I Am Now A Blogger
With so many fun book challenges to participate in, I could no longer be without a blog. I intend for the blog to help me keep track of my reading for the year as well as my progress on the challenges I choose to join.
Guide Star by Joy Ellis
Book Description:
Published: April 25, 2017
Stars: 5
Audible
Do you love emotional and gripping fiction full of twists about people fighting back against what life throws at them? Then try this book by a #1 best-selling author now. You won’t want to put it down.
WHO DO YOU TURN TO WHEN LIFE GOES WRONG? WHO IS YOUR GUIDE STAR?
Stella won’t give up, but she doesn’t know how to go on.
Stella North, a rising star in the police, has her life torn apart by a gunman’s bullets. She has often faced danger, but these injuries mean she must give up the job she loves. Her grandmother Beth is her rock. And Beth is no ordinary woman. At seventy, she runs marathons and has a past that Stella knows very little about.
Beth calls in her friend Michael to help with Stella’s recovery. But this man means a lot more to Beth than she reveals. And Stella’s ex-husband Edward and old police partner Robbie want to help, but Stella puts up emotional barriers, and they have problems of their own. Her old friends from her days of Urbex (exploring old abandoned buildings) offer a glimmer of hope for the future.
Will Stella find the strength to overcome the challenges of her new life, and will her grandmother at last resolve the deep emotional turmoil of her past?
Review –
This story does not fit in with the author’s usual genre of police procedurals , but is an emotional roller coaster from start to finish. iIt’s a blend of two characters efforts to start a new life after withstanding severe setbacks and trauma. You may need Kleenex at one point, I did!
The Night She Disappeared by Kevin O’Brien
Book Description :
Published: July 27, 2021
Audible
Stars: 5
SOME NIGHTMARES YOU CAN’T FORGET From the depths of sleep, Seattle TV reporter Anna Malone awakens to her phone ringing. She rarely drinks, and this hangover is brutal. Why can’t she shake the feeling that something terrible happened last night? And why can’t she recall any of it? BUT EVEN WORSE What Anna does remember: an awkward restaurant meal with her married lover, Russ Knoll, and his unsuspecting wife, Courtney. Russ’s phone call reveals that Courtney is missing, and as days go by with no trace, he comes under police scrutiny. Anna’s in the spotlight too, thanks to a TV rival with a grudge. Anna’s not proud of her affair, but she and Russ aren’t bad people. They’re certainly not the killing kind. IS THE ONE YOU CAN’T REMEMBER . . . Anna already suspected that Courtney-a successful, charming author-might have a darker side. Is she truly missing? Perhaps the sudden disturbances in Anna’s life aren’t accidental after all. But no scenario that Anna imagines can compare to the twisted game unfolding around her, one chilling piece at a time . . .
Review –
If you enjoy page turners, foreign crime fiction, mystery, murder and mayhem, then this is the book for you. Once you start reading or listening, it is hard to stop. The momentum of the story keeps you hooked with believable characters, accurate scenic descriptions and gut-churning suspense.
I highly recommend this book.
Happy New Year 2025
Well, 2024 wasn’t much better than 2023.
My husband has been on chemo since March of 2023 and will continue to be so until it stops doing its job. The chemo is to prevent the cancer from growing or spreading. So far so good. No more broken bones but the chemo is causing him extreme fatigue to the point he really doesn’t feel like doing much. His attitude is very positive so we just take one day as it comes.
I set the low goal on GoodReads of 200 books and their site shows I read 295 and my “paper and pencil” tally shows 310. Not sure why there is a difference but a notebook never lies, and that’s why I use one as a back-up to GoodReads.
I discovered 114 new authors this year and plan to read more by some and no more of a few.
Out of all the books I’ve read or listened to only 52 were FIVE STAR worthy, but that’s just my feelings.
I still read and listen to all genres of books, but my favorites are crime fiction, foreign crime fiction,historical fiction, young adult and of course a bit of smut.
The first big book of the year will be Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarrow, which is the third in the Empyrean series.
Happy reading/listening everyone!
The Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker
Book Description:
Published: May 17, 2022
Stars: 4.5
New Mexico, 2017: Sylvia Wren is one of the most important American artists of the past century. Known as a recluse, she avoids all public appearances. There’s a reason: she’s living under an assumed identity, having outrun a tragic past. But when a hungry journalist starts chasing her story, she’s confronted with whom she once was: Iris Chapel.
Connecticut, 1950: Iris Chapel is the second youngest of six sisters, all heiresses to a firearms fortune. They’ve grown up cloistered in a palatial Victorian house, mostly neglected by their distant father and troubled mother, who believes that their house is haunted by the victims of Chapel weapons. The girls long to escape, and for most of them, the only way out is marriage. But not long after the first Chapel sister walks down the aisle, she dies of mysterious causes, a tragedy that repeats with the second, leaving the rest to navigate the wreckage, to heart-wrenching consequences.
Ultimately, Iris flees the devastation of her family, and so begins the story of Sylvia Wren. But can she outrun the family curse forever?
Review –
“In 2017, Sylvia Wren is one of the United States’ premier artists but lives as a recluse in New Mexico. Then she’s contacted by a persistent reporter, which is a problem since Wren is living under an assumed identity in an attempt to escape her past as Iris Chapel. In 1950, the six Chapel sisters were living affluent lives as heiresses, but their father was distant and their mother was haunted by ghosts—some her own, some being victims of the family’s firearm business. Each of the Chapel girls longed to escape their home life, and the first two made it out by marrying before promptly dying. Iris escaped too, but how long can she avoid the family curse? Part gothic ghost story and part coming-of-age tale, Walker’s epic novel has a modern feminist spin. The narration by January LaVoy provides a wistful look at the sepia-toned time of Iris’s life, while also hinting at the more sinister aspects of being a Chapel sister.
VERDICT Walker’s (Dietland) second novel would be a great listen for fans of Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.
Reviewed by Elyssa Everling , Jun 01, 2022″ from the Library Journal
There is so much going on in this book – here is a sampling: Mrs. Chapel’s mother, grandmother,great-gransmother and who knows how far back, died in childbirth, Mrs. Chapel was pronounced crazy by her husband and put away, the curse of the sisters was going mad and dying a few hours after having sex with a man, and Iris was going to be put away by her father when she escaped and made her way to New Mexico. There is a lot more and the book is very well worth the read, although, the unclear ending was the reason I couldn’t give it a five star rating.
Side Note: The cherry in the title does not refer to the fruit.
One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware
Book Description :
Published: May 21, 2024
Audio/Everand
Stars: 4
high-tension and ingenious thriller following five couples trapped on a storm-swept island as a killer stalks among them.
Lyla is in a bit of a rut. Her post-doctoral research has fizzled out, she’s pretty sure they won’t extend her contract, and things with her boyfriend, Nico, an aspiring actor, aren’t going great. When the opportunity arises for Nico to join the cast of a new reality TV show, The Perfect Couple, she decides to try out with him. A whirlwind audition process later, Lyla find herself whisked off to a tropical paradise with Nico, boating through the Indian Ocean towards Ever After Island, where the two of them will compete against four other couples—Bayer and Angel, Dan and Santana, Joel and Romi, and Conor and Zana—in order to win a cash prize.
But not long after they arrive on the deserted island, things start to go wrong. After the first challenge leaves everyone rattled and angry, an overnight storm takes matters from bad to worse. Cut off from the mainland by miles of ocean, deprived of their phones, and unable to contact the crew that brought them there, the group must band together for survival. As tensions run high and fresh water runs low, Lyla finds that this game show is all too real—and the stakes are life or death.
A fast-paced, spellbinding thriller rife with intrigue and characters that feel so true to life, this novel proves yet again that Ruth Ware is the queen of psychological suspense.
Review –
“A reality TV paradise becomes a nightmare for the show’s unlucky contestants.
Lyla Santiago and Nico Reese have been dating for more than two years, and she’s beginning to feel like their relationship may be hitting a wall; she loves him, but his main focus at 28 is on his acting career, while, at 32, scientist Lyla is starting to dream about settling down. When Nico pleads with her to join him on a new reality TV show, One Perfect Couple, Lyla views it as an opportunity to see whether their relationship can go the distance—in reality as well as on TV.
They arrive on a remote Indonesian island to find blue waters, white sands, romantic huts, and eight other contestants, all beautiful, glamorous, and clearly committed to bolstering their visibility by competing on the show. The director seems a bit shady; he insists (as their contract demands) that they turn in all electronics, plies them with booze, and then leaves with the crew—and the first ousted contestant.
That night, a huge storm sweeps across the island. The next morning reveals a fatality among the wreckage: a hut and its inhabitant have been crushed by a tree, and the outbuildings have been destroyed. The remaining contestants are cut off from all communication, with the exception of one radio, and there is a very limited supply of food and water. So Love Island becomes Survivor, and one person in particular is set on being the last person standing.
Ware offers another take on the locked-room mystery, but this time, her focus is less on creating a creepy atmosphere of dread, as she did in earlier novels, than on showing the absolute brutality of which some humans are capable. But she still has a good time herself: There’s a funny self-referential line to an earlier novel, plus some female characters MacGyver-ing a battery. The prolific Ware ontinues to stretch herself, taking on something new in each novel and writing strong—and increasingly kick-ass—female characters.
The most cinematic Ruth Ware novel so far.“
I think Kirk’s Reviews hit the mark on this one, but I thought the book was TOO long. For me, it dragged in places, and a few of the beach scenes were protracted. All in all, a very worth while read!
The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren
Book Description:
Published: May 14, 2024
Audio from Everand
Stars: 4
Christina Lauren, returns with a delicious new romance between the buttoned-up heir of a grocery chain and his free-spirited artist ex as they fake their relationship in order to receive a massive inheritance.
Anna Green thought she was marrying Liam “West” Weston for access to subsidized family housing while at UCLA. She also thought she’d signed divorce papers when the graduation caps were tossed, and they both went on their merry ways.
Three years later, Anna is a starving artist living paycheck to paycheck while West is a Stanford professor. He may be one of four heirs to the Weston Foods conglomerate, but he has little interest in working for the heartless corporation his family built from the ground up. He is interested, however, in his one-hundred-million-dollar inheritance. There’s just one catch.
Due to an antiquated clause in his grandfather’s will, Liam won’t see a penny until he’s been happily married for five years. Just when Liam thinks he’s in the home stretch, pressure mounts from his family to see this mysterious spouse, and he has no choice but to turn to the one person he’s afraid to introduce to his one-percenter parents—his unpolished, not-so-ex-wife.
But in the presence of his family, Liam’s fears quickly shift from whether the feisty, foul-mouthed, paint-splattered Anna can play the part to whether the toxic world of wealth will corrupt someone as pure of heart as his surprisingly grounded and loyal wife. Liam will have to ask himself if the price tag on his flimsy cover story is worth losing true love that sprouted from a lie.
Review –
“A fake marriage leads to real feelings at a family wedding on a tropical island.
When Anna Green married Liam Weston, it wasn’t because they were in love—it was because they both needed access to family housing on campus, and marrying a relative stranger seemed like the best option. They avoided each other until graduation, and then Liam moved out and Anna never saw him again. Until he shows up at her door and tells her they were never actually divorced though he gave her papers to sign—and now he needs her to pretend to be his wife again.
Liam is the heir to a giant grocery company, and the inheritance his grandfather promised him comes with a catch—he has to stay married for five years. Liam thought he could avoid his family until he hit the deadline, but now his sister’s getting married and he needs his wife to be there. He offers Anna money if she goes along with his plan, and Anna desperately needs the cash—she’s a struggling artist who’s just lost her convenience store job, and she’s also responsible for her dad’s medical bills. Anna agrees and suddenly finds herself swept up in a world of unimaginable wealth as she attends the wedding on a private island. She knows she doesn’t fit in, but she has to fake it to get her payout—and to help Liam get his. Because even though she never got to know him when they shared a roof, she now realizes that the man she married is actually a great guy, even if his family is a nightmare.
As Anna and Liam project an image of domestic bliss to his skeptical relatives, Liam sees how honestly Anna lives her life, and he has to decide whether staying in his family’s good graces is worth living a lie.
Christina Lauren, pen name of the bestselling duo behind countless rom-coms, have crafted another entertaining and lighthearted romance. Artistic Anna and uptight Liam make for a perfect case of opposites attract, and the island setting creates a wonderfully escapist mood.
Steamy, fun, full of family drama.” Kirkus Reviews
I normally do not read books of the rom-com or chick-lit genre but everyone around me had this book tucked into a purse, on a kindle or iPad etc , so I had to see what all the hoopla was about.
I’ve seen this author’s name around, of course, but I had no idea it was a DUO and I don’t know how long the collaboration has been going on, but I must say, they did a good job on this book.(I have no other book of theirs to go by)
The storyline was predictable , rich boy meets desperate poor girl and in the end they live happily ever after. It’s what happens between the beginning and end that is just plain old fun to read. I’m glad I read it, it made for a nice break from murder and mayhem that I normally devour, and I may even venture into more books by this duo, but I make no promises.
The Family Next Door by Sally Hepworth
Book Description:
Published: March 6, 2018
Audio/Libby
Stars: 4
The small suburb of Pleasant Court lives up to its name. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows their neighbours, and children play in the street.
Isabelle Heatherington doesn’t fit into this picture of family paradise. Husbandless and childless, she soon catches the attention of three Pleasant Court mothers.
But Ange, Fran and Essie have their own secrets to hide. Like the reason behind Ange’s compulsion to control every aspect of her life. Or why Fran won’t let her sweet, gentle husband near her new baby. Or why, three years ago, Essie took her daughter to the park – and returned home without her.
As their obsession with their new neighbour grows, the secrets of these three women begin to spread – and they’ll soon find out that when you look at something too closely, you see things you never wanted to see.
Review –
“Small, perfect towns often hold the deepest secrets.
From the outside, Essie’s life looks idyllic: a loving husband, a beautiful house in a good neighborhood, and a nearby mother who dotes on her grandchildren. But few of Essie’s friends know her secret shame: that in a moment of maternal despair, she once walked away from her newborn, asleep in her carriage in a park. Disaster was avoided and Essie got better, but she still fears what lurks inside her, even as her daughter gets older and she has a second baby.
When a new woman named Isabelle moves in next door to Essie, she is an immediate object of curiosity in the neighborhood. Why single, when everyone else is married with children? Why renting, when everyone else owns? What mysterious job does she have? And why is she so fascinated with Essie? As the two women grow closer and Essie’s friends voice their disapproval, it starts to become clear that Isabelle’s choice of neighborhood was no accident. And that her presence threatens to bring shocking secrets to light.
The Family Next Door is Sally Hepworth at her very best: at once a deeply moving portrait of family drama and a compelling suburban mystery that will keep you hooked until the very last page.” us.macmillan.com
I’ve read several books by this author and she never disappoints. There are twists you don’t see coming and that makes the reading experience even better.
Highly recommend.
The Whispers by Ashley Audrain
Book Description:
Published: June 6, 2023
Audio/Libby
Stars: 5
A pageturner about four suburban families whose lives are changed when the unthinkable happens–and what is lost when good people make unconscionable choices
The Loverlys sit by the hospital bed of their young son who is in a coma after falling from his bedroom window in the middle of the night; his mother, Whitney, will not speak to anyone. Back home, their friends and neighbors are left in shock, each confronting their own role in the events that led up to what happened that terrible night: the warm, altruistic Parks who are the Loverlys’ best friends; the young, ambitious Goldsmiths who are struggling to start a family of their own; and the quiet, elderly Portuguese couple who care for their adult son with a developmental disability, and who pass the long days on the front porch, watching their neighbors go about their busy lives.
The story spins out over the course of one week, in the alternating voices of the women in each family as they are forced to face the secrets within the walls of their own homes, and the uncomfortable truths that connect them all to one another. Set against the heartwrenching drama of what will happen to Xavier, who hangs between death and life, or a life changed forever, THE WHISPERS is a novel about what happens when we put our needs ahead of our children’s. Exploring the quiet sacrifices of motherhood, the intuitions that we silence, the complexities of our closest friendships, and the danger of envy, this is a novel about the reverberations of life’s most difficult decisions.
Review –
“Women don’t stand a chance in Audrain’s pessimistic suspense novel concerning a child’s mysterious fall from his bedroom window.
Ten-year-old Xavier lies in a coma from which he may not recover. His mother, Whitney, sits silently distraught by his hospital bedside.
Months earlier, at a garden party Whitney hosted for her neighbors, guests overheard her berating Xavier through the same open window he’s fallen from. Emergency room doctor Rebecca lives across the street, in a gentrified neighborhood of an unnamed city, and was at that party with her husband. Now Rebecca can’t help asking herself the obvious question: Was it an accident, or did Xavier jump, or was Whitney somehow responsible?
As other women from the block come into focus, it becomes clear that Whitney is not the only woman with guilty secrets. (Forget the men, who are given no inner lives.) This is Audrain’s second novel about troubled children and their troubled mothers, following The Push (2021). These mothers, whom childless Rebecca envies—after multiple failures she is desperately, secretly trying again to get pregnant—are all miserable, although their situations vary.
Devoting herself to her daughter, who happened to bully Xavier at school the day he fell, Whitney’s friend Blair has given up her career and now feels trapped in a comatose marriage to a man she doesn’t like, yet she panics when she suspects he may be cheating on her.
Elderly Mara quietly nurses private anguish over the death of her emotionally delicate son and silently hates her husband for being cruel to him.
As the novel’s central force, Whitney is problematic. Not because she is unlikable, has anger issues, or even because she might have hurt her child, but because she is a caricature of the striving careerist with no redeeming characteristics, a bad mother, bad friend, bad wife, serial adulterer, and liar with a pathological lack of empathy.
The whodunit twists are fun, at least for a while; the heavy-handed treatment of motherhood not so much.” Kirk’s Reviews
Although, there are really no likable characters in the book, once you start, you can’t stop. I loved it! AND, the last sentence was EVERYTHING! If you want to know what I mean, you’ll have to read or listen for yourself !
I highly recommend this book.
The Other Woman by Sandi Jones
Book Description:
Published: May 31, 2016
Audio from Libby
Stars: 5
A deliciously disturbing, compulsively readable debut domestic suspense—prepare to meet The Other Woman: there’s nothing she won’t do to keep you away from her son…
Emily thinks Adam’s perfect; the man she thought she’d never meet. But lurking in the shadows is a rival; a woman who shares a deep bond with the man she loves.
Emily chose Adam, but she didn’t choose his mother Pammie. There’s nothing a mother wouldn’t do for her son, and now Emily is about to find out just how far Pammie will go to get what she wants: Emily gone forever.
The Other Woman is an addictive, fast-paced psychological thriller about the destructive relationship between Emily, her boyfriend Adam, and his manipulative mother Pammie.
Review –
“A woman meets her dream guy, but his mother is something out of a nightmare in Jones’ debut thriller.
Emily Havistock is immediately attracted to the handsome Adam Banks when they meet each other’s eyes across the room at a networking event for her London consulting firm, and even though she wasn’t looking for a boyfriend, it doesn’t take long before they’re seeing each other every night. Emily’s last relationship ended in disaster, but she feels a true connection to Adam, although he’s not forthcoming about his past.
A couple of months into the relationship, he invites her to meet his mother, Pammie, and assures Emily that Pammie will love her. On the way, when Emily makes a light joke about his mom’s taste in music, Adam snaps at her. One would think that Emily might have considered cutting her losses then and there. But, no, Emily is enamored with Adam, so she vows to make it work. What follows is a hellish sequence of passive aggressive nastiness on the part of Pammie that would bring any woman to her knees, begging for mercy.
Emily doesn’t feel like she can confide in Adam since he treats his mother like a saint, but she does have the support of her flatmate, Pippa, and best friend Seb. It doesn’t help that Emily feels undeniable sparks with Adam’s younger, very attractive brother, James. Things with Pammie eventually come to a head in a spectacular way, and Emily begins to realize that Adam may not be as perfect as she thought. Emily, who narrates, is relatable even if readers will root for her to put the fiendish, and fiendishly clever, Pammie in her place and smack Adam for not sticking up for her.
Jones ratchets up the tension to the breaking point and throws in a curveball that will make readers’ heads spin.Melodramatic yet wildly entertaining, with a smashing twist.”Kirkus Reviews
I couldn’t have said it better. Just when you think you have it figured out, the author throws a curve ball and you have to recalibrate your thinking. Near the end, the action ramps up for a surprise, butt satisfying finish.
I highly recommend this book.
The Latecomer by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Book Description :
Published: May 21, 2022
Audio/Libby
Stars: 4
The Latecomer follows the story of the wealthy, New York City-based Oppenheimer family, from the first meeting of parents Salo and Johanna, under tragic circumstances, to their triplets born during the early days of IVF. As children, the three siblings–Harrison, Lewyn, and Sally–feel no strong familial bond and cannot wait to go their separate ways, even as their father becomes more distanced and their mother more desperate. When the triplets leave for college, Johanna, faced with being truly alone, makes the decision to have a fourth child. What role will the “latecomer” play in this fractured family?
A complex novel that builds slowly and deliberately, The Latecomer touches on the topics of grief and guilt, generational trauma, privilege and race, traditions and religion, and family dynamics. It is a profound and witty family story from an accomplished author, known for the depth of her character studies, expertly woven storylines, and plot twists.
Review –
” A fatal car crash sets the stage for a fraught marriage and family life.
Drifting through his privileged existence, 20-year-old Salo Oppenheimer is further unmoored after a Jeep he’s driving flips and kills two passengers.
On a subsequent trip to Europe, a rapturous encounter with a Cy Twombly painting launches his passionate engagement with cutting-edge art. He’s less engaged with Johanna Hirsch, even though he marries her (it’s expected) and, after three childless years, agrees to IVF, which results in four embryos and the birth of triplets Harrison, Lewyn, and Sally.
Salo’s real life is in the Brooklyn warehouse where he keeps his art collection—and with Stella, a fellow survivor of the crash whom he meets again some years later; soon they are lovers and have a son.
Korelitz deftly limns this tension-riddled setup and the resulting Oppenheimer family dysfunction. Harrison, supersmart and arrogant, looks down on his siblings. Shut-off Lewyn seems to have imbibed his brother’s dismissive assessment of him. Sally keeps secrets from herself and others. Johanna, wracked by a longing for connection neither her children nor husband care to fulfill, learns of Salo’s other family on the eve of the triplets’ departure for college and decides to have the fourth embryo thawed and gestated by a surrogate; Phoebe is born in June 2000, shortly before Lewyn and Sally depart for determinedly separate lives at Cornell and Harrison for an ultra-alternative school that, somewhat paradoxically, nurtures his aggressively conservative views.
Part 2, which chronicles the triplets’ college years, is long and at times alienating; Korelitz makes no attempt to soften the siblings’ often mean behavior, which climaxes in an ugly scene at their 19th birthday party in September 2001.
It pays off in Part 3, narrated by latecomer Phoebe, now 17 and charged with healing her family’s gaping wounds. The resolution, complete with a wedding, persuasively and touchingly affirms that even the most damaged people can grow and change.
A bit slow in the middle section but on balance, a satisfyingly twisty tale rooted in complex characterizations.” Kirkus Reviews
I found the book to drag in the first two-thirds and so much so, that I lost focus on the entire premise. The triplets were so dysfunctional that reading/listening about them was very hard. The part narrated by Phoebe was a joy, as was she. After a tedious start the book ends on positive notes and makes it a worth while journey.
Kathy's Book Bag 