Welcome to Cooper - Tariq Ashkanani

 

This thriller follows Detective Thomas Levine as he arrives in the small town of Cooper, Nebraska.  After a tragedy and scandal in his previous position in Washington, DC, Thomas knows his transfer to Cooper is a bit of a punishment.  Despite the town being rundown and seemingly all but forgotten, there's a darkness just under the surface.  Thomas hopes this new town can be a place of redemption for him but when the body of a murdered woman with her eyes gouged out is found, it starts a series of events that shatter Thomas's hope of escaping his past. When Thomas's partner shoots their prime suspect with Thomas's gun, it seems like things can't get much worse. However, that is just the beginning and when the real killer reveals themselves, Thomas finds out that Cooper might just be the perfect place for a murder.

TW/CW: drug use, alcohol abuse, sexual assault (child and adult), suicide

I just want to say right at the top that I absolutely loved this book. This might be the perfect example of when I say I want gritty and depressing detective mystery thrillers. I thought every aspect was very well crafted and the way the whole story came together in the end was perfection.  This is Ashkanani's first book and I cannot wait to read more from him.

The setting and atmosphere was immaculate.  Cooper, Nebraska is the type of town that you drive past on the interstate and wonder if anyone actually lives there.  Everyone who lives there seems to be miserable but yet there's also a drive to protect the town.  Thomas is asked by just about everyone he meets what brought him to Cooper and it seems like everyone has a similar sort of story to his.  No one chooses to be here, but the town has a way of attracting and keeping misfits and loners with no other place to go.  I also loved the choice to have the story set in late November/early December when the cold and snow are starting to set in for the season.  At one point Thomas goes for a walk with another character and he's told that the trees look beautiful in the fall, but now that all the leaves have fallen they just look like sticks.  The landscape and the people are so worn down and depressing that it really feels like Thomas doesn't have any chance of working through his guilt and grief in this town. 

The characters were fantastic. The story is told in first person so we get a slightly tinted view of the different characters.  Almost everyone was an unlikable character in the best way and they really spanned the spectrum of reasons for being unlikable. They're all written in such a realistic way that you can really see how they ended up where they are in this story.  There were so many moments of interpersonal conflict that were used to build characterization in a really clear way. It was also interesting to have Thomas being the new guy in town and basically starting this book on his first day.  That way, we get introductions to the other characters and places that we'll see throughout the rest of the story.  As much as I do really like police procedurals and detective thrillers, I can admit that their characters can sometimes be sort of bland or one-dimensional. In this case, I really found the characters to be really interesting and even with the characters we don't see on page often, the descriptions and small conversations were really used to their fullest to develop the characters even more. Also, since we are in 1st person POV for this story, when Thomas learns something new about another character, it is really interesting to see how that new information directly impacts his view and opinion on that other character. 

The dual timeline and narration style choices were really interesting and worked well to keep the pacing of the story up.  Most of the book is following Thomas and his investigation of the murdered woman in chronological order.  However, we are alternating with the current day timeline which is written in a different style of telling a story.  These current day chapters are pretty short but do give us a bit more information since that perspective has the hindsight of already living through the investigation timeline that we are reading through. The narrative tone reminded me a lot of those black and white detective noir movies where the narrator is mostly telling the story from start to finish but they'll come in with the occasional comment like "but I didn't know that at the time".  I can see how some readers might find those types of interjections disruptive but I think it really helped keep me in the mindset so that when the present day chapters come in they aren't so disruptive. I also liked how there was a plot line in the present day chapters that I was also interested in and gave some more character insight.  These shorter present day chapters did act as little rest points for the reader.  The book is on the shorter side - 270 pages - and the main investigation plot line is pretty packed with information and plot/character developments so these other chapters are a needed breather but still kept me engaged in the current investigation thread since we know the two timelines are related.

The twist ending was a gutpunch that I hated in the best possible way. It is the type of ending where you think you know exactly where it is going and then it takes a sharp left turn and then you're left watching the resulting impact of that turn and shouting "no!" in your head but you can't stop turning pages. I have so many feelings about the ending and while it did hurt emotionally I think it was the perfect ending for this story.  It was the type of reading experience where I'm rooting so hard for these characters to end up at least okay but, of course, every other aspect of the book is telling me that a happy ending for these morally questionable characters in this dreary town is basically impossible.  I think the dual timeline works really well in this case because it does temper our expectations a bit but we still need to travel through the whole journey before we can catch up to the current day timeline.  I also loved how the plot twist played with reader expectations and assumptions which is one of my favorite types of twists in mystery/thrillers. I did like how the different plot lines all came together in the end in a very satisfying way so the reader gets as much closure as possible. 

Overall, I absolutely loved this book.  The setting and atmosphere was perfectly dreary and matched how downtrodden many of our characters are.  I loved the characters and how their relationships developed over the course of the story.  The ending was heartbreaking but the twist at the end was completely appropriate for how the story played out.

Hide - Nell Pattison

 

This isolated thriller follows a group of 7 friends as they embark on a hike on Boxing Day.  But when they're separated and watching a flock of birds, a shotgun blast echos through the nature reserve.  One of the friends is dead and one of the friends killed them. 

The cast of 7 friends are:

Emily, the sister who never lets her hearing loss hold her back.
Lauren, the sister who always feels a step behind.
Morna, who doesn’t get on with Lauren.
Ben, whose feelings for Emily border on obsession.
Dan, the quiet newcomer to the group.
Kai, who isn’t just on the hike to enjoy the wildlife.
And Alec, the one who knows all their secrets.

Overall, this book really didn't work for me.  I had such a hard time getting through it and I think it was at least 100 pages too long.  There wasn't anything glaringly bad with it, but the pieces were all just okay and they came together in such a way where the whole was less than the parts.  However, based on the reviews that have already been posted, I am in the minority on this one (currently has a 3.68 on Goodreads with 148 reviews).  

I really enjoyed the friend group dynamic and found it a bit of a refreshing take on the typical dynamic for isolated thrillers.  This group is a birdwatching group and most of them don't hang out together outside of the group outings.  I find that with most isolated thrillers, the group involved is often more closely tied than the group in this book was.  Usually, groups that are closely tied mean that they have more history and, thus, more room for interpersonal conflict. In this case, the fact that these people are basically strangers to each other actually plays into the thriller element because they don't know enough about the others to be confident of who is the murderer and who isn't. That being said, I was very surprised at how intertwined the group actually is once we get into the meat of the story and secrets start being revealed.  I did like how Emily was the most outsider of the group since she was the newest member and really only there to try and bond with Lauren.  Emily was by far my favorite character and I loved how she gave us a bit of the 'outsider perspective' on the other members of the group. 

I always prefer my isolated thrillers to be multi-POV so I was glad that we got to read from all 7 POV in this story.  However, I did find a lot of the characters to be very annoying and tedious to read from (Emily being the one exception).  I think my main issue stemmed from the author trying to build tension but it ended up being way overdone for me.  At the very beginning of the book, we know Alec said something during a previous group outing that really upset everyone but each POV we got would only allude to 'that thing Alec said that upset everyone' and it wasn't until 10% in that we actually find out what he said.  I thought that would be it and we would move on, however, that same tactic was then used through the majority of the book where each of the characters has some sort of big, life-altering secret that they keep bringing up in their POV but they also don't actually explain what those secrets are.  And most of the time, it is the POV character wondering to themself "maybe ABC Character found out about my secret", or sometimes thinking to themselves "if my secret gets out, I'm going to jail". But none of them actually say what their secret is.  And I understand this is done to build tension in the story and as a sort of red herring because if all of them have secrets they don't want revealed then any one of them could be the killer.  However, it was done so often and it felt so heavy handed that I just wanted to crawl into the book and punch the characters. I think the line between intriguing and annoying is going to be different for different readers and, for me, this significantly crossed the line into annoying territory.

I thought the setting was unique and it was an interesting twist on the typical isolation thriller location.  I'm a bit torn on how 'isolated' I like my isolation thrillers to be because, in theory, the characters weren't truly isolated but the actions and decisions by the characters is what ends up cutting them off for further assistance.  Because of this, there were a few times where the character choices fell into the horror movie trope of "just get out of the house, why are you going to investigate the noise???" where I understand why we needed to have something waylay these characters a bit, but I found some of those situations to be a little too convenient.  I was reading an ebook ARC so this might change for the final version, but I would have loved a map in the front of this book.  I think it would have helped so much to understand the scale of this nature preserve and just how twisty the trails were.  There were a number of times where the group had to choose between two paths - one more established but longer and a more rough short cut and I think being able to see those paths on a map would have helped me better understand the stakes in those decisions.  Also, we were given a good number of distances but I didn't have a good sense of how time was passing during the chapters.  Most of the time, it seemed like the chapters were in direct chronological order and we were just switching POVs but there were a few times where we would change POV and it seemed like that new chapter was taking place at the same time as the chapter we had just read.  I think adding something like timestamps at the beginning of each chapter would have helped me really get a feel for the pacing of the events taking place better. 

The pacing was really hit and miss for me.  I think of isolation thrillers as being very high tension but low action and this book was sort of the opposite.  There was a lot of running and hiding and choosing which path to take and more hiding but I never really felt like the characters were in danger.  When the one person in the group is killed, the other characters seem really wishy-washy on if someone else in the group killed that character or if there was someone else in the wildlife preserve.  At different times, different characters felt like they would swing wildly from one option to the other but I never felt like the narrative, as a whole, pointed the reader in any one directly.  In my experience, isolated thrillers are either type 1: 'characters think threat is outside, but is actually inside' or type 2: 'characters think threat is inside, but is actually outside'. I think in this case, the book didn't settle into one of these two main, generally accepted, branches.  And, of course, Pattison didn't need to choose one of those two branches but I feel like the way she chose to plot her story was, again, the less impactful option. 

The ending twist, right at the last page of the book, lowered my rating by a full star.  It wasn't objectively bad, but I felt it lessened the impact of the rest of the book and made the story feel unfinished.  It was one of those reveals that, sure, did turn everything we thought we knew completely around. However, in doing so, it re-opened parts of the plot that the book had told the reader were done. The ending feels like sequel bait a bit and I'm generally not a fan of that sort of ending.  Also, when I look back at the story, I don't see any breadcrumbs or hints toward this ending twist.  Which was especially annoying considering we rotated through everyone's POV so it, again, felt a little cheep because the author specifically left those clues out of the book.  The twist is big enough that it would be something the character in question would be thinking about probably a lot in the given situation.  However, we never see any of those thoughts when we are in their POV.  If anything, the characterization is almost the opposite of what it would be given everything that character knows is going on. 

Overall, this story just didn't come together for me.  I liked some of the individual aspects, but the story as a whole was not entertaining or effective.  I was often annoyed while reading this and really wished the story had taken a different angle with some of the plot lines.

Thanks to NetGalley and Avon Books for the ARC

Expected publication date is December 9, 2021

The Spaniel's Secret - Megan Mayfair

 

This is the second book in the Lemon Tree Bay Mysteries series and we're back in Lemon Tree Bay, Australia not long after the events of book 1. Clara is settling into a quiet life back in her hometown when the local beach bar Esmeralda's goes up in flames and Clara runs inside to save the owner. While the townspeople are thrilled with Clara's act of bravery, police officer Adam is concerned with finding out the source of the fire as well as if it is connected to the dead body that just washed ashore.  When her boyfriend tells her he's leaving town for a work opportunity, Clara adopts Sunflower - a Cocker Spaniel found running in the streets with her leash dragging behind.  Sunflower leads Clara all around Lemon Tree Bay and Clara finds herself, once again, at the center of a mystery. 

This is a cozy romantic mystery series so each book does contain a stand alone mystery that is solved by the end.  However, I don't feel like these are as readable as standalone as other mystery series I've read.  Mayfair does a good job of mentioning details from the first book, but we don't really get the usual quick and dirty recap of the previous book.  Because of this, we're pretty much dropped right into the book with little context around who these individual characters are or their relationship to each other.  For example, the history between Clara and her ex boyfriend is explained pretty in-depth in the first book.  However, when the ex shows up in this book, we see Clara's current boyfriend being a little uneasy and Clara assures him that she only wants to be with him.  So if the reader didn't read the first, they can still put together the pieces that there's some history between Clara and her ex, but we aren't given the exact details again.  This might just come down to personal preference, but I really enjoy having those quick run-downs of previous plots and characters that will come into play in the current book and I think I would have settled into this book easier if we had those instead of me taking time to try and remember what happened in the first book.

This book leaned pretty hard into the romantic plot - so much so that I'd call the romance/relationship plot the main plot line.  The dead guy and the fire really took a back seat to Clara and her relationships and I didn't love that choice.  The first book in the series has a romantic sub-plot for sure but the murder in that book is obviously the main focus.  In this second book, that is flipped and I wish the fire and the dead body were the focus of this book as well.  I did like the romance elements but I just felt like for a book in a mystery series there sure wasn't much mystery being developed.  In fact, a lot of the investigation aspects were done off page and then the reader is just told a summary of events after the fact. I thought the two crimes were interesting and I wish we got as much investigating in this second book as we did the first.  Now, I love reading romances but this was an odd sort of situation where Clara and her boyfriend are pretty solid but she has some concerns when he leaves for his business opportunity and that brings up memories of her and Adam together.  Adam has his own relationship with another woman whom he says he loves, but he's constantly thinking about Clara and how bad he messed up being with her back in the day.  So it isn't exactly a love triangle, but it sort of is?  There's a lot of internal monologue-ing about relationships and what each character is figuring out they want which leads to a bit of angst but no clear resolution by the end of the book. 

I did really like the multi-POV elements. We're mostly in Clara's POV but we do hop into Adam's and Lucas's POVs also.  I think this was a really smart idea, especially with the emphasis on the relationships in this book.  There are a few times where a character's action from Clara's POV could be interpreted a number of different ways and then we would pop into that other character's POV and see the meaning behind the action.  This helped lower the angst and tension in the romantic plot which kept this book firmly in the 'cozy romantic mystery' sub-genre for me. I also liked how the different characters ran in different circles in town so we could see different sides of Lemon Tree Bay just by flipping to a different character.  I also found the multi-POV allowed us to see a good amount of internal character growth. These characters were doing a lot of internal reflecting and thinking and I loved that we actually got to see it from their perspectives instead of waiting for the change to be super obvious to outsiders.

Despite my previous point about the mystery being secondary to the romance, I did really like the mystery and investigation elements that we did get.  Mayfair does a great job in both books at giving the reader all these different clues that seem to not go together until the very end when suddenly everything make sense.  The explanation behind the crimes wasn't anything super out of this world unique, but the way the investigation was crafted was really great. I do wish Clara was more hands-on in this investigation like she was in the first book.  She seemed very interested in talking out different theories with Adam and sharing the town gossip with him, but she didn't physically do much investigating.  There was one particular time where she found a clue and then just handed it over to Adam (which, technically, is what she should do, but it isn't what I want my lead character in a cozy mystery to do). The investigation in the first book really dug into the town's secrets and while this one did scratch that itch a bit, I really wish we had focused more on that and less on the sort-of-love-triangle that was going on.

Overall, this was a bit of a step down for me from the first one, but I still liked it.  I found this to be much more heavy on the romance and light on the investigation which isn't my personal preference.  However, I still loved the characters and the town of Lemon Tree Bay so I look forward to continuing in the series.

Thanks to BookSirens for the ARC. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Expected publication date is November 26, 2021.

A History of Wild Places - Shea Ernshaw

 

This story revolves around a community called Pastoral founded in the 1970s by people looking for a simpler life.  As the community grew and times changed, they became increasingly reclusive and as a result almost unknown in the present day.  Travis Wren has a gift for tracking missing people and he's hired by the parents of Maggie St. James - a children's book author who disappeared 5 years prior.  Using his gift, Travis is led to the gates of Pastoral.  Years later, Theo (a member of Pastoral) finds Travis's truck in the forest and starts to investigate who Travis is and what he might have been doing in Pastoral since Theo has no recollection of anyone new coming into the community for many years. Theo, his wife Calla, and her sister Bee each hold their own secrets and only when those secrets start to come out can they piece together the truth of Pastoral and the darkness hiding inside the pristine community.

My favorite part of this book, hands down, was the setting of Pastoral.  Each of the characters has a really complicated relationship with Pastoral and we see that range in our three POV characters.  I think the background and lore of Pastoral was really well integrated in the story so we didn't need a big info-dump history lesson.  I really liked how our POV characters could recognize the pros and cons of living there so it didn't feel like a complete brainwash-y cult situation, but there were certainly cult-like aspects to the community.  There were a number of aspects that reminded me a lot of the movie The Village - isolated community, mysterious danger in the woods that keep the community members inside, even a blind main character. The characters are constantly weighing the dangers of staying in the community (lack of medicine, for example) with the dangers of leaving (mysterious illness that lives in the forest). I also liked the choice to not make it clear right away when, exactly, this Pastoral timeline was in comparison to Travis's timeline. Since the community is so isolated, it very much felt like we are stuck in time and thus the story could have been either years before or after Travis found them (the synopsis does give away this answer, but I didn't pick up on that until after I was done reading the book). I think this is an excellent example of the setting being its own character, of sorts.  Especially with it being, at times, in direct opposition to what the characters want and standing in their way of reaching their goals.

The multi-POV was fantastic.  When we get into the meat of the story in Pastoral, we are pretty frequently switching between Theo, Calla, and Bee's POVs.  I really liked how short most of the chapters were (maybe 5-10 pages) which really helped keep me engaged in the story.  Each of them had their own plot lines that we explore as well as giving us different view points of different aspects of Pastoral. I also thought the interpersonal tensions between the characters were really well developed and the switching POVs was done to really heighten and explore those aspects.  We see one character knowing the other isn't telling the whole truth, then we switch POV and see that other character's reasoning for that choice.  I do wish we got a more interactions between our main 3 characters and the other members of the community.  We get a few, and we see some of the weekly community meetings, but our main three characters felt very isolated and I wanted to see them with their friends or doing other activities with the other people there. 

The beginning was a bit jarring but I got over it fairly quickly and it, overall, didn't lessen my enjoyment of the book.  We start of following Travis as he searches for Maggie.  We get a pretty in depth explanation of Travis's backstory and his gift for finding people.  I was extremely intrigued and immediately invested in Travis.  We're following Travis for the first 10% of the book so when we suddenly switch to following Theo, Calla, and Bee, I was a bit confused.  The two plot lines do, eventually, converge, but there was a pretty significant gap before that happened.  It very much felt like I had just started reading a second book in the middle of this first book and I didn't love how harsh that transition was.  I think 10% is long enough for me to get invested in a character and their story so then, having that character basically ripped away, it did take me out of the reading experience for a bit.  Luckily, the plot line inside Pastoral was also very interesting so I was able to get back into the book pretty quickly.  I do think if either Travis's initial part was shorter and treated more as a prequel or if it was handled in a more dual-timeline type of way it wouldn't have been such a harsh difference and I think it would have made the narrative feel a bit more cohesive. 

So when I requested this book from NetGalley, it was just categorized as 'General Fiction' but I think there are some very heavy mystery aspects that are expertly done.  The book starts off really strongly with Travis on the search for Maggie and unraveling the mystery of where she went and if she's still alive.  However, once we make the switch into Pastoral, those elements are dropped.  We do get back to more mystery elements, but it takes us a while to get there.  For quite a bit of the book (about from the 10% - 50% mark), we are just following the sort of day to day interactions of Theo, Calla, and Bee. But as the interpersonal tensions rise inside Pastoral, we start to see the cracks and want to explore them to see what the truth is behind the curtain.  I think the setting of Pastoral and its cult-ish behavior immediately leads the reader to want to pull back the layers.  Most readers with a basic knowledge of cults know communities like this don't just form overnight and they are really unsettling to read about when we've just been plopped into the middle of the situation.  So I think it would be fair to say that most readers, by the time the characters start to feel unsettled, are 100% ready to start sneaking around and finding out what secrets we can find and that is where the mystery elements start coming back into play.  And once we're full on into investigation mode, this story gets even better.  I loved how intricate and complex the mystery became and I was completely blindsided by the reveals. I was guessing all sorts of crazy theories trying to tie all the threads together and when all was revealed, it was *chef's kiss* perfection.

Overall, this was a fantastic read and will probably go down as one of my favorite reads for 2021.  I absolutely loved the setting of Pastoral and exploring the history of the place.  I thought the multi-POV elements were used expertly and I loved the mystery elements that emerged in the last 1/2 of the book.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for the ARC

Expected publication date is December 7, 2021

The Alpha - E.J. Findorff

 

This is the second book in the Angel Blondeaux series and follows the FBI agent as she is in the middle of investigating the serial killed dubbed The Blindfold Killer.  The Killer, who calls himself Roman, calls Angel when he disposes of a new body - or sometimes just to chat.  However, as Roman increases the frequency of his kills as well as the severity of his taunts to the police, Angel needs to decide what risks she can take to catch the killer before he catches her.

TW/CW: domestic abuse, sexual assault

While this is the second book in the series, as with most police procedural mysteries, it can be read as a standalone.  I really loved the first book in the series because it was an extremely compelling read that did a great job introducing us to Angel as a character.  There are a few references to the events of the first book that would be very confusing to readers if they hadn't read book 1, but those references did not impact the way the mystery contained in this book played out.  This book was a solid read, but it did feel pretty much like a standard police procedural/serial killer mystery where as book 1 was more unique and compelling for me.  I was pleased that the end of this book hinted at a return, of sorts, to the world/mystery of book 1 so I'm looking forward to continuing on in the series. 

I really liked how we're dropped into the middle of this investigation, right when they find the 5th body.  I know a lot of readers find the pacing of police procedurals to be slow, and I think Findorff starting the story when he did was a great choice.  It also allowed us to get a pretty quick info-dump of the crimes because Angel and the other investigators were comparing this fifth victim to the others basically by listing off characteristics (no eyes, throat cut, wearing a hospital gown, etc). The pacing from there was pretty standard for a mystery book where the police were gathering clues, making some breakthroughs, etc.  The stakes and tension are raised a number of times in the first 25% of the book which I also think makes it a very engaging read.  I think the calls that the killer makes to Angel work well to instantly bump up the tension and remind the reader what the main plot of the book is.  So often, these calls come in when Angel is having more personal conversations or other lulls in the main action plot of the book and just when the reader is relaxing - a call from the killer. It might come off as a little gimmicky to some readers, but I really enjoyed that aspect.

I loved how dynamic and fleshed out the different characters are and how they are so different from each other.  We get, of course, multiple characters who are members of law enforcement - FBI and local police - and there's always a chance that those characters could be written very similarly.  However, Findorff does a great job writing each character so well that they really stand out from the crowd.  Each character has a distinctive voice and attitude that is consistent throughout the book.  The story is told primarily through 2 POVs but there is a single chapter from the killer's POV.  I really liked the main 2 perspectives and thought they were a great choice to give us a well-rounded view of the investigation.  The one chapter from the killer's perspective I found to be unnecessary because it was only done once.  I wish we had gotten more of those chapters as a sort of unnamed 3rd narrator.  I could see the point of the one chapter (discussed in the next paragraph), but since it was only one chapter it sort of felt a little gimmicky and like an easy way to give some info to the reader.  I really love when detective mysteries have the killer's POV in them and I think this is the type of mystery that would have benefited from that extra layer of tension.  I think this point is especially true with serial killer mysteries because usually, so much of the serial killer's actions are based on their own personal history so seeing their actions or hearing their thoughts would have been an interesting character study.

Where this story lost some points for me was in the actual mystery but it is just a personal preference.  I strongly prefer my mysteries to have a lot of red herrings or dead ends for the investigators to come across.  This book, in comparison, was pretty much zero to prime suspect.  At the beginning, they had no suspects, then the killer revealed somethings about himself on a call to Angel and suddenly they have a suspect that fits all of those parameters and that is who they're pretty much focused on for the rest of the book.  I would have liked some more variation in the suspect pool or maybe having multiple suspects that could all fit the criteria so the police have to investigate multiple leads.  I think the aforementioned single chapter from the killer's POV tried to do this a bit with giving the reader some nuggets of information that Angel and the police didn't have yet so the reader could start to be suspicious of one of the characters we already met.  However, it was not done consistently enough to be impactful, at least for me and my reading experience.  I did think the actual line of investigation was well done and there were a few twists that I didn't see coming and thought were interesting.  But there weren't any reveals that really surprised or shocked me. Along these same lines, I felt like it was very obvious who the killer was once we saw them on-page so at that point the fun in the mystery turned from the investigation and red herrings to more of a thriller where the reader knows more information than the police so I'm reading mostly to see if Angel will catch the killer or not. I think this more thriller-leaning part of the book came in a bit earlier (about the 60% mark) than it does in most other detective fiction stories so, again, my expectations were a little thrown and didn't quite land for me.  I wanted a more winding investigation thread and then a bunch of action at the end (which is what I felt we got with the first book in the series - Blood Parish).

Overall, I really enjoyed this second installment following Angel and I will most definitely be continuing in the series.  I loved the characters, tension, and pacing but the mystery was a little too straightforward for my liking. 

Thanks to BookSirens and the author for the ARC - I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Expected publication date is January 14, 2022

Romance Wrap-up 10/16/21 to 11/15/21

 Xeni - Rebekah Weatherspoon

 

This is the second book in the Loose Ends series and follows Xeni and Mason after Xeni's aunt passes away.  She leaves almost everything to Xeni - on one condition: Xeni and Mason get married.  But Xeni has a life back in LA teaching kindergarten and Mason has some emotional baggage he left back in Scotland that he'll have to deal with.  I really enjoyed this read that I've heard so much about.  I loved how both our main characters are bisexual and how well they meshed almost instantly.  There is some grief from losing her aunt and some family drama on both sides, but as far as the relationship between Xeni and Mason, this was an almost zero angst read which I always appreciate.  This did feel a little insta-lovey to me and I would have liked more tension and build up as they got to know each other first but with the time constraints in the book (Xeni has to fly back to LA soon) I understand why this wasn't as slow of a burn as I would have liked.  I really enjoyed the side characters we got to see and how supportive just about everyone was to Xeni and Mason.

Teach Me - Olivia Dade 

This is the first book in the There's Something About Marysburg series and follows high school history teachers Rose and Martin.  Martin is new in town and has been assigned to take over some of Rose's classes as well as share her classroom.  Rose is upset but remains professional - determined to show that this new structure doesn't bother her.  The two grow closer as they spend more time together, overlapping during class periods and walking out to their cars together in the evening.  But as the school year draws to a close, can they both move past their own hangups about relationships and finally be happy together?  I really enjoyed this book and loved how adorable Rose and Martin are together.  They're both high school history teacher nerds who have a very dry and witty sense of humor (their banter is fantastic!).  They also are both in their 40s and divorced, which was a type of main character I don't see very often in romance books.  I loved how they both used their previous marriages and subsequent divorces to solidify for themselves what they want in a life partner and what they're not willing to compromise for.  Martin and Rose were really cute together and I liked how their relationship developed over the course of the year.  This really felt like a friends to lovers story and I thought it was so cute. 

2 in the Pink - Tabatha Kiss

This MFM romance follows Phoebe, Max, and Thad starting at their 10 year high school reunion. Phoebe was the voucher kid at the elite LA private school and was pretty ostracized throughout her years there.  She gets talked into going by her friend and now that she's grown her confidence over the years, she thinks she's ready to face everyone.  Until Max, the guy she's had a crush on for years, comes over and talks to her ... then brings her home with him ... and his best friend, Thad.  What starts as a one-night stand threesome soon becomes more as Phoebe starts dating both friends. She knows she should choose one but she can't decide.  And, when they find out about each other, she might not need to choose after all. I really liked this story.  I loved Phoebe, Max, and Thad and how easily they seem to get along.  I really appreciated how Phoebe was the 'ugly duckling' at school but instead of changing everything about herself, she just grew to accept herself.  She's a plus sized woman in LA and outside of a few self-deprecating jokes (that the men quickly squash), her size is never a problem.  I really liked how different Max and Thad are but also how solid their friendship is and how well they get along with each other.  My main complaint is that this felt a little insta-love to me and I would have liked to have seen more dates and getting to know you parts between Phoebe and both men.  I also personally prefer my poly-couples to be MMF instead of MFM but I really adored the relationship dynamic explored in this book.  I really liked the fact that Max and Thad were best friends so they did have their own relationship even if there wasn't a sexual component to it (it is explicitly stated that they are not boyfriends, they just happened to be dating the same girl but not each other).  I also loved how this was pretty low angst and the relationship dynamic isn't the main source of conflict. 

Pretend You're Mine - Lucy Score

This is the first book in the Benevolence series and follows Luke and Harper.  Harper is running to her best friend after finding her boss/boyfriend cheating on her but her car runs out of gas in the small town of Benevolence.  She witnesses and intervenes in a domestic abuse situation in the parking lot of the local bar which wins her a black eye and a place to stay for the night - Luke's house.  The two have an instant connection but he's going off to his 4th deployment to the Middle East in a month and she's trying to find herself again after being uprooted from her life.  She needs a job and a roof over his head, he needs someone to keep his meddling family off his back.  Sounds like the perfect fake-dating situation.  Only it doesn't stay fake for long and when Luke is away for a long 6 months, both of their pasts are waiting for them when he returns.  Lucy Score is an insta-read author for me and I'm working my way through her backlist after discovering her last year.  This is the heaviest book of hers that I've read and I wasn't necessarily expecting it.  That being said, this was still filled with a cute small town full with caring (if a little nosy) people, adorable pets, and steam levels that will knock your socks off.  I absolutely loved Luke and Harper together and how well they balance the other person - this was a great grumpy/sunshine book.

TW/CW: child abuse, domestic abuse, death of a spouse, death of a parent

Loathe Thy Neighbor - Teagan Hunter

This enemies to lovers story is the first in the Roommate Romps series and follows Dean and River.  They've lived in apartments next door to each other for about a year but when a small kitchen fire renders Dean's apartment unlivable, River surprisingly offers him an air mattress in her apartment. In close quarters their bickering fights reach new levels, but so does the undeniable chemistry between them and they agree on a no labels, no strings attached deal to burn off some of that chemistry.  Only problem is, when Dean's apartment is ready and he's moving out, they'll both have to figure out their feelings and admit that they might not hate each other after all. I'll admit, enemies to lovers isn't my preferred trope but I did like how these two weren't really enemies.  It really seemed more like Dean likes pushing River's buttons and River is just wound a little too tight to find that funny but neither of them really have reason to actually dislike the other one.  That being said, I did want a little more development when it came to them actually turning around and liking the other person.  The physical attraction was very obvious and there were times when they would find out or notice something about the other person that would re-frame their view a bit, but I didn't get that big change that you get in a lot of these enemies to lovers stories. This was a bit on the shorter side of what I normally read (260 pages) so this might just be a personal preference but if we got that additional 40 pages of development, then I think I would have liked this better.  I also had a hard time keeping all the side characters straight in my mind and a lot of them blended together for me which I didn't love. That being said, the next book in the series is friends to lovers which is much more up my alley so I think I'll be continuing on.

Dark Night - Paige Shelton

 

This is the third book in the Alaska Wild series and follows Beth as she prepares for winter in Benedict, Alaska.  Beth is hiding out, making sure to stay three steps ahead of her kidnapper who, last police knew, is still in the lower 48.  But this small town isn't as idyllic as it seems after a battered woman stumbles into the town bar one night and her abusive husband is found dead the next day.  Suspicions turn to the stranger in town - the census man - but he disappears soon after.  In a small town with people trapped in by the winter weather, everyone is a suspect.  But Beth, realizing there could be some hidden connections between her new and old lives, has a sneaking suspicion that maybe she isn't so safe in this town after all.

TW/CW: domestic violence

Okay, full disclosure time: I didn't know this was the third book in a series when I requested it from NetGalley.  The description might have been missing that part when I initially looked or maybe I just missed it when I was reading through.  If I did know, I wouldn't have requested as I haven't read either of the previous 2 books.  I didn't realize my mistake until I was about halfway through so I did finish reading the book as is.  I wanted to mention this right at the top so I acknowledge that some of my thoughts on the story might not be entirely accurate. 

First thing I want to mention is that even though this is the third book in the series, I think Shelton does a great job of getting the reader up to speed.  I initially thought that the beginning few chapters had a ton of info-dumping going on but now I realize that was the quick summary version of the previous books.  Each book in the series follows Beth as she is learning to live in this new reality post-kidnapping.  However, there are separate, stand alone mysteries that she helps solve in each book so from that perspective this can be read as a standalone.  I never got lost while I was reading, but I did find some things to be a little more summarized than I would have liked and I assume those parts were stuff that was addressed in more detail in the previous books.  So I'd say this series is similar in a lot of the detective fiction series where the main plot line in each book is a standalone mystery but there's an overall plot thread through all the books as well.  

I really enjoyed the characters and the relationships explored throughout the book.  Again, I think we're missing some of that initial character introductions from the previous books but I didn't have a hard time keeping the characters separate from one another.  I think because I was missing this backstory, the characters weren't initially very developed but we got a lot of interaction between them and Beth so the characterization was brought out by the conversations and plot instead of the typical initial character description/interaction you get in a completely stand alone book.  I did find Beth a bit under developed for my personal taste and maybe if I had read the previous books I would have more of her backstory/character development in mind.  However, in my reading experience, I found her to be one of the more mysterious characters in the book which is a little funny since she's the protagonist of this series.  I understand she's hiding out in this town and thus most people don't know who she is, but I do wish we had gotten more internal monologues or maybe flashbacks to flesh her character out a bit.  I think this was made especially clear by the fact that Beth's mother shows up in town but both women seem to be pretty tight-lipped about their past.  I did find the cast of characters in this town to be really charming and I liked the strong personalities we get from all of them. 

The mystery plot, I found to be a bit convoluted.  It wasn't hard to follow, exactly, but there were so many times when it wasn't clear how certain things were connected or how certain characters were making certain connections.  I think my main issue stemmed from the fact that the reader was supposed to be wondering if the murders in town had something to do with Beth's past and I think that mixing and integrating wasn't done as well as it should have been.  I think it would have been better if the two mystery lines were running completely parallel instead because I found this attempt to build suspense just ended up muddying the waters and making the story less enjoyable.  I really enjoyed the red herrings that Shelton developed throughout the story for both mystery plots.  I also think she did a great job blending isolation thriller tropes with some psychological suspense.  There is a pretty consistent reminder to the reader that this town is small and isolated and the harsh winter conditions can really affect mental health.  I really enjoyed the setting and the impact it had on the other story elements.  There was one part of the mystery element that really bothered me and it was when one character found a piece of information that they needed to look at and then they kept getting side tracked.  Multiple times.  I was getting incredibly frustrated because I just wanted that character to go look at the information already.  The reasons for the character getting sidetracked did not seem nearly as important as the actual information so I couldn't understand why the character was acting like that.  I could see it was an attempt at building suspense and tension but it wasn't quite balanced effectively for me.  Also, the ending did leave on a bit of a cliffhanger for Beth's personal life, but the main mystery of the book does get solved. 

Overall, I liked this book and I really enjoyed the characters and setting.  However, the mystery element fell a little flat for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC

Expected publication date is December 7, 2021.

The Hunting Wives - May Cobb

 

 

This mystery follows Sophie as she gets involved with a group of women - the Hunting Wives - lead by the mysterious and alluring Margot Banks. Sophie, her husband, and their young son have recently moved to a small town in Texas when Sophie had grown restless in their old life in Chicago.  Sophie had big plans of reinventing herself and her career as a lifestyle blogger but the familiar restlessness found her in a matter of months.  The Hunting Wives, at first, is a way for Sophie to inject some excitement into her life.  They meet weekly at Margot's cabin to shoot skeet and drink wine and, sometimes, go out to bars and get a little wild.  Sophie grows from intrigued to completely obsessed and when a body is found, her new loyalties to the group will be tested when she finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation with secrets on the cusp of being released.

TW: alcohol use, drugging, infidelity

I'll be honest, I had a lot of conflicting feelings about this book.  I went and read through some reviews and this seems like a book that people either really like or really dislike.  I had enough strong reactions on either side that I ended up pretty in the middle about it overall. 

My favorite aspect of this story is, by far, the friend group and their dynamic.  Although 'friend group' might be too strong.  They really felt more like frenemies to me - almost like the movie Mean Girls but with late 30's Texas socialites.  I enjoyed how each woman in the group had their own relationship with each of the other women so everyone felt like distinct characters.  I also loved the atmosphere of obsession and almost reverence these other women had for Margot.  Margot is definitely the queen bee of the group and she has this very dynamic atmosphere where these other women are dying to be in her orbit no matter what the cost.  I thought having Sophie be an outsider at the beginning of the book and then following her integration into this group was really fascinating. These are 100% for sure characters you love to hate and one of the biggest complaints I saw in 1 and 2 star reviews was the fact that these characters are all pretty awful and annoying and who would want to read about a whole group of women who seem to not like each other.  Me, that's who!  But I can 100% see how the friend group dynamic would put off some readers.  For me, I really enjoy reading 'unlikable' characters, especially when those characters lean toward being caricatures and the problems can really only be defined as 'rich people problems'.  This friend group was a little over the top, a little overly dramatic, and a little wine drunk at all times and I just had a really fun time reading all of that mess.  There is also a really interesting erotic undertones where each of the members of the friend group seem to oscillate between wanting to be Margot and wanting to be with Margot.

The real downfall, for me, was Sophie (which is unfortunate since she is our main character).  I found her to be a really inconsistent character who seemed to have these moments when, suddenly, her character completely changed.  We start the book pretty much dropped into Sophie's life 8 months after moving to this town. When the book opens, she is already intrigued with Margot and we never really get a real solid reason why.  We do flashback briefly when Sophie first sees Margot in a picture on social media and it seems like Sophie sort of falls in love with her immediately.  The descriptions of Margot that we get through Sophie are always very sensual and we can feel Sophie fall into obsession with Margot very quickly.  However, we also get a good number of times when Sophie is just as obsessed and in love with her own husband so I didn't understand what made Margot so different.  We do find out about a person in Sophie's past that seemed to at least look very similar to Margot but that was pushed aside pretty quickly so I'm not sure if that past person had anything to do with anything.  For the first few chapters of the book, we see Sophie as being really happy and content with her life.  She loves her husband, her kid, and her new life in Texas.  So I was thinking that this obsession with Margot might turn into a sort of slow burn tension for the rest of the book and Sophie would slowly change due to Margot's influence.  And that sort of happens?  But not really.  We then find out about Sophie's past and how her living situation when she was growing up instilled this restlessness in her where she's never satisfied with what she has.  Which is an interesting character detail and does play a big role in the rest of the story but my issue was this character detail comes in way too late.  We've established in the first few chapters - all following Sophie - that she is happy in her life.  Then, suddenly, she's telling us that she's not really happy, that she felt unsettled again only a few months after moving.  It is this back and forth that happens through the rest of the book that really annoyed me.  I think Cobb was going for the feeling that Sophie was struggling with these two pieces of her new life and how to deal with her restlessness but also wanting to keep the family and life she'd built.  But it came off, to me, more like inconsistent characterization and I couldn't get a good handle on Sophie.

As far as the mystery/thriller elements go, it was also a miss for me.  The prologue of the book is the discovery of the body in the woods.  It is literally 10 sentences long and I initially really liked that choice because it gave us a hint of what is to come.  However, by the end, I felt like those 10 sentences gave away too much information that overall lowered the tension.  The prologue is written in first person POV but we don't know whose perspective we're reading from so it immediately piqued my interest.  We don't know who is dead, we don't know where the body is, and we don't know whose perspective we're reading from - sounds like a good foundation for a fun mystery.  However, once we get rolling in the story, and everything is from Sophie's POV, I did find that lowered the tension considerably because then I was assuming we were in Sophie's POV for the prologue.  This also meant that the one piece of concrete information we're given in the prologue makes it very obvious who the dead person will end up being and, as a result, we lose any real sense of mystery and tension that small prologue initially built.  I know some readers always skip the prologues, especially when they're that short, but I normally read them.  However, I think in this instance, that skipping would work in your favor.  The actual body/murder plot felt like it was added in a later draft of the book and didn't really feel to me like it quite fit the story.  I think I would have enjoyed this a lot more if it A) stayed more as a domestic thriller with the backstabbing and secrets gradually increasing in severity or B) a different person ended up dead and have them dead earlier on in the story.  I think the person who did end up dying caused the main Hunting Wives group to fracture and suddenly my favorite part of the book - the dynamic within the group - was almost non-existent.  I think the death happened too late in the book as well so we flip the story from this toxic friend group to amateur murder investigation at about the 65% mark and the murder investigation gets wrapped up relatively quickly. Overall, I think this book should have picked one plot line and followed that through to the end.  

The pacing was pretty phenomenal and made me want to keep reading despite the fact that I wasn't loving anything in particular in the story.  The chapters have a sort of potato-chip quality where you just want to read one more, then one more, then one more.  I think Cobb does a great job at really integrating the reader in this new world of badly behaving socialites and, for me at least, it tapped into that part of my brain that loves office gossip or reading about celebrities.  There was so much scandal and backstabbing and passive aggressive comments that I was just enthralled with and it made me want to keep reading.  I think the dead body/murder plot was pretty meh, but what did keep me reading was wanting to find out if X person is going to find out about Y issue. I was pretty much reading for all the petty drama and rich people problems and that is where I think the story really shined.  There is a lot of drinking in this book - mostly wine but sometimes harder stuff - and it did get a little repetitive.  However, the drunker they get the more passive aggressive the women become and the more interested I become in the story.  It did feel, especially toward the end, that the alcohol consumption was an easy plot device way to get certain activities or reveals going so I don't think it would work for all readers (especially ones sensitive to alcohol consumption and over-consumption). 

Overall, this was a real mixed read for me.  I loved the complex and toxic friend/frenemies group and the pacing was really on point.  On the other side, I really found our main character inconsistent and I actively disliked the addition of the murder mystery plot.  I just wanted to read a book about messy socialites and the parts of the book that centered on that type of story were great but I could have done without the rest of it.

48 Hours to Kill - Andrew Bourelle

 

This fast-paced mystery/thriller follows prison inmate Ethan Lockhart as he is released on a 48 hour furlough to attend his younger sister's funeral.  His sister, Abby, disappeared weeks ago and is assumed dead, based on the amount of blood found at her apartment.  Ethan initially is set on following the rules of his furlough and using the time to grieve.  He's been in prison for 10 years so things on the outside are not the same as he remembers - his old loan shark boss Shark is now the head of a criminal empire and his sister's friend Whitney, once a skinny teen, is now a beautiful woman. However, as he finds out more details about Abby's case, Ethan soon finds himself investigating her death himself against the ticking clock. In order to find the truth in 48 hours where the cops and FBI had failed for weeks, Ethan will have to resort to his criminal ways that he previously swore off.

TW/CW: torture, drug use, voyeurism

The pacing in this book was phenomenal.  The main plot takes place over the 48 hours that Ethan is out of prison and the first scene we have of him is the morning of his release.  Ethan doesn't have the time to wait around and twiddle his thumbs while thinking about what actions to take.  We do get some flashbacks of Ethan and Abby at various points over the previous years but those chapters are usually pretty short and give us some more depth of their relationship.  Each chapter starts with the number of hours Ethan has left, which really emphasizes the time constraint he's working under.  It was very reminiscent of the TV show 24 where they never really let you forget the amount of time left on the clock. The actual time wasn't mentioned that much in the story (it wasn't like Ethan was constantly counting down the hours to the reader) so the countdowns at the beginning of every chapter really felt like a natural way for Bourelle to get that information across to us.  While Ethan might not be counting down the hours in his head, his concerns are written in such a way that we can feel his anxiety about the time he has left.  There's one part where he's thinking about going to sleep but then says he doesn't want to waste 6 of his 48 hours on sleeping so he continues on with his investigation.  The writing and action are so fast and just keep on rolling so quickly that Ethan (and thus the reader) have pretty much no time to rest.  There are some short chapters that are following other characters that act as brief breathers away from Ethan's agenda, but some of them are literally just a couple of paragraphs so we aren't away for long enough for these to feel like any substantial breaks.  Also, the fact that Ethan is involved with the criminal underworld also increases the tension and pacing because it is very much a matter of he has to do X before Y finds out because otherwise Z will happen. The plot points escalate pretty quickly and really sucked me into the book. 

The characters and their development arcs are fantastic.  Ethan and Abby's relationship was so well established and grounded that I cried twice while reading at certain points in the story.  We only get 2 scenes with them together in the times before Ethan goes to jail but there are so many other details woven into the story that really show how close their relationship was.  Bourelle did a fantastic job of working in character backstory in a very organic way.  For example, since Ethan has been in jail for 10 years, when he's talking to people he used to know, it is a natural conversation to catch up on the neighborhood gossip and talk about who is doing what.  We get a lot of information and backstory in the first 25% of the story but it never felt like an info-dump because of the surrounding circumstances.  The side characters are also just the right amount of developed to make them feel real and not just caricatures.  For example, we have the loan shark turned head of criminal enterprise who uses a strip club as a front for his other dealings.  It would be so easy for him to be a generally flat 'bad guy' character.  However, we get to see his complicated relationship with Ethan and some of his other quirks which really make him feel like an actual human and not just some faceless bad guy in the shadows.  The same holds true for other characters in the book.  All the characters we're introduced to are complex and interesting in their own ways and it really makes the character relationship and growth side of the book feel really grounded.  This is really a revenge/redemption story and I think Ethan's personal character arc really exemplifies that line.  While he is investigating his sister's murder, he is also grappling with his role in the events that preceded her death.  This struggle makes his fall back into his criminal ways even more heartbreaking because he promised to give them up so that he could be the big brother his sister deserved. 

The mystery elements and investigation were really well done and the clues were really intriguing.  I really loved the premise of this book and I was expecting Ethan to come out of prison with a full plan in place on how he was going to find Abby's killer.  However, since he initially was just going out to grieve and attend the funeral, I thought the events leading up to him finally deciding to investigate were really well done.   The plot leaned into Ethan's criminal background when he needed some quick answers and it did so in a very specific way.  Ethan's experiences both before and during his jail time all came into play and it was fascinating to see how certain clues would push him further along or push him to do things he didn't, initially, want to do.  I really liked how Ethan being a member of this criminal world blurred the lines a bit during his investigation because there were so many other things going on at the same time that it wasn't always clear what was related to Abby and what wasn't.  There were also a number of times where a lead would seemingly dry up but we'd get new information later and double back to that initial lead.  This looping was intertwined with other clues so it never felt too convoluted or convenient and I found all the plot threads came together in the end. The ending is where I think this book might lose some people.  It goes full summer action blockbuster and it is the one part where I had to suspend my disbelief the most.  That being said, it did feel like an appropriate ramp up of the tension and investigation so I did really enjoy where it went and I think it made sense plot-wise even if it wasn't entirely realistic.  This story reminded me a lot of the movie Shot Caller which I also really enjoyed.

Overall, this was a fantastically paced and plotted read that I devoured in an afternoon.  It was pretty much 0 to 100 in just a few chapters and I really enjoyed the character development we got interspersed with the action. 

Thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the ARC

Expected publication date is December 7, 2021