Review: Mortlock by Jon Mayhew

Mortlock is a book by Jon Mayhew, first published in 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Josie is a knife thrower at her local theatre. 

Alfie is an undertaker’s assistant. 

They have lived separate lives for many years, with no knowledge of the other. 

But now, a past intertwined with death and mystery will bring them together like they would never have believed. 

♥

'Something's wrong. It has been for years.' Josie felt the colour rising in her cheeks. 'I'm not a child any more. Tell me.'

'Get to your room!' Cardamom roared, snatching up his glass and throwing it to the floor. Josie leapt back as slivers of glass flew through the air. Broken shards of glass at her feet reflected back the golden flicker from the stove. The doorbell rang. 

Cardamom shot a warning glance at Josie. Then he pointed a shaking finger in the direction of the front door.

'Answer it,' he said, his voice tight with tension.

Josie gathered her skirts and ran out into the hall. She dragged the back of her hand across her cheeks, pushing back stray locks of hair from her temples. Calm down, she told herself. Compose yourself. Then she grasped the heavy brass handle and heaved open the door.

♥

I was lucky enough to pick up this book free with a pile of others a few months ago, and this one I had put off for quite a while. 

Horror, thrillers and adventure-mysteries aren’t really my scene. I’ve always been a romance, contemporary and chick lit kind of girl. I used to read a few mystery books when I was a kid, but never really anything this dark. 

I was truly expecting to hate this one, just the thought of reading it made me squirm, and even when I had started reading, I kept putting off the next page or chapter. 

But I really shouldn’t have judged it. As they say, you can never judge a book by its cover, and here, that saying is spot on. I have to say, I’m a sucker for finding beautiful covers and wanting to read the book, and I did the same with this one – judged the actual content by the cover.

This book opened my eyes to see a whole host of books that I have dismissed due to their genre or covers...in the end it really taught me a whole lot of stuff that I had never even thought about. 

I suppose, what I’m trying to say, is this book was really good. I felt myself being sucked in every time I started reading, even if there was other people in the room talking or watching TV. With some books, I can only read in complete silence. Also, even though I struggled with other books of different genres, *cough* Northern Lights *cough* this proved to me that I’m different than I thought. I thought I struggled reading things that are not physically possible in our real world. But a lot happened in Mortlock that easily falls into that category, and I still loved it. 

-Beth

Happy Reading!♥