5 Fiction Books You Must Read
My Favourite Reads Of 2021
Crush by Frederic Dard
Genre - Mystery, Suspense, French Noir
My Review -
That was MIND-BLOWING!🤯🤯🤯🤯 This is my second Frederic Dard novel, and he is slowly turning into my favourite author.
The book starts off feeling a little slow, but there is no looking back once you reach the midpoint. This book was sexy (without actually showing anything sexy, just letting your imagination do its magic) and thrilling.
Throughout the book, I continuously asked myself, "Where is this leading to? What is going on?" Well, I was thoroughly satisfied with the answers I got.
And THE END!!! My God, the end!
When I read it, I swore, and then I reread it to make sure I got it right, and then I swore again. It was that good!
Synopsis -
Bored with her mundane factory job, her nagging mother and her alcoholic father-in-law, Louise is captivated by a glamorous American couple who move to her industrial hometown in Northern France.
The Roolands' home is an island of colour, good humour and easy living in drab 1950s Léopoldville, and soon Louise is working there as a maid.
But once she is under her new employers' roof, their model life starts to fall apart - painful secrets from their past emerge, cracks in their relationship appear, and a dark obsession begins to grow, which will end in murder.
Fifth To Die by J D Barker
Genre - Crime, Thriller, Detective
My Review -
Book two in the 4MK thriller, and it was ONE HELL OF A RIDE!!!! SO! SO GOOD!!!
It was so much fun following the cat-and-mouse chase between Porter and Bishop.
It was an edge-of-the-seat and gut-wrenching ride. This book fried up my brain!
Synopsis -
Murder.
It's a family affair.
In the midst of one of the worst winters, Chicago has seen in years, the body of missing teenager Ella Reynolds is discovered under the surface of a frozen lake. She's been missing for three weeks...the lake froze over three months ago.
Detective Sam Porter and his team are brought in to investigate, but it's not long before another girl goes missing. The press believes the serial killer, Anson Bishop, has struck again, but Porter knows differently. The deaths are too different; there's a new killer on the loose.
Porter, however, is distracted.
He's still haunted by Bishop and his victims, even after the FBI have removed him from the case. His only leads: a picture of a female prisoner and a note from Bishop: "Help me find my mother. I think it's time she and I talked."
As more girls go missing and Porter's team race to stop the body count rising, Porter disappears to track down Bishop's mother and discover that the only place scarier than the mind of a serial killer is the mind of the mother from which he came.
Perfect for fans of Helen Fields, Val McDermid and Jo Nesbo, this gripping and twisted thriller will have you wondering, how do you stop a killer when he's been trained from birth?
Assassins Rogue by Rachel Amphlett
Genre - Thriller, Espionage
My Review -
Absolutely action-packed! Absolutely adrenaline pumping! Absolutely sleek and classy!
Eva Delacourt, Decker and Nathan are back with a bang! (literally and figuratively!)
Book two in The Eva Delacourt thrillers, I loved Assassins Rogue so much that I finished it in one day - a feat for me!
Synopsis -
When duty calls, do you follow orders – or risk everything and rebel?
An injured pilot discovers Eva Delacourt's safe house moments before dying from her wounds, thrusting the female assassin into a global conspiracy.
Within days, a new war will begin in the Middle East, and Eva is the only person who can prevent it.
In a race against time across a fractured Europe, and fighting a mysterious enemy working within the upper echelons of the British government, Eva must confront her past once more if she is to survive her mission.
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Genre - Contemporary, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Mental Health
My Review -
This gem warmed my heart. It made me tear up. It made me sad but in a good way. It made me hopeful.
This gem is the second novel that made me underline (the first being A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles). If I am underlining passages, it means it has touched me - heart, soul and mind.
I hope we all don't wait for a library and a librarian to show up to know that our lives have potential, no matter how gloomy it might seem some days.
A must-read if you're looking for the light in a dark tunnel.
Synopsis -
Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe, there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?
In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.
In The Middle Of Middle America by David B Lyons
Genre - Suspense, Slow-Burner Mystery
My Review -
I was speechless.
I had my heart in my hands, and it was numb. This book was so beautiful and so tragic.
I loved how it slow boiled to a climax no one would have imagined.
David B Lyons is a master storyteller. He knows how to engross you and then leave you wanting for more.
This was a lovely read. Heartbreaking, but lovely.
Synopsis -
A fascinating small town, character-driven novel that delivers the most shocking twist you'll read this year.
When lives entangle, webs will weave.
Time: September, 1997.
Place: Lebanon, Kansas—quite literally, as marked by a monument, the very middle of middle America.
A teacher. A soldier. An immigrant. A joker. A loner. A chancer. A carer.
A mosaic of seven regular townsfolk are going about their days, blissfully unaware their lives are about to interweave, interchange and interact; entangling into such a messy web that, together — and unbeknownst to them — their lives end up changing the face of America forevermore.
In the mold of movies such as Traffic, Magnolia & The Usual Suspects, In the Middle of Middle America follows multiple characters, and allows the reader to become a fly on the wall as they observe these seven lives entangling so tightly that they ultimately lead the reader into a head-spinning twist.
