🌟🌟🌟🌟 A claustrophobic thriller set in a fascinating location - aboard an expedition cruise set for the icy splendor of Antarctica. In this case, before the ship has even set sail, sinister and unexplained happenings are afoot. When a man is kidnapped enroute to boarding for the soon-to-depart cruise, it…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 I do so love a good gothic novel. All the elements are here, at this author’s hands, building into a hauntingly mesmerizing read that hits all the right notes, keeping this reader thoroughly hooked, - right up to an ending not unpredictable but so perfectly fitting it appears to…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 Clever and engrossing, this is a fun read with a twisty plot, and an ending this reader did not see coming. Jade Wiltshire wants to live like a millionaire, and has the appropriately titled paperback to help her. 30-ish and pretty, with her recent lottery winnings, Jade is unflinchingly…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 An unputdownable thriller, creatively centering on a true-crime podcast, a cold-case mystery, and a totally captivating nasty-but-nice heroine. Lucy Chase is almost thirty, - a beautiful, sarcastic, darkly hilarious, tough-as-nails loner who is used to being on the outside looking in. On the very outside, that is, - as…
🌟🌟🌟💫 Well-written, yet undeniably bleak, this is an 80’s era (both written and set) tale of domestic breakdown, existential nothingness, and bodies in motion, - unlikable characters bumping into each other randomly and in the process, spinning out trails invariably murky and mostly unpleasant. Set in Melbourne, Australia, the story…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 An edge of your seat thriller that has it all - a creepy mansion occupied by a strange and repressed family; a child, old before her time, who is truly unsettling; a murder (maybe?) tied to a mystery; and a first person POV heroine who is female, authentic and…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 What a delight! A book just as likely to break your heart as it is to tickle your funny bone, this charmer is a one-of-a-kind read, featuring a one-of-a-kind family who, come what may, will love and support their offspring. (And their offspring. And all the interconnected others that…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 I’m always so pleased to discover a fantastic and new (to me) Canadian author, and particularly one in the legal/mystery space. This intricate and haunting story, involves two contemporary murders, based in Toronto, Canada, as well as war-time atrocities and the wounds left behind on a global and historical…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 Reading this book is akin to taking a deep dive into a richly-fabricated speculative world, filled with interesting and intricate creatures, ideas and characters, and defined by an entirely new language. (Note: the author includes a very helpful glossary). Touching on many philosophical ideas and a whole host of…
Second in the Paradise Cafe series, this is another interesting, enjoyable read, with a likable heroine, an evocative setting in Depression-era 1936 Toronto, and not one, but two mysteries to solve. When Charlotte Frayne, PI, is hired to investigate the suspicious suicide of a severely disfigured veteran, she must confront…