My Bookish Year 2017 - July to December

This is where my year went downhill... I had an amazing month in July, I read some great books and I went to ComicCon & YALC for the fourth year in a row, and I met HODOR!!! Then in August disaster struck, my knee gave out and ever since I've been waiting for surgery, stuck in the house apart from hospital appointments, x-rays, and blood tests. That's enough of the miserables though, here are some of my favorite reads from July to December, click on the pics to get to reviews or Goodreads for more info.

The Perfect Victim - Corrie Jackson

Husband, friend, colleague . . . killer?

Charlie and Emily Swift are the Instagram-perfect couple: gorgeous, successful and in love. But then Charlie is named as the prime suspect in a gruesome murder and Emily's world falls apart.

Desperate for answers, she turns to Charlie's troubled best friend, London Herald journalist, Sophie Kent. Sophie knows police have the wrong man - she trusts Charlie with her life.

Then Charlie flees.

Sophie puts her reputation on the line to clear his name. But as she's drawn deeper into Charlie and Emily's unravelling marriage, she realises that there is nothing perfect about the Swifts.

As she begins to question Charlie's innocence, something happens that blows the investigation - and their friendship - apart.

Now Sophie isn't just fighting for justice, she's fighting for her life.

After the brilliance of Breaking Dead Sophie Kent is back and this time the truth is much closer to home than she wants to believe. Sophie is at a crime scene, a drowning, and discovers the victim was somehow connected to one of her best friends, the Herald's Business Editor Charlie Swift. When it's established that the victim is Sabrina Hobbs, a prominent lawyer, and she didn't drown, she was murdered. Sophie links Sabrina to Charlie, at first in a business way, but then she discovers that the two may have been intimately involved. Only she can't ask Charlie because he has disappeared and everyone's thoughts about him start to turn to a darker possibility. Is Charlie Swift a murderer? Sophie doesn't want to believe this, especially as Charlie is newly married to Emily after tragically losing his first wife, in a drowning accident... Do Charlie and Emily really have the Instagram perfect life that Emily insists they have? Or is the perfect victim right under everybody's noses? 

Sophie once again is struggling in her personal life. Still obsessing over her brother's death she will grab at anything that may lead to information so when it turns out that there may be a link between Charlie, her brother and a religious group called Christ Clan, she leaps in with both feet again. DCI Durand makes a welcome return but unfortunately for Sophie, the man in charge of Charlie's case holds a personal grudge against her because of a connection to events in Breaking Dead. We get to see the story from Emily's point of view too, the state of her marriage in the weeks leading up to the murder and the disappearance, and her state of mind.

As with Breaking Dead, I was hooked from the very first page. There seems to be an awful lot going on and more than one plot strand but Corrie Jackson weaves them together skillfully over the course of the story and by the end, having stumbled through more twists and turns than the first book, she leads you to a most unexpected conclusion, which most people won't even have thought about. Given that Charlie works at a newspaper it was fascinating to see how everybody initially thought completely incapable of any wrongdoing, even infidelity, but as time passed and Charlie stayed missing, even the most loyal of friends and colleagues can start to have their doubts. The crumbling relationship between the missing Charlie and his colleagues as they struggle to accept that they may have a murderer in their midst and that it's up to them to unmask the facts to convict him if it is indeed true was extremely well written and great to see other people's opinion of him.

The Perfect Victim doesn't let up from start to finish, there's an energy about Corrie Jackson's writing that compels you to keep turning the pages and her characters are completely engaging, although not always likable, which makes them all the more human. It's a fantastic sequel to Breaking Dead and I have only one request. Sophie Kent book three, please!!!

The Perfect Victim - Corrie Jackson

ISBN - 9781785761829

Publisher - Bonnier Zaffre

Release Date - November 16th, 2017

Find - Goodreads | Book Depository

About The Author

Corrie Jackson has been a journalist for fifteen years. During that time she has worked at Harper’s Bazaar, the Daily Mail, Grazia, and Glamour.

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Don't forget to check out all the other participants on the blog tour, for links check out Bonnier Zaffre's Twitter feed!

Huge thanks to Bonnier Zaffre and Netgalley for my copy of the book!

Breaking Dead - Corrie Jackson

Sophie Kent is hanging on by a thread. Her tenacity and talent have seen her rise through the ranks of a tough newspaper industry. But her brother's suicide has thrown her career and personal life into chaos.

Whilst out on the job interviewing witnesses of a brutal child murder, Sophie befriends a beautiful but traumatised Russian model. When the girl's mutilated body turns up in an upmarket hotel on the eve of London Fashion Week, Sophie knows she could have saved her. Eaten away by guilt, she throws herself headfirst into the edgy, fast-paced world of fashion with one goal in mind: to catch the killer. Only then can she piece her grief-stricken self back together. As she chips away at the industry's glittery surface, she uncovers a toxic underworld rife with drugs, secrets, prostitution, and blackmail.

The investigation propels Sophie from the glamour of the catwalk to London's darkest corners, towards a sinister past and a twenty-year-old murder case that could hold the key. Battling her demons and her wealthy, dysfunctional family along the way, Sophie pushes her personal problems to one side as she goes head to head with a crazed killer; a killer who is only just getting started...

Meet Sophie Kent, intrepid reporter for a London newspaper. Grieving for her brother, Sophie is just about functioning so when she stumbles across a Russian model whilst covering another story she senses there might be more to Natalia's story than meets the eye. 

If you've ever wondered what the seedier side of modelling looks then Breaking Bad might just show you the (imaginary) worst of it. Befriending Natalia, albeit with an ulterior motive, Sophie knows something is wrong with the young Russian girl. When a body is found in a London hotel, brutally murdered, during London Fashion Week no less, Sophie knows she is on to something huge and plunges headfirst into the underside of the fashion industry. 

Suspects are lining up in droves but the one Sophie can't move past is photographer and resident bad boy, Liam Crawford. Sophie knows Liam, intimately. They were up at Oxford at the same time and had a one night stand before Liam dropped out to pursue his photography more seriously. Liam is now the darling of the fashion world, and the on/off boyfriend of one the hottest models of the moment, Lydia Lawson, or Loony Lawson as the tabloids have dubbed her.

Sophie knows that there is something sinister going on and despite not being a police officer plunges headlong into her investigation, putting herself in far more danger than she will ever realise until it's almost too late.

I loved Sophie as a character, one of the most flawed I have come across recently, but this made her seem even more vulnerable. She's deep in the mire of grief after losing her brother to an apparent overdose, her wealthy parents are closed off and don't seem to be missing their son at all, which drives Sophie even more to find out what happened to Natalia and why this girl had to die so horrifically. Her colleagues at the newspaper seem to be aware that Sophie is struggling, but not of how much of herself she is putting into finding out what happened until she crosses the line that her boss says every good journalist should not, that of the truth.

Her relationship with the police is a precarious one, inserting herself into their case does not endear people but DCI Sam Durand has an apparent soft spot for Sophie, and she for him. He bends the rules for her, keeping her in the loop but even Durand has his limits and Sophie doesn't always know when to stop pushing.

Corrie Jackson has written a fascinating story, the darkness and the disturbing picture painted of the modelling world are not easily forgotten. The storyline never lets up, the pace is almost too much at times and the red herrings that lead you in one direction when you should be going in the opposite way are expertly done. I am a fan after just one book and can't wait to see where both Corrie Jackson and Sophie Kent go next.

Breaking Dead - Corrie Jackson

ISBN - 9781785770456

Publisher - Bonnier

Release Date - September 8th, 2017

Find - Goodreads | Book Depository