Audiobook April - The Murders at Fleat House

As many of you know Lucinda Riley sadly passed away in June 2021 due to cancer and was the best-selling author of the The Seven Sisters (the surprise eighth and final book in the series, Atlas: the Story of Pa Salt was started before her death and her son, Harry Whittaker, finished). But Lucinda touched into different genres and The Murders at Fleat House has an interesting history. 

Lucinda wrote this murder mystery back in 2006. Once written, she put it to one side and it's believed she would return to this once she had finished the Seven Sisters series. After her death, her family discovered the manuscript and, with the lightest of touches, edited and allowed to be published. 

I have never read a Lucinda Riley novel (I do own the first book in the series on my Audible and I would like to listen to it once Amazon figure out what the hell they did to my account!), but I have always wanted to read The Murders At Fleat House, but was saving it. And then, out of nowhere last month, my brain went "Now! I want to listen to this NOW!"

Title and Author: The Murders at Fleat House by Lucinda Riley

Publisher: PanMacmillan

Bought, Gifted or Borrowed: Audiobook Bought and Borrowed via library's audiobook app

Buy from (Affiliate): Bookshop.org

The death of a student at a small private boarding school of St Stephen's sends shockwaves within the school and the head teacher is desperate for it to be a tragic accident. But why would the boy take aspirin when he was deathly allergic to them?

The boy's father demands the Police to look into it and the case prompts the return of Detective Inspector Jasmine 'Jazz' Hunter to the force. Jazz has her reasons for leaving the Met and the Police as a whole but, as a favour for her old boss, she decides to look into the death. 

As she enters the closed world of the boarding school and the boarding house of Fleat House, she discovers that the student was a bully and not well liked. Plus, with it being common knowledge that the student was allergic to aspirin and took drugs to control his epilepsy, it would have been easy to swap his medication. 

But when one of the teachers kills himself and another student vanishes, it looks like Fleat House has a dark secrets and history and Jazz needs to figure out what is going on. And fast.

Audiobook April - Mini-Reviews

Another day, another mini-review write-up on two audiobooks: one I got for review (in exchange for an honest review/reaction, of course) and the other from my local library (because why not!) 

We have (for review) One of Our Ministers Is Missing by Alan Johnson and the other (from library's audiobook app) Miss Marple's Final Cases by Agatha Christie!

Audiobook April - Into Shadow Mini-Reviews

HAPPY EASTER MONDAY TO YOU ALL! And here we go with my first Audiobook April.

Welcome to my (hopefully not a complete car-crash of a themed month) Audiobook April. Like I said last month before I took a small, Easter blog holiday, this month is me trying to showcase some lovely audiobooks (and to get my audiobook TBR list down a little). Also, to have a little fun (fun is the name of the game this blogging/reading year)!

So, let’s start with something light, something easy, right? Nope. I listened to something short (my podcast backlog is getting quite long so, hopefully, will be able to have a listen to a few of them this/next month).

What I listened to is two short stories from the Into Shadows collection, a collection of short stories from Amazon. Amazon do a few collections of Amazon Original Stories, all short stories or novellas that, they hope, you will be able to read or listen to in one sitting. Very similar to Quick Reads.

The two am going to chat briefly about are The Six Deaths of the Saint by Alix E. Harrow (narrated by Saskia Maarleveld) and What the Dead Know by Nghi Vo (narrated by Natalie Naudus).

In The Six Deaths of the Saint, the Saint of War comes to an ill servant girl so she can fulfil her destiny to come the kingdom’s greatest warrior. But will it be worth it?

In What The Dead Know, a woman posing as a medium finds herself trapped in a school due to a blizzard starts to hear something. A voice in the dark that wants to be heard…

Audiobook April

I wanted to chat about my weird little germ of a theme month happening next month: Audiobook April.

Now, I love a good audiobook. I listen to quite a few (mainly due to my drives to/from work) as well as podcasts and I love a good old dancing in my kitchen while listening to the radio or streaming music. And while popularity in audiobooks and podcasts have gone over the last few years, we still have that whole “Is listening to an audiobook reading?” debate. And I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole as I am not nearly smart enough to address this issue. I have my opinions (I say yes, it does), but I understand why some people disagree. Let’s be respectful and kind, and agree to disagree, shall we?

But I want to do a month where my write-ups are focused on audiobooks, whether I buy them from Audible or Apple Books, borrow from my local library or gifted by publishers in exchange for honest thoughts and reactions. And I want to try and be wide on audiobook genres, age ranges and lengths. Some will be short and others will be long (hence why some audiobooks I listened to the past few months I have been very quiet on – been saving them for April).

Because I like this weird idea of mine, I’m gonna take a week or two off blogging so can get a head start on myself. Plus, with Easter round the corner, now seems to perfect time to take a mini blog break. 

Now, before you all go "What about your murder month?", I am still going to be beavering away with that in the background. If I audiobook a crime/thriller audiobook, I will post my thoughts on that in April. If I read it, that will go up in May, but I will say "Murder Month" in the title of the post. I'm hoping to get at least two more crime titles done before the end of March! 

Plus, I have a few titles that I would like to try and listen to this month and a few that I suspect will be curveballs. Any below that you guys are DESPERATE for me to try? And do you want to a hint of some titles that I am considering/tempted to try...?