Adrian Martin

Adrian Martin is a young, popular Irish chef. His new cookbook, Create Beautiful Food at Home, takes reasonably easy to make at home recipes and makes them look very, very fancy. His breezy explanations and the lovely photographs have me convinced it is possible to make food at home that looks like it comes from a swanky restaurant. For home chefs looking to learn something different or polish up restaurant-worthy skills, this is a terrific, must-have book.

***This book was reviewed for Crooked Cat Publishing via Netgalley***

The Helland Reckoning, by Adrian Martin, begins on a frigid winter's night with a car making its slow lonely way to Bowannack, in Helland. In the car is a fretful mother and her twin daughters. A collision with a deer is the start of a horrific dance with darkness for this small family.

Towed to their new home of Bowannack, Katie and her two girls- Sarah and Tegan- settle in for a night of indoor 'camping’ in their show more furnitureless home. Before the sun should rise on their very first night in the new place Katie has been plunged into a mother’s worse nightmare. Sarah has gone missing.

Katie finds aid in the most unlikely of places, from a mysterious man named Michael, to the humble parish priest Father Tilsley. The Helland Reckoning is a story spanning generations; a story of evil incarnate, and the saving grace of family ties. It is a story that invites you to believe in the impossible.

I thoroughly enjoyed the story of Helland. It was a clever story, and I didn't suss out Michael's truth at all. It came rather as a surprise. I must also admit that I got quite wrapped up in it and someone walked up on me and scared the flying pixie stix out of me. My reaction (jumping a foot out of my chair and hiding behind the Kindle, like it could save me…) startled the poor woman almost as badly as I had been.

That being said, the story has room for lots of improvement. It is in need of a good copy-editor to partner with the author. A thorough grammar and spell-checking is in order. These things weren't prevalent enough that it turned me off the story, but it is a good idea. There is also much material that could be trimmed, omitted, or rephrased. It would be greatly benefited by rather more showing than the telling that made the bulk of the story. Also, one technical point from a mudbug’s point of view- they seem to have been able to dig up not one, but two bodies out of frozen earth way too easily. Indeed, the fact they were even able to break ground at all is an astonishing feat, given the weather. I do look forward to seeing the author grow, and would most certainly read their next book.

🎻🎻🎻 Recommended for the connoisseur of horror and psychological/ paranormal thrillers, X-Files, and movies such as Poltergeist and The Hallow. show less

Katie, recently divorced, is both nervous and excited to move herself and her 12-year-old twins, Sarah and Tegan, to the house she just bought outside the small town of Helland. It's a new start for them all. On the way to their new life, driving in a snowstorm that has left cars and trucks abandoned everywhere, Katie hits a deer. The excitement, the horror and the mystery all start from there and doesn't let up until the end, when you sit back and say, "Wow!"

The characters are well drawn show more out for us, their complexities, the good and the not so good side, coming out as the story progressed. New revelations about the people and the past unfolding, not unlike a flower opening up to the sun, taking us along the neatly plotted path to the surprising destination.

The Helland Reckoning is a very enjoyable book, of mystery and horror and I loved every minute of it.

Book copy received via Net Galley in exchange for an honest review. show less

A dark atmospheric thriller set on Bodmin Moor.
Great read!
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher Crooked Cat Publishing via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.