Teen Henry 1994 (Henry Bins #0.5) by Nick Pirog

 

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Category: Adult, Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy, Mystery
Content: Nothing I can remember

 

Henry Bins has a rare sleep disorder where he's only awake for sixty minutes a day, from 3:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. His meticulously regimented life—three minutes to shower, five minutes to eat, seventeen minutes of school, four minutes to play Zelda—is turned upside down when his dad leaves for a week-long cruise.

Just days into his newfound freedom, Henry's carefully structured hour explodes into adventure after a chance encounter with the audacious and beautiful Alice leads to the discovery of an abandoned puppy and a suspicious puppy mill.

As they team up to care for the mischievous pup, Trout, and work to shut down the cruel operation, Henry and Alice stumble upon a web of secrets involving her father—the principal of the local high school—and a shady new technology company. With each precious minute ticking away, they find themselves entangled in a high-stakes game of corruption, daring escapes, and a first crush that makes Henry's heart race faster than his limited time.

With the help of Alice's best friend Nicole and her brother Greg—or "Cipher" as the teenage hacker insists on being called—they embark on a mission to expose the truth before time runs out.

Full of heart-pounding adventure, first love, late-night daring, unbreakable friendship, and '90s nostalgia, Teen Henry 1994 is a hilarious and heartfelt coming-of-age mystery that is a bold reminder that sixty minutes is all it takes to change everything. 

 

This was an enjoyable prequel novel to the Henry Bins series. Fourteen year old Henry is left to his own devices for a few days, with the neighbor looking in on him periodically, while his dad takes a vacation. I enjoyed the characters in the book a lot and the plot was also ok. One of the most enjoyable parts of this, at least for me, was seeing how close Henry would cut it getting home in time before he fell asleep. But that was also a frustration as well because he certainly never seemed to learn! Another enjoyable part of this book was going back to 1994 and reliving all the things from that time period. Dial-up, AOL, cordless phones, the music, etc. 

I did find it a bit far-fetched that so much happened at 3 a.m. for Henry to get involved with, and sometimes there was just no way that all that happened in just one hour. I thought at times the author did a good job with this aspect of the book, showing us how Henry crammed everything he wanted to do in the one hour he had each day, and others not so much. This ends kind of on a cliffhanger with one of Henry's friends hacking into something he shouldn't, so that leads me to believe this isn't just a one time prequel. I was actually hoping it would be because I honestly just want the author to publish what I assume will be the last book in the main series.

 

 

 

 

 

Murder Will Out by Jennifer K. Breedlove

  

Murder Will Out by Jennifer K. Breedlove

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Gothic, Mystery
Content: Strong Language

 

Come for the memories. Stay for the murder...

Little North Island, off the coast of Maine, is so beautiful it could be a postcard. Organist Willow Stone cherishes her memories of childhood summers spent on the island with her godmother Sue... even though her visits ended abruptly, and she hasn't seen or heard from her godmother in over fifteen years. Until a letter from Sue—and word of Sue’s death—brings Willow back to the picturesque island.

The islanders rarely mention Sue without also bringing up Cameron House, and the controversy around Sue’s unexpected inheritance of the sprawling mansion. When Willow overhears someone threatening the next heir to the property, she starts to question whether Sue’s death was really an accident, and can’t help but wonder whether someone on this sleepy island is willing to stop at nothing—even murder—to claim Cameron House for their own.

Through Willow’s eyes, as well as those of others on the island, a mystery unfolds that keeps drawing Willow back to Cameron House and the very real ghosts that walk its corridors. 

 

I enjoyed certain aspects of this story. I really liked the ghosts. I didn't care all that much for most of the living characters though. They were just kind of bland and uninteresting to me. Then there was this thing where the main character and the police officer disliked each other. It felt very childish, and got on my nerves. It was mainly perpetuated by the main character as she had bad memories of him as a child. It seemed very petty and immature that she couldn't get past something silly from when they were kids. Eventually they warm up to each other, but it took way too long.

As a gothic mystery goes this was ok. The house was definitely a character in it's own right. It was enormous with lots of hidden secrets. I kept wondering how they could afford the upkeep on it. There appeared to be no employees for that either. The mystery kept me guessing, mainly because there were too many obvious suspects, and I felt like because they were so obvious, none of them would be the person behind the murders. I also feel like there weren't enough clues in certain places to help deduce who was behind things. There were a few twists, one that I didn't see coming, but despite that this book just felt really mediocre to me.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for Providing me with an ARC of this book.

 

 

 

 

 

Rage (Kate Burkholder #17) by Linda Castillo

  

My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre:  Mystery
Content: Strong Language

 

Summer has arrived with a vengeance in Painters Mill, and a macabre discovery by three Amish children brings the quiet to a grinding halt. Chief of Police Kate Burkholder arrives on scene to find the dismembered body of 21-year-old Samuel Eicher, a local Amish man who owned a successful landscaping business. What twisted individual murdered him in such a sadistic way?

The investigation has barely begun when, miles away, a second body is found, stuffed into a barrel and dumped in a ravine. The deceased is 21-year-old Aaron Shetler, Samuel Eicher’s best friend. What could these two young Amish men have done to deserve such violent ends?

With a heat wave bearing down, Kate learns quickly that, for reasons she doesn’t understand, no one is willing to talk about what happened to the men. Just as she begins to fear the case may be hopeless, a mystery woman comes forward and reveals that fun-loving Aaron and Samuel had recently befriended some very unsavory characters―individuals who may have ties to a larger, more sinister, black market.

To solve the case, Kate must delve into the most sordid corners of her community, but when she gets too close, the killers target Kate herself. Will the secrets simmering beneath the surface of Painters Mill take another life before she can expose the truth? Or will Kate be the final victim? 

 

In this seventeenth novel in the Kate Burkholder Series we are greeted at the beginning with a brutal murder of an Amish man. This is nothing new for this series. Each book starts out with either a brutal murder or the discovery of one. This was not one of my favorites in the series. It was entertaining enough, but there were some things done by characters that either didn't make a lot of sense, or were just plain stupid. First off there was no good reason ever given for why the first body was dismembered when it could have just been buried where it was buried without doing all that. What was the point of dismembering the body if they were just going to bury the pieces in shallow holes right next to each other? And the other bodies weren't dismembered. So why the difference?

Then there was Kate herself. If you've read any of my other reviews of this series, then you know I've complained about how Kate does stupid things, like not waiting for backup to arrive before she gets herself into some of the situations she gets into. It happens at least once in each book, but this time she repeatedly does this over and over. She decides to investigate something and then calls one of her deputies to meet her there. Then every time she ends up getting there before they do, and she proceeds to walk straight into trouble without waiting for them. What's the point in calling them? You would think the first time she got beat up it would have made her more cautious, but nope. There are also other things she does in these situations that scream inexperience, but we are supposed to believe that she is a seasoned police chief.

I was also in complete disbelief that Kate and John didn't see all the red flags that were pointing to human trafficking in this book. I don't even think it is a spoiler to say this in my review because it was so obvious from very early on that this was what was happening. Kate in particular came off as an idiot in this book. I'm actually beginning to question whether or not I want to keep reading this series. It's not the first time I've felt this way, I almost quit this series before but decided to keep going because I liked certain things about it. I still like those things. I like the details of the Amish community, and I like the relationship between Kate and John and the small details we get about their home life. This book was very sparse on all those things though. 

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Drop of Corruption (Shadow of the Leviathan #2) by Robert Jackson Bennett

  

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Fantasy, Mystery
Content: Lots of F bombs, Sex that is mostly fade to black or off-page

 

In the canton of Yarrowdale, at the very edge of the Empire’s reach, an impossible crime has occurred. A Treasury officer has disappeared into thin air—abducted from his quarters while the door and windows remained locked from the inside, in a building whose entrances and exits are all under constant guard.

To solve the case, the Empire calls on its most brilliant and mercurial investigator, the great Ana Dolabra. At her side, as always, is her bemused assistant Dinios Kol.

Before long, Ana’s discovered that they’re not investigating a disappearance, but a murder—and that the killing was just the first chess move by an adversary who seems to be able to pass through warded doors like a ghost, and who can predict every one of Ana’s moves as though they can see the future.

Worse still, the killer seems to be targeting the high-security compound known as the Shroud. Here, the Empire's greatest minds dissect fallen Titans to harness the volatile magic found in their blood. Should it fall, the destruction would be terrible indeed—and the Empire itself will grind to a halt, robbed of the magic that allows its wheels of power to turn.

Din has seen Ana solve impossible cases before. But this time, with the stakes higher than ever and Ana seemingly a step behind their adversary at every turn, he fears that his superior has finally met an enemy she can’t defeat. 

 

I very much enjoyed the first book in this series and I was looking forward to reading this one, but every time I picked this up to read it I would read a little and then put it down. I just figured it was my mood and I would get back to it later. Well, four months later I've finally finished it. I'm not sure what it was about this book that made it so hard for me to get into. Was it that the characters felt a bit off to me? They did but not right from the beginning. I don't know, but I do know that as I got further into the book my lack of interest didn't improve, it got worse. 

Din's and Anna's character's were one's that I liked in the first book. Din much more so than Anna, because she has an abrasive personality, but she intrigued me as a character. She still does a bit, but I thought she was a little overblown in this book. Her eating habits turned my stomach this time around. Her profanity filled sentences had me tuning out instead of taking her seriously.

Din was preoccupied with sleeping around this time. I didn't like this aspect of the story at all. I wanted the version of Din that was in the first book. The Din that wanted to do his job and keep it. This one was depressed and preoccupied. I also didn't care for the time lapse between books. Obviously things happened to these characters that changed them in that period of time that we as readers weren't privy to. 

Clearly I'm in the minority as most people have given this book 4 and 5 star ratings. I've even heard some reviewers say they liked this book better than the first one. I wanted to be able to agree with them. I hoped that putting off finishing this until I felt more in the mood for it, would do the trick. But unfortunately, I don't feel the same way. At this point, I'm not sure I want to continue with the series.

 

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for providing me with and ARC of this book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her Deadly Game (Keera Duggan #1) by Robert Dugoni

 

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre:  Mystery, Legal Thriller
Content: Strong Language

 

Keera Duggan was building a solid reputation as a Seattle prosecutor, until her romantic relationship with a senior colleague ended badly. For the competitive former chess prodigy, returning to her family’s failing criminal defense law firm to work for her father is the best shot she has. With the right moves, she hopes to restore the family’s reputation, her relationship with her father, and her career.

Keera’s chance to play in the big leagues comes when she’s retained by Vince LaRussa, an investment adviser accused of murdering his wealthy wife. There’s little hard evidence against him, but considering the couple’s impending and potentially nasty divorce, LaRussa faces life in prison. The prosecutor is equally challenging: Miller Ambrose, Keera’s former lover, who’s eager to destroy her in court on her first homicide defense.

As Keera and her team follow the evidence, they uncover a complicated and deadly game that’s more than Keera bargained for. When shocking information turns the case upside down, Keera must decide between her duty to her client, her family’s legacy, and her own future. 

 

It's been a while since I've read a legal thriller, not since the Barbara Holloway Series by Kate Wilhelm. It was nice to read one again. I like Dugoni's writing style, but I already knew that from reading his Tracy Crosswhite Series. He brought just enough intrigue to the courtroom to keep me hooked while reading this. I also liked Keera as a character. Her family though...oh boy! Part of me thinks she would be better off getting far away from them, but I feel like the family drama will continue to develop and improve. I read this while completely engrossed in the second Karen Read trial every day, and at times I couldn't help picturing the prosecutor in this as Hank Brennan. My opinion of the two is the same.

Overall, I liked this a lot and I'm looking forward to reading more in this series. 

 

 

 

 

Death at a Highland Wedding (A Rip Through Time #4) by Kelley Armstrong

  

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre:  Mystery, Historical Mystery, Fantasy
Content: Strong Language

 

After slipping 150 years into the past, modern-day homicide detective Mallory Atkinson has embraced her new life in Victorian Scotland as housemaid Catriona Mitchel. Although it isn’t what she expected, she's developed real, meaningful relationships with the people around her and has come to love her role as assistant to undertaker Dr. Duncan Gray and Detective Hugh McCreadie.

Mallory, Gray, and McCreadie are on their way to the Scottish Highlands for McCreadie's younger sister's wedding. The McCreadies and the groom’s family, the Cranstons, have a complicated history which has made the weekend quite uncomfortable. But the Cranston estate is beautiful so Gray and Mallory decide to escape the stifling company and set off to explore the castle and surrounding wilderness. They discover that the groom, Archie Cranston, a slightly pompous and prickly man, has set up deadly traps in the woods for the endangered Scottish wildcats, and they soon come across a cat who's been caught and severely injured. Oddly, Mallory notices the cat's injuries don't match up with the intricacies of the trap. These strange irregularities, combined with the secretive and erratic behavior of the groom, put Mallory and Duncan on edge. And then when one of the guests is murdered, they must work fast to uncover the murderer before another life is lost.
 

 

I liked the progress of some of the relationships in this book. I feel like things are progressing on that front at just the right pace for me. For me, the mystery wasn't as compelling as it was in the last book, but it was still an enjoyable read. I wish that there was more back and forth interaction through time. What I was really hoping for when I started this series was a glimpse into both time periods and it looks like this is just settling into being a Victorian mystery series, which isn't a bad thing, but I've read a lot of those already. I also feel like certain characters in this series have accepted this reality too easily. There was hardly any push back on the idea of time travel in previous books by characters who find out about Mallory's secret. That being said, I'm in no way disinterested in this series. I will definitely be reading the next book after it's published.

 

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Silenced Girls (Agent Tori Hunter #1) by Roger Stelljes

  

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre:  Mystery, Suspense, Thriller
Content: Strong language, We get the perspective of a serial killer but nothing too detailed, Fade to black sex

 

She moved far away to try and forget her past. A past that would seep back in when she least expected it and crushed her soul over and over. She tried to keep the evidence packed away in boxes high up on a closet shelf like carefully packing away a tragic part of her life. As if sealing the boxes, was sealing away a time in her life she desperately wanted to go back and change. Until one day a mysterious letter arrives from an unknown sender that unravels everything.

FBI Special Agent Tori Hunter returns to her hometown of Manchester, Minnesota for the first time in twenty years to investigate the disappearance of a woman who is gone without a trace. She is desperate to solve a case that will cause her to confront her own painful past and question the motives of friends she thought she knew and trusted. It will plunge her and the other detectives into the crosshairs of a dangerous killer while in search of the truth.

 

This was a good start to the series. In the beginning I struggled to like the main character. Some of her behavior annoyed me, but she eventually grew on me, and grew as a character by the end of the book. I liked Braddock right off the bat though. He was definitely the smartest person in the book. I had some issues with the way the investigation went and some of the assumptions that were made by Braddock's superiors. They kept saying they knew things that were only assumptions, but that they had no proof to back up. Despite those minor annoyances, I enjoyed this and found it entertaining. I think it's comparable to the Tracy Crosswhite series by Robert Dugoni, so if you like that series give this one a try. 

The Housemaid Series by Freida McFadden

       

 

I recently read all three of the books in The Housemaid series by Freida McFadden and I enjoyed the series. I do have to say that I liked the first book better than the other two. I thought the series got weaker with each book. I also read book one in ebook form and really liked it that way. It kept me up into the wee hours of the night. It was just so hard to put down! I ended up listening to the other two books on a road trip, and while they kept me entertained on my long drive there and back, and was one reason I didn't mind the drive so much, I really didn't like the narrator at all. I am wondering if I would have liked those two books more if they had been eye reads instead. That being said, I know I would have still had most of the same issues with book three. 

 

The Housemaid (The Housemaid #1) by Freida McFadden

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre:  Mystery, Suspense, Thriller
Content: Strong language, Physical and Psychological Abuse, Confinement

 

There's something about this author's writing style that grabs me and doesn't let go. I could not put this book down! You would think that it would be a 5 star read if that was the case, but there were some things that didn't come off as completely believable to me. Story wise it should probably get a 3 but it's getting a 4 for the sheer entertainment value of all those twists and turns, even the ones I predicted correctly. I'm adding a spoiler tag down below for things that didn't work so well for me. Be prepared for major spoilers if you look.

Things that seemed a bit unbelievable- The way Andrew allowed Nina to let Millie stay in the attic room. That didn't make sense. One of the reasons Nina gives him for allowing it is because if they make the guest room her bedroom his parents won't have anywhere to stay when they're visiting. But we are told his parents have kept their NY house after moving to Florida, so they wouldn't need to stay in the guest room. I have a hard time believing Andrew would have relinquished that much control regardless of the reason she gave him. The fact that Millie stayed when there was a chance Nina could make an accusation that would send her back to prison. I don't believe she would have stayed on after she realized that. She could have just told her parole officer that the employer was a mental case and mistreating her. I'm pretty sure the parole officer would have helped her find a place to stay until she got a different job. She helped her get a job before. Also, if she was bold enough to punch the bartender in the face when he was touching her inappropriately why couldn't she have just told her parole officer what he was doing in the first place? That Millie would have stayed in that locked room the whole time when she had the key. She could have escaped when he was gone. But I think we are supposed to believe that she plotted the whole thing so she could ambush him and lock him in the room. Andrew is given pliers at one point when he's locked in the room, so he can pull out his teeth. Something that I had a hard time believing he would do until the part at the funeral near the end when his mother told Nina she had pulled his baby teeth out as a punishment. So, knowing that I can maybe believe he would have done it. But I'm still not convinced. I knew the whole time that the things Andrew did to women probably came from the way his mother treated him, but I have a hard time believing his mother would ever have told Nina about anything she did to him. When Andrew has the pliers he could have used them to try to pull the pins out of the door hinges. It was mentioned they were on the inside of the room when he was trying to bust the door down. Also, why does no one try to break out the tiny window and yell for help? It wouldn't open but you could still break it. The huge coincidence that the police officer on the scene happened to be the father of the woman Andrew was engaged to in the past, and the fact that he was able to cover up what really happened so easily.

 

The Housemaid's Secret (The Housemaid #2) by Freida McFadden

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre:  Mystery, Suspense, Thriller
Content: Strong language, Abuse

 

In many ways this book followed the same formula as the first book, only with some twists. I enjoyed this book, but not quite as much as book one. There's a time lapse of several years that I wasn't expecting but it worked fine. This was a very entertaining book that kept me listening and wanting to know what was going to happen next. I did predict most of the twists but it was still a fun read.

 

 

The Housemaid is Watching (The Housemaid #3) by Freida McFadden 

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre:  Mystery, Suspense, Thriller
Content: Strong language, Abuse

 

The main character is married with two kids in book three and she's middle aged now. That didn't bother me, what bothered me was that she just seemed different. Maybe I should just blame it on her getting older and becoming a mother, but she felt more cautious, less willing to take chances, and the lack of communication between her and her spouse annoyed me. It didn't make sense that he wouldn't tell her these things. In fact, it felt contrived, just to add drama to the story. Overall I enjoyed this series though, and I want to read more books by this author. I think her books, while not always completely believable, are very entertaining.

Dead Woman Walking by Sharon Bolton

 

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre:  Mystery, Suspense, Thriller
Content: Strong language

 

Just before dawn in the hills near the Scottish border, a man murders a young woman. At the same time, a hot-air balloon crashes out of the sky. There’s just one survivor.

She’s seen the killer’s face – but he’s also seen hers. And he won’t rest until he’s eliminated the only witness to his crime.

Alone, scared, trusting no one, she’s running to where she feels safe – but it could be the most dangerous place of all . . .

 

I liked that this was a bit different from the other mystery/thrillers I've read. It starts out with people in a hot air balloon witnessing a crime being committed. I thought it was pretty harrowing for a while as they tried to escape the killer who was following the balloon to try to kill the witnesses. I enjoyed the way this unfolded, slowly revealing the secrets in the story, and it ended up being pretty different from what I thought it would be. Although I predicted all but the very last two twists, it's still a 4 star read, and I want to try other books by this author. 

While listening to this, there were a couple of times where I was confused at the way something happened in the story, but the fact that the story switched from past to present in a non-linear way is what caused that. You have to pay close attention while reading. I think that maybe actually reading this versus listening to it might make it a little less confusing at those parts.

 

 

 

 

The Locked Door by Freida McFadden

  

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre:  Mystery, Suspense, Thriller
Content: Strong language; Kidnapping, torture, murder, and animal cruelty, although none of that happens on page.

 

Some doors are locked for a reason…

While eleven-year-old Nora Davis was up in her bedroom doing homework, she had no idea her father was killing women in the basement.

Until the day the police arrived at their front door.

Decades later, Nora’s father is spending his life behind bars, and Nora is a successful surgeon with a quiet, solitary existence. Nobody knows her father was a notorious serial killer. And she intends to keep it that way.

Then Nora discovers one of her young female patients has been murdered. In the same unique and horrific manner that her father used to kill his victims.

Somebody knows who Nora is. Somebody wants her to take the fall for this unthinkable crime. But she’s not a killer like her father. The police can’t pin anything on her.

As long as they don’t look in her basement.

 

After reading the book description, I went into this wondering what was in Nora's basement. I don't think it's a spoiler at all to say this book is set up to make us wonder if we can trust Nora or not. What I really enjoyed about this book was that I could never be sure until the end. I think I followed every single misdirection the story sent my way. I'm not sure how I feel about some revelations at the end of the book but it was thoroughly enjoyable. I was completely glued to this flaws and all. I can see why this author is so popular. I'll definitely be reading more!

 

 

 

 

The Fate of Mercy Alban by Wendy Webb

 

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre:  Gothic, Mystery, Ghost story,
Content: A fade to black sex scene

 

Grace Alban has spent twenty years away from her childhood home, the stately Alban House, for reasons she would rather forget. But when her mother's unexpected death brings Grace and her teen-age daughter home, she finds more haunting the halls and passageways of Alban House than her own personal demons.

Long-buried family secrets, a packet of old love letters and a lost manuscript plunge Grace into a decades-old mystery about a scandalous party at Alban House, when a world-famous author took his own life and Grace's aunt disappeared without a trace. The night has been shrouded in secrecy by the powerful Alban family for all of these years, and Grace realizes her family secrets tangle and twist as darkly as the secret passages of Alban House. Her mother was intending to tell the truth about that night to a reporter on the very day she died - could it have been murder? Or was she a victim of the supposed Alban curse? With the help of the disarmingly kind--and attractive—Reverend Matthew Parker, Grace must uncover the truth about her home and its curse before she and her daughter become the next victims.

 

I've liked other books I've read by this author but I found this one to be frustrating. It was the slow pace of the story, and the way it took its time to reveal all the secrets, some of which were obvious. There would be something about to be revealed and then the author would have to insert descriptions of what they were eating and the scenery to drag it out needlessly. It was dragged out so much that I almost felt like throwing the book across the room a couple of times. 

I also got frustrated with how dumb some of the characters were. All those secrets they just couldn't bring themselves to tell so that they could protect this wealthy family. It was just unreal. And I'm not buying that a family this wealthy with a mansion like that wouldn't have 24 hour hired security there, plus a state of the art security system. 

On top of all that the minister of the church is sleeping with his parishioner whom he barely knows, and whom isn't really a church goer herself. It just didn't seem very believable that a minister would do that. 

Then there was the epilogue. I absolutely hated it.

 

 

 

 

 

Girl Number One by Jane Holland

  

My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre:  Mystery, Suspense, Thriller
Content: Strong language, One moderately descriptive sex scene

 

As a young child, Eleanor Blackwood witnessed her mother's murder in woods near their farm. The killer was never found.

Now an adult, Eleanor discovers a woman's body in the same spot in the Cornish woods where her mother was strangled eighteen years before. But when the police get there, the body has disappeared.

Is Eleanor’s disturbed mind playing tricks on her again, or has her mother’s killer resurfaced? And what does the number on the dead woman’s forehead signify?

 

I listened the audio of this and I wasn't crazy about the narrator. Overall this was just ok. Nothing surprised me and the main character annoyed me. She did some stupid things. She was also always thinking about how attractive the men she was acquainted with were. She was suspicious of one man but still slept with him, which didn't make any sense to me. Nothing in the book really surprised me at all. The person I suspected the most ended up being the present day killer, and I had also thought about the possibility of the other person being her mother's killer. 

I've noticed there are a few things most of the psychological suspense thrillers I've read by UK authors have in common. The police are inept at their jobs and dismissive, the parents of the main characters are downright mean and unsupportive, and lots of smoking that's portrayed as though it's sexy instead of a health hazard. This one was the same. I'm not sure if this is a trend or just a coincidence, but I'm a bit tired of it. I think I'm going to stick to authors in this genre that I know I like for a while.

 

Arrowood by Laura McHugh

  

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre:  Mystery, Suspense, Gothic
Content: Nothing I can remember

 

Arrowood is the most ornate and grand of the historical houses that line the Mississippi River in southern Iowa. But the house has a mystery it has never revealed: It's where Arden Arrowood's younger twin sisters vanished on her watch twenty years ago--never to be seen again. After the twins' disappearance, Arden's parents divorced and the Arrowoods left the big house that had been in their family for generations. And Arden's own life has fallen apart: She can't finish her master's thesis, and a misguided love affair has ended badly. She has held on to the hope that her sisters are still alive, and it seems she can't move forward until she finds them. When her father dies and she inherits Arrowood, Arden returns to her childhood home determined to discover what really happened to her sisters that traumatic summer.

Arden's return to the town of Keokuk--and the now infamous house that bears her name--is greeted with curiosity. But she is welcomed back by her old neighbor and first love, Ben Ferris, whose family, she slowly learns, knows more about the Arrowoods' secrets and their small, closed community than she ever realized. With the help of a young amateur investigator, Arden tracks down the man who was the prime suspect in the kidnapping. But the house and the surrounding town hold their secrets close--and the truth, when Arden finds it, is more devastating than she ever could have imagined.

Arrowood is a powerful and resonant novel that examines the ways in which our lives are shaped by memory. As with her award-winning debut novel, The Weight of Blood, Laura McHugh has written a thrilling novel in which nothing is as it seems, and in which our longing for the past can take hold of the present in insidious and haunting ways.

 

I really enjoyed reading this book. It was atmospheric and I really felt like I could picture the location. There were no big surprises for me, as I found it fairly easy to figure out where the twins were, but I still found this to be an enjoyable story. More than anything it got me interested in looking up the location of the house in the book. There was an address for the house in the book and I ended up looking it up to see if the house really existed. There was no house at the exact address. The town is real, the street along the Mississippi river is real and there are lots of historic homes on that street. I did find the house in the book that was referred to as the Green house, and said to have a stone arch in the front that resembles teeth. I was surprised to find that was a real place, and it was built by Hugh W. Green in 1912. It's an odd looking house for sure.

There's one small issue I had with the book that I have to mention. There's a part in the book where the main character talks about her mother longing to live in a more modern house (this would have been in the late 70s or early 80s when her mother lived in the old Victorian home) and she longed for wood paneled walls and popcorn ceilings. I'm sorry, but NO ONE longs for popcorn ceilings, absolutely no one. I can believe the wood paneled walls and even shag carpeting, but not pop corn ceilings! All jesting aside though, I did really like this book and I may even read something else by this author in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Big Four (Hercule Poirot #5) by Agatha Christie

  

My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre:  Mystery, Suspense
Content: Clean

 

Famed private eye Hercule Poirot tackles international intrigue and espionage in this classic Agatha Christie mystery.

Framed in the doorway of Hercule Poirot's bedroom stands an uninvited guest, coated from head to foot in dust. The man stares for a moment, then he sways and falls. Who is he? Is he suffering from shock or just exhaustion? Above all, what is the significance of the figure 4, scribbled over and over again on a sheet of paper?

Poirot finds himself plunged into a world of international intrigue, risking his life—and that of his "twin brother"—to uncover the truth.

 

I saved this book for last instead of reading it in order because it seems most people think it's the weakest book in the whole series. So, instead of saving the best for last, I saved the worst for last. After reading it, I agree that it wasn't great. I had very low expectations going into this and so I wasn't disappointed. It was maybe even a little better than I was expecting. This is basically Hercule Poirot meets spy novel. The big four that the title eludes to are rather over the top at times, much in the same way a James Bond villain might be. Also, Hercule Poirot did things in this book that an old man shouldn't be spry enough to do.

My main enjoyment came from the fact that Hastings was in this book. Having finished all the other books in the series, and reading the latter books in order of publication, it's been a long time since Hastings has been in one of the books and I missed him. It was like revisiting an old friend. The friendship between Hastings and Poirot was what made me give this book 2.5 stars instead of just two. Everything else in the book was pretty ridiculous.

I'm sad to have come to the end of the Hercule Poirot novels, but not too sad because there are still over 50 short stories to read. So now it's onto those.

 

 

 

 

 

The Liar's Girl by Catherine Ryan Howard

  

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery, Psychological Suspense
Content: Strong language

 

Her first love confessed to five murders. But the truth was so much worse.

Dublin's notorious Canal Killer, Will Hurley, is ten years into his life sentence when the body of a young woman is fished out of the Grand Canal. Though detectives suspect they are dealing with a copycat, they turn to Will for help. He claims he has the information the police need, but will only give it to one person - the girl he was dating when he committed his horrific crimes.

Alison Smith has spent the last decade abroad, putting her shattered life in Ireland far behind her. But when she gets a request from Dublin imploring her to help prevent another senseless murder, she is pulled back to face the past - and the man - she's worked so hard to forget. 

I'm so glad I discovered this author. I knew after reading The Nothing Man that I wanted to read more of her books, and this second one was also very good. This author is very good as writing character centered psychological suspense, a type of book that I love if done right. I enjoyed the slow build of this story and I thought the characters were very well written. It kept me guessing for a while, but I realized how things were going to end up somewhere in the middle of the book. That being said, it still kept me reading because I wasn't sure I was right. If you enjoy this type of book then I recommend this one and The Nothing Man. I'm looking forward to reading more of Catherine Ryan Howard's books.

 

“Did he really think I’d escaped all this intact? That I could love him and he could kill people and then I could just go on and live a normal life? That I could have those things now, no harm done? Didn’t he realise what he’d done?” 

 

 

 

 

 

The Burning (Kate Burkholder #16) by Linda Castillo

  

 My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery, Suspense
Content: Strong language, A gruesome murder with details from the murdered person's perspective

 

Newlywed Chief of Police Kate Burkholder is awakened by an urgent midnight call summoning her to a suspicious fire in the woods. When she arrives at the scene, she discovers a charred body. According to the coroner, the deceased, an Amish man named Milan Swanz, was chained to a stake and burned alive. It is an appalling and eerily symbolic crime against an upstanding husband and father.

Kate knows all too well that the Amish prefer to handle their problems without interference from the outside world, and no one will speak about the murdered man. From what she’s able to piece together, Swanz led a deeply troubled life and had recently been excommunicated. But if that’s the case, why are the Amish so reluctant to talk about him? Are they protecting the memory of one of their own? Or are they afraid of something they dare not share?

When her own brother is implicated in the case, Kate finds herself not only at odds with the Amish, the world of which she was once a part, but also the English community and her counterparts in law enforcement. The investigation takes a violent turn when Kate’s life is threatened by a mysterious stranger.

To uncover the truth about the death of Milan Swanz, Kate must dive deep into the Anabaptist culture, peering into all the dark corners of its history, only to uncover a secret legacy that shatters everything she thought she knew about the Amish themselves―and her own roots.

 

It's hard to believe I've read 16 books in this series. This latest installment starts out with a very gruesome murder, and quite frankly, I had a hard time reading the details. From looking at the cover, I thought someone's barn would be set on fire but unfortunately it wasn't a barn. If you've read the books description then you'll know, but I didn't read it beforehand. 

There were some interesting historical things about the Anabaptist culture in this book, and I had to look those things up on my own and read about them. I also enjoyed Kate and Tomasetti as they embarked on life as a married couple, and he even attempted to help her with this case. This book was pretty average for the series. Kate, as always, did some things I thought weren't very well thought out, and on top of that she came off as super human with the way she kept taking beatings yet could keep going. That aspect of the story wasn't very believable. 

Overall I liked this book but it wasn't one of my favorites in the series. 

Thanks to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for providing me with an ARC of this book.

The Missing Sister by Elle Marr

  

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery, Suspense, Psychological Thriller
Content: Strong Language

 

In Paris, her twin sister has vanished, leaving behind three chilling words: Trust no one.

Shayna Darby is finally coming to terms with her parents’ deaths when she’s delivered another blow. The body of her estranged twin sister, Angela—the possible victim of a serial killer—has been pulled from the Seine. Putting what’s left of her life on hold, Shayna heads to Paris. But while cleaning out Angela’s apartment, Shayna makes a startling discovery: a coded message meant for her alone…

Alive. Trust no one.

Taking the warning to heart, Shayna maintains the lie. She makes a positive ID on the remains and works to find out where—and why—her missing sister is hiding. Shayna retraces her sister’s footsteps, and they lead her down into Paris’s underbelly.

As she gets closer to the truth—and to the killer—Shayna’s own life may now be in the balance…

 

This book was a mess. There were so many things that didn't make sense. The protagonist, Shayna does things that are at turns silly, stupid, and dangerous. She was one of those too stupid to live characters. It was very obvious to me who she shouldn't trust. There were also dumb things like her being worried about someone thinking she was her sister and finishing the job, but then she wears her sister's clothes when all her laundry is dirty?  Also, she goes to questionable places, putting herself in danger and won't tell the police what's going on. 

I kept wondering why her sister couldn't have just told her what was going on in the coded message she left, or at least who she shouldn't trust, or where she was. Why leave a whole trail of them instead of just one with more details? And why didn't the police find this coded message and think it was worth looking into? It didn't make any sense.

The reason behind her sister's disappearance was crazy. I guess serial killers are either crazy or evil, but this was absolutely bonkers. In the end some things were left unexplained, like who tried to kidnap Shayna. I have to say that the most interesting character was Madam Chang, and boy was she full of surprises.




 

    
 

The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard

  

 My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery, Suspense, Psychological Thriller
Content: Strong language, The unpleasant recollections of a serial killer that include raping and torturing his victims (although not much detail is given)

 

I was the girl who survived the Nothing Man. Now I am the woman who is going to catch him...


At the age of twelve, Eve Black was the only member of her family to survive an encounter with serial attacker the Nothing Man. Now an adult, she is obsessed with identifying the man who destroyed her life. Supermarket security guard Jim Doyle has just started reading The Nothing Man —the true-crime memoir Eve has written about her efforts to track down her family’s killer. As he turns each page, his rage grows. Because Jim’s not just interested in reading about the Nothing Man. He is the Nothing Man. Jim soon begins to realize how dangerously close Eve is getting to the truth. He knows she won’t give up until she finds him. He has no choice but to stop her first …

 

This is the first book I've read by this author and it definitely won't be my last! I found this book to be a very compelling read with a couple of twists I didn't see coming. That being said, I did figure out some of it ahead of time, but that didn't diminish my enjoyment of the book at all. Going into this we know who the killer is, the mystery lies elsewhere here, and the thrills lie in the fact that you're in the killer's head reliving the killings as he reads the book that's written about him. The whole time I was anticipating when he would finally go after Eve. 

The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton

  

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery, Dystopian, Post-Apocalyptic, Sci-fi
Content: Autopsies performed off page with some description of the results, Talk of people being experimented on, Someone's head is bashed in off page with some description of the result

 

Solve the murder to save what's left of the world.

Outside the island there is nothing: the world was destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched.

On the island: it is idyllic. One hundred and twenty-two villagers and three scientists, living in peaceful harmony. The villagers are content to fish, farm and feast, to obey their nightly curfew, to do what they're told by the scientists.

Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death. And then they learn that the murder has triggered a lowering of the security system around the island, the only thing that was keeping the fog at bay. If the murder isn't solved within 107 hours, the fog will smother the island—and everyone on it.

But the security system has also wiped everyone's memories of exactly what happened the night before, which means that someone on the island is a murderer—and they don't even know it.

And the clock is ticking. 

 

I loved this author's first book, The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. I also love mysteries, and this one seemed very intriguing because no one in the book could remember what happened. This cover is also gorgeous. Because of those things, I had really high hopes that this would be a book that I would love, despite the fact that his previous book, The Devil and the Dark Water ended up being a dud for me. Unfortunately, this ended up being a huge disappointment. It was a painfully slow, needlessly drawn out story, that at times just went in circles. Most of the characters were hard to connect to, and some were downright impossible to like or have any sympathy for, despite their circumstances, which we are never given any real details on. I did like Emory quite a bit, although she and her daughter Clara where the only characters I really liked. For the most part, there was a really dim view of humanity in this book that I didn't like at all.

Emory is tasked with investigating what happened, and from the beginning it was pretty easy to figure out that there was a lot of manipulation going on from a couple of different characters. I don't think it's a spoiler for me to say that because it's so obvious. Most of the time Emory is clueless to things that the reader is in on. She quite often discovers things that we as the readers already know and then no real conclusions or connections are made by her to solve anything. She just picks up clues throughout the book and does nothing very useful with them. Sure she throws out theories on what she thinks happened, but she never really makes any progress on solving anything until the end when suddenly she figures it all out and tells us what happened. The slow pace and the lack of progress was incredibly frustrating. Overall, I figured out most the elements to this book before they were revealed with the exception of how the first death happened, so I guess that was a plus. Only it didn't feel like a plus, it felt anticlimactic. 

Lastly, the whole killer fog thing was ridiculous and not ever explained. I saw the twist coming with that a mile away, but the fog itself just never really made sense. Where did it really come from? How was it created? Climate change is just not a good enough explanation. It had all the elements of something from a cheap sci-fi horror flick. Is this author only going to write books I dislike from now on? I hope not but I'm not sure I want to take a chance on another one.

Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for providing me with an ARC of this book.

Dark One: Forgotten by Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells

  

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery, Paranormal
Content: Mild language

 

Every year in the United States there are fifteen thousand murders, give or take a few hundred. Of those, nearly forty percent go unsolved.

In this six-part audio series, Christina Walsh is determined to change that. After struggling with the loss of her father, she sets out on a journey to bring the justice that has eluded her to the families of other victims. And she starts with a particularly strange case. The murder of world-renowned violinist Leona McPherson who mysteriously disappeared years ago after a concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. As Christina digs deeper, the story gets stranger. Leona was a prodigy, someone too good to be forgotten, but that’s exactly what has happened. She’s been forgotten. Entirely. By everyone who knew her. From the gushing music critic in her hometown to the detectives investigating her murder, even her own mother.

So Christina embarks on a cross-country mission, with her roommate Sophie, to figure out what happened to Leona. In the process, she uncovers a trail of similar victims who have suffered the same fate. But if no one can remember the victims, how can the killer possibly be caught? Christina’s only leads come from a crazed homeless man’s ramblings, a mysterious glass eye, and an otherworldly totem. Is Christina crazy or has she stumbled upon something so implausible it must be true?

 

This was an interesting audio book that's set up to feel like you're listening to a podcast. I really got into this and was enjoying it until I got to the part where the main character's roommate gets involved. I've got to be honest, she almost ruined this book for me. She was so immature and annoying. I think she was supposed to bring some comic relief to the story but I didn't find her funny. She felt like a character that should have been in a YA novel. Thankfully, I was able to ignore her enough to enjoy the rest of the book, but this could have been a 4 star read instead of a 3.5 star read if she hadn't been in the story, or if she had been written as a more mature character.

The mystery itself was good and I liked the supernatural aspect of the story. Apparently this is a prequel to a graphic novel, but I've never read it and I don't plan on reading it. This worked well enough on it's own.