteriously missing, seemingly without a trace. The family, of what’s left, use many coping strategies to get through these dark days and you can feel the emotion and see the strength of character that they keep going, even though they feel guilt and bewilderment that their daughter went missing and despair and helplessness that they have no answers. They also cling hard onto hope so they keep going in life.
It’s interesting and, perhaps more powerful for it, the way that Emma (the missing child) has her own narrative to tell readers why she disappeared. It’s a good way to get into her psyche and infact all of the main characters have their own present story and backstory to tell about their lives.
Jim and Cath also have a cottage that they inherited, so take on tenants – Lara and Nick. Then all the characters become even more intrinisically linked and it becomes apparent that there are so many secrets being harboured in the pages, that keeps the book engaging, as well as the fact that there’s a need to discover how it could possibly all end and whether certain things will work out well or not.
There’s quite a philisophical bent at times, that creates for some rather elegant thought-provoking moments, through its sometimes nuanced approach and natural human thoughts. The book is essentially about relationships, how they interconnect to other people’s lives, the impacts secrets can have, the upbringing that occurs at childhood and how that feeds into adulthood. How to attempt to reshape life and cope with incredibly traumatic situations. Overall it is quite a compelling, complex book about the twisting paths of life, loss and hope.
About the Author
RACHEL HANCOX read Medicine and Social and Political Science at Cambridge, qualified as a doctor three months after getting married, and has juggled her family, her career and a passion for writing ever since. She worked in Paediatrics and Public Health for twenty years, writing short stories alongside NHS policy reports, and drafting novels during successive bouts of maternity leave. Rachel has five children, three dogs and a cat. She lives in Oxford with her husband and youngest children.
Save hundreds of lives. Or save your child?
Clare Mackintosh is the multi-award-winning author of five Sunday Times bestselling novels, including I Let You Go, which was the fastest-selling debut thriller in the year it was released.
Bright, promising Emma is entangled in a toxic romance with her old professor – and she’s losing control.
ALAN PARKS captures the dark beating heart of 70s Glasgow in his highly acclaimed Harry McCoy series.
Eighteen-year-old Emma has loving parents and a promising future ahead of her. So why, one morning, does she leave home without a trace?
Bookmarks and Stages by Lou 