Guilty Women by Melanie Blake

 

Guilty Women by Melanie Blake.

Published 28th April 2022 by HarperCollins.

From the cover of the book:

Can they get away with murder?

On a beautiful island off the English coast, four TV actresses gather.

Their fifth member is missing – and only they know why she was killed.

As the secret between them threatens to come out, tensions on set run high.

The women are determined that the show must go on – no matter what it costs.

But one of them is on the edge of telling the truth – and no show in the world could survive this scandal…

All of the women have something to hide – but the question is, are they all guilty?

The cast of RUTHLESS WOMEN is back – but this time they’re in trouble…

***********

Welcome back to the beautiful island of St. Augustine, one of the jewels of the Channel Islands, and home to the location of the long running hit TV drama Falcon Bay.

The previous season of Falcon Bay was fraught with fierce clashes, behind-the-scenes plotting, and a surreal live episode which saw the uber-bitch channel owner Madeline Kane coming to a very sticky end. The ambitious women we met in book one, Ruthless Women, are desperately trying to hold it together.  All are attempting to keep under wraps the things they were forced to do to protect themselves and the show, but the guilt is weighing heavily on more than one of them and breaking point may not be too far away...

Then fate decides to take a very unfriendly turn, putting them all under unbearable pressure, and risking everything they have achieved. Will their sins be discovered and bring their lives crashing down around them, or can our Guilty Women come out on top once more?

Following on closely from the rollicking Ruthless Women, Melanie Blake steps up the glamour, suspense and all-out sexiness for this sequel Guilty Women. Here we find our powerhouse femme fatales coming to terms with the twists, turns and tragedy of recent events, while struggling to keep their secrets hidden. The success of their beloved Falcon Bay is paramount, and everything in their lives is so much better without the revenge-fuelled attentions of Madeline Kane. The show must go on!

But Madeline's ghost looms large over them all and a whole new crop of trials come flying thick and fast from the fertile imagination of Blake to disrupt their private and professional lives - faces from the past, prying journalists, and steamy shenanigans threaten to derail them, and serve to keep you on the edge of your seat more than ever before. No spoilers from me, dear readers, but there is a lot of momentous drama going on, and all the threads carry the hallmark of Blake channelling her idol Jackie Collins to create a highly entertaining mix of plotlines that take you to intriguing places. Revenge is still well and truly in the air, mixed up beautifully with plenty of sex, drugs and cameras roll, with lashings of suspenseful mystery too..

This is a grand old-school, over-the-top, page-turning bonkbuster, brought right up to date for a modern audience. In many ways it gives you more bang for your buck that the first instalment Ruthless Women, which shows Blake really warming to her theme and settling into a style that suits her down to the ground. Older women are once again front and centre, and they are smart, glamorous, sexy, and resourceful! Hurray!

I gulped this fun, feisty, flirtatious book down in one delicious bite, transported right back to the salacious best-sellers of my youth (Shirley Conran's Lace anyone?). It also has a cracking cliff-hanger of an ending that hooks you right into the next book - I cannot wait!

Guilty Women is available to but now in hardcover, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to HarperCollins for sending me a proof of this book in return for an honest review, and to Random Things Tours for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

Melanie Blake is the bestselling author of Ruthless Women, which became a Number 4 Sunday Times hardback bestseller and an ebook bestseller in 2021, selling over 150,000 copies. Guilty Women is her second novel about the cast of Falcon Bay, and her first with HarperFiction.

Growing up in a working-class household with severe dyslexia, Melanie has her own Rags to Riches story, just like that of her characters – at 15 she was told by her school career advisors that her decision to work at a record shop was ‘a clear example that she wouldn’t go far in her career’. They were wrong. By 19 she was working at the BBC’s iconic Top of the Pops show and by 26 she had built a reputation as one of the UK’s leading music and entertainment managers. She also created her own acting agency from scratch which became the most successful independent boutique agency in the UK.

 Melanie still represents a high-profile stable of actresses, but is also now enjoying success in her own right as a author, playwright and producer.