Reviews – Page 6 – Books Dani Likes

Rewind by Catherine Ryan Howard

Hello Kittens! I hope you and yours are all doing well as we enter the 15^th year of Quarantine. Just kidding! Things will be getting back to the new normal soon and I hope that if you, like me, are going to be forced back into the real world, that you can do so in as safe a manner as possible. For today, I have a murderous distraction of a book for you. If any of you read Adrian McKinty’s The Chain last year, then I think you will really like this story. There’s a murder, there’s a recording of the murder, there’s a creepy Irish setting, and plenty of suspects to keep you guessing. This one first hit my radar when it was reviewed over at Crime By The Book, which is any excellent blog for mystery/thriller/nordic noir fans. Enjoy and take care!

Title: Rewind Rewind

Author: Catherine Ryan Howard

Author website: https://catherineryanhoward.com/

Publisher: Black Stone Publishing

Publish date: September 3, 2019

ISBN: 9781538519684

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

Summary

It all begins with a gruesome murder. Picture it: a woman is sleeping in a dark room and suddenly a figure appears along the side, obviously intent on harm. But wait, you don’t have to picture it, because it is all on tape. Why is it on tape? Who is she? Why is she being murdered? All of these questions will be answered in good time, but two questions are going to chill your bones as you finish the first chapter: why does the killer destroy the camera and how did they know the camera was there?

In Rewind, the reader is going to meet Natalie, a social media influencer who appears to be living her best life. But looks can be deceiving, especially on the internet. In reality, strange things have been happening around Natalie, seemingly as a result of her fame. Her husband won’t take any of it seriously and questions her commitment to her job. Her best friend thinks her work is a hobby and that her life is a breeze.

We also meet Audrey. Audrey is a wannabe serious reported who is currently trudging her way through an assignment in the Entertainment department of an online magazine. Her soul crushing job everyday is to create short, pithy, click-baity stories regarding celebutantes. She is aching to be promoted to the hard news division, and with her living situation deteriorating and her finances draining fast, she could really use the extra money. When her boss tasks her with looking into the social media disappearance of a well-known star, she jumps at the chance.

We are also going to meet Andrew. Andrew runs a set of vacation cottages in a remote area. It’s the kind of place that doesn’t get cell reception and where wi-fi spots are limited. Andrew is a loner who local townspeople regularly gossip about and who fails to put his latest guest at ease. Andrew is a man with many secrets and we learn a good bit about his life in all of this.

Why I liked it:

A really compelling story. Fast-paced plotting. We start at the end of things and work our way back and forth in a way that makes it hard for the reader to piece everything together too quickly. I also loved the way the story ended with the structure of a published news article. I thought that was a particularly nice touch given how most of the story plays out.

***Spoiler alert: I will say this, I called a major twist really early on…like 4 chapters in early. That being said, I absolutely loved the story anyway.***

What I would like to change:

I actually didn’t love the structure of the story as much. It reveals itself as though it was a videotape, with chapter headings such as “Fast-Forward”, “Pause”, etc. I loved that we started with the murder, but the non-linear structure was hard for me to follow at times, and since it had non-traditional chapter titles, it was even harder. I think I would have liked all the “before” chapters grouped together and all of the “after” chapters grouped together just as much.

Disclaimer: No disclaimer needed. I borrowed this title digitally for free from my local library.

My library rating:

lemonade_icon 2 glasses of lemonade= a book that you could probably recommend to family and close friends. They may not like everything that’s in it, but they’re not going to start sending you cards with holy scripture written in them as messages to get you back on the path of righteousness after reading them either.

There are scenes involving child rape, pedophilia, sexual blackmail, gaslighting, and we get a fairly graphic description of a murder. That’s a lot in one book, but the majority of the scenes involving those first two take place off the page or using a fade-in technique.

My personal preference rating: I gave this one 5 stars. I was totally hooked on this one from the first chapter and basically flew through it in a day and a half (Goodreads will say it took me 5 days, but I was a little behind on my reading and didn’t really start until a few days later). I’ve already added Howard’s backlist to my TBR.

Notes: Billed as Pyscho meets Fatal Attraction. Unfortunately, I’ve never seen either movie so I can’t comment on the accuracy of that. 😦

The Fallen Girls by Kathryn Casey

**Update 5/31/20. I was contacted the publisher who let me know that you can access this book from a few other online platforms. I’ve added links below and updated my intro for you. Now you have even more opportunities to pick up this great read!**

Hello Kittens! I’ve got one that may be a little more limited to access than my normal recommendations but I think it is a worthy read for crime fiction fans. This title is currently only being released in digital formats, but I highly recommend it. There’s an interesting setting, a haunted investigator, and an intriguing premise. I figured out whodunnit about 16 chapters from the end, but I was so hooked that I kept reading anyway. Also, there was always the possibility that the author could throw another curve ball and I would be wrong. Do you try to guess the killer when you read mysteries? I’ve started noting my guesses in my personal notes to see how quickly I can guess. My first guess on this one was wrong, but the plot helped straighten my thinking out over time.

Title: The Fallen Girls

Author: Kathryn Casey

Author website: http://www.kathryncasey.com/

https://www.facebook.com/KathrynCaseyAuthor/

Publisher: Bookouture

Publish date: June 3, 2020

ISBN: 9781838886011

Buy the Book: Amazon, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play

Summary:

Detective Clara Jeffries has been working in Dallas PD’s Crimes Against Persons Unit for 3 years. She’s a workaholic who gets the job done and never seems to take time off. When her boss orders her to take a few days of leave, she’s at her wits end for what to do with herself. Around this time she gets an unexpected call from an old acquaintance, Max Anderson, who tells her that he believes her half-sister has gone missing. Clara agrees to return home to help Max work the case because he is having trouble speaking with Clara’s family.

Clara left Alber, Utah, years ago to escape the fundamentalist lifestyle of her Mormon community. While we only get glimpses of her past, we know that her childhood was a happy one and something happened to her in her teens that changed her life and made her want to run away. With help from a woman named Hannah to escape, Clara hasn’t been back since and hasn’t kept in touch with her family. Clara’s family considers her an Apostate, an outsider who has betrayed the faith, and they’re not anxious to talk to her or even acknowledge her existence. When Clara gets to Alber, she discovers that the case is extremely complicated because Max is certain that her sister is missing and has reason to believe that she has been taken, but Clara’s family refuses to confirm that the girl is missing or provide the police with any information.

To make matters worse, Clara’s family aren’t the only ones denying that her half-sister is gone. The police aren’t anxious to investigate a crime that they can’t prove has even happened, especially without the cooperation of the families. The harder that Clara digs into this, the more threatened the townspeople and the local police departments are getting. She is told repeatedly to drop the case and return to Texas, but Clara is certain that her sister is missing, and according to Hannah, she may not be the only one.

Why I liked it:

This was an intriguing mystery with a setting that I didn’t know much about. Casey writes about the intricacies of this Mormon community and the struggles that they have gone through. She gives a thorough treatment to the religious aspects as well as the pitfalls of this faith community, including the mistrust they have of outsiders. Ultimately, this was a thoroughly plotted mystery with a healthy amount of twists and turns. It’s not overly gory, but there is some violence and there is definitely a villain. I can easily see this novel being turned into a movie.

It’s told in alternating chapters between Clara, Max, and Clara’s half-sister, Delilah. With each chapter you get another piece of the puzzle, but the plotting is intricate enough that I didn’t put everything together until about 60% of the way through the book. I figured out who the villain was, but not everyone might, and I really don’t mind a mystery every now and then where you actually are given enough information to figure things out. Not to mention, just because you think you know who did it doesn’t mean you know why they did it, and the why is just as interesting to find out.

Also, the first chapter is seriously creepy and I loved the tone that it set. The cover art is perfect for this title and I’m not sure I’ll ever look at cornfields without thinking about this read again.

What I would like to change:

The first half of the story was really heavy on gaslighting Clara. For me, that’s always a little tough to read. It made me wish that we got to the action of the story a little quicker.

I also wish I was seeing more promotion for this title. I couldn’t find it on the author’s website (only on her Facebook page). It’s a strong story and it would be more accessible to most people in print… But I suppose that won’t matter if lots of people pick it up in digital format (which you should do). I still prefer print despite the fact that I increasingly read digitally, but I could be in the minority on this.

Disclaimer: I received an electronic advance copy of this title via the publisher on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

My library rating:

lemonade_icon 4 glasses of lemonade= a book you could recommend to a book group or anybody who reads. You might find controversial subject matter, but it is handled delicately.

While there is violence in the book, none of it takes place on the page so I think a book club could handle this one, and they might like reading about a community that is very different from their own.

My personal preference rating: I gave this title 5 stars. I think it is a really solid start to a mystery series. I’m going to be taking a look at the author’s backlist, which includes a lot of true crime too. Yay!

Get A Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert

Hello Kittens! Are you in the part of the country getting a weird cold snap right now? Me too! But no worries, because this next book out to warm you right up. Definitely steamy! I’ve been making a concerted effort to add more fiction featuring diverse characters and by diverse authors into my book diet and this book checks off both of those boxes. This book came out back in November, but the next title in the series is coming out in June (assuming no publishing delays), so it’s a great time to pick this one up. The writing is modern and funny and you’ll be rooting for these characters all the way.

Title: Get a Life, Chloe Brown Get a Life, Chloe Brown (The Brown Sisters, #1)

Author: Talia Hibbert

Author website: https://www.taliahibbert.com/

Publisher: Avon

Publish date: November 5^th, 2019

ISBN: 9781643854786

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

Summary

After a near-death experience, Chloe Brown begins rethinking her life’s accomplishments, or lack thereof. She decides that maybe her family has the right idea in encouraging her to, “get a life”. So what’s a girl in this situation to do? Create a get-a-life list, of course! Chloe’s list includes enjoying a drunken night out, riding a motorcycle, going camping, and having, “meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex”, among other things. You know, the average. But first, she needs to move out of her family’s house and get her own place.

That part actually turns out to be pretty easy, but once she moves to her new apartment complex, she runs into the prickly building manager, Redford. Chloe finds his presence thoroughly unpleasant and doesn’t understand why no one else in her life can see how utterly annoying he is.

For his part “Red” isn’t exactly enamored with the new diva living in the complex either. She treats him as decidedly less-than in all of their interactions, and every time he turns around he seems to be running into her. And what’s more, he’s pretty sure he caught her spying on him while he was painting in his apartment. As Red’s annoyance builds, so does his attraction to Chloe. Maybe she’s not as bad as he first thought, but she’s definitely peculiar and he doesn’t need that kind of energy in his life. Red’s just beginning to put his life together after a really bad break-up and he does not need a complicated woman like Chloe in his life…but he can’t seem to stay away.

Chloe was definitely watching him paint. After all, what kind of guy paints in his apartment shirtless with the blinds open. Plus, this fulfills the “do something bad” portion of her get-a-life list. Red is a harmless distraction, but not a friend and definitely not boyfriend material. Chloe tried the boyfriend thing before and it went horribly wrong. Chloe has enough to deal with in her life without adding a complication like Redford. Red however, is persistent in changing her opinion of him…and he might just be worth re-writing her list for.

Why I liked the book:

I really like how the author handled the interracial relationship aspect of the story. I also appreciated reading a story where the main character is suffering from chronic illness. The story emphasizes how Chloe’s fibromyalgia impacts her life from pre-diagnosis to now. Hibbert spends a decent amount of time talking about how a diagnosis of a chronic illness that is difficult to manage even with medication can take a toll on the sufferer’s personal relationships. Despite all of the hardship, Chloe is still a lovable character with a strong will. I think readers are going to love her and her sisters.

Red comes across as an imperfect, but still really good guy. He is the kind of guy that most girls would drool over, but he’s got baggage from a prior relationship and he’s drifting in his life right now. Above all, I appreciate that as a character, he didn’t struggle with the caregiver nature of the situation. He presents as understanding of Chloe’s limits without pushing her unnecessarily. Both characters have something to learn about themselves and each other.

What I would like to see changed:

Chloe’s sisters come across a little shallow, even though they are also very compassionate about her life. I’m looking forward to seeing Hibbert explore deeper parts of their characters in the rest of the series.

Also, can we just get a book about their grandmother? Because she sounds like someone readers would enjoy getting to know.

Disclaimer: No disclaimer needed. I chose this title for my Book of the Month selection back in November and finally got around to reading it.

My library rating: There are a few pretty spicy sex scenes in this one. It’s a romance after all! But between those, a some indiscriminate curse words sprinkled throughout the book, I’d have to be cautious about recommending this one at work. I would maybe give it a shot for people who tell me they enjoyed The Kiss Quotient or The Rosie Project. Interestingly enough for my rating system, one of my best friends recommended this title to me.

1 glass of lemonade. A book that can only be recommended to someone whose reading taste you know well, like a best friend. There may be a fair amount of curse words, spicy sex scenes, or potentially morally repugnant behavior. This does not mean that the book is bad, just that the audience might be a little more limited.

My personal preference rating: I gave this title 4 stars. It’s sweet and sexy and features diverse characters, so what’s not to love?

Reading Group Guide and Read-a-Like suggestions.

The Other People by C. J. Tudor

My Dear Kittens! For today, I have a pretty creepy read for you. I read my first C.J. Tudor book a few weeks ago and loved it so much that I snapped up another one right away. I’m very grateful for ebooks right now, even if I do get a headache when I read too many hours in that format. If you’re looking for a read to take you away from all of this but still keep you in a dark place, then this would be a good choice. This is a relatively new release and Tudor doesn’t have a huge backlist, but having read 2 of her titles now, I’ll be adding her to my list of must-read authors. Stay well and enjoy reading!

Title: The Other People

Author: C.J. Tudor The Other People

Author website: https://www.facebook.com/CJTudorOfficial/

Publisher: Ballantine Books (a Random House imprint)

Publish date: January 28^th, 2020

ISBN: 9781984824998

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

Summary:

Gabriel is stuck in traffic on his way home when his life changes forever. In the car ahead of him he gets a fleeting glimpse of a young girl. She looks exactly like his daughter, Izzy, and she seems frightened. Gabe makes a split second decision to pursue the car through the traffic, but eventually loses track of the vehicle and convinces himself that it could not have been Izzy. He pulls over at a service station to call home and confirm that all is well, but when the police answer the phone, they tell him that something terrible has happened to his wife and his daughter.

Despite the police’s insistence that both his wife and daughter died that day, with both of their bodies recovered at the scene, Gabe refuses to believe that Izzy is dead. After all, he knows now that he could have seen her that day on the interstate. Consumed with guilt for giving up the chase then, Gabe now spends his days driving up and down the interstates, looking for that car and any other sign of his daughter. Along the way he comes into contact with a host of characters, some who seem willing to help him for reasons unknown, and some who believe he is just a hopeless man with an obsession.

When Gabe starts uncovering the truth of what happened that day, he falls down a rabbit hole that will entangle half a dozen lives. His wife is dead. Izzy must be alive. People he trusted have lied to him and a mysterious group known only on the Dark Web as the Other People, is coming after him. The vigilante group has a reputation for settling scores, and the more he digs into them, the more trouble he finds.

Why I liked the book:

The book is structured in a way that keeps readers on the edge of their seats. We get chapters from the perspectives of different characters. At first, the only character whose backstory we really know is Gabe, but we are also given the perspectives of a woman named Fran who travels with a strange girl named Alice, as well as the story of a waitress named Katie who works at one of the travel stops that Gabe frequents. As with all good thrillers, their stories seem entirely separate to begin with, but they twine together and form an entirely coherent storyline by the end.

In particular, I really love how many chapters drop a major clue or plot twist in the last sentence. It made it very difficult to stop reading at any one point because I was dying to know how each revelation would impact the overall story.

I also love a good creepy element, and the references to Alice’s narcolepsy and the beach and the strange girl in the bed kept me wondering if the supernatural would play deeply in the story.

Lastly, the Other People vigilante group make great villains. With an underground shady internet group, you never know who is with them, which means that the main characters literally have no one they can trust.

Disclaimer: No disclaimer needed. I borrowed an electronic copy of this title from my library’s digital collection.

My library rating:

This book is a no-brainer recommendation for mystery and thriller lovers, but if I was recommending it to a stranger who wasn’t as familiar with the world of mysteries and thrillers, I probably wouldn’t start with this title. There’s a fair bit of violence and a few actual and attempted murders. It doesn’t really go deep enough into difficult subject matter to be a good book club selection (unless it’s a mystery/thriller book club).

lemonade_icon 3 glasses of lemonade= a book that you could recommend to coworkers and friends you don’t know very well.

My personal preference rating: I gave this one five stars. I love a good dark mystery. I didn’t guess the twists (in fact I was pretty far off about a few things). This is a solid novel for my tastes.

What You Wish For by Katherine Center

Hello Kittens! My read-a-palooza continues with a women’s fiction title this time. I came across Katherine Center’s work a couple of years ago and was blown away by it. I have a confession to make though…I picked out the first book because it had a stunning cover. Center had already published several novels at that time, but How to Walk Away had a unique cover style that has carried through with her last couple of publications. This title won’t be coming out for a few more months, but that gives you time to catch up on Center’s other titles. I admit that this wasn’t my favorite of her books, but it was still very good and I think that people will enjoy escaping into these types of novels right now.

Title: What You Wish For

Author: Katherine Center

Author website: http://katherinecenter.com/

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Publish date: July 14^th, 2020

ISBN: 9781250219367

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

Katherine Center’s newest novel, What You Wish For, focuses on a young Librarian named Samantha who is working at a private school. When her boss, who is also a mentor and friend, passes away unexpectedly, Sam’s life is thrown for a loop. She’s barely recovered from the funeral when she gets the news that the replacement principal for her school is a man that she had a major crush on several years back. As in, a crush that was so bad that she fled the state to get over him. She remembers him as a goofy and lovable guy who was a great teacher, but she worries that once she sees him again, all of the old feelings are going to come rushing back.

As Sam struggles to adjust to so many changes in her life, Duncan (her former heartthrob and current boss) settles into his new position. This Duncan, however, is nothing like the person Sam remembers. This Duncan is hyper-focused on school security, increasing the school’s security measures at the expense of everything else. As Sam realizes that the school she loves and her mentor’s legacy is in danger of being destroyed by Duncan, she prepares to fight the battle of her life. She works to forget the man that she once knew so that she can stand up to the “new Duncan” and convince him that his efforts are misguided when it comes to this school. She’s ready to fight for her students and her colleagues, but when she discovers some things in Duncan’s past that help explain his demeanor now, she’ll have to fight just as hard to save the person he once was before he’s gone forever.

This book covers a lot of ground in a relatively short period of time. It’s a quick read with a lot of emotional depth. The characters are all dealing with grief in different forms and both Samantha and Duncan have experience major transformations over the course of the story. The setting is a big part of the story, since most of the action takes place within the private school, but descriptions of the school and its history do not bog down the narrative. There’s even a lovable canine for readers who like that kind of thing.

Center’s books tend to focus on emotional development and characters who survive and thrive when the deck is stacked against them. The main character, Samantha, has epilepsy, and I appreciated how her emotional responses to how people treated her as a result of her epilepsy were just as important to the story as the disorder itself was. At the same time, the story only narrowly focuses on that plot line and thankfully doesn’t try to deeply educate the reader on the medical aspects of epilepsy (there’s a time and a place for that kind of reading.)

I’ve read Katherine Center’s last two books, How to Walk Away and Things You Save in a Fire, so I had an idea of what I was in for. This book doesn’t rank as high for me as her previous two did. Samantha’s story did still pull at my heart strings, and I made it almost all the way through the story before I was reduced to tears (a feat that happened much earlier in the previous novels). Ultimately, I felt that we spent too long being primed to hate Duncan in this book. He is portrayed and cold and isolated for more than half of the book and it made it hard for me as a reader to want to root for him in the end. This was partially due to how the passage of time was utilized in the book because the first half of the book took place over the course of a few weeks while the second half of the book, especially the parts regarding the efforts to rehabilitate the old Duncan, felt like we were fast-forwarding through weeks and months to reach the conclusion. I also really liked the drama that Tina and Kent’s characters added to the story, but I felt like their conclusions were rushed as well. It seemed unlikely that Tina would have such a significant change of heart regarding Samantha.

Honestly though, those issues are minor. This was a great read that is an easy recommendation to patrons. Center’s backlist constitutes solid recommendations as well and I fully expect that Katherine Center will remain an author whose releases are go-tos for me.

Disclaimer: I received an electronic galley of this title from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

My rating:

lemonade_icon 5 glasses of lemonade= you could recommend this book to anyone. There is nothing in here that is going to upset anyone and you could start handing it out on street corners. (This kind of book is a Librarian’s dream. As much as we love good literature, suggesting a book for someone can be nerve-wracking work that can backfire BIG TIME.)

While there is a brief discussion of school violence here, I don’t think it is graphic enough to put off the majority of readers. I think this title is recommendable on a grand scale. The romance isn’t overwhelming and the story is sweet.