Review of 'The Secret Recipe for Second Chances'

The Secret Recipe for Second Chances by J.D. Barrett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A light-hearted amusing paranormal Australian love story. Definitely a fun read with a nice Ah! ending.

Lucy Muir has finally broken free of her cheating husband and is determined to start her own restaurant where she will be free to invent her own recipes and cook without her ex claiming the credits.
She is drawn to a closed restaurant which was the best in the city in the 80s.
What she doesn't know is that the ghost of the original chef is there and he's not going to let her get on in peace until she's helped him. Of course she falls in love with him. Read the rest yourself and have a gentle chuckle.

A pleasant read and good to find an Australian author with a sense of humour.



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The Malice of Waves by Mark Douglas-Home

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Hurray, number three in the series and another intelligent read. The author doesn't just write a murder mystery of the 'Here's a body, find the murderer' school, he looks at consequences, causes and effects. This makes for a more thoughtful read, a more complex plot and characters worth reading about.

Cal McGill is now more heavily involved with being a pure Sea Detective and finding bodies and he is employed to find the body of a teenager, Max Wheeler, who disappeared from a tiny uninhabited island 5 years earlier. This happened in the Outer Hebrides and again the islands are very much characters in the story. Mr Wheeler is obsessed with finding his son, his daughters suffer, and the island population is sick of being regarded as an evil bunch who prefer to hide a murderer rather than speak the truth. A lot of cause and effect and its consequences. The police are involved again and so Cal meets up with and works with D.S. Helen Jamieson. It's a complex plot and a good read.

Mark Douglas-Home writes well and his prose is lucid and a pleasure to read. Readers don't need to start with the first novel as each novel stands alone but it does really add to reading pleasure to see how some of the things which happen tie back to earlier stories. If you haven't tried this series and enjoy a different kind of mystery this is one not to miss.



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