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Blog Tour Review - Nocturne With Gaslamps by Matthew Francis

Blog Tour Review - Nocturne With Gaslamps by Matthew Francis Hastings Wimbury has always dreamt of playing Hamlet, but for now he works as a theatre gas-boy. Here, he tends to a gas chandelier so powerful it creates its own weather, and limelight machines that can throw a shadow onto a wall ten miles away. When Hastings suddenly disappears, his fiancée Flora sets out to find him with the help of Cassie, her rival in love who is more preoccupied with the ghosts terrorising the streets of London. Soon total darkness is imposed upon the city, and they realise that something far more sinister is at hand… Ladies aren’t supposed to solve mysteries, but this is a matter of life and death.  Nocturne With Gaslamps is a very curious book. It's a crime fiction mystery, and from the blurb I assumed it would be a hunt for a missing person, but Hastings Wimbury doesn't go missing until halfway through the book, and as he's one of the three point-of-view characters, it's hard to reall
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Review - A Window Breaks by C M Ewan

 Review - A Window Breaks by C M Ewan

It's 2am.

You are safely asleep in bed.

A noise wakes you.

You stir, unsure why, and turn to your partner.

Then you hear it. Glass. Crunching underfoot.

Someone is inside your home.

You can stay and fight. Or run.

What would you do?



A Window Breaks is a really gripping mystery thriller!

It starts off as a novel about grief and loss. A family have lost their teenage son in a terrible accident and we see the harsh consequences of that. These are recurring themes throughout the novel, as we see relationships strained, silence and distance growing between people who love each other but feel that their relationship has changed and don't know how to address it, and how it affects their daughter. Throw in an additional mugging and you have feelings of guilt and inadequacy to deal with, as our POV character is a father hurting from being unable to protect his wife and daughter. Believing that some time away from everything might help them rebuild their family, they head to a remote Scottish lodge, that turns out to be very luxurious with a particularly high level of security around it. 

Then comes something straight out of every father's worst nightmare. Things are just starting to go better with his wife, Rachel, it's the middle of the night, and there's the sound of a window breaking downstairs, footsteps, maybe voices. From this moment on the book moves at a breakneck pace and this family try to stay one move ahead of these home invaders while trying to figure out what is actually going on.

The pacing worked really well for me. Just as I was starting to get tired of all of the running around in the woods, wondering if there'd be another half a book of that, everything shifted and we started to learn more. Deeper plots and mysteries slowly unfold, drawing me in totally to the drama and leaving me wondering about justice and revenge and what any of us would be prepared to do to keep our loved ones safe.

🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑

A Window Breaks by C. M. Ewan is out now, published by Pan Macmillan.

I was given a review copy via Netgalley in return for an honest review.

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