The summer is at its end. The days are getting shorter, the light fading and the rain making everything wet en gloomy. While some people find the rainy autumn and winter the time of the year to curl up with a book for me it is the summer. I love to sit out on my balcony till late at night reading in the natural light. Lying on the grass in a sunny park with the noise of people around me. This summer was a good reading year for me. Book after book I went through, some good some not so good. Here the top 5 of the best books I read this summer to make your autumn and winter even more special.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
I have been raving here about Gillian Flynn’s second book Dark Places so I just had to read her first one Sharp Objects. Gillian Flynn has a wonderful writing style. She can make her characters so fast en witty but also very gloomy and down-to-earth.

When there is a girl missing in her small hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri, Camille Preaker gets the assignment from her Chicago-based newspaper to cover the story. Camille left this town with good reason, leaving her unloving mother, silent stepfather and manipulative stepsister behind. With lead in her shoes she comes back and investigates what happened and finds out that the death of this little girl is connected to another death a couple of years previous. While digging deeper into the case she is also gets sucked in into her dark en and very dysfunctional family.

A must read if you like a good dark psychological thriller!

The Bed I Made by Lucie Whitehouse
When you begin to read the book Kate is on the Isle of Wight where she fled to get away from Richard, her lover for almost two years. You know what happened must be quite severe for her to leave her London apartment and her friends to settle in the heart of winter on the isolated island. While slowly being accepted by people on the island and even making friends you go back and forth in the past to Richard. How they met and how their romance blossomed, how he made himself a part of her whole life, shielding her from her friends. In the beginning every couple of chapters he has a voice in the form of mobile texts or emails. The more you read the more threatening they are getting and Kate begins to fear the worst.

When first starting the book I felt it was a bit slow, but after some chapters it gains momentum and I promise you you can’t put it down. Lucie Whitehouse has a wonderful fresh voice with very real characters.

The Company of Shadows by Ruth Newman
This is a great action-packed book where you will find yourself traveling the globe.

Kate Benson is a young widow trying to piece her life back together after her husband drowned on holiday in Sicily. While going through some holiday photo’s of her friends, who just came back from Miami, she suddenly finds herself looking at her dead husband who is in the background of one of the pictures. Kate’s whole world turns upside down and she flies to Miami and then to Sicily to find the man on the photo. What really happened that fatal day in Sicily? Did Charlie really die? Did he drown or was he murdered? And who are the men trying to warn her not to look into it?

A whirlwind of a book with a crazy ending.

Apartment 16 by Adam Nevill
It’s not very often I read horror books, but after reading some raving reviews I thought I would give it ago.

Barrington House, a chic apartment building in London, is not all it seems. Apartment 16 hasn’t been opened in 50 years. Night guard Seth hears noises from the apartment and when one night while exploring what the sounds are something happens that will forever change his life.

Apryl inherited another apartment in the building from her great aunt. What starts of as a great fortune for her soon changes into an obsession where she has to know what happened to her great aunt. What is behind the door of apartment 16?!

The book is written so vividly I was actually scared of reading it alone at night. It’s a story that slowly builds up to an explosive end.

Bleed for me by Michael Robotham
Bleed For Me is part of Robotham’s series about clinical psychologist Joe O’Loughlin. Joe has separated from his wife and two children and is dealing with his Parkinson’s disease. When one evening Sienna, a friend of his daughter, turns up covered in blood his life takes a drastic turn once again. Sienna’s father has been brutally murdered in her bedroom and she is too shocked to talk about it. Joe, with the help of his friend Ruiz, goes on a, sometimes very disturbing, journey to find the truth.

Michael Robotham is one of my favorite crime writers and while his last book Bombproof was a little disappointing Bleed For Me is top-notch.

Presented by ABC Crime Buyer Pleun.

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