Sweet Paradise – A Rae Valentine Thriller

When Rae Valentine loses boyfriend, book deal, colleague and job within the space of 24 hours, she jumps at the idea of a distracting and personally demanding challenge sure to increase her income overnight. She’s the most compassionate, but also the most gullible PI in the business. In her attempt to locate a missing teenager Rae falls foul of a psychological cesspit of obsession, addiction, misogyny and love-gone-bad. On the wrong side of the gate of Paradise Place Clinic, no-one is who they appear to be and everyone has their secrets…

Compelling, stylish and underscored with the same pitch-perfect dark humour of Divine Justice, this gutsy Rae Valentine escapade brings back old friends and enemies from the past… Vincent, Mrs Saldana, JP and Denzil, but watch out for a whole new batch of baddies…

Reception

“Things are not looking good for Rae Valentine, junkie and PI. Not only has her boyfriend left her but her book deal has fallen through and she has become dangerously obsessed with a mysterious online admirer. Broke and broken-hearted Valentine accepts an assignment she would usually avoid and goes undercover in Paradise, an upmarket rehab centre, trying to find a “guest” whom the centre insists ran away. The missing girl’s parents have other ideas. Paradise is not the luxurious and peaceful haven it appears to be in the brochures. A compulsive read.”
– Aubrey Paton, Sunday Times 
 
“I am galloping through your book, Sweet Paradise. What a ride! Wow. I can hardly catch my breath as I turn each page. I can honestly say I have never read anything so punchy and exhilarating albeit on the dark side. You researched your subject well, addiction that is. The energy is palpable.”
– Anne Woodbourne 
“Hally haa! I stayed in bed until finishing Sweet Paradise after 2H00 this afternoon, and it felt like bunking school and going to watch a movie with Hannibal Lector and Daisy de Melker out-grossing one another. The end had me putting off a badly needed pee because I couldn’t stop reading until the end. And what an end! Like that produced by a very disturbed film director with a limitless budget to produce a denouement that explodes, is burning and sexually perverted until the last dying gasps of a pair of villains that can only be created by a writer who sets no boundaries on a fevered imagination.”
– Niki Daly
 
“Locally, I really enjoyed the recently published Sweet Paradise by Joanne Hichens: tight plotting, great writing, a scary villainess, and a heroine with balls. It surprised me, and that is a quality I truly appreciate in genre fictions.”
– Karina Szczurek, Litnet

News

EXCLUSIVE BOOKS – SWEET PARADISE

A lineup of SA authors at an Exclusive Books (Cavendish) book signing. From left, Peter Church, Paige Nic, Rahla Xenopoulos, Lauren Bekes, Justin Fox, Jacqui L’Ange, Kate White, Joanne Hichens, Sindiwe Magona and  Jade Gibson.