I’m really excited to be one of the bloggers kicking off the blog tour for Game Players by Anita Waller. Regular readers will know how much I like the author and this book has to be one of her best.
My Review:
I really like Anita Waller, when I read 34 Days I absolutely loved it and have been a fan of the author ever since, and she’s definitely got a place in my top author’s list.
There was a lot that I loved about Game Players, it grabbed me right from the start and I loved the ‘gang of six’, a group of children who find themselves caught up in a world that they don’t belong. They make a decision, all agreeing by vote, but are totally unaware of the fatal consequences of that vote.
As a reader I couldn’t help but root for the gang, and also feel slightly envious of them as I’d of loved to have friends like that when I was growing up! I loved how Waller made each child an individual, but together they were such a team and a real force to be reckoned with.
The book is told from various points of view and I have to say that I enjoyed reading all of them which is unusual as often there’s at least one that you don’t enjoy reading about so much. The police officer who knew that something was going on but had no idea what. The criminal with a conscience. The imperfect parent trying to do their best. They all added to the story and made it a compelling read that I just didn’t want to put down.
Game Players was one of those books that I desperately wanted to keep reading to find out what was going to happen, but when I did I was really sad that it was over and that I would have to leave that gang of six behind.
Thanks for a great read Anita Waller! When is the next one out??
Thank you to Bloodhound Books for a copy of Game Players by Anita Waller, I was under no obligation to review the book and all thoughts are my own.
Blurb:
When a gang of six children playing in their den in the woods spot a man burying drugs nearby, it marks the beginning of the end of their childhoods
Unsure what to do, the children dig up the drugs and take them away. But when the dealer, who they watched bury the stash, shows up dead, the youngsters are thrown into turmoil.
Scared of what might happen, the children tell the police about the body they have discovered.
Meanwhile, a group of gangsters start searching for their missing drugs.
Soon the children and their families become the target of the vicious criminals who will stop at nothing to retrieve their narcotics…
About the Author:
Anita Waller was born in Sheffield, South Yorkshire in 1946. She married Dave in 1967 and they have three adult children.
She began writing when she was around 8 years of age, writing ‘compositions’ at junior school that became books with chapters.
In 1995 she sent Beautiful to a publisher and as they reached the contract stage the publisher went into liquidation. As a result, the book was consigned to the attic in dejected disgust but in 2013 it was dragged out again for an enforced complete re-type. The original was written on an Amstrad 8256 and the only thing that remained was one hard copy.
Anita is not a typist and it was painfully reworked over two years, submitted to Bloodhound Books who, within three days of reading it, offered her a contract. 31 August 2015 saw its release into the wide world.
Following the outstanding success of Beautiful, she began a sequel on 27 December 2015, finishing it on 19 March 2016. The new novel, Angel, was launched on 7 May 2016.
34 Days followed, with its launch in October 2016. This was a huge success, particularly in the United States. While this, her third book in the psychological thriller genre, was flying out in all directions, she began work on her fourth book.
Winterscroft was a change in genre. It is a supernatural tale, set in Castleton, Derbyshire, and its release date was February 2017.
While she was writing Winterscroft, it became very clear from reading reviews that a sequel to 34 days was needed, and she began work on that. Bloodhound Books launched Strategy, on 10 August 2017.
Her next book, launched February 2018 and entitled Captor, is a psychological thriller, set exclusively in Sheffield. It was an instant success, both in the UK and the US.
The along came Game Players… once more set in Sheffield, the story involves a group of six children who have each other’s backs to a remarkable extent. The darker, criminal side of Sheffield is explored, and the book launch is 18 May 2018.
In her life away from the computer in the corner of her kitchen, she is a Sheffield Wednesday supporter with blue blood in her veins! The club was particularly helpful during the writing of 34 Days, as a couple of matches feature in the novel, along with Ross Wallace. Information was needed, and they provided it.
Her genre is murder – necessary murder.
Links:
Amazon page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref =nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias %3Daps&field-keywords=anita+ waller
Facebook page: @anitawaller2015
Website: www.anitamayw.wixsite.com/anit awaller
Twitter: @anitamayw
Four little Londoners, Hope, Jun, Lea and Parth, come from a different cultural background, are good friends living in London. They are travelling to the iconic places around the city in search of magic hats to cure Mr Globe’s headache.
Winnie Mak Tselikas is a believer in diversity. Born and raised in Hong Kong, she studied engineering, worked in commercial sales and in 2011 switched to education upon moving to London. There, she met her half-French, half-Greek husband and they had a son, who now has family in China, France, Greece, HK, the UK and the US. Winnie considers her son to be a world citizen rather than of a particular nationality or culture. Inspired by her family and London’s diversity, she founded One Dear World and created the lovely adventures of Mr. Globe and the little Londoner dolls.
Whitechapel, 1888: London is bowed under Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror.
Born in 1978 in Marseille and with a degree in political science, Johana Gustawsson has worked as a journalist for the French press and television. She married a Swede and now lives in London. She was the co-author of a bestseller, On se retrouvera, published by Fayard Noir in France, whose television adaptation drew over 7 million viewers in June 2015. She is working on the next book in the Roy & Castells series.
1997. Scarclaw Fell. The body of teenager Tom Jeffries is found at an outward bound centre. Verdict? Misadventure. But not everyone is convinced. And the truth of what happened in the beautiful but eerie fell is locked in the memories of the tight-knit group of friends who embarked on that fateful trip, and the flimsy testimony of those living nearby.
One cold November night in 2014, in a small town in the north west of England, 26-year-old Arla Macleod bludgeoned her mother, father and younger sister to death with a hammer, in an unprovoked attack known as the ‘Macleod Massacre’. Now incarcerated at a medium-security mental-health institution, Arla will speak to no one but Scott King, an investigative journalist, whose ‘Six Stories’ podcasts have become an internet sensation.
Matt Wesolowski is an author from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the UK. He is an English tutor and leads Cuckoo Young Writers creative writing workshops for young people in association with New Writing North. Matt started his writing career in horror and his short horror fiction has been published in Ethereal Tales magazine, Midnight Movie Creature Feature anthology, 22 More Quick Shivers anthology and many more. His debut novella The Black Land, a horror set on the Northumberland coast, was published in. Matt was a winner of the Pitch Perfect competition at Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival in 2015. His debut thriller Six Stories was an Amazon bestseller in the USA, Canada, UK and Australia.
If only I could read faster 