207 Book Talk

Beth Hardcastle has a seemingly perfect life in a small village in England, where she lives with her husband and young daughter. Having left London behind for the suburbs, she run a pottery shop and cafe and (thinks) she has a wonderful marriage, until her husband Tom is taken in for questioning about the disappearance of a former girlfriend. As her life starts to unravel, Beth questions just how well she really knows her husband and her neighbors.  I did enjoy the story being told from multiple points of view, but I found this book less and less believable and interesting the further on I read. There were a few interesting twists, but they felt predictable and I found the main character very unlikable the more I got to know her.  Final rating: ★★☆ ☆ ☆ This ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

 First, in my defense, I had already started this book BEFORE I created the challenge for myself yesterday to only read books from certain TBR piles in my house and the CloudLibrary holds on my iPad. I didn't cheat! Now on to my review... A Good Girl's Guide to Murder   by Holly Jackson was a book that I heard about because I almost concurrently saw it on a friend's Goodreads profile and on the nominee's list for 2020 Goodreads Choice Award for Young Adult Fiction. The friend reading it happens to be a co-worker, and she lent me the book. It sat here on a stack of TBR's for a week or two, and then yesterday as I was finalizing my Popsugar and ATY52 challenge lists, I realized I could use it to fulfill a prompt for both, and here we are. This is the story of a high school student, Pippa Fitz-Amobi, who decides to do her senior capstone project on the infamous murder-suicide of two students that had occurred in her hometown 5 years before. She never really believed S...

The Whisper Man  by Alex North came up as a recommendation for me on Goodreads. I checked out the Amazon preview of the book and I was intrigued enough to buy it. Before I got a chance to read it, I noticed it was a bargain book on Books-a-Million's website. That should have been my first clue that the 4.05 average the book has on Goodreads might be too good to be true. I have found in the past that recent titles in the bargain section of Books-a-Million are there for a reason. I just could not get in to this story. I am a quick reader, especially when I am interested in a story. Granted, there was a lot going on in the world this week that pulled my attention from reading, but when I enjoy a story I always find a way to make time to get plenty of reading done. Tom Kennedy and his young son Jake pack up and move to the town of Featherbank after the death of wife and mom Rebecca. Before they move, and immediately after they arrive, creepy things are happening. The story seemed like...

  I almost stopped this book after the first 30 pages, not due to bad writing, but because of my own reluctance to read books by British authors. I read the beginning of the book and then took about a day off from it to celebrate Christmas with my family. I was in no rush to get back to it, but did open it back up Christmas night before bed and then read it randomly throughout yesterday until I finally finished. Did I love this book? No. Did I end up liking it? Not exactly. Did I hate it? No. The story opens with 40 something mom Zoe Walker looking through a newspaper while traveling on the Tube. Imagine her surprise to see her own photo on the page of advertisements for dating and escort services. While her boyfriend and best friend are hesitant to believe it is a photo of her, she is eventually convinced it is her in the photograph for a website called FindTheOne.com, a site she has never heard of, let alone joined. Police Constable Kelly Swift is introduced in the next chapter, ...