We were thrilled to read in The Bookseller that debut novelists performed really well during 2020, in fact even better than during 2019. We adore a wonderful debut at LoveReading, it really does feel as though you’re discovering a new talent, and there’s nothing better for us than being able to recommend a fabulous book.
Femi Kayode s debut
Lightseekers packs a reading punch, it’s a book we are really excited about and as well as being a Liz Pick of the Month and LoveReading Star Book, I also chose to include it in my crime round up for the LoveReading LitFest on my book recommendation video slot. This is an intelligent crime thriller set in Nigeria, where the location is vividly brought to life and characters firmly stamp their presence into your minds eye. Femi’s introduction to writing is fascinating,
The Cut by Chris Brookmyre (Little, Brown, £18.99) Millicent Spark is a world-weary septuagenarian newly released from prison after serving 25 years for murder. She may have her freedom yet feels far from free. Then, just when Millicent is ready to give up on life, she meets Jerome Kelly, a Glasgow film student with a chequered background. The chance sighting of a photograph from 1994 hanging in a hotel corridor sends them down a rabbit hole as the duo uncover startling new information about someone from Millicent s past and shed new light on a life-altering night. The Cut harks back to the razor wit and black humour of Brookmyre s novels All Fun And Games Until Somebody Loses An Eye and Attack Of The Unsinkable Rubber Ducks. Top marks too for the author s encyclopaedic knowledge of cult horror films and obscure death metal bands.
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New Thrillers That Glitter With Malice
Credit.Adriana Bellet
March 1, 2021
If there is ever a time when you feel insane sleepless, hormonal, weepy, terrified it’s when you’re a new mother alone with your baby. So Megan, the young mother who narrates Julia Fine’s bonkers, provocative THE UPSTAIRS HOUSE (HarperCollins, 304 pp., $26.99) is not all that surprised when, her nerves already frayed, she discovers that a turquoise door has appeared in her house and that a long-dead woman has taken up residence behind it.
Oddly, the woman turns out to be Margaret Wise Brown, the author of classic children’s books like “The Runaway Bunny” and “Goodnight Moon” and the subject of Megan’s unfinished Ph.D. thesis. Megan seems to have blundered into an epic struggle between Margaret and her real-life lover, Michael Strange, a poet, suffragist, femme fatale and provocateur who tortured Margaret emotionally when they were together and now seems to be threatening Megan’
Book review: Lightseekers by Femi Kayode
23 Feb, 2021 11:51 PM
2 minutes to read
Napier Courier
Reviewed by Louise Ward, Wardini Books
So many crime novels, so much same same … then along came Lightseekers. Set in Nigeria, the story follows an investigative psychologist as he s drawn in to the tragic and violent mob violence that ends in the torture and death of three university students.
Philip Taiwo has been out of Nigeria for a while, teaching in the United States. As a result, he and his lawyer wife have forgotten how parts of their country operate. Even in Lagos where they live and work, they are sheltered from corruption, jungle justice and the poverty that boils over into protest. When Philip s father asks him to investigate the death of the son of a friend he finds he is intrigued, and flies to Port Harcourt, then on to the town of Okriki, into a new world of police checkpoints, bribes and obfuscation.