Book Review: The Warden by Jon Richter

Can you ever really be free if you can’t go outside?

The year is 2024, and the residents of the Tower, a virus-proof apartment building, live in a state of permanent lockdown. The building is controlled by James, who keeps the residents safe but remain prisoners.

This suits Eugene just fine. Ravaged by the traumas of his past, the agoraphobic ex-detective has no intention of ever setting foot outside again. But when he finds the Tower’s building manager brutally dismembered, his investigator’s instincts wont allow him to ignore the vicious crime.

What Eugene finds beyond the comfort of his apartment’s walls will turn his sheltered existence upside down. To unravel the Tower’s mysteries, he must confront James… and James takes his role as the Warden very, very seriously.

Book Review: Last One at the Party by Bethany Clift

The end of everything was her beginning.

It’s December 2023 and the world as we know it has ended.

The human race has been wiped out by a virus called 6DM (‘Six Days Maximum’ – the longest you’ve got before your body destroys itself).

But somehow, in London, one woman is still alive. A woman who has spent her whole life compromising what she wants, hiding how she feels and desperately trying to fit in. A woman who is entirely unprepared to face a future on her own.

Now, with only an abandoned golden retriever to keep her company, she must travel through burning cities, avoiding rotting corpses and ravenous rats on a final journey to discover if she really is the last surviving person on earth.

And with no one else to live for, who will she become now that she’s completely alone?

Book Review: The Prank by L.V. Matthews

What happens when reality TV goes wrong? El Greene is about to find out.

El lives a quiet life in London until a chance encounter leads her to discover a link between a hit reality TV show and her father’s death.

El realises she can orchestrate the perfect revenge but her pursuit soon turns to obsession and she doesn’t seem to know how to stop. Her drive for destruction means risking her life, and the lives of those closest to her…

Book Review: The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

This is the story of a murderer. A stolen child. Revenge. This is the story of Ted, who lives with his daughter Lauren and his cat Olivia in an ordinary house at the end of an ordinary street.

All these things are true. And yet some of them are lies.

You think you know what’s inside the last house on Needless Street. You think you’ve read this story before. But you’re wrong.

In the dark forest, at the end of Needless Street, something lies buried. But it’s not what you think…

Book Review: The Last Thing To Burn by Will Dean

He is her husband. She is his captive.

Her husband calls her Jane. That is not her name.

She lives in a small farm cottage, surrounded by vast, open fields. Everywhere she looks, there is space. But she is trapped. No one knows how she got to the UK: no one knows she is there. Visitors rarely come to the farm; if they do, she is never seen.

Her husband records her every movement during the day. If he doesn’t like what he sees, she is punished.

For a long time, escape seemed impossible. But now, something has changed. She has a reason to live and a reason to fight. Now, she is watching him, and waiting…

Book Review: The Thin Place by C D Major

She has to know the truth about overtoun estate, but there is a reason it has stayed buried for so long.

When journalist Ava Brent decides to investigate the dark mystery of Overtoun Estate – a ‘thin place’, steeped in myth – she has no idea how dangerous this story will be for her. Overtoun looms over the town, watching, waiting: the locals fearful of the strange building and the secrets it keeps. When Ava starts to ask questions, the warm welcome she first receives turns to a cold shoulder. And before she knows it, Ava is caught in the house’s grasp too.

After she discovers the history of a sick young girl who lived there, she starts to understand the sadness that shrouds it. But when she finds an ominous old message etched into a windowsill, she is forced to wonder – what horrors is the house protecting? And what will it cost her to find out?

With her own first child on the way, Ava knows she should stay away. But even as her life starts to unravel, and she receives chilling threats, the house and the bridge keep pulling her back…

Book Review: The Family by P.R. Black

The best way to catch a killer? Offer yourself as bait.

Becky Morgan’s family were the victims of the ‘crimes of the decade’. The lone survivor of a ritualistic killing, Becky’s been forever haunted by the memories of that night.

Twenty years later, with the killer never found, Becky is ready to hunt down and exact revenge. But the path to find the murderer is a slippery slope and she finds herself opening up some old wounds that should have been left sealed.

Will Becky avenge her family or join them?

Book Review: Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis

Capable of infecting your mind, altering your breathing rate, and shot-gunning your pulse, Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis absolutely crawled beneath my skin and had me lying in bed, wide awake, wondering what that noise was I heard just a few moments ago… The wind rattling the bathroom blinds, surely? In the same league as Slenderman, old folk tales and chilling legends, Harrow Lake had that all-encompassing quality that never truly lets you be, once the ‘what ifs’ have settled in your mind. Terrifying, but on a subtle level, a level which is more disturbing than frightening, the sort of thing you’re scared of but still completely fascinated by. I loved allowing the author to smother me with this tale, I loved the feeling of terror which she evoked, and I found Mister Jitters to be quite appalling, to say the least.

Book Review: Sister Dear by Hannah Mary McKinnon

Sister Dear by Hannah Mary McKinnon was a sinister and twisted novel with a delicious dash of mystery, and a devilish threat, weaved right the way through, that of which was capable of destroying an entire history of truth unbeknownst to the unseeing Victoria, Eleanor’s half-sister who has no idea she exists.

I really enjoy a novel which explores the darker, deeper depths of family, and Sister Dear by Hannah Mary McKinnon certainly does that. Within this book, there are twists and turns around every corner, alongside plenty of secrets waiting to be unearthed. The tension was delicious in this story. From the moment Eleanor crosses paths with her extended family whom have no idea of her identity, I was waiting for the moment she’d be discovered by them and would ultimately be forced to reveal her truth and her link to them.