Review: The Secrets We Share

Author: Edwin Hill

Started reading: September 22nd 2022

Finished the book: September 30th 2022

Pages: 296 / 8h 54m

Genres: Mystery, Thriller

Published: March 29th 2022

Source: Netgalley

Goodreads score: 3.98

My score:

Synopsis

At first glance, Natalie Cavanaugh and Glenn Abbott hardly look like sisters. Even off-duty, Natalie dresses like a Boston cop, preferring practical clothes and unfussy, pinned-up hair. Her younger sister, Glenn, seems tailor-made for the spotlight, from her signature red mane to her camera-ready smile. Glenn has spent years cultivating her brand through her baking blog, and with the publication of her new book, that hard work seems about to pay off. But her fans have no idea about the nightmare in Glenn and Natalie’s past.

Twenty years ago, their father’s body was discovered in the woods behind their house. A trauma like that doesn’t fit with Glenn’s public image. Yet, maybe someone reading her blog does know something. There have been anonymous online messages, vague yet ominous, hinting that she’s being watched. And with unsettling coincidences hitting ever closer to home, both Glenn and Natalie soon have more pressing matters to worry about, especially when a dead body is found in an abandoned building . . .

Review: Savage Row

Author: Britney King

Started reading: September 18th 2022

Finished the book: September 20th 2022

Pages: 258 / 5h 13m

Genres: Thriller

Published: November 19th 2020

Source: Netgalley / Storytel 

Goodreads score: 3.65

My score:

Synopsis

Jack Mooney, a career criminal, has been in prison for nearly a decade, quietly nursing his hatred for the jurors who put him there. One in particular gets him through the endless days—the alluring Amy Stone.

When Mooney is granted early release, he makes Amy his first priority. To his delight, she’s even more enticing than before, and better still, she has a lot more to lose than he’d imagined.
As Mooney’s campaign of terror mounts, the police seem powerless to protect the Stone family, who must rely on their wits to survive a psychopath hell-bent on revenge.

Review: Project Pay Day

Author: Brent Hartinger

Started reading: August 2nd 2022

Finished the book: August 5th 2022

Pages: 206

Genres: Middle Grade

Published: February 21nd 2021

Source: Netgalley

Goodreads score: Not enough ratings

My score:

Synopsis

Dave and his two best friends, Hannah and Curtis, are looking forward to a summer of complete freedom, but their parents have another idea: they insist that the three teenagers get summer jobs. But the friends come up with a plan: Why not invent fake jobs to get their parents off their backs? The trouble is, their parents are going to want to see them bringing in real money. And that means finding a way to get-rich-quick, but without breaking the law, and without doing any actual work.

The summer passes and Dave, Curtis, and Hannah try a long list of schemes: trying to catch bank robbers to win the reward; scientifically calculating the “correct” number of jelly beans in a contest jar; finding and exploring a network of underground smugglers' tunnels; and even diving for sunken treasure. But “Project Pay Day” never quite goes according to plan, and they don’t make the money they need. Soon summer is almost over, and they have no choice but to solve a big local mystery — or face the consequences of their actions, which includes their parents breaking up the trio for good!

Review: Awakening (Queen of Spades #1)

Author: E.J. Dawson

Started reading: June 22ne 2022

Finished the book: June 27th 2022

Pages: 280

Genres: Science Fiction, Romance

Published: April 10th 2020

Source: Netgalley

Goodreads score: 4.38

My score:

Synopsis

Ayla is a villain. With a gift that allows her to see when anyone will die, she’s remorseless in her profession as the perfect assassin. When she wakes up in a cryo-tank three thousand years in the future, and no idea how she came to be there, all that matters is survival.

Rescued by Leith and the crew of the Nuria, Ayla discovers a far evolved world of space ships and galactic colonization. But everything comes with a price, and though Ayla is no princess locked in an icy tower, she still has to pay for the rescue she didn’t know she needed.

Given over to Leith, a darkly handsome man who reads Ayla far easier than she’d like, they must work together if Ayla is to repay her debt. As the pair come to learn how dangerous one another are, so too grows a lustful bond that comes with rules of its own. Fighting to learn why she was frozen, Ayla’s dragged into Leith’s past with a criminal organization seeking to take over this sector of the galaxy. In order to survive, Leith will need Ayla’s help, but Ayla doesn’t know if she’s willing to pay what it will cost her…

Review: Typecast

Author: Andrea J. Stein

Started reading: June 18th 2022

Finished the book: June 21st 2022

Pages: 400

Genres: Women's Fiction

To be Published: September 13th 2022

Source: Netgalley

Goodreads score: 3.90

My score:

Synopsis

At thirty-one, Callie Dressler is finally comfortable in her own skin. She loves her job as a preschool teacher, and although living in her vacant childhood home isn’t necessarily what dreams are made of, the space is something she never could have afforded if she’d stayed in New York City. She knows her well-ordered life will be upended when her type A, pregnant sister, Nina; adorable four-year-old niece; and workaholic brother-in-law move in, but how could she say no when they needed a place to crash during their remodel? As Nina pointed out, it's still their parents’ house, even if their mom and dad have relocated.

As if adjusting to this new living situation isn’t enough, the universe sends Callie another wrinkle: her college boyfriend—who Callie dumped ten years earlier for reasons known only to her—has a film coming out, and the screenplay is based on their real-life breakup. While the movie consumes her thoughts, Callie can’t help wondering if Nina and her friends are right that she hasn’t moved on. When a complication with Nina’s pregnancy brings Callie in close contact with Nina’s smart and funny architect, Callie realizes she'd better figure out whether she wants to open the door to the past—or risk missing out on her future.

Review: Rose Petal Graves (The Lost Clan #1)

Author: Olivia Wildenstein

Started reading: May 23rd 2022

Finished the book: June 8th 2022

Pages: 368

Genres: YA, Fantasy

Published: March 29th 2017

Source: Netgalley

Goodreads score: 3.75

My score:

Synopsis

I wasn't the type of girl who believed in fairytales, much less tales about faeries, but that changed the day the fae walked into my life.

Staying away from my lakeside hometown was the plan, but Mom died suddenly. Dad said she suffered a stroke after she dug up one of the ancient Native American graves in our backyard. Creepy, I know. Creepier still, there was no corpse inside the old coffin, only fresh rose petals. As we made preparations for her burial, unnervingly odd and beautiful newcomers poured into my small town. A coroner with emerald eyes and black hair, much too young for the job. An arrogant blond socialite, who lived to get under my skin. And a tattooed Native man, who wasn’t supposed to be alive. By dying, my mother had inadvertently revived an age-old feud between the fae and the tribe that hunted them. A feud that was about to tear my world apart.

Review: The Silent Bluebird

Author: Elle M. Holmes

Started reading: May 29th 2022

Finished the book: June 5th 2022

Pages: 276

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction

Published: November 17th 2020

Source: Netgalley

Goodreads score: 3.67

My score:

Synopsis

The stories we read have the power to change our lives.

Sadie Smith lives an ordinary life, unlike the extraordinary ones of the characters in the books where she finds an escape. She dives into her stories with wanton abandon.
Until one story changes it all.
The story of the impetuous Killian Quinn: an agent for the Zeta Defense Agency, determined to avenge his fallen partner. As she follows him further down the rabbit hole, worlds collide when she awakens with her hands tied to a chair in the face of armed men. Sadie finds herself dropped in the middle of a battle between secret agencies she didn’t even know existed, but maybe where she’s belonged all along.

Review: What She Found in the Woods

Author: Josephine Angelini

Started reading: July 29th 2021

Finished the book: July 30th 2021

Pages: 400

Genres: YA, Mystery, Thriller

Published: December 1st 2020

Source: Netgalley

Goodreads score: 3.96

My score:

Synopsis

This is Magda's last chance. Recovering from a scandal at her elite New York City private school that threw life into a tailspin, she is shipped off to live with her grandparents in the Pacific Northwest for the summer.
Medicated and uninspired, Magda spends her days in a fog wandering the forest behind the house. But then she stumbles upon Bo. He's wild and free, and he can see the real her. Magda starts believing she might be able to move on from her past and feel something again.

But there's more to this sleepy town than she thought. And what Magda finds in the woods near Bo's forest home is the beginning of a whole new nightmare...

Review: Of Wicked Blood (The Quatrefoil Chronicles #1)

Author: Olivia Wildenstein & Katie Hayoz

Started reading: March 15th 2021

Finished the book: April 15th 2021

Pages: 434 / 14:41:00

Genres: YA, Fantasy

Published: February 2nd 2021

Source: Netgalley

Goodreads score: 4.18

My score:

Synopsis

No rest for the wicked... or the cursed.

SLATE
I didn’t mean to steal the Bloodstone from the De Morel’s crypt. Scratch that, I did mean to steal it. Until I realized it was a curse-magnet that only comes off if I, along with a jolly trio, successfully defeat four curses. If any of us fail, I’m dead. I’ve never been a glass half-empty sort of person, but my glass looks in dire need of a refill right about now. The only highlight of this wicked treasure hunt: feisty, entitled Cadence de Morel.

CADENCE
I was raised on tales of magic, in a small town reputed to be the birthplace of French witchcraft. Did I believe all the stories I heard? Absolutely not. I mean, if magic existed, Maman wouldn’t have died, and Papa wouldn’t be stuck in a wheelchair, right? Wrong. The night Slate Ardoin waltzes into my life, wearing a ring he stole from my mother’s grave, I call him a monster. But then I meet real ones, and Slate, well . . . he becomes something else to me. Something frustrating to live with but impossible to live without. Something I will fight for, no matter the cost. *Warning: profuse cursing (and not just the magical kind).

Review: Ten Days Gone (A.L. McKittridge #1)

Author: Beverly Long

Started reading: March 6th 2021

Finished the book: March 21st 2021

Pages: 377

Genres: Mystery, Thriller, Crime

Published: February 18th 2020

Source: Netgalley

Goodreads score: 3.85

My score:

Synopsis

In all their years working for the Baywood police department, detectives A.L. McKittridge and Rena Morgan have never seen anything like it. Four women dead in forty days, each killed ten days apart. With nothing connecting the victims and very little evidence, the clock is already counting down to when the next body drops. A.L. and Rena will have to act fast if they’re going to find the killer’s next victim before he does.

But identifying the killer’s next likely target is only half the battle. With pressure pushing in from all sides, a promising breakthrough leads the detectives to Tess Lyons, a woman whose past trauma has left her too damaged to appreciate the danger she’s in. Unwilling to let another woman die, A.L. and Rena will put everything on the line to keep Tess safe and end the killer’s deadly spree once and for all—before time runs out again.

Review: Always Greener (The General Buzz Book 1)

Author: J.R.H. Lawless

Started reading: December 24th 2020

Finished the book: DNF

Pages: 263

Genres: Science Fiction

Published: February 18th 2020

Source: Netgalley

Goodreads score: 3.44

My score:

Synopsis

Life's biggest victim, please step up and claim your prize!

A smash-hit reality show is offering a lifetime of luxury to the one person living the world’s worst life, and now everyone is out to prove just how bad they’ve got it. Want in? All you’ve got to do is accept ocular implants that let the whole world see life through your eyes, twenty-four hour a day, seven days a week.Fortunately, there’s still one person who hasn’t lost faith in all humanity. The show’s ever-smiling host is determined to wring some tiny bit of meaning out of this twisted competition and your unhappy existence.
There has to be a purpose behind all this misery, doesn’t there?

Review: In the Realm of Ash and Sorrow

Author: Kenneth W. Harmon

Started reading: October 18th 2020

Finished the book: DNF

Pages: 352

Genres: Historical, War, Japan

Published: January 2nd 2020

Source: Netgalley

Goodreads score: 4.49

My score:

Synopsis

When bombardier Micah Lund dies on a mission over Hiroshima, his spirit remains trapped in the land of his enemies. Dazed, he follows Kiyomi Oshiro, a war widow struggling to care for her young daughter, Ai. Food is scarce, work at the factory is brutal, and her in-laws treat her like a servant.

Watching Kiyomi and Ai together, Micah reconsiders his intolerance for the people he’d called the enemy. As his concern for the mother and daughter grows, so does his guilt for his part in their suffering. Micah finds a new reality when Kiyomi and Ai dream—one which allows him to interact with them. While his feelings for Kiyomi deepen, imminent destruction looms. Hiroshima is about to be bombed, and Micah must warn Kiyomi and her daughter. In a place where dreams are real, Micah races against time to save the ones he loves the most.

Review: Rain Will Come

Author: Thomas Holgate

Started reading: July 12th 2020

Finished the book: July 15th 2020

Pages: 301

Genres: Mystery, Thriller

Published: April 1st 2020

Source: Netgalley

Goodreads score: 3.93

My score:

Synopsis

Paul Czarcik, the longest-tenured detective in the Illinois Bureau of Judicial Enforcement, puts the rest of the team to shame. Ruthless and riddled with vices, Czarcik always gets his man. And fast. Until now…

A double slaying isn’t the open-and-shut case of urban crime he’s used to. Connecting it to a high-profile Texas judge, Czarcik realizes something bigger is going on. It’s the work of a serial killer for whom Chicago is just the beginning. Now he’s inviting Czarcik to play catch-me-if-you-can on a cross-country murder spree.

Going rogue, Czarcik accepts the challenge. But as the bodies pile up, he must come to grips with the fact that nothing—not the killer, the victims, or the rules—is what it seems in this bloody game of cat and mouse..

Review: On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness (The Wingfeather Saga #1)

Author: Andrew Peterson
Started reading: April 27th 2020
Finished the book: May 10th 2020
Pages: 304
Genres: Middle Grade, Fantasy, Adventure
Published: March 18th 2008
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads score: 4.30
My score:

Synopsis

Janner Igiby, his brother, Tink, and their disabled sister, Leeli, are gifted children as all children are, loved well by a noble mother and ex-pirate grandfather. But they will need all their gifts and all that they love to survive the evil pursuit of the venomous Fangs of Dang, who have crossed the dark sea to rule the land with malice. The Igibys hold the secret to the lost legend and jewels of good King Wingfeather of the Shining Isle of Anniera.

Full of characters rich in heart, smarts, and courage, On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness is a tale children of all ages will cherish, families can read aloud, and readers' groups are sure to enjoy discussing for its many layers of meaning. Extra features include new interior illustrations from Joe Sutphin, funny footnotes, a map of the fantastical world, inventive appendices, and fanciful line art in the tradition of the original Frank L. Baum Wizard of Oz storybooks.

Review: Frozen Secrets (Europa Academy, #1)

Author: Myles Christensen
Started reading: January 24th 2020
Finished the book: February 19th 2020
Pages: 298
Genres: Science Fiction, Middle Grade
Published: January 25th 2020
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads score: 4.23
My score:

Synopsis

Thirteen-year-old Max Parker is a grounded Earthling with the soul of a space explorer. So when he learns his family is relocating to Jupiter’s moon, Europa, he readily agrees to stay out of trouble. But his promise is soon forgotten, and his snooping lands him on a shuttle doomed for a fiery disintegration.

Convinced someone sabotaged the craft to cover up the theft he witnessed, Max digs into the incident. What else could they be hiding? Dodging a series of deadly accidents, he follows the clues to an abandoned outpost and discovers a secret that could blow the lid off a moon-wide conspiracy. Can he solve the mystery before his interplanetary escapade gets him killed?

Review: The Missing Barbegazi

Author: H.S. Norup
Started reading: November 28th 2019
Finished the book: December 7th 2019
Pages: 256
Genres: Middle Grade, Fantasy
Published: October 4th 2018
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads score: 4.00
My score:

Synopsis

Tessa discovers the healing power of wishes when she sets out to find a missing Barbegazi, said to live in the mountains near her village. Meeting one is only the beginning of an adventure that unites generations and teaches Tessa that trust is at the heart of the best relationships.

A delightful story about families, love and learning that some secrets are best kept secret - forever.

Review: Friend or Fiction

Author: Abby Cooper
Started reading: October 21st 2019
Finished the book: October 27th 2019
Pages: 272
Genres: Middle Grace, Magical Realism
Published: October 8th 2019
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads score: 4.21
My score:

Synopsis

Jade's life hasn't exactly been normal lately, especially since her dad's cancer diagnosis. Jade wishes her family could leave their no-name town in Colorado already--everybody else does sooner rather than later, including every best friend Jade's ever had. So she makes one up. In the pages of her notebook, she writes all about Zoe--the most amazing best friend anyone could dream of.

But when pretend Zoe appears in real life thanks to a magical experiment gone right, Jade isn't so sure if she likes sharing her imaginary friend with the real world. To keep her best friend (and even make some new ones), Jade learns how to cope with jealousy, that friends should let friends be true to themselves, and that maybe the perfect best friend doesn't exist after all..

Review: The Humiliations of Pipi McGee

Author: Beth Vrabel
Started reading: September 14th 2019
Finished the book: September 24th 2019
Pages: 384
Genres: Middle Grade, Contemporary
Published: September 16th 2019
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads score: 4.17
My score:

Synopsis

From her kindergarten self-portrait as a bacon with boobs, to fourth grade when she peed her pants in the library thanks to a stuck zipper to seventh grade where...well, she doesn't talk about seventh grade. Ever.
After hearing the guidance counselor lecturing them on how high school will be a clean slate for everyone, Pipi--fearing that her eight humiliations will follow her into the halls of Northbrook High School--decides to use her last year in middle school to right the wrongs of her early education and save other innocents from the same picked-on, laughed-at fate. Pipi McGee is seeking redemption, but she'll take revenge, too.

Review (ARC): The Art of Taxidermy

Author: Sharon Kernot
Started reading: August 11th 2019
Finished the book: August 12th 2019
Pages: 240
Genres: Poetry, Fiction
To be Published: August 13th 2019
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads score: 3.91
My score:

Synopsis

Lottie collects dead creatures and lovingly cares for them, hoping to preserve them, to save them from disintegration. Her father understands—Lottie has a scientific mind, he thinks. Her aunt wants it to stop, and she goes to cruel lengths to make sure it does.


And her mother? Lottie’s mother died long ago. And Lottie is searching for a way to be close to her.


The Art of Taxidermy is a heartbreaking verse novel exploring love and death, grief and beauty, and the ways we try to make sense of it all.

Review: Ollie Oxley and the Ghost: The Search for Lost Gold

Author: Lisa Schmid
Started reading: July 27th 2019
Finished the book: July 28th 2019
Pages: 184
Genres: Children's book, Fantasy, Mystery
Published: June 18th 2019
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads score: 4.46
My score:

Synopsis

Twelve-year-old Ollie Oxley is moving — again. His mom is starting another new job, this time at the Bingham Theater in Granite City, California. Moving all the time means Ollie has struggled in the making friends department, but he quickly connects with a boy named Teddy. To Ollie's surprise, though, his first friend in town is a little more... unique than those he's made in the past. Teddy is a ghost.

Befriending someone who lived during the famous California Gold Rush sure does make things interesting for Ollie. But when the school bully, Aubrey, targets Ollie, and it looks like the Bingham Theater might close, the stakes couldn't be higher. Can Teddy and Ollie work together to take down Aubrey, save his mom's job, and solve a mystery years in the making?