Neither the name nor the blurb does this book any justice, I really loved it!
The main character is brilliant, he is in a wheelchair and has a few issues but is really likeable, brave and humourous, the supporting characters are great too, I loved Tai and Patricia whilst equally hating the odd Zoyls.
The plot was suspenseful and fast paced, well written with good descriptions and no rambling, a good blend of seriousness, nostalgia and humour, with a fair bit of fact thrown in and a well placed twist towards the end which I didn’t see coming.
Highly recommended.

Thank you Netgalley and BooksGoSocial for the eARC.
A very different book, it's a mystery set in South New Zealand with a strong sense of place and really interesting historical facts. It's so original, unlike anything I've read before and it was hard to put the book down.
It starts with Finn Bell hanging off a cliff and then goes back to how it all started. Finn is in a wheelchair, thanks to a drunken car accident that ended his marriage and compelled him to move to the very south of NZ to hide away and put himself back together in his small cottage in Riverton.
He has a therapist, the 70-something Betty (love her!), and the compulsory sessions between the two of them are unique, to say the least! There's a lot of navel gazing that I found quite interesting and at times humorous.
The community is very pleasant and welcoming, except his neighbors, the Zoyl brothers. Finn finds out about two murders that were never solved and is looking into them. He suspects the Zoyls, but the villagers are reluctant to open up and his nosing around gets him nowhere.
He gets involved in murder ball and finds a friend, Tui, who unsuccesfully warns him to keep away from the brothers.
It's difficult for me to say much more about the story, I don't want to spoil it. It's riveting, unique and I absolutely loved it.

I’ve read other reviews of this book and agree that the story gripped me from the very beginning.

Alternating between the present day where we first meet Finn hanging upside down on a cliff...and not for enjoyment. To five months before, where the reader is slowly and enticingly led through the motions of how he got to be in the present position.

Having a failed marriage and becoming a paraplegic from a drunken car accident sees Finn selling up his assets and moving to the most southern point in New Zealand, a place called Riverton. Does he want to live or die? Here he does develop new friends, with the help of a very physical game called ‘Murderball’ and a new therapist called Betty...I loved the character of Betty, a 70 year old therapist who has slightly off beam ways to make him see himself in a better light, this is where the title of the book comes from, as Betty asks him....’is he a Dead Lemon?’
Unfortunately for Finn his nearest neighbours are the Zoyls and they are very strange and menacing and he has somehow gotten on the wrong side of them. Drawn into the mystery of the disappearance of a young girl and then later her father from the house he has purchased, his questions and actions put him in danger.

I really enjoyed this, I didn’t find the alternating chapters confusing at all and I loved the slow reveal.
The New Zealand and Maori history was also very interesting, although there were a few instances in the description that I found a little upsetting. I guess that is the history.
All in all a good storyline that kept me entertained all the way through.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for a copy to read and review.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Booksgosocial for a review copy of Dead Lemons, an unusual thriller set in Riverton, the southernmost settlement in New Zealand.

The novel opens with Finn Bell, the protagonist hanging upside down in his wheelchair on the edge of a cliff. It then flashes back 5 months to the beginning of how Finn got there. After an alcoholic car crash Finn lost the use of his legs, his marriage and his business so rather than confront his new reality he fled south and bought an isolated cottage in the town of Riverton. Problems with the power supply bring him into contact with his unpleasant and decidedly "off" neighbours, the Zoyl brothers who are still prime suspects in the 1988 disappearance of Alice, daughter of the former owners of Finn's cottage. With nothing better to do Finn starts to investigate.

Told in the first person Dead Lemons is an excellent read. It is a great thriller with a warm and occasionally witty tone but it is also a tale of redemption as Finn comes to terms with his new life and finds friends and self accommodation. I'm not overly fond of split timelines but it works really well in the novel, ratcheting up the tension and arousing the reader's curiosity. I devoured the novel in one sitting, desperate to know what was coming next. The navel gazing therapy (of which there is a lot) passed me by and I skim read it as it doesn't interest me - I still don't understand the concept of a dead lemon - but the upshot is it works for Finn.

The first person narrative means that the novel is all about Finn. Is the character autobiographical or is it just a literary conceit? I don't know but it doesn't really matter. Finn is a damaged individual who fled his pain in alcoholism and look where that got him! His new reality is an isolated life in a wheelchair but his therapist, Betty, and his new friend, Tai, won't let him away with brooding and slowly bring him to life. His voice is raw, honest and unvarnished. It makes for great reading.

I love the setting of the novel and the little gems of information peppered throughout the novel about whaling, Mãori culture and various other things. They are all genuinely informative and Mr Bell's love of the area shines through. It's now another place I want to visit.

Dead Lemons is an excellent read which I have no hesitation in recommending. 4.5* ((half a point deducted for the boring therapy sessions).

5 stars

The book goes back and forth between the present with Finn hanging by his leg off a cliff to a few months earlier when he first moved to Riverton.

Finn Bell lived in Wellington until he had a drunken accident which left him in a wheelchair. He also lost his wife and his job. He moves to a little cottage outside of Riverton, New Zealand. This is as far south as he can be and still be on land. It’s on the way to Antarctica.

Betty is a seventy-something therapist who lives in Riverton. She is now Finn’s therapist. She puts forth the theory of “dead lemons” to Finn. Is he a dead lemon? Her therapeutic style is very unusual and unique.

Everyone in Riverton is related to everyone else. He meets Tai at Murderball. It’s a rough game, like rugby, but in wheelchairs. Tui warns him to stay away from his nearest neighbors, the Zoyls. Having a problem with his electricity, Finn goes to visit the Zoyls and wishes he hadn’t. They intimidate him and frankly scare the hell out of him.

While researching the history of his cottage, he learns of the murder of a twelve-year old girl. She was the daughter of the people named Cotter who lived in the cottage before Finn. She was brutally tortured before she died. The main suspects were the Zoyls, but despite being arrested, they were never brought to trial. A year later, the husband goes missing.

Finn goes on a journey of self-discovery and “investigates” a local crime at the same time. He meets new friends and learns how not to be a stupid drunk.

There are surprises in this book: about people and events. There is a major twist in the story at the end. It’s delicious.

Finn learns a great deal about the Maori culture from his new friends the Tuis. He describes the landscape and culture of southern New Zealand so that the reader is almost there. It’s wonderful. One usually reads about Australia, so it’s refreshing to learn about New Zealand as well. This book is very well written and plotted. Other than the moving back and forth between times, the book is written linearly and clearly. I liked Betty the therapist. Her unique style of therapy is both refreshing and it works! I immediately went to Amazon to look for others of Finn Bell’s novels. I truly enjoyed this book and plan to read more by this author. (I really could have done without what happened to the cats, however. I hate that kind of thing in books – or real life.)

I want to thank NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for forwarding to me a copy of this wonderful book for me to read and enjoy.

4.5 rounded up to 5 stars.

Set on a backdrop of New Zealand, this novel has an intricate storyline and strong characterisation. Original, slightly quirky, with a philosophical thread running through it. The central character is in a wheelchair but very refreshingly, he's portrayed extremely realistically. I enjoyed the first half of the book more than the second, but it still gripped me throughout.

Very much deserved 'WINNER OF THE NGAIO MARSH AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL'.

Many thanks to Netgalley for providing me with this ARC, for which I have given a voluntary and unbiased review.

This is the first book I’ve read by Finn Bell. The story is set in southern New Zealand and provides some fascinating glimpses into NZ history and culture. The main character, who also happens to be named Finn, is a man who has lost his way. His marriage has ended, his drinking led to his being in a wheelchair and he has moved to a remote, small town to start over, or perhaps this is where his life will end. The story moves between the precarious position Finn is currently in and the past so that we can see how he got there. This town is full of wonderful, caring characters who accept newcomer Finn without hesitation as well as some who can only be described as pure evil. The tension is high as a series of events plague Finn and he attempts to ensure that the perpetrators are held accountable for their actions in the present as well as the past. The twists and turns just kept coming and the ending provided an additional revelation. This book held my attention and interest from the first page. While the dark parts are very dark and gruesome the majority of the characters are people with good hearts who make Finn want to be a better person. Without spoiling this for anyone, I will say that the good versus evil perspective was very well developed.
If you like a thrilling mystery with great characters, an intriguing location, friendship, loss, and redemption, this one won’t disappoint. Thank you, Finn Bell, BooksGoSocial, and NetGalley for a digital copy to read and review. A solid 4.5 stars.

I'm sorry I was unable to read this book. Made it to about 20% and it was so confusing I gave up and read the last 20 or so pages. Still didn't understand what this was supposed to be about.

Very recently I read Finn Bell’s Easter Make Believers and really enjoyed it, so I was very excited when Dead Lemons (his award winning and longer work) appeared on Netgalley. Another trip to New Zealand’s South Island so soon and still/again so good. Like his other book, this one is a thriller. There are murders, suspense, secrets and all that, compounded by the fact that it all takes place within a small relatively isolated community. Practically a locked small town mystery. The plot was intricate enough to have some misdirection and a twist at the end, so genre fans will definitely be satisfied. For me the best thing about Bell’s books is the dramatic aspect of it, approached like a work of literary fiction with a thriller angle it’s actually a very credible work of fiction, well researched, well written, with well realized characters and author’s ardent love for his island coming through loud as, well, bells. It’s impossible not to compare this book to Easter Make, so I’ll just get on with it, Easter is a later work and it shows more (marginally) maturity when it comes to developing complex characters and less fairy tale neatness of the ending, but really the books are very similar in the way that they create a place you’d like to visit populated with individuals you come to care about. It also has the same terrific afterword that discusses some historical and cultural themes from the book, which is so much more interesting and informative than the standard list of thank yous. This book, like Easter Make Believers, features therapy, much more so, in fact, which I found very interesting reading and a therapist who takes a refreshingly original approach to complexities of psyche, which is where the title comes from. It refers to those individuals who are in some way damaged and are unable to change their ways and thus can bring no joy to their own lives or lives of those around them. What really threw me about this book is that the protagonist was named Finn Bell and I don’t know enough about the author to realize whether this is in any way autobiographical or some sort of a meta experiment. So now I have to go google the author, looks like. Nice timing reading this too, a book set so close to Antarctica on the first snow day of the winter. Thanks Negalley.