Elin Hilderbrand is well-known for being the “queen of beach reads.” Titles like Summer of ‘69, 28 Summers, Trouble in Paradise…you get the idea. Every once in a while, I want something escapist, pretty much guaranteed to have a happy ending, and NOT focused on any of the current “issues” that are like a tsunami …
True friends?. They are the kind of people you can pick up the phone at 3 am, tell them you need help, and they will JUST SHOW UP. No questions, you know you can count on them. That’s part of the premise of Kimberly McKreight’s Friends Like These, in which 5 long-time friends from college …
I’ve been a member of WeightWatchers (now known as WW) off and on for longer than I want to realize, so I was looking forward to reading The Shift by Gary Foster, PhD. With any book about weight loss, I always want to know about the author — who they are and whether they have …
Paula Hawkins, best known for Girl On The Train and Into The Water, now gives us A Slow Fire Burning. Thanks to Penguin Group Riverhead and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for this honest review of a book I was REALLY looking forward to as an escape from the news of the day… The …
I consider myself a halfhearted fan of William Kent Krueger: I enjoyed both Ordinary Grace and This Tender Land (https://littorallibrarian.org/this-tender-land-by-william-kent-krueger/). But the only one in the beloved Cork O’Connor series I had read was Iron Lake, so when I received a copy of Lightning Strike from Atria Books and NetGalley in exchange for an honest …
The Turnout sounded so good: the story of Dara and Marie Durant, dancers since they were tiny ballerina wannabes. Growing up, they were both homeschooled and trained as dancers by their mother, who founded the Durant School of Dance, along with Dara’s husband Charlie, a former star ballet student of their mother’s. Dara is the …
I’m kind of a big fan of thrillers, female-in-distress genre in particular. So I was super happy to receive a copy of Dark Roads by Chevy Stevens, author of Still Missing, Never Let You Go, and other equally entertaining books. It tells the story of women killed along the highway in British Columbia, and features …
Publication Date June 15, 2021 Nathan Harris has written an amazing debut novel. The Sweetness of Water is set in a fictional Georgia town during the Reconstruction period just after the Civil War ended, with the main characters being a land-owning family and two brothers, recently freed from the neighboring plantation. George and Isabelle Walker …
Adam Serwer is a staff writer at The Atlantic, focused on politics, race, and justice. Like many Americans, I have spent much of the last five years reeling as we saw the kind of President we had and the America we were becoming. I admit I waver between being so freaked out by the news …
A couple of years ago, I listened to to the Dirty John podcast. Having grown up in Orange County and having known more than a few people like Debra Newell and her daughters, I was totally drawn in to the story of the uber-rich woman who had made tons of money as an interior designer …
Danielle Henderson is a mid-40s African-American woman who has had a career as an author and editor, and she has led a fascinating life. In The Ugly Cry, she reveals all the pain and hurt she endured as a child and tells the reader in EXCRUCIATING detail stories about what happened, who was there, and …
Publication Date May 25, 2021 David Swinson’s City On The Edge is described as a “transformative crime story,” set in Beirut in the 1970s. Told from the perspective of 13-year-old Graham, who lives with his State Department father, younger brother, and the mother who is apparently drunk most of the time and fights with David’s …
John Glatt is one of my favorite authors in the true crime genre. Especially after reading his book on Chris Watts (EEWWW), I was happy to receive a copy of Golden Boy from St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley in exchange for this honest review. Although I am an avid fan of true crime books and …
In 2016, 2018, and 2020 I read and reviewed Jodi Picoult’s Small Great Things, Spark of Light, and The Book of Two Ways, with each earning five stars (and two of the three getting my “You HAVE to read this book”). I also noted that “when a friend and former library co-worker basically sniffed her …
I love “unputdownable psychological thrillers,” and because I was a huge fan of B.A. Paris’s Behind Closed Doors (2016) and I enjoyed Bring Me Back (2018) and The Dilemma (2020), I was happy to receive a copy of The Therapist from St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley in return for my honest review. One of the …
My first experience reading Kathy Reichs’ Temperance Brennan novels was in (gasp) 1997, and I really enjoyed the strong female character with the fascinating job, being a forensic anthropologist employed by agencies in both Montreal and North Carolina. Since, I have read and enjoyed most of the series, so I was happy to have a …
I have pretty consistently enjoyed Shari Lapena’s novels, rating The Couple Next Door, An Unwanted Guest, and A Stranger In the House all four stars. So I had four-star expectations when I picked up her latest, Not A Happy Family (thanks to Penguin Group Viking and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for this honest …
Lauren Etter’s book The Devil’s Paybook appealed to me on so many levels. First, it has been compared to John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood, which told the story of a major clusterf^&k involving a Silicon Valley startup with some wacko and very greedy people trying to completely change how something extremely important (blood tests) is done. …
Because I really enjoyed previous selections of the “Read With Jenna” book club, including White Ivy and The Four Winds,I was inclined to read Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle, the group’s selection for May 2021. It has received many rave reviews and has one of those plotlines that encompasses two strong female characters in two very …
I had not read anything by Louise Candlish, but the premise of The Other Passenger was intriguing: an unreliable narrator is suddenly trying to prove his innocence. There really weren’t likable people anywhere in this book, to my view, but they were interesting. Jamie is the primary character, and we learn that he and his …