It s a week before Christmas. Sophie is out of work, out of love and out of her depth literally. Stuck in Cornwall on the holiday from hell with her ex-boyfriend, her boyfriend s ex, and two intimidating colleagues. If that s not enough, Sophie s got her hands full trying to prevent her best friend s perfect engagement from blowing up in her face.
When a corpse turns up in the local harbor it s the perfect distraction at least until someone tries to add Sophie to the body count.
Tangled love, tangled lives, tangled clues. Now there s a holiday menu Sophie can t resist."
Kate Johnson lives in rural Essex where she belongs to a pride of cats and puts up with a demon puppy. She did actually do most of her homework, but quickly so as to have more time to stare out of the window thinking about heroes. Stay in school, kids. Kate has done a variety of not-particularly great jobs, ranging from airport check-in to lab assistant, but much prefers writing for a living. For one thing, the hours are better, and no one ever tells her off for not ironing her shirt. In fact, the lack of ironing might be the single greatest advantage to being an author. Kate loves going off at mad tangents, which you’d surely never have guessed, but also enjoys reading romance and fantasy, watching funny stuff on TV, drinking coffee by the gallon and occasionally leaving the house. The Untied Kingdom is her first novel to be published in the UK.
It still is an entertaining book and i love Sophie's sense of humour, but she's starting to get on my nerves. The whole self-inflicted, non-existing, self-fabricated drama with Luke is annoying and frankly ridiculous. I'd still recommend it though
Sophie Green and Luke Sharpe are at each other's throats - so why are they going on holiday together? Twice?
According to Luke, Sophie's acting like a stupid cow for having broken up with him, and I have to agree. But he's not being much cleverer, and I often felt the urge to throttle them both. Unfortunately, despite the fact she frequently describes Luke being suave and skilled, they both come across as alarmingly inept investigators, blatantly drawing attention to themselves whilst pestering uncooperative suspects.
At this point, I'm not reading the series for suspense or mystery - which is a bit odd, considering all the characters are spies, suspects, or victims - but rather for Johnson's crisp, witty style. And I've simply got to see these two get it together for good!
Docherty fails to make an appearance in this installment, more's the pity, and Xander only rates a couple of paragraphs. Johnson does introduce Rachel, who's an entertaining if improbable character. No American eight-year-old girl would know what a creche is, much less act as worldly and mature as this one does. Even so, she perked my interest more than some other plot points, and there's some good potential here for future sardonic hilarity.
I'm almost willing to bet Johnson created Caro, Luke's new sort-of girlfriend, merely for another excuse to mangle Sophie. It's possible Johnson uses Sophie's constant state of fending off attacks/recovering from injuries as a sympathy subplot, accurately figuring readers are getting fed up with Sophie being such a dolt about Luke. And Sophie's somewhat homophobic reaction to the secret gay love affair (which you could see coming from a mile away) made me uncomfortable, especially considering the state of things with Xander and a certain other coworker/friend. The insta-ending for the mystery bit was predictable and rushed, but I did enjoy the semi-epilogue reunion between Luke and Sophie at the wedding. Aww...
Still and all, I've bought the next installment: "Run Rabbit Run," just released this month. Come on, Kate Johnson, and make this one worth the wait!
I really like this series. I got a little impatient in this one, though, and hurried through parts, assuming a certain outcome... only to find several unexpected developments that took things in a different direction (which is good). I don't think there's a fifth in the series, despite this one having come out 2 years ago, and I'm not sure what that means. Was this intended to be climactic? I could see how it might be taken that way, but if this was the intended conclusion of a series, it was a little unsatisfying for me.
This might be my second favorite of the Sophie Green Mysteries. (I, Spy? being #1).
Sophie actually got quite irritating with her woe-is-me attitude through out the first half of the book - especially considering it was over a situation she created for herself. butI was happy with the ending. And I felt like overall, the book did a solid job of wrapping up the series.
I'm sad to not have any new books to look forward to though.
It was a little slower than the other books. Not my favorite Sophie Green storyline, there wasn't as much action or something was missing because it seemed so slow that I actually forgot that the story of Maria meeting her new love interest happened in this book. But I still enjoyed the characters and can't wait to see what happens in the next book!
This is my least favorite of the sohpie green books. Uninteresting mystery, too many woe is me conversations from sophie and no real closure on the future of sophie and luke. I read a lot of the book and couldn't even tell what was going on, especially in the action scenes. There were too many suspects to know what was going on with the mystery.
Sophie Green is on holiday with her professional spy co-workers, including her ex-boyfriend, when a woman mysteriously turns up dead in a nearby cave. Sophie's interest is piqued when she casually investigates and someone tries to kill her in the same cave. Out of a job and with only the dumbest blonde dog ever as a trusted companion, Sophie sets out to solve the murder and save her own life.
I think I got this as a kindle freebie years ago. I liked it OK. It was quick and had some action.
I started with book 4, though (not my usual habit) and so I wasn't invested in the characters. Maybe if I had started at book 1 I would have liked it better.
This is the 4th book in the series and my least favorite. It seemed that the author was trying too hard to create the storyline. Additionally, the female lead was put into peril so many times that it became very annoying.
This was a great book. Sophie is totally someone I would want as a friend. I can't wait to read the next one. I was glad to see that Sophie and Luke both came through the events of book 3 okay to continue their attraction and chemistry in this book. The end of book 3 had me in tears.
This was the fourth book in the series and I enjoyed each and every one of them. Read on the author's page that a fifth one is in the works. I'm looking forward to that one too.
It was very entertaining ;-) A little too much on the woe-is-me relationship stuff, but I'm hooked. Kate Johnson is looking for a market for her fifth book. I'm keeping my eye out...