All Your Perfects by Colleen Hoover

All Your Perfects by Colleen Hoover
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Time take to read - 5 days

Pages - 305

Publisher - Simon and Schuster

Source - Bought

Blurb from Goodreads

Colleen Hoover delivers a tour de force novel about a troubled marriage and the one old forgotten promise that might be able to save it.

Quinn and Graham’s perfect love is threatened by their imperfect marriage. The memories, mistakes, and secrets that they have built up over the years are now tearing them apart. The one thing that could save them might also be the very thing that pushes their marriage beyond the point of repair.

All Your Perfects is a profound novel about a damaged couple whose potential future hinges on promises made in the past. This is a heartbreaking page-turner that asks: Can a resounding love with a perfect beginning survive a lifetime between two imperfect people?



My Review

What an opener, we see an infidelity busted and the book then goes from present day back to the time the infidelity was discovered and everything that transpires afterward. Quinn and Graham met under not the best circumstances but fate tends to have better plans for them. Present day and their perfect marriage is suffering, inability to talk about it, game face on and the longer the elephant in the room doesn't get discussed the bigger the rift between them becomes.

This book will have a lot of triggers for many, infidelity, relationship issues, conceiving, issues around it, it is very relationship centric. You know something is between Quinn and Graham but not what and we bounce back and forth past and present. It shows just how huge the issues are between them with stark almost side to side comparison, loves young dream, fresh in the throes of love to present day and struggling to be honest/close.

It is hard to go into it without giving spoilers which we don't do but it covers some heartbreak, some big issues within relationships, fertility and everything that comes with it. I think there are some actions/reactions that will annoy/enrage some readers. I think Hoover is a bit marmite, some folk love her stuff, some not so much. Regardless I think she creates characters/situations that whilst you may not always like them I think you can tune into or relate to, 3/5 for me this time. I have a fair few others of hers on the tbrm and I think they all are pretty different, lied but didn't love.

View all my reviews

Liar by Lesley Pearse

Liar by Lesley Pearse
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - 3 days

Pages - 384

Publisher - Penguin

Source - Bought

Blurb from Goodreads

Amelia White dreamed of being a reporter, but the closest she'd come was selling advertising in the local paper.

Until the fateful day she stumbles on a truly shocking scoop.

A murder victim, round the corner from her home.

When the police and reporters descend, Amelia is horrified at the assumptions made and lies soon to be spread about this poor young woman.

Convincing her local paper to let her take up the story herself, Amelia is determined to protect the victim from these smears. But when another body is found, the police investigation stalls.

Now, Amelia's own unfolding investigation may be the only chance of uncovering the truth, and stopping more killings.

If only she can work out who the liar is . . .


My Review

Amelia works for the newspaper selling advertising space but really wants to be a reporter so when she stumbles upon a murder victim her chance finally comes. With her easy going manner and the fact she found the body she gets to have an exclusive and write a piece that she hopes will put her on managements "map". The body discovery also brings a chance meeting of Max, a friend, neighbour and love interest, things seem to be looking up for Amelia but she cannot let go that a killer is still out there and soon finds trouble at her own door.

Set in 1970 it is nice to have a female character who wants to succeed in her career as well as her personal life. The struggles at work, dating and getting caught up in a murder case, when the killer strikes again Amelia is in the heart of it. She wants the story of the victims, who they were and for their families not just sensationalism or tearing the women's characters apart.

Amelia is a character I went back and forth on, she is kind, sweet and for a reporter (ish) she has a big heart. She also has some questionable actions and judgements but we all know someone like that and sometimes it brings a bit more realism to the character.

The book deals in a few topics, murder, abuse of a few varieties, violence, relationships to name a few. I like Pearse's stories, even when I don't love the characters I still get totally drawn in and there are a few to dislike. 3.5/5 for me this time, I think I still have one or two to buy and catch up on but I have read most and either enjoy or love them.

View all my reviews

Letters To My Daughter's Killer by Cath Staincliffe

Letters to My Daughter's Killer by Cath Staincliffe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - 1 day

Pages - 240

Publisher - C & R Crime

Blurb from Goodreads

Grandmother Ruth Sutton writes to the man she hates more than anyone else on the planet: the man who she believes killed her daughter Lizzie in a brutal attack four years earlier. Ruth's burden of grief and hatred, has only grown heavier with the passing of time, her avid desire for vengeance ever stronger. In writing to him Ruth hopes to exorcise the corrosive emotions that are destroying her life, to find the truth and with it release and a way forward. Whether she can ever truly forgive him is another matter - but the letters are her last, best hope.


My Review

Firstly, let me say this book is written in letter format, the whole way through. There are some dates but mostly they are just letters, more diary format as Ruth writes how she felt and what happened from the moment she finds out her daughter was brutally murdered. The letters clearly mark out, this is her getting her feelings out, her experience of it all and that she isn't expecting a reply. This is for her, to get it all down, in stages as she lives & relives what happened from finding out to the immediate aftermath.

It has been four years since the murder, Ruth is still consumed with anger, grief, rage, hurt and many more emotions. This is her way of working through that and towards acceptance, by penning it all down to both the killer and us, the reader. When the murder is covered, after the autopsy, it is very detailed in the brutality to the body, some readers may find this hard to read. If you have lost someone to murder or even just death this could be a hard book for you to read as Ruth's grief and emotion very much comes alive on the pages.

It is quite a weird one, not in the writing or anything but rather I haven't read anything like it before, or quite in that format. It is very cleverly put together, you can feel the raw emotion and devastation to the family, not just Ruth but to her grand daughter Florence, Ruth's ex husband and Lizzie's husband Jack. A gripping, emotive and sad story that draws you into from the very start to the very end. 4/5 for me this time, this is my first time reading this author and I would certainly read her again.

View all my reviews