February 2025 Reads

 

If someone had told me at the beginning of February that I'd manage to get through 10 books and 4 audiobooks in the shortest month of the year I wouldn't have believed them. I guess this is a testament to how gripping I found the books. Yes, you've guessed it, the month was prominently thrillers. I did make a conscious effort to pick up my Kindle rather than my phone and this seems to have made a vast difference. I'm not talking about locking the phone away or setting restrictions on it, just being conscious when I've checked everything I want to check and putting the phone down. Enough about the phone, on to the books.

My first book of the month was A Trial In Three Acts by Guy Morpuss, a murder mystery and legal thriller combined. When an actress is beheaded during a production suspicion falls on her ex-husband, a Hollywood movie star who was also starring in the play. It is up to his legal team to discover who actually committed the crime and how.

I loved Cuckoo by Callie Kazumi, even though I felt slightly grubby and voyeuristic as I read it. Claire is shocked to discover her fiancé has been lying for months and he is now ghosting her. As she tries to figure out why you begin to question if she is delusional, everything sounds too perfect for her fiancé to simply disappear from her life.

In The Quiet Sister by Alex Stone Chloe decides to pretend she is her identical twin Mia when tragedy strikes. Chloe has always been the quieter, more sensitive twin, and a little bit jealous of Mia’s successful life. It’s not jealousy that forces her to take over her sister’s life though, it’s a chance to outrun a destructive relationship.

A Brush With Death by J. M. Hall sees the return of retired primary school teachers Pat, Liz and Thelma. This time around they are investigating the mysterious death of an ex-colleague. Neville Hilton was a bit of a jobsworth, a perfect qualification for his role as an Ofsted inspector, but was it this job that led to his death? I found myself alternating between profound sadness and all-consuming rage as I read.

When Lena overhears a conversation between her neighbours she’s convinced they’re about to commit a crime, and not for the first time. Everyone around her is skeptical so she decides to investigate herself. The New Neighbours by Claire Douglas is very much in the vein of classic film noir where danger lurks in suburbia.

Initially, I thought Bad Blood by Sarah Hornsley was going to be a combination of a murder mystery and a legal thriller. However, other than the fact that the lead character is a barrister there is very little legal chicanery in the story. Justine Hart returns to her hometown eighteen years after she left it to try and discover why her teenage boyfriend, the love of her life, is accused of a double murder. She hopes to also find out why he suddenly disappeared from her life when she was eighteen.

The Summer Guests by Tess Gerritsen sees a return to The Martini Club, a group of spies who have retired to Purity, Maine. When a teenage girl goes missing Maggie’s neighbour, Luther, is the obvious suspect but Maggie knows Luther wouldn’t commit the crime he’s accused of. With her friends, they use all the skills they honed as spies to discover what happened and are constantly one step ahead of the police investigation.

Scrimping to make ends meet, September Blythe is shocked to discover a relative she didn’t know existed has left her a fortune and a house in Harrogate. The Second Chance Book Club by Stephanie Butland follows September’s uplifting journey as she learns about her biological family and the power of friendship and kindness.

For me, Harlan Coben is the king of killer twists and his latest, Nobody’s Fool, follows in the same vein. Teenager Victoria Belmond was abducted and not heard of for eleven years until she suddenly reappeared with no knowledge of where she’d been. When Sami Kierce catches a fleeting glimpse of her he’s shocked as he's convinced he woke up next to her dead body twenty years ago.

When Shadows Fall by Neil Lancaster is a welcome return of Max Craigie. The fall of a walker in the Scottish Highlands raises concerns that someone is targeting lone females. Local police aren’t overly concerned, is this down to laziness, incompetence or something more sinister? This is edge-of-your-seat stuff from beginning to end.

My first audiobook of the month is one that has been out in print and ebook format for a while but has now been released in audio format. The Fells is a new detective series from Cath Staincliffe that features two mismatched detectives investigating twenty-year-old remains that could be the final victim of the Fellside Strangler. The dynamics of the detectives work well together and the narration, featuring Yorkshire accents, helps make them feel very real.

In Good Bad Mother by Anya Mora we meet Amelia, a new mother, living a seemingly perfect life with a loving husband and a beautiful home in a wealthy neighbourhood. However, Amelia is hiding a dark secret and it looks as if someone is about to reveal it.

My third audiobook was book seven in the DCI Adam Fawley series. In Making A Killing by Cara Hunter Fawley has to revisit an earlier case. Daisy Moon disappeared eight years ago and her body was never found, her mother was convicted of her murder. Trace evidence found on the buried body of a woman points to the possibility of Daisy Moon still being alive. I enjoyed the twisted story, and now want to read the series, but I don’t think the style worked well as an audiobook.

The final audiobook of the month was Where Lost Girls Go by B. R. Spangler. This is the first book in the Detective Casey White series. Casey is a troubled detective, her life revolves around searching for her daughter who was abducted fourteen years ago. While on enforced leave she stumbles across a girl on the edge of the woods, a girl who was abducted and held captive for nine years. Could there be a link between this abduction and that of her daughter?

Publication dates to watch out for:-

A Trial In Three Acts by Guy Morpuss will be published on 6/3/25 in hardback, ebook and audio format.

The Quiet Sister by Alex Stone will be published on 10/3/25 in ebook and audio format.

Cuckoo by Callie Kazumi will be published on 13/3/25 in paperback and audio format. The ebook is available now.

A Brush With Death by J. M. Hall will be published on 13/3/25 in paperback and ebook format.

The New Neighbours by Claire Douglas will be published on 13/3/25 in hardback, ebook and audio format.

Bad Blood by Sarah Hornsley will be published on 27/3/25 in hardback, ebook and audio format.

The Summer Guests by Tess Gerritsen will be published on 27/3/25 in hardback, ebook and audio format.

The Second Chance Book Club by Stephanie Butland will be published on 27/3/25 in ebook and audio format. The paperback will be published on 24/4/25.

Nobody’s Fool by Harlan Coben will be published on 27/3/25 in hardback, ebook and audio format.

When Shadows Fall by Neil Lancaster will be published on 27/3/25 in hardback, ebook and audio format.