Book review: A Passionate Love Affair with a Total Stranger by Lucy Robinson

My edition: Paperback, to be published on 31 January 2013 by Penguin, 434 pages.

Description: Charley Lambert has put considerable effort into achieving a perfect life. She has The Job. The Wardrobe. And The Flat. Her womanising, junk food-loving housemate Sam lowers the tone a bit but that aside, things are peachy.

Then she breaks her leg in three places, watches her unrequited love propose to someone else and - worst of all - is forced to hand over her job to her nasty deputy while she recovers. Workaholic Charley fears that she will soon go mad.

Desperate for something to do, she discovers her talent for helping the lovelorn online. And then William arrives in her inbox. Within hours of his first email, her world starts to change. Helpless, she watches herself fall in love with this man and begins to realise that she's not who she thought she was. But will she be brave enough to turn her back on her old life - all for a total stranger?

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Book review: Forgive Me by Lesley Pearse

My edition: Paperback (ARC), to be published on 14 February 2013 by Michael Joseph, 512 pages.

Description: Cheltenham, 1991

When Eva Patterson returns home from work one day, a devastating scene awaits her. Her mother, Flora, lies dead in the bath. Beside her is a note saying only: 'Forgive Me'.

Until then, Eva always believed her family's life would be comfortable and secure - but Flora's suicide changes everything. And when Eva discovers that in her will Flora left her an artist's studio in London, she realises how little she knows about her mother's past.

When Eva visits the now derelict studio, she is shocked to find out that her mother was once a successful artist back in the 1960s. A chance encounter leads her to Phil, who agrees to help her restore the studio, as well as offering her the advice and friendship Eva so badly needs.

In the studio attic she finds a collection of Flora's paintings and old diaries, which Eva believes were purposely left for her to find. Searching for answers, Eva encounters a psychic who mysteriously warns her to beware of a 'sleeping serpent', which she soon discovers refers to a shocking crime in Flora's past.

Will discovering the truth destroy Eva's belief in everything she holds dear? And will Phil stand by Eva even when her journey leads her and those she loves into certain danger?

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Book review: The Last Time I Saw You by Eleanor Moran

My edition: Paperback, to be published on 7 February 2013 by Quercus, 594 pages.

Description: When Olivia Berrington gets the call to tell her that her best friend from university has been killed in a car crash in New York, her life is turned upside down. Her relationship with Sally was an exhilarating roller coaster, until a shocking betrayal drove them apart. But if Sally had really turned her back, why is her little girl named Olivia?

As questions mount about the fatal accident, Olivia is forced to go back and unravel her untangled history. But as Sally's secrets start to spill out, Olivia's left asking herself if the past is best kept buried.

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Book review: Lost & Found by Tom Winter

My edition: Paperback, to be published on 21 February 2013 by Corsair, 320 pages.

Description: It started with a letter...

Carol is married to a man she doesn't love and mother to a daughter she doesn't understand. Crippled with guilt, she can't shake the feeling that she has wasted her life. So she puts pen to paper and writes a Letter to the Universe.

Albert is a widowed postman, approaching retirement age, and living with his cat, Gloria, for company. Slowly being pushed out at his place of work, he is forced down to the section of the post office where they sort undeliverable mail.

When a series of letters turns up with a smiley face drawn in place of an address, he cannot help reading them.

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Book review: Stolen by Lesley Pearse

My edition: Paperback, published in 2010 by Penguin books, 469 pages.

Description:A beautiful young woman is discovered half-drowned on a Sussex beach... Where has she come from? Why can't she remember who she is - or what happened?

She's wearing an old-fashioned dress and her hair has been hacked off. She's obviously been bound by the wrists and ankles. But without knowing her own name or who did this to her, she can't begin to piece together who she is and what led her to this unfamiliar place.

The police are baffled, but when the doctors examine her they make a shocking discovery: she has recently given birth. Who on earth is she? And where is her baby?

Stolen is a riveting, nail-biting story of a young woman desperately trying to recover her past and make sense of the woman she used to be.

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