Reading Round Up 2021 #11

 Hello there lovely readers.

Time for another reading round up.

I feel like I failed on the reading front this week. I've been reading on average four books a week this year but the last few days I just haven't had the concentration capacity to really become fully engaged in all of the stories that I wanted to read.

Therefore this round up will be short and sweet.

Another Life by Jodie Chapman 5 out of 5 stars

Another Life tells the story of responsible 22 year-old Nick, who falls in love with passionate Anna (19) over the course of one hot summer. When Anna’s strict religion seeks to divide them, Nick is too scared to fight back and lets her go. Anna is drawn back into Nick’s life years later, and Nick must choose between finding his courage or forgetting about his one that got away.

                                                                                                                                                                           

This novel had all the feels. The good, the bad and the ugly. It was emotional, it was real and it was raw.

Told through the course of varying timelines, we get to know Nick, warts and all.

He hasn't had the easiest of lives both where family and love is concerned but he always remains the reliable one, staying the constant in other people's lives.

I really felt for him, as well as for those that happened to come in and out of his life as he journeyed from young child and up through adulthood.

Refreshing literature.

Another Life didn't rely on major twists and turns to make it a page turner. Instead what was written was palpable, genuine and authentic.

Jodie has written a debut story that made me instantly want to read it again as soon as I had finished it. Heartbreakingly hopeful. A stunning novel filled with devastating love.

The Lost Hours by Susan Lewis 5 out of 5 stars

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.

                                                                                                                                                                          

The book begins with a murder.

The drama, palpable from the get go.

Karen Lomax, who is teenage girl, went missing and has now been found murdered. The police have their suspicions but struggle to find the evidence needed to convict anyone for the crime.

Fast forward a twenty years and we are introduced to the Crayce's and their extended family. All seem normal, like the perfect family really. That is until Annie and David's daughter Sienna makes an unfortunate mistake of bowing to peer pressure and getting herself in trouble with the law.

The police take her DNA and she hopes that is as far as it goes as no further charges are made. But sadly for her, the DNA is the start of the re-opening of Karen Lomax's case when a familiar DNA matches the one that was found in her underwear when her body was discovered.

That means that the murderer could be Sienna's dad (David), her Uncle Henry or her Grandad Dickie (Henry and David's dad).

I was invested from start to finish. And just when I thought I had it all worked it, everything changed. All I can say is that it is surprising/shocking just how far people will go to get the lives they've always dreamed of.

The Lost Hours is a brilliantly in-depth crime novel that is devastatingly dark and gritty. Showing that one small mistake can have disastrous knock on effects.

Once you start this book, you will not want to put it down.

I'm now in the middle of reading two books. Love Letters of Kings & Queens and Unwinding Anxiety (which I'm finding extremely helpful). What are you currently reading?