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Review: ‘The Perfect Wife’, by JP Delaney

Details here

Abbie wakes in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there. The man by her side explains that he’s her husband. He’s a titan of the tech world, the founder of one of Silicon Valley’s most innovative startups. He tells Abbie she’s a gifted artist, a doting mother, and the love of his life.

Five years ago, she suffered a terrible accident. Her return from the abyss is a miracle of science, a breakthrough that has taken him half a decade to achieve.

But as Abbie pieces together memories of her marriage, she begins questioning her husband’s motives – and his version of events. Can she trust him when he says he wants them to be together for ever? And what really happened to her, half a decade ago?

Published by: Quercus Fiction

Publication Date: 8th August 2019

Format: Hardback

I. S. B. N.: 9781786488527

I got this book from Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival. On the Friday there was a pop-up Crime Files event where this book was given out.

I hadn’t planned to read or review it yet, but something was brought to my attention by the delightful @autiedragon on Twitter, who was reading an eARC and came across something that they felt had to be highlighted. Before saying anything I wanted to read the book and form my own opinion. I have, and I fully support @autiedragon’s response.

You will see what I mean when I get in to the review. As regular readers know, I don’t normally review books I don’t like but this is important to me. I need to warn Autistic fans of thrillers, psychological suspense novels etc. about the content.

There will be spoilers in this review. If you don’t want to know what happens, there are other reviews available elsewhere.

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Review: ‘White Gold’, by David Barker

Blurb
VENGEANCE ALWAYS HAS A PRICE
Sim Atkins, Overseas Division agent, returns to Earth, having saved the Moon base from a deadly terrorist plot (see Rose Gold). All Sim can think about is finding the criminals responsible.
But his fury and lust for revenge are put on hold when a nuclear warhead is stolen by Terra Former leader Matthias Larsson. Can Sim and his colleagues track down the terrorist cell and disarm the device in time?
White Gold is the gripping finale in the compellingly original Gaia Trilogy, page-turning thrillers that provoke as well as excite.

Unexpected Review #2: ‘We Are Legion (We Are Bob)’, by Dennis E Taylor

Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency; 2nd edition
14th April 2017
£9.31
9781680680584

Blurb
Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it’s a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street.
Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first claim to entire worlds. If he declines the honor, he’ll be switched off, and they’ll try again with someone else. If he accepts, he becomes a prime target. There are at least three other countries trying to get their own probes launched first, and they play dirty.
The safest place for Bob is in space, heading away from Earth at top speed. Or so he thinks. Because the universe is full of nasties, and trespassers make them mad — very mad.

Unplanned review: ‘Artemis’ by Andy Weir

36426750 — Published By: Del Ray
Publication Date: 12th July 2018
Format: Paperback
I.S.B.N.: 9781785030253

Blurb

Jazz Bashara is a criminal.

Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you’re not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you’ve got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent.

Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down. But pulling off the impossible is just the start of Jazz’s problems, as she learns that she’s stepped square into a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself – and that now, her only chance at survival lies in a gambit even more unlikely than the first.

Review: ‘Survive’, by Stephen Llewelyn

Survive

Published By: Clink Street Publishing

Publication Date: 18th September 2018

Format: Paperback

I.S.B.N.: 9781912562039

Price: £10.99

Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41643888-survive

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Survive-Stephen-Llewelyn/dp/1912562030

Book Trailer: https://youtu.be/gyTWR6iC3rc

Audio Clip: https://youtu.be/4F7NL9Pq_1I

Blurb

A young man and his mother fight to leave tragedy behind. Striving for a new life on Mars has cost Tim and Patricia everything, but as even their future is taken from them, their past is just beginning.

Earth: population 50 billion. Pollution, crime and scarcity are out of our control. Instantaneous travel provides hope for the terraforming of another world.

A terrorist attack. An explosion at the event horizon of a wormhole. A murder. A trail of clues, misinformation and sabotage. Nothing is as it seems as an old enemy returns from the shadows. 100 years from now, the 100 souls aboard the USS New World are thrown back 100 million years to the deadly Cretaceous Period. From there, an epic fight to save humanity begins; but first, they must survive.

A multi-national, eclectic crew; among them the good, the not so good and the no damned good at all. Loss, courage, genius and sheer bloody-mindedness bind them. NASA Captain, James Douglas, and his first officer, Jill Baines, expected a taxi run to Mars. Now they must escape a fearsome Mapusaurus pack, survive natural disasters, brutal discoveries and treachery.

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Bonus Review #1: ‘Elysium’s Shadow’, by Matthew Munson

Published By: Inspired Quill

Publication Date: October 2015?

Format: Paperback

Price: £9.99

I.S.B.N.: 978190860069

Bought from here

Blurb

“It’s been a hell of a first day.”

Jon May has been the Governor of Elysium for a few hours, and he’s already facing a belligerent Chief of Security, an ex-Operations Manager imprisoned for killing the previous Governor, and an amorphous energy mass that has its own agenda.

So now Jon has to decide who to trust; his Security Chief will barely talk to him, and his only allies people who are, according to the Republic, dangerous criminals.

With less than 48 hours to delve into the shadows surrounding Elysium’s recent but tumultuous past, May is about to uncover more about this job than he bargained for.

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Review: ‘Duck Egg Blues’, by Martin Ungless

Published By: Independently Published

Publication Date: 25th May 2017

Format: Paperback

I.S.B.N.: 978-1521495919

Price: £8.99

Blurb

This perfect slice of ‘cozy crime’ is narrated in the voice of a pre-war English butler and concerns a rich and powerful businesswoman whose daughter goes missing from their country house estate. That the story- teller is a robot belonging to an impoverished detective brings a fresh and original take on ‘cozy’, and as for ‘crime’… well, it does begin to escalate, what with MI6, criminal gangs, corrupt police, and that’s not to mention international cybercrime!

As the plot strands weave together, we discover that behind one mystery lurks a greater threat. No one is safe, not even PArdew…

This is without doubt the robot-butler-detective thriller you have been waiting for!

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Bonus Review #4: ‘Children of Time’, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

25499718

Published by: Pan Macmillan

Publication Date: 21st April 2016 (First published June 2015)

I.S.B.N.: 9781447273301

Format: Paperback

Price: 8.99

Blurb

The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age—a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind’s worst nightmare. Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?

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Review: ‘Entropy’, by Bryn Lucas

Bryn contacted me earlier in the year to ask if I’d review his book Entropy. I liked the premise, so here we go:

Entropy: Political Intrigue in 2048 by [Lucas, Bryn]

Published By: CreateSpace

Publication Date: 17th July 2017

I.S.B.N.: 9781548895938

Format: ebook and paperback available

Price: £0.99 (ebook), £12.00 (paperback)

Blurb

Entropy is a speculative thriller set in the London of the very near future where the accepted political wisdoms of today have presaged the catastrophes of tomorrow.

Dylan Sharkey, a civil service desk jockey, is sucked into a revolutionary plot to bring justice to the dispossessed. His mission uncovers a foreign mole at the highest level of the British Government. Continuing his quest may cost him his life. Abandoning it would lose him his humanity.

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Review: ‘Black & White’, by Nick Wilford

35512981

Publication Date: 18th September 2018

Published by: Superstar Peanut Publishing

I.S.B.N.: 9781370304622

Format: e-book

Blurb

What is the price paid for the creation of a perfect society?

In Whitopolis, a gleamingly white city of the future where illness has been eradicated, shock waves run through the populace when a bedraggled, dirt-stricken boy materialises in the main street. Led by government propaganda, most citizens shun him as a demon, except for Wellesbury Noon – a high school student the same age as the boy.

Upon befriending the boy, Wellesbury feels a connection that he can’t explain – as well as discovering that his new friend comes from a land that is stricken by disease and only has two weeks to live. Why do he and a girl named Ezmerelda Dontible appear to be the only ones who want to help?

As they dig deeper, everything they know is turned on its head – and a race to save one boy becomes a struggle to redeem humanity.

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