How to make mini book covers #bookishhobby

I’m back with a DIY project and as far as bookish hobbies go, this is the cutest one yet! I’ve seen plenty of photos on Instagram of little mini book covers and I always wondered how to make these. I have finally found the answer and I’m happy to share it with you. And don’t worry, the good news is that it’s really not all that difficult!

Okay time to start! First, think of some book covers you want to make in advance so you know when you start that you’re not adding another 30 minutes trying to decide. I just picked my last ones that I read and the ones that I’ll be reading in the next few weeks, so not especially favourites. I’m sorry I don’t have lots of photos of the start of the project but I’m talking you through it step by step so it should be clear enough.

Note: The following instructions mention a programme named Canva but you can easily do the same in Word. I tried and tested it and it gives the sames result, only the colours in Canva that you need for the spine are a bit more diverse in shading, and they suggest colours there too based on the colours in the image which is helpful too. I only found out after I had already made this post so I’m giving you my original review.

First, open up the site Canva, make an account or log in and ‘Create a design’ by selecting an A4 document. Make a rectangular ‘shape’ on the page by choosing a square in the ‘element section’ on the left. On the bottom of the page you can increase the percentage of your view and I scaled my view to 120% so that I could fit the covers nicely into the squares at the right time. Now it’s entirely up to you how big or how small you want your covers but as a guideline I set my square at around 70 mm horizontally and 40 mm vertically. You can add the ruler when you go on the top into File – View Settings – Show rulers and guides.

   

Now open another tab and Google the title of the book you want, you want to see a book cover so once you hit enter choose the tab images to see all the covers. You don’t have to go on a website but you can just choose an image, you click on it and when you see it bigger on the right side of your screen you simply right-click on the cover and ‘copy the image‘, then go to the Canva page and paste it.

It’ll be too big but you can change the size when you go to the corner of that cover picture. Make it fit in your square and if you’re happy with it, copy/paste the image again for the other side. You’ll be able to turn it upside down too so that your book cover will look good from all sides. Make sure you have left a little space between the two covers because that’s the spine of your miniature version of the book.

You can change the colour of that spine by simply clicking on your square. It’ll show a color icon next to shape above your page and you can change the color to another one that goes well with your cover.

Time to print these via Share – Download – PDF Print

And we have:

                                           

Now the really fun part starts! What you need is some foam (you can do it with paper too, there are other tutorials I’ve seen that use paper, but my way is so much faster) and glue. Cut out two pieces of the same size as your cover, glue them together with some mod podge (I didn’t find that here so I used the glue I had) and into the booklet and there you have it. Use a minimum of glue (even less than I’m showing here) and spread it out with a piece of paper or cardboard, because it’ll cause the paper to wrinkle if you use too much.

And this is how it’ll look on my Instagram 🙂

So what do you think of these mini book covers? Cute innit? I’ve seen some bloggers making covers for all the books they read in a year. I’m not going to start such a collection but I’m keeping the ones I made as home deco in a jar.

Oh and as a behind the scenes… this is what I’m working with… or better yet how :-). For full disclosure, Poes did not have any glue on her, it’s a small miracle.

Till next time! Tell me what you think, I’d love to hear if it’s a yay or a nay!

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Stalking Jack The Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco #BookReview

Seventeen-year-old Audrey Rose Wadsworth was born a lord’s daughter, with a life of wealth and privilege stretched out before her. But between the social teas and silk dress fittings, she leads a forbidden secret life.

Against her stern father’s wishes and society’s expectations, Audrey often slips away to her uncle’s laboratory to study the gruesome practice of forensic medicine. When her work on a string of savagely killed corpses drags Audrey into the investigation of a serial murderer, her search for answers brings her close to her own sheltered world.

The story’s shocking twists and turns will make this dazzling debut from author Kerri Maniscalco impossible to forget.

I was in the mood for reading some historical fiction and when I saw this novel about Jack The Ripper, well how could I resist? I’m also a big fan of the cover and reading the story I can say that the woman on the cover fits the story perfectly, she even made it easier for me to imagine Audrey Rose. 

There’s A LOT that I liked about this novel. First of all I loved how the author was not afraid to dive right into the story. The novel opens with an autopsy in Audrey Rose’s uncle Jonathan’s laboratory and just reading that first line about the moment before making the incision was enough to know that I was really going to enjoy the story and writing. The author inserted real photos of that period which gave the story a sense of authenticity, and afterwards I read in the afterword also a number of details about the Jack The Ripper murders that she tried to replicate in the story as well. 

I also loved how Audrey Rose didn’t want to fold to the Victorian standard expectations for a woman. I loved her fascination for the dead and how she’s adamant that she’s just as capable to perform a postmortem as a man. She has to walk a fine line, on the one hand she has to have tea parties and if she wants to wed soon she needs to be on her best behaviour, but on the other hand she sneaks away to assist her uncle, she doesn’t shy away from looking at Jack The Ripper’s havoc on his victims, she isn’t afraid to tell her mind and as an act of defiance further along she wears her riding gear.. when she’s not riding. She’s a perfect heroine and the exact character this novel needed!       

I’d say she’s the star of the show but that’s a lie because she has to share first place with Thomas, another student of her uncle. Thomas has mad deductions skills, I was seriously in awe and I don’t know if I loved the murder mystery or the courting going on between Audrey Rose and Thomas most. I’m tempted to go for the latter. The flirting (on a Victorian level) was so good and I loved Thomas’s pursuit and his little remarks. Apart from that they were also great as a detective duo and I think it’s no coincidence that Thomas addressing her often as Wadsworth always gave me major Sherlock and Watson vibes.

Last but not least, the story is of course about Jack The Ripper. Audrey Rose and her entourage are called upon and soon enough it doesn’t let her go. There are a few possible suspects but I figured out who Jack The Ripper was very soon, without any real grounds I admit but I still knew I had to be right on this and I was. Authors always follow the same formula and I have cracked that formula so it takes a lot more than this to surprise me, although she did try to create some doubt. While I knew who I didn’t completely understand the why though and finding out left me a little speechless. Now I wonder about the real Jack The Ripper even more!

Stalking Jack The Ripper is an original young adult novel with a great Jack The Ripper twist. I neither expected the morbid details nor the romance but I loved both and I do hope to read the next in the series in the future.

I bought a paperback of this novel. This is my honest opinion.

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney #BookReview

Isolated on their private island in Cornwall, the Darker family have come together for the first time in over a decade. When the tide comes in, they’ll be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours. When the tide goes back out, nothing will ever be the same again. Nothing – because one of the family is a killer . . .

As the leaves of autumn fall, Daisy Darker arrives at her grandmother’s house for eightieth birthday celebrations. Seaglass, the Darker’s ancestral home, is a crumbling Cornish house perched upon its own tiny private island.

Every member of the family has their secrets. Nana, alone for so long. Daisy’s absent father, Frank. Her cold-hearted mother, Nancy. Her siblings, Rose and Lily, and her niece, Trixie, full of questions and without a father of her own. Daisy has never had an easy relationship with her family, but some secrets are much darker than others. This will be a gathering that some of them won’t remember.

  /

Alice Feeney is one of the best writers that I know and she delivers another spectacular story in Daisy Darker. I want to say that she keeps getting better and better but all of her stories are next level and I always recommend her if someone asks for suggestions for novels with great twists.

There are six characters next to Daisy who come together at Seaglass house to celebrate her grandmother’s 80th birthday. The sea separates the house from the main land and they can only cross it when the tide is low so basically they are trapped for the night in an isolated location with no escape from each other. As if that’s not bad enough, there is a killer among them! The characters were all very well fleshed out and the flashbacks to the past really made me get to know each of them: Nana (the grandmother), Frank and Nancy (the parents), Rose, Lilly and Daisy (the daughters), Trixie (Lilly’s daughter), Connor (childhood friend until he stopped speaking to Daisy), and Poppy (Nana’s dog). The first pages with everyone arriving at the house made me wonder if I would have trouble knowing who’s who but the characters are very distinct from each other. One by one they also get finished off. Who will be left, who is the killer and why? What is the secret that is being kept? The answers are nothing short of jaw-dropping.

Daisy was a great character and I felt a bit sad for her because she’s always been a bit of the black sheep in the family. She defied death multiple times but that didn’t earn her more love from her parents or sisters, except from her grandmother who always adored her. Daisy was born in one big dysfunctional family and as the story progressed the true colours of all of them came out. Still, with some of them gone I found it difficult to find answers to the pressing questions. For a brief, silly moment I even wondered if Daisy was the killer herself, even though everything was told from her POV with the necessary panic…

Well I certainly got value for money because this novel was very very clever, the pacing of mounting tension was perfect and the story that led up to all the murders was nothing I expected. I didn’t see that one special plot twist coming that I’m normally not fond of but was actually quite appropriate in this story… Ok I didn’t really see the rest of the twists coming either except for this one fundamental one and that’s only thanks to my ever-present paranoia (and not because it’s obvious when you read what it’s compared to in almost all of the reviews therefore I will not mention it). Let’s just say it’s best to go into this novel blind. Let it just surprise and hook you as it did to me!

I bought an ecopy of this novel. This is my honest opinion.

Hold Back The Stars by Katie Khan #BookReview

Carys and Max have ninety minutes of air left. None of this was supposed to happen.

Adrift in space with nothing to hold on to but each other, Carys and Max can’t help but look back at the world they left behind. A world whose rules they couldn’t submit to, a place where they never really belonged; a home they’re determined to get back to because they’ve come too far to lose each other now.

Hold Back the Stars is a love story like no other.

Why oh why didn’t I read this sooner? Another one of my backlist and what a winner. Hold Back The Stars is a novel set in an utopian world. It’s a mix of romance, new adult genre with a sci-fi background (I don’t even have a category for that). Not really my kind of read right? Well things can change :-).

On the one hand Carys and Max are floating in space and trying everything they can to get back to the capsule. Time is ticking away and each chapter shows how many more minutes of oxygen they still have left.

In alternating chapters the author took me back to the beginning, where Carys and Max met. Carys drove shuttles and Max was working in his parents supermarket while also answering all sorts of questions about cooking as a chef. How Max became an astronaut and ended up in space was a mystery to me but the story was cleverly constructed and it actually made some kind of sense.

Max and Carys were in their early twenties when they fall in love. The thing is, in this utopian world the story is set in, they want the people to develop their individuality so therefore you can only become a couple at the age of 35. Yep the taste of forbidden love is the best.

I was completely on board with this new world, the rules, the different voivoids and the rotations to other voivoids every couple of years until it was time to settle down.

The author is a star (yes I couldn’t not say it) and I can’t believe it’s her first novel. There are several topics inserted into the story that are stepping stones for contemplation, about family issues and personal choices, and of course if a real utopia can exist.

The ending has everything you want and the lead up to it lets the reader take a peek at other possible scenarios how it could have played out. Cari’s life without Max, or Max’s life without Cari,.. you’ll have to see in the end what the scenario is that the author picked. If you ask me then she picked the right one but it goes straight through the heart!

This novel had the perfect mix and was a joy to read. Forbidden love has never felt so good. Also what an absolutely beautiful quote is this:

“The thing about first love, Cari, is that it breaks you. It changes everything about who you are for the next person.”

Hold Back The Stars was an amazing story with so much to give. At first I was hung up on their past lives more but in the end you know them so well and it catches up and I was hanging on to those moments in space and hoping so much for a miracle.

I’m definitely adding her other novel, The Light Between Us, to my readlist!

Oh by the way, good to know that Hold Back the Stars is in the works at studio Lionsgate, to be directed by Justin Baldoni (Five Feet Apart) from a screenplay by Christy Hall (I Am Not Okay With This), produced by Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen (Strange Things and Arrival).

There’s work to do for some of you I believe, you better read the novel before you watch the movie! It’s only 1.99p at the moment btw.

I bought a paperback copy of this novel. This is my honest opinion.

Lovely Vicious (book 1) by Sara Wolf #BookReview

Seventeen-year-old Isis Blake hasn’t fallen in love in three years, nine weeks, and five days, and after what happened last time, she intends to keep it that way. Since then she’s lost eighty-five pounds, gotten four streaks of purple in her hair, and moved to Buttcrack-of-Nowhere, Ohio, to help her mom escape a bad relationship.

All the girls in her new school want one thing—Jack Hunter, the Ice Prince of East Summit High. Hot as an Armani ad, smart enough to get into Yale, and colder than the Arctic, Jack Hunter’s never gone out with anyone. Sure, people have seen him downtown with beautiful women, but he’s never given high school girls the time of day. Until Isis punches him in the face.

Jack’s met his match. Suddenly everything is a game.

The goal: Make the other beg for mercy.

The game board: East Summit High.

The reward: Something neither of them expected.

/

Novel number 300-something of my backlist and I’m ashamed to say I actually chose it as my next read because I confused it with another novel that I’d been meaning to read and clearly don’t have in my library (Truly Devious btw) Vicious, devious, you can see how got it mixed up right? Another funny thing about this novel is that Sara Wolf made it into a trilogy and the new title of this book is actually Love Me Never. Honestly if I’d have seen that title with that new cover I’d not have touched it. I know it’s one of my flaws and I’m happy I was oblivious because it turned out not such a bad read. I read it in a day!

What I enjoyed most of all about this novel were all the words and comments that came out of Isis Blake’s mouth. The writing style – the snide remarks especially – was very entertaining and it really made me smile a lot.

Isis makes an enemy of Jack Hunter, the school’s heart throb because he’s not at all interested when the friend she just made, Kayla, throws herself at his feet at a party and he makes that painfully clear. Isis doesn’t stand for it and demands an apology for the way he treated her but he isn’t giving in. She steps it up and then his retaliation made my heart pitter patter but unfortunately I found the next moves of Isis taking it quite (too) far. The romance is definitely not instant although you can feel there’s something between them.

Underneath this confident, battle-armour Isis there’s another side of her that left her wounded. There are layers to both Isis and Jack which bring more serious themes to the story and in the end they really pulled at my heartstrings. It ends with a cliffhanger so be aware that it’ll leave you wanting to know more. Overall, I have absolutely no regrets picking this one up, even when it wasn’t my intention.

I bought an ecopy of this novel. This is my honest opinion.

Five Survive by Holly Jackson #AudioBookReview

Eight hours.
Six friends.
One sniper . . .

Eighteen year old Red and her friends are on a road trip in an RV, heading to the beach for Spring Break. It’s a long drive but spirits are high. Until the RV breaks down in the middle of nowhere. There’s no mobile phone reception and nobody around to help. And as the wheels are shot out, one by one, the friends realise that this is no accident. There’s a sniper out there in the dark watching them and he knows exactly who they are. One of the group has a secret that the sniper is willing to kill for.

A game of cat-and-mouse plays out as the group desperately tries to get help and to work out which member of the group is the target. Buried secrets are forced to light in the cramped, claustrophobic setting of the RV, and tensions within the group will reach deadly levels. Not everyone will survive the night.

Six teenagers are stranded in the middle of nowhere, there’s a sniper outside and one of them has a secret, that’s about the gist of the story. Sounds great right? Five Survive was very promising but unfortunately the focus on the secret came rather late into the story. Red is the main character, the one who doesn’t really fit in, the one whose mother was killed in the line of duty and the one who’s always strapped for money. Is any of this relevant to what’s happening? You’ll just have to read/listen to the story yourself.

Whilst I very much enjoyed the denouement at the end, the rest of the story didn’t blow me away like her previous novels. A lot of time in the story is taken up by their attempts to escape. At a certain point there was also an elaborate mirror trick put in place to determine the position of the sniper but despite the very detailed account I still couldn’t see how it worked without any of them actually going outside. Other than that there was definitely some added shock value that I wasn’t really prepared for so I liked some of it very much and some of it was a bit tedious.

The tension could also been a little more present as I found they were relatively in a safe place as long as they stayed inside. It was only when they finally might receive some help that I became quite anxious. The title reveals that one of them dies and I was constantly wondering who wouldn’t make it, and why. I had no idea who the victim would be although I did want to put one of them up as the story progressed because there’s one selfish, egoistic character in that RV and if not given a choice I would know who to sacrifice.

I loved the Good Girl’s Guide to Murder trilogy so much so my expectations were quite high and while I’m impressed with the who and why of it all, I just didn’t feel it reached the same awesomeness level as her previous work.

Unfortunately, I didn’t like the narration at all. The narrator (Emma Galvin) had a hard voice and apart from the shouting going on  she talked with a raised voice so much even though it wasn’t mentioned explicitly in the text that it got on my nerves and probably influenced my opinion of the novel as well, even though I don’t want it to have an impact.

I received a free ecopy of this novel from the publisher via Netgalley. This is my honest opinion.

The Courier by Holly Down #BookReview

Five years ago, Laurel Lovejoy had it all. The high-powered city job, the loving husband, the perfect daughter. Now, she is forty and alone, and working for a courier service. But she has discovered that being a delivery driver comes with a superpower: it makes her invisible. People accept her presence without question. They go about their lives, unaware of just how much she sees – how much she knows.

Laurel is particularly fascinated by the residents of Paradise Found, an exclusive gated cul-de-sac. She sometimes even finds her way there when she’s not working, using her days off to soak up as much information about the inhabitants and their lives as she can. Everyone needs a hobby.

Then one day Laurel sees something in one of the houses – something that blows her whole world apart, and will have devastating consequences for everyone involved . . .

First of all, this is the first novel that I read where corona and social distancing is part of the plotline. I wasn’t too sure if I wanted to read about the lockdown in a novel but it actually felt more than okay. It certainly triggered memories to the days we were all confined in our homes and somehow I quite enjoyed this trip down memory lane. It was so recognizable for me but even in the future I actually think it’s great for next generations to read about too and to see how life was at that time. I wonder if they’ll think this part of the story was completely made up too. With the shops closed we ordered more than ever online and so I think it was quite clever of the author to introduce Laurel as a courier for a delivery company. As it was back then she had to keep her distance, but that is something she really doesn’t do!

Laurel wasn’t the most likeable character for a number of reasons but her unhealthy interest in the lives of the residents of the six houses of Paradise Found totally gets out of hand. How far can you go to get to know someone? She wants to know everything about her customers, who they are, what they buy, and one day she even goes through someone’s trash! That’s not the end of the line but only the start of everything. Laurel has major issues and with her drinking she’s a very unreliable narrator so I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure if what she thought she had found out was true or not, although I had my own ideas.

Laurel had it all, the husband, the child, the nice house and a great job but in the present it’s all gone. Laurel is all alone, trying to hold on to her job and the rest of her time is spent either at Missing Mums meetings or drinking at her apartment. I really didn’t like her drinking but to cut her some slack her grief over the loss of her daughter was in her every thought. It seemed Laurel lost her little girl Sophie at a young age and she feels guilty but it was unclear what had really happened until the end because she doesn’t want to share her story at Missing Mums but does remark on her feelings and her daughter on a regular basis.

There was a big twist in each of the two storylines and my enjoyment of these twists are essentially on opposite sides. I give big points for this one surprising twist where the author created some specific expectations about the disappearance of her daughter where I thought myself quite clever but it still turned out different from what I had expected. A good different, with a lot of emotions. The other twist came entirely out of left field and left the story open ended. Shock value guaranteed!

I didn’t like Laurel all that much for the majority of the novel, first because she doesn’t seem the best mother, also because of her indiscretions, her lying and crossing the line with her work. I even symphathised with some residents when she tries to engage them unwillingly in sharing information about themselves, but in the end I recognised she wasn’t a bad person, I understood her better and when she finally won me over I didn’t get the satisfaction of knowing everything would be all right so when I finally got to that place I also wanted a different ending, a more happy ending and I feel like I was cheated out of it. In theory the author left room for a sequel but I wasn’t a fan of this twist nor how it was wrapped up, so instead of 4 or 4.5 stars I’ve ultimately decided to give 3.5 stars.

I received a paperback copy of this novel in my Capital Crime subscription box. This is my honest opinion.

Hack Forward by Key Enigma #EscapeGame #mysterygame #KeyEnigma

First, some info about this hybrid game:

Hack Forward can be played solo or with multiple players (1-6 players), the full game consists of 8 chapters with 8+ hours of gameplay and a hundred challenging puzzles. It is available in multiple languages (EN, ES, DE, FR, IT, PT and in DUTCH) and you or others can replay the game after you completed it.

The storyline: You are hired to investigate a series of cyber attacks and, along with a group of hackers, you must discover the culprit.

HOW TO PLAY THE GAME?

Your experience begins once you get the box. Read the instructions carefully, type the game code into your investigator account, and then the fun begins!

The start was easy enough, I typed a secret code that I found in the booklet on the website and someone filled me in about the case. The first task that was set for me was reading through some news articles by clicking through a few sites and visiting a company website and after I had confirmed I had done this I was given instructions to compose an email to a contact person via email (I had to find the name and address myself). Exciting!

This game has 8 different chapters with about an hour gameplay for each. In Chapter 1 I had to visit someone’s social media pages in order to find a password to get into a computer and then watch and find secret codes hidden in several mp4 files on that computer. All of the words found and combined in these mp4 files would give me access to a website. It took me some time and re-watching some of the videos again to discover all the codes but it wasn’t too difficult to achieve. In chapter 2 I was given lots of physical clues to use. Some were quite easy, others (one where I had to think a bit more mathematically; don’t worry each type of puzzle was only used once so no more counting from thereon) requested a hint or 2 (I’m the best at miscalculating things) but it was all great fun.

 

I took a break after each chapter of the game. It is said beforehand that a chapter lasts about one hour but I think I went through some of them a little faster and I spent more time on others. I think their claim of +8 hours of gameplay is therefore quite accurate.

On to the next!

There were several envelopes in the box so the suspense was kept until it was time to open them. I found papers but other – unexpected – things too in the envelopes (which I have no intention in spoiling for you). I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of items and how professional it looked.

There was text but not too much so most of the time is spent actually solving things. I was happy with the guidance I received via their site and I was always able to request several hints or even the solution when typing solution (I never had to do this last one though).

This game was awesome! I’m not actually the best at this sort of adventure although I do love it, but I have no patience to search for an hour how to solve something when I’m stuck and I didn’t need to. I continually made progress and when I really didn’t know how to start with solving something I asked for a clue. I have learned quite a few new apps and techniques while playing this game.

I don’t want to give away too much but I had to insert coordinates on a map, play some oldscool animated computer game, listen to a clip in reverse, make a code appear on a photo by playing with photo settings, manipulate paper with temperature, get into a bank account by delving into ones Instagram, recognize a song, reset someone’s pin code by answering security questions… Don’t be intimidated because you’ll normally know what to do and even when you’re kind of a noob like me with the internet and apps it’s all very doable.

One of the extra perks of this game is that the game can be played more than once and it’s even allowed by the company to give the game to someone else. They can log in with their own username and password combined with the game key and start the game afresh.

My box – part 1 – contained only half of the full game which means the first four chapters, as I didn’t want to take too much of a risk if it wasn’t my cup of tea but looking back I wish I had gone for the full game immediately.

In case you didn’t know already, I highly recommend Hack Forward and it certainly is value for money. If you’re still not sure you can also play a demo of the first chapter on the Key Enigma site. In fact I enjoyed this one so much that I already ordered another box (Calling Card) so you’ll have another review to look out for later this year!

Check out their site for all the different games here

I purchased a game on my own at full price. This is my honest opinion.

Take a look at my other reviews:

Crimibox: The Case of the Ashes

The Curious Correspondence Club: Chapter 1: Custodian Keys

Murder Mystery Party Case Files: Underwood Cellars

Judas Horse by Lynda La Plante #BookReview

‘Do you know what a Judas Horse is? When the wild mustangs are running free, you corral one and train it. When he’s ready, you release him and he’ll bring his team back into the corral – like Judas betraying them…’

Violent burglars have been terrorising residents across the English countryside. But when a mutilated body is discovered in a Cotswolds house, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary group of opportunist thieves.

As Detective Jack Warr investigates, he discovers locals with dark secrets, unearths hidden crimes – and hits countless dead ends. With few leads and the violent attacks escalating, he will have to act as audaciously as the criminals if he hopes to stop them.

When Warr meets Charlotte Miles, a terrified woman with links to the group, he must use her to lure the unsuspecting killers into one last job, and into his trap. But with the law already stretched to breaking point, any failure will be on Warr’s head – and any more blood spilled, on his hands…

This is the first Lynda La Plante novel that I read and I certainly understand why she’s such a successful author. Judas Horse is the second novel in a series about DC Jack Warr but I only came upon this information afterwards. It surprised me to learn this so it didn’t hinder my reading experience and the novel can definitely be read as a standalone. 

I had a good feel of Jack’s character, he’s not without flaws but he’s a natural born leader, a bit of a lone wolf I might add and he struggles a bit with that, but he’s damn good at his job. I also enjoyed the glimpse into his personal life where his new status as a father will be the biggest change of late. But Maggie and Jack also have friends who are expecting, then there’s also his mother who lives with them and he often refers to his late father and his biological father. Overall the character development was great and made me care for them.

At the beginning of the novel there are two children who find an abandoned horse carriage and then the story takes quite a jump towards Jack, where I saw him in action and immediately knew he was good at his job. The horse carriage was not spoken of any more and I had almost forgotten all about it when it suddenly became quite relevant. It was exciting to finally understand the meaning of the horse carriage and I enjoyed how it came into play again later on. The story itself is mainly about some burglars who quite drastically rob people of their belongings and it becomes terrifying when they don’t even care if people are home or not. Jack tries to find out who they are and where they’re going to strike next and I was fully invested in the investigation myself which isn’t simple to solve and takes a route I hadn’t anticipated.

I enjoyed the dynamics between the different police officers, and there was a good build up, only the ending was a little too action packed for me. It would definitely work for me on screen with all the high tension chasing but book-wise I prefer the investigation itself. Judas Horse (the title is explained in the novel, I had never heard of this before but it is a perfect title relating to both the plot and the setting) pulled me in right from the start and was a wonderful introduction to this author so it probably won’t be my last one either. 

I received a hardcopy of this novel in my Capital Crime Subscription box. This is my honest opinion.

Love and Other Human Errors by Bethany Clift #BookReview

A book synopsis is fundamentally ridiculous. How can I possibly convey, in only 100 words, the events of the past year and their impact on my perfectly ordered existence?

It is insufficient space to accurately detail how I was blackmailed into demonstrating my flawless algorithm to find a soulmate, despite having no desire for one.

In my former life I avoided trivial human connections. I was alone, accomplished and brilliant.

Unfortunately, that solitary and driven woman no longer exists.

My name is Indiana Dylan and this is the extraordinary account of how I fell in love.

There: 100 words exactly.

The lovely pink cover was one of the reasons I decided to read this novel. The fact that it’s been getting really high ratings and was only 99p closed the deal.

This is a story about love and the shortcut to find it. Indiana has created an app called Tru who finds your true soul mate on the basis of more than your interests. The algorithm she wrote knows to find the client’s habits, preferences, everything there is to know. JaneDoe is the company she tries to sell it to but they require proof that it really works so she has to work together with manager Lina (who puts work before love) and IT guy Jack (who lost the love of his life). Indiana/Indi doesn’t want love in her life but there’s a lot at stake as Indi stands to lose her house and the new secret project she’s working on. The app has to work, she knows it does because she never fails so she agrees to prove it to JaneDoe.

I loved how completely different the main characters were but the side characters were just as important if not even more. Peggy – Indi’s assistant – seems more human than Indi herself and the homeless Frank and his dog Alan who take up residence at the entrance of Indi’s building show such humanity and kindness that I literally cried for them. They left quite an impression and are the ones who really stole my heart in a flash.

The characters all make different but important life changes in this novel and I really enjoyed the evolution the characters went through. Indi is socially awkward for a very long time and not easy to connect with at first but she takes baby steps to being more human and showing more heart and as she changes I too really started to warm up to her after being initially drawn towards the other characters at first.

Indiana’s soul mate is waiting for her but as in all romance novels there’s the necessary bumps in the road to love. A bit of a predictable ending but that didn’t make it any less enjoyable. The author inserted enough originality into the novel to give it that little extra. Even though the romance level of the novel was different than expected, present but certainly not dominating, this novel certainly has heart and some valuable advice for the ones who care to listen.

I bought a copy of this novel. This is my honest opinion.