#Blogtour #Review - The Friend Zone Experiment by Zen Cho

The Friend Zone Experiment

Zen Cho
Macmillan, 8 August 2024 
Available as: HB, 352pp audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 978-1035046089

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of The Friend Zone Experiment to consider for review, and to Anne for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Renee Goh has an enviable life, growing her own Instagram-friendly clothing business, Virtu, dating a Taiwanese pop star and living in a posh London flat left her by her aunt.

But she's estranged from her family, ends up working extremely long days and has just been dumped by the boyfriend. So it's perhaps not suprising that when she bumps into another ex, Yap Ket Siong, at a V&A do, she spends a night with him. Surely they can just remain friends? 

Unfortunately, there is unfinished business from their previous breakup - business which touches on Renee's father's desire to hand on his own firm, a major conglomerate based back home in Malaysia, to one of his three kids. Renee could be back in the fold, all she has to do is impress father (and outdo her very competitive brothers...). But what might the impact be on Ket Siong - and should she care? Suddenly that friend zone begins to look more like a very unstable fence to sit on, with passion one side, cold hard business on the other and perhaps, murky secrets on both.

The Friend Zone Experiment was a terrific read. Renee is an engaging main character, a woman who knows what she wants, is basically together and organised and definitely not ready to get pushed off course by romantic currents. And yet, at some level, she is still hurt by what happened between her and Ket Siong ten years before. As is he. Renee doesn't, though, know the full story - and I enjoyed seeing that teased out, with flashbacks and revelations. Yes it's one of those scenarios where people are hiding things for each others' supposed good, where there are misconceptions and assumptions (cue Renee's judgy but supportive pal Nathalie). Beneath all this are the bones of a thriller plot involving kidnap, stolen documents and murky secrets - but Zen Cho has the confidence to leave that sketchy and focus on the impact of events on her cast of appealing characters. 

Did somebody say "appealing characters"? I have to mention Ket Siong at this point, of course I do, he is the epitome of an appealing, no downright attractive, character - certainly to Renee, despite what he did ten years before. An honourable, somewhat tortured soul, he spent years putting duty ahead of self - as, in a slightly different way, has Renee. She was brought up learning that business and money always comes before family, with the result that her rebellion against a highly patriarchal father has been expressed by... founding her own business and working night and day at it.

With those secrets from the past reaching out, will Renee and Ket Siong be able to sort out what's real and what's imagined, satisfy the constraints of duty and love, and, above all, keep those they care for safe? Deftly plotted, fun to read and with great heart, The Friend Zone Experiment keeps us guessing, serving up thrills, excitement and a powerful, tearjerking finale.

Strongly recommended, whether you've read Zen Cho's earlier fantasy works such as Sorcerer to the Crown, The True Queen and Black Water Sister - or not.

For more information about The Friend Zone Experiment, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy The Friend Zone Experiment from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

#Review - Lake of Darkness by Adam Roberts

Lake of Darkness

Adam Roberts
Gollancz, 25 July 2024
Available as: HB, 320, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781399617673

I'm grateful to the publisher for  giving me access to an advance e-copy of Lake of Darkness to consider for review.

In Lake of Darkness, we are introduced to a medium-to-far future human interplanetary society of a Utopian bent - and to the thorny problem of evil, which seems to have been eradicated but proves tenacious. 

This is a world of abundance, permitting its members to do pretty much what they want, subject to some basic rules about consent. Effectively people devote themselves to hobbies, forming "fandoms" that act in common to pursue goals. These goals range from art projects to the pursuit of pure science to exploration. We see an attempt by one man to be the first to walk on the surface of the planetary core (Roberts addressing the technical difficulties this presents in some (convincing) detail). The aim is basically status, earned by the acclamation of one's fandom. This is seen as a healthier approach than accruing resources or power.

It's all done with the help of AI, which undertakes the real work. This allows a staggering level of achievement, but it all feels a little empty. The people we meet here reminded me of those in EM Forster's The Machine Stops - they sustain a lively degree of chat and engagement with one another but it all feels brittle, shallow, with the real action taking place elsewhere. Representative of this is that nobody can read, everyone relies on the AIs to translate historic documents, resulting in a whole layer of ignorance and misunderstanding arising from the failure of sounds to represent or differentiate underlying ideas. 

It's also a short-attention-span society, one where those AIs don't just speak texts but summarise and recommend them too. As a result the adults in this book are contradictory, at the same time both erudite and childlike. When things begin to go wrong, when the system is challenged, nobody is really able to pull together a response (another echo of Forster, I think?)

In Lake of Darkness, what goes wrong is slightly mysterious. It may be a threat from an Ancient Evil which meddling scientists have unleashed from its prison (cue a great deal of speculation about who or what would be capable of constructing this prison and the paradoxes it builds into the universe). Or it may be that the evil has been loose and ac time for aeons. Or it may be that both things are true, with the evil (possibly not the right term, really) representing a part of humanity that the Utopia has suppressed. We are reminded that there are laws of balance and conservation in the Universe and that therefore, at least in the long run, certain things may be impossible - such as firewalling off areas of experience and motivation. Or, putting it another way, some things may be certain, such as human traits and behaviours surviving.

As presented to the reader, this paradox is framed in terms of the event horizon of a black hole. A couple of futuristic ships arrive, capable of FTL travel, to investigate black hole QV Tel but madness and obsession will soon destroy their crews. There is a great deal of debate, both among the characters of this novel and from the narrator (or narrators - the way the book represents how it is being told is twisty, reminding me of Tolkien in its insistence that it is being translated - but from what and to what and by whom is unclear) about whether it might be possible to communicate with whatever life might exist within a black hole. This apparently abstract point of physics, indeed, motivates characters to extremes, up to and beyond murder. (I enjoyed the way in which Roberts uses his apparently consensual society to show an individual with aberrant views can impose this on the wider culture - the grounding in consensus meaning that there are no real checks in place. It all reminded me of a version of social media gone septic. Sorry, gone even more septic). 

This question engages real, unresolved issues of physics but it also, I think, represents the gist of the book. The existence of black holes poses a puzzle whose solution allows for real choices in the design of the universe - it's left deliberately uncertain whether it is this fact that drives a succession of characters in this story to defy, indeed trample, the norms of their civilisation, or whether they have indeed been affected by some kind of serial taint that derives from the black hole itself and is being communicated through society, thereby posing a deep contradiction.

This is a novel of ideas, that debate about the nature of reality coming over as more solid that the rather insipid characters who fail to face up to its consequences. And, just to be clear, by "insipid" I don't mean these are badly or weakly drawn characters, I think Roberts depicts them just as he intends to, they are insipid members of an insipid society which has forgotten things about itself that it ought to to have help on to.

Overall, a riveting and strange book, alive with alternatives and a haunting sense of the past and the future debating with each other.

For more information about Lake of Darkness, see the publisher's website here. 

#Review - The Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre

The Cracked Mirror

Chris Brookmyre
Abacus, 18 July 2024
Available as: HB, 497, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9780349145792  

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of The Cracked Mirror to consider for review.

The Cracked Mirror is a story with many layers. As described in the blurb, it unites a tough LA detective, Johnny Hawke,  with a seemingly genteel Scottish spinster, Penny Coyne (yes, I know!) a librarian who solves crime in her quaint village. Penny would never break a rule (she know the sorts of consequences that can follow) but she does have some surprises for Hawke (who is of course, Mr Rule Breaker, always at odds with his own boss, and with a string of dead partners behind him).

Each is presented in their own segment, which has its distinct title ("The Cracked Mirror" being one). Hawke is working on a high-stakes murder at a Hollywood film studio, but is about to be suspended and thrown off the case when strings are pulled by those with, well, pull. Coyne investigates a death at a local church, which she solves before moving on to a Society wedding - to which she's been invited, but doesn't know why. Indeed, this isn't the only instance of Penny's memory proving unreliable - an experience shared by Hawke, planting seeds of there being something unsettling going on even before the two, improbably, meet in one story.

Which is where things go REALLY weird. What has so far read as basically a pastiche of two different crime genres, if an entertaining one, then pivots to become something all its own. It isn't an oddball crime story in which the two mismatched detectives have to work together and earn each others' respect. Or rather, it is, it can't avoid being that, but that's almost incidental, it provides some fun but it's not the point. Unfortunately I can't say what the point is without being spoiler, so you'll just have to take it from me, Brookmyre is on top form here and if you think the story as presented is fiendish, well, you've seen nothing yet. This book simply bowled me over.

It wasn't just the way that Brookmyre maintains the structure of the two, very different, narratives - using it to show events from two quite distinct perspectives - while fusing the whole thing into a powerful, engaging and much more distinct unity. Yes, there are cracks here which we will eventually understand once we know what's going on, but those cracks also make sense in terms of the frames of reference of Penny and Johnny. Unlikely events which befall our hapless protagonists do have their own logic, but as they happen, the vividness of Brookmyre's writing sweeps the reader up so were less concerned with the why, as with the "how do they get out of this?"

No, it wasn't just that. I found these characters growing on me. The more I learned about who they were, the more heart I saw this novel had. Behind the different brands of detective genius which the two display (with Penny, especially, showing great ingenuity even though apparently out of her comfort zone in the LA sunshine) there's a real sense of loss, of burned bridges and deep hurt, which drives them to behave as they do (whether to step over the line, or treat it as a religion) and which makes them, in combination, a formidable force.

Come for the high concept, stay for the vivid, relatable characters and their strange world.

Overall, a fun and rather tricksy novel that kept me guessing although - when I went back and thought about it - Brookmyre played a straight bat and left enough hints to work out what is happening. Also, a book that plays some wonderful games with genre conventions and the reader's expectations.

For more information about The Cracked Mirror, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - The Last Song of Penelope by Claire North

The Last Song of Penelope (The Songs of Penelope, 3)

Claire North
Orbit, 20 June 2024
Available as: HB, 388pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780356516110

I'm grateful to Orbit for sending me a copy of The Last Song of Penelope to consider for review.

The stories of Penelope and of Odysseus her husband, who was ten years away from Ithaca at the Trojan War and ten years returning, are part of the DNA of Western culture and I can remember when I first heard then, in a (necessarily bowdlerised!) version when I was about eight years old. 

Even then, I thought, this was rather odd. 

It wasn't so much the somewhat random escapades of Odysseus as he made his leisurely way home (though he could have hurried up a bit couldn't he?) but the way Penelope was treated as she waited for him. Why didn't someone just chase those suitors away? Why did Penelope have to stage an elaborate ruse, weaving her father-in-law's shroud just to delay them? Of course, nobody was going to teach the kids in an English rural primary school in the 70s about sexism and the patriarchy - and I'd never really gone back and revisited the stories until Claire North's trilogy began to appear - so long-buried questions and puzzlement bubbled up as soon as I began reading these books. I have been intrigued and captivated by the way that North deals with them. By the cool affect of her narration, the way she integrates human affairs with the Greek pantheon, the puzzled outsider's view of Egyptian Kenamon. But most of all, by the often-exasperated Penelope - a woman on the edge in more ways than one - as she deals with indignity after indignity and triumphs every time.

Last Song is the third (and last) book, and if you haven't read the others (Ithaca and House of Odysseus) you simply must go back and do so before you start this one. Not because spoilers (this is a three thousand year old story!) but because you have such a reading treat in store. You mustn't miss out. So promise me you'll do that, please?

Assuming you have, you'll be a bit more clued up with the setting. In her husband's prolonged absence, Penelope is Queen of Ithaca, a remote and much-maligned corner of the Ancient Greek world, a modest place and one which tends, shrewdly, to exaggerate its modesty. With so many ravening kings, pirates, psychotic gods and such loose on the wine-dark sea, the less tempting a kingdom appears, the safer it will be.

The general set-up is that Penelope, a wise and determined woman, mustn't be seen to exercise ;power, so this is left to her somewhat bumbling counsellors. In reality she is, though, firmly in control and is playing a long game, keeping the suitors, who wish to marry her (and inherit the kingdom) at arm's length while also preserving Ithaca's independence from its stronger neighbours. 

In the earlier books we saw Penelope skilfully navigate various crises, cultivating allies and bamboozling various would-be enemies. In The Last Song, though, she faces her stiffest challenge when Odysseus, finally, returns, upsetting careful calculations and overturning the delicate balance that Penelope has maintained. Soon Ithaca will be at war with itself for reasons utterly predictable to anyone who's been watching the absurd, strutting men who inhabit these tales. 

All of that is complicated by our narrator, the goddess Athena, who, as she informs us, is far from reliable. Indeed, she admits that she has a certain purpose in shaping events, and she will, obviously, adhere to a certain view of how things develop. While it might be nice if this involved female solidarity with Penelope and her lieutenants and maids, that will only go so far. Athena is in the business of writing her story, and she will have an eye to the audience down the ages who will receive it. 

So, as events unfold, we're getting two narratives (at least). There is what - we may imagine - "really" went on (but which we're not told all of) and what the "poets" will sing of in future days. Sometimes these align, more often not. I would venture to say though that the former is what eight year old me would like to have been told. By giving us this, North therefore corrects the record, though, as Athena warns us, there can be no reliability when one goes beyond the words of poets...

But what a story this is. There is war here, both force of arms and force of cunning. There is pride, rage, revenge. There is greed. Above all - or at the centre of all - there is love, or loves. Love that might have been, love that has been worn down and lost but might be regrown. The relationship between Penelope and the returned Odysseus is knotted and complex, he revealed to be, perhaps, less the pig headed patriarch than some of his peers. But equally complex is Penelope's relationship with her son Telemachus - though it is rather one to which she has lost, and can't seem to find, the key.

There is also bitterness and cruelty here with some moments of real horror - The Last Song of Penelope is not a book for the faint of heart. Long-suffering as she is, Penelope is not spotless herself - for example, even she does not really, I think, see her maids, who are slaves, as people, however much she clearly loves them. So we are trapped by layers of assumptions and social norms.

The Last Song of Penelope is a brilliant, satisfying, heart-wrenching and absorbing conclusion to North's trilogy. The writing shows North at her formidable best, but more, it takes these ancient stories and imbues them with a sense of heart, a deep empathy for people of long ago, who are living half in myth, half in history. I think it's that heart, that empathy which is perhaps what is missing from so many modern retellings, eroded by the act of translation and the familiarity of the story. North gifts her version with both. 

I would STRONGLY RECOMMEND this book!

For more information about The Last Song of Penelope, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour - Cursed Under London by Gabby Hutchinson Crouch

Cursed Under London
Gabby Hutchinson Crouch
Farrago Books, 11 July 2024
Available as: HB, 255pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781788425032

I'm grateful to Black Crow for sending me a copy of Cursed Under London to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Cursed Under London is an engaging and entertaining urban fantasy, with a real subcurrent of romance. It's also one of the oddest books - in a good way - that I've read in ages.

In an alternate Tudor London, under Good Queen Bess's rule, a separate realm has been established underground, and more widely, under England, for magical creatures - fae, vampires, werewolves and a host more. There the undead mingle with creatures from myth and legend, following their own laws (human meat definitely ON the menu).

The outcome of a past war, this state of affairs is delicate and it needs continual diplomatic effort to keep it working and prevent fresh conflict. So when a deadly consignment is stolen from the Fae by surface gangs, Her Majesty's guards become involved in the investigation. Frustrating them at every turn, however, are the renegades Fang (a distant traveller from the Ming empire) and Lazare de Quitte-Beuf (a flailing, not to say failing, actor). Both have come under a strange curse which they attribute to Deep London. All roads lead, it seems, down the Tubes...

I loved this book for its verve - the story just keeps rolling on, throwing wonders and moments of terror off in all directions - its characters - Fang and Lazare develop a delightful, will-they, won't-they relationship whose bitterness and joy turns on some real emotional knots and awful experiences in their pasts - and its sly humour (simply too many examples to be able to quote, the story had me giggling on my commute). The busy, detailed view of a different London is always great fun and it's incredible how the author makes some seemingly bizarre ideas work: Christopher Marlowe as a zombie? You'll believe he was! A swan as Elizabeth R's jaded, hard bitten head of guards? Meet Captain Dame Isobel Honkensby! It's all gloriously inventive, rather convincing, and, well, a lot of fun.

Opening, I hope, a series, Cursed Under London draws on knowing references to London and Londoners, genre fiction, romance, crime politics, culture and a myriad other themes to paint its world - the darkness as well as the light. Because, don't be mistaken, there is darkness here - the wonders of Upper and Deep London are wonders, but they can be misused and real harm caused. Behind the fun and games, there's somebody trying to do just that.

I'd strongly recommend this book, and can't wait to see where the story goes next.

For more information about Cursed Under London, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Cursed Under London from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

#Blogtour - The Betrayal of Thomas True by A J West

The Betrayal of Thomas True
A J West
Orenda Books, 4 July 2024
Available as: HB, 301pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781916788152

I'm grateful to Karen at Orenda for sending me a copy of The Betrayal of Thomas True to consider for review, and to Anne for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

The Betrayal of Thomas True is a novel about growth, about recognising and becoming what one was meant to be, and about about loyalty. It is also a novel about betrayal, about prejudice and about persecution.

Above all, it is a novel about love.

Though the book is set in the roiling metropolis of early 18th century London, the precise date that this story takes place is kept vague. However, while St Paul's Cathedral is nearly complete (so some decades after the Great Fire), Sir Christopher Wren is still alive, so the action takes place before 1723. It's early enough though to pick up something of the brimstone of Restoration drama, opening as young Thomas arrives in London on the stagecoach, fleeing staid and respectable Highgate for a life of passion. Convention would dictate the naive young country boy suffering all manner of indignity at the hands of worldly Londoners, and in a way he does, beginning with his grasping aunt and uncle demand 6 months' rent for a decaying attic room on London Bridge. But hold. Master Thomas isn't some lost innocent. Alive to who he meets and what they hint, he comes to the city with a purpose, and soon seeks out the molly houses, and in particular, the most notorious of them all, Clap's. There he can be Verity True-tongue, taking a woman's gown and mingling with others - some respectable and wealthy, others less so - who must also conceal their true natures from friends, family and neighbours.

It is a fraught and dangerous double life, for, among the ranks of the mollies is a rat, selling them out to their persecutors...

I loved the sheer joy of this book, the teeming life of London depicted in all its variety, its glory and grossness. This is the London of Jonathan Wilde, of thief-takers, cutpurses, Bedlam, Newgate and the Tyburn jig. It's a London impossible to police, a place of rookeries and hidden houses of resort, of double identities and split loyalties. Remember, civil war and religious differences are only a generation back, with the Crown and the faith still dubiously founded. London is a town of spies, full of those on the make and those daring to live fully after decades of turmoil. And it's full of the self-righteous, those who are terrified that somebody, somewhere, might be enjoying themself. All's a perfomance - respectability or defiance - on the widest stage in the world, as True Thomas takes his place.

Against that setting, The Betrayal of Thomas True is a thriller of sorts, following Gabriel Griffin ("Lotty Lump" is his Molly name), the guard of Mother Clap's, as he pursues the rat. Mollies are being murdered, and only one of a few can be to blame. Consumed by grief at the loss of his wife and baby three years before, Gabriel stalks his quarry. Meanwhile, a pair of wandering justices, Myre and Grimp, approach London, consumed with their own plans and plots and determined to feed the Tyburn tree. This pair - who at first seem like the comic relief from a Shakespeare play, a Shallow and Simple, perhaps - grow steadily more disturbing as their true natures and motivation are revealed.

It's a complex story where appearances deceive and no-one can be trusted. Division among the mollies will be fatal, and yet bodies pile up provoking suspicion and recrimination. Their motto, "Always together", begins to seem hollow yet as we will see, it can bear several meanings.

Building to a tremendous conclusion asking vital questions about authenticity, solidarity and the nature of love,  The Betrayal of Thomas True reveals a London at once both utterly alien and rather familiar. It's the story that might have been written between chapters of Joseph Andrews or Tom Jones - both obvious (yes, of course this is what was going on on the other side of the page) and deeply revealing.

A great read and a book I'd strongly recommend.

For more information about The Betrayal of Thomas True, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy The Betrayal of Thomas True from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

Cover reveal - The Other People by CB Everett

I'm excited today to be able to join in the reveal for THE OTHER PEOPLE by C.B. EVERETT, out on 10 April 2025 in hardback, e-book and audiobook from Simon & Schuster

Forget what you think you know.

Ten strangers.

An old dark house.

A killer picking them off one by one.

And a missing girl who’s running out of time…

Ten strangers wake up inside an old, locked house. They have no recollection of how they got there.

In order to escape, they have to solve the disappearance of a young woman. But a killer also stalks the halls of the house and soon the body count starts to rise. Who are these strangers? Why were they chosen? Why would someone want to kill them? And who – or what – is the Beast in the Cellar?

Because while you can trust yourself, can you really trust THE OTHER PEOPLE?

Praise for C B Everett

‘One of the very best crime writers we have, simple as that’ ― Mark Billingham

‘One of the brightest stars in the British crime writing’― John Connolly

‘A guaranteed thrill-ride’ ― Sarah Pinborough

‘Crime fiction royalty’ ― Steve Cavanagh

'(A) master storyteller’ ― Ragnar Jonasson

So - are you ready for that cover?  

Well here goes...

I think that's gorgeous - and it promises to be a gorgeous mystery as well.

You can pre-order The Other People here