Book Review - The Perfect Couple by Jackie Kabler - #HolidayReading Mexico

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Amazon UK

Title: The Perfect Couple

Author: Jackie Kabler

Format reviewed: Ebook

Source: Netgalley

Publisher: One More Chapter

Publication Date: 25th June 2020

Rating: 5 Stars

The perfect couple…or the perfect lie?
A year and a half ago, Gemma met the love of her life, Danny. Since then, their relationship has been like something out of a dream. But one Friday evening, Gemma returns home to find Danny is nowhere to be seen.

After two days with no word from her husband, Gemma turns to the police. She is horrified by what she discovers – a serial killer is on the loose in Bristol. When she sees the photos of the victims she is even more stunned…they all look just like Danny.

But, the police aren’t convinced by Gemma’s story. Why has no one apart from Gemma seen or heard from Danny in weeks? Why is there barely a trace of him in their flat? Is she telling them the truth, or are there more secrets and lies in this marriage than meets the eye?

Jackie Kabler is going from strength to strength with each book she writes. 

This is a story that kept throwing in mini OMG hooks to keep you turning the pages, and has me second guessing everything. 

In fact the book is written from two perspectives, Gemma who is reporting her husband missing, and the police, who are already looking into two murders of men that look quite similar, and have no idea what to think when it turns out Gemma's husband also looks like the two victims. 

As I was reading each point of view in alternating chapters, my thoughts as to what exactly was going on flip flopped continually.  Such was how convinced I was by both viewpoints that I couldn't really work out which may be accurate. 

Much less just how the murderer was or where the missing husband may be or why. 

The Perfect Couple screwed with my head, in a way that had me reading on, unable to put the book down, as I needed to know the truth!

Very addictive and compelling read. 

Thank you to One More Chapter on Netgalley for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily 

Book Review - Am I Guilty? by Jackie Kabler

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Amazon UK

Title: Am I Guilty?

Author: Jackie Kabler

Format reviewed: Ebook

Source: Netgalley

Publisher: Killer Reads

Publication Date: 19th April 2019

Rating: 5 Stars

A mother’s job is to protect her child…
But everyone makes mistakes sometimes
Gripping, exciting and emotional, this book will grab you from the first page and refuse to let you go until the final chapter!

I never thought it would happen to me…

One moment I had it all – a gorgeous husband, a beautiful home, a fulfilling career and two adorable children. The next, everything came crashing down around me.

They said it was my fault. They said I’m the worst mother in the world. And even though I can’t remember what happened that day, they wouldn’t lie to me. These are my friends, my family, people I trust.

But then why do I have this creeping sensation that something is wrong? Why do I feel like people are keeping secrets? Am I really as guilty as they say? And if I’m not, what will happen when the truth comes out…?

Well I wasn't expecting that ending! I was so convinced part way through that I knew the gist of what had happened, and some of my guesses were correct but many other things occurred too much to my delight. 

I was completely gripped in this story, told from various viewpoints, about a mother's worst nightmare. 

There were times during this that I suspected everyone, at other times I was completely convinced that Thea was truly guilty - it was incredibly hard to know who to believe. 

It also can't work out how to phrase anything that I want to say about this story, in light of what I know now about how it all ends.  I suspect its best if you read the blurb,  and read the book for yourself.  You won't be disappointed  - it truly is a gripping story. 

I read the book in just a couple of sittings, even reading in bed when my eyes were feeling really blurry as I just wanted to read another chapter or two... but then there was another mini surprise that made me want to keep turning the pages even past my blatant need to sleep. 

I had read some cosy mysteries previously from Jackie Kabler, and enjoyed them, but this has really stepped up a gear and is a full blown psychological drama - it crept under my skin, and may continue to cling onto me for a while after finishing it. 

Definitely an author I want to read more from, and wow with that ending, I am very very curious what Jackie Kabler has in store for us all next! 

Many thanks to Netgalley and Killer Reads for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily. 

Book Review - The Development by Jackie Kabler

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Amazon UK

Title: The Development

Author: Jackie Kabler

Format reviewed: Ebook

Source: Author supplied copy

Publisher: Accent Press

Publication Date: 10th May 2018

Rating: 4 Stars

After a stressful week, TV reporter Cora Baxter is ready for a quiet weekend. What she isn't counting on is witnessing the shocking death of a young woman on her way home.

Cora discovers that seventeen-year-old Leanne has been protesting against a new housing development, angering the powerful establishment. Leanne’s death is ruled a suicide but, when puzzling information comes to light, Cora decides to investigate further.

She might not know what an unscrupulous businessman, a suspended police officer and hate-mail sending neighbours have to do with the case – but she does know there is a news story there.

With her eccentric camera crew on hand to help, can Cora work out what happened in the days before Leanne’s death? And was it really suicide after all?

As it had been so long since I read the previous book in the series it took me a few chapters to get back into the swing of these characters and how they interact.  There were early references to the previous books but my memory must be failing as they weren't enough to trigger specifics in my mind. 

As a result I think its fairly safe to say this is a book that work as a standalone, and it a great humorous mystery.  There are moments in the story that are just completely hilarious, while they are attempting an investigation into a suicide, which has really affected Cora. 

Let's face it if a dead body fell onto your car while you were driving along you may start to feel connected to the person and wonder what drove them to kill themselves.  Due to the pacing of the book and how quickly I was reading it, I didn't really come up with any theories myself, but was interested in how Cora's investigation was proceeding. 

What I think though makes these books really special is the amount of imagination that must go into coming up with many different stories for breakfast TV, that Cora and her crew can get around the country to report on.  They go from the relatively normal to the completely bonkers! 

The mystery in this book unfortunately didn't hook me as much as I would like, I think it was the topic at the heart of it that just didn't set me on fire. I was curious how Cora would approach it, but it just didn't completely intrigue me.   I also found some of the smaller changers of perspective to be a bit random, although they did make more sense in the last few chapters. 

Despite that overall I found The Development to be a good book, not the best in the series, but a perfectly enjoyable read that I devoured really fast. 

Thank you to Jackie Kabler for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily. 

Guest Post about The Development by Jackie Kabler - Blog Tour

As a writer you’re often asked about where the inspiration for your books comes from. My answer is generally very simple – from driving! I live in Gloucestershire and work in London, which is a four- to five-hour round trip, and I do that four times a week. That’s a lot of driving, and a lot of thinking time. I love listening to true crime podcasts as I drive, and the inspiration for my last book, The Deadline, came from listening to a podcast about an alleged miscarriage of justice – a man locked up for a crime he always maintained he didn’t commit. It got me thinking – what if that happened to somebody I know? What if a close friend of mine was charged with murder, and she said she was innocent? Would I believe her, if all the evidence was against her? How far would I go to help her clear her name? That became the plot for a book, when TV reporter Cora Baxter has to try to prove that one of her best friends is innocent of murder.

I also get inspired by the scenery and buildings I see as I drive, and that was very much the case with my new book, The Development. I live north of Bristol, and so when friends and family come to visit, Bristol airport is the most convenient. I was driving there to pick someone up one day, and suddenly started forming the plot of a novel in my head as I drove under the beautiful Clifton Suspension Bridge. It’s a stunning construction, but sadly is also a well-known suicide spot, so I started thinking “what if some poor person was up there right now, planning to jump? What if I saw it happen? What if they landed right in front of my car?”. (I’m not sure if everyone’s mind works like this – maybe it’s just the mind of a crime writer!)

And then, I pushed the idea a little further. What if the death turned out to be suspicious? What if somebody else was up there on the bridge too? What if there were odd circumstances leading up to all this? What if it wasn’t actually suicide at all, but murder, made to look like suicide? Those musings became the beginnings of The Development, which starts with Cora Baxter driving home from work and witnessing the horrible death of a young woman. I suppose a lot of writers work like this, irrespective of genre – what if this happened? What if that happened? What if somebody did this? What would the outcome be? “What ifs” definitely help pass the time on a long, tedious drive!

After three Cora Baxter books, I’ve now started work on something a little different, more of a psychological suspense novel, and that too was inspired by something I was listening to as I was driving to work. A two-hundred-and-twenty-mile commute may not be for everyone but for me it provides plot lines for my books, so long may it last! 

Thank you Jackie for this great post. I can't wait to read The Development and see what happens next with Cora Baxter. 

After a stressful week, TV reporter Cora Baxter is ready for a quiet weekend. But what she hadn’t counted on was witnessing the shocking death of a young woman on her way home. She discovers seventeen-year-old Leanne had been protesting against a new housing development, angering the powerful establishment. Leanne’s death is ruled a suicide, but when puzzling information comes to light, Cora decides to investigate further.

She doesn’t know what an unscrupulous businessman, a suspended police officer and hate-mail sending neighbours have to do with the case – but she knows there is a news story there.

With her eccentric camera crew on hand to help, can Cora tie the strands of Leanne’s case together – or will other forces interfere?

The Development is the third in the Cora Baxter Mysteries series.

Links

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36657676-the-development?ac=1&from_search=true

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Development-Cora-Baxter-Mysteries-Book-ebook/dp/B079V5Q2GW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1524823356&sr=8-1&keywords=the+development+jackie+kabler

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Author bio: Jackie Kabler is a journalist, TV presenter and author. She spent twenty years as a TV news reporter for GMTV, ITV and BBC news, and now works as a presenter for shopping channel QVC and is author of the Cora Baxter Mysteries, a series of  murder mysteries set in a television newsroom. The Development is her third novel. Jackie lives in Gloucestershire with her husband, who is a GP. 

Website jackiekabler.com

Twitter @jackiekabler

Facebook www.facebook.com/jackiekablerauthor

Instagram @officialjackiekabler

Book Review - The Deadline by Jackie Kabler

Amazon UK

Title: The Deadline

Author: Jackie Kabler

Format reviewed: Ebook

Source: Author supplied review copy

Publisher: Accent Press

Publication Date: 20th October 2016

Rating: 5 Stars

Cora Baxter is back - and this time, she's facing the most important deadline of her career…

When TV reporter Cora Baxter attends the scene of a murder in a London park, she's horrified to discover the victim is someone she knows – and devastated when one of her best friends is charged with the crime. Suddenly the fun-filled life of Cora and her eccentric camera crew takes a darker turn. Cora is convinced that her friend is innocent, but with seemingly solid evidence, the police investigation team – reluctantly led by Cora's boyfriend DCI Adam Bradberry – believe the case is closed. With a trail of clues that leads all the way to New York, can Cora find out the truth before the trial begins – or is it already too late?

The Deadline is the second in the hugely popular Cora Baxter Mysteries series by acclaimed broadcaster Jackie Kabler.

The Deadline is a fabulous mix between a mystery with a very strong lead female character, who won't take know for an answer and is utterly convinced by her best friends innocence, and a story with some brilliantly timed moments of comic relief. 

With regards the comedy, there were moments I almost burst out laughing on my commute, in public, as the scene had tickled me so much. Most of the best humour involved Cora making slight gaffs while on camera, as well as one great typo in an email to a hotel, by one of her colleagues, and then there are some great malapropisms! 

The question this book asks, is would you stand by your best friend, and her pleading her innocence, when all the evidence puts her at the scene of the crime with potential motive and evidence. Well Cora Baxter is loyal to the end and sets herself a deadline to prove her friend's innocence, with the help of a group of their friends. She struggles with the fact the police think its an open and shut case, complete with her boyfriend being in charge of the police investigation. 

I don't think it matters what outlandish thing you think may have happened as you read, I can assure you that unless you are a master at working out fictional mysteries, this will shock you. I did have a complete OMG moment, as I hadn't seen something coming. 

This is the second book in the Cora Baxter mystery series, and it can definitely be read as a standalone, although the first was excellent too. I say this because there is a year between the books, and I don't have full recollection but didn't feel lost at all, so sure people that haven't read The Dead Dog Day wouldn't have a problem either. 

The Deadline is a fantastic second book, from author Jackie Kabler, and it kept me reading longer than my lunch break allowed, and had me wanting to get back to the book all afternoon, which just shows how much it was playing on my mind. 

If you like humour and like your crime and mysteries to not be too gruesome and hardcore then this is definitely a book to be read. 

Thank you to Jackie Kabler for this review copy. This was my honest opinion. 

Book Review - The Dead Dog Day by Jackie Kabler - Blog Tour

Amazon UK

Title: The Dead Dog Day - A Cora Baxter Mystery

Author: Jackie Kabler

Format reviewed: Paperback

Source: Author supplied reivew copy

Publisher: Accent Press

Publication Date: 22nd October 2015

Rating: 4 Stars

When your Monday morning begins with a dead dog and ends with a dead boss, you know it’s going to be one of those days. And breakfast TV reporter Cora Baxter has already had the weekend from hell, after the man she’d planned a fabulous future with unceremoniously dumped her. 

Now Cora’s much-hated boss has been murdered – the list of suspects isn’t exactly short, but as the enquiry continues the trail leads frighteningly close to home. Why is Cora’s rival, glamorous, bitchy newsreader Alice Lomas, so devastated by their boss’s death? What dark secrets are Cora’s camera crew hiding? And why has her now ex-boyfriend vanished? 

The race to stop the killer striking again is on…

The Dead Dog Day is an entertaining book, that became compulsive, unputdownable reading as it progressed. 

Cora is a breakfast TV reporter, who travels up and down the country reporting on anything from the serious to the ridiculous. She was at the main studios on the fateful morning, where to start with one of the guests, a dog, died before it was at the studio. Jeanette the boss tried to insist they just continue with the dead dog on air (in a series of conversations that sets the tone for the humour that is present throughout the book). Shortly afterwards Jeanette is found dead, murdered to be precise. 

Occasionally towards the ends of chapters there would be an aside from the murderer although I can't imagine who would have guessed who it is, and especially the motivation, until it was revealed. At least I had no idea. 

Various chapters were either focusing on Cora and her life, Benjamin her new boyfriend, and Adam the detective running the murder investigation (who Cora may also fancy). 

Work on the case is very slow, and soon questions are asked over various of Cora's colleagues who are acting more oddly than before. 

However it wasn't necessarily the mystery aspect that gripped me from the start. It was the indepth details of Cora's job, and the sheer range of stories she was expected to report from. It was a regular occurrence for her to have to be a ridiculous O'Clock, to travel 3+ hours by car, sometimes just in search of a specific weather condition, and then be ready to be live on air during the broadcast. 

I believe this must be where Jackie Kabler's TV knowledge comes in, and everything about the outside broadcast teams sounds very feasible and realistic, and you really had a good idea about the circumstances these teams work in. 

There were efforts to step up the tension, and as they were introduced, I think it was then, that I started wanting to read more and more of this story, to see the final outcomes. 

I am really hoping the Cora is going to be a recurring character of Jackie's, as you get such a great feel for her various sets of friends and colleagues, I can imagine this being a fantastic series. 

As it is I found it to be a very entertaining, funny at times, and definitely gripping story, that I loved reading.  An excellent debut novel, and a fabulous start to Jackie's writing career. 

Thank you so much to Jackie Kabler for offering me a review copy. This was my honest review. 

Guest Post - Jackie Kabler on The perils of ice-skating...!

The final part of my debut novel, The Dead Dog Day, took somewhat longer to write than I'd anticipated, because I had to type it with just one hand. This was because last December I, in my infinite wisdom, decided that it would be a marvellous idea to go ice-skating with one of my oldest friends. How fabulously festive it will be, I thought! A lovely mid-morning skate on the gorgeous rink outside the Natural History Museum in London, followed by a yummy lunch in our favourite little Italian restaurant. Sounds fabulous, right? That is, until you realise that we're talking about me, a woman so clumsy she can barely cross a room without walking into a wall.

Hence, fifteen minutes after stepping onto the ice, I'm being escorted off it again by two paramedics, my right wrist so badly broken I can't even look at it without wanting to pass out. Five hours later, my oh-so-sweet and tolerant friend and I finally leave the nearest hospital A&E department, where I have had my wrist bones pulled back into vaguely the right position by three doctors while I sucked frantically on gas and air. But the wrist-pulling wasn't enough, so a few days later (two days before Christmas Eve) I am back in hospital having surgery to insert three pins to fix it properly. 

I went straight back to work on Boxing Day (I'm a presenter on shopping channel QVC) with an extremely painful arm in plaster, artfully disguised by a variety of drapey scarves. But because of the weird position my hand was now fixed in, effectively I was now unable to use my right hand for anything at all. It was surprising how quickly I adapted - things that at first seemed totally impossible with one hand, like inserting contact lenses and using hair straighteners, were soon being done, slowly and awkwardly. And then, of course, I had a book to finish, and a deadline to meet, and being one-handed simply couldn't be allowed to interfere with that. So, for two long months, I slowly typed the final chapters of my novel with just my left hand. 

Ten months on, the right one is still slightly wonky and doesn't work properly, and I'm still having physiotherapy to try to correct it. But at least typing isn't such a slow process these days. And no, I won't be going ice-skating again this winter. I think we'll just head straight for the Italian restaurant this time...much safer!

The Dead Dog Day

Amazon link

 When your Monday morning begins with a dead dog and ends with a dead boss, you know it’s going to be one of those days. And breakfast TV reporter Cora Baxter has already had the weekend from hell, after the man she’d planned a fabulous future with unceremoniously dumped her. 

Now Cora’s much-hated boss has been murdered – the list of suspects isn’t exactly short, but as the enquiry continues the trail leads frighteningly close to home. Why is Cora’s rival, glamorous, bitchy newsreader Alice Lomas, so devastated by their boss’s death? What dark secrets are Cora’s camera crew hiding? And why has her now ex-boyfriend vanished? 

The race to stop the killer striking again is on…

About Jackie Kabler

Jackie Kabler worked as a newspaper reporter and then in television news for twenty years, including nearly a decade on GMTV. She later appeared on BBC and ITV news, presented a property show for Sky, hosted sports shows on Setanta Sports News and worked as a media trainer for the Armed Forces. She is now a presenter on shopping channel QVC and her first novel, The Dead Dog Day, is now available for pre-order on Amazon ahead of its release on 22nd October. 



Find Jackie on Facebook - www.facebook.com/jackiekablerauthor
And on Twitter - @jackiekabler 
And on her website - www.jackiekabler.com

Thank you so much Jackie for sharing that painful sounding experience. I hope your right hand fully recovers, and that in time you may be willing to look at an ice-rink again! Although I suspect if that had been me, I would have probably broken both ankles to go with the wrists!