The Perfect Couple by Jackie Kabler

The perfect couple…or the perfect lie?

A year and a half ago, Gemma met the love of her life, Danny. Since then, their relationship has been like something out of a dream. But one Friday evening, Gemma returns home to find Danny is nowhere to be seen.

After two days with no word from her husband, Gemma turns to the police. She is horrified with what she discovers – a serial killer is on the loose in Bristol. When she sees the photos of the victims she is even more stunned…the victims all look just like Danny.

But, the detectives aren’t convinced by Gemma’s story. Why has no one apart from Gemma seen or heard from Danny in weeks? Why is there barely a trace of him in their flat? Is she telling them the truth, or are there more secrets and lies in this marriage than meets the eye?

Gemma comes home from a business trip to their new home in Bristol to discover that her husband, Danny is missing.

It takes a while but Gemma eventually reports him to the police as a missing person. Unknown to Gemma though, two men, who are scarily similar to Danny have been found murdered recently in Bristol. Is there a serial killer on the loose?

The police soon begin to question Gemma. Something isn’t quite right here. Gemma is saying that Danny has only been missing for a few days – yet nobody has heard from him in weeks. Why haven’t any of their new neighbours ever seen Danny? Why did Danny quit his new job before he had even started and why is there hardly any trace of Danny in the new home?

This really held my interest from the off and I loved the fact that I honestly had no idea of what was going on. Where was Danny? Who is telling the truth? What’s the deal with the weird neighbours?

The ending was disappointing though and the final “twist”, i felt, was not needed and that’s the reason for this only having 3 stars on Goodreads from me.
I would still highly recommend this book though and I look forward to reading more from this author.

The Boy From The Woods by Harlan Coben

The man known as Wilde is a mystery to everyone, including himself. Decades ago, he was found as a boy living feral in the woods, with no memory of his past. After the police concluded an exhaustive hunt for the child’s family, which was never found, he was turned over to the foster system.

Now, thirty years later, Wilde still doesn’t know where he comes from, and he’s back living in the woods on the outskirts of town, content to be an outcast, comfortable only outdoors, preferably alone, and with few deep connections to other people.

When a local girl goes missing, famous TV lawyer Hester Crimstein–with whom Wilde shares a tragic connection–asks him to use his unique skills to help find her. Meanwhile, a group of ex-military security experts arrive in town, and when another teen disappears, the case’s impact expands far beyond the borders of the peaceful suburb. Wilde must return to the community where he has never fit in, and where the powerful are protected even when they harbor secrets that could destroy the lives of millions . . . secrets that Wilde must uncover before it’s too late.

30 years ago a boy was found living in the New Jersey woods. This boy, Wilde, has no recollection of how he got there nor for how long.
Wilde is godfather to Matthew, a teenage boy who also happens to be the grandson of Hester Crimstein. If you have read other Coben books, you will know who she is – and understand why I was so excited when she popped up.
A girl from Matthew’s class at school goes missing and he asks Hester for help in finding her and Hester then enlists the help of Wilde.
With a powerful, wealthy family added to the mix and a presidential runner with secrets they want to keep hidden, this is a book that just doesn’t stop.
The plot is intricate and intriguing with many subplots and twists. Some of the twists I could see coming, but had no way of knowing how it was going to pan out and others took me completely by surprise.
I loved every second of this book and I really hope that we will get to meet some of the characters again.

Saturdays At Noon by Rachel Marks

Emily just wants to keep the world away.
She doesn’t want anyone to know all the ways her life is messed up.
Going to anger management every Saturday, talking to strangers, was not part of the plan.

Jake just wants to keep his family together.
He’s also messed everything up.
Going to anger management is now his best hope for bonding with his six-year-old Alfie.

Emily can’t understand why Jake – who seems to have it all – is even there.
Jake can’t understand why Alfie – who never likes strangers – lights up around spikey Emily.

Everything they think about each other is about to change.
But can they change how they feel about themselves?

Do not mistake this book for a run of the mill rom-com.
Emily meets Jake at an anger management class that they both have to attend. Emily, by order of the court and Jake, by order of his wife.
Unfortunately Jakes son Alfie has taken rather a shine to Emily and the 3 of them spend a lot of time together for the benefit of Alfie and neither Emily and Jake are happy about this.
The 3 main characters of this book are written SO well. What I particularly liked was the fact that there wasn’t a character who was “the right one” or “the main one”. They all had a voice and they all used it. Every single one of them. There are times when I found myself both cheering for all of them and other times, I would hold my head in my hands wishing to be able to bang heads together. We discover how difficult relationships can be once you have a child, how bloody hard being a parent can be and how sometimes, life just doesn’t turn out how you thought it would be, through no fault of your own.
The fact that this book was set in my home town also helped and the character of Alfie is going to stay with me for a very long time.

Forget My Name by J S Monroe

How do you know who to trust…

…when you don’t even know who you are?

You are outside your front door.

There are strangers in your house.

Then you realise. You can’t remember your name.

She arrived at the train station after a difficult week at work. Her bag had been stolen, and with it, her identity. Her whole life was in there – passport, wallet, house key. When she tried to report the theft, she couldn’t remember her own name. All she knew was her own address.

Now she’s outside Tony and Laura’s front door. She says she lives in their home. They say they have never met her before.

One of them is lying.

 

Unputdownable.

 

What would you do if a young woman knocks on your front door saying that she has lost her memory?  A young woman arrives at Heathrow airport.

She’s lost her bag, her phone, passport everything, including her memory.    All she knows is that she has a train ticket to a village in Wiltshire and every now and again she will get a flashback of her best friend, Fleur.   When she arrives in the village, she feels drawn to a cottage.  A cottage that is now owned by Tony and Laura.  A cottage that the stranger is able to describe right down to the tiniest details.  She must have lived here at some point in her past.

Tony decides that she looks like a Jemma,  (with a J) and with no reason not to, this is the name that she stranger begins to answer to. . . . but there was another Jemma (with a J) in the village before and after murdering her best friend at university, she has since disappeared.   Some of the locals are convinced that these women are one and the same person . . .

 

This book takes place over just 4 days and they are a bloody busy 4 days starting off at Heathrow Airport, taking us to a village in Wiltshire and then ending up in Berlin.   A fantastic fast-paced book that is full of twists and turns that at times left me wondering what the hell was going on.  Who am I supposed to believe?  There were a few different plotlines, but they worked well and all came together in the end even though there were the odd little bits that were utterly unbelievable – which I can’t go into without giving the game away – but this didn’t distract from my enjoyment of the book.  I found myself rooting for Jemma all the way through.  Sympathising with how terrifying it must be to suddenly have no memory of anything other than a house.

 

This is the first book that I have read by this author and I will certainly be keeping an eye out for more.

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

 

Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go-Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock and roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.

Another band getting noticed is The Six, led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.

Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.

The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.

I don’t even know where to start with this book. It is so completely different to anything else that i have ever read.

It is written like one long interview with the band, crew, journalists – basically anyone who had anything to do with the band – who are “telling all” of their experiences with the band.

THE band. Daisy Jones and the six.
Everyone knows them but nobody knows why, at the height of their popularity, they split.