Tag: Alice Feeney

Top Five Tuesday:Top 5 books with a pronoun in the title

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

Top 5 Tuesday was created by Shanah at Bionic Book Worm, and it is now being hosted by Meeghan at Meeghan Reads. For details of all of the latest prompts for January to March, see Meeghan’s post here.

Today the topic is Top 5 books with a pronoun in the title – Find all of your he, she, they, we or you books and then shout them from the rooftops!! Or just on your blog page.

They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie. This is not one of Agatha Christie’s detective novels – no Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot –  just Victoria Jones, a short-hand typist, a courageous girl with a ‘natural leaning towards adventure’ and a tendency to tell lies. Set in 1950 this is a story about international espionage and conspiracy. 

I Found You by Lisa Jewell. This is the mystery of the identity of the man Alice Lake found sitting on the beach at Ridinghouse Bay (a fictional seaside resort) in the pouring rain. He can’t remember who he is, or how or why he is sitting there. 

Then She Vanishes by Claire Douglas. The opening is dramatic as a killer calmly and coolly considers which house harbours the victim and then enters and shoots first a man and then an older woman. Who are they and why were they killed in cold blood?

His and Hers by Alice Feeney. When a woman is murdered in Blackdown village, newsreader Anna Andrews is reluctant to cover the case. Anna’s ex-husband, DCI Jack Harper, is suspicious of her involvement, until he becomes a suspect in his own murder investigation.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, a weirdly wonderful book. Mary Katherine Blackwood is nicknamed Merricat. But she is anything but merry and as the book opens she is eighteen, living with her sister Constance. Everyone else in her family is dead. How they died is explored in the rest of the book. It’s a macabre tale, with its portrayal of fear, resentment, hostility and the persecution of its disturbed and damaged characters.

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

I’ve read Alice Feeney’s debut novel, Sometimes I Lie and His and Hers and loved them. So I had high hopes for Daisy Darker, her fifth book.  Sadly, I was disappointed and I have to say that I didn’t enjoy it. I’ll even go as far as admitting, which I really don’t want to say because I don’t like being negative about a book, I think it is dire. But there are plenty of other readers who enjoyed it, even loved it, so I’m in the minority here. Don’t let me put you off reading it, if it appeals to you. This is just my opinion.

Description (Goodreads)

After years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker’s entire family is assembling for Nana’s 80th birthday party in Nana’s crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. Finally back together one last time, when the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours.
The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. Then at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows… Trapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darkers must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets, before the tide comes in and all is revealed.

With a wicked wink to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Daisy Darker’s unforgettable twists will leave readers reeling.

My thoughts:

I’m going to be brief. The beginning, was promising and made me interested enough to read on as the Darker family reunited for their Nana’s 80th birthday party at Halloween. They all arrive, Daisy, her father Frank, her mother Nancy, her siblings Rose and Lily and her niece, Trixie. Nana lives on a tidal island, which means that when the tide was in they couldn’t leave, making this a variation on the ‘locked room murder’ mystery, which I generally like. So, I read on, as hour by hour, one by one they’re all found dead. There’s a poem written in chalk on the back wall of the kitchen about the Darker family. As each death occurs the lines about each person are struck through. The poem is pure doggerel and painful to read.

The story quickly began to drag for me and I got fed up with the repetition of how many hours were left until low tide. I got tired of the unlikable characters in this dysfunctional family, the platitudes scattered throughout the book and the increasingly stupid plot, culminating in a surreal supernatural conclusion. I was glad to get to the end.

His and Hers by Alice Feeney

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

HQ| 28 May 2020| 384 pages| Review copy| 4*

I read Alice Feeney’s debut novel, Sometimes I Lie three years ago and loved it. His and Hers is her third book and just like her first book I was utterly gripped by it and compelled to read it, puzzled and amazed by the cleverness of the plot. It’s a standalone psychological thriller.

Blurb:

Jack: Three words to describe my wife: Beautiful. Ambitious. Unforgiving.
Anna: I only need one word to describe my husband: Liar.

When a woman is murdered in Blackdown village, newsreader Anna Andrews is reluctant to cover the case. Anna’s ex-husband, DCI Jack Harper, is suspicious of her involvement, until he becomes a suspect in his own murder investigation.

Someone is lying, and some secrets are worth killing to keep.

The narrative moves between two characters ‘Him’, Jack Harper and ‘Her’, Anna Andrews and there is also a third narrator, the unnamed killer. Anna lives in London, working for the BBC. She grew up in Blackdown, and is an alcoholic, who is still recovering from a recent tragedy that pushed her to drink. Jack is a Detective Chief Inspector, who has recently moved to Blackdown from London to be in charge of the Major Crime Team based in Surrey. He knows Blackdown well as he also grew up there and Anna is his ex wife.

There is so much ambiguity and misdirection that there were times when I thought the killer could just as easily be Jack, or Anna, or one of the other characters – and wondered just which one was the narrator. More murders follow after that first one. But these are not random killings – and it’s soon apparent that the victims are all connected. They had all been at to the same school and had been guests at Anna’s sixteenth birthday party.

I read it quickly, suspending my disbelief and disliking most of the main characters – they really are downright nasty – cheating, lying, manipulating and abusing others, bullying and blackmailing them. – and worse. It kept me guessing throughout, changing my mind about the culprit, or culprits, as I read on. It’s not a comfortable read, dark and twisted with some gruesomely graphic scenes, which is why I’m giving this book 4 stars instead of 5. It’s one of those books I didn’t really like, but I did enjoy working out the puzzle of who could be trusted, who to be wary of and most of all who was doing the murders.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers HQ for an ARC.

Alice Feeney’s second book, I Know Who You Are, is one of the books lost in the depths of my Kindle library – I must dig it out.

My Friday Post: I Know Who You Are by Alice Feeney

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Book Beginnings Button

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

I Know Who You Are by Alice Feeney is one of the books I borrowed from the library. It was due back yesterday and as I’d only just started to read it I tried to reserve it – but couldn’t. Fortunately it is available at the moment for 99p on Amazon, so I’ve now bought the e-book.

I know who you are

London, 2017

I’m that girl you think you know, but you can’t remember where from.

Lying is what I do for a living. It’s what I’m best at: becoming somebody else.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice.

30879-friday2b56These are the rules:

  1. Grab a book, any book.
  2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
  3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
  4. Post it.
  5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Page 56:

I close my eyes and see Ben’s face, I don’t need a photo for that. It feels as if the us I thought we were is being demolished, lie by lie, leaving little more than the rubble of a marriage behind.

Blurb:

Aimee Sinclair: the actress everyone thinks they know but can’t remember where from. But I know exactly who you are. I know what you’ve done. And I am watching you.

When Aimee comes home and discovers her husband is missing, she doesn’t seem to know what to do or how to act. The police think she’s hiding something and they’re right, she is – but perhaps not what they thought. Aimee has a secret she’s never shared, and yet, she suspects that someone knows. As she struggles to keep her career and sanity intact, her past comes back to haunt her in ways more dangerous than she could have ever imagined.

What do you think? Would you keep reading?

I shall! I wanted to read this book because I thoroughly enjoyed Alice Feeney’s debut, Sometimes I Lie.

Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

A gripping psychological thriller

Sometimes I Lie is Alice Feeney’s debut thriller. I usually take descriptions of books like this with a bit of scepticism: ‘Unnerving, twisted and utterly compelling, you won’t be able to put this new thriller down.’ But it really is like this – and I did find it utterly compelling.

I like complicated plots with believable characters and with twists and turns to keep me glued to the book. This book has all this and more. I was puzzled, stunned and amazed at the cleverness of the plot structure and how I’d had the wool pulled over my eyes, although I did have a suspicion of what it was all about, I just hadn’t worked out the whole truth.

I’m not going to say much about this book because I think it’s best to read it without knowing very much about it. It’s narrated by Amber Reynolds as she lies in hospital in a coma. She can’t move or speak, but she can hear and gradually she begins to remember who she is and what happened to her. But as the opening sentences reveal sometimes she lies. Actually it’s hard to figure out who is lying, who can be trusted and what really happened. There are flashbacks to what happened immediately before Amber ended up in hospital and there are diary entries from the early 1990s starting when Amber was nearly ten.

I thoroughly enjoyed Sometimes I Lie. It’s a complex, confusing, disturbing and brilliant book. I read it in just two sittings and when I got to the end I immediately had to turn back to the beginning and start reading it again.

Many thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for a review copy .

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 1872 KB
  • Print Length: 279 pages
  • Publisher: HQ (23 Mar. 2017)

Alice Feeney is a writer and journalist. She spent 16 years at the BBC, where she worked as a Reporter, News Editor, Arts and Entertainment Producer and One O’clock News Producer.