This Week in Books (23rd March, 2022)

Hosted by Lipsy Lost and Found, my Wednesday post gives you a taste of what I’m reading this week. A similar meme is run by Taking on a World of Words.

| LAST BOOK I FINISHED READING |

New Year’s Eve, when the clock strikes twelve. A lavish party in one of Edinburgh’s best postcodes is sent spiralling into chaos when two guests fall tragically from the roof, impaled on the cast iron railings below.

For Tess, it was about more than reuniting with long lost friends. Recently diagnosed with an illness that could be terminal, it was her last chance to make things right. Having grown apart from her husband Marcus, she knew this would be the perfect opportunity to renew their vows, surrounded by everyone they love.

Their time is running out. Tess’ closest companion Sylvie knows this better than anyone. She’s trying desperately to offer her friend some closure from the guilt that has plagued them both for decades.

But as midnight approaches and the countdown begins, it becomes clear that someone doesn’t want a resolution.

They want revenge.

[Yes, third time was indeed the charm. And that’s almost all she read too 🙄. Anyway, my review will be up closer to the publication date. I had niggles but all in all, I was also entertained so there’s that.]

| THE BOOK I’M CURRENTLY READING |

Heather Harris is a piano teacher and professional musician, whose quiet life revolves around music, whose memories centre on a single song that haunts her. A song she longs to perform again. A song she wrote as a child, to drown out the violence in their home. A song she played with her little sister, Harriet.

But Harriet is gone … she disappeared when their parents died, and Heather never saw her again.

When Heather is offered an opportunity to play piano on a cruise ship, she leaps at the chance. She’ll read her recently released childhood care records by day – searching for clues to her sister’s disappearance – and play piano by night … coming to terms with the truth about a past she’s done everything to forget.

[Close to finishing this one. I’ve managed to go without tissues so far. 😄]

Florence. Spring, 1537.

When Cesare Aldo investigates a report of intruders at a convent in the Renaissance city’s northern quarter, he enters a community divided by bitter rivalries and harbouring dark secrets.

His case becomes far more complicated when a naked man’s body is found deep inside the convent, stabbed more than two dozen times. Unthinkable as it seems, all the evidence suggests one of the nuns must be the killer.

Meanwhile, Constable Carlo Strocchi finds human remains pulled from the Arno that belong to an officer of the law missing since winter. The dead man had many enemies, but who would dare kill an official of the city’s most feared criminal court?

As Aldo and Strocchi close in on the truth, identifying the killers will prove more treacherous than either of them could ever have imagined . . .

[Also STILL reading! This is how bad my reading is going at the moment. I haven’t read a single page in this book since my last post.]

| WHAT I’M (PROBABLY) READING NEXT |

As a young child, Wilde was found living a feral existence in the Ramapo mountains of New Jersey. He has grown up knowing nothing of his family, and even less about his own identity.

He is known simply as Wilde, the boy from the woods.

But when a match at an online ancestry database puts him on the trail of a close relative – the first family member he has ever known – he thinks he might be about to solve the mystery of who he really is. Only this relation disappears as quickly as he’s resurfaced, having experienced an epic fall from grace that can only be described as a waking nightmare.

Undaunted, Wilde continues his research on DNA websites where he becomes caught up in a community of doxxers, a secret group committed to exposing anonymous online trolls. 

Then one by one these doxxers start to die, and it soon becomes clear that a serial killer is targeting this secret community – and that his next victim might be Wilde himself …

[I’m not entirely sure this will be next but it’s the one that is currently calling to me the loudest and Harlan Coben’s books always promise a thrilling ride so it may just be what I need to avoid yet another slump. As per usual, we shall see.]

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What are you reading this week? Do let me know! Happy reading! xx