"Daisy Darker" by Alice Feeney

An audio book.

The book begins with the agent saying the manuscript was hand delivered.

Daisy (her 1st person PoV), born 1975 with congenital heart problems (dying at least 4 times, and several operations), has sisters Rose and Lily. Their parents have divorced. All have financial problems. Daisy's grandma grew rich having written "Daisy Darker's Little Secret" - a children's book. Her grandma thinks she won't live to 81, and has invited them all to her Cornwall house (on a peninsula that becomes an island at high tide) for her 80th birthday in 2004.

There was an event that still causes friction between Daisy and the others. Father likes music. Mother wanted to be an actress. Rose has built up a vet practice. Lily (mother's favourite) had a child, Trixy, when young and has never worked.

Connor (a BBC crime correspondent) arrives by rowing boat. He's known the family since he was 9. Gran saved him from his abusive, widowered father Bradley. She also saved the father from an overdose. Bradley (reformed, an NT gardener) later became Nancy's partner for a while.

Gran reads her will - mirrors for Lily so she can see what she's become; art materials for Rose; Daisy with money for charities of her choice. Trixy gets everything else. Daisy shares a room with Connor. Her parents are discovered sleeping in the same bed. She sees Connor in the night looking at poems on his laptop. At midnight the 80 clocks in the hall chime and there's a scream. Gran is dead. A head wound? Fallen off a chair? She has the Daisy book on her hand, and chalk. There's a chalked ryme on the wall, nasty to the family, saying that they spend their final hours together. The boat disappears. The body disppears. There's a VHS to watch.

Near halfway through we learn that Lilly is a diabetic needing insulin twice a day. Her kit is found, but with drugs missing. Father is found dead, his baton tied to him. Poisoned? Maybe it was a suicide - guilt about killing the grandmother? A B key is missing from the piano. Trixy was supposedly asleep in the window seat (they'd put a sleeping pill in her tea), but she's gone.

There are flashbacks of family life - father returning with presents etc. Often these are provoked by video tapes left in a room. The first has "WATCH ME" on it. The second has "READ ME". Then "HEAR ME", then "NOTICE ME" There's some attempt to add emotional depth - family dynamics from the past, etc - but the reactions to the deaths might be from an Agatha Christie piece.

The poems have been changed, their premonitions becoming true. Connor had chalk on his jeans.

Gran said she'd started an honest book about the family. Bradley said he'd started a book about grief.

Dad's body disappears. Nancy goes missing. Dad's and Nan's bodies are found in a cupboard under the stairs. Trixy's there too, a puncture beween toes. Insulin? Rose finds an antidote. Rose has brought a gun. Nancy's found dead outside. On the 4th tape there's a birthday of gran's where her trusted agent is present. The gun's lost.

Another flashblack - Rose and Connnor are good friends, but Rose is soon off to Cambridge so Lily flirts with him. Daisy (13?) sees Lily and Connor have sex.

We learn the Connor is Trixy's father - a possibility Daisy hasn't considered. Connor's father disappeared - suicide it's assumed - when Connor was 18.

Connor falls down the stairs and dies. Rose is shot by Trixy. Trixy reminds Daisy she's been dead for years (which is why people ignored her). She's only seen by Trixy (who has the same heart condition as Daisy) and people who are about to die. Connor ran her over when he was drunk and without a license. His father thought he's killed her and killed himself.

Gran's not dead after all. She and Trixy worked together to get rid of their ghastly family. Gran poisons herself so she can see Daisy - "everything I did tonight I did for you"

Daisy can move scrabble letters, so she writes a book - the one that the agent was so surprised to get at the start.

I thought the plot was weak in places, but the final twist explains things. I think the start's rather slow at the same.

"The Dream House", T.M. Logan

An audio book.

It's 2024. Having moved into an old house with wife Jess and children, Adam finds a secret room behind a wardrobe. Lea is 16. She was 7 when Adam and Jess married. Daisy (4) and Callum (now 9) came later. Daisy wets the bed saying that she’s seen a ghost.

In the room he finds a Rolex watch initialled EJS and sells it for £4,000. He finds an old flip-up mobile with one number in the address book. They try it and they’re texted back. On the phone is a picture of wrists tied by a scarf. He finds a dog collar with an address, and visits the address. The collar belonged to the dog of the woman’s ex-husband. The woman, Max says that her husband disappeared about 20 years before. She has a son who never saw his father. Adam finds a coded message and a scarf.

Adam's just been sacked, not telling Jess. He finds a surveillance camera in a tree, and suspicious cameras around the house.

Someone comes to the house wanting the items, pretending to be the previous occupant's grandson. Adam gets a text demanding the items. Lea is stalked. Adam's suspicious of the cleaner and gardener. He tries to buy the watch back, but it's gone.

There are interludes when we learn of other people - loners, closet gays, etc.

Adam's knocked out by an intruder. He tells Jess everything, including about him losing his job, etc. He decides that he'd better return everything. He buys a fake replacement watch. Jess (surprisingly) does to the drop. The people aren't fooled.

An ex-detective turns up with the real Rolex. He says he worked on the original case. His theory is that there were 2 people and serial murders.

Adam sacks the gardener and cleaner. Jess (puzzlingly) thinks he's becoming paranoic. The ex-detective suggests that they try to give the real items over, and trap the baddies using his police contacts. Things don't work out. Adam gets a call which makes him realise that Jess is being held captive in the hidden room. He rushes back. It's the estate agent. He tells them that the items were evidence that his partner in crime had hidden as insurance. He locks Adam and Jess in, then sets the house alight. Max and her son catch him on the way out, and Adam escapes carrying Jess.

In the end I liked it. Adam begins to suspect everybody, with justification.

"Tatty" by Christine Dwyer Hickey

An audio book.

1964. The narrator, Caroline (Tatty), has a new baby sibling. The narrator imagines the world seen through the baby's gradually focussing eyes.

In Chapter 2 the narrator's 5. She lives in Dublin. Her father likes the horses. She knows about the local pubs - where the toilets are, the back/upstairs rooms. The landladies offer her meals and ask her about her family. She's learnt to say little. She has a special sister Dierdra who eventually goes to a special school. Tatty's alert to the phases of arguments her parents have. She intercedes when her mother starts battering her little brother. She lies to her father about having friends.

Her father (who she thinks loves her more than her mother does) sends her to a boarding school when she's about 10. Her older sister Jeany wants to go too. Her mother is drinking and is pregnant again. She lives in a separate part of the house. When her father collects her for Xmas, he's drunk and has a crash.

Later, she's summoned back home. She sees "a snowman going brown at the edges, like a fruit going off". Her mother has wrecked the house then overdosed on sleeping pills. She'll recover. Their father blames the kids. He promises that everything's going to be different - mum's giving up drink and Tatty's staying home. He then pops out to see a friend.

I didn't see much to admire in the book.

Other reviews

• Dorothy Allen (The story is deceptively simple in construction: it’s told from Tatty’s perspective in 10 chapters as she ages from four to 14. As she grows, so do her perceptions and the complexity of the novel grows on the reader.)

"The girl in the mirror" by Rose Carlyle

An audio book.

Iris (it's her PoV throughout, she's 23 years old) and Summer are twins, identical, though Iris has internal organs the opposite side to usual. She's a lawyer who's recently broken up with her boyfriend. Their mother Annabeth, their father's other wives and offspring are still around. Their brother Ben is gay. When her father died (she was 14), he arranged $100m to go to the first grandchild born within marriage. Summer (ex-nurse) is married to Adam whose first wife died (Summer was her nurse). Adam's son Tarquin is more than 2 years old and mute.

Summer's family is cruising in their yacht Bathsheba when Tarquin falls ill. Iris flies over to help Summer sail the yacht away. Summer's pregnant. She goes overboard. Iris wonders how to break the news on her arrival. Misunderstandings and the situation tempt her to say that she's Summer. She has trouble maintaining the pretence - she's not pregnant (she tells Adam's cousin she miscarried on the boat), she knows nothing about childcare, Adam's into BDSM role-play, and any medical examination will reveal that her heart's strangely located.

She gets herself pregnant but she's over a month behind what people think she is. Summer was more popular than her - her mother says she considered Iris a lost soul and never understand her. Virginia, a half-sister, has been encouraged by her mother to get pregnant. She's sent to New Zealand to married a cousin when 16 and her mother gets her to have sex 3 times a day. Her cousin isn't happy about it, nor is Victoria. Iris plays the piano badly (like Summer) then improves. "The piano seems to have the soul of Bathsheba, the soul of the ocean."

Tarquin's first sentence is "You're not my mother".

Iris's waters break. She has a daughter. Ben turns up after 7 months of non-contact (he hadn't come over after Iris's death). He knows straight away that she's Iris (though Iris's mother had been living with Iris and Adam for months without realising) and she deals with the situation as if she expected it.

Summer appears. Iris copes well with the surprise. Summer says she's wombless and it's all been a plot to get a child (which I hadn't anticipated). While they're fighting Ben shoots Summer from a distance then returns to New York while Iris returns to attend the delayed ceremony for Iris. But actually Ben shot Iris.

When one of the twins is shot dead I presume the author expects readers to be unsure who the victim is. Before then I think the twists work, though the behaviour/reactions of characters are often hard to believe. The $100m reward is so high that extreme reactions are likely, and with twins around, there are few new plots left. I didn't believe that Iris would adopt Summer's identity - too easily discoverable by mother or doctors. Even if Ben disliked Summer, his behaviour is strange.

I think the writing's ok. "Another wall of pain slams into my body" doesn't work for me.

Other reviews

• Toni V. Sweeney (Summer is the dominant twin, but she’s not as perfect as everyone has always thought. Her secret has nothing to do with the order of birth. Their father’s will is only the catalyst bringing her true nature into the open. In the beginning, Iris strives merely to keep her sister’s memory alive, but as she becomes deeper involved in her deception, her personality gradually dissolves into Summer’s, into the time when she and her sister were one.)

"The Boy, the Bird and the Coffin Maker" by Matilda Woods

An audio book. It's described as "Middle Grade, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Young Adult" etc, not the kind of book I'd usually read.

It's set in a village called Allora (Italian?). Fish fly onto the shore. Rosa and Clara Finistre ("windows" in Italian) live on a hill next to Alberto, a carpenter. A plague kills his wife and 3 children. He makes coffins for them, like Russian Dolls. He makes a coffin for himself too. He goes to all the funerals from then on. 30 years later the mayor asks for a grand coffin to be made for him.

di Ponto thinks he can earn a living by being a fisherman, but people can pick up fish for free. Miss Bulito, who's been in the village for about a year, is found dead. Alberto uses his coffin for her. His house is repeatedly burgled. He discovers that a boy (with a companion bird Fia) is the culprit. He's Tito, the (previously unknown) son of the dead woman. Alberto teaches him woodwork. He saves Tito from the snow. Tito sleeps for 12 days, then wakes. Fia has an injured wing, which is why it flies in circles. It grows from the size of a sparrow to a hawk's size. Tito explains to Alberto that he and his mother had to flee South from Bolzano to escape from Tito's policeman father, who's still looking for him, which is why he hides. Alberto reads him a story about an explorer, Geo, who finds a mountain called Isola which was full of marvels and became an island because of so many tears.

Tito's father stays in town, does house searches, offers ever bigger rewards. Tito puts himself at risk of discovery by visiting his mother's grave. Alberto's old friend Enzo helps him keep his secret. Rosa dies, the fish stop flying. di Ponto begins to earn money. Fia disappears for days, returning with something from Isola. In the night Tito and Alberto sail away in the Mayor's coffin.

An enjoyable read.

"Bleeding Heart Yard" by Elly Griffiths

An audio book.

In the prolog we learn that a policewoman (Cassie, married to Pete) committed a murder.

Harbinder, a 38 year old Sikh lesbian from Shoreham, has started a new detective job in London, living in shared accommodation with 2 women (including Metta, a 6ft blond). Cassie is her DS. At a school reunion attended by Cassie, an out-spoken, married, right-wing MP, Garfield (Gary) Rice, was murdered. He'd been receiving messages saying "Bleeding Heart". His wife is Italian. Other people in the year are Henry (left, shadow cabinet minister, with a husband), Simona (now school head), Izzy (actress), Anna (back from years in Italy to support her dying mother) and Chris (in a band). Gary and Izzy were sweet-hearts at school and had recently started an affair.

At the end of the A-levels, the gang had decided to punish David for raping Cassie and being bad to Annie. They'd intended to scare him at an unused station. In the end, only Cassie was with him. When he approached her, she pushed him away and he died under a train. Nobody was accused. Henry and Gary saw the incident.

Anna heard Simona talking by the scene of the crime though Simona says she was eating out with her family then. Gary died of an insulin overdose. Cassie and Chris are diabetics. An empty syringe with Cassie's prints is found near the school. Gary had told Izzy that he knew who had killed David.

There's a club called "The Bleeding Heart" in "Bleeding Heart Yard". The right-wing climate-change denyers called themselves the Bleeding Hearts.

Henry tells Anna that she was by the station when David died. She doesn't recall it. Not long before, Chris had split with her.

Chris (single with 2 children) takes Anna to Brighton for the day. Henry is killed.

Handwriting analysis shows that Gary's wife wrote the notes to him. Cassie confesses to Harbinder that she pushed David.

Chris spends the night at Anna's. He's arrested. Anna looks through her old diaries. Chris is released. Izzy suggests a re-enactment at the station. Harbinder's there. She's threatened with a gun by Cassie's husband Pete. Metta (who we'd been led to think might be the culprit) saves her. Pete had shot David (to save Cassie) and had committed the other murders. Cassie realises that he's always been over-protective. Matte and Harbinder start going out. Harbinder takes Matte to meet her family.

Some of the vocabulary doesn't match the speaker - "without rancour", "solicitous", "like a diorama the day spooled in front of me". Many of the facts of the case (especially about the overheard conversation at the reunion) are repeated.

"Nude" by C. Michelle Lindley

In 1999, Dr Elizabeth Clarke, who works in an L.A. museum, flies to Greece to procure (for maybe $6 million) a newly discovered statue. She's about 35, suffers from bad migraines, and has very recently divorced from Julian (who she liked because he was all surface). A sister, Margaret, died when a teenager. She's in competition with Maddison (who she's had sex with in the gallery) to replace her boss William. She knows that William may know about her affair with Maddison. She's warned not to be cold to the prospective sellers.

Niko, married to Theo (female), seems to want to be friends. The museum staff show her another statue very recently found in the sea, just like the one she's come to buy. It's obviously a fake - what should she say?

After a meal with Theo and Niko (Niko is death haunted, and want to give up smoking) they drive her to a private club. She's introduced to Leon. She realises she doesn't have her wallet, so she has to let Leon pay for things. She tries coke for the first time. She wakes next morning in her room, not knowing now she got there, thinking that she may have had sex (this risk-taking while on a career-defining mission, alone, is surprising. I'd have expected her to panic without her wallet). When tired or getting a migraine she hallucinates - about sex, about Margaret, etc.

Niko gives her photos of the statue. Among them are suggestive photos of Theo. She knows about Greek representations of the female form. She wonders how much of her life (at work and home) is performance. She's conscious of her body as a studied object.

An insect wing is stuck on the statue overnight. No damage. She thinks she has a STD, and finds a tampon deep inside her. She flies to Athens to give a talk. Niko and Theo come too. She's questioned by a student about the morality of buying history and taking it from its country of origin. She says galleries look after the pieces and make them available to the public. She’s interested in value systems - assessment of art and female bodies. But if a beautiful body is depicted, which value system dominates?

They return. Maddison turns up. His first child’s just been born. They sleep together. Theo discovers them next morning. She later tells Elizabeth that she and Niko have an open relationship.

The statue’s found in in the fountain, its head replaced by a plastic bag with a cicada inside. She goes to a party, drinks too much, wounds a goat with a gun. At the party she tells a young boy how she'd gone swimming with Margaret in a lake, just the two of them, and she'd drowned. When she gets back from the party, Niko tells her that he and Theo are leaving the island. They have sex. Next day Theo takes artistic nude photos of her. Maddison calls from the States to say that the purchase has gone through, that William has had a bad stroke, that William is being investigated for monetary and sex-related indiscretions, and that she and Maddison are promoted. She turns down the promotion and tramps around Europe. She learns that Theo is pregnant with twins, and that she was involved with the decapitation.

At the end she's in an Albanian museum. A partially deaf little girl tries to climb onto a statue's plinth.

The language is noteworthy - "His image drained into the shadows"; The Mediterranean's rhythm is "like a sleeping breath", etc. The main character's contradictions help emphasise the novel's conceptual underpining - Art vs Life; Theory vs headless Art, etc.