Close to Home - Cara Hunter Review

First of all, I just want to mention that I received this from Penguin UK as I was a winner of the giveaway for this book on goodreads. This did not affect my views or opinions on this book and this post isn’t sponsored.

“Last night, 8-year-old Daisy Mason disappeared from her parents' summer party. No one in the quiet suburban street saw anything - or at least that's what they're saying. 


DI Adam Fawley is trying to keep an open mind. But he knows that nine times out of ten, it's someone the victim knew.

That means someone is lying.

And that Daisy's time is running out…“


This is the first book in the DI Adam Fawley series and author Cara Hunter’s debut novel. I absolutely loved this an so glad that I managed to get hold of it early! The overall pace of the book was great and I didn’t feel like I had I had to drag myself through any part of the book. The only issue I had as with the epilogue as I felt it was a bit hard to believe and far fetched BUT I still gave the book five-stars because you could probably just ignore the epilogue if I’m being honest haha!

The book has no chapters; just page breaks which, when I first took a quick flick through the book, I thought I was going to dislike – I’m a massive chapter advocate and hate it when there are long chapters that just seem to drag on so I really thought that I was going to have an issue getting through this. I had no problems though; the page breaks are obvious enough that you’re not left guessing if the story has moved on completely or just taken a break from that current situation. 

The best part of this book is the inclusion of all the twitter and facebook updates. It made it seem like it was actually modern and also really helped understand how things can escalate. There’s a part where it’s showing online hate towards the one of the suspects and how easily it escalated. And it also helped show how easily things can get leaked online by people who don’t been necessarily realising they’re doing so. I felt these social media updates added so much more to the book and I really enjoyed having them there.

I also liked how we kept up with the investigation in real time but also got some flashbacks which helped add even more to the real-time story we were following. Every time there was a development in the case we were there for it and got it follow it though; there were no higher agencies making discoveries which we get told about but not actually getting to follow; you literally get to hear about every detail. 

The character development was ok but I felt like we could have had more of an introduction to Adam, especially since he was the main character in all this. We got a bit; we know his wife’s name and that they’ve had a hard time with some issue with their child but that’s about it and I would have liked to know a bit more about him and his life. Although I really enjoyed the character development of Sharon and Barry Mason and felt that it really helped the story and it's plot line realistic. 

I thought I had a pretty good idea of who'd done it until the end few pages and the way the plot develops really helped to enforce the readers thought of who the suspect is which gave for a more interesting finish when it turns out to be not what you're expecting!

Overall, I think this was a fantastic book and I’m eagerly awaiting the sequel! Hopefully we'll get to see more of who Adam is a a character and more about what happened to his son. You can pre-order this here on amazon UK for its release in December.

Anything To Have You - Paige Harbison Review

“Nothing should come between best friends, not even boys. ESPECIALLY not boys.
Natalie and Brooke have had each other's backs forever. Natalie is the quiet one, college bound and happy to stay home and watch old movies. Brooke is the movie—the life of every party, the girl everyone wants to be.
Then it happens—one crazy night that Natalie can't remember and Brooke's boyfriend, Aiden, can't forget. Suddenly there's a question mark in Natalie and Brooke's friendship that tests everything they thought they knew about each other and has both girls discovering what true friendship really means.”

I’m going to start by saying that I flew through this book and managed to read it under a day; I just couldn’t put it down! I know that there are a lot of bad reviews on good reads and many of them say that this book is a very inaccurate portrayal of teenage children in high school and it probably is but I didn’t feel like that detracted from the story enough to make it a terrible book! I mean, tbh when I was seventeen / eighteen, I was going out drinking most weekends in club and spending all my tie with my boyfriend which isn’t too far from what’s happening here!

This is told both from Natalie’s POV and Brooke’s POV but isn’t split into alternating chapters. Instead you get several chapters told from Natalie’s POV and then several chapters from Brooke’s POV. I preferred reading from Natalie’s POV and I found that although I was interested in Brooke’s POV to see her side of the story that was happening in the book, I wasn’t as bothered about Brooke herself like I was with Natalie. Brooke just seemed like a manipulative, jealous bitch and I just couldn’t get on board with anything she was doing. 

As with most people, I found the first chapter really difficult to get through and I though I was going to really struggle with carrying on with the story but it really picks up after that first chapter – so much so that, as said above, I managed to read it in under a day. 

You could see the twist coming from miles away but it didn’t really detract that much from the story and plotline. And I also liked the way that Harbison took the story to get to the twist. The build-up of Natalie’s and Aiden’s relationship felt organic and not forced; especially when you find out both sides of how Aiden and Brooke got together in the story. And a mentioned above, because of how Brooke was, I really didn’t feel that sorry for her.

This is a young adult story as the characters are all 17 and 18 years old but it is a much more mature YA novel and deals with a lot of alcohol, drugs and drug taking and sex so that would be something to consider. 

I’d recommend this is you’re looking for a more mature YA novel which involves coming-of-age and romance along with some over-exaggerated use of alcohol, drugs and drug taking and sex along with the partying [although I didn’t feel like this detracted from the story itself.

The Accidental Scientist - Graeme Donald Review

This is a non-fiction book which is described as the role of chance and luck in scientific discovery. 

I really enjoyed this; it’s one of the first non-fiction books I’ve picked up in a while as they can be quite daunting due to them just being generally straight facts with (obviously) no plot which can make them difficult to read through and finish. However, I didn’t have that problem with this!

I think that because the chapters weren’t too long and each chapter was on something different it made a lot easier to make your way through. I don’t think there wasn’t a chapter that didn’t make me go “oooh I didn’t know that!” even in the chapters where I’d heard the main story behind it; It included so much extra stuff and was a really, pleasant read.

I also thought it wasn’t too complicated. I have a scientific background and took Biology, Chemistry and Physics at A level and then carried on to complete a degree in Biochemistry at university and I’ve picked up some non-fiction books which, although marketed for beginners to the scientific field, would have definitely struggled. This however required none of that and explained everything fully and not only that, it was straight forward and so easy to understand which makes it great for the everyday person to pick up and dive straight in.

It would be perfect for someone who enjoys QI, and I would definitely recommend it for anyone who’s wanting to dive in to an easy-to-read non-fiction scientific book!

Leashed - Zoe Dawson Review

This is currently free on Amazon UK for Kindle!

I didn’t enjoy this and it’s such a shame because it had such potential!

Leashed is a book about Callie Lassiter who is meant to be your sweet girl next door but with a tom-boy twist and Owen McKay who’s your typical bad boy lothario who owns his own club. They meet through an encounter with their dogs where Callie’s dog Jack gets Owen’s dog Jill pregnant.

It had the workings to be a good story, I mean romance mixed in with dogs – Hell Yes! But it just fell so flat. The kindle book which I read was only 232 pages, which I feel isn’t too short but not super long either. Yet I felt like the entire story was just rushed. Things were just skipped over completely and it made it a bit more difficult to keep sense of any time that may have passed.

This is also told in dual POV; from Callie’s side and from Owen’s side. There was no clear definition between who POV we were now seeing  - there were no page breaks, no name title to let us know who was now telling the story and it made it so confusing to keep up with who was now talking. I know the book was written in third person so maybe the author felt it might be easier to keep up with because of this but as mentioned, I just felt it could get a bit confusing. This was also the same for the major time or setting changes as there were page breaks; the paragraphs would just carry on going.

There was way too much emphasis on Callie being some sort of tom-boy, like it was literally mentioned in every bloody page. We get it; Callie isn’t your usual girly-girl who wears dresses and heels. The same was said for Owen, it was mentioned so much by him and by Callie about how much of a bad-boy he was, again we get it. It was played upon so much and it just annoying and it started to feel like that maybe Callie was sort of looking down on girls who weren’t tom-boys.

I felt like there wasn’t really enough of a development of their relationship and it was insta-love and went from zero to 100 in no time. I can understand that there was the lust there but that seemed to develop into love just ridiculously quickly I mean they were going on holiday within a month or so of being together and basically meeting and then moving in with each other. Seemed ridiculous to me, even for insta-love status.

I did enjoy the concept and like I said romance and dogs – Yes! But unfortunately the writing and execution just wasn’t enough to make this enjoyable.

This is part of a series which carries on with Callie’s friends POV for the next books but I won’t be continuing on with them.