Watching You by Michael Robotham

I am the most important figure in Marnie's life, but she doesn't know it yet . . .

I am the one who watches.

Marnie Logan often feels like she's being watched. Nothing she can quite put her finger on - a whisper of breath on the back of her neck, or a shadow in the corner of her eye - and now her life is frozen. Her husband Daniel has been missing for more than a year. Depressed and increasingly desperate, she seeks the help of clinical psychologist Joe O'Loughlin.

Joe is concerned by Marnie's reluctance to talk about the past, but then she discovers a book packed with pictures, interviews with friends, former teachers, old flames and workmates Daniel was preparing for Marnie's birthday. It was supposed to be a celebration of her life. But it's not the story anyone was expecting . . .

Delicously twisty. An intriguing story with a lot of twists and turns and kept me guessing right to the end.

9/10

The Life To Come by Michelle De Krester

Set in Sydney, Paris and Sri Lanka, The Life to Come is a mesmerising novel about the stories we tell and don't tell ourselves as individuals, as societies and as nations. It feels at once firmly classic and exhilaratingly contemporary.

Pippa is a writer who longs for success. Celeste tries to convince herself that her feelings for her married lover are reciprocated. Ash makes strategic use of his childhood in Sri Lanka but blots out the memory of a tragedy from that time. Driven by riveting stories and unforgettable characters, here is a dazzling meditation on intimacy, loneliness and our flawed perception of other people.

5 stories that intertwine and overlap. Pippa is the thing in common between them. Very cleverly written, all a bit too clever and literary for me.

5/10

The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan

Galway 1993: Young Garda Cormac Reilly is called to a scene he will never forget. Two silent, neglected children - fifteen-year-old Maude and five-year-old Jack - are waiting for him at a crumbling country house. Upstairs, their mother lies dead.

Twenty years later, a body surfaces in the icy black waters of the River Corrib. At first it looks like an open-and-shut case, but then doubt is cast on the investigation's findings - and the integrity of the police. Cormac is thrown back into the cold case that has haunted him his entire career - what links the two deaths, two decades apart? As he navigates his way through police politics and the ghosts of the past, Detective Reilly uncovers shocking secrets and finds himself questioning who among his colleagues he can trust.

What really did happen in that house where he first met Maude and Jack? The Ruin draws us deep into the dark heart of Ireland and asks who will protect you when the authorities can't - or won't.

Awesome, twisty thriller. Well drawn characters, lots of surprises but it all made sense in the end.

I'll be looking out for more by Dervla McTiernan.

9/10

Uniform Justice by Donna Leon

Neither Commissario Brunetti nor his wife Paola have ever had much sympathy for the Italian armed forces, so when a young cadet is found hanged, at Venice's elite military academy, Brunetti's emotions are complex: pity and sorrow at the death of a boy close in age to his own son, and contempt and irritation for the arrogance and high-handedness of the boy's teachers and fellow students.

The young man is the son of an ex-politician, a man of an impeccable integrity all too rare in Italian politics. But as Brunetti - and the indispensable Signorina Elettra - investigate further, no one seems willing to talk, as the military protects its own and civilians keep their own counsel. Is this the natural reluctance of Italians to involve themselves with the authorities, or is Brunetti facing a conspiracy of silence?

I have enjoyed other books in this series more than this one. The ending left me feeling there was unfinished business.

There is a lot of political rambling in this book and in the end I skipped over some of these paragraphs just to find out where the plot was going.

7/10

We See The Stars by Kate Van Hooft

Is that the Big Dipper?' Mum asked. Her eyes were bright from the light in them, and they shone in the darkness more than any of the stars in the sky. 

Simon is an eleven-year-old boy who lives in a world of silence, lists and numbers. He hasn't spoken for years and he doesn't know why.

Everyone at school thinks he's weird and his only friends in the world are his brother Davey and Superman, who's always there when he needs him.

One day Simon shares his Vita-Weats with Cassie, the scary girl from his class, and a friendship starts to form. And the new teacher Ms Hilcombe takes an interest in him, and suddenly he has another friend as well. 

When Ms Hilcombe goes missing, only Simon knows where she is. But he has made a promise to never tell, and promises can never be broken. So now Simon is the only one who can save her.

This is a beautifully written book but after finishing it I am confused. Who does the father drive to see all the time like a stalker? The ending was frustrating. I think I needed to be spoon-fed the answers.

7/10

The Midnight Line by Lee Child

Jack Reacher takes an aimless stroll past a pawn shop in a small Midwestern town. In the window he sees a West Point class ring from 2005. It's tiny. It's a woman cadet's graduation present to herself. Why would she give it up? Reacher's a West Pointer, too, and he knows what she went through to get it. 

Reacher tracks the ring back to its owner, step by step, down a criminal trail leading west. Like Big Foot come out of the forest, he arrives in the deserted wilds of Wyoming. All he wants is to find the woman. If she's OK, he'll walk away. If she's not...he'll stop at nothing.

As usual, and excellent read. Lots of action, a mystery to solve and Jack always gets the girl for at least one night.

10/10

Sarum by Edward Rutherford

The towering story of five families through 100 centuries of turmoil, tyranny, passion and prosperity.

In a novel of extraordinary richness the whole sweep of British civilisation unforlds through the story of one place, Salisbury, from beyond recorded time to the present day.

The landscape - as old as time itself - shapes the destinies of the five families. The Wilsons and the Shockleys, locked in a cycle of revenge and rivalry for more than 400 years. The Masons, who pour their inspired love of stone into the creation of Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral. The Porters, descended from a young Roman soldier in exile. And the aristocratic Norman Godefrois, who will fall to the very bottom of the social ladder before their fortunes revive.

It's taken me a while to read this but I'm glad I did. I must admit I was intimidated by it's size, but once I started it I was interested all the way through.

8/10