Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker.

This week my teaser comes from thriller The Craftsman by Sharon Bolton, an ARC of which I received from NetGalley and devoured at the end of last week. It’s a pretty creepy and sinister story about the investigation into a killer who buries his victims alive, with the majority taking place in northern England at the end of the 1960’s. This was my first book by Bolton but it impressed me so much I’m going to have to see what other novels of hers I can track down.

My Teaser

We can never predict who will be killers, or recognise those who have become so. If I’ve learned one thing in thirty years, it’s that.

~ 82% The Craftsman by Sharon Bolton

Blurb

Catching him will make her career – and change her forever. 

August, 1999 
On the hottest day of the year, Assistant Commissioner Florence Lovelady attends the funeral of Larry Glassbrook, the convicted murderer she arrested thirty years earlier. A master carpenter and funeral director, Larry imprisoned his victims, alive, in the caskets he made himself. Clay effigies found entombed with their bodies suggested a motive beyond the worst human depravity.

June, 1969 
13-year- old Patsy Wood has been missing for two days, the third teenager to disappear in as many months. New to the Lancashire police force and struggling to fit in, WPC Lovelady is sent to investigate an unlikely report from school children claiming to have heard a voice calling for help. A voice from deep within a recent grave.

August, 1999 
As she tries to lay her ghosts to rest, Florence is drawn back to the Glassbrooks’ old house, in the shadow of Pendle Hill, where she once lodged with the family. She is chilled by the discovery of another effigy – one bearing a remarkable resemblance to herself. Is the killer still at large? Is Florence once again in terrible danger? Or, this time, could the fate in store be worse than even her darkest imaginings?

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker.

This week my teaser comes from The Exact Opposite of Okay by Laura Steven an advance copy of which I received from NetGalley. I have to admit I initially struggled to get into this as main character Izzy has a really strong voice and a sense of humor I’m not sure I wholly get (it’s a bit extra) but I’m now around halfway through and enjoying it a lot more.

My Teaser

I would love to be brave enough to take matters into my own hands, like a soldier who proudly charges to the front line and faces enemy troops head-on. But alas I am instead going to hide out in my soggy trench until the problem passes, or I’m brutally murdered by a rogue grenade. Either way I am fundamentally a coward and not the kind of person you want on your side in a battle zone.

~ 19% The Exact Opposite of Okay by Laura Steven

Blurb

Izzy O’Neill is an aspiring comic, an impoverished orphan, and a Slut Extraordinaire. Or at least, that’s what the malicious website flying round the school says. Izzy can try all she wants to laugh it off – after all, her sex life, her terms – but when pictures emerge of her doing the dirty with a politician’s son, her life suddenly becomes the centre of a national scandal. Izzy’s never been ashamed of herself before, and she’s not going to start now. But keeping her head up will take everything she has…

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker.

This week my teaser comes from The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton, a book I’d had my eye on for a while and was lucky enough to receive a copy of from NetGalley. I read the majority of this over the weekend and honestly I can’t recommend it highly enough. Such a clever and intricately plotted story and such brilliant writing. I absolutely loved it.

My Teaser

Yet instead of being angry he pities me. That’s the worst part. Anger’s solid; it has weight. You can beat your fists against it. Pity’s a fog to become lost within.

~ loc 236 The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Blurb

How do you stop a murder that’s already happened?

At a gala party thrown by her parents, Evelyn Hardcastle will be killed–again. She’s been murdered hundreds of times, and each day, Aiden Bishop is too late to save her. Doomed to repeat the same day over and over, Aiden’s only escape is to solve Evelyn Hardcastle’s murder and conquer the shadows of an enemy he struggles to even comprehend–but nothing and no one are quite what they seem.

Deeply atmospheric and ingeniously plotted, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a highly original debut that will appeal to fans of Kate Atkinson and Agatha Christie.

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker.

This week I’m going for a classic for my teaser with Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. I think this may be my favorite Austen (although it’s a pretty close run thing with Persuasion) as I find it the easiest and most amusing of her books. I absolutely adore all of the gothic elements and how it highlights the dangers of too much reading 😉 I do think Austen is a little harsh on her poor heroine though.

My Teaser

Such were her propensities – her abilities were quite as extraordinary. She never could learn or understand anything before she was taught; and sometimes not even then, for she was often inattentive, and occasionally stupid.

~ page 1 Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Blurb

Jane Austen’s first novel—published posthumously in 1818—tells the story of Catherine Morland and her dangerously sweet nature, innocence, and sometime self-delusion. Though Austen’s fallible heroine is repeatedly drawn into scrapes while vacationing at Bath and during her subsequent visit to Northanger Abbey, Catherine eventually triumphs, blossoming into a discerning woman who learns truths about love, life, and the heady power of literature. The satirical novel pokes fun at the gothic novel while earnestly emphasizing caution to the female sex.

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker.

This week my teaser comes from The Truth About Alice by Jennifer Mathieu, author of Moxie. I absolutely loved Moxie so was very excited to receive this from NetGalley and read it at the end of last week. I wouldn’t say I didn’t enjoy it but I’m afraid my expectations were a little too high and it was a bit disappointing. You can read my full review here.

My Teaser

‘I’m not a sideshow attraction.’

And she wasn’t. Not to me.

She was the main attraction.

But I had no way to tell her that.

~ 19% The Truth About Alice by Jennifer Mathieu

Blurb

Everyone knows Alice slept with two guys at one party.
But did you know Alice was sexting Brandon when he crashed his car?
It’s true. Ask ANYBODY.

Rumour has it that Alice Franklin is a slut. It’s written all over the ‘slut stall’ in the girls’ bathroom at Healy High for everyone to see. And after star quarterback Brandon Fitzsimmons dies in a car accident, the rumours start to spiral out of control.

In this remarkable novel, four Healy High students – the party girl, the car accident survivor, the ex best friend and the boy next door – tell all they know.

But exactly what is the truth about Alice? In the end there’s only one person to ask: Alice herself.

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker.

This week my teaser comes from A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, yep at long last I’m finally reading it. I swear this has been on my TBR forever but I put it into the hat at my real life book club and it finally got picked. I’ve spent most of today reading it and have been absolutely loving it. Ove is just so lovely and even though he’d hate it I just want to give him a cuddle 🙂

My Teaser

Ove presses the soles of his shoes into the snow. He has certainly not begun this day with the intention of letting women or cats into the house, he’d like to make that very clear to her. But she comes right at him with the animal in her arms and a determination in her steps.

~ Pg 139 A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Blurb

At first sight, Ove is almost certainly the grumpiest man you will ever meet. He thinks himself surrounded by idiots – neighbours who can’t reverse a trailer properly, joggers, shop assistants who talk in code, and the perpetrators of the vicious coup d’etat that ousted him as Chairman of the Residents’ Association. He will persist in making his daily inspection rounds of the local streets.

But isn’t it rare, these days, to find such old-fashioned clarity of belief and deed? Such unswerving conviction about what the world should be, and a lifelong dedication to making it just so? In the end, you will see, there is something about Ove that is quite irresistible..