This is a beautifully crafted story by Jo Spain. The characters were compelling, the plot was twisted, the setting was beautiful and there was plenty of suspense. A twisted and complex tale of family life which has to be one of the best books of 2019. I can highly recommend it and have no hesitation in giving 5*.

It was early summer 2018 and Adam Latimer returned home to Spanish Cove after an absence of ten years. The family had thought him dead - in fact, that's what the private detective his mother had insisted upon had told them. He was cagey about exactly where he'd been but he seemed content, if not happy, to be hope. What brought him? Well, nine years ago his mother died and he'd seen the in memoriam in the paper: this was the first he'd heard about what had happened. His three sisters and two brothers had mixed feelings about his return, but his father is delighted. In fact, he's determined to have a party. Only, with Frazer Latimer, what happens has to be about him. He has an announcement to make - it's nine years since Kathleen died and he's been lonely. He's met Ana, a Polish immigrant, and they're getting married.

The party is being held on a yacht that belongs to Danny McHugh, Frazer's long-term friend, and godfather to two of the children. Nine people set out on the yacht, but only eight return alive: Frazer suffers a head injury and ends up in the sea. He was probably dead before he hit the water and Detective Downs cannot believe that it was an accident. Which of the eight people on board killed him?

James is a television producer, but work has dried up and he's desperately short of money. He's got to maintain his wife, Sandra and her daughter Bella as well as his mistress, Lena. How did Frazer react to his request for an 'investment' in his company? Clio has been an illegal immigrant in New York for four years: Frazer refuses to release her trust fund, which she was entitled to on her twenty-first birthday. Kate is married to wealthy businessman and hotel owner Cheng Grant. Ellen is thirty-nine but still living at home: something happened thirteen years ago and although she's reluctant to talk about it, it's clear that she blames her father. Perhaps the saddest of the family is Ryan, who's been living in Limone in Italy and feeding his addictive personality. Frazer refused to release his trust fund too.

I first encountered Jo Spain a few months ago when I read The Boy Who Fell and I knew then that I would take any opportunity to read more of her work. She's a classy writer: no clever literary tricks, just a good story exquisitely plotted and well told. I half guessed whodunnit, but I was nowhere near the full answer and what little bit I did get didn't spoil my enjoyment of the book. Now I've just got to get my hands on some more of her books! This one is highly recommended and I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.

Oh this was a fantastic book! An extremely dysfunctional family, secrets and lies and a whodunnit - what's not to love!
Ever member of the Lattimer family has some grudge against their father, and to be fair he has acted horrendously over the years! But what person holds that grudge far enough to commit murder?
Set on a celebration on the family yacht, this book is reminiscent of an Agatha Christie mystery, the layers are peeled back and each character's back story is revealed until all becomes clear! I would bet my last penny on no-one being able to predict the ending. A brilliant read.

Amazing mystery thriller.
A family of a father and his five sons are throwing a family reunion celebrating the return of their sixth brother who has disappeared for years and was assumed dead.

But soon tragedy strikes and an explosive chain of lies and secrets unravel with spectacular twists and turns.
The pace and narrative structure are engaging and suspenseful with carefully drawn unreliable characters. Highly recommended.

Thanks Netgalley, the publisher, and author for an ARC in exchange for an honest opinion.

And Jo Spain does it again with an absolutely fantastic book!

My mind is still boggled from all the intricate details and planning that went into the whole thing. I thought I knew what was happening so many times over and yet I was still so wrong and so stunned at everything I read.


Thank you Netgalley and the Publishers of this book for giving me the amazing opportunity to read this book before it was released. I am so grateful and cannot wait to buy my own copy of the book to grow my collection 😁

Another enjoyable read by Jo Spain. A well written story of a complicated family full of secrets which they are trying to keep. The story swapped nicely between different characters and times as well which also kept it interesting.

Absolutely loved this novel! The writer has a beautiful and seamlessly flowing narrating style and I literally could jot put the book down.

The Lattimer family is steeped in secrets and they are all finally about to unravel.

The structure of the novel was excellent with the crumbling of the lies wound perfectly around the mystery of the death on a yacht. The tragedy of the family is very compulsive with plenty of tension and dramatic cul-de-sacs to keep the reader hooked.

This is the third book that I have read by Jo Spain and they just keep getting better and better. I love how everything builds up and builds up and you think you have cracked it but then whoosh you are thrown way off course!!!

The story centres around six siblings and their father. One of the siblings (Adam) has returned home after being missing presumed dead for the last ten years. The other siblings (James, Ryan, Kate and Clio) are summoned to the family home (where their father and sister Ellen live) for a reunion with their brother. However, all is not as it seems and all six siblings appear to be concealing secrets.

When things take a turn for the worse and tragedy strikes - questions are asked and suspicions raised. But who has the most to hide and why?

I enjoyed this book very much. I didn’t like many of the characters (with the exception of Ryan, Adam and Clio) but I could generally see why they were the way they were. Without giving too much away, what a horrible horrible man their father was!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced read copy of this book in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

Six Wicked Reasons by Jo Spain thanks @netgalley @jospainauthor and @quercusbooks for my arc
Publication date 16th January 2020
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Ten years ago, Adam Lattimer vanished without a trace and left his already fragile family broken. Now he's back and the family are brought together for the first time in a decade. Where has he been? and it seems everyone has a secret they need to keep hidden.
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This book was incredible, full to the brim of secrets and lies in an incredibly dysfunctional family. I loved it. A little murder mystery thrown in too. Another must read from an amazing author xxxxx

Thanks to Netgalley and Quercus Books for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A tour de force of a psychological thriller from one of the most perceptive observers of the human condition.

"Six Wicked Reasons" is a rare gem of psychological thriller that demands to be read in one sitting. So, lock your doors, switch off your phone and settle down in splendid isolation so you can enjoy Jo Spain's latest triumph of a novel. This story revolves around the gathering of the Lattimer clan, ostensibly reunited for the first time in many years to celebrate the return of Adam, the son of Kathleen. and Frazer. All seems normal so far... well, yes... but this is not normal family, if such a thing can be said to exist. To say they are dysfunctional also seems an inadequate form of terminology to describe both individually and collectively the Lattimer family dynamics, with Frazer and his children exhibiting neuroses that I suspect not even Freud could have imagined. But lets start with Pa Frazer. Psychopathic, narcissistic, borderline personality disorder, are all appropriate clinical terms to describe this man. Families, however, are not the petri dishes of psychiatric study, with the mad, bad or plain evil, inevitably leaving victims in his wake. Victimisation can, given the right conditions, turn to vengeance, so it should come as so surprise that Frazer is murdered. The question inevitably arises: by whom?

Like a crackling Agatha Christie novel where all the main protagonists have a motive for killing the victim but only one could have committed the crime, Jo Spain, takes us on an absorbing journey through the human condition in all its ugliness. Did I just compare Jo Spain to Agatha Christie? Well I was wrong. Jo Spain is far better. With the gradual build up of tension and her perfectly calibrated prose, this is a superior novel in every respect. For the purist of the psychological thriller genre "Six Wicked Reasons" is quite simply unmissable.

I am a big fab of Jo Spain's Inspector Tom Reynolds series but this was the first standalone book of hers that I have read. This is an interesting take on the classic locked room whodunnit, 9 people on board a yacht when one person ends up dead. There are 6 main characters in the family plus a family friend and narrative switches between present day and the past with lots of family secrets revealed along the way. There is no doubt Jo is a great author, she writes very believable characters and she always keeps you guessing right until the end with her intelligent plotting however I didn't find this as engaging as her previous books. I think maybe there was too many characters and too many narratives to follow. That said there was enough in this book to keep me reading and the history and motivations of the siblings are revealed slowly over the course of the book but if I'm being honest, by the time I got to the end I didn't really care who had done it and why.

Thanks to Netgalley and Quercus Books for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Another excellent read from Jo Spain. The Lattimer family have come together for the first time in years as Adam Lattimer has arrived back after disappearing 10 years previously. All of the siblings have their own secrets from that time and since. Their mother has deceased since Adam left and their father is not an easy man to be around. During a party on a friends boat to celebrate Adams return, and following a surprise announcement that their father has made, the father falls overboard. Was it an accident or was he murdered? And if so who is the guilty party? The six children all have their own history with their father and any one of them can be guilty.
Yet again I enjoyed this book from Jo Spain. The family dynamics are very interesting, especially how the different children saw the same situation from different perspectives. During the book you can see how the various children interacted with their father and I felt myself changing my mind constantly about who the guilty party was.
Thank you to Netgalley, Quercus and Jo Spain for giving me an ARC in exchange for an honest review

I would like to thank Netgalley and Quercus Books for an advance copy of Six Wicked Reasons, a stand alone psychological thriller set in Wexford, Ireland.

When Adam Lattimer returns home ten years after he disappeared his father Frazer summons his other five children home for a celebration but the celebration doesn’t quite go as planned as family tensions boil over and someone dies.

Wow, what a read! I should perhaps point out that there are very few elements to this novel that I normally like, alternating points of view and timelines, family drama, psychological thriller (to be avoided like the plague as I can’t find much to believe in most of them) and yet, drawn by the author, I requested to read it and was absolutely transfixed. I didn’t put it down from start to finish and feverishly turned the pages to find out what was coming next. I found it riveting.

To say the Lattimers are dysfunctional is a bit of an understatement. The children couldn’t wait to get away from their father and forcing them to come back is a recipe for disaster. The novel more or less starts with the death and follows DS Rob Downes’ interviews as he takes the children back over events of the past few days which in turn allows them to muse over older events internally. The novel is a slow burn accumulation of facts, events and consequences leading to an unexpected conclusion, well maybe not so unexpected by the time the reader gets there but not what I was expecting at the start. I liked Rob’s suspicion that he wasn’t getting the full story as it planted a niggle of doubt but, to be honest, I was too caught up in the narrative of the past to try and work out what was really going on.

I’m not sure that I can do the novel justice in this review. It is a mesmerising tale of dysfunction, all caused by the narcissistic Frazer, but the very nature of that dysfunction means that the children are all keeping secrets and are loathe to give them up either to Rob or the reader. I admire the author’s skill in keeping the reader hanging by revealing just enough to whet the appetite and gradually revealing more as the novel progresses.

Six Wicked Reasons is a good read that I have no hesitation in recommending.

Another great read from Jo Spain - queen of the whodunnit! You might think you know who killed Frazer - some might say he had it coming - and all of his children are suspects! But - the narrative twists and turns so that you only think you know - until the rather satisfying end!

The story is full of secrets and revenge and desires between the siblings during a reunion! I loved the booked and the narrative it took! Looking forward to reading another book by Jo Spain

A fabulous book about a highly dysfunctional Irish family. The writing is brilliant which means that all of the characters develop throughout the story. In typical Jo Spain style, the ending brings it all together. I’ve loved all of the books that she’s written so far and this one didn’t disappoint.

Well. If someone hadn’t got to Frazer Lattimer first I think I may have felt inclined to murder him myself! At the very least, he made my hands clench, my jaw lock and my eyes flash and he’d definitely have been on the receiving end of one of my famous ‘dead eyes’!! What a horrible, terrible excuse of a man. This is the story of a dysfunctional family all of which is to the dubious credit of narcissist Frazer, who if he isn’t a psychopath I’d be very surprised. His children - James, Ellen, Kate, Adam, Clio and Ryan (especially Ryan) are all on the receiving end of his vicious tongue and harsh decisions all their lives. Their mother Kathleen (who had died several years before these events) sounds lovely but she is unable to temper his vile moods and controlling behaviour. Why on earth she marries him is beyond me as I can’t imagine what she sees in him, as it eludes most people. Frazer marries up big time, as Kathleen has great wealth which Frazer is meant to manage which of course, plays into his controlling hands.

The story is set in Albertstown near Wexford in Ireland. It starts with the return home of Adam who disappears ten years previously and is presumed dead. All the children are summoned home from various places they have fled to (apart from Ellen who for various reasons stays at home) to celebrate Adams return. Frazer dies in mysterious circumstances during a party on board a yacht owned by family friend, Danny. At first, his death is thought it be accidental but DS Rob Downes thinks otherwise and doggedly pursues the truth. The story is told between now and several years ago and from the perspective of each of the siblings. This works well as we learn a lot about them and their lives, the truth and the lies and their individual circumstances which doesn’t always match appearances.

This is a suspenseful slow burner which is a genre I like. It is very well written and keeps the interest from start to finish. The story encompasses anger and revenge, guilt, secrets and lies, mystery and intrigue which builds slowly a bit like building a bonfire and you are just waiting for the thing to ignite. The conclusion is very good and surprising. The characters are not all likeable especially Frazer obviously, but neither is James who is beyond selfish and a chancer and Kate seems to lie reflexively. Ryan, Adam, Clio, Danny and Rob are very likeable. Ryan suffers the most at the hands of Frazer and this led to drug addiction although thankfully he is now in recovery. All of them have serious issues and grievances with Frazer and any one of them has justification for wanting him dead so throughout the novel you are constantly wondering which one did it!!! The book feels like a fly on the wall ‘docu-drama’ as you peek at this dysfunctional family reeling in shock at the bombs that Frazer hurls and then sits back in satisfaction as he surveys the damage. His death is no loss, trust me!

Overall, another superb read from Jo Spain. She is an outstanding author who creates intriguing books and I highly recommend her books.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Quercus Books for this excellent ARC.

With any Jo Spain novel you know you are in for a treat and this is no exception! Mainly set in Southern Wexford in a little place called Spanish Cove. Siblings are recalled back to their family home by their father to mark the reappearance of a wayward son, believed dead. The book opens with a death, accidental or not, of the father who fell/was pushed off a yacht . As the death is investigated and the siblings congregate we are aware of tension, of drama and of tragedy in each of their lives resulting money , or the lack of money. As their stories are told more and more of the picture is revealed and possible motives uncovered we are made aware of historical tensions between all members of the family and the slow reveal of past events muddies the water even more, we are kept mostly in the dark until the end.
Well told, well characterised and intriguing as with all Jo's books I would recommend a read.

I have read a previous book by Jo Spain and it was brilliant. This was no different. Highly enjoyable.

‘Six Wicked Reasons’ centres around a dysfunctional family, the Lattimer family. Although this is something we can all relate to there are six siblings involved here: Adam, James, Ryan, Kate Ellen and Clio. This makes it more complicated than usual.

Adam had disappeared and while he was missing the mother died, leaving the father, Frazer, who keeps a tight rein on trust fund monies, investments and the family house as the central family character.

When Adam returns, some ten years later, it coincides with Frazer announcing he is to marry again, and will be taking all the money from the sale of the house and investments and traveling the world with his new wife. He calls a party on a yacht to celebrate. This is to be skippered by a close friend of the family, Danny. The siblings arrive from around the world and Frazer makes it clear he is still in control.

There is tension between all of the siblings and Frazer as secrets start to unfold. gradually the story reveals the complicated nature of all the relationships over the years.

Thanks to NetGalley, Quercus Books and Jo Spain for my ARC of Six Wicked Reasons in return for an honest review.

Great read. Highly recommended.