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.

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'...

  The 20th Victim  is the twentieth entry in James Patterson's Women's Murder Club series. Like any series with this many books to its name, the storylines are never as good 15 or 20 books in as they were at the beginning, but this one felt closer to those earlier entries than other recent titles have. This time around Lindsay and Cindy are caught up in trying to solve a cross country killing spree aimed at taking down drug dealers. Cindy has been contacted by the killer, or one of the killers, directly and in her drive for the scoop she and Lindsay get into a disagreement over sharing details of the crimes sooner rather than later. Yuki is also dealing with a drug related crime and wondering whether its right to charge a teenager wheelman for the crimes committed by his passenger. Claire is dealing with some scary health issues, and is not an active participant in solving crimes as she was in past storylines. As with many of the stories in the Women's Murder Club series, t...

I am not much of a TV watcher, but occasionally I will decide to try out a show on Netflix, which is how I came across Virgin River. I certainly didn't love it, but it was something mindless to do for a few days while I wasn't feeling so great. Because I am much more interested in books than TV, I was interested when I learned it was based on a book series and bought the ebook of the first in the series, Virgin River . Yikes. First, I am glad I had credits and didn't actually pay for this book. Second, the writing was, to me, a perfect example of why some people refuse to read anything tagged as a "romance" novel. The writing was atrocious. The characters had no depth. The conversations were ridiculous. Who talks like this in the modern world that the novel is supposedly set in? I could not believe how gross some of the lines where, like Rick saying it "wasn't statutory until he was 18," with a shrug. The way Jack spoke to Mel when he wanted more tha...

  We all know the saying "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." With that in mind, this review will be brief. All This Time   is coauthored by Mikki Daughtry and Rachael Lippincott, the writes behind Five Feet Apart  (which I did enjoy). The best thing I can say about All This Time  is that, at 238 pages, I only wasted a few hours of my day reading it.  Kyle has had the same girlfriend since middle school. The night of their high school graduation, he has a gift ready that he is sure will fix whatever is going wrong, because something is definitely bothering his girlfriend Kimberly. Unfortunately, before the night is over, they will be in a horrific car crash and Kyle will emerge with a traumatic brain injury and Kimberly will not survive.  SPOILERS AHEAD..... stop here if you don't want to read them. Let me rewrite that last sentence.... Unfortunately, before the night is over, they will be in a horrific car crash and Kyle wil...

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...

 Oof... I finally forced myself to finish reading Layla  by Colleen Hoover today. Before I say what I think (although I am sure that first sentence is a giveaway), I want to mention that I really liked her books Verity and It Ends With Us and I loved  Regretting You. I wasn't sure what to expect from Layla, because  Verity  was so different than her other two novels that I had already read. This one felt like she tried to take what worked in Verity  a step further and it just fell flat.  Layla  is the story of a couple, Leeds and Layla, and the circumstances of their initial meeting, their whirlwind romance, and a terrifying encounter that leaves them both irrevocably changed. Just how changed they are is slowly revealed during the trip they take back to the Kansas bed and breakfast where they first met.  I'll be the first to freely admit that paranormal is not my typical genre, but I have read and loved books that fall under this category se...

 I am still working on Layla  by Colleen Hoover, but I was eyeing one of my bookshelves and something about The Burning Room by Michael Connelly caught my eye.  It's been awhile since I had read one of the Harry Bosch novels. I got this one years ago on the sale tables at Books-a-Million, and then it went on to the shelf to languish.  I really enjoyed the story, and had forgotten that I liked the Bosch character quite a bit. At this point in his career, Bosch is closing in on his last year with the LAPD and is working in the Open-Unsolved Unit. A case from many years before turns from a shooting to a murder when the man who had been hit by a bullet so long ago eventually dies. Bosch has a new, younger partner, who he is skeptical of at first, but comes to enjoy working with. The book ends up focusing on two different cases, which evolves in to three of four different cases that may have some commonalities, but still flows well. I thought the cases wrapped up rather ...

  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, ...