by Jeremy Bates

This had me unsettled right away. Katrina is driving with her Boxer dog to a new city to start a new job. Rain is pouring down and when she passes a man hitchhiking, her humanitarianism outweighs her caution about being a woman alone and she offers him a lift. However, within minutes he makes her feel unsettled and having already lied about her destination, she pulls over and demands that he get out of the car.

The little white lie that she was turning off at the next stop seems harmless, but it will set in motion a series of lies that escalate until Katrina finds herself wrapped up in a horrific situation, one lie at a time.

The plot is extremely well done. The spreading of the web of lies and the complications that result was at a pace and done with an artistry that you could easily imagine actually happening, apart from a few events towards the end that felt a little rushed.

The one thing that wasn't realistic was Kat's responses that got her into so much trouble. Mr. Bates should have asked a few women how they would handle the situations because part of being female 101 is how to lie to creepy guys that make you uncomfortable.

Rule number 1: you NEVER cop to living someplace, real or not. Creepy guys are too inclined to follow you home. Whatever the truth is, you're going to someone else's house for an unpleasant reason and no, it wouldn't be okay for someone to go along with you. They might get shot/contaminated or whatever.

You sure as Hell don't mention what street you live on and no, you can't invite people because it's not your cabin and you're just moving out from a violent ex.

How hard is it? Sorry guys, blame the creeps in your midst. For us, it's survival.

If you've pressured a woman or even curb crawled to insist she give you her phone number, don't complain when it turns out to be the number for the local police. I had that one memorized by the time I was 11.

Again, towards the end a few of her actions were outright stupid. I don't want to give spoilers but if you've established someone is dangerous, you get as far away from them as you can and let the police handle it.

The suspense and characterisation were very well done and I will continue to count Jeremy Bates as a Modern Master of Horror, but he really does need to talk to some women about 'what would you do' situations.

This one failed my "Life's Too Short" test fairly early.

The start is a little disturbing but in all the wrong ways.

I know I should be being gripped by how the small, self-protective lies a woman tells escalate and place her in danger.

I should be feeling sorry for her and recognising that this kind of thing could happen to anyone. Or I should be shouting at her to wake up, deal with the confrontation and save herself.

I'm not doing either of these things because neither she nor the angry, drunk, narcissistic young man threatening her seem real to me. They come across purely as plot devices and the plot isn't attractive. It's shaping up to be another thriller where the "thrill" comes from watching a vulnerable woman being put at risk.

The speed of my decision is mainly down to the writing. When Bates describes places and situations the prose is leaden and as engaging as reading a police report. When Bates takes me inside the head of either the lying young woman or the drunk young man, I don't get to live there, I just get a laboured explanation of what is driving their behaviour that reads more like notes to an actor who will play the characters.

So, I have an unattractive plot, delivered with limping prose and dialogue from characters I don't believe in. Life's too short.

YA and I are in a weird relationship lately, and it's definitely making it harder for me to review books like Little White Lies. This is a book that made me giggle, endeared me to its characters, but then ran way longer than it probably should have. It's rough to sit in that middle ground where you genuinely loved the majority of a story, but there are just small things that make it rougher to finish than you expected. That's this book in a nutshell.

I mean, this book could have probably done with a bit of culling in the plot department. The mystery built around Sawyer and her newly acquired family members started out with a bang. However, as the story progressed, it felt more and more stagnant. The tension that Barnes built up so well at the beginning, that sense of growth that was tied to Sawyer, just slowly simmered off. I was frustrated towards the middle of this story, and really ready to skim. I kept on though and, I can say, the end of this book rewarded me. So, if you feel the same, just keep going. It's worth it.

Also I should note that I appreciated how well Barnes rounds out these characters. Debutantes of any sort have the ability to be vapid girls who have no personality to speak of. In this case, the girls have a wonderful amount of depth. Especially since Sawyer, an outsider to this whole world of pearls and balls, comes into the picture early on. I loved the friendship and the family relationships that came to life on the page. Each girl had their own little quirk that spoke to what we'd expect from the debutante scene: the mean girl, the pretty but spacey one, and the prim one. However as time went on, each one of them broke out of the mold slowly but surely. It was so refreshing.

The actual ending of the book did cause a bit of huffing and puffing from me. I knew that this was an ongoing series, and so I was thoroughly prepared for a cliffhanger ending. What happened instead was the exact opposite. Everything wraps up with a neat bow, and this book just ends. No fanfare, no excitement, but then isn't that just like real life? I suppose I've been groomed to expect book ending frustration. I'm not sure if that's funny or sad.

Anyway, this is well worth a read. It's a charming book and, while it has its flaws, it pushes the envelope on what has been done with characters of this type before. I honestly can't wait for the next book.

Dr Alex Inglis is horrified when she discovers that her one night stand in Ibiza is a teenage patient of hers. Johnathan Day insists she pursued him and she says it is all a figment of his imagination - so who to believe? This is a tale and a half as I veered from one account to another and back again! Page turner definitely and very fast too in my haste to find out who is lying or not. Hard to put down, gripping all the way through to the final page despite no one really coming out of this story well as they were all as unpleasant as each other! Take it on holiday or read before bed, but do read it - you won’t be disappointed.

Jo, Carrie and Sarah meet at a friend's funeral and are struck by the fact that time could run out for any of them at a moment's notice. Driven by the idea to seize the day, and helped somewhat by the fact that they don't really know each other, they decide to make a 'wish list' of aims to be completed by September. But what they've said they want to do, and what they actually want to happen might not be the same thing after all...

This is a very easy to read book, in that I soon found myself a third of the way through it after trying to decide which book to read between two choices. The storyline involves the trials and tribulations of three women who all have different aims in life, who want to support each other to get those aims, but who might not have been completely truthful with the others. There are mishaps and misunderstandings along the way. But also there was a lot of self-denial, each of the protagonists were misleading themselves as to what they wanted, and as to how they had got in the position they found themselves before they made friends. Carrie used self-deprecating humour as a defence mechanism but also failed to see her role in why she felt so sad and alone in her marriage. Sarah's determination made her quite selfish when she was trying to please everyone and Jo failed to see what was in front of her, so driven was she to run the family business well.

I did like the characters in the book. Carrie who's shyness hides someone who does not love herself at all, blossoms as her friendship with Sarah and Jo develops. She begins to gain confidence, self-awareness that allows her bubbly demeanour and caring nature to emerge. Sarah likes to be the one to organise, to control aspects of her life. She is desperately trying to juggle life so she can do best by her family. As she gets to know the others it becomes apparent that she in not in control and learning to let go sometimes. Jo is determined and driven, putting her own life on the backburner as she contends with keeping her staff happy and employed and believing she doesn't need close friends but learning that there are benefits to having them after all. All three women before meeting were somewhat loners, with seemingly few friends to rely on they all blossomed as their relationships developed. There were some parts of me I recognised in each of them, Jo's romantic side, Sarah's guilt at returning to work after having a baby and Carrie's lack of self-confidence. I did feel however that sometimes it seemed that there was too much guilt and too much lack of self-esteem from the characters. I sometimes wanted to shake Sarah and Carrie and tell them to look properly at their situations, tell them to talk to their husbands, though that of course would have cut the story very short!

This is an enjoyable, gentle read, perfect for a spot of escapism. I like Cathy Bramley's novels and her writing style and luckily I have a couple of her earlier books to keep me going before her next one is published.