A Game of Lies by Clare Mackintosh – Reading Wales 2025

A Game of Lies, a sequel to The Last Party, also takes place on the Wales/England border, reuniting the detectives from the previous book, Ffion (pronounced Fee-on) Morgan and Leo Brady. A reality show is being filmed in North Wales, which recruited contestants for a survival experience, promising £10,00 for participating and £100,000 for the winner. 

But Miles Young, the producer, had something else in mind when he called the show, Exposure: he has researched the applicants, chose those who harbor a dark secret, and plans to expose them on the air, one by one, to create huge ratings.

Two Cozy Mysteries

A Brush With Death by Elizabeth J. Duncan
Minotaur Books, 2010

Penny Brannigan is a Canadian in her 50s who settled in the Welsh town of Llanelen years ago where she has made friends and started her own manicure business (there's a first!). In the previous book, The Cold Light of Morning, Penny helped solve a mystery with Detective Inspector Gareth Davies, now her beau. Now, Penny has achieved every reader’s dream – inheriting a rustic cottage with its own mystery!

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch – Reading Ireland Month 2025

After Eilish Stack answers the door one night to find two policemen asking for her husband, she slowly begins to realize nothing will be the same for her family. Her husband’s job seems innocuous – he is an administrator for the Teachers’ Union of Ireland but these men are investigating an allegation against him:

The Lost Passenger by Frances Quinn - featuring a dramatic rescue from the Titanic!

Cinderella meets All-of-a-Kind Family in a new book I really liked and recommend. Elinor Hayward, the lovely and intelligent daughter of a prosperous factory owner, is thrilled when she and her father are invited to a New Year’s Ball in early 1910. Even better, she meets an attractive young man, Frederick Coombes, son of an earl, who is not just friendly but clearly interested in her:

It was stupidly easy to fall in love with Frederick; I got halfway there that very evening. But I’d like to point out, before you decide I must have been soft in the head, that I was nineteen, he was the first man ever to pay attention to me, and he was very, very charming.

February 2025 Reading

Although February is a short month, there were some outstanding reads, especially The King’s Messenger, Slow Bomb at Dimperley, and The Spy Coast - links to those reviews are below.

Historical Fiction

Slow Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans (2024). A soldier returning to his ancestral home after WWII finds new responsibilities and little in the way of practical help from his family as he copes with death duties and ennui in this amusing story. My review.

The Note by Alafair Burke - when a joke goes deadly wrong

An anticipated reunion in the Hamptons turns deadly after a practical joke in this novel by bestseller Burke. May Hanover, a lawyer living in NYC with her fiancé, has been looking forward to and yet dreading a weekend get-together with her two closest friends from summer camp. They were very close once but she hasn’t spent time with them in person for years. 

Catrin in Wales by Mabel Esther Allan – Reading Wales 2025

The sun was shining brilliantly and the hedgerows in the lane I had just left had been covered with half-open hawthorn. It was the third of May and I was in Wales, my mother’s country. Wales! I, Catrin Drury, aged just eighteen, was alone and entirely free for the first time ever, with a map in my hand, a few necessities on my back, and the future somehow fluid and unseeable.

Six Degrees of Separation – from Prophet Song to Whitethorn Woods

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place as other readers, add six books, and see where it ends up. This month’s starting point is the 2023 Booker winner, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch.

I got Prophet Song from the library this week for Reading Ireland 2025 as it is about an Irish family and takes place in Dublin (as I plan to read it I avoided spoilers).