Book Review - Dead Hope by Nicky Wells - #AroundTheUKIn144Books #EastYorkshire - Blog Tour

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Title: Dead Hope

Author: Nicky Wells

Format reviewed: Ebook

Source: Author supplied review copy

Publisher: Self Published

Publication Date: 23rd February 2017

Rating: 5 Stars

**A thrilling fusion of crime, suspense, and a touch of romance**

Cat Hope doesn’t want to go to prison. She needs a job, and she needs it fast: judge’s orders.

Kay Mahon, office worker by day and hacker by night, is on the run from a past life that he’d rather not remember.

When their paths cross, they begin to investigate the truth behind the deaths of Cat’s parents, the successful rock star couple Jackie and Adam Hope. Little do they know that their quest is putting Cat in grave danger.

If you asked me to suggest a genre for this book there is no way I would be able to pin point it. There are elements of romance, suspense, women's fiction, thriller, crime and mystery in it, it is some of all of those and yet not one part really takes over. 

This is a story that is so well put together it keeps you reading, from the time Cat Hope receives her rather unusual sentencing at the start of the book, to the investigation she carries out into her parents deaths almost 20 years on, when she is finally able to start questioning things. 

There is are romantic elements with Kay, who is a top notch computer hacker who works at the company that Cat is working for her in her first ever job. There are also sorts of bits of high action and ways to get adrenalin pumping as everything comes together. 

I'll admit I did have a fairly strong inkling for a lot of the book as to some of what the outcome would be, but actually some of my theories were more wild than what actually occurred. Regardless I really enjoyed the journey and all of the story telling and description. 

I found that Dead Hope was a book that intrigued me from the opening and as it proceeded I became more and more gripped, until I could barely put it down. 

This is to my knowledge Nicky Well's first book that deals with more thriller like elements, and it has been written really well. It won't necessarily appeal to die hard crime/thriller fans, but for those that like those harder hitting elements in with their story, you have come to the right book. 

It starts off not sedately, but by appearing to be a completely different sort of story to what it turns into. From a book about two people that are both hiding things, but have realised they may have some sort of connection, and happen to work together, into something that had my heart racing, as the danger level ramps up. 

I thoroughly enjoyed Dead Hope from start to finish, and found it was just the book I needed to get myself out of a slightly reading slump, that I was falling into. It has completely revitalised my enjoyment of reading, and I can only thank Nicky Wells for that. 

Thank you so much to Nicky Well for this copy of the book which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily. 

About Nicky Wells: Love & Thrills

Nicky Wells writes captivating romance and breathtaking thrillers featuring famous (or infamous!) feisty heroes and extraordinary villains. DEAD HOPE is her eighth book and the first published novel in her “Wake Up Dead” themed thriller series, with the next two books scheduled for release through the course of 2017 and 2018. Nicky has previously published seven works of romantic fiction both with US publishing house, Sapphire Star Publishing, and independently.

Born in Germany, Nicky moved to the United Kingdom in 1993 and currently lives in Lincoln with her husband and their two boys. She loves listening to rock music, dancing, and eating lobsters. When she’s not writing, she’s hopelessly addicted to reading crime novels by the truck load.

Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Romantic Novelists’ Association | Sapphire Star Publishing | Amazon | Goodreads | Pinterest | Google+

GIVEAWAY

Prize 1: £10.00 Amazon voucher and 1 signed bookmark

Prize 2: £5.00 Amazon voucher and 1 pen

Prize 3: 1 mug, 1 signed bookmark, 1 pen

Prize 4: 1 mug

5 runner up prizes: signed bookmarks

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Guest Post - All Roads Lead to Rome by Nicky Wells - Rome Week

When I was younger, I used to hang out in Rome with my friends. That sounds cool, huh? Like I had the jetsetting lifestyle and all that. You couldn’t be more wrong. “Rome” was a café-bar-cum-ice-cream-parlour down the road from where I lived. It opened up one day when I was about eleven. Overnight, the front of a pretty ordinary 1960s shop acquired a lime-wash, marble pillars, and a green vine trailing its way towards the first-floor windows. The marble was fake, but the vine was real.

And inside—wow. The old folks said the place had some kind of identity crisis, didn’t know what it wanted to be: Café? Bar? Ice-cream parlour? But my friends and I, we thought it was marvellous. As you walked in, you were greeted by a large counter groaning under the weight of pastries. Further back, the bar was made of shiny dark mahogany, with glass shelves full of Italian beers, wines and fancy liqueurs. At the far end, the ice cream counter offered flavours of “gelato” that nobody had ever seen before or knew how to pronounce. Stracciatella soon became my favourite.

The place was furnished with rickety, mismatched wooden tables and chairs without table cloths, and the walls were beige-washed. I say that because the colour was irregular, like a white-wash, except it wasn’t white and it wasn’t brown. It should have looked dirty and horrible, but it was amazing, especially with all the hanging baskets of flowers and the artful patterns of tiny coloured tiles and mirrors.

Pretty soon, Rome was where we congregated to do our homework. Rome was where we went on our first dates. Rome was where we drowned our first heartaches in ice cream. And Rome was where we had our first, totally illegal, taste of alcohol when Joe—short for Giovanni—made us his special Limoncello ice cream cocktail on our fourteenth birthdays. It was heavy on the ice cream, and the Limoncello only made a token guest appearance, but we loved it.

Joe was the beating heart and soul of Rome. He and his wife Anna owned the place. They were from Italy, and their English was broken (if you wanted to be generous) to non-existent (if you were brutally honest). Yet somehow, we managed to communicate, and it was Joe who listened to our woes, Joe who advised us how to fix arguments and bikes, and Joe who straightened out our mathematical confusion. In Rome, we listened to Italian music, twisted our tongues around some basic Italian phrases, tried out Italian coffee, and feasted on Italian pastries and bread.

And then, as abruptly as it had opened, Rome disappeared. One day, the place was boarded up, and Joe and Anna were gone. Just like that. 

Needless to say, we were bereft. Tears were shed and desperate attempts were made to trace Joe and Anna, but it was as though they’d never existed. The whispers started—about how Joe and Anna had been illegals, had been spies, criminals on the run, mobsters, you name it.

Me, I was grieving and angry. How could Joe and Anna leave like that, without a word, like our friendship didn’t mean a thing? In time, the grief and anger turned to sweet nostalgia. If it hadn’t been for Rome, I’d have probably never thought of leaving the village. But the glimpse of another world proved irresistible, and I applied to uni in London. I became a translator and interpreter, Italian being one of my six languages, and I travelled a lot. It was because of Rome that I saw the world before I settled back in London with a husband and—later—two kids.

Imagine my surprise then when twenty years later, on a business trip to Rome—yes, the actual place—I stumbled across a place called “GiovAnna’s”. Marble pillars outside, a vine trailing up the front, and, just visible from my vantage point on the road, a counter groaning under the weight of pastries.

I stood there, on the Vicolo dei Modelli, just round the corner from the Trevi Fountain, in the glaring heat of noon in the middle of July, and time and space slipped away from me. My heartbeat skittered and fluttered as flashbacks assaulted me hard and fast. Could it be?

Hesitantly, I stepped over the threshold. The inside was larger, much larger, than I remembered—but of course, I didn’t remember this place at all. Yet, the furniture and beige-wash and colourful tiles were all the same. The place was busy, evidently popular with tourists, and my eyes scanned the bar impatiently. Disappointment lodged in my throat when the barman turned out to a young woman, and the ice-cream server a teenager.

“Mia Bella! At last!”

I nearly jumped out of my skin when a hand alighted on my shoulder and I found myself being gently spun around. I locked eyes with Joe, a much older version of himself, but his voice hadn’t changed.

“Mia Bella,” he repeated. “You found us. What took you so long?”

I shook my head. “Why did you leave? You didn’t even say goodbye!”

“You learned our language!” Joe broke into a big smile at my Italian phrases and continued our conversation in his native tongue. “And I’m sorry we left. That’s a long story. Come.”

He took my hand and led me towards a table at the back. He sat me down, ordered some food, and summoned Anna. And at last the story emerged. As a young woman, Anna had witnessed a vicious crime. She had given testimony at trial, and then she and her husband had fled the country that very same night after a policeman warned them they wouldn’t be safe. They went to France, but that wasn’t far enough. Therefore, they decided to hide where no-one would expect them, namely in rainy old England. They picked an obscure place in the middle of nowhere and poured what little money they had in a small eatery. They laid low for six years, but they got ratted out again. They went to Denmark next, and then to Hungary. It was only a year ago that they finally received the all-clear and settled back in Rome.

“It was worth it,” Anna offered quietly. “Justice was done, we are still alive, and we made many friends along the way. And now we have this.” She made an effusive hand gesture and smiled.

“And this.” Joe pointed towards a pinboard covered in smiling faces, all with names and dates. “Our friends, they keep finding us, and they tell us stories of their lives. Now’s your turn,” Joe smiled. “What brought you to Rome?”

What a fascinating story Nicky, and its really made me smile. I love that you have shared this with us as part of Rome Week!

Cat Hope doesn’t want to go to prison. She needs a job, and she needs it fast: judge’s orders.

Kay Mahon, office worker by day and hacker by night, is on the run from a past life that he’d rather not remember.

When their paths cross, they discover that the night that derailed Cat’s future nineteen long years ago also changed the path of Kay’s life. Confused and intrigued, they begin to investigate the truth behind the deaths of the successful rock star couple Jackie and Adam Hope. Little do they know that their quest is putting Cat in grave danger. 

Purchase Dead Hope on Amazon UK or Amazon US

About Nicky Wells: Love & Thrills

Nicky Wells writes captivating romance and breathtaking thrillers featuring famous (or infamous!) feisty heroes and extraordinary villains. DEAD HOPE is her eighth book and the first published novel in her “Wake Up Dead” themed thriller series, with the next two books scheduled for release through the course of 2017 and 2018. Nicky has previously published seven works of romantic fiction both with US publishing house, Sapphire Star Publishing, and independently.

Born in Germany, Nicky moved to the United Kingdom in 1993 and currently lives in Lincoln with her husband and their two boys. She loves listening to rock music, dancing, and eating lobsters. When she’s not writing, she’s hopelessly addicted to reading crime novels by the truck load.

Nicky’s books: Sophie’s Turn | Sophie’s Run | Sophie’s Encore | Spirits of Christmas

| Fallen for Rock | Fairy Tale in New York | Seven Years Bad Sex

Join Nicky: Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Amazon | Goodreads | Pinterest | Google+

Promo - 7 Years Bad Sex by Nicky Wells

One wedding. One curse?  Disaster ever after…

A seven-years-bad-sex curse? Surely not! Yet something went wrong when rock singer Casey and drummer Alex got married on that beautiful yacht anchored off St Tropez in the south of France. Something went badly wrong. For even on their wedding night, the young couple discovers a complete and somewhat surprising inability to make love. Muddling through their honeymoon with a string of thin excuses for their predicament, the lovers defer finding a solution (and panicking) until the return to their home in London. After all, they married for life and to make rock music, not for the love of sex. Right?

But when they resume life as normal in London, all hell breaks loose. Increasingly frantic in their quest for release, the unhappy newlyweds embark on a string of hilarious and occasionally harmful antics that drives them, their band, and an assortment of random strangers to the brink of despair. But it ain’t over ‘til it’s over or, in this case… it ain’t over ‘til the newlyweds sing.

About Nicky Wells

Ultimate rock chick author Nicky Wells writes romance with rock stars—because there’s no better romantic hero than a golden-voiced bad boy with a secret soft heart and a magical stage presence!

Nicky’s books offer glitzy, glamorous romance with rock stars—imagine Bridget Jones ROCKS Notting Hill! If you’ve ever had a crush on any kind of celebrity, you’ll connect with Nicky’s heroes and their leading ladies.

Born in Germany, Nicky moved to the United Kingdom in 1993 and currently lives in Lincoln with her husband and their two boys. Nicky loves listening to rock music, dancing, and eating lobsters. When she’s not writing, she’s a wife, mother, occasional knitter, and ad-hoc radio show presenter. Rock on!

Nicky’s books: Sophie’s Turn | Sophie’s Run | Sophie’s Encore | Spirits of Christmas
| Fallen for Rock | Fairy Tale in New York | 7 Years Bad Sex

Join Nicky: Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Romantic Novelists’ Association | Sapphire Star Publishing | Amazon | Goodreads | Pinterest | Google+

Did you know? There’s a single out now by Nicky’s fictional rock band Tuscq come to life! “Love Me Better” is available for download from Amazon, iTunes and many other places. 

JOIN THE PROMO PARTY ON 20TH JUNE!

YOU CAN FIND THE PARTY HERE - https://www.facebook.com/events/1000603729951759/

There will be fun and games, Prizes and lots of laughs. Starting online at 9am on 20th June!