Thank you to Minotaur Books and NetGalley for this ARC. I was so excited to see this one appear on my shelf. The Two Rivera series was my first foray into Ann Cleeves’ work and each one has been a delight. I love the world she’s created here and how the focus isn’t really on only one detective, although I do love Matthew Venn and his reserved demeanor, trying to figure out how to be part of a community. Parts of this mystery were convoluted but overall this was another solid addition to the series!

The Raging Storm

About 4 years I decided to try a book by Ann Cleeves based liking the Shetland TV series which was based on a series of her books. The book I tried was the first of her Two Rivers series featuring Detective Matthew Venn. Since then, I have read the second of this series as well as several from the Shetland and Vera novels.

This is the third of the Two Rivers series and is titled “The Raging Storm”. I thank Netgalley for the chance to read this before publication.

Based on my experience, when you read an Ann Cleeves novel, you can be sure it will be a great mystery, the characters will be well developed, and you will feel a strong sense of the location. In this book the sense of place was very strong. It takes place in a remote sea-side village inhabited by many Brethren, a religious community which Venn fled many years ago

I think that although the author gives sufficient background to understand the characters from previous books, the reader may have a better appreciation of some key characters if they had read earlier books in the series (especially “The Long Call”).

That said, I have sometimes read a book in the later part of a series which I enjoy and then had the pleasure of reading earlier books and seeing how the main characters developed.

I liked this book a lot and highly recommend it. The book is scheduled to be released on September 5 so you have a while to look forward to it and maybe read the earlier books.

Enjoyable mystery that kept me guessing until the end. I really enjoyed the characters and scenery. Highly recommend this series.

#TheRagingStorm #NetGalley #AnnCleeves #MinotaurBooks #StMartinsPress
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''COMING SEPTEMBER 5,2023""""""""""""""""""""""""
How exciting to receive an advanced reader's copy of this book from NetGalley and #St. Martin'sPress, that I requested! I am never disappointed in an Ann Cleeves novel and this one is not an exception.
The third in the Two Rivers series, The Raging Storm, is a character driven book with some who are intense, others who are self-possessed and secure in the knowledge they are better than almost anyone else, and some who are hopeful...but a murderer lurks within this eclectic group. Dark, dramatic characters in a cold, and forbidding setting ramp up the suspense in this atmospheric tale as only Ann Cleeves can do. Slowly the threads are wound until all is revealed. I loved the journey and wish it was autumn already as that weather perfectly suits this read.
When friends are reunited after a long absence, some with fortunes , some now without---truths are revealed, and lives are changed forever. I recommend this book and series to all who enjoy British mystery/suspense, beautiful prose, and human psychological disorders.
Thank you for a chance to read this, all opinions and thoughts are my own.

I always eagerly await the Ann Cleeves novel, because I know I'm in for a compelling tale, with richly drawn characters. But my favorite aspect of her writing has to be her description of place--no one does a better job of describing the landscape so that you feel like you are right there with the characters.

Her latest book, The Raging Storm, does not disappoint! The latest entry in her series featuring Detective Inspector Matthew Venn takes us to an isolated village that Venn visited as a child. He is called in to investigate the murder of a former resident who's now a famous adventurer, and who returned to the village under mysterious circumstances.

Although I wouldn't describe the book as a page-turner, the suspense is cleverly drawn out, and the characters are fascinating and multi-dimensional. One of the most fascinating aspects of Venn's character is his relationship to the religious sect he grew up in, and that is featured here, as several members of the village are members of the group. Definitely recommend to fans of Cleeves' previous work as well as Louise Penny fans and anyone who enjoys a well-written and thoughtful mystery.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

A solid mystery, but the Two Rivers series still lacks strong characters. It's hard not to compare it [unfavorably] to the Vera Stanhope series which moves at a noticeably faster pace featuring unique strong reoccurring characters. Matthew Venn and his team seem so flat and impersonal that I found myself far more invested in the victims and suspects. Detective Venn is a very insular character and I can see his personality in glimpses but he still comes across as... well... as boring.

As in previous books, this a mystery with SO MANY different people interacting - it's easy to confuse who's who as the plot gets twisting about. And it is a lovely twisty mystery with loads of clues, red herrings, and suspects! Even the location feels like a character in its own right. The isolation, the violent rain, even the chill to the weather, added so much texture to the plot. I was pleasantly surprised at the reveal (always happy when I can't figure it out 'who-dun-it') yet the solution made sense and fit in with the story. Ann Cleeves is truly gifted in devising puzzling mysteries and The Raging Storm is no exception.

The Raging Storm, by Ann Cleeves is murder mystery set in the small rural town of Graystone.
Where the epicenter of the village revolves around the local Maiden’s Prayer bar and the local yacht club.
The multiple characters are all well written and mostly engaging. There is little to no profanity used in the telling of the story.
Which is something I appreciate. There are no sexual scenes, just innuendo, which is refreshing.
I got impatient with the storyline dragging on too long with discussions of who done it and how.
The Raging Storm gives us the whole thought process of finding out what, who, and how in this storm of chaos.
I had guessed the ending before the finish of book, but the thought process of the guilty parties in the why they did it was enlightening.
The Raging Storm gets 3 stars from me, because I could never get involved in the storyline and care about the characters.

#TheRagingStorm
#AnnCleeves
#NetGalley

Thank you to #StMartinsPress, #MinotaurBooks, and #NetGalley for providing this #ARC Advance Reading Copy. Expected publication date is September 5, 2023.

This is the third in the Cleeve’s Two Rivers series. I wish I had read first two so they are now firmly planted in my TBR list. The good folk of Greystone, Devon, are thrilled to welcome famous adventurer, Jem Rosco, into their mists. A ferocious gale arrives on the same evening as Rosco and the next day his dead body is found in a dinghy, moored off Scully Cove. Enter Detective Inspector Matthew Venn and company.

I love the Brits.. I love British novels.. whodunnits… period pieces.. any of Cleeves works as well. So I totally recommend The Raging Storm. Her ability to create the atmosphere of this tiny village in Devon and it’s inhabitants for me is part of the British esthetic of English storytelling. She is a master. This novel does not disappoint.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher I was able to get an ARC copy (ebook format) of Ann Cleeve's latest book.
The Raging Storm, the third book in the Two Rivers series. DI Matthew Venn is sent to the town in which he grew up, to investigate the murder of a once famous local legend. Venn's childhood memories of growing up in the town of Greystone, Devon, are not a particularly happy ones. With the assistance of the local police and his team, Venn searches for this strange murder and later runs into another murder. Are they related, or just coincidence during the stormy weather?
Once again Ms. Cleeves envelops the reader not only with the mystery of the case, but with the beauty and violence of the location.
As with any of Ann Cleeves' books, I recommend this twisting, turning mystery.

"Skulls and bones and the white, white light."

I enjoy television shows from Great Britain. Ann Cleeves has created very clever and loveable characters with Vera and the Shetland series in her novels made into tv shows. I chose to start reading some of her books and recently received The Raging Storm which is to be released in September 2023.
This is the third book in the Two River series and is stand-alone if you haven't read the others.
Inspector Matthew Venn and his team are assigned to the village of Greystone to investigate a mysterious death. Jem Roscoe, a celebrity sailor and adventurer caused a stir after arriving in the local pub. Declaring he is to meet someone special, he strangely disappeared, only to be found during a hoax call which brought a rescue team to Scully Cove. It appears he has been murdered.
Venn has the strangest case he's ever encountered. Things just don't make sense as his team questions villagers, search for clues and evidence. He has personal memories of the area where his parents had brought him as a child to meet with members of the Brethren. This is a cult which he later rejected, and who rejects him, in part because he is gay.
The characters are well developed. They have secrets, background stories and agendas that make for an interesting plot. I liked the book, reading it in less than a forty-eight-hour period. It was hard to put down. I did figure out the main mystery, but it took a while. I appreciate that there is no foul language, graphic violence or sexual activity in the book. It's not needed. I like that Venn still questions his own faith or lack of it. This can give a person of faith, like me, a view into how another person (even though fictional) thinks, the reactions during stressful situations, etc.
I want to thank St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books for my copy through NetGalley and this is my own personal opinion about the novel. It's a very good mystery.

I received an advance copy of The Raging Storm by Ann Cleves. This is the third book in the Matthew Venn series. A local hero is found dead and Matthew and his team investigate.
As usual, the characters are well drawn out and the story is tightly related. In many of the mystery novels I have read lately the book seems to dwell more on rivalries, and quirks of the characters than the story itself. I don't care about the history of the biscuits served with tea. Cleeve's characters certainly have distinct personalities but the drama induced is minimal.
My only negative was what seemed like an abrupt ending. Maybe it was just me being sad the book was over. ALL five stars!

Ann Cleeves goes from strength to strength. The third novel in her Matthew Venn series finds Matthew investigating a crime in a village he’d visited as a child. The book opens with the raging storm of the title, and no one is better than Ann Cleeves at setting the stage using nature as a backdrop. The coastal town where the story takes place gets a “callout” – the volunteer coast guard heads out to see what’s up with an abandoned boat in the middle of a storm. They find the boat, and inside, the body of a man.

The man turns out to be a well known adventurer and sailor, Jem Roscoe, who had grown up in the area and left to make his name and fortune, sailing around the world. The village as a whole seems to be proud of him, mystified as to why he was renting a cottage in the area, and completely flummoxed as to the reason for his death though many remember him as a braggart. The only clue comes from an observant bird watcher, but beyond this clue, the police are as puzzled as anyone else.

What Cleeves does as well as any writer alive is peel back layers and delve deep into character. Not only does she illuminate the characters of Matthew and his team, Jen and Ross, but the characters of almost everyone in the tiny village. Matthew is happily married to Jonathan, a suitable arrangement of opposites. Matthew is careful and rule abiding; Jonathan is an outgoing creative spirit. The two balance each other. Jen is a single mother, raising two pretty self sufficient kids and beating herself up about the lack of time she’s able to spend with them. Ross is the enthusiastic puppy of the group – needing to be reined in and learning to be careful in his investigations.

The three of them end up in Greystone to investigate Jem’s death, and thanks to the storm, they’re stuck as downed trees cut the village off. No one on the team are too pleased about this (for different reasons) but they set up headquarters in the village pub – shades of Roderick Alleyn! – and settle in for the long haul. When another death occurs the detectives are certain the two are linked, though there seems to be no reason why they would be.

Jem, as they continue to look into him, appears to have been a careless man – careless of his relationships, his life details, and leaving a wake of what I would call annoyed near heartbreak behind him. The slow unraveling of his character is one of the treats of the novel, as is the nature saturated investigation taken on by Venn’s team. As this is Ann Cleeves, there are both heartbreaking details of the lives of the people in the village, as well as the natural world playing it’s part in the story. You almost feel you are on the edge of the ocean, a place, Cleeves makes clear, both dangerous and unpredictable as well as beautiful.

This is an extremely strong entry in this series, and the denouement, with the path of clues laid carefully by this intelligent writer, providing both a shock and a righteous feeling of – of course! – on the part of the reader. An all around lovely read.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read and review this book.

When a semi-famous, native son returns for a mysterious visit to Greystone, the village is abuzz. When the local lifeboat crew is called out to an anchored boat in a infamous bay, DI Matthew Venn and his team is called out to investigate.

This third book in Ann Cleeves series featuring Matthew Venn has all the usual elements of a British police procedural. There is the usual lack of clues, locals who seem to be holding back secrets, and a long, drawn-out investigation. Eventually, the truth is uncovered, but only after the team’s lives are put in peril.

I like Ann Cleeves’s books. This was a typically enjoyable one. My only complaint is I had trouble keeping track of who was who. A few too many characters to keep track of, without enough distinguishing personalities.

A fantastic mystery. I highly recommend this series and this author. This series is so well written and was my first introduction to the world of Ann Cleeves. I highly recommend all of her work to fans of the genre.

I always enjoy Matthew Venn’s character, and his sergeant Jen Rafferty is great too. But… the plot of this one was a bit farfetched. I still love the atmospheric Devon setting though!

A famous seafaring adventurer’s body is found in an abandoned dinghy….who wanted him dead?

Jem Rosco, a man from a hardscrabble background who rose to international fame as the youngest person to sail solo around the world, comes back to the area where he was raised.. He rents a small cottage in the isolated coastal town of Greystone, saying only that he is in town waiting to meet someone special. A few weeks later the local lifeboat crew is summoned to aid a small boat that has foundered nearby in an area known as Scully Cove, and in it they find the naked body of Jem, dead. Inspector Matthew Venn and his team are summoned to investigate the situation. It soon becomes clear that this was murder, not misadventure, but that is about the only thing that is clear. Apart from the sighting of a mysterious woman getting out of a car late on the night of the murder, the list of suspects is pretty limited. The town is small and remote, and the stormy weather would have made it very difficult for anyone but a local to kill Jem and get him out to where the body was found. The setting is doubly hard for Venn….it is a town where he and his parents had vacationed when he was young, before he rejected the evangelical faith in which he was raised and in so doing lost his family. The Brethren, as the religious group is known, still has a very active congregation in Greystone. As Venn and his crew try to piece together the sequence of events that led to Jem’s murder, they must dig into his past and that of others in the town. The single mother who helms the lifeboat crew and has a son with a devastating rare illness, the family whose farm was lost when their father invested poorly, the man who had been the foreman at the local quarry until it was bought up and shut down, the well-bred woman who was Jem’s first love and whose family had owned the quarry….they and so many others in town have connections to and conflicts with one another and Jem. When another body turns up in the same area where Jem’s was found, Venn and crew must work quickly to prevent another tragedy….without losing their own lives in the process.
This is the third installment in the Matthew Venn series, but can very easily be read as a standalone. Author Ann Cleeves both vividly paints the setting of the story, bringing this bleak coastal town to life in the reader’s mind, and creates a great cast of characters. Venn, a thoughtful investigator still coming to terms with the effects of his strict upbringing and estrangement from his mother as well as finding happiness with his husband Jonathan; Sgt Jen Rafferty, relocated from the Merseyside as she left an abusive husband, raising two teens as a single mother while pursing the career she loves; Officer Ross May, ambitious and perhaps a bit abrasive as he tries to prove his worth to Venn; and the residents of Greystone, with their loves, their tragedies, their dreams and their fears. It is no more clear to the reader than it is to Venn exactly why Jem was killed, nor by whom….and in an insular community, no one is willing to bare the townspeople’s secrets to strangers, even if they do have a badge. Fans of this and Ann Cleeves’ other series will most certainly enjoy puzzling their way through The Raging Storm, and those who aren’t familiar with her work will see what they’ve been missing. Readers of Mary Ann Shaffer’s “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society”, P. D. James, and Minette Walters should also give this a try. I enjoyed both the plot and the writing a great deal. Many thanks to NetGalley and St Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books for allowing me access to an advanced reader’s copy.

The Raging Storm is a strong entry in the Two Rivers series. I enjoyed the character development for Matthew Venn and his husband, Jonathan, as well as for the sergeant, Jen. The police investigation is solid and the pacing is excellent. I did not guess the ending which is a good thing in a mystery.

This is the first in this series I’ve read. I will be sure to follow up with the others. The suspense kept me turning the page and the small town vibe was colorful and detailed.