Foxglove Copse by Alex Beecroft

After a massive anxiety attack, Sam Atkins left his high-powered job in the City and committed himself to life on the road in a small van. Six months in, he’s running out of savings and coming to the conclusion that he might have to go home to his emotionally abusive family.

Needing time to think, he takes a walk through a copse by the Cornish roadside, only to stumble upon the body of a ritualistically killed sheep. As he’s trying to work out what the symbols around the animal mean, the sheep’s owner, Jennifer, and her nephew, Ruan Gwynn, come upon him.

Ruan is a kind-hearted young man with a large supportive clan, and since he and Sam feel almost instant attraction, he doesn’t want to believe Sam is a sheep-killing cultist. In fact, the moment he lays eyes on Sam’s miserable solitary life, he wants to rescue the man. But as the killings escalate, he and Sam need to stop whoever is actually to blame before they can concentrate on saving each other.

A standalone contemporary novel in the Porthkennack universe.

Book 5
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Riptide Publishing

Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Sarah – ☆☆☆☆
Each new book in this series is a surprise and this one is definitely a delight. When city financier Sam’s conscience gets the better of him, he rejects his worldly goods, buys a van and some tarot cards, and heads to Cornwall only to be arrested for a ritual slaughter on the day he arrives. In Porthkennack, someone has been terrorising Ruan’s niece and her teenage friends. When his aunt’s sheep is slaughtered, he needs to find the culprit – but he can’t quite believe that Sam, a gentle English visitor, is to blame.

All the best bits of this series are present in this newest book. Once again, the intertwined family clans of this small seaside town come to life in full colour. Ruan’s family, the Gwynns, are a close and only slightly eccentric clan. The Lusmoores reappear – accompanied as always by lore, myth, and the fear of locals. Sam and Ruan are both well-developed characters and I loved the changes in Sam’s life as he settled into Porthkennack.

This story is as much a mystery as it is a romance. I really loved Ruan and Sam together and I also really enjoyed their search for the person terrorising Porthkennack. There are some thoroughly exciting scenes (and a couple of very cute dogs) at the end.

Alex Beecroft was born in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and grew up in the wild countryside of the English Peak District. She studied English and philosophy before accepting employment with the Crown Court, where she worked for a number of years. Now a full-time author, Alex lives with her husband and two children in a little village near Cambridge and tries to avoid being mistaken for a tourist.

Alex is only intermittently present in the real world. She has spent many years as an Anglo-Saxon and eighteenth-century reenactor. She has led a Saxon shield wall into battle, and toiled as a Georgian kitchen maid. For the past nine years she has been taken up with the serious business of morris dancing, which has been going on in the UK for at least five hundred years. But she still hasn’t learned to operate a mobile phone.

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Reviewers on the Wicked Reads Review Team were provided a free copy of Foxglove Copse (Porthkennack #5) by Alex Beecroft to read and review.

Labyrinth by Alex Beecroft

Kikeru, the child of a priestess at the sacred temple of Knossos in ancient Crete, believes that the goddesses are laughing at him. They expect him to choose whether he is a man or a woman, when he’s both. They expect him to choose whether to be a husband to a wife, or a celibate priestess in the temple, when all he wants to do is invent things and be with the person he loves.

Unfortunately, that person is Rusa, the handsome ship owner who is most decidedly a man and therefore off-limits no matter what he chooses. And did he mention that the goddesses also expect him to avert war with the Greeks?

The Greeks have an army. Kikeru has his mother, Maja, who is pressuring him to give her grandchildren; Jadikira, Rusa’s pregnant daughter; and superstitious Rusa, who is terrified of what the goddesses will think of him being in love with one of their chosen ones.

It’s a tall order to save Crete from conquest, win his love, and keep both halves of himself. Luckily, at least the daemons are on his side.

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Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Erica – ☆☆☆
Alex Beecroft is a new-to-me author.

Labyrinth is a transgender novella set in mythic times, featuring a young man who isn't sure if he wants to be a woman, only because he enjoys the company of his savior, another man. Truth be told, I was hooked from the start, but around the 15% mark, my interest waned.

The beginning had a major hook. Kikeru overheard two Greeks planning to overthrow his king. After choosing confrontation over calling out for help, Kikeru finds himself in an impossible situation – Rusa comes to the rescue.

My issues with the novella are as follows.

One: the overall feeling of the novella was frustration as I read, simply because the characters themselves were so childlike. I don't mean childish. Childlike. Naive. Kikeru's mother decided to dress him as a woman, instead of listening to the fact they were in danger, and instead of putting a stop to it, he continued to allow it. This bled over into the novel itself, where all actions after the fact supported this childlike mentality, doing dangerous things instead of just alerting their king.

Two: I don't feel this is a transgender novella whatsoever. In the mythos of this story, if you are a man who is a lover of other men, then you are a woman. There is no concept of being gay. Kikeru didn't want to be a woman, didn't feel himself to be a woman. Said so many times in fact. His mother dressed him as a woman in the middle of a tirade about him not giving her grandchildren and marrying, so therefore he is female instead. I will not call him 'they' or 'she. Kikeru, he wanted Rusa instead of women, so therefore in his culture, that meant him a female who was to be in service to the goddess.

That is not how being transgender works. If anything, I'd say Kikeru was gender fluid, not transgender whatsoever. Gender fluid while being sexually attracted to men.

Kikeru's need to figure out who he is sexual and gender-wise makes the more important issues take a backseat. It wasn't just Kikeru's longevity at risk by the Greeks, but an entire way of life and all of their people. While the driving force of the novel was an important one, the inner monologue and musings of Kikeru seemed vapid and childish when survival was on the line.

While I appreciate the inventiveness of the premise, the execution of the story didn't work for me.

Truthfully, maybe I'm a demanding audience, because I've only found one gender fluid book that was accurate, as well as one transgender book. While Labyrinth is sure to entertain many, I'm obviously not the target audience.

Alex Beecroft was born in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and grew up in the wild countryside of the English Peak District. She studied English and philosophy before accepting employment with the Crown Court, where she worked for a number of years. Now a stay-at-home mum and full-time author, Alex lives with her husband and two children in a little village near Cambridge and tries to avoid being mistaken for a tourist.

Alex is only intermittently present in the real world. She has spent many years as an Anglo-Saxon and eighteenth-century reenactor. She has led a Saxon shield wall into battle, and toiled as a Georgian kitchen maid. For the past seven years she has been taken up with the serious business of morris dancing, which has been going on in the UK for at least five hundred years. But she still hasn’t learned to operate a mobile phone.

Connect with Alex

Facebook  ~  Twitter  ~  Google+  ~  Website  ~  Goodreads

Reviewers on the Wicked Reads Review Team were provided a free copy of Labyrinth by Alex Beecroft to read and review.