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.

As a reader of a few of Laura Dave’s previous books, I wasn’t sure about how she would fare in the mystery genre, as it felt like a big departure from Eight Hundred Grapes and Hello, Sunshine . I was pleasantly surprised by The Last Thing He Told Me . Newly married Hannah Hall is surprised one afternoon by a knock on her door. A preteen girl is delivering a note from her husband, Owen. It contains only two words, but those words are powerful, and set the tone for the rest of the story.  Owen’s company is being investigated by the SEC and he has disappeared. Hannah is left in charge of her sixteen-year-old stepdaughter, Bailey, who has made it clear she is not Hannah’s biggest fan. In an attempt to understand her husband’s cryptic message, Hannah and Bailey must work together to solve the riddle of what, exactly, is going on and when it all began.  I enjoyed the pace of the story, as it moved back and forth in time between the past and present. The puzzle of who can be trusted...

The Speed of Light  centers on Simone, a young woman dealing with a recent diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. She is navigating what the disease will mean for her life moving forward, and worrying about her job at a local university that is currently going through budget cuts. Simone meets a nice guy one night on her way to visit her parents when her car breaks down and she accepts a ride from him. Connor seems great, but is romance in the cards with everything else going on in her life at the moment?                                                                             Flash forward to just over a year later, on a work day that starts like any other, and sudden gunshots turn the ordinary into a fight for survival. Facing down degenerative nerve damage as her disease progresses is somet...