Tag Archives: thriller

My Porridge & Cream read: Helen J Christmas

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Today I’m delighted to welcome thriller novelist Helen J Christmas. Her ‘Porridge & Cream’ read is Camellia by Leslie Pearse.

“I started this book in 1998 during a very wet Glastonbury Festival; I remember curling up in my sleeping bag, feeling utterly miserable as the rain splashed around the campsite. Yet from the very first page I was quickly absorbed in the story.

Set in my home county of Sussex, the saga begins with a young girl who is orphaned at 15, when her mother is discovered drowned. Camellia is an unhappy, neglected child, yet her security is ripped away when she stumbles across a secret hoard of letters among her mother’s belongings. After realising her entire childhood has been based on lies, she takes off to London to start a new life.

Beautifully written with powerful story lines, Camellia is as much a ‘coming of age’ story as a romantic drama. At the start of the book, she is an overweight teenager but blossoms into a glamorous young woman. Caught up in the sizzling 60s of London, her life turns into a roller coaster. She is abandoned by a controlling drug dealer boyfriend, but discovers a loyal friend who becomes her soul mate. It is filled with little anecdotes that remind you of growing up, for example, the excitement when the two girls get a flat together, the wild parties, the sex… It has some tragic twists too and as her life hurtles from one crisis to the next, Camellia eventually embarks on a journey of self-discovery, desperate to trace her true father.

By the time I had finished, I really cared about the main character. I have read lots of novels by Leslie Pearse but this is my all time favourite. I have read it twice and will probably do so again in my life. The places are so authentic, some of which are familiar to me. I hadn’t read the prequel of this book, Ellie, but was so pleased I didn’t, as it was a joy to discover Camellia’s secrets for myself!”

Helen J Christmas’s Bio

Helen J Christmas lives on the south coast of Sussex with her husband. With a love of writing since childhood, she started her decade spanning thriller series ‘Same Face Different Place’ in 2011. Her first book ‘Beginnings,’ set in 1970s London, combines romantic suspense with a hard-hitting conspiracy thriller. Helen confesses that her second book, ‘Visions,’ was the one she always wanted to write. Set in the 1980s, it is a psychological thriller based around the restoration of an English country house in Kent.

Writing is something she juggles around family and social life. Helen is self employed and enjoys running the web design company she and her husband set up from home. They have no children but enjoy the company of a faithful border collie and a fluffy white cat. Helen confesses to have got most of her ideas for writing, whilst walking Barney along the beach. She is coming to the end of her series with two more books in the pipeline.

Helen J Christmas’s books

Helen Christmas

Helen’s latest novel Pleasures is the third book in her British thriller romance series, ‘Same Face Different Place.’ Eleanor knows who is responsible for the crimes committed in the 70s and is now desperate to unravel the clues. Swept up in the mystery the younger generation is growing up fast, including Eleanor’s 14 year old son, Elijah. They are as keen defeat their enemies as she is. So when an illegal rave in a forest results in a shocking attack, Eleanor knows that time is running out. Will she unearth the evidence she needs to bring justice to those who deserve it? Or will the evil characters triumph yet again?

Click here to read my review of Beginnings, book one in the ‘Same Face Different Place’ series.

‘Pleasures’ by Helen J Christmas, #3 Same Face Different Place [UK: Chichester Publishing]

Helen J Christmas’s links
Blog
Facebook
Twitter
Website
Goodreads
Pinterest Book 1: Beginnings
Pinterest Book 2: Visions
Pinterest Book 3: Pleasures

Porridge & Cream

What is a ‘Porridge & Cream’ book? It’s the book you turn to when you need a familiar read, when you are tired, ill, or out-of-sorts, where you know the story and love it. Where reading it is like slipping on your oldest, scruffiest slippers after walking for miles. Where does the name ‘Porridge & Cream’ come from? Cat Deerborn is a character in Susan Hill’s ‘Simon Serrailler’ detective series. Cat is a hard-worked GP, a widow with two children and she struggles from day-to-day. One night, after a particularly difficult day, she needs something familiar to read. From her bookshelf she selects ‘Love in A Cold Climate’ by Nancy Mitford. Do you have a favourite read which you return to again and again? If so, please send me a message via the contact form here.

Discover the ‘Porridge & Cream’ books of these authors:-
Rachel Dove
Shelley Weiner
JG Harlond

Helen J Christmas

 

‘Camellia’ by Lesley Pearse [UK: Arrow]

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#BookReview ‘Chosen Child’ by Linda Huber @LindaHuber19 #suspense #thriller

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This is a thriller which starts at a stroll and ends like a train. In Chosen Child by Linda Huber, the lives of two married women crash together. Linda HuberThe story starts starts with a childless couple who are part-way through the adoption procedure. Ella is desperate for a child, any child. Her husband Rick wants a baby boy. The first crack appears at an adoption party – where approved adoptive parents mingle with available children and their carers – when Ella makes an instant connection with a feisty six-year-old girl. Meanwhile Amanda’s pregnancy test shows the blue line but she doesn’t know if the father is her husband or her lover. I worked out the connection between the two women pretty quickly, but there is so much more to the story. The lies get more complicated, decisions are made then regretted, time cannot be turned back. And all the while six-year-old Soraya starts to wonder if Ella and Rick really are her forever family.
This is a thoughtful thriller about adoption, promises and the reasons for having children. This is Linda Huber’s fourth novel, now I want to read the others.

If you like this, try:-
‘Stolen Child’ by Laura Elliot
‘Pretty Baby’ by Mary Kubica
‘Before the Fall’ by Noah Hawley

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#BookReview ‘Little Deaths’ by Emma Flint #mystery #suspense

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This is another of those novels which is an uncomfortable read. What kept me reading? The characters. I wanted to know what really happened. But of course this is fiction and characters don’t always tell the truth, only their version of the truth. Little Deaths by Emma Flint is an accomplished debut, as I read I could tell she had got under the skin of her characters. Emma FlintThere is an intriguing set-up, we first hear Ruth’s voice. She is in prison. We don’t know why, but she compares her life now with her life before. When she was a single mum with two small children. As I read, I felt a shiver down my back: where are her children now? Starting the story with Ruth in prison surely gives away the ending, doesn’t it? Not really. This is a nuanced tale of trial by jury in 1960s America [though until the Sixties were mentioned, it seemed to be set in a curiously non-time specific period] where prejudices about women could wrongly influence outcomes, where social pre-conceptions coloured witness statements, and hearsay evidence seemed admissible if the accused was disliked. It is a tale of presumed guilt, and it should make all readers stop and think.
Ruth, separated from her husband Frank, works as a cocktail waitress to support her children. It is a hard life when Frank’s support cheques bounce and the children don’t want to eat the only food she has to feed them. Ruth puts on a persona when she leaves the house, it is her way of coping. She is a proud woman, who doesn’t want to admit her struggles or to ask for help. She is attractive and uses make-up and tight clothes to attract boyfriends who give her cash, cash which helps her to survive. And then one morning when she goes to the children’s bedroom, Cindy and Frank Junior are not there. The police questioning starts, and the make-up, short skirts and lack of friendly neighbours come back to haunt her.
We are told Ruth’s story, first by Ruth herself, and also by Pete Wonicke, a young journalist who reports on the case. As the months go on and no-one is arrested we see Ruth’s anger and helplessness in the face of police who wait to convict her rather than investigate other clues. Meanwhile, Pete becomes obsessed with Ruth and with proving her innocence.
This novel stayed with me for days afterwards. It made me question how quick we are to judge others by what we see on the outside, how easy it is to allow our prejudices to dominate our views on life. Sometimes the guilty-looking person will be guilty. But sometimes they won’t.
You will have to read right to the end to find out if Ruth is guilty or not guilty.
The novel was inspired by a real life case, read more about this in The Alice Crimmins Case by Kenneth Gross.

If you this, try:-
‘Stolen Child’ by Laura Elliot
‘The Girls’ by Lisa Jewell
‘Disclaimer’ by Renee Knight

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#BookReview ‘Good Me Bad Me’ by Ali Land @byAliLand #thriller

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Good Me Bad Me by Ali Land is a difficult book to review without giving anything away. It is compulsive, difficult reading, and though I raced through it I can’t honestly say I enjoyed it. Ali LandTeenager Annie is living with a foster family whilst waiting to give evidence at her mother’s trial. Her mother is accused of being a serial killer of children, Annie turned her in to the police. As she waits for the trial, Annie [now called Milly] is coached by her foster father on how to handle being in court and giving evidence under cross-examination. For Milly, there is no escaping her horrible childhood. As Mike tells her, the only way out is through. But Milly isn’t telling Mike everything.
Milly’s identity is secret, her name false, her reason for being fostered is fabricated. In this world of officially-approved lies, Milly must face her memories of what happened: what is real, and not-real. What did her mother really do? What did Milly do? At times of stress – and there are many as she fits into a foster family with an unwelcoming teenage daughter – Milly hears the voice of her mother in her head, encouraging her to be controlling, to be nasty. This is the ‘good me, bad me’ of the title. Of course every person is a mixture of light and dark, what matters is the decisions we make. Will Milly be able to let go of her past and make a new life?
Covering the few tense weeks in the run-up to the trial, Good Me Bad Me is a turbulent emotional read. One minute I thought ‘please don’t do that, Milly’, the next I was indignant on Milly’s behalf at some of her foul treatment at the hands of school friends. The picture of teenagers, girls selfish and taunting, boys over-sexualised, is not an easy-read. You will make up your own mind whether to like Milly and whether to believe her.

If you like this, try:-
‘Wolf’ by Mo Hayder
‘The Girls’ by Lisa Jewell
‘Taunting the Dead’ by Mel Sherratt

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#BookReview ‘Beginnings’ by Helen J Christmas @SFDPBeginnings #thriller #romance

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A teenager abandoned and at the mercy of a 1970s London gang, Eleanor Chapman is the ‘same face’ in the romantic thriller series ‘Same Face Different Place’ by Helen J Christmas. London’s East End is the starting point for the first novel, Beginnings. Eleanor’s father must disappear from England after killing in a man in a gang war. Sixteen-year-old Eleanor is taken under the wing of her father’s boss, gang leader Sammie Maxwell. And from that point, her life spirals out of control. Helen J Christmas Forced to work in a brothel, she escapes and joins up with another teenager-on-the-run, Dutch musician Jake. Together they attract the attention of organised crime gangs and the police. Unsure who is really chasing them, they run from hiding place to hiding place and lose the ability to judge who is trustworthy. Sharing their fears, spending every minute together, Jake and Eleanor live on borrowed time. They fall in love. At times the story takes surprising twists, sometimes the outcomes are a little more predictable. I found it a little difficult to keep track of how time was passing, they seem to fall in love very quickly, and it will be interesting to see if Eleanor’s father re-emerges in the next book.
Inevitably in the first book of a series, there is lots of setting-up, character introduction and exposition. Christmas does a great job creating Seventies colour, the food, the fashions, the neighbourhoods. In a fast-moving story, Christmas writes well about a teenager lost in a large and unforgiving world.

Click the title to read my reviews of the next books in this series:-
VISIONS #2SAMEFACEDIFFERENTPLACE
PLEASURES #3SAMEFACEDIFFERENTPLACE

If you like this, try:-
‘The Girl on the Train’ by Paula Hawkins
‘The Cheesemaker’s House’ by Jane Cable
‘The Seventh Miss Hatfield’ by Anna Caltabiano

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#BookReview ‘Thin Air’ by Michelle Paver #ghosts #mystery

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1935, the Himalayas. A team arrives in Darjeeling, in preparation for climbing Kanchenjunga. A retired climber, who attempted the same climb, warns the team’s doctor to cancel the climb, or take another route. And so begins Thin Air by Michelle Paver, a tale balancing the power of nature, the vulnerability of man’s minds, and the toxic mix of superstition and arrogance. Michelle PaverIs the retired climber right, is there something bad out there? If so, what? Can the past come back to haunt you? No-one has stood on the very peak of Kanchenjunga, the locals believe it is bad luck to do so. At her website, Michelle Paver writes about her expeditions – she travels extensively to research her novels – and it shows that she has been there. Throw into the mix some bitter sibling rivalry, class snobbishness and Sherpa superstitions, and you have an atmospheric thriller which makes you really feel you are there, with them, stranded in a tent in a Himalayan blizzard.
Billed by some as a ghost story, this is more an account of psychological terror: as the mountaineers climb higher, the tension tightens. Is their bitching, sniping and forgetfulness a symptom of altitude sickness? Is the doctor hallucinating, or are his sightings a sign of a something more sinister?
I loved Paver’s previous ‘ghost/terror’ novel, Dark Matter. This is similar, the tension tightens slowly, with the turn of every page, until you cannot put the book down.

And read my reviews of other novels by Michelle Paver:-
THE OUTSIDERS #1GODS&WARRIORS
VIPER’S DAUGHTER #7WOLFBROTHER
WAKENHYRST

If you like this, try:-
‘The Wicked Cometh’ by Laura Carlin
‘A Sudden Light’ by Garth Stein
‘The House on Cold Hill’ by Peter James

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#BookReview ‘Pretty Baby’ by Mary Kubica @MaryKubica #mystery #suspense

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Don’t be fooled by the cover photograph, this is not a thriller about trains. Pretty Baby by Mary Kubica is a psychological tale of parenting, grief, abuse, and husbands and wives who stop communicating and stop interacting. At times I had to take a gulp and accept some situations which seemed unrealistic to me, it was either that or put the book down. Mary KubicaHeidi and Chris live with their daughter Zoe in Chicago. One freezing wintery day, running for a train, Heidi spots a homeless girl with a baby. She hesitates, wondering whether to say something, and then the girl is gone. Wishing she had helped, Heidi looks out for the girl the next day… and takes her home. Zoe sees it as an invasion of her space, Chris worries about who the girl – Willow, with baby Ruby – really is, and whether she poses a threat to his family and property. Both are right to be worried.
At times I grew impatient with Heidi for indulging herself and impatient for Chris to show some intuition and see what was really going on. Unfortunately Chris is a bit of a stereotype, the hard-working banker husband who spends more time at work than home, fending off the glamorous co-worker. Zoe’s thoughts we do not hear. For me, Willow is the most interesting character and I would have liked to read more about her relationship with Matthew. Concentrating more on Willow’s story, rather than Heidi’s would make this a completely different book.
Unfairly, I think, the publisher compares Pretty Baby to Gillian Flynn and Paula Hawkins [in other words, to Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, giants of their genre]. But they are page-turners whereas the pace of this story is slower, allowing the various threads to unfold. What kept me turning the page? What is Willow hiding? When will Chris or Zoe speak out? How far will Heidi go to help a stranger and why is she risking everything?

Read my reviews of two other novels by Mary Kubica:-
DON’T YOU CRY
THE GOOD GIRL

If you like this, try novels:-
‘The Girl on the Train’ by Paula Hawkins
‘Gone Girl’ by Gillian Flynn
‘Stolen Child’ by Laura Elliot

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#BookReview ‘The Farm’ by Tom Rob Smith #thriller #mystery

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The Farm by Tom Rob Smith is the best thriller I’ve read this year, one of those ‘who do I believe?’ scenarios. It’s an ordinary day for Daniel until his mobile rings. It’s his father. “Your mother’s sick… She’s not well… She’s been imagining things.” His mother is in hospital, he says, she’s been committed. As Daniel prepares to fly to Sweden where his parents live, his father calls again; his mother is missing. Tom Rob SmithHis mobile rings again, it is his mother. She says his father is lying. Who to believe?
And so starts The Farm, a book which questions the parent/sibling relationship, lies told within the family, and how far a family can be stretched before it breaks. It is a story of a Swedish woman and her English husband retiring to a farm in rural Sweden, looking for a new start, an active retirement, anticipating being part of a close-knit community.
Tilde arrives in London and tells Daniel that his father is lying. She is not ill, she is in danger, she has discovered crimes, lies, irregularities. At all times she carries an old leather satchel which she says is full of evidence.
Who to believe?
Life on the farm is not as they hoped. Tilde says they have no money, the neighbours are brusque and cold, and the behaviour of her husband Chris has changed. Tilde becomes concerned for the adopted daughter of a neighbour, Håkan, a powerful man both physically and locally in the community, who becomes a new friend for Chris. Crimes have been committed, Tilde says. The community is keeping secrets, and she feels threatened. Her husband seems to be conspiring with Håkan. Tilde is afraid.
Chris tells Daniel that his mother has suffered a psychotic episode, that her behaviour has changed, that she may turn violent. That she is imagining things.
Daniel does not know who to believe. His reaction to his mother and father’s stories are coloured by the fact that he too has lied to them, by withholding from them the truth of his sexuality and his current relationship.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Accident’ by Chris Pavone
‘Slow Horses’ by Mick Herron #1SLOUGHHOUSE
‘I Refuse’ by Per Petterson

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#BookReview ‘The House on Cold Hill’ by Peter James @PeterJamesUK #ghost #thriller

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Is it a crime story, is it a ghost story, is it a thriller? I don’t care, The House on Cold Hill is great. This is the first Peter James book I have read, and I loved it. It is a mystery about a family moving to a new house in the country, then everything starts to go wrong.  Have they just bought the wrong house? Bad luck? Co-incidences? Or is someone attacking them, and why? Peter JamesAs the oddities become more frequent, Ollie becomes more frantic as the house crumbles, his new business clients are sabotaged, and he fears for his wife and daughter. The tension is handled brilliantly, the first quarter of the book is a slow build as we get to know the family and the house, after that the screw is turned relentlessly. James is a skilled storyteller.
After finishing reading this novel, I discovered that Peter James used his own experience of living in a haunted house. This shows on every page, the things that happen in the house, Ollie’s reactions, the understandable belief that ‘this is not real.’

And here’s my review of DEAD SIMPLE, the first in the Roy Grace crime series by Peter James.

If you like this, try:-
‘A Sudden Light’ by Garth Stein
‘The Cheesemaker’s House’ by Jane Cable
‘The Quarry’ by Iain Banks

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#BookReview ‘Snow White Must Die’ by Nele Neuhaus #crime

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A tight-knit community where everyone looks out for each other, bound together by past tragedy. Into this walks Tobias, released from prison after serving his sentence for murdering two teenage girls. In the village where he grew up, where the two girls died. Snow White Must Die by Nele Neuhaus starts with this potent mixture of past and present, lies and threats. The truth never went away but there will be more deaths before the full story is known. Nele NeuhausThis is the first German thriller I have read, and Nele Neuhaus is a new author for me. This was no more difficult to adjust to than reading a Swedish thriller, yes the names are different but the story pulled me along and I cared about what happened to Tobias, Amelie and Thies. Nothing is what it seems.
Detectives Pia Kirchoff and Oliver von Bodenstein bring their own personal hang-ups to the investigation, as is always the case with modern detectives. For me, it was the line-up of characters in the village which was fascinating. Lie is layered on lie: the doctor, the actress, the businessman, the politician, and twenty-somethings who were all teenagers when the murders happened.
The village closes ranks so Kirchoff and van Bodenstein must figure out a way to break down the barriers.

If you like this, try:-
‘Eeny Meeny’ by MJ Arlidge #1HELENGRACE
‘Cover Her Face’ by PD James #1ADAMDALGLIESH
‘The Killing of Polly Carter’ by Robert Thorogood #2DEATHINPARADISE

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