#BiteSizeSaturday with a little help from my friends ft. Dead in Venice by Fiona Leitch and Degrees of Guilt by HS Chandler #ILoveAudio

Hi and welcome to another #BiteSizeSaturday! Today the theme is #ILoveAudio but also: with a little help from my friends. Both of these came highly recommended and so when I had some Audible credits to spend, I happily spent them on these two. But did I agree with my lovely blogger friends??? Read on to find out!

Dead in Venice by Fiona Leitch is a delightful murder mystery with the best main character ever!

Bella is an award-winning writer who has lost her writing mojo, so when she gets an invitation from an Italian fan to go stay in the fan’s Venice apartment for free, it must be the easiest decision Bella has ever made. After all, if Venice doesn’t get her creative juices flowing, nothing will! By the way: anyone thinking now: well that sounds to good to be true, is absolutely right!
Venice is high on my travel bucket list, so I enjoyed the scenery tremendously. The descriptions are vivid and a number of touristy places are named, and I almost felt like I was there. The murders that are committed are original, mysterious and very intriguing and Bella’s love interest is a fun storyline as well. But the element that steals the show at every turn is Bella herself. God, that woman made me laugh out loud more times than I care to count, she’s hilarious! I read the expression “oodles of fun” in a review a while back, I had never heard it before and I loved it, and I’ve been waiting to use it for a review for ages, and my friends: this is it! If I don’t use it for this one, I never will because Dead in Venice really IS OODLES OF FUN!
Dead in Venice is narrated by Deryn Edwards, who does a perfect Bella, but also gets the male voices just right. With a narration of only about 6 hours, this is a short, quick, but very entertaining little book!
So… Do I agree with Vicki and Zoé??? Obviously! Recommended!

The second book I’ve listened to that came highly recommended by bloggers who know their thrillers is Degrees of Guilt by H.S. Chandler.

Degrees of Guilt by H.S. Chandler (a.k.a. Helen Fields) is an outstanding courtroom thriller about Maria, a woman who’s on trial for having bashed in her husband’s head with a chair leg. The courtroom scenes alternate with the POV of Lottie, one of the jurors, and through flashbacks we learn more about Maria and her life before that fatal day. Before long, I was ready to pick up a chair myself and start bashing, not only the hubby, but the prosecutor too! (You can say all you want that it isn’t personal, Imogen, but it sure feels that way!) I felt for Maria, I believed her side of things and I hated her husband for his psychological abuse and the prosecutor for putting her through the ringer in court. Still, somewhere in the back of my mind, there was a tiny niggling doubt: was I right to trust Maria? She does seem to be hiding things, how reliable a narrator is she really? It’s crystal clear: I would be the worst juror ever, even worse than Lottie who’s struggling with her own marriage, Cameron who’s apparently becoming more and more obsessed with Lottie, and the jurors who made up their minds before the prosecutor’s opening statement was well and truly finished.
I listened to the Audible narration by Nathalie Buscombe, who did an excellent job, creating subtle nuances in the various female voices and deepening her voice to accommodate the male voices.
So… Do I agree with my lovely blogger friends? Hell, yes!! Just like Meggy and Inge (among others) I loved Degrees of Guilt and I’d highly recommend it!

Have you read these? What did you think? Or do you want to know more? Just holler! (Yeah I put that one in especially for you, Eva 😉😄)