Review Copy – BooksPlease

Warning Signs by Tracy Sierra

Published on March 9, 2026 by Margaret1 Comment

This is Tracy Sierra’s second book and the first one I’ve read of hers, but it won’t be the last. After a slow and ominous start that made me worried about what was coming next, it then picked up pace. I couldn’t stop reading, totally gripped and fearful of what might happen next.

Description:

There’s something out there in the darkness.
By morning, bones lie in the snow, picked clean.

Zach knows the moods of the mountains – his mother taught him before she was gone. His father and the other men on the ski weekend think they know better though.

Drinking and boasting, they laugh in the face of the icy conditions.

But Zach understands what danger looks like. Can he survive the wilderness, and all the monsters within it?

The book begins as Zach, Bonnie and their mother, Grace are in the Colorado mountains where she is teaching them how to recognise the danger signs of an avalanche. A year later, Zach, now aged twelve, is spending a ski weekend with his father, Bram as he entertains his business investors. Bram is one of the most obnoxious characters I have met in fiction, a cruel, manipulative and narcissistic monster and his relationship with Zach is really awful. Zach, who is desperate for his father’s approval, has to tread carefully to avoid Bram’s vile and explosive temper.

The story is told from Zach’s point of view, which had made me initially wary of reading it. But, it was successful, because it is told in the third person. Despite his lack of confidence due to his father’s behaviour towards him, he is a resourceful, courageous and sensible boy. His mother had instructed him well about the dangers of the mountains and how to survive the conditions. He is a fully rounded character, whereas the other characters are not described in such detail, but sufficiently well enough as a supporting cast.

The setting is just so beautiful, but also claustrophobic as snow continues to fall and the hut where they are staying becomes snowbound. The tension and suspense gradually rise, as they try to find a way to ski down the mountain. The danger increases with the threat of an avalanche and some stupid decisions that Bram and the other men make. They are supremely confident that they can cope with anything the conditions throw at them, unaware of the dangers. And to make matters worse Zack is constantly aware that something or someone is watching them. The discovery of a dead elk on their way up to the hut adds to his fears as he imagines it was killed by a monster. This is a terrifying story filled with horror as their fears of an avalanche become a reality.

My thanks to the publishers, Penguin and NetGalley for a review copy.

The Living and the Dead by Christoffer Carlsson

Published on February 1, 2026 by Margaret1 Comment

Description

On a cold, snowy winter’s night in 1999, Sander and Killian leave a house party together, in a small town in rural Sweden. The very best of friends, they imagine they will remain so forever.

The next morning, each is a key suspect in a murder. Each has something they want to conceal from the police. And from the other.

The hunt for Mikael Söderström’s killer will take over twenty years. It will see a detective leave the force forever. And it won’t end until a second body is found, and the tight-knit community’s secrets are finally brought to light . . .

My thoughts

The Living and the Dead by Christoffer Carlsson, is translated from the Swedish by Rachel Willson Broyles.

This has a slow start. It has a tense atmosphere and a great sense of place, set in Skavböke, a small town in rural Sweden. .There are many characters and it took me quite some time to sort them out – who were related, who were friends and who were police, although the list of characters at the beginning of the book does help. The narrative is told from the different characters’ perspectives, which was also confusing until I had them sorted in my mind and I had to re-read several passages for a while. It’s not a book to read quickly!

By the time I got to the second half of the book and the action picked up pace it was much more satisfying to read. It kept me guessing what was going on and who the culprit was all the way through. I enjoyed all the twists and turns, which took me by surprise. It’s a dark, bleak thriller with plenty of suspense as secret relationships, rumours and rivalries abound in the small town. I particularly enjoyed Carlsson’s description of the Swedish landscape and characterisation.

I didn’t know until after I’d read this book that it is the third book in Carlsson’s Hallandssviten Series. I’ll certainly be looking out for more of his books.

Christoffer Carlsson was born in 1986 on the west coast of Sweden. He holds a PhD in criminology from the University of Stockholm and is one of Sweden’s leading crime experts. Carlsson is the youngest winner of the Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year, voted by the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy, and has won the prestigious Glass Key award for The Living and the Dead, given to the best Scandinavian crime novel of the year. He’s also won the Best Swedish Crime Novel twice.

My thanks to the publishers, Penguin and NetGalley for a review copy.

The Fox of Kensal Green by Richard Tyrrell

Published on January 11, 2026 by Margaret3 Comments

Description

A quiet neighbourhood of London is about to be shattered.

Normally little happens in these mixed streets of families, retirees, podcasters and gossips. A little group create a community garden. An ageing journalist writes nature columns. A left-wing Scotsman longs for the glory days when he interviewed Castro. A disabled professor plans a book clearance. Supine Mario takes far too many drugs. And Wilf Kelly decides to get a fox as a pet.

Can a fox be tamed? Wilf sets out to do it. We follow his journey of self-discovery as he patiently befriends the animal.

When Wilf is accused of an awful crime, he becomes the target of a police and media firestorm. It’s a drama that galvanises not just the community but people from all around London to pour to Kensal Green’s streets. But can anyone prove Wilf’s innocence?

A superbly written debut novel with a big heart, that will make you laugh, cry and remind you of the joy of community spirit.

My thoughts:

I thought I’d enjoy The Fox of Kensal Green by Richard Tyrrell, based on the description above, so I was delighted to find that I loved it. It is an in-depth study of Wilf Kelly, who at the beginning of the book is a young man living on his own after his mother died. He’s a neurodivergent loner, with his own comforting routines, one of which was walking in a wild old cemetery. He loved its memorials, trees and bushes, a place where birds nested and where the brambles had overgrown the graves. It was there he spotted a big red dog fox and decided to make him a pet. His mum used to chant ‘To get love, you give love’ and love meant gifts. So, he brought him gifts of meat hiding it in a thicket under a bush.

He found life confusing and clung to his routines. But he knew he had to change and wondered if he could overcome his fears of people by forcing himself to speak to more people. Could he build bonds with people at the same time as with his fox, and be socially acceptable. Another one of his routines was delivering the Metro newspaper to his neighbours through their letter boxes and he decided to extend his round and actually talk to people. They recognise him as an eccentric and try to support him in their different ways. But then a terrible crime occurs and Wilf becomes the centre of a police investigation, and is besieged by the media.

I was very impressed by this debut novel. I loved all the characters, each one coming across as a real person with their own individuality, and the setting in a quiet London neighbourhood is vividly depicted. I’ve never been to Kensal Green but I could easily visualise the locations, the Victorian terrace houses, the tree streets neighbourhood and the local cemetery, the Kensal Green Cemetery in West London. I found this website fascinating, giving the history of the cemetery. It opened in 1833, in 72 acres of grounds, including two conservation areas, adjoining a canal, and home to at least 33 species of bird and other wildlife. Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins, are just two of very many famous people who are buried there.

I loved Wilf. He’s an eccentric character portrayed with empathy. And it is the local community, and in particular Felicia, his childhood friend, who quietly provide him with support, emotionally and practically with gifts, and they rally to defend him when he is suspected of a violent crime. To go into any more would only give away spoilers. This is an original novel that will linger in my mind for quite a while.

Thank you to the publishers, Salt for my review copy of this book via NetGalley.

A Legacy of Secrets by Lulu Taylor

Published on December 3, 2025 by Margaret3 Comments

Description:

Is the truth a legacy worth inheriting?

Flick Templeton seems to have it all: money, a renowned family name, brains and talent. But her wealth and status seem an obstacle to the real love she longs for. Guided by passion, she seeks her soulmate while finding her own path – but will the legendary family curse of tragedy and loss always thwart her?

Etta, Flick’s daughter, inherits her own share of the family blessings along with its darkness. Growing up, she is pulled between caring for her mother and finding her own identity. As Etta unravels the threads of Flick’s secrets, she starts to learn the truth about who she really is . . .

But can Flick and Etta ever break truly free from the shadows of a painful past, and the curse that seems to hang over every generation of their family?

This is the first book I’ve read by Lulu Taylor, so I wasn’t sure I would enjoy it. But when I had an invitation from Pan Macmillan to read this book I thought I’d read it, based on the blurb.

Once I’d started reading it I found it gripping and compelling, but I also found that it’s full of emotion, from ecstasy to the depths of despair about a dysfunctional family, with some truly awful characters.They believe their family is cursed. It’s a dramatic family saga, verging on melodrama, high on romance, intermingled with mystery and intrigue. It’s also very long encompassing three generations, over different time lines. I did find the structure of the plot rather muddled, so it’s definitely a book you have to read carefully to keep track of the characters over the years from 1952 to 1992.

The main character is ‘little girl lost‘ Flick (Felicity) Templeton, the daughter of the fabulously rich and glamorous, Gloria, who is so unbelievably selfish, self-centred, and controlling, a perfectly horrible person. The novel begins in 1952 with Brinsley and Flick’s eighteenth birthday party to celebrate their coming-of-age, when Brinsley would take possession of Caundle Court. This puzzled me as in 1952 the date when a young person became an adult was 21 and it was not until 1969 that it was lowered to 18. I know this book is fiction, but this is so incorrect that it made me wonder if I wanted to carry on reading. Nevertheless I did because a mystery always intrigues me. However, as I read on it soon became clear what the secret was and it wasn’t too hard to work it out well before it was revealed, over 400 pages later. I had been tempted to jump to the end to see if I was right but because I received this book via NetGalley to review I thought it was only fair to read the whole book.

Despite my misgivings I did find enough that I liked to give A Legacy of Secrets 3 stars. I enjoyed the details of life in the 1950s when Flick went to a finishing school in Oxford and her brother went to Magdalen College to read history. I liked Flick’s daughter a lot, and determination to uncover the family’s secrets. I also liked the descriptions of all the locations and the interaction between the characters showing how misunderstandings arise and the difficulties of mother/daughter relationships. I could feel the heartbreak and sadness as the characters experience all the setbacks that are thrown at them. It’s a complex and emotional book, one that I liked rather than loved.

The Seeker of Lost Paintings by Sarah Freethy

Published on October 16, 2025 by Margaret2 Comments

Blurb:

Rome 1939
Arriving in Rome to work for the wealthy Montefalco family, Maddalena is homesick and alone. She finds solace – and love – in the beauty of the city, but as the war in Nazi-occupied Italy rages, she must make a devastating choice.

London, 1997
After her mother Maddalena’s death, Beatrice Fremont discovers a fragment of a painting and a letter that sends her on a hunt to Rome. Helping her is art dealer Jude Adler, who’s convinced they are looking for a lost Caravaggio. For Jude, this could be the find of a lifetime; but for Beatrice their search uncovers a shocking secret and the answer to a mystery kept hidden for years.

I’ve not read Sarah Freethy’s first novel, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from her latest book, The Seeker of Lost Paintings. I am delighted to say I loved it. It’s historical fiction set in two timelines, one in the 1940s in Italy and the other in 1997 in London and Italy. It appealed to me because of the mystery surrounding a lost Carravagio and I really enjoyed that aspect. I’ve read quite a lot of historical fiction set during the Second World War, but I don’t think I’ve read any set in Italy during the Nazi occupation before and it was this part of the story that I enjoyed the most.

The book begins with a Prologue set in Naples in 1610 with an unnamed artist as he starts a painting. Who he is and what he is painting only becomes clear later in the book. The narrative then flies forward to July 1997 and a hot day in London when Beatrice Fremont, yearning to be in Italy where both of her parents were born, is waiting for Jude Adler to arrive to value her late father’s art and photography collections. Her mother, Maddalena is seriously ill and they need to sell his collections to secure the family home.

When Jude spots a small painting, hanging on Maddalena’s bedroom wall, he is convinced he’d seen the image somewhere before. It reminds him of Caravaggio’s painting of St John the Baptist in Youth with a Ram. Caravaggio’s followers had made many copies of that painting and Jude is convinced that if it is one of those it could be worth tens of thousands. But Maddalena wants Beatrice to reunite the painting with its rightful owner. And so after Maddalena’s death, the search to find out more about the painting begins, taking Beatrice and Jude to Italy.

Back in 1939, Maddalena was working as a cook at the home of Conte Luca Montefalco, at the Villa Velare in Rome. Luca’s older brother Roberto had renounced his title and taken up Holy Orders, and is working at the Vatican where he is responsible for an art collection that must be preserved and removed from the Vatican in preparation for the impending war. It was a remarkably tense and difficult time in Italy, under Mussolini and the Fascists, and the local people suffered immensely under the Nazi occupation.

Sarah Freethy’s beautiful descriptive writing and characterisation transported me back to that period, almost as though I was there witnessing what life was like for the ordinary Italians during the war years – the dangers and privations they faced. It really is a remarkable book, drawing together the two strands of the story, both in the past and the present and ending in a satisfying conclusion.

Many thanks to the publishers, via Netgalley for my review copy and I’d love to read more of Sarah Freethy’s books.

The Predicament by William Boyd

Published on October 5, 2025 by Margaret10 Comments

Gabriel Dax, travel writer and accidental spy, is back in the shadows. Unable to resist the allure of his MI6 handler, Faith Green, he has returned to a life of secrets and subterfuge. Dax is sent to Guatemala under the guise of covering a tinderbox presidential election, where the ruthless decisions of the Mafia provoke pitch-black warfare in collusion with the CIA.

As political turmoil erupts, Gabriel’s reluctant involvement deepens. His escape plan leads him to West Berlin, where he uncovers a chilling realisation: there is a plot to assassinate magnetic young President John F. Kennedy. In a race against time, Gabriel must navigate deceit and danger, knowing that the stakes have never been higher . . .

My thoughts

I was really keen to read The Predicament William Boyd’s second book in his espionage trilogy about Gabriel Drax because I loved, the first book Gabriel Moon. A major strand in that book was the story of the tragedy surrounding his mother’s death when he was a young child. His subsequent separation from his older brother added to Gabriel’s disturbed state of mind and contributed to his reluctance to become a spy. In fact he was accidentally drawn into the world of espionage without making a conscious decision.

The Predicament begins in 1963, a few months after the events related in Gabriel’s Moon. However, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would because the novelty of a spy who doesn’t want to be a spy is no longer a novelty. Now, Gabriel knows he is being drawn back into the dangerous and shadowy world of espionage by his fascination/obsession with Faith Green, his MI6 handler, who effortlessly manipulates him. But is Faith beginning to show her true feelings for him, is it possible that she may even be in love with him, or is she just using sex to keep stringing him along?

It all seems a bit shallow and the characters are rather stereotypical, although it’s fast paced and easily readable. Gabriel is assigned to a joint MI6/CIA operation in Guatemala to interview Pedro Tiago an ex-priest thought to be the next elected President. When Tiago is assassinated Gabriel realises he has once again been manipulated and is in danger of losing his life. Then he is sent to Berlin to assist the CIA prevent the assassination of President Kennedy, an interesting episode that lacks tension as we know Kennedy wasn’t assassinated in Berlin.

The action does jump about, as in between these events he has meetings with Russian spies and realises he’s become a double agent and he is still having sessions with the psychoanalyst as in Gabriel’s Moon. In addition he is a successful travel writer and he continues to use his spying assignments as locations for his books, but his research seems rather superficial and he is accused of plagiarism. I felt it was all too much tongue in cheek. There are several loose ends, which I hope will be resolved in the final book.

My thanks to the publishers for a review copy via NetGalley.