207 Book Talk

  Sarah Ellsworth is a mother of two teenage sons, one away at college and the other, Finn, still in high school. One night she and her husband Martin receive a frantic, disjointed call from Finn. They aren't sure what is wrong, but they know their son needs help. When they find him sick and disoriented in the woods, they also find the body of his girlfriend, who has injuries that make it look like she has been attacked. Sarah wants to do the right thing and call the police, but her husband, a member of one of the most prominent families in tow, has other ideas. He convinces Sarah to leave the body where it is and get their son home. He and his high-powered family have experience covering up incidents that might put them in a bad light, and the death of a teenage girl, perhaps at the hands of their son and grandson, is no different. Sarah goes along with the ruse, but is unhappy about it and becomes increasingly concerned about what exactly the Ellsworth's are covering up this ...

I found  Last Day  by Luanne Rice on Kindle Unlimited. I had never heard of the author, but the premise of the book sounded interesting so I borrowed it. I would encourage anyone that decides to read this murder mystery to also borrow it from somewhere, instead of buying it. It is not a keeper, in my opinion. Last Day  follows Kate and Conor as they try to solve the murder of Kate's younger sister, Beth. Conor is a police detective who also happens to have been the first officer on the scene many years before when teenagers Kate and Beth were found tied up in the basement of their family art gallery with their dead mother, Helen.  Beth is found bludgeoned and strangled in her bed by Kate and two local officers she called for help when her sister didn't pick up numerous phone calls over the course of several days. Beth's daughter Sam was away at a summer camp in Maine, and her super sleazy husband Peter was conveniently on a guys only sailing trip at the time of Beth'...

I came across this short story collection while looking at books by Blake Crouch. These 6 short stories were written by some of the best SciFi authors, and perhaps authors in general, currently writing. Each is a standalone story, but they share a common future theme. I am reviewing the first three books in the collection in this review, and will review 4 through 6 separately.  Book 1: Ark  by Veronica Roth The first story in the collection is (so far) the one that felt like a beginning chapter to a much longer tale. It opens two weeks before the Earth is impacted by a huge asteroid. The asteroid impact is something the world has been aware of for a very long time before its impact, and people have been preparing in various ways. Most of the population has already left to head to another planet, but some scientists have stayed behind until the last possible moment to continue collecting and cataloging specimens before Earth is destroyed. Samantha is cataloging plant specimens ...

Wayward   is the second book in Blake Crouch's Wayward Pines trilogy. After surviving a fête, Ethan Burke is now sheriff of the town of Wayward Pines, Idaho. He had woken up there just two weeks before, on a case for the Secret Service trying to find two missing agents from the Boise office, and now he is "in charge" of this charming, Stepford-esque town.  David Pilcher's experiment to save the world is perhaps not going as well as he had planned. Many residents of Wayward Pines, population 461, struggle to go along with the status quo, pretending that their former lives no longer exist. Talking about the past is forbidden. There are cameras and microphones watching and listening to everything in town, so how can anyone find an escape, physically or mentally? Ethan struggles with the right choice. Is it more important to protect the town from what is outside the fence, or to protect them from the man who put them all there in the first place? Will his son ever have a ...

  I'll admit I got a late start in knowing that Blake Crouch is an amazing author. I had picked up a copy of Dark Matter  at a local bookstore because I liked the cover. I brought it home, put in on a shelf, and it languished in my TBR pile with several hundred other books. Last year I needed something to fit a reading challenge prompt and noticed Dark Matter  would be a fit, so I decided to read it. I was wary, as SciFi is not a genre I have ever been interested in, but holy crap, was it a good story.  Currently, I am waiting for  Recursion  to be returned to my local library so I can read it for a prompt this year (also, just because I want to read it. Have you checked out the Google Preview ? I was hooked on the first page!). Anyway, I was spending my yearly Christmas book gift certificate the other day and saw the name Blake Crouch as I was scanning the shelves, which is how I stumbled upon, and came to own, Pines .  I picked it up yesterday to do ...

  Layla  by Colleen Hoover Hoover is an author I stumbled across last year when one of her books ( Regretting You ) was available on Kindle Unlimited. I have really enjoyed many of her stories (check out Verity , seriously) but I am not too sure about this one. About 40% done at this point with this story of a ghost possessing the woman the main character is in love with.