📖 Blog Tour ~ Who's Lying Now by Susan Lewis

 

Harper Collins
14 April 2022

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book
and to Random Things Tours for the invitation to take part in the blog tour

You think you’re safe.

You think you know your neighbours.

But can you ever really know who’s telling the truth?

Jeannie Symonds is a force to be reckoned with – an eccentric, award-winning publisher, spending lockdown with her husband in a house near Kesterly-on-Sea. She seems to have it all: a high-flying career, a happy marriage, a niece she adores.

And then one day, she vanishes.

Cara Jakes is a new trainee investigator – young, intelligent and eager to prove herself. When she teams up with detective Andee Lawrence to look into the disappearance, she is determined to find out what has really happened to Jeannie. Cara begins to question the residents of this close-knit community, sure that someone has a secret to hide.

But how can she separate the truth from the lies?

📖 My Review... 

Jeannie Symonds seems to have the perfect life, she's a successful publisher, has a handsome and charismatic husband, and lives in a beautiful property in Kesterly-on-Sea however, as we soon discover, this ideal life is far from perfect. When Jeannie disappears without trace her friends and family are all suspected of knowing far more than they appear.

Trainee investigator Cara Jakes and detective Andee Lawrence have their work cut out as they try to uncoil the interweaving stores which Cara's family and acquaintances seem to have constructed but trying to discover who is guilty of anything is just as baffling as Jeannie's mysterious disappearance. Over the course of this tightly knit story we travel back to the time before Jeannie's disappearance and then forward to the days after she's goes missing.  We get several perspectives from a group of unreliable narrators who all seem to have something to hide.

As always this talented author gets right into the heart of a small community. Kesterley-on-Sea is the type of town where everyone seems to know everyone else's business and yet when confronted no-one seems to be accountable for their actions. The undercurrent layer of mystery which runs throughout the story gradually builds up the tension, which is made all the more poignant for being set during the lockdown periods of the COVID-19 pandemic when people became more distrustful of those around them

Who's Lying Now is an intricate study into human nature - the suspicious, the ambiguous, the sensitive and the arrogant, all combine in a calculated mystery which kept me guessing from start to finish. 

🍵Best read with... strong coffee and sugary doughnuts

About the Author

Susan Lewis is the internationally bestselling author of over forty books across the genres of family drama, thriller, suspense and crime, including I Have Something To Tell You, One Minute Later, My Lies, Your Lies and Forgive Me. Susan’s novels have sold over three million copies in the UK alone. She is also the author of Just One More Day and One Day at a Time, the moving memoirs of her childhood in Bristol during the 1960s.

Susan has previously worked as a secretary in news and current affairs before training as a production assistant working on light entertainment and drama. She’s lived in Hollywood and the South of France, but now resides in Gloucestershire with husband James, two stepsons and dog, Mimi.

Twitter @susanlewisbooks #WhosLyingNow

@fictionpubteam

@RandomTTours

📖 Blog Tour ~ The Lost Hours by Susan Lewis

 

Harper Collins
1 April 2021

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of the book
and RandomThings Tours for my invitation to be part of the blog tour

A perfect marriage...

Golden couple Annie and David Crayce have it all. A loving marriage, three beautiful children and a thriving family business. Life couldn’t be better. Until the unthinkable happens…

A perfect crime?

A piece of damning DNA evidence has arisen, placing David as the prime suspect of a murder committed twenty-years ago. Annie is sure her David is innocent. But if he isn’t guilty, then either his father or brother must be.

As the police investigate the cold case, so does Annie. Trawling through her old diaries, she begins desperately looking for answers. But it all comes down to a few lost hours she can’t solve.

And Annie begins to doubt the one person she thought she knew best… Her husband.

📖 My thoughts...

David and Annie Crayce have an enviable lifestyle, running a successful family business and with three healthy and happy children their lives seem nothing short of perfect. However, after a twenty year old cold case investigation has been reopened due to new and damning DNA evidence, David Crayce is arrested on suspicion of murder. 

The story starts beautifully as we are drawn into the life of an affluent family, a life which is seemingly filled with love and laughter. There's a lovely slow build up to David's arrest which gives us chance to really get to know the Crayces, and their extended family, and whilst some characters are more likeable than others, by the time tension cranks up I think that we have already decided whose side we are on, and when things start to go wrong for the Crayces, they unravel at frightening speed. 

As the story progresses it becomes difficult to put the book down and I found myself reading The Lost Hours when I really should have been doing something else. The tension is palpable, especially when other family members, particularly male members get drawn into the investigation, and the relevance of familial DNA links cannot be underestimated. I think that's what this author does so very well, in that she creates relatable characters who you begin to like and trust, and then she shocks you into disbelief when events take that character in an altogether unexpected direction. The whodunit element of the story becomes increasingly exciting as you begin to wonder just what will be exposed when the crucial lost hours of this murder mystery are finally revealed.

Full of twists and turns, The Lost Hours is a gripping family drama which has all the trademarks of this author's fine writing, a tense story line, wonderfully imagined characters and a supporting cast of people, who in their own right are pivotal to the plot. Taut, tight and tense, I quite literally couldn't put the story down, and finished The Lost Hours with that satisfactory sense of having read a good story well told.

About the Author

Susan Lewis is the internationally bestselling author of over forty books across the genres of family drama, thriller, suspense and crime, including One Minute Later, My Lies, Your Lies and Forgive Me. Susan’s novels have sold nearly three million copies in the UK alone. She is also the author of Just One More Day and One Day at a Time, the moving memoirs of her childhood in Bristol during the 1960s.

Susan has previously worked as a secretary in news and current affairs before training as a production assistant working on light entertainment and drama. She’s lived in Hollywood and the South of France, but now resides in Gloucestershire with husband James, two stepsons and dogs.

Twitter @susanlewisbook #TheLostHours

@fictionpubteam

@RandomTTours

Blog Tour ~ One Minute Later by Susan Lewis

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to host today's stop on the One Minute Later Blog Tour

Harper Collins
21 February 2019

My thanks to the publishers for my invitation to be part of this blog tour and for my copy of this book

Vivienne Shager has everything going for her, but on the afternoon of her 35th birthday, Vivi has a heart attack. Unbeknownst to her, Vivi has been living with a rare heart condition and now her life shrinks back to how it begun, as she moves back to the small seaside town she grew up in. And with her time running out, there is one thing she wants to know the truth about… 

Thirty years earlier, Shelley’s family home, Deerwood farm, bursts full of love and happiness. Until her husband dies in mysterious circumstances. So many secrets were buried with him, family loyalties, and things best left to history.

My thoughts..

We tend to go blithely through life thinking we are indestructible but as this novel shows, life can, and does, change, quite literally, on a heartbeat. Vivienne Shager's life is altered forever when she experiences a heart attack on the afternoon of her thirty-fifth birthday. The result has a devastating effect, not just on Vivi as she comes to terms with her greatly altered lifestyle, but also on the lives of those around her, and even the lives of some people she has never even met. The story of how Vivi copes is in itself a captivating read but add into the mix a dual time element about something which happened thirty years earlier and the story starts to take on a whole different meaning.

The author writes this type of family saga really well and brings her characters to life in a very believable way. There is much to consider, not just about how Vivi's heart condition affects her lifestyle, but also running alongside is the consideration given to organ donation, and the meaning this has on the wider context of the story is gradually revealed. I think the first half of the book is concentrated on setting the scene and I needed to concentrate on what's happening but once the characters, and the settings, were fixed in my head, I enjoyed discovering where the story was leading.

One Minute Later is, in many ways, a rather sad story, and yet, what shines throughout is the importance of family and friends, and whilst there is sadness at the conclusion of the story, there is also hope, and love in abundance.

About the Author

Susan Lewis is the bestselling author of over forty books across the genres of family drama, thriller, suspense and crime. She is also the author of Just One More Day and One Day at a Time, the moving memoirs of her childhood in Bristol during the 1960s. 

Following periods of living in Los Angeles and the South of France, she currently lives in Gloucestershire with her husband James, stepsons Michael and Luke, and mischievous dogs Coco and Lulu.

Website

Twitter @susandlewis #OneMinuteMore #OnePageMore

@fictionpubteam

Amazon UK

Blog Tour ~ The Secret Keeper by Susan Lewis

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to be hosting today's stop on The Secret Keeper Blog Tour

Century
Arrow Publishing
9 August 2018

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book and for the invitation to be part of this tour

What's it all about..

You never forget your first love. Eighteen years ago, Olivia learned to live without Sean Kenyon. She moved on, building a life with her husband Richmond and their two children in the picturesque town Kesterley-on-Sea. But when Sean unexpectedly appears on Olivia’s doorstep, her world is turned upside down once more. As old feelings resurface, and new truths come to light, Olivia finds herself questioning everything. Is her husband really the person she thought he was? The past and present collide, and Olivia must uncover the truth before it’s too late. But if everyone is keeping secrets, how will she know who to trust?

What did I think about it..

Olivia and her husband, Richmond, seem on the surface to have the perfect marriage. With two teenage children, a lovely home and a successful business, their lives seem set on a perfect trajectory. But all is not as it seems in this paradise and when Olivia's first love, Sean Kenyon, unexpectedly appears back in her life, it unleashes all sorts of mayhem which threatens to change Olivia's life and that of her family forever.

The Secret Keeper is a beautifully written family drama which bears all the hallmarks of this talented author's ability to get right into the nitty gritty of family life. Olivia's story drew me in from the very beginning and I felt such huge sympathy for her as she battled her own demons alongside what was happening in her husband's complicated and messy life.

The tense atmosphere which starts to infiltrate the story adds a real sense of foreboding and as the story progressed I found that I was turning the pages faster and faster to try to discover just what was going on and so much wanted everything to work out well for Olivia and her family. The characters who dominate the story are an interesting bunch, some of them are not particularly likeable, but collectively they all add a lovely blend of light and some quite dark shade to the story.

The Secret Keeper is one of those intricate family mysteries which makes you thankful that your own family is really quite ordinary in comparison. It's definitely a perfect read for an afternoon in the garden.

About the Author

Susan Lewis is the bestselling author of thirty-eight novels. She is also the author of Just One More Day and One Day at a Time, the moving memoirs of her childhood in Bristol. She lives in Gloucestershire.

Website

Twitter @susandlewis #TheSecretKeeper

@arrowpublishing

Amazon UK

Blog Tour ~ Believe In Me by Susan Lewis

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to be hosting today's stop on the 

Believe In Me Blog Tour

Century
25 January 2018
My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book and for the invitation to be part of this blog tour

What's it all about...

Believe in me follows Leanne as she tries to mend the wounds her family has suffered after the death of her husband. When the opportunity arises to foster a child, Leanne is quick to open her doors. But her generosity is about to be put to the ultimate test...

Daniel Marks is a ten year old boy whose father is in prison for a gruesome murder.

Everyone deserves a place to call home, and a family to care for them, but will Leanne and her family still be safe once Daniel enters their lives?

With the help of friend and familiar ex detective Andee Lawrence, Leanne sets out to right the wrongs of the past.

What did I think about it ...

This warm hearted story really caught my imagination and by the end of the first chapter I was completely immersed in the lives of those who live at Morley Farm. It's quite an unusual set up with different generations and different nationalities all living in close proximity but it allows them to be supportive of each other and to share in each other's sadness and successes.

However, the story is about more than just friendship and family as it covers some quite deep and emotional issues, particularly about fostering and how children cope with loss, and also how tragedy and trauma can have lasting repercussions. The story also touches on people's attitudes towards racism and certainly gets its point across in a way which is both meaningful and heartfelt.

To counteract the darker elements of the story, there are some lovely light moments which made me smile, I especially liked how all the residents and friends all came together at Morley Farm for entertaining evenings. So descriptive was the idea of all these lovely people spending time together, I really felt like I was sitting with them sipping wine on a bright summer evening.

The author clearly writes about what she knows and this comes across in the ease of storytelling which combines a blend of family drama, with  a story about love and loss, and the healing power of friendship.

About the Author

Susan Lewis is the bestselling author of thirty-eight novels. She is also the author of Just One More Day and One Day at a Time, the moving memoirs of her childhood in Bristol. She lives in Gloucestershire.

Website

Twitter @susandlewis #BelieveInMe

@arrowpublishing

Amazon UK

Do visit the other Blog Tour stops