‘As the waters start to rise, they find the first body…’ - cover tag line.

My thanks to Bookouture Audio for a review copy via NetGalley of the unabridged audiobook edition of ‘The Flood’ by G.N. Smith. The audiobook is narrated by Helen McAlpine. I was also invited to take part in the publication week blog tour. My stop will contain reviews for both ‘The Flood’ and ‘The Island’ and be posted in a few days time,

First body..chilling. This is Book 1 in the Fiona MacLeish Crime Thriller series.

The titular character is a constable with Police Scotland currently taking a mandated break from duty following a traumatic case. She has been visiting her Aunt Mary at her remote cottage in the Scottish Borders. It was where Fiona had grown up following the murder of her parents, an event that continues to haunt her and had caused her to join the police. Now the visit has been cut short by a storm.

Storm Odin is no ordinary winter storm but a mega storm and there are widespread flood warnings in place across the Northern U.K.. The river waters are already rising in the valley. In the opening chapter Fiona and her aunt are preparing to evacuate.

Before setting off Fiona checks on their elderly neighbours to ensure that they are safe. She is shocked to find the body of Mr Edwards with bruising around his throat indicating that he was strangled. Torn between her duty as a police officer and needing to ensure her aunt’s safety, Fiona is uncertain how to proceed.

With the realisation that the torrential rain has already cut off the small farming community, Fiona thinks it likely that the murderer is still nearby. She and Mary take refuge with other local residents at the highest standing farm. Fiona has kept the fact that she works for the police a secret and so must undertake any investigation on the quiet. Then another victim is found and everyone is on high alert. Tempers fray and the storm continues to wreck havoc. No further details to avoid spoilers.

I will admit that I find storms accompanied by high winds and flooding terrifying even in fiction. Add a murderer on the loose and consider me already on the edge of my seat. I admired how effectively Smith pitched his readers into the building maelstrom of Storm Odin from the opening chapter as Fiona dashes around helping her aunt gather a few treasures, well aware that it was going to be impossible to save the cottage.

‘The Flood’ wasn’t the type of police procedural that I am used to as Fiona was cut off from the usual resources available during a murder investigation. Plus, as she frequently points out, she is not a detective though is able to draw on her experience and instincts.

Indeed, she does a lot of speculation about whodunnit as internal dialogue often flip flopping between suspects. I didn’t find this approach worked that well for me though I appreciated that in this situation surrounded by the danger presented by the storm, she was trying her best to sift through possibilities.

With respect to the audiobook edition, Helen McAlpine is an experienced voice actor whose narration of a series of Scottish cosy mysteries I have been enjoying. Clearly ‘The Flood’ is a more serious kind of crime fiction though I felt that she found the right pitch to convey the sense of threat being experienced from both nature and humans.

Overall, I found ‘The Flood’ an engaging read and while I found if a little rough around the edges, I certainly wanted to know more of Fiona’s story. As Book 2, ‘The Island’ was published at the same time I shall be reading on.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

This book was a good mystery taking place in a rural farming community. I really enjoyed Fiona as a main character and want to learn more about the murder of her parents. I hope we learn more in the next book.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this ahead of time!

3.5 stars (rounding up to 4)
I had never heard of this author before but I thought the cover looked very interesting! Yes...I'm one of those people that judges a book by it's cover. Don't judge me! Thrillers are my favorite genre and the description sounded like something I would like. I'm also a fan of audiobooks and the Scottish accent made the book even more fun. I love that it has a lead female police officer. I feel books are 99% male protagonist police officers. It was a little slow starting out. I struggle to finish books that don't have me wanting more within the first 2 chapters. It didn't have as many twists on who may have done it. I did still enjoy it and will probably read the next one because I liked Fiona so much!

**please note due to low rating I will not be leaving a public review for this book as I have not paid for it.**

Narrated by Helen McAlpine ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
by G.N. Smith ⭐⭐

Sorry for thr poor review, however I could not get into this story at all. I found the characters to be dull, the story moved along at an ok pace but I just found myself uninterested in the whole book.

This is my first time trying this author and while I didn't enjoy this story I would try another one.

This is the first book in the Fiona MacLeish series I couldn't wait to get my hands on. The title totally sold it to me. After reading it I then went on to listen to the audio book.

Smith sets the scene when we meet Police Officer Fiona MacLeish who has been ordered to step back from her role in Police Scotland. Fiona finds the body of a neighbour in their flooded house. With torrential rain cutting the farming village off completely. Then another body is found... It is a race against time can she catch the killer before another victim is found?

I loved the whole feeling and setting of this story and I will definitely be reading the next books in this series. Fiona is a character you cannot help but like we learn a lot about her childhood in this story but I feel there is more that we don't know yet.

This is an atmospheric who dun it read with the whole thing set with the backdrop of a storm. I must admit that I loved the audio. The narrator brought this story to life. From the Scottish accents to the feeling of being stuck in this terrifying situation.

The Flood is an engaging read and will have you guessing until the very end.

Fiona MacLeish is visiting her aunt while she is on leave, her aunty Mary is the only family member left after Fiona’s parents were murdered when she was a teenager.
In this small, rural Scottish village no one else knows that Fiona is with the police, and as they are all trying to battle a flood there are multiple hurdles – there are dead bodies which show up, there’s the task of saving the cows (which was a really lengthy detailed chapter and could have been avoided). Also, in almost every chapter the reader is told that Fiona suspects the villagers and she has to be really careful as there’s a killer among them – this was a bit of repetition IMHO.

This is the 1st book I am listening to by the author, and I am not sure if I will come back for more though – really didn’t pique my interest as the storyline was a good one but kind of dragged!

Thanks to Bookouture Audio, GN Smith and Netgalley for the audio ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

First I’ve read by this author. First in a new series too. But, not sure I’ll be going back for more.
Although this one had the makings of a terrific plot, it just didn’t work for me. Fiona is a Scottish Police Officer who is currently out on leave. She goes to visit her Aunt Mary and finds herself caught in a terrible storm.
And just as they start making plans to evacuate, all hell breaks loose, and a dead body turns up. BUT, they did not die of natural causes, they were murdered.
The book progresses to show each and every terrible turn of the storm. And all the neighbors in this rural town decide to stick together to try to make it through. But, there just might be a killer among them…
Again, seemed like this could be really good. Great characters. Scary theme. Murders… But it just didn’t pull me in.

3⭐️⭐️⭐️ for me.

Thanks to #NetGalley and #Bookouture Audio for the ARC of the audiobook which will be released on September 22nd.

#GNSmith #TheFlood

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This is my first book by the author and found the narrator easy to listen to and I loved where the story is set but I did find this repetitive at times and had alot of characters in it but overall I wasn't excited to listen to it as I found it a big dragged out at times but interested to see what PC Fiona is up to next. Thanks to netgalley for the arc.

3.5 ⭐

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of The Flood.

This is the first book I've read/listened to from G. N. Smith. I enjoyed this book. There was a diverse group of characters who are forced together due to an unusually large flood. Multiple murders occur & the main character, Fiona, is trying to figure out who the killer is. I personally think some of the main characters thoughts were repetitive. But I'll overlook that. I wanted to know more at the end. I guess I'll just have to read book number 2 (The Island) now.

The Flood was an engaging and riveting locked-room whodunit, except, in this instance, the locked room was a small village in a valley that's currently cut off from civilization by a flood.

Fiona MacLeish is a constable who is on leave after the tragic loss of a colleague. She's visiting her aunt, who is her only remaining living family member after Fiona's parents were murdered when she was a teenager.

Determined to keep her aunt safe and get to the bottom of who killed two elderly neighbors at the start of the storm, we're invited into her thought process as she tries to think like the detective she hopes to one day be.

As the flood waters rise, the villagers all congregate at the only farmstead high enough to avoid the raging flood waters. But as the body count increases, so does the realization that the murderer is still among them.

This was a well-written story with an engaging plot and well-defined characters. And I enjoyed it very much.

There was one significant editorial mistake toward the end of the book, I believe, but not important enough to change the outcome of the story. (We see a body being found and rescued, but one of the rescuers later tells someone else that the body wasn't found. If that was an intentional misdirect, I missed a reason for it.)

But other than that, I thought the story was well done. While it's set in Scotland, there were times when the MC had to give brief explanations for different terms, but it was done in an unobtrusive manner. Some may say that slows the story down, but I appreciated understanding what was going on.

Thank you to G.N. Smith, Bookouture Audio and NetGalley for an advance review copy. And I look forward to the next book in the series!

I now have another series to add to my automatically read list!! I love Fiona, she is a super smart, resilient kick-ass copper! She kicks ass, literally, and takes names in this book with the help of aunty and a couple of neighbors! This was my 1st book by G.N. Smith but is not my last, as I am adding all of their books to my TBR!

#TheFlood
#NetGalley

This was a mostly engaging novel, with a wonderful setting and the perfect level of noir factors. It unfortunately felt somewhat long-winded in passages, with unnecessary repetitions, however it was overall a good listen. The main characters are developed well and in a way that is promising for the sequel.

This is an honest review following gratefully receiving an ARC from NetGalley.

I downloaded this audioARC from NetGalley and listened to it while doing some housework.

The setting was particularly striking, and I liked the way the novelist captured the tight relationships of the people living in the small rural area affected by the flood of the title. I also liked the lead character, Fiona MacLeish.

Three stars from me means that I believe that the author has achieved their aims, and it's a good book, but that I personally didn't fall in love with it. In this case, the pacing was the snag for me - I just didn't feel the tension I expected I would, with waters rising and a murderer on the loose. There was a lot of discussion between the characters of what to do next, and in places I felt all I was doing was listening to neighbours bicker. However, that could just have been my personal reaction - if you are intrigued by the plot, give the book a read or a listen and see what you think for yourself.

Three Word Review: hot water rising.

The Flood is not what I would call a crime thriller, it was more of a locked room, a whodunnit mystery.
Set in a valley in the Scottish borders we meet Fiona MacLeish, the main character. She is on leave from being a police constable and decides to go to her Aunt Mary’s home the place she grew up.
Fiona tells the reader frequently how she wanted to be a detective so she can find out who murdered her parents. But she can’t do exams due to the trauma of being told her parents were dead when she was in an exam at school.

An epic storm is about to hit, and as the water is rising it starts to flood, Fiona decides to check on an elderly neighbour and finds him dead, with no sign of his wife either.

Trying to get out of the valley proves hard and she realises that they are trapped until the storm stops and the water levels start to drop. The safest place to go is the farmhouse which is a little higher than the other homes beginning to flood.

A group of people are already at the farmhouse, and they are all trapped together. It isn’t long before people start getting annoyed with being trapped arguments happen and then more people are murdered. Who is the murderer?
This is quite slow going throughout, it is very descriptive both inside the farmhouse and outside too which I would expect as it lays out just how flooded and trapped everyone is from the outside world. I did like Fiona, she is a great main character, not afraid to get her hands dirty and tell people a few home truths if needed and her Aunt Mary has a special place in my heart!

I switched to audio a third of the way through and I found that much better, the accents were fantastic, and I think it made the book so much better, a real feel of Scottish people.

Overall it was a good book, not as gripping as it could have been, but enough in there to keep you guessing throughout.

This book hits a lot of cliches. An almost locked room mystery Set on a dark and stormy night. Where our hero is a police officer with a dark and traumatic past. There was real potential for this book to be good. The atmosphere is done really well. And the characters are interesting where it falls down. However, is the endless repetitiveness. Not only do the same events happen multiple times within the narrative, but the main character has a tendency to voice all of her thoughts out loud, including multiple repetitive memories about her childhood. This author is one to watch and I look forward to future works.

This author is new to me and as such I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it sounded interesting and I was not disappointed. The premise for the book does have a bit of a feel of Agatha Christie about it: a group of people trapped together and one of them is a murderer, it is up to Fiona, an off-duty police officer, to solve the crimes & discover who has murdered a number of people both prior to and during the night’s flood. However, it is modern, fast-paced and held my attention throughout. Extremely well narrated, the narrator kept the pace of the storyline and it was easy to differentiate between the different characters.
I enjoyed this audiobook and will most definitely seek out the second in the series to follow what Fiona encounters in her path towards becoming a police detective and solving the crime of who murdered her parents many years before.

Colleen Chi-Girl's review for NetGalley and Goodreads
Sep 03, 2023
The Flood (Fiona MacLeish #1)
by G.N. Smith, with Helen McAlpine, Narrator

Bookshelves: 2023, audio, favorite, contemporary, crime-mysteries, netgalley, scotland, travel, women-centered, bookouture, house-n-home

I really, really enjoyed this terrific, new novel and new-to-me-author. I hovered between rating it 4-1/2 to 5 stars and settled on rounding it from 4-1/2 stars to 5 stars, and one of my favorite reads of the year.

It's the first book in a new series, titled Fiona MacLeish #1. Fiona is an intelligent female lead who is a police officer, but wants to be a detective. The well-narrated audiobook by Helen McAlpine goes down as one of my favorites for 2023 and I can't wait until book #2 is released!

I'd like to thank the author, GN Smith, NetGalley, and Bookouture for the well-done ARC audiobook. I really loved this story and finished it in 2 days.

The author's writing was fast-paced, interesting, and kept me on the edge of my seat, especially with the addition of Helen McAlpine, Scottish narrator, and her spot-on and enjoyable Scottish lilt? accent? I'll never hear the word "murder" again without thinking of McAlpine saying "mare-der" in a tone that'll land you right into the Scottish highlands (or low lands?)! There was a lot of action and high intrigue from the very start. Fiona, a Scottish police officer is off-duty, on a much needed break following a previous difficult case, when a strong storm creates a deadly flood in the Scottish countryside where she's visiting and staying with her dear Aunt Mary.

Fiona and her aunt are fleeing the area to find higher ground and safety, when they decide to check on a nearby elderly couple. Fiona (alone) discovers kindly George, the elderly man's, very recent dead body, while his wife is missing.... could she also be murdered, caught in the vicious flood, or could she be the murderer?? Although Fiona tries to preserve the crime area of the murder, it becomes a difficult task with the flood quickly moving in on them.

They and a small group of people end up at a nearby farmer's home on higher ground, when soon another murder sets Fiona and the group on edge. No one but Aunt Mary knows that Fiona is a police officer, which gives her the edge to keep track of each of the characters to figure out just who has now murdered two people. There is so much tension and excitement, not knowing what will happen next and if there will be another "mare-der". The Scottish setting is basic, the farmer's home and nearby outdoors, similar to a locked room mystery, and the characters all have seem to have hidden secrets. Don't we all......?

Get this one! You won't be sorry, especially on audio.

I want to thank Netgalley and the author for gifting me the audio version. The novel itself was okay. The story was not as engaging as what I thought it would be. There was a lot of lagging in the story.

This is my first audio listen by author G.N. Smith and it was a good one. We meet police woman Fiona and she is in a cottage with her elderly relative and a storm is happening and a flood is starting.

They have to evacuate the cottage so whilst her relative is packing she goes to see some other neighbours to see if they are ok and falls upon a murder scene. Fiona, being part of the police is used to seeing things like this and she has a past that is very tragic. They try and leave the area but the roads blocked so they are stuck with a killer in the midst.

I enjoyed this book, slow at times but nonetheless a good audio book.

Thanks to the netgalley, the publisher and the author for allowing me this arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

This was a crime novel with PC Fiona MacLeish taking the lead and had been trasnferred to audible well.
The narrator had a nice easy to listen to Scottish burr.
The storyline was clever, the plot interesting and a real whodunnit. During a Flood the locals move to higher ground but the bodies keep appearing but who was the killer amongst them? Could Fiona work it out before the killer came for her?
Very enjoyable and well worth a listen.

Thank you to Bookouture Audio, GN Smith and Netgalley for an audio copy in return for an honest review.