🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ Turning the final page on this literary memoir I find my head spinning, mind struggling to form an articulate, coherent summary beyond an overwhelming and incontrovertible — Wow. So here we are - my own “fusion” of somewhat disconnected (utterly blown-away) impressions underlying this incredible work. First, with sheer…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 Book four in the Margaret Nolan series, my first by this author, (but definitely not my last) — this is a complex, well-drafted police procedural packed with likable and interesting recurring characters, all revolving around a multi-layered plot, itself teeming with action, twists, plenty of bad-guys, and of course,…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 "This is what happens to women" A truly terrifying read, this modern-day, feminist-inspired take on Stoker’s Dracula is creepy, compelling, and absolutely the stuff that nightmares are made of. Heavily informed by Welsh folklore, this take has the centuries old ‘Sugnwr Gwaed’, the ‘Fampir”, lurking in his windswept Castle,…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 A clever and compelling story with plenty of pathos and charm, refreshingly unlike anything this reader has encountered between the pages. The story is told through narratives alternating in the first-person voices of five people: a therapist, Genevieve Dempsey; and her four subjects: Freya, Victoria, Mischa, and Callum; each…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 A mesmerizing Nordic mystery, uniquely premised, cleverly plotted, and impossible to put down. Agnes Glin, our third-person-POV narrator, is twenty-seven years old and has lived her entire life in California, although her heritage on her father’s side is Icelandic. Agnes, with her white-blond hair, is still reeling from a…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A lushly intricate tale of love, and longing, and most of all, of lies — and what it will take to smooth out edges, creased and sharpened and soiled, by years (make that decades) of deceit. Narrated in the alternating third-person voices of three main protagonists, the story arcs…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ I listened to the (excellent) audio version of this memoir, narrated by Julia Roberts and Riley Keough, and interspersed with audio clips from Lisa Marie Presley that she recorded as part of her book preparations. Lisa Marie, having reached out to her daughter, Riley, for help in pulling the…
🌟🌟🌟💫 Based in and around Portland, Oregon, this legal thriller is peppered with several plot twists, a central and darkly terrible crime, a bevy of suspicious characters, and a long and circuitous road that may or may not lead to justice. Charlie Webb is an average guy, and an equally…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 Unusual and gripping, this made-for-teens story is the start of a new series by one of my favorite (adult mystery) authors. In this new genre, we meet Hannah Armstrong, a strangely-gifted fourteen-year-old, who has the ability to hear other’s thoughts, in the form of “whispers”, which are often chaotically…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A stunning collection of short stories, told across decades and spanning New Zealand and Canada, each centering on one of a small group of loosely-connected women that have crossed paths, although their stories are told here individually. With incredible fineness the author slices through these literary lives, each story…