Audiobook Review - The Man Who Fell From The Sky

This was an impulse decision when I saw this on NetGalley. I was planning not to request anything to review on NetGalley as my TBR is getting a little out of hand. But there was something about this that caught my attention and made me hit request. Maybe it's the Murderino in me that makes me listen to true crime podcasts such as My Favourite Murder, Tenfold More Wicked & Criminalia (and the podcasts you guys [including my sister] recommend such as The Missing Crypto Queen and The Lazarus Heist). Maybe it's because I went "Oh, this sounds good". Or maybe it's because a man fell out of a plane and NO ONE NOTICED!

Title and Author: The Man Who Fell From The Sky: The Bizarre Life and Death of 20s Tycoon Alfred Loewenstien by William Norris

Publisher: CamCat Books

Bought, Gifted or Borrowed: Audiobook gifted by publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review/reaction

Captain Alfred Loewenstein was known as many things during his glamorous and gaudy life. A multi-millionaire that's a maker and loser of his fortunes (and others around him). But all that wealth didn't save him one July evening in 1928 when he boarded his aircraft with six others to fly from England to Brussels and, halfway through the flight, he vanished. Everyone says that he fell through an exit door that he mistaken for the toilet.

But things don't add up about his death. The story the pilots and the other passengers don't exactly match up or make sense, and the officials don't seem to look too hard into the death. Many suspect that his fall was a simple accident, while others wonder if he had committed suicide. And others... others wonder if he was pushed or thrown off the plane. But who would do that, and why?

That's what investigative journalist William Norris decides to do in the mid-80s...

Thick As Thieves Cover Reveal!

I'm going back into the world of Aster Valley. It's been a long time coming since I audiobooked both Right as Raine and the prequel novella, Winter Waites. And I have read a few other Lucy Lennox's titles (Hostile Takeover and Hijacked, the latter co-authored with May Archer), but I always wanted to come back to Aster Valley and, out of all the titles in the series, Thick As Thieves was the one that always grabbed my attention. 

I will put the blurb down below (as I want you to see why I'm excited to read this - yes, it's has friends-to-lovers troupe, don't judge me too harshly), but I am thrilled to be involved in the cover reveal of this! And, hopefully (if I get my ducks in a row), my review for this will be up in the coming few weeks! 

But first, the blurb (as taken from Goodreads):

Julian:

I've been in love with my best friend since forever. Okay, fine. Like, kindgergarten. It started out platonic, obviously, but then became... nope. Still platonic. The problem is that Parker Ellis has been straight since forever. And that makes it difficult to convince him the two of us are meant to be together.

And now there's no point. All is lost. He's gone and gotten engaged to his high-school sweetheart which means I have to grin and bear it while pretending to be the happy, supportive best man while he prepares to commit his life to a woman I can't even fault. She's great. We've all been friends forever. I know he'll be happy with Erin, just not... just not as happy as he could be with me.

Parker:

I'll admit. Sometimes I press the easy button. Like when Julian Thick had offered me half his sandwich back in grade school after noticing I didn't have any food. Or when I'd needed a date to homecoming in tenth grade and Erin told me she was it. Or when I'd used the one thing that came easy to me, skiing, to get my college tuition paid for. Or when Erin had showed back up in my life six months ago and told it was time to marry and start a family...

But for the first time in my life I'm facing something that's not at all easy. It's my wedding weekend and I've just been left at the altar. Not only that, but when my best friend whisks me away to drown my sorrows in a snowy cabin in Aster Valley, I accidentally discover Julian's been keeping secrets. Big secrets.

The kind of secrets that lead to hot experimental kisses in front of a blazing fire, tentative physical exploration in a way I'd never imagined before, and the kind of intimate, true confessions I'd never even dreamed of between me and the one person who's always been my true home.

But after twenty-plus years of thinking of Jules as my friend without benefits, is it truly possible to change who we are to each other? There's no easy button this time, but I'm willing to do the work. I only wonder if Julian is ready to trust I really mean it.

Blog Tour Review - The Revenge of the Beast

Ok, truth time. This blog tour was meant to happen just before Christmas, but things happened (no one's fault. Barring technology. Technology was the enemy for this tour!) so, the tour was pushed back. But, when I first discovered this tour was happening, I jumped on it! If you followed me in 2020 (One of the Many Years That Must Not Be Named), you would know one of my fave reads was The Beast and the Bethany by Jack Meggitt-Phillips. It was just such as delightful and delicious read, with hints of Roald Dahl and silliness throughout. So, of course, I wanted to read/audiobook the sequel, The Revenge of the Beast. Hence why I jumped on this tour!

Now, I will admit that when I did go into this, I was fearful that this wouldn’t be as fun as the first, but I took the risk anyway. 

Title And Author: The Beast and The Bethany: Revenge of the Beast by Jack Meggitt-Phillips (Illustrations by Isabelle Follath)
Publisher: Farshore
Bought, Borrowed or Gifted: eProof gifted by publisher by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review/reaction for blog tour, and audiobook borrowed from local library via BorrowBox
Length: 288 Pages or 5 Hours and 5 Minutes

Taking place a few weeks after The Beast and The Bethany, the youthful-looking 511 Ebenezer Tweezer is trying to come to terms of life without the Beast. But he has The Bethany, once notorious prankster, who is keeping him on his toes. She and her parrot friend, Claudette, are determined that she and Ebenezer must de-Beast their lives and do some do-gooding. But both are finding this trickier than they first thought: Ebenezer is missing the gifts that the Beast vomited, Bethany is finding that her prankster past is making it hard for her to do some good, and both aren’t exactly sure how to be good people.

Plus, there’s something off with Claudette. Even since she ate the Beast, she’s been … well, not herself.

Changing Reading Plans

And now, we enter my reading in 2022! I didn't realise that taking a longer Christmas/New Year blog break would push my write-ups back. And I hope to hit the ground running with a bunch of reading that will show you guys where I wish/hoped to take The Pewter Wolf Reads this year. 

Alas, my first planned book of 2022 - Peril at End House by Agatha Christie - ended in me quitting/DNFing it at around the 50%. I do plan to go back one day (maybe as an audiobook) and I do have other Agatha Christies that I want to read. Plus, I had plans. I made reading plans (vague plans, more like musings if we're being completely honest with each other, dear reader) what of I wanted to read this year. I want to try and read the whole Sookie Stackhouse series (which I am planning to do! I just need to get past the first chapter of Dead Until Dark). I, also, have an idea over a series or two that I've started but not finished and I would like to go for it and finish this year (keeping these under my hat as I need to plan...)

But after quitting Peril at End House, I wasn't exactly wanting to stick my reading ideas for the next few weeks. I left a little deflated and a little run down. The last few books/audiobooks I read in 2021 were very meh/three stars reads. And because I had plans to read several titles throughout the course of January and February 2022. I had plans to read The Maid by Nita Prose, a Dan Brown novel (either Angels and Demons or Digital Fortress) and a few other titles that I planned to keep hidden as I like the idea of mystery on here (though if you guys follow me on social media, they won't be that much of a surprise!).

So, I decided (as I felt a little rundown and close to a reading slump) to read some short stories/novellas and, as it happened, one of the MM romance authors I follow through socials said she had a short story up on Prolific Work's MM Romance Group's 2022 Giveaway, and I went "Oooh" and downloaded that as well as a few others to try out new authors or to get my rear in gear in a series or two I should start. 

Sometimes, you need a platter cleanser or a moment to recharge and reset your reading. Sometimes, it's taking time away from reading for a while. Sometimes it's reread a book you love and know inside and out. And sometimes, it's reading something that you know you are reading quickly and manage to finish in a short space of time. 

And the last opinion is what I did (normally it's reread or just having a reading break). 

Now, I'm not gonna talk too much of the short stories/novellas I read (The Real Deal by KM Neuhold, The Cubby Hole by Blade James, Pick One by May Archer and The Straight Friend by Raleigh Ruebin) as I will probably chat more about it on my Goodreads, but I thought I would write this to say that while I never do Monthly TBR lists, I do like to know what am reading next (even though I am a mood reader at heart) and while having these lists are great, sometimes throwing it out of the window and just going where the winds take you are just as helpful and kind. 

And with everything that's happened to us all in the past few years, I think we all need to be kinder to ourselves and make ourselves happy. 

Christmas 2021 Audiobooks - Christmas Tree Farm Mysteries Mini-Reviews

These are the last two audiobooks I blitz before the end of 2020 (yes, we're now getting towards the end of 2021 reading/audiobooking. And you can blame me discovering a bunch of audiobooks on Audible's Plus Catalogue [am doing a trial with Audible again. I don't know why but yeah, here we are. Again). 

And the last two are cosy murder mysteries in the same series. Hence why I'm only doing one post as they were ok. They were fun, but nothing really to write home about. 

Ok, let me do a quick summary of both titles. 

In the first, Twelve Slays of Christmas, Holly White has returned to her home town of Mistletoe, Maine after her Christmas Eve wedding was cancelled, nursing a broken heart. But her time back to help her parents's Christmas Tree Farm and their annual Reindeer Games doesn't get off to the festival start she hoped when Holly discovers the President of the town's Historical Society is bludgeoned to death on the edge of the family. And with the town's new sheriff discover that her father and the farm's reindeer keeper both argued with the grouchy President moments before her death, Holly is determined to find the killer. Though the killer is watching Holly... 

And in its sequel, Twas the Knife Before Christmas, a year has passed from the previous year's events and Holly is hoping for a quieter Christmas. Shame that's not gonna happen as the body is discovered in the town's centre - and all the evidence is pointing to Holly's friend, Caroline. A video of her arguing with the deceased is circling, his car is behind her house and the murder weapon is a customed marble knife. But Caroline can't have done it - and Holly is determined to prove it. But when Christmas just ten days away, her family Christmas tree family having renovations on its kitchen and buying a new inn, Holly's jewellery business taking off and her relationship with the town sheriff becoming suddenly strained, can Holly really prove Caroline's innocence and bring the killer to justice?

Christmas 2021 Audiobook - The Christie Affair

We all know Agatha Christie. She's the Queen of Crime. We all know or are aware of at least one of her creations and one of her mysteries. And we all know that, in 1926, the author vanished for 11 days and no one knows the truth about what happened to her as she never spoke of it. Even in her autobiography, Agatha Christie: An Autobiography, she brushes those days and never speaks of it. The only thing she says about that time is the two books she wrote around that time - The Big Four & The Mystery of the Blue Train - are the two stories she had difficulty writing and most disliked.

And main people are curious over those missing days as, before she vanished, her husband told her he was leaving her for his mistress - Nancy Neele - and her beloved mother died months earlier. And the fact that Agatha never spoke about it has us still puzzled to this day. Did she have a nervous breakdown? Did she vanish to spite her husband, hoping he will leave his mistress and return to her? Did she vanish to frame him of her murder and start a new life?

And many authors/films/TV shows have tried to guess. We have Andrew Wilson's A Talent for Murder, suggesting Agatha was being blackmailed to commit murder. We have the movie, Agatha (starring Dustin Hoffman and Vanessa Redgrave), that suggests that Agatha was planning to kill herself and frame her husband's mistress. We have TV movie, Agatha And The Truth of Murder, an alternative history, that suggests that she was solving the real life murder of Florence Nightingale's goddaughter, Florence Nightingale Shore. Hell, we even had a Doctor Who, episode - The Unicorn and the Wasp - that suggested aliens were involved in her disappearance (it's a delightful episode, FYI). And, more recently, The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict and now The Christie Affair.

Told from the point of view of Archie Christie's fictional mistress, Nan O'Dea (not Nancy Neele), we see what happened and we look into Nan's past and wonder...

Christmas 2021 Audiobook - She Who Became The Sun

I finished this a few days before Christmas (hence why I classed this as a Christmas review). I wanted to get a few titles (two or three) read before Christmas and New Year's Eve that I have promised publishers I would do. As you all know, if you follow me on my socials (mainly Goodreads and Twitter), I am useless at requesting a story in any form and then making a prompt review. They are always late, but I hoped that, over the Christmas period, I could at least attempt to have a few titles - bought, borrowed or requested - ready for 2022, hence why I decided to have a slightly longer blog break over the Christmas period. 

And so, here we are. 

Title And Author: She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

Publisher: Mantle

Bought, Borrowed or Gifted: eProof gifted by UK publisher via NetGalley in exchange for honest review/reaction while Audiobook’s borrowed from local library via BorrowBox app. 

I'm not sure how to write a blurb for this title so, bear with me. Set in 14th century China, two children's futures have been revealed. The boy is promised greatness, the girl nothing. But when the boy dies, the girl makes a snap decision to survive: she takes her brother's identity and joins a monastery as a young male novice. Her need to survive burns deep within her and she is willing to do anything to keep herself hidden and to live. 

But when the monastery is destroyed, she makes another decision. She decides to not only claim her dead brother's identity but his abandoned, foretold greatness as well.

Christmas 2021 Reads - Mini-Reviews

I'M BACK! After a nice long break (yes, this Christmas blog holiday was longer than normal, but I'm quite happy with this decision as, sometimes, we need a long break to find ourselves and make plans...). Anyway, for the next few weeks, you will be reading write-ups of books/audiobooks that I have read/listen to over the Christmas break. Normal(ish) schedule will resume in the next few weeks. So, once we get into (let's say...) February, you will see my 2022 reading! So, brace yourselves! 

Anyway, I was hoping to get this up last year, but one of the MM romance novellas I was reading took a little longer than I was expecting so decided to push this MM romance heavy post back to 2022. 

Now, originally, the initial plan was I going to do individual reviews on some Christmasy titles that I read or try to read before I go on my Christmas blog break, but as I was writing to write a short review for eNovella, How To Catch The Boss by Ana Ashley (4.5 in the Chester Falls series, in case you are curious), I decided that I might push a few titles together and show you guys that I have gone against my typical "I need to play catch up on my reading/review (which yes, I am!) and read something Xmas!" And so, here are a few titles.