Book Review - The Unbroken by Alex Caan - Blog Tour

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Amazon UK

Title: The Unbroken

Author: Alex Caan

Format reviewed: Ebook

Source: Netgalley

Publisher: Hera Books

Publication Date: 18th March 2020

Rating: 5 Stars

Millie didn’t get time to think. The car door was pulled open and she was dragged out, her screams loud and raw, as she kicked and fought. She called out for Oscar, again and again, screaming for help.

But he never came.

It was the wedding of the year. Millie Beaumont marrying billionaire playboy Oscar Hayat, the eyes of the world watching.

But the dream turns into a nightmare when Millie and Oscar are brutally abducted while on honeymoon. Millie is killed, her body dumped in London. Oscar is still
missing…

Enter DS Moomy Khan and DI Sarah Heaton - not your typical police officers. Moomy is running from her own troubled past, while Sarah is having to live with the hard choices she has made. Yet they will stop at nothing to find Millie’s murderers and track down Oscar. Only a family as high profile as the Hayats have enemies lurking in every corner - have they taken the ultimate revenge, or is someone else behind the death and kidnapping?

And
can Moomy and Sarah find Oscar - before time runs out and he suffers the same fate as his wife?

The first book in the gripping, fast-paced new Khan and Heaton crime series, The Unbroken will thrill fans of A.A. Dhand, Angela Marsons and Robert Bryndza.

What a gritty start to a new series with a pair of kick-ass detectives for good measure. 

Ok, it took a while to get to grips with DS Moomy Khan and DI Sarah Heaton, they are not what you would call typical officers, and their personal lives are rather troubling, but yet it is clear they are great at their jobs. 

This is a story that is incredibly diverse, and I loved getting to know the police team and their backgrounds, in addition to learning all about the family that is at the heart of this story.  

For the Hayat's are uber rich, and think nothing can touch them, but whether they actually care for each other is another matter, even when their oldest son, Oscar and heir apparent is kidnapped and his new wife turns up dead. 

I had no idea how the plot was going to unravel and I was gripped as a result of it. I was eager to learn everything I could about this case,  and in it meet some very misguided people. 

Yet at the same time, it's what has been happening in Moomy and Sarah's recent pasts, that  I feel is going to shape the series, to the extent that I'm already dying to read book 2, based on the way this one finished.  I feel there is far more to them both than has already been revealed and I am so looking forward to seeing how they develop over a series. 

Fast paced and addictive, this is yet another fabulous thriller from Alex Caan, which asks the question of just whether you have to obey the law if you are a billionaire.  

Thank you to Hera and Netgalley for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily. 

Please take a look at all the other fabulous book bloggers on this tour

Book Review - First To Die by Alex Caan

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Amazon UK

Title: First To Die

Author: Alex Caan

Format reviewed: Ebook

Source: Netgalley

Publisher: Zaffre

Publication Date: 14th June 2018 

Rating: 4 Stars

SOMEWHERE IN THE CROWD IS A KILLER 

Bonfire Night and St James's Park is filled with thousands of Anonymous protesters in a stand-off with the police. When a cloaked, Guido Fawkes mask-wearing body is discovered the following morning, Kate Riley and Zain Harris from the Police Crime Commissioner's office are called in.

The corpse has been eaten away by a potentially lethal and highly contagious virus. The autopsy reveals the victim was a senior civil servant, whose work in international development involved saving lives. Why would anyone want him dead? 

THEY WILL STRIKE AGAIN 

As the research team looking into the origins of the deadly virus scramble to discover an antidote, first one, then another pharmacist goes missing. Meanwhile, a dark truth starts to emerge about the murder victim: he was an aggressive man, whose bullying behaviour resulted in the suicide attempt of one of his former staff members.

AND TIME IS RUNNING OUT . . .

With thirty lives potentially at stake, Kate and Zain have their work cut out for them. Can they find the two missing pharmacists in time, or will they too end up dead?

That was one intense book, I feel as though I have learned about far too about the incredibly scary world of biochemistry, and just what horrors could await the world if this was to become a reality.  My head feels fried from the amount of information i have taken in, and its already been giving me bad dreams. 

Yet I didn't find I was particularly hooked on this thriller,  nor did I have any ideas where the investigation would take us. 

I was though surprised when I referred back to the blurb after I had read a significant amount of the book and things still hadn't really occurred that were mentioned in it.  I thought I was going to be reading a fast paced thriller with a real race against time, but instead it seemed like the majority of the first half of the book was focused on one specific dead body, and that when it started to get more serious and the investigation proceeded, I found myself a bit confused. 

This may be because I am realising that I am just not keen on thrillers that involve drugs, drug trials, pharmaceutical companies and all that related industry. 

That being said I could easily see that the book was getting under my skin, and I was mildly curious as to how everything would be resolved.  The writing is very good, and it was my personal preferences clouding my enjoyment of the book. 

This was the second book featuring this police team, and although I read the first book a few years ago, I found I was struggling to remember things even with the reminder tidbits, so I would say these are best read one after the other, and Cut to the Bone is by far the better story to my eyes. 

I would though be curious to read more from the author in the future, as I suspect it was the crime that I wasn't engaging with properly, rather than anything else.  If you like slow building thrillers with a lot of explanations then this could be the book for you. 

Thank you to Netgalley and Zaffre for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily. 

Book Review - Cut To The Bone by Alex Caan - Rachel Reads Randomly Book #34

Amazon UK

Title:  Cut To The Bone

Author: Alex Caan

Format reviewed: Ebook

Source: Netgalley

Publisher: twenty7

Publication Date: 14th July 2016

Rating: 4 Stars

One Missing Girl. Two Million Suspects.

Ruby is a vlogger, a rising star of YouTube and a heroine to millions of teenage girls.

And she's missing . . .

But she's an adult - nothing to worry about, surely?

Until the video's uploaded . . .

Ruby, in the dirt, pleading for her life.

Enter Detective Inspector Kate Riley; the Met's rising star and the head of a new team of investigators with the best resources money can buy. Among them, Detective Sergeant Zain Harris, the poster boy for multiracial policing. But can Kate wholly trust him - and more importantly, can she trust herself around him?

As hysteria builds amongst the press and Ruby's millions of fans, Kate and her team are under pressure to get results, and fast, but as they soon discover, the world of YouTube vloggers and social media is much darker than anyone could have imagined.

And the videos keep coming . . .

Cut to the Bone was a book that had really attracted my interest, as I have recently become hooked on a couple of You Tuber's channels, so very curious to see a bit of the behind the scenes action as such. 

What became very apparent early on in this book, is that it is very hard to trust any of the information that is being revealed, or at least you need to remember it all and try to make sense of it all, but there are so many leads, hooks, red herrings and twists and turns as the story progresses that I was left reeling at the end of it. 

At times the sheer quantity of information and various threads made me have to put the book down for a bit while I processed the new leads, before I was able to continue. The story touches on all manner of issues, some of which were a lot more disturbing than others. 

As is often the case when I review a thriller I am being deliberately vague as to the details, purely for fear of accidentally giving away any of the plot that could be key. I was though fascinated by all the geeky technological details that were used, and all of Detective Sergeant Zain Harris' unorthodox methods of acquiring data from computers. I understood quite a lot of the details and its a stark reminder that you leave a digital footprint with every action you take online, and that even deleted data can be recovered in skilled hands. 

The main detective Kate Riley is hiding something in her personal life, and as her past is slowly revealed, I couldn't help but feel a lot of empathy for her, as she has had to make some quite difficult decisions in the past. 

Cut To The Bone is written in many short chapters, which is great for when you think just one more chapter, and the pacing is very good. At all times I was intrigued by the story, even if I wasn't 100% hooked, I definitely realised early on I had no idea at all who was behind Ruby's disappearance, but that I really wanted to know who it was, and why. 

This is a great debut thriller, and I really hope this isn't the last we will be seeing of Detectives Zain and Kate. 

Thank you to Bonnier Zaffre and Netgalley for this review copy. This was my honest opinion. 

It became apparent to me quite early on Monday that this would be the runaway leader from last weeks vote, and I can certainly see why so many of you are raving about it. It really is a contemporary thriller that keeps you on your toes. Thanks to everyone that voted for it, and please do see this weeks selection and have your say again.