In 2015, I read Michael Robotham’s The Night Ferry, then in 2016 I was KNOCKED OUT by Close Your Eyes! 2017’s The Secrets She Keeps was not quite as terrific (for me) as the other two, so maybe that is how I missed 2019’s Good Girl, Bad Girl, the first in a series featuring Cyrus …
TBH, I’d never heard of Chad Zunker before reading Family Money (which I read and reviewed earlier this year). He wrote a series featuring Sam Callahan and the David Adams legal thriller An Equal Justice, but somehow he was new to me. I really enjoyed the plotting and pace of Family Money, so I was …
Seems like it is an actual THING to make a living as an “influencer,” and while I had read a couple of stories about the risks and rewards of this way of life (!), reading about Kimberly Belle’s female protagonist, a young woman named Alex, really made it all seem real/possible. Alex and her husband …
Several years ago, I read Jane Harper’s The Dry – and I was hooked. Could not WAIT for her next book! The Dry, Force of Nature, and The Lost Man (all of which featured Federal Investigator Aaron Falk) were all five-star reads…and while I admit to being “an easy grader,” they all really were terrific. …
Years ago, I read and loved Defending Jacob, and I was thrilled to receive a copy of William Landay’s new book, All That Is Mine I Carry With Me. I’m a big fan of legal thrillers/courtroom dramas, and this promised to MAYBE be the Landay book I had waited so long for… In 1975, ten-year-old …
My husband is a HUGE fan of Cormac McCarthy. I, on the other hand, have never really appreciated his books. But I decided to give The Passenger (the first in a two-book series) a try, hoping that because it sounded like it might be a mystery/suspense thing (right up my literary alley) that finally I …
I’m a big fan of Jane Harper, so when I read that Hayley Scrivenor’s book Dirt Creek was available from Flatiron Books and NetGalley in return for my honest review, I was looking forward to it – a LOT. For some reason, it was originally publixhed in Australia as Dirt Town, but is renamed as …
I’ve been a regular reader of Linwood Barclay’s books for several years, generally awarding 4 or 5 stars, so I was pleased to get a copy of Take Your Breath Away from William Morrow and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. But then I looked at the last book of his I reviewed, which …
I was so eager to read this book. Partly because I am such an avid reader of true crime, and Ashley Flowers is the primary host of the wildly successful Crime Junkies podcast. When I got my review copy (thanks to Random House/Ballantine and NetGalley) which I received in exchange for my honest review, I …
I have loved Chris Pavone ever since I read The Expats, and was beyond happy to receive a copy of his latest, Two Nights in Lisbon, from FS&G and NetGalley in exchange for this honest review. And I cannot WAIT for this one to be published so I talk to someone about it and can …
When I first read T. Jefferson Parker’s Laguna Heat back in 1985, I had recently moved to Santa Cruz and was ecstatic to be living in a small beach town again — because I grew up in South Orange County (specifically in and around Laguna Beach) and graduated high school in 1965. So I know …
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 …
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 …
Laura Dave has written several novels, but TBH I’d never heard of her before I got an advance copy of her latest, The Last Thing He Told Me, from Simon & Schuster and NetGalley in exchange for this honest review. The premise sounded like it had the potential to be either ho-hum or terrific: husband …
In Philip Margolin’s latest legal thriller, Robin Lockwood, a former MMA fighter and Yale Law graduate (who appeared in Margolin’s recent books The Third Victim and The perfect alibi) joined a hotshot law firm shortly before attorney Regina Barrister (a recurring character in Margolin books) started deteriorating mentally due to Alzheimer’s. One of Regina’s former …
What incredible timing…the news today is full of the coronavirus (COVID-19) which allegedly originated with animals and came from Asia and everywhere I look, people are wearing masks, more or less freaking out, and are generally TENSE as we see the initial outbreak begin to expand, revealing how completely unprepared we are in this country …
Chances Are, by Richard Russo, is one of those great summer reads for Boomers: set on an island, with reminiscences galore, back to the late 60s-early 70s, with references to Vietnam, college adventures and relationships, and then the counterpoint of the kind of wistfulness that people in their mid-sixties get when they look back at …
The Night Before is one of many recent psychological thrillers, with the whole woman-in-danger thing, but on steroids. The publisher’s blurb was vague, and that is probably a good thing, as it made the surprises more effective. As the story opens, a woman named Laura is getting ready for a blind date, and she isn’t …
Her One Mistake is a quick read, and will likely have readers guessing until near the end – oh, OK maybe halfway through. I am notoriously bad at figuring things out, so I am not judge here, but I did enjoy this and thank Gallery Books and NetGalley for a copy in return for this …