Book 161 – Last Girl Ghosted by Lisa Unger

• Started: December 19, 2021
• Finished: December 19, 2021
• Pages: 394
• Multiple POV, Timeline Jumps, New York
• Rating: 4.5/5

REVIEW + SUMMARY

This is the second book I’ve read by Lisa Unger (the first was Confessions on the 7:45 earlier this year) which I think I enjoyed just a bit more than this one. Interestingly enough, this book, like the last I reviewed (Things We Have in Common) used the partial second person. Most of the book was from the point of view of main character, Wren, though it occasionally shifted to other missing women / third person following Bailey, the private investigator. When Wren talked about her missing beau, Adam, she always addressed him as you. It’s a pretty unique writing tactic so it was odd to see it in two books in a row, but I don’t mind.

Wren is not a fan of online dating until she meets Adam on Torch. He’s nothing like any of the other men she’s met and very quickly she finds herself falling in love. Their whirlwind lasts about three months and then… nothing. He seems to disappear off the face of the Earth; he blocks her number, his apartment turns out to be a short-term rental, and then a private investigator informs her that his real name isn’t even Adam. Wren is determined to find out what exactly happened to the man she thought she loved, especially when she learns that many of his previous girlfriends have gone missing and that they, like her, all had a great tragedy in their past. As she attempts to track Adam down she finds it difficult to keep her own past hidden – every step closer to him also circle back to her own secrets.

One thing I did mind, however, was how the book handled COVID. It was mentioned sporadically throughout and mostly as a way to show the sort of “end of times” Wren’s father had predicted/prepared for in her youth. I understood that Unger was trying to do with the parallels, it was just not enough for me. I don’t know, I feel like she should have made it a bigger aspect of the book or just made up some sort of event instead of relying on real life.

Overall, I did enjoy this book and the many secrets and layers throughout. It is a pretty classic domestic thriller and a fun concept in this day and age of online dating. I would recommend for fans of thrillers in general and Unger’s other work. I will looking forward to reading more by her in the new year!

Book 160 – Things We Have in Common by Tasha Kavanagh

• Started: December 19, 2021
• Finished: December 19, 2021
• Pages: 288
• Single POV, UK
• Rating: 4.5/5

REVIEW + SUMMARY

Y’all this book was wild.  I have read a few books with pretty messed up characters (Just One Look and #FashionVictim come to mind right off the bat), but this takes the cake.  In Just One Look, the main character was delusional but still seemed to have (part) of her heart in the right place.  #FashionVictim was satire and leaned into the craziness, so I don’t think it reallllllly counts.  But this one, especially since it was YA, was delusion plus a constantly spinning moral compass.  It was also kind of realistic because that kind of loneliness and grief in such a young character (Yasmin is 15), could twist their mind enough that they go down the same road as her.  It’s written in partial second person, where she constantly addresses one character as you.  Maybe that just is second person but I think of that as more like This is the Water by Yannick Murphy where the main characters are the continuous “you.”  I don’t know if that makes sense but I love that book and would recommend it.  Either way, I like second person a lot and it is actually how I prefer to write.  

Yasmin is a very lonely teenager.  She hasn’t really had any friends since her dad died five years ago and she retreated into herself and food.  Now is obese, a loner, and obsessed with Alice Taylor, a beautiful girl in her class.  One day at school, she notices a man watching Alice – not unlike how she watches her – and just knows that he is going to take her.  She decides that she will become Alice’s hero once this happens and forces herself into this man’s life.  After meeting him, however, she begins to shift her alliances, a point that comes into question when Alice actually disappears.  Yasmin has to decide if she is going to be the hero of her fantasies or lean into her new obsession.

I really had no idea what direction this book was going to go – there were so many possibilities! – but I liked how it ultimately ended.  I don’t know if I would describe it as a happy ending, but it didn’t leave a pit in my stomach and it did make me think so it was at least a successful one.  If you like twisted/weirdly sympathetic lead characters, you would like this book.  I would not recommend it across the board but I do think that if you can stomach Yasmin’s poor decisions, you will like it as well.

Book 159 – Those Who Prey by Jennifer Moffett

• Started: December 18, 2021
• Finished: December 19, 2021
• Pages: 394
• Single POV, Timelined, Boston/Florence
• Rating: 4.5/5

REVIEW + SUMMARY

After reading two books on NXIVM (The Program and Don’t Call it a Cult) this year, it was interesting to read a fictionalized account of a cult.  Especially from the point of view of a lonely college freshman in the 1990s, it was easy to see how one could get sucked in.  I definitely empathized with her situation of feeling alone at school and so far away from the comfort of your childhood. Fortunately, I did have a support group and joined a sorority (though some consider Greek life cult-like!) so my overall experience was much better. It’s so easy to look at cult stories and go “that would never happen to me!” but this book really demonstrated how they pick their followers and how slow/insidious the recruitment process is. It’s like any common scam – if you miss the initial glaring red flags on the way in then you definitely won’t notice the millions more once you’re there.

Emily is feeling alone during her second semester from college. She purposely chose a school far away from home, trying to put miles between her and her distant father and the well-meaning but overbearing stepmother that he married too quickly. But once she got there, she realized that she was in a bit over her head and that making friends isn’t as easy as she remembered from childhood, especially after her roommate drops out due to drug problems. Then Emily meets Josh and is swept into his circle of friends and their larger group – The Program. Bible Study on steroids, Emily is excited to feel a sense of belonging, especially when local program head, Meredith seems to take a shining to her. She embarks on a mission trip with the group to Italy, but quickly finds that it’s not exactly what she signed up for. A member of the group ends up dead and Emily has to reckon with the fact that she is more alone in The Program than she ever felt at college.

I would recommend this book. I definitely thought it was a good complement to the cult-themed non-fiction I had read earlier in the year. It was YA, but mostly in the fact that its main characters were young adults and going through some of the awkwardness of growing up. I liked that they were college age (even if they were freshman) instead of high schoolers because she was able to very accurately capture those moments of transition out of your parents’ home where you feel like you’re so independent but secretly know you’re not and crave the structure and guidance of your parents. Or maybe that’s just how Emily and I felt… Either way, really enjoyed this story and how Emily grew over the course of the novel.

Book 158 – You’ll Be The Death of Me by Karen M. McManus

• Started: December 17, 2021
• Finished: December 18, 2021
• Pages: 323
• Single POV, Boston
• Rating: 5/5

REVIEW + SUMMARY

Another great YA thriller by Karen M. McManus! I think this might have been my favorite of the three I read in 2021 (The Cousins and Two Can Keep A Secret were the other two much earlier this year). Again, she is able to so accurately capture what it’s like to be a teenager: sibling rivalries, the urge to impress your parents and teachers, and the ever-changing dynamics of a friendship between three people. I wanted to say that this mystery was on a larger scale than her other books, but that’s not really true. She is always able to write about a larger/more insidious crime but not make it seem ridiculous that a bunch of teenagers get wrapped up in and end up solving it.

Ivy, Mateo, and Cal are three high school students – and middle school best friends that grew apart – each having their own Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad morning. When they run into each other in the parking lot at Carlton High School they decide to skip together. As they make their way to the city, they run into another one of their classmates and decide to follow him a bit. Unfortunately, their Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad morning turns into a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad when he ends up dead. The three set off to find out what happened and end up exposing many secrets – including their own – as the day progresses.

I would definitely recommend this book, especially if you are already a fan of her other work. The characters are similar across the books (overachiever, underachiever, kid who has been dealt a bad card) and the formula is repetitive (little bit of romance, small mystery ends up being part of a much larger scheme) but IT ALL WORKS! She comes up with unique storylines that fall within her parameters and they’re always great reads. Already looking forward to whatever she comes up with next.

Book 157 – Hello, Transcriber by Hannah Morrissey

• Started: December 16, 2021
• Finished: December 17, 2021
• Pages: 293
• Single POV, Timelined, Wisconsin
• Rating: 4.75/5

REVIEW + SUMMARY

I really enjoyed this book! But for some reason, I kept thinking “translator” instead of transcriber and was very confused that it was in Wisconsin and not the U.N. (like the movie The Interpreter starring Nicole Kidman). But once I got over that, I was able to really sink in to the desolate town of Black Harbor and Hazel’s struggles there. I like how the plot weaved her personal and professional life together and how her problems in one area bled into the other. Because of the small town setting, the insular nature of the events felt more believable.

Hazel and her husband, Tommy, move to the small town of Black Harbor for his job. The book opens with her own job interview and subsequent hiring as the newest police transcriber. In her role, she is privy to all the town’s case reports, including the overdose of a child who supposedly got his drugs from the local seller, The Candy Man. She finds herself drawn into the case – in great part due to her growing attraction to the lead detective, Nikolai Kole – and completely over her head. The bodies start to pile up as she gets closer to Kole and she starts to lose all sense of who, if anyone, she can trust in Black Harbor.

I would definitely recommend this book. It was a great thriller and kept me guessing throughout. There wasn’t a terribly large cast of characters so you might be able to piece it all together before the characters do (I did not!) but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I look forward to reading more books by this author in the future.

Book 156 – The Gathering by Anne Enright

• Started: December 14, 2021
• Finished: December 15, 2021
• Pages: 261
• Rating: 3.5/5

REVIEW + SUMMARY

I picked this book up because Anne Enright is the author of one of my favorite books, The Forgotten Waltz, and I am about to embark on my every ~5 year re-read. I grabbed that, this book, and another by her since they were all available at the library. It seemed interesting enough and was very beautifully written but it did not translate into a good book or story. Part of the appeal of her books (or at least The Forgotten Waltz) is the flighty, unreliable narrator where the question of how things really happened adds to the blur and allure of the events. In this case, it was just confusing. She focused, weirdly enough, on the imagined sex life of her grandparents and I didn’t love that. I was also very confused with where she was in the timeline of everything – how far out she was from her brother’s death at the various points of the novel. Just didn’t quite *get* this one.

Veronica is one of nine surviving siblings saying goodbye to their brother, Liam, after he dies. The two were just a year apart and particularly close. Veronica reflects on their childhood, partially spent at their grandparents’ after her mother suffers from yet another miscarriage. She recalls her grandparents – their meeting and eventual love – as well as their landlord/friend, Lamb Nugent, who was also a constant in their lives. Veronica is in charge of picking up Liam’s body and bringing it home for the funeral. She imagines her husband, the man she now avoids by staying up all night and only going to bed when he wakes up. All of this swirls around her head and she makes peace with the loss of her brother and the full, but sad life he lead.

If that doesn’t really seem very cohesive, it’s because I didn’t read it as a very cohesive story. I do like the way Enright puts her sentences together, but this time I didn’t like how each of those sentences flowed into a book. I would not recommend but I still plan on re-reading The Forgotten Waltz and trying out The Green Road, the other book I have out by her right now.

Book 155 – Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins

• Started: December 9, 2021
• Finished: December 14, 2021
• Pages: 352
• Single POV, Timeline Jumps, UK
• Rating: 4.5/5

REVIEW + SUMMARY

This was a slow book for me to get into. I’m don’t know if I was just distracted or if it was the actual cadence of the book (probably a bit of both), but this took me a while to get through. It is billed as a thriller, which isn’t completely inaccurate as the focus is on a missing child and there is a general sense of foreboding throughout, but there’s not a ton of action. It is a very sweet story, in its own way, as we see the relationship between Dee and Felicity develop.

Dee is a nanny to Felicity, the selectively mute daughter of Nick, a Master at Oxford. Over the course of her time with Felicity, Dee becomes very attached to her and disheartened by how Felicity is treated by Nick and his new wife, Mariah. Neither are abusive or even mean, but they do not have the time or energy to give Felicity the care she needs. Or at least that’s how Dee explains it to the detectives interrogating her after Felicity goes missing. Nick is convinced that Dee has something to do with it – a point she vehemently denies – which is part of how she landed in the room with the detectives. And so, hat’s where most of the story takes place: them asking her questions and her answering and internally reflecting on all the little events that led them there.

If you like a slower paced thriller, perhaps like Julia Heaberlin’s “novels of suspense,” I think you would like this book. Overall, I did enjoy and the focus it took on the relationships of the various characters. The book did not end on the clearest note and I would love to learn where all the characters ended up in five to ten years.

Book 154 – The Better Sister by Alafair Burke

• Started: December 8, 2021
• Finished: December 9, 2021
• Pages: 311
• Multiple POV, Timelined, New York
• Rating: 4.25/5
• TW: Domestic Abuse

REVIEW + SUMMARY

I first heard of this book on @pretanewporter’s instagram. I have read a few books by Alafair before (The Wife and If You Were Here) and it was available at my local library so I picked it up. I guess I was in a bit of a reading slump – I took a whole week off (holiday parties!) – and her books are pretty consistent thrillers. I liked If You Were Here a bit more than this one, but it still kept me on my toes and I was continuously surprised by what each chapter brought. She was able to very accurately capture the relationship between the two sisters as well as the various emotions the main character, Chloe, went through as the story progressed.

Chloe and Nicky are sisters whose lives have taken very different paths. Chloe, the younger of the two, is a successful magazine editor, now married to Nicky’s ex-husband, Adam, and raising her son Ethan. Nicky is a distant thought in their heads until Adam is murdered. Ethan becomes the prime suspect and Nicky, as his biological mother, re-enters their lives. Chloe struggles with the thought of losing Ethan, especially after losing Adam. Chloe and Nicky are forced to come together and put their past conflicts aside in order to protect Ethan.

I really didn’t know what to expect for most of the book. I kept thinking it would go one way, only to be led in another direction. I liked the dynamic between the sisters and felt like it changed very organically over the course of the book – it wasn’t some gushy reunion ever, just two women fighting for their place in the other’s life. I would recommend this book and will continue to read more books by Alafair Burke.

Book 153 – Northern Spy by Flynn Berry

• Started: November 30, 2021
• Finished: November 30, 2021
• Pages: 276
• Single POV, Northern Ireland
• Rating: 4.75/5
• TW: Miscarriage

REVIEW + SUMMARY

This book was recommended to my husband’s aunt and I am really glad I picked it up! It’s the second book I’ve read by this author (I read A Double Life last year); I thought this one was much better. It focuses on two sisters in Northern Ireland and I find that area so fascinating. I didn’t know much about it (and honestly still don’t) but learned a lot when I visited back in 2017. I am not sure how much of this book was exaggerated and if the conflicts are still happening on such a violent but subverted level but it definitely made for a great backdrop for this thriller.

Tessa and Marian are sisters living in Northern Ireland, still dealing with the constantly looming threat of the IRA, even twenty years after the Good Friday Agreement. Tessa is primarily focused on providing a good life for her infant, Finn, but her whole world is upended when security footage from an IRA robbery shows her sister at the scene as one of the perpetrators.As Tessa reconnects with her sister she becomes swept up in a world of covert operations and espionage. She is torn between her desire to help her sister and her need to keep her son safe. Together, Tessa and Marian cross moral and legal lines in order to protect themselves from the warring factions.

Even though I did like A Double Life, this book made me want to read more by the author. I would definitely recommend for anyone interested in books about relationships between sisters or modern day espionage.

Book 152 – Lie Still by Julia Heaberlin

• Started: November 29, 2021
• Finished: November 30, 2021
• Pages: 285
• Single POV, Texas
• Rating: 4.5/5
• TW: Rape

REVIEW + SUMMARY

I’m slowly making my way through Julia Heaberlin’s bibliography (I just have one left) and this was another great novel. Even though it dealt with some pretty heavy topics such as rape and drawn out murders, I also felt that this book had the greatest amount of humor to it. The characters were a bit over the top, but that just added to the fun of the story. There were a lot of different characters with murky motives and possibly related storylines that the book kept me on my toes throughout. Heaberlin’s later books (this is her second thriller) are described as “books of suspense” but this was not and kept up a fair level of action throughout.

Emily and her husband, Mike, move to Clairemont, Texas in the middle of her pregnancy for his career: he has been appointed police chief. Emily attempts to make friends with the ladies in town, many of whom are part of a secret society lead by Caroline Warwick. Emily is reluctant to be included and her feelings of despair only grow when Caroline disappears and a series of ominous notes appear at Emily’s doorstep. She is unsure if they are connected to the missing socialite or her own dark past but knows that, either way, she is in grave danger.

I was surprised by the ending and by how all the various pieces came together, but I thought it worked out well. I am glad to have read this and recommend it, especially if you are fans of her other work. It is the third book I have read by Julia Heaberlin this year (We Are All the Same in the Dark and Black-Eyed Susans are the other two) and I only have one more to read before going through all of her thrillers. Can’t wait to get my hands on it!