Review: The Holiday by T.M. Logan

While on holiday with three of her best friends and their families, Kate suspects that her husband is having an affair. And worse, she suspects that it's with one of her best friends. Determined to discover the truth, Kate begins to dig into her friends' lives, but soon realises that there is much more at stake then she thought...

This was a fantastic book. Interesting, gripping and with a deeply-layered story with many twists and turns. This book definitely kept me guessing - I thought I had the ending figured out, but this is definitely not going to end the way you think. There are many issues touched upon in this story - friendships, relationships, secrets, teenagers and children, there are many aspects to this that kept the story interesting.

I've given it 4 stars instead of 5 because the ending was slightly too 'out there' for me. Only in the sense that it was COMPLETELY different to what was happening throughout the story, and it did make sense with the story, but there was something slightly too 'out there' about it.
       

Review: The Man Who Didn't Call by Rosie Walsh

Wow! This book was so full of twists and turns that I couldn't put it down.

Sarah has a complicated past, a thriving business and is in the middle of an amicable divorce. So when she meets Eddie and falls head-over-heels in love after only a week, she lets herself feel truly happy again for the first time in a long time. But then Eddie doesn't call from the airport, and even though it's only been a week, Sarah knows that something is wrong. Turns out they both have a complicated past, and one of them is to blame...

This book was incredible. I love that it dived immediately into the story, and flicked back and forth between before and after, between Sarah's point of view and Eddie's. I thought for sure I had the big twist figured out, but it turns out I had completely the wrong end of the stick, so the big twist was genuinely shocking.

The pace of the story in this book was excellent, and the representation of grief and mental health is really important. This was a fantastic book that I would highly recommend.

Review: The Other Half of Augusta Hope by Joanna Glen

Augusta and her twin sister, Julia, have always been close, but they're polar opposites. While Julia wants to settle down and lead a simple life, Augusta wants... more.

Parfait has fled his war-torn homeland and is living as an artist in Spain, but he feels guilty about leaving his family behind. When tragedy strikes that reverberates across both of their lives, they come to realise that they are both missing half of themselves...

This was a really delightful book. The parallel stories of Augusta and Parfait are told really well, and are entwined in a delicate way. It took me a while to work out the connection between them, but once it became clear, it all came together quite quickly. As opposite as Augusta and Parfait are, it was tragedy that brought them together, and the difference in their characters at the beginning and the end are quite stark.

So much stuff happened in this book that it took me a while to figure out how I feel about it, but this book was genuinely lovely, and it was enjoyable to read. I sped through it because I was desperate to find out how their story ended.